Though Men’s Rights activists devote an enormous amount of their time denouncing feminism – or at least the imaginary version of feminism that exists only in their own heads – they’re happy to appropriate feminist concepts when it suits them. One that many MRAs seem especially eager to claim for themselves is the idea of the “safe space.”
Of course, their version of the “safe space” bears only a slight resemblance to the feminist original. Feminists seek to create spaces for discussion in which say, rape survivors can discuss their experiences without being triggered by insensitive arguers and trolls and mansplainers in general.
When MRAs talk about “safe spaces,” by contrast, their goal is often to exclude women not just from discussion spaces but from full participation in society, essentially declaring giant arenas of work and play, from STEM fields to video games, to be places where feminists, and women in general, should fear to tread.
And so it’s hardly surprising that more than a few MRAs are arguing that the Zoe Quinn “scandal” proves that women and gaming don’t mix – or, at least, that they shouldn’t.
Consider the little manifesto recently “pinned” as the top post on the Men’s Rights subreddit, in which a fellow calling himself mradiscus lamented what he called “a pattern of female feminists migrating to formerly male spaces, demanding to be accommodated and eventually causing conflict and alienation.”
The “male spaces” he has in mind – the “hacking scene,” atheism, and the video game industry – won’t come as a shock to anyone familiar with the current state of nerdboy rage, but might trouble anyone who thinks that women are, you know, equal to men and have the same rights to choose their own careers and have their own interests and beliefs.
Not only that, but there is just a teensy bit of irony in that the way that MRAs and others are trying to drive off the feminist, er, invaders is by harassing them. That is, MRAs are appropriating the concept of “safe spaces” — designed to protect those in them from harassment and abuse — and using it as an excuse for … harassment and abuse.
But let’s step back a bit, because we still don’t have an answer as to why any of these “spaces” should be defined as male in the first place. How is atheism – the lack of a belief in god or gods – only a dude thing? When did guys get the right to call dibs on the gaming business?
Well, as mradiscus sees it, these “spaces” have traditionally been essentially nerdboy preserves, and should be protected from the pernicious influence of “female feminists” who, presumably, have no real interest in hacking or gaming or skepticism and whose real goal is just to make life hard for already beleaguered nerd dudes:
A scene predominantly populated by rather introverted young males becomes popular and attracts, among others, young women with a feminist mindset. Some of these women then go on and demand to be accommodated. Their demands are mostly met, and so we see the emergence of “gender awareness teams” at hacking conferences, no-means-no campaigns at anime conventions and a whole lot of conference panel slots devoted to “feminist this” and “gender that”.
Mradiscus then offers what I can only call a “revisionist” history of the harassment of feminist women from Rebecca Watson to Zoe Quinn:
What we also see is a whole lot of scandals. What seems to spark them most of the time is a overreaction to a minor offense, blown way out of proportion by a semi-popular feminist and her fan base who then proceed to launch an attack on the whole “misogynistic” scene. The young men feel cornered and unfairly attacked and retaliate with inappropriate and infelicitous measures which only leads to the feminists seeing their prejudices confirmed. Rape threat allegations are launched, there’s doxxing and name-calling all-around and new-found fame for a brave and courageous young feminist who may or may not proceed to make a career out of her struggle.
I should point out that none of the women who have allegedly “made … career[s] out of [their] struggles” actually asked to be harassed and demonized. If the harassers are angry that their harassment allowed Anita Sarkeesian to raise a lot more money than she asked for, they really have only themselves to blame.
Mradiscus ends with an ominous prediction-slash-threat that young men aren’t going to remain “patient” for much longer – and that things could get much worse for feminists venturing into these “male spaces.”
I wouldn’t be surprised, however, if the patience of these young nerdy men turns out to be a shallow well that’s drawing to a close. I sense quite a bit of alienation in the hacking and gaming sub-cultures when it comes to feminist topics. What do you think?
I think that you have a very strange notion of “patience.”
Naturally, MRAs being MRAs, mradiscus’ little manifesto – dripping with unexamined misogynistic assumptions and a quiet, curiously passive-aggressive rage – won praise and more than one hundred upvotes from the subreddit regulars.
The most extraordinary response to mradiscus’ rant was also the top-ranked comment, a long screed from a fellow calling himself a0i that argued, with complete seriousness (and occasional very confused references to the theories of Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci), that
The logic of how feminists target predominantly male spaces is very similar to the pattern of locust swarms.
Yep. Feminists are LOCUSTS.
