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.
It means “I’m a bigoted asshole”. What does less or more human mean? Such terms would be a human construction, right? Human as a species, homo sapiens, is defined by “can you mate and create viable offspring” those are the lines and there are no hominids on Earth today outside of those lines.
Going back to what science knows, not only are there multiple lines of archeological/anthropological evidence that the human race originated in Africa, but Africa is also the human locus of diversity. Humans in Africa and/or of recent African origin are more genetically diverse than human groups outside of Africa. This is due to stuff like population bottlenecks but racists today have erased all of their previous dumb theories and re-‘splained this biological fact to mean that the mutations that occurred in the diaspora are some sort of proof of genetic superiority, whatever in the world that would mean. Adaptations to environments, etc, to diseases, etc, do not make a creature better or worse. Again, that is a human construct.
Racists are idiots, their blatherings are not science, and the way they are always several decades behind the science trying to reinterpret it to mean that they’re awesome just for being born to the right parents would be comical if they weren’t bent on hurting so many people.
@Orion, I’m with you on the funding deal, and don’t forget there are VC firms and even … states (see Rhode Island … oops) funding so-called AAA games, just the same way movies are funded, and of course not all of these turn a profit so it would be unfair to credit customers with the funding of games that bombed and lost money for everyone.
What we need is some journalism on this topic … you know, that thing, like “ethics”, that doesn’t mean what GG-ers think it means.
That said, iPad, iPhone, and Android games are making a LOT of money and more than that, a LOT of profit … of course as more companies pile into that space the risk will increase, just as it did with AAA games. (Those were always risky, though, because it can take years to finish a project and some other company might have made an advance that makes your game seem out of date by the time it’s released.) Maybe it’s more like TV and movies … TV didn’t kill movies, but it changed the economics of movies a LOT.
@ Buttercup
They view relationships as a competition, whoever gets the most out of it for the least effort “wins”.
Run away, run away…
Exactly, lol. Though now I’m hungry.
@altofronto
They exploded over games having different player OPTIONS, options they could easily scroll past. So it has little to do with games or gameplay in the end. This is about women having an opinion. This is about burning the witch. Google “Operation Lollipop”. This was the #GG test run. A racist, sexist agenda. It wasn’t even MRAs who started this mess although they jumped on the bandwagon. It was some straight up determined racist f*cks who were trying to come up with new ways to troll Black people on social media. Trolling and tormenting people IS the point. That’s the game here. Not a single person shooter with hot grafix.
Er, yeah dude, pretty sure that women aren’t inaccessible to MOST men. Sure, a few guys may make the conscious choice not to pursue romantic relationships on a temporary or permenant basis and sure, a few guys may have long dry spells, but even the most stereotypical nerds, those cut from the same mold as myself, generally manage to A) Get laid at least a few partners and B) Manage and maintain actual physical relationships.
Some of us neckbeards actually get together with hot girls Vox, wrap your head around that one.
Fedoras actually twist your brain waves and make you sexist. Unless you wear tinfoil beneath them. Then you are safe
@ Orion – I don’t think the GG-ers even consider it in that much depth, they just want their consumer demographic money to dictate how the market is supplied. I’d just like to assert myself as being a fellow consumer, and having money exactly as green as theirs, while being part of the marginally larger demographic to boot.
@ Holocene – I don’t think it’s limited to player options, there have been freak-outs over gay NPCs flirting with their characters via dialogues. But I agree, a lot of it is just about “putting those uppity [slurs] back in their place” for daring to express themselves or even assert their existence via the medium of video games. As if it’s the result of some kind of direct pressure from activist groups that some NPCs might be rounded characters, and not game devs imitating life through their art and finally catching up with the times.
It’s all about defensiveness. Defending the “L337 gamer” identity from “casual gamers”. Defending their egos from anything that doesn’t put them front and centre as the protagonist. Defending their favourite games from criticism. Defending their regressive opinions and tropes of women, PoC and the LGBTQ community. Defending their positions as most chased-after consumer. Defending their privilege to not be forced to accept or think about the existence of people who are not like them……
Ultimately, it’s all so shallow.
aw, it’s trying to pretend it isn’t a troll. innit cute?*
*no. it’s not
@Boogerghost
Nice. Nailed it.
http://imgur.com/qpzb9s8
Sarkeesian talks about this. But isn’t it interesting that they threw a rage-meltdown prior to her even raising the money for the first webisode? Before. Not in response to.
I’m not a gamer by any means. I am a nerd, but I played sports year round and my mother was really negative on computer games (and also on me staying over at friends’ houses–when I had friends) so by the time I got any access I found that I really sucked and found sucking at something pointless kinda … pointless. My most shameful nerd self-expression would probably be erotic fanfic, posted under another nym, obvs. Writing and posting it was rewarding … playing videogames wasn’t.
