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Should gaming be a “safe space” for nerdy dudes who hate women? The Men’s Rights perspective

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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.
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.

YetAnotherCommenter 18 points 9 days ago* (22|4)      Woman are assigned status for being nerds where men are not.  Men lose status for their nerdiness. Women gain it.  Some geek girls have admitted how being a female nerd grants you so much attention from men (Rebecca Watson did precisely this in an issue of a skeptic newsletter). They admit the fact that female-geekery conveys a certain level of privilege.  This is actually compounded by feminism because by being a geek (or faking it) a woman is seen as standing up to the "boys club" and thus gets a chorus of "You Go Girl!" cheerleading combined with the ability to acquire victim cred from "teh sexist menz are picking on me!"      Also, the way some pop-feminists go on about fake nerd girl shaming, it's like it's a second holocaust or something.  And then they shame all male nerds as misogynists who are bitter because they can't get laid. "Neckbeard" and "fedora" jokes and "you're just socially awkward and live in your mother's basement" are all derivatives of nerd shaming.  I know several geek girls (real geek girls, not fake ones). I support females who enjoy video games and comics etc. enjoying these hobbies. I also think it makes business sense for some comics and games to cater to this demographic (to varying degrees).  What I protest is how ideological feminists are basically attempting to "reformat" geek culture towards their own preferences, and I protest how they see geek culture (which is a product of the socially emasculated rejects of the gender system) as a bastion of "male privilege." I protest how they interpret the fact that things aren't always about them all the time as bigotry or hatred. You can fairly describe geek culture as androcentric (after all, it is predominantly male and formed from the basis of men's experiences), but this isn't the same as misogyny.  The fact is that if feminists truly wanted to undo the gender system, male nerds would be a fantastic reservoir of allies. Yet by casting us as oppressors and borderline-rapists and engaging in repeated attention-whoring behavior and exploiting female-nerd privilege and inflicting repeated guilt-trips upon us, they have destroyed any hope of this.
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?

guia7ri 4 points 9 days ago (7|3)  I think that the reason why it seems like mostly women (or why it's fake geek girls not just fake geeks) is because girls have all of the power in high school. The popular/attractive girls control who is "cool" and who isn't. But it never just ends there. The ones that get rejected by this group will be rejected by everyone else because they're trying to be accepted as "cool". The rejects end up being forced loners at best (unless they hang out with other misfits, but that can almost make things worse). So when the girls who were (or look like they would have been) responsible for the geeks being social outcasts and losers for being geeks, are now are getting into geek culture it ends up causing a controversy over the legitimacy of a girl's interests.  Even so I think the reason why it may actually be fake geek girls is because women (especially attractive and confident women) are seen as interesting or cool when they identify as a geek. If a man says he likes video games/comics/sci-fi books/movies it's typically seen as either normal or unmanly/childish. I don't think anyone would ever falsely something about themselves that would have negative connotations.

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.

byuku 3 points 9 days ago (8|5)  My belief is that most of the complaining actually does come from fake geek girls. Think about it - have you ever met extremely hostile and unfriendly geeks? Especially around attractive women? Most geeks I've ever known have been treated like shit by society and thus have a really passive behaviour (they're quiet).  My hunch would be that a bunch of crazy feminist nutjobs walk into a convention, and some geek asks "Hey I notice XYZ on your shirt, who's your favourite character?"  Traditional geek girl responds politely. Fake geek girls say "WHAT? JUST BECAUSE I'M HERE DOESN'T MEAN YOU GET TO TEST ME!!!" and bitches about it to all hell all over the enerets.  And now we're here talking about it. That's how feminism dominates mainstream cultural discussion as it does.
That’s how they get you!

EDIT: Added a sentence to temper and clarify my assertion that men “dominate” gaming.

