I’m back from a brief vacation in Migraineland, and thinking about the ways in which Men’s Rights Activists love to appropriate the language of feminism and other progressive movements, usually in ways that are face-palmingly ass-backwards.
Take this recent discussion on the Men’s Rights subreddit of the dire threat of “fake gamer girls” invading the “male space” of gaming. The generically named guywithaccount sets up the discussion with this post:
![I want to talk about "fake geek girls" (self.MensRights) submitted 9 days ago by guywithaccount For those of you who don't know about this, there's a bit of a controversy in what I'll call the geek community. Apparently, when women attend geek conventions (that is, those celebrating e.g. video games, comic books, sci-fi and fantasy), some men accuse them of being "fake geeks" or demanding that they prove their "geek cred" by correctly answering trivia questions made up on the spot. Here's one article (of many) that talks about it: [1] http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2013/08/08/the-fake-geek-girl-nonsense/ My concern for this issue is that, like anything else that involves gender, feminists and feminist sympathizers are attempting to dominate the discussion and frame the whole thing from a feminist and gynocentric perspective. The prevailing analysis might be summed up as "geek culture is deeply misogynistic, and the people complaining about fake geeks are just sad little losers who hate women." IMO, the geek subculture has provided a somewhat-safe space for many men who have been snubbed by the rest of society, where they are not expected to prove their value to each other by carving notches in a bedpost or exemplifying traditional masculine traits. The increase in mainstream appeal and female participation over the past decade or so threatens the safety and exclusivity of this space, and the backlash from male geeks is a somewhat-predictable response to the invasion of their space. Of course, there are few spaces just for men, and when someone tries to create or preserve one, they're accused of misogyny. I suspect that some of you don't give a crap about any of this and see the whole thing as petty, but realize that it's not happening in a vacuum. I believe it's merely a symptom of the fact that men have almost no voice in gender discussions and their needs are routinely denied or ignored.](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fakegeek.png?resize=573%2C541&ssl=1)
Now, there is a teensy bit of gold in this pile of bullshit: the notion of a “safe space,” where oppressed people can come forward and discuss their issues without fear of being talked over or shut down by those outside their group — who have more power in the world and who may not have their best interests at heart (or who may just be Blabby McBlabbypants types).
But there are a couple of giant problems with this notion when it comes to gamer dudes declaring gaming a “safe space” for men. The first is that, despite lingering resentments over being “snubbed” in high school or wherever — evident in the OP and in comments throughout the discussion — these guys are not actually an oppressed people by any measure that really matters.
Indeed, many of them — as tech dudes in a male-dominated tech world — are in fact in fairly privileged positions. For them to claim they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from the evils of “fake gamer girls” is a bit like Klan members claiming they need a “safe space” to protect themselves from blacks, Jews and Catholics. (Which is more or less what Klan members have argued over the years, albeit in less PC language.) No, I’m not claiming that all MRAs are the equivalent of hood-wearing Klan members. Only some of them are.
The second problem with the “game world as safe space for men” aregument is that YOU CAN’T JUST DECLARE BIG CHUNKS OF THE WORLD TO BELONG TO MEN. Yes, men dominate the gaming world in sheer numbers, both as game-makers and game-players. (While women make up nearly half of all game players — 47% — men tend to dominate the “serious” games that many geek dudes claim are the only ones that really count.) But gaming doesn’t “belong” to men any more than, say, novel-reading “belongs” to women — even though surveys suggest that women make up a staggering 80% of the fiction market in much of the English-speaking world.
Yep, that’s right: Women dominate “noveling” much more dramatically than men dominate gaming. Yet you don’t find women denouncing “fake noveler boys” or declaring that the male brain isn’t wired to understand the subtleties of written fiction.
No, in fact men are actively welcomed into book clubs. And my best friend, a woman, has spent much of the 18 or so years or our friendship trying to get me to read this novel or that novel, though over the years she’s only succeeded in getting me to read maybe one or two of her suggestions, which were pretty good, I have to admit. (I do plan to read some of the others, really.)
