Check out Margaret Corvid’s fascinating piece in the New Statesman on male sexuality and the appeal of misogynistic movements to sexually frustrated men. As a professional dominatrix who’s also a feminist, she’s acutely aware of the ways conventional masculinity restricts and impoverishes male sexuality.
When I became a professional dominatrix after years in the kink scene, I expected my kinky work to involve lots of spanking, whipping and bondage. And, to my delight, it has. But in the majority of my sessions, I am creating a space for men to explore areas of their sexual lives that society feels are unmanly; they come to me to be penetrated, to be used, to serve, to submit, to worship, to be taken. A client might have any or all of a bewildering array of fetishes, but they mostly come to me to experience something well outside the very narrow confines of what society says that it means to be a man.
Unfortunately, as she notes, Men’s Rightsers and Pickup Artists offer nothing to men who feel confined by these narrow notions of manhood; indeed, their definitions of manhood are both retrograde and restrictive.
One of the greatest tragedies of the men’s rights movement is that, in the end, its lessons serve only to drive men further away from what they yearn for. Pick up artist techniques and aggrieved entitlement are unlikely to help men achieve the goal of intimacy, but feminist values can teach them the skills to communicate with respect.
You’ll notice a few quotes in there from me, from an email interview she did with me as well as from my post Is the Men’s Rights Movement driven by the rage of the rejected? (I also discussed the issue in this post on the weird sexual undercurrents in A Voice for Men’s Facebook “memes.”)
Shaun – glad to help, though it is a hell of a shock to find out the depths of shittery in what should be a decent movement. Or at least it was for me!
There are some really interesting blogs by trans women who’ve no time for that shit, if you’re interested – Snowflake Especial and Gender Minefield come to mind.
Anyone would think that Anita was encouraging people to abuse her. FFS being female and having an opinion (in her case, conclusions grounded in evidence) is not valid grounds to attack someone. She is *not* making people attack her, those people are *choosing* to attack her. And attack her they do, instead of her conclusions/premises.
And the counter that no, a player doesn’t have to/isn’t forced into undertaking sexist and abusive actions in a game is not an argument. The programmers took time (and therefore money was spent) in creating those behaviours in the game, and people have posted videos of doing those behaviours.
/sigh
OK, couple of things:
First off, “arrogant fool who doesn’t know the first thing about video games” doesn’t mean “not a gamer”. There are plenty of self-identified gamers who are arrogant fools who can’t play well; that doesn’t make them any less of gamers.
Two. I’m saying that Sarkeesian’s experiences are a perfectly valid talking points and demonstrate a really disgusting level of misogyny from people much like some of the assholes who my buddy the top PVPer beats up on in PVP all the time. HOWEVER, those experiences don’t make her bizarre opinions on video games any less confusingly wrong.
Three. I brought up Sarkeesian because somebody accused me (falsely) of advocating hate attacks on Cathy Brennan. I used Sarkeesian as an example of someone I don’t think particularly highly of to demonstrate that even if I don’t like someone, I still don’t advocate any of the typical MRA shithead tactics.
Four. I have already stated that I don’t have the first clue of what a “professional victim” is. I have also stated that I find the practice of using real bad experiences to back up wrongheaded opinions to be rhetorically weak and distasteful.
Paradoxical–
Thank you for linking that. You beat me to it!
I don’t play online for that reason, and quit my last job because that crap carries over when you work in gaming retail, too. I legit had a six-year-old boy call me a bitch for letting his mom know GTA5 was rated M, as was required by company policy.
Does Anita even use the fact that harassment occurs to her as proof for her observations about videogames? Ever? I don’t think she’s really talked about her harassment during her videos… She’s mainly used her experiences as proof that women get harassed when speaking out about video games, when they try to hold a discussion about video games.
Ken,
If you’re going to make comparisons to the civil rights movement, I’ll bite.
Activists organized themselves and their allies and used that organizing to draw attention to their cause and to put the pressure on elected officials. What they did not do is go to Klan meetings and try to talk them into not being racist anymore. Because that would be futile.
There’s nothing wrong with arguing with or trying to educate men who don’t grasp that we live in a sexist culture. But it’s not likely to change anything. To say marginalized people should engage with the people who hate them, despite personal risk is bullshit.
Please stop trying to mansplain feminist activism to us.
And Ground petrol, stop trying to pretend you didn’t use all the gamergate talking points. You did. We can all scroll up and read it.
I’m so glad we have not one, but two dudes helpfully explaining how to feminist correctly! My sore throat and achy muscles just weren’t annoying me efficiently enough.
Anyone who would unironically use the phrase “playing the victim” about a woman who’s being harassed the way Sarkeesian is isn’t nearly as feminist as they think they are. There’s a shitload of stuff to unpack there, and honestly, I just don’t feel like it’s worth the effort in this case.
GroundPetrel
Intention isn’t magical. We inferred that statement as “Anita’s not a real gamer”, especially since that’s usually leveled at her by asshats who want to discredit her all the damn time.
If you want to say she’s ignorant in your opinion, fine. But, as a feminist gamer, she talks a lot of sense to me. I don’t agree with everything she has to say, but I find her to be far from “arrogant” for stating her opinions, and far from “ignorant” considering the amount of research she’s had to put into her project.
Do I think she could do a bit more? Absolutely. Everyone could stand to do more research from time to time. Do I think she’s wrong based on the amount of research she’s done so far? Not exactly.
