Leave it to Vox Day, the proudly reactionary sci-fi author and game developer, to say what most of his #GamerGate comrades spend so much energy denying: that their little movement is at least in part a backlash against women in gaming. At least against real women, with their own opinions.
As Vox writes in a post on his Alpha Game blog,
Games have long been an escape from women and social pressure for many young men, so it should surprise no one that they aren’t particularly keen on seeing their retreat invaded by the very things from which they are escaping.
So why exactly do guys want an escape from women? Well, as Vox once explained in an interview with “Dr. Helen” for her book Men On Stike,
Women can be entertaining, but they’re expensive, inaccessible for most men, and from the male perspective, shockingly unreliable.
What makes it worse, Vox suggests on his blog, is that the kind of guys who play a lot of video games aren’t exactly the guys scoring the top quality women.
When people ask a gamma or an omega if he wouldn’t rather be out and about “with a real girl” instead of playing games, they should first keep in mind what sort of “real girl” is probably on offer for him. And considering the alternatives, who can truly blame him if he looks at his choices and decides that games and porn are genuinely the better option.
Huh. Aren’t you a game developer, Vox? I thought the first rule of GamerGate is that journalists and developers shouldn’t insult their customers.
But GamerGaters were quick to pardon Mytheos Holt for calling them all a bunch of dateless losers, and I suspect they’ll do the same with Vox, because no matter how pathetic he thinks most gamers are, it’s clear he thinks women are worse.
Katherine Cross wrote an interesting article about what policing of sexuality in games–it is a hobby that is filled to the brim with sexualized women, but very limited in what kinds of sexuality games will represent.
http://bitchmagazine.org/article/lets-get-digital-gaming-erotic-roleplaying-rpg-sex
Waaaay OT: doesn’t one of the Mammotheers have some fish keeping experience? I have a tank of Malawi cichlids and I am pretty sure one of my demasoni is holding eggs. Needz advice!
This sounds far worse out of context and is probably not a sentence I should write, but: I was a lady elf in Arcanum and I totally had sex with a lady prostitute.
If prostitutes are a measure of judgment on the progressiveness of Western RPGs, then I’m happy to note that the most recent one I played, Wasteland 2, lets you pay to have sex with a dude cosplaying as Billy Dee Williams if you want, and nobody bats an eyelid if your character is a man, too.
This reminds me – when I played Civ, I always set it to No War. Spending centuries building up my Culture Victory only to have some cranky AI spoil my fun – no fun. Someone on a Civ discussion board wondered at this – no war?! No researching military tech? Wasn’t that. . . boring?
I have a little more insight into his mindset now. Also, I stopped playing Elder Scrolls games because there’s not a lot to do if you avoid all combat. I didn’t even want to go into the cellar to kill rats.
You’d think Myst would have been perfect, but I never even got off the first island, even with a walkthrough.
This is OT but does anyone know if the manosphere is talking about the Bill Cosby thing and defending him. I ask because in the Gawker comments I’ve seen a whole lot of people use the McMartin preschool case as an excuse to disbelieve all women (up to 20 or so) that have come forward. It seems to be an organized talking point and I wondered if had origins in the manosphere somewhere. Is anyone else hearing this talking point elsewhere?
@tedthefed
I recall being rebuffed. Was there a patch that added that option later?
PS: Not that my memory is the perfect record of anything 🙂
@WWTH
Roosh and co. were naturally very upset about what happened to Bill Cosby on twitter and then proceeded to defend him by comparing him to Roman Polanski.
http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-42362.html
@Alais
Defending a serial rapist by comparing him to a paedophile? What?
@diana
I played recently, and I got the game from GOG, so it’s very possible it’d been patched or updated, if you bought the game in stores. You also might have been rejected because of your race and not your sex OH GOD THIS CONVERSATION IS TERRIBLE OUT OF CONTEXT.
@ M.
It’s the Roosh V forums, so who can explain their logic?
Also, reading through the comments, they also think that he’s getting accused of rape because liberals want to punish him for being a black conservative. Not kidding.
I wrote and erased as post about this earlier today! Totally with you. Just narrowing the female population to the 18-28 bracket is already a small slice of the whole group (I’m charitably assuming these guys aren’t all pathologically obsessed with teenagers)
Then you take out the ones that have a bmi > roughly 23, the ones with noticeable dermatological or dental issues, the ones with visible disabilities, the ones who are mothers, the ones who don’t style themselves in a conventionally feminine fashion, and even the ones whose arrangement of facial features are insufficiently ‘girlish’ (Bruce Willis’s daughters get a TON of flak from these guys… for the great crime of inheriting their father’s chin!)