If you’re a socially awkward guy and want a safe space to discuss that, find a therapist, find a support group. Don’t pick on women gamers and pretend this is somehow your right because you’re oppressed as a socially awkward guy.
Anyway, here are some other dumb comments from the Reddit thread. YetAnotherCommenter warns feminists that they may lose some powerful allies if they continue acting so feministy.
Speaking of nerds who can’t get laid — which we weren’t but which these guys keep bringing up (and identifying themselves as) again and again — guia7ri seems to harbor some lingering resentments from high school, and who better to take that out on than attractive geeky women?
Hey MRAs, if you wonder why feminists sometimes describe MRAs as bitter men who hate women because they can’t get laid, it’s because MRAs like gui7ri so often EXPLICITLY DECLARE THEMSELVES BITTER MEN WHO HATE WOMEN BECAUSE THEY CAN’T GET LAID.
Meanwhile Byuku blames it all on evil feminists pretending to be geeks in order to make trouble. Because that’s what feminists do.
That’s how they get you!
EDIT: Added a sentence to temper and clarify my assertion that men “dominate” gaming.
Asher, like many of our trolls, just wants us to fall down and admit how right he is about everything. It won’t happen, and his need for validation from u sis just sad.
Cite a study you silly ass. Don’t point me to a popular news article. I want a study.
“asher is a moron” About 18,300,000 results (0.35 seconds)
Ahhhhhhh… so nice of you to admit what has been obvious to the rest of us this whole time.
The application of moral reasoning involves the application of empathy. You are confusing the tools that moral reasoning uses to be effective and with the conditions for morality. You are engaging in the reversal of cause and effect.
Empathy is the product of morality and not its cause.
BTW, most of the people I know understand this.
“asher is boring” roughly 17 billion result, .5 seconds.
Ooooh anecdote as evidence. And he claims he’s the only intellectually honest one here?
Hey guys, [TW: suicide] downing a bottle of klonopin with vodka is perfectly safe, I survived it after all!
All I know is now I’m never going to hear/read the words “intellectual dishonesty” the same way ever again.
Intellectually honest to God.
All forms of exclusion are the same, right?
I love it when pedantic people are so focused on words that they fail to notice subtle distinctions between ideas. Irony at its finest.
I am just…baffled by this.
Argenti: Benzos are hard to terminally OD from, and I’m glad. You would be missed.
The reason he’s here is because when he acts like this offline people just walk away. Yay captive audience!
(Seriously everyone, ignore him, he won’t go away as long as he’s getting attention.)
“The plural of anecdote isn’t evidence” is so cliche… but it bears repeating.
I’m sorry to say you have made such a poor first impression that I can’t really see letting you spend time with mine.
Oh great, another Baby’s First Philosophy Studies.
Pfft. Please. I can get Love, Blood and Rhetoric; Love and Blood; or Blood and Rhetoric. It’s Blood that’s obviously mandatory.
I call upon Asher to renounce atdevel in all its forms!
Oh ye gods, you’re another boring fella who doesn’t understand evo psych but thinks it’s the answer to everything.
Nooooo, science is the methodology by which we arrive at the explanation that best fits, etc. The explanation is properly termed a theory.
Oh wow, so, like, fifty years or so?
Next you’re going to argue that humans don’t have free will.
Oh great, Dictionary Troll on top of everything else.
Great Glolloping Buddha, not this again.
I’m sorry, it was not obvious to me that Asher was here to Dispense Wisdom. Allow me to kowtow properly this time. Fucker.
Mints on pillows and tiny bars of soap in the bathroom.
In a 4X game.
Sorry, forgot how much I had quoted.
OTOH, I nailed every single one of those blockquotes. Go me.
Lolwhut? In your universe emotional reactions are caused by pseudophilosophical reasoning? Does this apply to everything?
“This thing you are giving me is known as a ‘present.’ Humans exchange these as a way of strengthening social bonds, thus promoting survival of the species. Evolution therefore dictates that I should feel what is known as ‘happy.'”