If you feel that they’re valid talking points and demonstrate misogyny, why shouldn’t someone who wants to talk about misogyny talk about them?
And again, why is your disagreement with her opinions so damn important? No one cares, Louise.
We told you what a professional victim is. Read previous posts please.
Again, if you feel that they’re valid talking points and demonstrate misogyny, why shouldn’t someone who wants to talk about misogyny talk about them?
Anita’s talking about misogyny in the games industry, both in and out of game. Why do you think her using her personal experiences is such a terrible thing to do?
Stop talking in circles please.
And again, why is your disagreement with her opinions so damn important? No one cares about your opinions on this, Louise.
We sincerely don’t care if you don’t agree with her. That’s not the point we are discussing here. We’re discussing why you think her talking about being victimized is so distasteful to you.
Ok, so, arrogant fools who can’t play games well=still gamers.
Anita, who has done extensive research in games and has opinions on them=just an arrogant fool who doesn’t know the first things about games.
NOW I GET IT.
I think you will need to describe what you do mean by “doesn’t know the first thing about video games” then, and how that relates to her thesis of “misogyny and misogynistic portrayal of women are common in video games”. Do you mean “is good at video games”? Because being good at highly skill based games means nothing when you are talking about the portrayal of women in said games.
I’m saying pretty clearly that said Internet mob is a bunch of idiotic assholes who should be served multiple restraining orders.
Sarkeesian was just the first person I came up with it who I (and several of my friends, male and female, het and otherwise) think is full of bull, to demonstrate that I do not in fact think that every idiot should be raped/killed/have their children hurt/have their property destroyed.
Also, as I’ve said, the games I play show know signs whatsoever of sexism–and again, I play these games with people including an asexual woman, a genderfluid person who is sort of between male and female, a bisexual woman, a bi dude, a gay dude, and another het guy. We’re not really a bigoted bunch.
kirbywarp:
No she does not. She never mentions her harassment unless that’s the topic being discussed.
Cassandra,
I called it on ground petrol yesterday but nobody believed me.
I think your expert troll and asshole radar has rubbed off on me!
A distraction for those who might want one about now:
@alaisvex: It saddens me to hear that about your friend’s exclusion. Is it okay to send her and her partner virtual hugs? Or are hugs off limits here at ‘WHTM’ on Friday? I don’t know the hug policy. This thread could use some hugs…and cats…I’m first time commentator by the way, long time observer.
Anyway, the point I was going to make to TERF debate that’s now several pages buried, is I think the reason some transwomen react online with death threats to people they call ‘TERFs” is because it causes more dysphoric feelings to here your true gender identity rejected by your fellow women more than by men. I do know it hurts for myself to hear a ciswomen not respect my being a transwomen than a man. Of course, as mentioned, there may be transwomen who simply dismiss any women who won’t have them as transphobic, which is using societal oppression they face to mask their own entitlement.
That’s not an excuse for the disgusting hatred, death threats, any threats aimed at those called ‘TERFs’. I honestly had never thought of TERF as an actual slur, but today I did was reminded it can be used as a silencing tactic. I admit I’ve tried to end arguments online just by calling someone else a TERF before walking away, when I felt I was under attack. If I could apologize to those people directly, I would.
I’ll try to avoid using it in the future.
No we’re getting into the “I have black friends” portion of the argument. Oh good. Just what we were missing.
@ WWTH
Yeah, I already knew things would go this way too, just couldn’t be bothered to engage because tooth pain/headache.
GroundPetrel
Look! All my individual friends are saying there’s no sexism in my games, no siree! It’s not like internalized misogyny is a thing, or that they’re individual people with individual thoughts and feelings, and while they might not find something offensive or sexist, other people might!
And since all my friends say there’s no sexism in my games, I’m going to completely ignore anyone who says otherwise!
And since my (insert oppressed group here) friends say so, I’m completely off the hook for everything! [/sarcasm]
Look dude, because your friends say it’s okay, it doesn’t mean they speak for everyone, nor does that mean that other people can’t have another point of view, NOR does that mean that you get to stop looking for sexism in games.
GroundPetrol,
When Anita claims that games contain sexist tropes and narratives, she’s not directly attacking the way that you and your friends play games.
Hi Jennifer!
Haven’t read all the thread, but thanks for that last post! You probably know all about the welcome package, but if you want one of your very own, you can find it by clicking on the scented candle at the bottom of the right sidebar.
@paradoxicalintellectual
“If men want to learn about feminism and the problems women face today,”
The easiest way is probably just to know some women.
My female friends and I obviously know about each others lives. That I have it pretty cushty and they don’t is flipping obvious.
[Gah, I’ve got a plane to catch in an hour and I haven’t even packed. But this is such an interesting site. Curse you wonderful people for making this such a brilliant place!]
At the risk of being super-ninja’d, but GroundPetrel, are you really using the friend argument? Really?
@GroundPetrel:
What games do you play? I’m calling you on the “no sexism” thing.
(This is besides the point that you’re starting to go way over the line with your behavior for this community)
Alan, dude, glad to have you here, but seriously, go pack!
Alan Robertshaw
This too.
Also, hi, my name is Paradoxical Intention (not that ParadoxicalIntellectual isn’t an awesome username). It’s a psychological term for doing something that is directly against your better instincts in order to better yourself or to conquer a fear (as I understand it). 😀
If it helps in the future, Paradox or Paradoxy is just fine. 🙂