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:
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.*
Acolmiztli, meanwhile, sheds a tear for the nerds that came before him:
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.)
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.
Oh, and while we’re at it: This is what a female sniper looks like: http://www.nellis.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/120511-F-AQ406-094.JPG
Not this: http://www.konami.jp/kojima_pro/japanese/img/info/q01_6x9.jpg
How are any of David’s criticisms exclusive to men? All of them apply equally to women who spew the same nonsense.
Really? Mary Shelley ‘invented’ science fiction? The ancient Greeks didn’t have anything to do with it? Voltaire did not live before Shelley’s time?
Wait, wait, we just mentioned that women PLAY games and design them. How does this make them better than men?
Freudian slip?
Apparently talking about women in anything other than the most negative ways is male-shaming. MISANDRY.
I have so many questions about this post, but as they expose my total ignorance of how people game that I am loathe to ask them.And I am also too lazy to Google for the answers. Also, I need to go to the market. … I may never learn the truth.
LBT — email me that shit! Please.
Re: Frankenstein’s Monster and that writing contest in general — Polidori’s The Vamyre is credited as invented vampires stories as we know them. Very Eurocentric as vampires have a long history in places like Romania, but nonetheless they both pretty much started new genres from what was a friendly writing contest (backstory, the Shelleys and Polidori went to visit Lord Byron and got stuck inside thanks to shitty weather, the results of their boredom made history)
Brian Aldiss, who wrote Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction is of the opinion that modern science fiction originated with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. You could argue with this, sure, but it’s not something David just made up.
I have two copies of that book. I had one, but was frustrated that the spine was broken. Then I ran across another copy and bought it. As soon as I tried to read it, its spine broke too.
So far I’ve only read the part of the book about Lovecraft and the “weirdies.”
Thus ends David’s Duplicate Book Minute.
There’s ancient Greek sci-fi? You’re not talking about stuff like the Odyssey, are you?
But yeah, there’s a difference between the occasional fantastical work and a viable, relatively popular genre, and the publication and popularity of Frankenstein seems to have been the watershed moment for the latter.
I love the idiot who said that if you don’t state what gender you are people will assume you’re a guy. They got so, so close to self-awareness and then jammed their fingers in their ears and ran blindly past it.
Civilization II is what my cousin used to keep me busy whenever he baby-sat. xD I still love the franchise, though I really wish that they’d make a new Alpha Centauri. That game was the best.
But no, women should create their own completely separate thing all on their own. It’s not like things women create with women in mind are deemed “stupid girl stuff,” hounded by assholes whining about misandry, or become popular with men who then complain loudly when it doesn’t pander to them.
Sometimes I’m really glad for using an OS incompatible with almost all games.
By the way, his argument of “other kids were mean with nerds, and it’s all women’s fault” is pretty weird. I don’t know how it worked in MRA High, pretty much 100% of the bullies in my school were men.
Shaenon said:
Yoshi’s Island was great! It was sort of a guilty pleasure for me. Even though I never owned that cartridge, I still remember some of its music.
Oddly, ahostileworld isn’t completely wrong. Most of the elements of modern science fiction were around when Mary Shelley put them together. Then Mary Shelley put them together.
This is what inventing something means. You know — like the Wright Brothers didn’t invent wings, propellers, the internal combustion engine, timber frames or canvas, they just put all these things together to make something new.
The concept that a great invention is the work of a singular act of inspired personal genius is a trope popularised in the novel Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
Wow, I had no idea some folks would get so whiny about the idea that Mary Shelley created fanfiction. Why does Voltaire or the Greeks get the credit? At least with Mary Shelley, we have a REASON. (It’s about a scientist using SCIENCE! which uses it to explore the human condition and the possibilities of the future.)
RE: Argenti
I can’t email a CD to you! (Two, actually — one has the installation, the other the game itself.) And I don’t know if I COULD copy them.
Also to the “there was science fiction before Shelley!” crowd: you always seem to forget proto-sf authors Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn. Wonder why that is…
Anyone else getting images of the Fat, Ugly or Slutty website while reading that?
I am 42 and my husband is 41. Both of us started gaming in the late 70s and a feature of the early part of our relationship in the early 90s was gaming until the sun came up. Not so much now cos kids and work. I have to say,neither of us was an outcast because of gaming. People who gamed were interested,those who didn’t, weren’t. The most I can say is that MrBigMomma’s interest was never questioned, whereas people have been mildly surprised by mine.
Running Civ 5 at the moment, hubby playing assassins’ creed.
“I can’t email a CD to you! (Two, actually — one has the installation, the other the game itself.) And I don’t know if I COULD copy them.”
