Men’s Rights Redditor on Gaming: “It would be nice if women/feminists … f**ked off and created their own thing rather than moving into a men’s space … .”

I must show this to my professor. I was discussing misogyny in gaming culture with her, but I did not have a good reference with me. Thank you for providing such a clear-cut example.

How they co-opt terms (men’s space) to exclude others is hideous.

Reblogged this on Victoria 2070 a.d..

I do remember Revenge of the Nerds, and how it was a perfect illustration of rape culture. The nerds install cameras in a sorority to watch the women without their knowledge, and later, one of the main characters rapes someone by pretending to be her boyfriend.

If you enjoy an activity… share it with others. That’s true love.

Women “fucking off and doing their own thing?” As in, making their own spaces? A space one could describe as, I dunno, “safe”?

I’m sure if they did that, misogynists would never give them trouble again. They certainlynwouldnt go out of their way to invade and troll such spaces. Why didn’t we think of this before?

Well, I’ll grant that on the internet no one knows what’s in your pants unless you tell them // make it explicitly clear. I don’t image most people particularly enjoy that the way I do though (I am fundamentally unable to pass as androgynous in meat space)

The rest is a load of horse manure. Including about no women SEALs since they aren’t allowed to exist and may well choose to once they can. (Pecunium, correct me if I’m wrong there, but the active combat exclusion inherently covers the SEALs doesn’t it?)

Games are a consumer product. You participate by buying something and using it. You can’t tell a group of people they’re not welcome to buy something. Can you imagine if women started telling men they weren’t allowed to buy cake mixes? “No! Baking cakes is a woman’s space!” We’d be laughed off the planet for that. (I don’t know if that’s the greatest example, but I’m baking cupcakes for Mr. S’s birthday, so it’s the first thing I thought of.)

And let’s not forget that we’re talking about video games. Claiming that women can’t play war games because they aren’t SEALS in real life is laughable. None of these gamer guys have real life SEAL experience. So I guess they aren’t allowed to play, either. Having a penis doesn’t automatically make you a warrior.

So men are in charge of a particular space because of majoritarian rule?

Um, ok.

Also, I think it’s hilarious how they define “male space” as any space with mostly men in it rather than, you know, simply a space that is specifically designed for men only.

The theme is like, well if women want in then they should do it themselves. Our MRA friends seem to miss the fact that systematic cultural and financial obstacles block many women/women orientated projects from ever being developed/reach the market.

There would be dudely rioting in the streets if they had to put up with a tenth of the shite women do as a matter of course in their days.

Men were raised in a culture where playing video games was games was grounds for social pariah status and open hostility.

There’s the drama, the part that makes me love it when MRAs talk about video games. These guys talk about their “tough childhoods” like they were ethnic minorities raised in an occupied state or something. With the persecution complex these guys shoulder, I keep waiting for one of them to post the lyrics to a negro spiritual – It’ll happen, I’m sure.

It occurs to me that I’m probably the same age or older than most of these whiners, so I feel like I’m in a position to call them out on this “nerd persecution” crap they keep selling. Video games were just a normal part of youth when I was a kid – this idea that owning a Playstation made you a pariah is absurd. I get that it’s a major part of the “nerds v. jocks” myth we have going here in the States, but that’s as much Hollywood as it is reality. In this reality, video games were a fairly standard topic of conversation. If any of these guys felt left out, I guarantee that it wasn’t the electronic entertainment, it was because they were assholes.

Of course, all of that’s for boys. I don’t know the situation for girls, and obviously these pricks don’t care. There were plenty of young men who drifted in and out of my various circles, but only one girl, and she clearly did not fit in elsewhere. I suspect that there’s a reason for that.

Most of the anti-gamer hostility I saw came from other gamers for playing the “wrong” kinds of games or buying the “wrong” console. Non-gamers hearing about Final Fantasy or whatever just looked kind of bored and tried to change the subject.

I do have one piece of anecdotal evidence that supports this narrative, and that’s that my first girlfriend got mad when I ignored her to play Dynasty Warriors.