Wherever there are men, there are targets for false accusations, male scapegoats, and fake victims. False accusations can’t happen without men, and neither can feminism. When there are too many women somewhere, you can’t claim that the environment is dominated by men, and feminists have nothing left to justify their presence. Feminists can’t thrive because they lack a scapegoat. They seek out a place where men are, and fabricate outrage at finding too many men in once place, at one time.
They have to find fresh environments with concentrations of male majorities, for “structures of misogyny” to pretend-struggle against. Thus, nerd culture being targeted, video games being targeted, Anita Sarkeesian making up being attacked, etc.
Yep, apparently all those hundreds of thousands of comments you might have seen attacking Sarkeesian all over the internet are nothing but a mirage. That Flash game in which you could cover her face in bruises? You must have dreamed it.
It’s telling that a major feminist concern is for “women’s exclusive space”, while another feminist concern is for “women’s inclusion in male-dominated spaces”. They fight to get in, just to kick the men out. …
Feminists demand unlimited access for women, as proof of men’s commitment to equality, but demand limited access for men, to prove men’s concern for safety.
Wat? I’m pretty sure no feminists are talking about excluding men from video gaming.
This works, despite the irony that — if you believed in their equality, you wouldn’t make special accommodations for their safety.
Uh, no, because if one group faces systematic oppression because of prejudice, the only way to ensure an egalitarian society is by making “special accommodations for their safety.” That’s why we have hate crime laws.
In the case of gaming, and atheism and tech in general, the only “special accommodations” feminists have asked for have been, you know, protection from sexual harassment and assault. Protections that also apply to men.
If there is one principle to understand about the tactics used to engineer women’s privilege over men in society, it is this:
- “what you intend to do to an opponent, you must accuse them of doing to you” …
Frame your victim as your victimizer, put them in a position to want to prove themselves innocent. Frame your attacks as self-defense, frame your transgressions as righteous. Frame the enemy as using propaganda, make this part of your propaganda. Frame the enemy as a threat, before you launch your attack. Pretend to be a victim, while attacking the accused.
Apparently MRAs are utterly oblivious to irony.
@ryeash:
This got posted earlier at the other thread:
http://www.polygon.com/features/2013/12/2/5143856/no-girls-allowed
The answer seems to be after the big North American video game crash of 1983, when there was a realignment from ‘video games’ being a thing of their own to being treated as ‘toys’. The result was a much more actively marketing-oriented approach to sales, and in the 90s that led more to more actively courting the young male demographic as they were seen as buying more games. The self-fulfilling prophecy of such marketing approaches has long since metastasized.
Incognita Seconda, that guy sounds pretty scary.
One time I was trying to be helpful to a newbie in a game. I was explaining how the game worked and showed him a few places to get stuff, hang out, or whatever. He at some point started pestering me if I had a myspace. I basically told him that I didn’t use it, but he still persisted. I told him that I didn’t really want him having my info, and he freakin’ ran off like a startled cat. I was so confused, though I figured he thought me being nice meant “let’s have a relationship.” I guess it was good though, that he left rather than badger me some more… cause then it probably would have been me running away.
I saw this and I thought it was adorable
http://youtu.be/o8SdYz7cq04
This right here is why I have no patience for men who complain about mean feminists are. This is exactly what misogynists do. They pretend like they really believe that feminists are man haters so we have to spend time and energy defending ourselves and proving that we don’t really hate men. These guys are never arguing in good faith and I wish women would stop engaging in any way other than a mocking one. Luckily, people here know what’s up but I too frequently see commenters on Jezebel falling for it.
Nice try. No sale. These “introverted” guys aren’t constantly complaining about cool or extroverted guys playing games. They aren’t harassing them. It’s women that they target. They aren’t misunderstood nice guys who are afraid to talk to women. They aren’t upset that their hobby is suddenly popular (it was popular with both genders in the 80’s too). They are upset that women are around and expect to be treated like human beings.
We know misogyny we see it so please don’t try to mansplain it away.
Word. It is entirely okay with me if these particular dudes choose to get all MGTOW as soon as they realize we’re not automatically sexually available to them. Go, little nerdlet, go! Run away from the scary lady who won’t give you her digits!
My takeaway from this: MRAs think I’m a locust … or does that only apply if I’m a woman feminist?
My response: LOLWUT?
Yeah, Cthulhu’s Intern, but the games those women play don’t count because it’s all Candy Crush and Kim Kardashian and Angry Birds and the like. Real games are the ones that dudebros play, therefore any games that attract people other than dudebros are a horrible scourge that must be wiped out before they infest the domain of real gaming with Class 3 Cooties and require that you take off and nuke your computer from orbit.