Protip: When people say “Yes, whatever you say, Asher,” it doesn’t mean they agree with you.
hellkell — yeah, I realize as much, they also don’t tend to make one want to down the rest of the bottle, so yeah. And thanks (this was a couple months before I delurked, so you’d have never known me, but I appreciate the sentiment all the same)
My point, however was that what applies to one person does not inherently apply to everyone (a fact that stands true even for things we’d assume are innate to humanity — eg that your organs are aligned so your appendix is on the right, a very small minority have them all mirrored)
Asher: Now, I ask you, again, what is the complimentary gatekeeping function that is male to the gatekeeping of sex function that women have?
The gatekeeping function of sex. It really is that simple. Person A has the right (contra your interpretation of Bentham) to decided with whom the they have sex.
So too does person B, and C, and D, and on, and on, and on. Each person has that function.
And you can’t claim (historically) that this was a woman’s power: not when she could be married off as chattel. Not when the act of being married meant her husband had the right to force her to have sex if he was of a mind.
And this isn’t a “constant”. Jewish law has recognised, for going on two millennia, that good sex is a woman’s right, and that a husband who doesn’t provide it is divorceable, on that basis (and one who forced himself on his wife [or vice versa] was also divorceable).
Asher: Jared Diamond? Not so much.
Funny, the greatest complaing of Diamond (as a writer of popular science, not to his peer-reviewed work) is that he does a lot of, “this is true” presentation.
The intro to “Guns, Germs, and Steel” has a statement that “primitive” people are smarter than “civilised” people because they have to memorise so much more, in the course of their everyday lives.
This is patently false (it’s a category error), but that sort, “this is what it all MEANS” is a large part of what he does in that book, and in Collapse.
Your case, you are not making it.
Throughout history, most men have not oppressed most women.
The claim is vaccuous, and intellectually dishonest (because you can’t prove it). Most men didn’t have to oppress most women. The society did it for them.
Sort of the way most Northerners didn’t directly oppress slaves. That doesn’t mean slaves weren’t oppressed in the US.
People who are oppressed have no incentive to contribute to the well-being of a society in which they reside. However, women have, generally, contributed to the societies in which they lived, therefore, women haven’t been oppressed.
Spot that fallacy: begging the question.
A: you posit oppressed people have no incentive* to contribute to the societal well-being.
B: Women did so contribute.
C: Ergo they weren’t oppressed; because if they were they wouldn’t have contributed.
But C is predicate on A, which uses C to prove itself, ergo the question has been begged.
It’s really that simple. The idea that all questions can be resolved to one axis of investigation: and that axis resolves other questions is facile. That you seem to think it works that way (and is simple) is why you understand neither science, nor philosophy.
*this is also a weasel, since you imply all incentives have to be postive; slave had no positive incentive to help their societies, but they still did so, but that’s a different rhetorical dishonesty.
I think we need some sort of name for the disease that Asher appears to suffer from. Spock Syndrome? Internet Android Affliction?
Asher: Where does geek culture involve willful and systemic terrorizing of others? Be specific. Cite examples, because willful and systemic terror was the core identity of the Klan – that’s what it was all about.
Fallacy of compostiion, and a lie.
The first, not all geeks are members of the Klannish aspect of the culture. (but for citations, Dear Muslima, and all the crap around Elevatorgate: the harassment, and real world consequences attendant to “Donglegate” Katherine Harris, Anita Sarkeesian, Redheaded Feminist, The Texas Lan Party where the problem of dudes terrorising women was solved by… banning the women, not the terrorising men: shall I go on? Wouldn’t matter, I expect you to hand wave them away as you spirit the goalposts behind another hill).
The lie, is that you are still imputing the fallacy of composition to Dave, despite going on a dozen refutations.
Klan terror was widely-known and if the geek community engages in systemic and willful terror of others then it is logical to assume that it would also be widely known in the general public consciousness.
False.
The Klan was widely known because it was terrorising a large group of people in very public ways. Even at that the scope of Klan activity is still ignored, and minimised (go ahead, look up the Klan in Indiana, and see that they largely ran the state in the 1930s).