Yeah, IME (I’m 22) playing video games was pretty standard fare for most guys and a lot of girls in school, though maybe not as much as much as these guys do it. The one guy I can remember who was obsessive ended up going to prom with two dates. Granted, neither of us slept with him (I know because I drove him home right after, and we were both just friends of his). Also, I did make fun of his sometimes, but we were debater buddies, and I feel justified making fun of anyone who plays Starcraft on the classroom computer while I’m practicing debate.

Also, fiber arts in general is really female dominated, but I don’t think that the women involved are hostile to men who do it. Pecunium will know more, but I have never really seen it or heard about it online. So it isn’t just about “this is our space”–this is about girl cooties and privilege.

On the male knitter thing, I went to the local yarn shop yesterday to get some loom food and there was a young boy (maybe about ten?) learning to knit. I didn’t quite figure out, but I think some of the women around were his family. There was also a man who was one of the owners (I think) who helped show me some yarn–I’d commented on how hard it was to find masculine colors in fancy sock yarns, and he showed me a red/black cascade handpaint that I might come back for when I want to make my dad another pair of socks.

It’s always funny, because when I got my job testing video games, back in the late 90s, my interview went “You have experience! And you’re a girl! And you have experience! You know you’re so hired, right?” The other guys on the QA squad were delighted to have a second girl on the team. I know they like to think of themselves as super-hardcore whatever, but I hardly think working for Electronic Arts is some piddly little thing, they’d probably shit their pants to do that.

It’s always funny, because when I got my job testing video games, back in the late 90s, my interview went “You have experience! And you’re a girl! And you have experience! You know you’re so hired, right?” The other guys on the QA squad were delighted to have a second girl on the team. I know they like to think of themselves as super-hardcore whatever, but I hardly think working for Electronic Arts is some piddly little thing, they’d probably shit their pants to do that.

Starting countdown to MRA shouting about female privilege…

When I was out for a walk late last night I had a car full of guys drive by and scream out the window. Then they turned around and drove past as one of them dangled his dick out the window at me. I guess by wanting things like that not to happen is me wanting to take over the entire town that I live in. “If women don’t want dicks in their face for no reason, than why don’t they move?!”
The logic they use…it baffles. As always.

First, amen and I second that to everyone.

So, the primary consumers of tv are women, so tv is dominated by feminist women? Which is why tv shows are full of interesting, well-rounded, complex female characters and the “males 18-34” market is completely ignored by programmers and advertisers and no professional sporting event is ever televised. Ever.

Are they even reading what they write? The cognitive dissonance they experience must be through the roof! I think they need therapy. Lots of therapy.

@wordsp1nner: I have a male artist friend who works in textile arts (along with pottery and a few other things), and I’ve never seen any indication that he’s excluded or looked down upon. Granted, he’s a bit different – I’ve known him and his older brother my whole life, and I’ve never known men who were less concerned with perceived gender roles. Still, no one around here seems to mind men working in “feminine” crafts, or vice versa for that matter.

I’m with the comments that say playing video games was normal when I was little (I’m 28). I’m not a gamer and don’t like games much as I lack hand eye coordination but I often played with friends. As games got more advanced and serious this happened less as I was no longer good enough to play with.

Andrew,

I suspect that men in fiber arts might get some crap, but not usually from women in fiber arts.

I played my first computer game as a toddler. I learned how to spell with a DOS typing tutor. I learned math from Math Blasters on a Mac. I never stopped playing – I played with my dad, I played with my male friends, and then I hit my early teens and had to play alone because gaming was a “boy thing,” so I was “weird.”

When my met my husband, our first date was in Diablo I. We also played a lot of StarCraft (he was Protoss, I was Zerg) before we moved in together. Yesterday, my in laws took our toddler to a museum for the afternoon so that my husband and I could play Left 4 Dead for about five hours straight.

But hey, yeah, tell me that women don’t play games, or that games are “male space.” While you’re doing that, I’m with a man who appreciates having a wife who not only loves games as much as he does, but who values the time that we get to play together.

No matter how many wo9men point out that they’ve been interested in gaming all along, that this has never been purely a men’s space, they just can’t hear it. We MUST be faking it, because reasons.