Although, on that note, I may in fact have to take a hammer to my phone to prevent myself from playing anymore Doge2048.
Emmy Rae: “Really? The whole issue seems to be that women/feminists are attacking perceived male only spaces and ruining them. The complaint is not about too many people gaming. It is specifically about women gaming and ruining it by expecting to be treated like people.”
I know he was complaining specifically about women and feminists, but I think that he would still be complaining about the socially assertive guys (the popular kids) invading his precious nerd space even if women stopped participating. Basically, I think he’s just blaming women for making him feel uncomfortable in what he perceives to be his “safe space” so that he doesn’t have to address his own insecurities.
But that’s just my opinion of him, specifically. He just seems like the sort of person who would rather point fingers at the easiest target than accept his own shortcomings. I’m not trying to dispute that there’s sexism in the gaming community, because there definitely is and definitely needs to be addressed.
Someone who knows more about biology/entomology can correct me if I’m wrong. It’s my understanding that grasshoppers turn into locusts when there’s an overpopulation and lack of enough food. This makes the analogy stupid. Locusts don’t get together and swarm just to make farmers sad. It’s an involuntary response to environmental conditions.
You’re assuming facts not in evidence. This is a guy that’s in the men’s rights subreddit for fuck’s sake. I think it’s safe to make a presumption that he is motivated primarily by misogyny.
But that’s just my opinion of him, specifically. He just seems like the sort of person who would rather point fingers at the easiest target than accept his own shortcomings. I’m not trying to dispute that there’s sexism in the gaming community, because there definitely is and definitely needs to be addressed.
You’re saying that sexism in the gaming community exists and needs to be addressed but you’re the one who’s trying to avoid addressing it by sweeping his misogyny under the rug and trying to make his comments about anything else.
Ugh blockquote fail. I’ll try the last half of the comment again.
You’re saying that sexism in the gaming community exists and needs to be addressed but you’re the one who’s trying to avoid addressing it by sweeping his misogyny under the rug and trying to make his comments about anything else.
@weirwoodtreehugger
Not entirely true, some of them do complain about games like call of duty and madden being too popular with college bro types which somehow brings the quality of other games down because the devs dumb down other games in an attempt to get more college bro sales.
But those complaints don’t result in the same sort of harassment that women get constantly
“The primary idea behind a roleplaying game is pretending to be somebody or something else — and I already know what it feels like to be a white male.”
I totally agree (except I know what it feel like to be a white female :P). And with so many options, I end up making 10 different characters with a variety of weird hairstyles, eye colors, and skin colors. In a game where I can be anything, why would I want to look like a normal person?
But some people want to feel like they’re in the game, so I guess it’s whatever floats your boat.
Essentially true. THere’s overpopulation, they get stimulated in a certain way, hormonal levels rise, this triggers swarming behaviour and morphological chances, SUDDENLY LOCUST.
So I guess… feminists gestate in unrelated areas in solitary periods, then, consuming the local environmental ressources until a point where their population reaches a localized peak (sustainable for that thropic level), swarming behaviour is triggered by some as-of-yet-unknown signal and they rapidly multiply, then overtake formerly male only spaces in order to consume more raw material.
Which is actually surprisingly on point. You have small, seperate growth of communities of feminist thought that eventually aggregate and start cross-pollinating and then, after some critical mass, a memeological change is triggered and it suddenly swarms everywhere because by now there’s so many of them, and the ideas spread quickly, and large areas of male-space is covered by rapidly advancing swarms of chitinous females going on about ludonarrative dissonance and sexual objectification, resulting in a new ecological balance wherein feminist thought is actually considered normal because the swarms of ravenous exoskeleton clad winged man-devourers have converted the social background into their image.
And that’s how you get sexual harassment policies, people.
Swarming lawyer flocks.
I possibly over-extended that metaphor a little.
While I think there is definitely more than a fair share of “I was a nerd before nerding was cool” hipsterism going on in geek circles and do think that “popular, extroverted guys” playing videogames get a bit of side-eye from the more traditional crowd, I’ve got to agree with those who note that it’s not coincidental that women gamers and geeks come in for much, much more open hostility and harassment.
I think women are more threatening as gamers and geeks because a lot of the more traditional geek guys have internalized a sense of inferiority when it comes to the apparently more popular “alphas,” but the geek guys feel, on some level, as though they’re still at least better than women (or people of color, in many cases). When women not only start knocking on the doors of their geeky treehouses, but start building their own bigger, better treehouses, that screws with these guys’ coping mechanisms and makes them very, very angry. “Wait, I can’t treat you like I treat all the sex-doll avatars in my videogames? You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry . . . GEEK SMASH!”