Given that geek/gamer culture is a far smaller, and more geographically amorphous (i.e. lots of it isn’t in a physical space) and that assholes like you will make apologia for them (the same way that whites would say it wasn’t that bad, and if they didn’t like the blacks could move; or fight back), it’s not a surprise that it’s not “widely known in the public consciousness”.
Except that it is. Not so widely known as the Klan, but the crosses aren’t being burned on lawns, rather they are in Youtube comments, and twitterhates. And it’s becoming more widely known.
That people have been looking away doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Asher: For an analogy to be intellectually honest there has to be a large body of similarities between the respective things being analogized. To use both the Klan and male geeks in the same analogy implies that there is a large body of similarities.
Nope. It has to be internally consistent, and have some validity in the scope of the comparison. It was, it does.
Some geeks make arguments similar to those the Klan made. That is true. Saying it isn’t dishonest.
Pretending that it isn’t true, when the logic behind it has been explained (ad naseum) is isn’t just intellectually dishonest, it’s also factually dishonest.
I already explained that and no one even acknowledged it. In fact, the original poster was dishonestly trying to use the dishonest rhetorical tactic of sneaking in equivalencies via a bad analogy.
Unless you count several people who told you why it was structually sound, and rhetorically valid (people like me) as no one, then yes, you are right.
Here, in the real world, where words have meaning and people can scroll up, that sort of gaslighting bullshit don’t fly.
. If an analogy is generally accepted as true then the premises under which it was offered then become accepted as true, as well. For David’s original analogy to be accepted as valid means to accept that there is a large body of functional similarities between male geeks and the Klan.
No. There has to be specific similarity to the aspect compared. There was. YOU, are insisting (in the face of the evidence) that Dave really meant to say things he didn’t, i.e. the gamer geeks are in all ways just like the Klan
He didn’t say that, and to impute he meant it is to be both a liar, and intellectually dishonest (as you use the words).
For an analogy to be intellectually honest in application it cannot just be well-argued but the premises under which it operates also have to be true. Consider the following analogy: wheels are to cars as legs are to horses. This analogy works and is intellectually honest because both cars and horses are things that people have frequently utilized for transportation so there is not a false equivalency between cars and horses.
Don’t be stupid.
1: Dave defined a limited premise. so that is dismissed.
2: Your car/horse analogy has nothing to do with them both being means of transportation. Sails are to ships as legs are to horses. Jet Engines are to planes as legs are to horses.
The transport aspect is immaterial. And legs/wheels is weak. What are wheels? They are the means to make motion easier.
Legs are support, and locomotive engine.
So fuel is to cars as hay is to horses works. Legs/Wheels is disputable (one might argue hooves/wheels, and motor/legs, but the analogies are stretched: and what the horse/car is used for isn’t material).
You really aren’t very practiced at debate against educated people.
Actually this is a poor analogy. Motors are to cars as legs are to horses.
Really, though, from what he’s written, how could interpret it as anything else?
If no one has any rights, then there is no reason for any social contract.
This is a reversal of cause and effect. Clearly, I have a “right” to kiss my wife and I not longer have that “right” at the point she decides that she no longer desires it. “Rights” are an effect of any social contract, not it’s cause, and I am pretty clearly talking about “rights” in the metaphysical sense, not the relative and practical sense.
Certainly, I have the “right” to drive 55 on the freeway and no longer have that “right” if the speed limit gets lowered to 50. This is a rejection of notions of rights being a priori.
That was meant for katz, by the way. Sheesh, you guys post long and fast.
Fallacies are intellectually dishonest argument (that was one of composition).
Fallacies involve logical inference and relate to necessary conditions. I wasn’t attempting to draw out a logically necessary inference so the comment wasn’t frallacious. Otherwise, simply presenting evidence for a position would be fallacious, as one presentation of evidence doesn’t exhaust the body of all possible evidence.
Amusingly, it’s the “citations needed” crowd who engages in the logically fallacious reasoning that if something isn’t definitively established in a peer reviewed journal then it isn’t worth considering. THAT is logically fallacious.