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kittehserf
11 years ago

Huzzah! I haz sufficiently appeased the blockquote and link monsters.

cloudiah
11 years ago

katz, That dictionary is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. And the last entry may be missing one letter at the very end. Fixing which would make it even beautyer and joyier. 🙂

pecunium
11 years ago

Oh yeah, as to the inane idea that chopping the US into separate countries will lead to butterflies and ponies: A short essay on sovereignty, territoriality, nationalism, and statecraft.

Asher, as on everything else, is a vacuous sink of ignorance and willful fail.

inurashii
inurashii
11 years ago

Asher just seems to have a hard time understanding that anything at all exists beyond the boundary of his skull.

But to be fair it IS pretty roomy in there.

CassandraSays
11 years ago

I guess he figured that since he has so much empty space it was only fair to show up here and offer to let us host a party there. Shame that the music was terrible, it really killed the mood.

Good
Good
11 years ago

One good way to prevent rape would be to tell women not to sexually abuse boys:

http://www.canadiancrc.com/PDFs/The_Invisible_Boy_Report.pdf

Finally, there is an alarmingly high rate of sexual abuse by females in the
backgrounds of rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men – 59%
(Petrovich and Templer, 1984), 66% (Groth, 1979) and 80% (Briere and
Smiljanich, 1993). A strong case for the need to identify female perpetrators can
be found in Table 4, which presents the findings from a study of adolescent sex
offenders by O’Brien (1989). Male adolescent sex offenders abused by “females
only” chose female victims almost exclusively.

freemage
freemage
11 years ago

Yay! You guys left me a piece to chew on!

Take a look at South Korean divorce rates. In 1990 they were around one percent. Today they are around forty-five percent. What changed is that the divorce laws went from men taking everything in a divorce to divorce laws looking like what they do in the US. Presumably,men could have divorced their wives on any whim but did not do so. Why not?

Yes, you can say because they got to exercise power over their wives but this ignores the reality of human psychology which is that people rarely exercise power solely for the sake of lording over others. Yes, there are individuals who are like that but they are very much an aberration.

The simplest explanation for the low historical divorce rate is that those men valued the relationship with those women, and not for the purposes of simply exercising power over them.

The blighted assininity of this conclusion is staggering. He literally has declared that if the men were happy in the relationship, the women could not have been oppressed. The ‘simplest’ explanation, you dimwit, was that prior to the change, women had to choose between staying in a bad marriage, or economic ruination. This is pretty much the definition of oppression, you shitweasel. As soon as it became possible to survive outside the relationship, according to your uncited numbers, nearly half the women fled those relationships as fast as they could. Ergo, prior to that change in the laws, women were being severely oppressed.

freemage
freemage
11 years ago

Oh, and grumpycatisagirl? I swear, that photo of the white cat looks almost exactly like our Legolas, down to the tiny bit of eye-gunk. Is yours a shedder, too (I can brush Legolas for about two minutes and end up with enough hair for a cottonball.)

inurashii
inurashii
11 years ago

Good, your concern trolling has literally nothing to do with this conversation. I get that you’re just bursting at the seams to introduce this dubious report that nobody is gonna disagree with the basic premise of (no one should abuse children, ever), but seriously dude try to be at least a little relevant.

grumpycatisagirl
11 years ago

Freemage, yes, he sheds like crazy! I still have black clothes after having him in my life for 13 years. You’d think I would know better. You should see what I look like after I take him to the vet.

Good
Good
11 years ago

What’s dubious? Also, most rapists are raised by women in single parent households:

http://thefatherlessgeneration.wordpress.com/statistics/

Viscaria
Viscaria
11 years ago

When we brush Tigger I swear he lets off so much hair that we could form that hair into another, regular-sized cat.

pecunium
11 years ago

Oh Good: You are in the same ballpark as Asher: Those “statistics” are unsourced.

Freemage: Careful, when I told the dude who thinks it ain’t terrorism if no one dies, that Korean Women not getting divorced when it would lead to poverty, I was told I was arguing for, “false consciousness”.