But I’ve been reading and listening to what everyone has been saying and what I hear from female–born female–gamers (I don’t mean to be transphobic–actually I am trans–just pointing out that it’s a different life experience) is that while the female NPCs in certain games are a nuisance, they really take back seat to really simple basic things like being able to play as a female protagonist (or a protagonist of color, or both). And also, being able to play multi-user games without having people you don’t know pile on IRC-level nasty when they hear a female voice.
And frankly now, just being able to be in the industry for women seems to be a major challenge, never mind the content of the games being created.
I see a lot of parallels between gamergate and what happened to Rebecca Watson. Because Watson was tolerated — not embraced, tolerated — as long as they thought she was a chill girl of Atheism (the movement, the one with conferences and self-important thought leaders). There was already negativity about Skepchick (the blog) and about having women speakers other than a few superannuated old guard folks like Dr. Harriet Hall (who has positioned herself as the chill matron when it was time to make a choice) and Eugenie Scott (who is not really part of the atheist movement per se but is a hero to a lot of atheists for fighting–successful–against creationism and Intelligent Design in public schools) who had “earned” a place at the table (and didn’t make the bro’s uncomfortable in uncomfortable places). (No doubt O’Hair would have been among them but she was murdered by a con-man in a really twisted, bizarre case.)
But once Rebecca broke the unspoken truce, by criticizing an “awkward guy”‘s behavior, by suggesting that one of the tribe–the “Brights”–could have made her uncomfortable when everybody knows the bad guys are all religious, right?–it was on. And I mean ON. It was nasty. Relentless. Women who supported Watson like Surly Amy got death threats. Personal lives and careers were assailed. Big wig douchebags showed out. Dawkins played Adam Baldwin except AB has always been a bit of a joke whereas Dawkins despite the “Brights” silliness still was basking in a lot of respect which he has proceeded to blow big time.
fruitloopsie wins!
Sailor Moon–love it! Truth, justice, and the American–what’s that you say? Ai to seigi means Love and Justice? What’s that? You say she’s Japanese? Oh. Ohhh.
You know what was the cutest thing ever? Chibiusa (Rini) saying I will punish you in baby talk: o shi o ki you
MRAs who neg young girls and mock their pure hearts, I cannot forgive you! Or your ridiculous hats! Yurusenai!
/yes I am loving Sailor Moon R on Hulu, why do you ask?
I think it’s all of those things together, honestly. The eye candy characters would be more tolerable if there were also female characters that were, you know, actual characters with personalities and a purpose other than being wank fodder, and when you pile on the hostility that anyone who sounds female seems to automatically get the “this is not for you” message comes across loud and clear. If it was just one of those things then people wouldn’t be so pissed off, it’s the accumulation of micro-aggressions combined with the lack of representation that reads as “you are not welcome here”.
Well played, fruitloopsie!
Pretty sure Theo, who is a garden variety religious conservative as well as an open sexist/racist wingnut is getting all the sex in his life that he wants and instead is talking to an audience of marks, just like Elam, Heartiste, and all the rest. “Unhappy with your life? Let me validate your unhappiness with pure unvarnished bullshit and then sell you rage.” In Theo’s case he makes his living, last I checked, selling milporn, not blogging, so his motivation is to garner a flying monkey army to fight back against the evil kool kids* in the sci-fi/fantasy world who are trying to “silence” him. He just wants attention and revenge.
Kinda like Eron Gjoni, who found out too late that bad attention is not better than no attention at all. Since Theo is apparently competent at his version of hackery it’s quite possible that so far all of his attention whoring has been profitable–who knows? Notoriety has only bitten OSC in the butt very late in the game. His (shitty) movie even made it to theaters. So … there.
*such as Scalzi, not to mention every woman of color writing sci-fi in the English language ever, oh also anybody who read sci-fi by POC and pronounced it “good”–they must be stopped. now.
The best way to troll Beale would be to rename the Hugo and the Nebula after Octavia Butler and Samuel Delaney. His hed wud asplode.
The Octavia Butler Awards would make me so happy, do so much good for the field overall, and piss off the Vox types so much. How do we make this happen?
I would have liked this sentence so much better if you’d left out “hot”.
Unfortunately, you can buy women, if you ‘shop’ in the right ‘stores’. Human trafficking, aka “slavery”, is a very real thing.
Aww thanks guys
http://wifflegif.com/gifs/538366-animation-cartoon-gif
Late to the party but I nth everything said about the Sailor Moon cartoon. Nice one fruitloopsie. 🙂
@Buttercup
Nerd girls are hot? Intelligence is hot?
Hot is only problematic when you make it that way, because attraction is a very personal thing. Now when corporations and marketing firms and horrid bottom feeder magazines get involved, look out.
No, actually, there’s an accepted mainstream definition of ‘hot’, so unless you specifically say ‘hot to me’, it’s going to mean we think you’re using conventional media standards.