Shit, and my CD drive is dead! I have the windows install, but it breaks under XP and I can’t find a license key for 95. However…bring them? I assume pecunium has a working CD drive and I have a flash drive and skillz…we’ll see what I can do?
Lately I’ve been spending all my free time on Nature Games’ Infant Simulator 2013. It is awesome, and the graphics are cutting-edge. It’s a real edge of the seat game, no saving allowed.
Pity the DLC’s so pricey.
Check out this blazing gameplay screenshot!
Hey… MtG isn’t a “niche geek pursuit”, is it? Not a video game, but same kind of overwhelmingly hostile to women, “you aren’t supposed to be here” thing. Most Fridays I am the only female-bodied person out of ~40 at the local brick & mortar.
Lol Falconer…I just got that, slow on uptake much?
Am able to comment as my 4yr old is still asleep at 9.30am. Have checked to make sure she is alive of course.
Damn, that’s a cute baby. How old are they now? Teething yet?
The college DLC’s expensive but its safer on the save integrity than the CoD DLC for the simulator.
Darnit, Falconer, you had me at that one. “Infant Simulator 2013” sounded so much like “Street Sweeper Simulator 2011” or “Surgeon Simulator 2013” that I thought, “Oh great, ANOTHER shoddily-built game designed to make a quick profit off of the lulz generated by its nonsensical premise?”
Only then did I put my brain into gear.
Brain: why would Falconer want to simulate having infants? Oh!
Followed by D’AWWWWW
Sweet pic, Falconer!
RE: Argenti
Okay, I can try to bring the CDs; I’m not thriled about lugging a game set with me on the road, but another friend of mine later in the trip is interested. Also, B-SOD has a working CD drive. I think a friend of mine mentioned you could download all of them from here, and they probably work better than my old CD-ROMS, honestly.
Yeah I had meant the DOSBox roms anyways, not CD-roms (do people still call ’em that?). Thanks for the link, I’ll see what magic I can work from that!
Pecunium! I haz plant for you! Sundew produced a baby with this nice long root and it’s been potted and is all cute and tiny in its oversized 2″ pot (smallest plastic I had, no terra cotta cuz it leeches minerals and carnivorous plants no like minerals) it’s been fed and everything, and I think I can get you bloodworms if I head straight from the train to your place, my mother’s freezer bags have a two hour window depending on air temp and it is FREEZING on the train. A proper plant! No seeds, no cuttings, just a cute little thing in sand and moss! *squees*
they are almost seven months old! No teeth yet.
@Argenti: Oh god, changing a diaper when you only control one hand, like in surgeon simulator! jesus.
Rather, @Biot.
I liked how Trollypants on the last page expressed his disapproval XD as if David will be disappointed to learn that he no longer has the unflinching support of the “can’t tell the difference between anti-masculine and anti-misogyny” crowd.
@BigMomma: Oh yes, the little niggling fear. My baby girl has taken to falling asleep face down, folded double after she knackers herself trying to crawl. I find myself looking in on her twice an hour while she naps like that.
Ah, I always enjoy the trope of the old-school nerds who were so oppressed by the ladies in their all-male subculture of old. Remember, girls have never been nerds. Any girls you see in nerdland are a modern perversion, the “fake geek girl” out to… Well, it’s not very clear. Destroy all that is right and holy, but how that’s accomplished by enjoying comic books we’re not sure. There certainly weren’t droves of women there for the birth of sci-fi/fantasy as a genre, some of them admittedly hiding between male or neutral pseudonyms. There weren’t plenty of women at the earliest Star Trek conventions. Not sci-fi/fantasy clubs on the campuses of women’s colleges for thirty years, churning out alums who plunged into books and comics and games and movies to produce genre-defining works that resonate with us today and forever. Nope. We have always been at war with Eastasia.
RE: Argenti
Yeah I had meant the DOSBox roms anyways, not CD-roms (do people still call ‘em that?).
Yeah, sorry, I only got CD-ROMs. (And yes, I still call them that, or just plain CDs.)
RE: badandfierce
Yeah, I think those folks got their ideas about geekdom from old movies or something, where the male geeks lusted after the cheerleaders and there were apparently no geek girls.
Wait,you messed up yournegative.
Or maybe you’re just a misandristwho likes saying that men are inherently flawed.
(projection! Asswipe!)
Also, my game was Age of Empires. We played the SHIT out of that, multiplayer.
My Little Bathtub: Hygiene Is Incidental.
He is now convinced that the sole function of gaming fandom is to make comic-book fandom look better by comparison.
HAH! Sad, but funny.