Overall, I’m guessing we really are talking about five percent of the female population.
Waaaaaaaah
See: Vivian James, the perfect girl gamer, because she’s invisible enough to be mistaken for a proper white dude.
@tedthefed
ahh…okay. I haven’t played in years, and mine was store bought.
and yes…out of context…sounds … really bad 🙂 🙂 🙂
I have to say, it is the Polanski case that convinced me that this culture couldn’t give two shits about rape, whatever people may claim. Whoopi even said it wasn’t “rape rape”, but he violently raped a young teen after drugging her. That’s like… there is no grey area. Underage? Check. Drugged? Checked? Said no and resisted (as a drugged teenage girl)? Check.
I mean, if that isn’t rape, what the hell is rape?
@Alais
Yeah, I’ve seen that talking point around. I’m pretty sure it’s just another version of #GG’s “Use SJW language!” nonsense, hoping that if they point out the fact that he’s black enough times, we’ll feel racist or otherwise guilty and leave him alone.
I’m oddly comforted by this because one of them is finally admitting it. What I’m not comforted by is how comfortable everyone else’s with the idea that it’s okay to keep women out of games….
I also love the part where he implies that gamers, who he thinks they’re ugly losers themselves, look at their “options” and decide that we are all too ugly for them…..apparently loser guys still deserve perfect women.
ceebarks – Argenti knows lots about keeping fish, zie’s been doing it for years. If you drop a message for zir to the mods, I can pass it on for you. 🙂
Haven’t caught up with the comments yet, but I’m beginning to wonder if Teddy boy has smacked himself over the head once too often with his flaming sword, and fried his brains. He really is a prat.
All I got to say is…
“Alpha” I get, it obvious.
“Beta” I suppose, still obvious. But really, wouldn’t “non-alpha” be sufficient?
“Omega” Well that’s taking it a bit extreme. Alphas and betas weren’t enough?
“Gamma” Really? WTF. These people’s obsession with man-hierarchy is supercalifragilisticexpialidociously mind-boggling.
@kitteh, thanks!
I was just thinking about it, and I have to echo some of the thoughts I’ve read in here.
1. You don’t BUY women. You can buy things FOR them, you can spend money ON them, but you can’t BUY them. (Some people say you can “invest” in women, but I think that’s still kinda problematic language.)
2. Coming from a gamer (since our dear friend Vox seems to have not indulged in this hobby himself), a girlfriend is FAR cheaper. Shit. My computer was $1500 USD (though I mostly bought it for school. 😛 ) and games for that can cost anywhere from 10-50 dollars, my XBox 360 was a special edition (and the only one the shop had that didn’t come with a Kinect, which is a bullshit add-on that no one needs period.) that cost $400 USD, and games for that are 60 bucks a pop if you buy a new game on disc. (And they’re roughly 20 bucks if you get older ones that are still in their shrinkwrap.)
Granted, there are sales and indie games (Humble Bundle is AMAZESAUCE if you like cheap PC games, and XBox Live Marketplace has some interesting/fun to kill some time games [and demos!] on the cheap), but let’s be honest, new retail games are expensive.
I could go out to dinner with a lovely girl/guy/person at a nice restaurant for the price I pay for a new XBox game! And for the price of a new console, I could even get them a lavish gift (Or buy groceries for a couple of months for myself)!
Hell, for the price of a new, good computer, I could at least pay a couple payments on my student loans!
tl;dr “Having a significant other is far less expensive than being a gamer.” – A gamer
The last time I played Arcanum, I think one of the mods borked my interactions with Madame Lil. Every time I tried to talk to her, she started screaming about half elves and went hostile. Since I almost always play a female half elf and didn’t want to start over with a different race, I gave up. Too bad, because one of her quests – the one to get the money from the halfling – is buggy and he’ll give you money as long as you’re willing to hit the right conversation option…
Can you tell how much I love this game?
No! You lie! My nephews love my kinect. I have this game where they can smash buildings like godzilla, throw snowballs at each other, pop balloons and lots of other stuff. I have this other one where you ride a pig in a race – and I think it may be the funniest thing my bf and I have ever done together. Sure, it’s no good for most games, but the ones that are designed around it are silly and a lot of fun.
@ ParadoxicalIntention –
Well, of course one can’t actually buy a woman, but lots of guys like VD have the tired old misogynistic notion that sex is a transaction, rather than a mutual activity. I’ve known lots of guys who think they’re ‘owed’ something if they pay for a date.
Funny thing, I’ve had even more hostile responses from that sort when I tried to pay for the date!