Viscaria
Viscaria
11 years ago

(I say regular-sized because Tigger himself is huge).

CassandraSays
11 years ago

Good is back? That’s not good at all.

grumpycatisagirl
11 years ago

Ah, the old single-mothers-are-the-root-of-all-evil card.

I think we should just stay on the far more interesting topic of cat hair.

CassandraSays
11 years ago

Whenever I brush my cat I get fluffy little tumbleweeds of hair in the hallway. They’re far more interesting than either Asher or Good.

chibigodzilla
11 years ago

When we brush Tigger I swear he lets off so much hair that we could form that hair into another, regular-sized cat.

My bengal is a huge shedder, you don’t even need to brush her, just pet her and you get enough hair on your hands to make another cat.

Viscaria
Viscaria
11 years ago

Our cats form tumblefurs too! And then Bailey tries to lick them, which: gross, buddy.

Tracy
Tracy
11 years ago

Waiting for Good(less) to say “that’s why women shouldn’t be allowed to divorce, because single mothers cause rape” or some such shite.

I have 7 cats. I think most of my body hair is actually cat hair that has stuck to me.

Tracy
Tracy
11 years ago

Question: why do so many cats want to lick/eat their tumblefurs? Mine always do.

CassandraSays
11 years ago

Mine used to do that and then she stopped, no idea why. Now she steps disdainfully over them as if scolding me for not cleaning them up yet.

Nitram
Nitram
11 years ago

Good on,
“What’s dubious? Also, most rapists are raised by women in single parent households”

And I’m sure fatherless households have nothing whatsoever to do with fathers abandoning their children and choosing to be absent. /sarcasm

pecunium
11 years ago

As to, “the invisible boy”. The citations are weak in the text: many are old; some of those which are used as if they were presently dispositive of thinking on the subject are more than 40: e.g. Morgan, P.K. and Gaier, E.L. (1956). The direction of aggression in the mother-child punishment situation. Child Development, 27 (4), 447-457 ).

Worse the text is a mishmash of unsuported assertions, weak examples, and distortive interpretations.

nd there are other problems. The embellishment of patriarchy theory evident in the quotation from Hyde is biased in the way it generalizes a negative stereotype of “male sexuality” to all men.

So let’s look at that quotation (I will use the entire paragraph it’s in, lest you accuse me of stripping it of context):

Because women were the early advocates in the abuse field, much of the writing in this area reflects a women’s point of view and a predominantly gender-based feminist framework for analysis known in general terms as “patriarchy theory” typified in the work of Herman (1981). In this theoretical view, abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is the result of a “patriarchal culture of male power, male prerogative and male inclination to sexualize all relationships” (Hyde, 1990)

1: That quotation on patriarchy is 24 years old. Since the good doctor is talking of the ways in which the present system is failing boys/young men, he ought to be using a more recent discussion of patriarchy. If it is, there ought to be a more recent quotation.

2: He has taken this quotation from it’s parent sentnce, and married it to his own words; by itself not always a problem, but he attributes an attack on a cultural trait to a specfic claim that Hyde is saying this is true of, “all men” which isn’t in the quoted portion. His citation of Herman (1981) seems superfluous, and I wonder why it’s there.

His next paragraph is a discussion of kyriarchy(which hadn’t been coined as a term yet). It’s as if he realised there are separate axes of power imbalance all on his own. That he fails to address any of the work in that field at all calls the rest of his reseach/analysis into question.

3: This paper… is 15 years old. So the issue isn’t new, and this publication isn’t evidence that it’s being ignored. It actually undermines the idea. Offering it up as if it’s something Canada needs to hop on, because it’s failing, is (at best) disingenuous..

It’s, (to borrow a phrase) Double-Plus Ungood.

cloudiah
11 years ago

Well we better rush all of those single mothers into forced marriages then!

Oh wait, I think we tried that for a while…

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