And I thought this is what a female sniper looked like.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uDI_4YnQJJ0/UK171f5YsrI/AAAAAAAACsc/YIJ_eBQWJ3g/s400/westheimer.jpg
(OK, OK, ex-sniper.)
And yes, Roberta Williams, dammit.
There’s a whole thing with sci-fi fans grasping at straws to make their genre look older than it is, which mostly hinges on equivocating with traits that are common in sci-fi but also common in other genres. eg, “Sci-fi is old because sci-fi has adventure in it and lots of old stuff has adventure in it too!”
Unsurprising that they’d apply that bad logic to exclude women.
Who cares? Lots of genres aren’t that old. A bunch die pretty fast too — looking at YOU, trucker movies of the 1970s!
S Trawnil: Second, I’m not one to appreciate when someone uses the voices of a few misogynistic idiots to justify another anti-masculine rant.
Guilty conscience much. What I read was an anti-misogynist rant. I suspect you of projecting the “woman = feminist” conflation the MRA crowd is so prone to doing.
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.
Work on reading for context.
re fiber arts: I’ve never had anything but supportive reactions. I’ve seen some interetsing men (biker dudes) who knit. Never have women said, “this is our stitch and bitch; for women only”.
Nor have I seen it in any of the other “female dominated” areas I’ve seen people doing (costuming, beadwork, scrapbooking, etc.).
Things like pottery seem to be pretty evenly divided (IME), and photography is strange. It’s got more men in it, but women don’t feel excluded (to me, I may be missing something) and some of the more interesting photographers I know/have worked with, were women.
I don’t know many female smiths (but a few) again, the sense I get is, “more power to ’em”, because there aren’t that many smiths. I know some women who do mail, and they don’t (so far as I’ve seen) get shit.
So I think this is an assholes with issues problem.
I suspect that men in fiber arts might get some crap, but not usually from women in fiber arts.
Mostly not. There are some who will gender police like mad; but it’s mostly men. I am sure there are some gender essentialists (often very fundie-religious) who do it, but that’s not my circles of company.
Cthulhu’s Intern: I’ll see your female sniper and raise you another one: from the 1940s
That’s not in the USSR (despite the use of a modified Mosin-Nagant)but in Israel. Here are some details about her. (she’s a famous person, for things she did after being a sniper).
(this time with better linking)
Cthulhu’s Intern: I’ll see your female sniper and raise you another one: from the 1940s
That’s not in the USSR (despite the use of a modified Mosin-Nagant)but in Israel. Here are some details about her. (she’s a famous person, for things she did after being a sniper).
By gaming making people social outcasts do they mean stuff like D&D? Because they might actually have an argument there, but the idea that video/computer gaming ever made people social outcasts is laughable. I remember when we first moved to Texas in 82. There were arcade machines in the pizza places and at KMart, that’s how common gaming was. I was exactly the kind of little girl who they probably have nightmares about spurning them in middle school, and I had a gaming console. So did everyone else that I knew.
Eh, granted I’m not the D&D sort, but VtM only ever seems to make me friends. Might just be that the reactions are either “omgs you play?!” or “huh?” whereas D&D is widely known. But the only shit I’ve ever gotten isn’t really shit but fanwanking about Fishmalks (and that is quickly killed as my Malks are not Fishmalks)
Also…*flails at pecunium* check your bloody email once in awhile?! There is stuff! For you!
pecunium: I had an extreme interest in smithing when I was a teenager and wanted to apprentice to a farrier. However, I got chased out of even that interest because of the sexual harassment and “physical testing*” I received from only my mentor, not to mention all the shit many customers and coworkers put lady smiths through when said women actually pursue their craft.
I think there are a lot of abusive, woman-hating idiots out there. The MRAs just have a habit of making those idiots’ thoughts more public.
* Like “hey, I wonder if this one-hundred-pound seventeen-year-old can handle this draft horse who has a habit of sitting down on his farrier? also it will be hilarious if I don’t warn her about this first. Let’s see how special she thinks she is then.” Luckily no one got hurt.
The whole “social outcasts” things seems weird to me. I’d be of the “huh?” variety if someone said they play whatever game (yeah, never heard of many outside this site) but why should someone having a hobby make them an outcast? Sure, if they want to talk about said hobby to everyone, to the exclusion of all else, they might end up as a Boring Person sort of outcast … or if their hobby is something really skeevy (in which case would they be talking about it?) or if their attitude is that nobody except people like them is allowed to like their hobby … but we wouldn’t get people acting like that, would we now? /sarcasm
guffaw-ferrets: Sorry, I can’t say for farrier work; the only farriers I know ,I know in the context of getting horses shod. The smiths I know tend to be blade/wrought iron workers.