And Cthulusbaby, I don’t need that “fake nerd” bullshit from someone who can’t even spell “Cthulhu” correctly. GTFO my fandom, thanks.

@MrPopularSentiment, I started out always playing Protoss, but then I got addicted to Zerg, because I like the music best, and I enjoy the squelchy/screamy/gutteral sounds they make. Sometimes, my boyfriend will make a board where I can play both Protoss and Zerg, but Zerg is my primary, so I get the Zerg music.

And hey, if women don’t like it, well, they can always just hide their gender identity.

…allowing the misogynists in the group to go on claiming there are no women in their super-special little club*, because women aren’t good enough.

My husband and I are both in the comics industry, and this past week he foolishly got himself embroiled in some arguments over the latest outbreak of assholery from the Penny Arcade guys. He is now convinced that the sole function of gaming fandom is to make comic-book fandom look better by comparison.

*Of people who play video games. That is the single saddest thing in the world to feel superior about. I was up until 3:00 AM last night playing “Yoshi’s Island” on Super Nintendo. I’m not under the impression that makes me better than people who got some sleep. Although “Yoshi’s Island” is pretty much the best game of all time.

Yes, and even I–who doesn’t really do video games–has a love for Civilization, various android/IOS games, and that one King’s Quest with the mother and daughter (which, ironically, I learned to play from my mother).

My dad, however, has no apparent interest in any computer games, though he does like board games.

@Wordsp1nner – Civilization is awesome. You should try Warlock: Master of the Arcane. I just started playing it a few days ago and I’m pretty much in love. It’s very similar to Civ5, but has magic! You heard me right, magic!!

I wonder if they are referring to first person shooting games exclusively or if they are trying to imply that all gaming of any sort is intrinsically masculine.
I know I’ve played a couple of PC non-shooter games in my day and I certainly don’t consider myself a gamer.

@Shaenon: Amen to pretty much all of that. At the risk of turning this into another discussion on video game culture, there is nothing about that that pisses me off as much as that “more hardcore than thou” bullshit. I remember when video games were a hobby and not part of anyone’s identity. And, I remember when no one bragged about all the time and money they wasted on video games. If I’ve spent 200 hours playing Civ games in the last year (which is probably not far from the truth), that’s not something I’m proud of. I’m proud of the things I did when I wasn’t being entertained.

@MrPopularSentiment: If you can get DOSBox running, you might want to try Master of Magic. It’s as hilariously broken as any other old 4X game, but it’s also a lot more sophisticated than a lot of what you see now.

@morrigan: have you seen jto’s video on apartheid and safe spaces? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7kUX18R9ws&list=UU255AfKquZnQMO0amxdEGWw that should add something to your work.

I guess we should be calling for men to drop out of nursing school/flower arrangement/elementary education/fiber art/… because those are all women’s spaces, amirite? And all you need to have to define a women’s space is a majority of women!! I’m having fun imagining the hypocritical rage were I to start a satirical thread implying that.

(though much of the MRA movement have already shown that they don’t give a crap about men with those kinds of hobbies, as much as they pretend to)

*has already shown, gaah!

I am 100% confident that men have more representation in romantic comedies than women have in dudebro video games like CoD. Not only are they more represented numbers wise (unless its a romcom about lesbians, there’s guaranteed to be at least one man in it!) but there is much more variety of the type of man who is there (although it’s definitely not perfect, because it’s Hollywood).

Also, I love how “gaming culture” somehow means “going nuts over really unimaginative war shooters that get crapped out every few months”. It’s as if “movie buffs” were primarily interested in summer blockbusters, and shamed everyone who’d rather watch an indie flick or a documentary than another entry into the Transformers or Fast and Furious franchises.

The problem with Mr. Penis’s view of gaming culture is not that women want to be in it. The problem is that gaming culture has grown up, and games are not just about power fantasies for overgrown adolescents, if it ever was about that in the first place! People who make games and who genuinely love the art form are looking to use games to tell stories. They want to be creative. They want to make something beautiful, and fun, and full of depth.

