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.