Christina Hoff Sommers is an old school faux-feminist who’s devoted the last several decades to trashing feminism. Lately she’s apparently decided to appeal to a younger audience — or at least a more immature one — by pandering to the #GamerGate crowd.
That’s probably worth a post or two in itself, but in the meantime you might enjoy this excellent song that deftly rebuts the, er, arguments in her recent video about sexism in video games and why she thinks that’s somehow not a real issue because, you know, dudes like to look at boobies when they play games. No, that’s really her argument — though I’m not sure it even qualifies as an argument, technically speaking.
Anyway, enjoy!
And here’s her original video, if you’re feeling masochistic and would actually enjoy sitting through six and a half very long minutes of simple-minded, patronizing, disingenuous, evidence-free pseudoarguments delivered by someone desperately pandering to terrible, terrible people.
Okay, this video is awesome, and I would donate if I had some money.
Message to CH Sommers: When the opposition is this much funnier than you… you may be on the wrong side.
It’s amazing how the same people who accuse critics of being fake gamers are suddenly taking CHS and that Breitbart guy seriously.
Sommers looked into gamer culture for 2 whole weeks, she must know what she’s talking about! I, a fake gamer, have only been playing games regularly for 25 years. Can’t measure up against 2 weeks of equity feminist investigation.
Video games aren’t sexist because not all of them are sexist but the rest ARE sexist and how dare you care about that!!!?
Her arguments are so full of logical failure and the song rebuttal is so well-done. Bravo!
This Sommers woman is very dangerous, because in many posts she sounds believable. Not in this one though, this is really screwed up, completely illogical.
The song is so cool!! Who is this guy?
My SO is a lifelong gamer who fits the gamebro definition of gamer culture (minus being a terrible person) and finds the sort of games C H Sommers dismisses as what men want incredibly condescending. It’s like watching a terrible action movie that doesn’t think you’re smart enough to pay attention without T&A, explosions and CG. Why watch a Michael Bay movie when you could watch something that doesn’t treat you like an infant? Why play a game that assumes you are only interested in it as third rate softcore porn? It would be ridiculous to say that preferring movies with a plot beyond “things explode plus partial nudity!” is destroying Hollywood (although I’m sure most of these assholes would).
Give me (or him) Hanna and Bioshock any day over Duke Nuke ‘Em and the Fast and the Furious.
Uggggh hell hath no fury like a fanboy scorned. Seriously, where is this wholesale destruction of video games? Where is the pinkwashing you insist is so iminent?
I just finished watching a Let’s Play of Off, and its combat song seems to really fit the mood of this horseshit: zany, totally perpendicular to reality, and not nearly as serious despite all the efforts.
Damn this was awesome. Hey guys long time lurker first time watcher, damn glad to finally step into the light of the mammotheers.
Plus this video makes some damn good points, expect an avalanche of trolls trying to refute it soon
On the point on false equivalence… it falls flat, not only because of that but also because people DO critique female oriented shows and other media. That is, if they aren’t dismissing them as empty headed drivel in the first place.
Also, the lady’s insistence that men only want to (or prefer to) play – and therefore identify with – male leads is kinda insulting. Then why can women play as and related to male characters? Allof my (male) gamer friends are all insulted at the very suggestion.
This would be perfect even without the groovy dance moves. The groovy dance moves make it particularly transcendent in awesomeness.
You know, I USED to be want to play male protags all the time. But that was when I was stuffed so deep in the closet, I was in fucking Narnia.
Now that I’m out, I care a lot less. Sometimes, I still get stuck playing men just because the female characters get stuck as fanservice, but given the choice, I’ll take a nonsexualized female protag, thanks.
Live, from Stepford…It’s Christina Hoff Bummers! Yaaaayyyyy…er…eh?