Yeah, they also want to sell you a new CoD every year, because they know you’ll buy it, and they love money. But that’s not the heart of gaming. FPS’s are popular and fun and they make game companies a lot of money. But loving gaming doesn’t begin and end with loving Call of Duty any more than loving movies begins and ends with loving Independence Day. It’s OK if the popular stuff is what you’re in to. But it doesn’t make you a more authentic gamer than anybody else, and frankly, it suggests that your interest in games as a genre of artistic expression is rather shallow.

The bullshit about men and gaming pisses me off, so every time this topic gets posted, I’ma just repost what I said on tumblr:

Whenever I hear some asshole gamer whining about how women aren’t real gamers, I want to hiss in their ear, “Roberta Williams.”

Whenever I hear some asshole gamer claiming that female protagonists in video games don’t sell, I want to say, “ROBERTA WILLIAMS.”

Whenever I hear some asshole gamer acting like his balls are getting chopped off because his sacred male space is being invaded by women, I just want to ram every CD-ROM of my Roberta Williams Anthology game collection down his throat in front of a mammoth blow-up picture of her in front of her computer circa 1978, all the while bellowing, “ROBERTA WILLIAMS, MOTHERFUCKER! ROBERTA! FUCKING! WILLIAMS!”

Also, us and our friend just finished Zork Nemesis and are now playing Myst. The game is far less intimidating as an adult!

RE: wordsp1nner

That was King’s Quest VII! I still have it, though me and Sneak got stymied and haven’t rebeaten it in ages. (That stupid HORSE!)

Re: DOSBox, if you use OSX there’s a freeware easy as pie one called Boxer.

And if anyone has the rom for King’s Quest VII I’ll pay you in virtual cookies for it.

I’m first going to comment to the fact that the writer indicates Mark Shelley as the founder for science fiction. Try looking up Johannes Keppler. He is credited with writing science fiction as early as 1604.

Second, I’m not one to appreciate when someone uses the voices of a few misogynistic idiots to justify another anti-masculine rant. Man-bashing is old, and as mature in life as pantsing a kid in PE class for a laugh. While I appreciate putting an idiot in their place, I don’t not like when someone uses it as a soap-box to generalize any type of ideal that women are somehow better or men are inherently flawed.

Aren’t 90% of novel readers women? Funny, I like reading novels, but I never get told to fuck off and play video games or get tested to see if I’m a “fake novel reading guy.”

😀 We have the rom for King’s Quest VII! We have EVERYTHING that Roberta Williams ever even BREATHED on, up until about 1996.

I’m going to add to the “women who have always played video games, because why the fuck WOULDN’T they” list. Some of my earliest memories (around two or so) are attempting the original Tomb Raider games while my dad gave me pointers on how to play. I wasn’t very good at them, but I did beat The Secret of Monkey Island (mostly) on my own. I also gained a life-long crush on Lara Croft, so… thanks Dad?

I’d also like to note that there is -nothing- wrong with getting into video games later in life. It’s a hobby, not a goddamn career.

And Cthulusbaby, I don’t need that “fake nerd” bullshit from someone who can’t even spell “Cthulhu” correctly. GTFO my fandom, thanks.

Word!
Also, I have no relation to that guy. Just need to say so.

Neither Steve Jiobs or Bill Gates had any advantage at all in their life because of their male gender. None at all.

Ha ha and ha.

Neither Bill Gats or Steve Jobs had any advantage at all in their lives because of their male gender. None at all.

Ha ha ha and ha.

Eerk, that’s what I get for thinking I caught my mispelling of Jobs in time to post my comment over again. I spell Bill Gates wrong instead.

D’oh.

By the time I started gaming (the late 90s), it was a pretty standard activity and nobody was looked down on for it. There of course were niche geek pursuits – Magic: The Gathering, say – but mostly people would ignore rather than mock that. It sounds like so much invented persecution.

Everything I’ve heard about Gates and Jobs were that they were/are assholes, and I probably would not want to have a beer with them.

In other gaming news, apparently the kids here love horror games. The ones staring crazy little girl protagonists and asylums most of all. Go figure.

Seriously, our old comp runs like a dream, but they’re sad because we likely won’t be able to play Fran Bow when it comes out.