FWIW, I much, much prefer the so-called “betas” to the so-called “alphas” (Why? War Machine and his I DO ALPHA MALE SHIT clothing line vs., I don’t know, like, everything Wil Wheaton has done forever), but there are plenty of so-called “betas” who have taken this bullshit hierarchy so seriously for so long that they’re too busy being misogynistic jerks to free themselves from it.
Disclaimer: I know, I know: Not All (Geek) Men. But seriously, people, a bunch of them do act this way.
weirdwoodtreehugger: “You’re saying that sexism in the gaming community exists and needs to be addressed but you’re the one who’s trying to avoid addressing it by sweeping his misogyny under the rug and trying to make his comments about anything else.”
No. That isn’t what I’m trying to do.
I’m saying his particular misogyny most likely comes from deeper insecurities, and he most likely hates a lot of groups, not just women. Women are just the easiest target for him to blame right now, and that is because of a larger culture of misogyny, and that definitely should be addressed.
Then the solution to feminist locusts should be to provide enough gaming opportunity so that it’s sustainable relative to the feminist population.
I hear this excuse a lot of the time when someone is saying misogynist things though. Most especially in the aftermath of the Eliot Rodger shooting. There was a whole lot of “but he hated a lot of men too!” Well, sure. But his manifesto was primarily misogynist. This MRA’s was exclusively misogynist.
As Maya Angelou said, if someone shows you they are, believe them the first time. These dudes on, I’ll say it again the men’s rights subreddit, are showing us that they are first and foremost misogynists. They never asked for a safe space from other men. It’s women they hate and want to exclude and said terrible things about. Why do you feel the need to helpfully point out that not to worry, they probably hate all sorts of other people too? What exactly is your point?
@Mr Nick Is your argument that misogynists hate other people besides women, but they just aren’t as convenient to hate and harass?
oh. I guess so.
weirwood: I was talking specifically about this reddit poster, not all MRAs. I tried talking to MRAs once, and you’re right. They just hate women. Plain and simple.
Emmy Rae: No.
This egocentrical worldview gives me uncontrollable rage, especially because I’ve seen it in so many of my acquaintances. It’s not just the same old “alpha men, beta men and other assorted objects” kind of attitude that we know from mras;
In addition to that, we see the kind of behaviour that comes from being way to comfortable in a percived underdog role.
These dudes feel that the world at large is against them (even though it probably isn’t) and all others, especially women, especially feminist women who don’t know their place, are their enemies.
Women don’t actually like video games and anime and science and all that stuff, they just don’t want them to have them. Women don’t actually like cosplay and/or larpg, they just do it the better to friendzone them, because they’re the tragic heroes of society and we like to see them suffer. Because liking video games etc. makes them outcasts (Right? Because nobody else plays those, these days) and so it makes them special .
So, you know, it’s okay to be an asshole because the world was mean to them so they’re only striking back.
They know they’re vastly superior to all other humans (and women in particular) because they’re the main character and all others are just NPCs.
It’s a very childish attitude that some people just can’t seem to grow out of.
Like that kid at school who threw a major tantrum because somebody showed up with the same “You laugh at me because I’m different, I laugh at you because you’re all the same.” t-shirt.
They say “Women are taking our stuff because they don’t want us to have it” but all I hear is “Ew, girl cooties!”.
Er, sorry about the rant. I’m done now.
Thus Spake ZaraLittlefish:
My wife exclusively plays male characters in MMOs, for exactly this reason. If you play a female character, sooner or later somebody asks “r u really a girl?” If you answer “yes,” it immediately changes the social structure of the game. You are no longer just another gamer there to have a good time; you are an Other trying to fit in, and everything you do must be evaluated through that lens.
Suddenly you’re no longer a good player, you’re “pretty good for a girl.” If you can’t make raid night, expect comments like “‘female issues,’ LOL” or “It must be the season premiere of My Little Pony tonight.” And if you have an off night and do poorly, someone will say “Can we kick the bimbo off the team please?” Of course, if your reaction to all this is anything other than meek acceptance, you are “drama whoring” and anybody who supports you is “white knighting.”
And yes, I realize “Not All Male Gamers Are Like That.” (Our current online gaming circle isn’t, and my wife is quite comfortable being “openly female” with them.) But enough are like that that I don’t blame any woman who feels it’s simply safer to play male characters online.
The rhetoric is ridiculous, but the current state of the games industry does kind of have the whiff of a bunch of people showing up late to a house party, and then demanding the hosts change the music, decor and dress code to accommodate their tastes and comfort.