I’m really sick of the media pandering to ‘gamer culture’ and ‘gamergate’ as if there aren’t other things going on in the world to talk about. I’m also sick of the negativity that people get when they want to critique gaming as well…particularly if that critique isn’t exactly what some male gamers don’t want to hear. I used to think gamers were really cool people on the whole but their recent behavior in reference to females within gaming culture pisses me off so now I’m going to have to re-think what sort of people I used to think were cool simply aren’t…
I watched the original video. (Oh, help.)
It’s kind of strange, this distinction along gender lines between hardcore gamers and casual gamers. People like games just in general, and in the so-called ‘hardcore’ market, representations of heroic characters are pretty narrow. The protagonist is usually a white man (with hair stubble). There isn’t much variation in non-player-controlled characters, either. I don’t mind playing as a male character, but it’s much more fun for me if I can create a woman character. It’s even more fun if I can still be queer, still be Asian, etc. But that’s not how the bulk of ‘hard core’ games are structured.
I really think the ‘hardcore’ market would open up to greater variation in players if it were a little more inclusive. I mean, look at Mass Effect and Dragon Age… They’re not perfect, I know. But they include lgbtq characters, they give you the option of playing as your own sex or gender, you have options in terms of skin color and facial features, etc… And judging by their forums, people from all kinds of backgrounds play it.
Occasionally you see a little grumbling over this lgbt character or that one… But the writers (David Gaider in particular) are good at pointing out how no one group of gamers has the more inherent rights than another, or is deserving of more choices than another, simply because that group is in the majority (ie: just because you’re straight and male doesn’t mean you should automatically have more options than anyone else).
If people would like representation in a hugely popular form of entertainment, does that mean we’re taking over… I think not.
Also… Dragon Age moment: Enchantment?! 😀 Who can hate it? (Sorry. Obscure nerd reference over.)
Sorry for rambling…
I have hangover diarrhoea. 🙁
You may be wondering why I’m sharing this with you. It is to illustrate how even something as disgusting as the shits is STILL more palatable than Christina Hoff Sommers.
In some perverse way, I almost see the accelerating ability of graphics to be kind of rough on rep.
We used to play a lot of Hack103, an old ASCII rogue-like. Your character? An @. That’s it. You got to choose a gender in the game, but the only difference it made was the character class would change between Cavewoman and Caveman. Other than that, it was a total nonentity. Nobody speaks to you in a way that requires pronouns. It’s all, “Hello, [NAME]! Didn’t you forget to pay?” kinda stuff.
And in a way, having this ASCII set-up meant you could imagine yourself to be whatever you wanted. As kids, we had fun imagining what orcs (O) really looked like. We drew floating eyeballs (E) and imagined the character classes to be whatever we wanted.
It’s great that games are getting really elaborate with their customizing interfaces. But in a way, the more realistic the game gets in visuals, the more limited your options.
I used to play the Rogue games. Again, ascii chars were all the graphics you got. Just don’t ask me about the lice. *shudder* llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll *scream!*
@marinerachel
When you say palatable you don’t actually mean palatable, eh?
I would not eat either BUT if I HAD to eat one and it came down to Christina Hoff Sommers or poop….
This thread has taken a somewhat surreal turn.
It is really interesting, isn’t it?
I mean, wading through comment sections of articles relating in any way to HarassmentGate, I’ve noticed that when pushed to the wall on the issue of sexism in video games pro-
harassmentgamer commenters are quick to admit that, in fact, certain devices, like objectification (they wouldn’t use this word obviously), *might* indeed be widely used, but immediately after that they proceed to make up some ridiculous and utterly irrelevant justifications for their widespread use.They’ve basically just conceded critics’ points, yet somehow still seem to believe that they can dismiss out of hand any possibility of v-games being sexist, by employing some kind of lousy attempts at rationalization. Their utter failure in enaging even the most basic themes in opposition’s arguments is really baffling.
It’s almost as if they didn’t have either clear conception of, or willingness to understand what constitutes sexism.
Where are the vidya games rife with dongs for me look at? I like looking at those, you know. I have feelings too.
Marinerachel, here you go! The dongs are inside shorts, but they dangle noticably during gameplay.
http://store.steampowered.com/agecheck/app/296470/