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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 … .”

George Eliot: Should she have been alllowed to play video games?
George Eliot: Should she have been allowed to play Call of Duty?

So the other day the fellas in the Men’s Rights subreddit were having another thoughtful and nuanced discussion about OMG WOMEN PLAYING VIDEO GAMES GET OUT GIRL GERMS EWWWW GAMING IS FOR MEN ONLY HELP HELP WE’RE BEING OPPRESSED and the always insightful IHaveALargePenis offered this little suggestion to the “feminists/women” of the world:

IHaveALargePenis 25 points 6 days ago (51|26)  It would be nice if women/feminists for once fucked off and created their own thing rather than moving into a men's space (after decades of berating it and the men participating in it) and demanding things change to suit them.  Remember revenge of the nerds? A movie that's about 30 years old? All those "nerds" are the ones in charge of modern technology. They're the Bill Gates' and Steve Jobs' of today and people love their products. They didn't have it easy getting to where they did, they sure as shit weren't given a green light for simply being men. So why is it that women aren't walking down the same road? Hell it's not even the same road since most people don't actively insult them or tell them they can't do it for simply being women.  It would be nice if feminists for once proved everyone wrong and themselves right by getting a bunch of women together and creating a new system/industry from the ground up which men want to flock to.

Huh. So in return I guess men would agree to hand science fiction over to the ladies — after all, it was one of them, Mary Shelley, who basically invented the whole genre back in 1818 with her mad-scientist classic Frankenstein.

Mr. Penis also gets bonus points for explicitly conflating women and feminists — most MRAs do this only implicitly, and then pretend they haven’t — and wins this month’s “Really? You Really Just Said That?” MRA Irony Award for declaring in his second paragraph that “people don’t actively insult [women] or tell them they can’t [get involved in nerdy pursuits] for simply being women” after he JUST DID EXACTLY THAT ONE PARAGRAPH EARLIER.

One brave commenter responded to Mr. Penis’ screed with a detailed list of infliential women in the gaming industry. Amazingly, this comment wasn’t downvoted into oblivion, though it is worth noting that it got considerably fewer net upvotes that Mr. Penis’ masterpiece.

The thread, naturally, is full of poop from other contributors as well. Cthulusbaby not only doesn’t want women playing or expressing opinions about games; he doesn’t even want imaginary women in his games. No Manic Pixel Dream Girls for him!

Also, he seems to be under the impression that there are no men in romance movies.*

Cthulusbaby 4 points 5 days ago* (9|5)      what right do men have to claim an entire subculture as "their own space"?  When they are the overwhelming majority of consumers for it? Seriously, look at the demographics of men vs women for games like COD and Gears of War and explain how these online communities AREN'T male spaces?  I don't want female soldiers in my games about elite special forces, because in real life there are no female navy seals or SAS. Women just don't belong, there's no need for them in these games. I like my shoot-em-ups to be testosterone fuelled aggression simulators, not equal opportunity political propaganda.  It's exactly the same as a small but vocal minority of men complaining about male representation in sappy romance movies, and a shit ton of other men jumping on the bandwagon even though they've got no actual interest in it.      Also, you put an unfair and extremely skewed amount of blame on women for the amount of stigmatization placed on "nerds" back in the day. Sure there are women who berate gamers but I think mass media as a whole hasn't been doing that subculture any favors and to say that women are more to blame for that is completely unfounded and absurd.  I think you'll find that women are the primary consumers of TV media, and women are the ones who decide what is attractive and desirable in men. You'll notice that since the "nerd" archetype became more attractive to women, it's moved more into the mainstream and is no longer as socially unacceptable. You really think that is coincidence?  Upvoting you for providing an alternative viewpoint, but you're really misguided.

Acolmiztli, meanwhile, sheds a tear for the nerds that came before him:

acolmiztli 3 points 5 days ago (5|2)  Men were raised in a culture where playing video games was grounds for social pariah status and open hostility. It was amazing that anyone developed a love for computer games to the point of wanting to make it their career!!

Evidently the only way to rectify this past injustice is to do the same thing to women today? It’s the MEN’S RIGHTS WAY!

And hey, if women don’t like it, well, they can always just hide their gender identity. (On the Internet no one knows you’re George Eliot.)

poloppoyop 2 points 5 days ago (4|2)  A lot of free tools have been available for years to make games. Anyone can take the time to learn things, participate in open source softwares etc. If teenagers do it, I don't see what prevents women to do the same. Their gender? Nope, internet offers anonymity so you can participate in some project and people will consider you male until proven otherwise.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Sometimes all it takes to solve these silly lady problems is some good old-fashioned male ingenuity,

H/T to Againstmensrights on Reddits for pointing out Mr. Penis’ lovely remark, and making the same point about science fiction.

* Note to extremly literal-minded readers: I am not actually suggesting that Cthulusbaby thinks there are no men in romance movies. It is just that the way he is framing the issue is so ridiculous he might as well think that.

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Shaenon
11 years ago

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.

wordsp1nner
wordsp1nner
11 years ago

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.

MrPopularSentiment
11 years ago

@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!!

sarahlizhousespouse
11 years ago

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.

Andrew Johnston
11 years ago

@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.

Andrew Johnston
11 years ago

@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.

ikonografer (@ikonografer)

@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.

feminist_couple
feminist_couple
11 years ago

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)

feminist_couple
feminist_couple
11 years ago

*has already shown, gaah!

deniseeliza
deniseeliza
11 years ago

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.

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

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!

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

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!)

Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

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.

S Trawnik
S Trawnik
11 years ago

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.

Cthulhu's Intern
11 years ago

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.”

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

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

Redcap
Redcap
11 years ago

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.

Cthulhu's Intern
11 years ago

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.

grumpycatisagirl
11 years ago

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.

grumpycatisagirl
11 years ago

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.

grumpycatisagirl
11 years ago

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.

Maltete
11 years ago

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.

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

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.

LBT
LBT
11 years ago

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.