An open thread for non-personal stuff (there’s another one for personal stuff). As usual, no trolls, no MRAs here!
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Open Thread for Non-Personal Stuff: January 2016 Party Girls Edition
We Hunted The MammothBucking the Backlash
I have the feeling that turning life into a ‘game’ is likely to result in feelings of resentment. How fulfilling can life be if it is simply a game?
You learn a lot of rules and techniques to ‘win’, but there will always be people who seem happier. But instead of doubting the worldview that gets you into that unhappy place, it’s built into the belief system that others are cheating you of your rightful due.
‘Game’ is predicated on contempt for others. I don’t see how that can bring anything but bitterness and hatefulness.
@BritterSweet
Oh god, I literally just got to this part in the game. Sure, fucking photosynthesis, of course. It’s such a terrible excuse, it actually makes the blatant sexism even more pronounced.
@PoM
I agree. Dehumanizing women is a big part of ‘game’. Women are portrayed as just a number, or a plate, or a ‘lay’, mere objects in a game for the player to enjoy.
Then the player gets mad when the pieces of the game start acting on their own accord and don’t follow the ‘role’ they are prescribed.
@proudfootz
I think the idea that ‘oh it’s all a game and all you need to do is say the right things and you’ll win’ is providing a lot of reassurance in the unhealthiest of ways.
@ Moocow
It’s just exacerbated by how Kojima said it. “There is actually an important plot-related reason for why she dresses like this, and when you find out you will feel ashamed of yourselves for calling me sexist. Now who wants to buy a figurine of her with the boobs made of softer material?”
As long as we’re talking about video games: am I the only one thinking, while watching promos for Far Cry Primal, that the whole “Stone Age” shick is just Ubi getting away with unbelievably racist imagery?
That Sarkeesian video, besides making a good point, is hilarious, btw. Particularly the part where she tries to get a glimpse of Batman’s butt. Someone, in a comment on another site, googled something like “asses” and “videogames” and got lists and lists à la “Top 10 Asses in Videogames” from major games sites. Ethics!
You guys saw that this phenomenon has been named “Baby Got Backstory,” didn’t you?
https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/9724-baby-got-backstory-a-trope-creation-thread/
Been reading the thread in Katz’s link. I’m not impressed with how the dudes (and they do all seem to be dudes, at least up to where I am on page 6) argue examples into and out of the trope depending on frankly spurious things.
Like, on page 6 there is a post that argues that Bayonetta actually shouldn’t be included because it feels like “the character is all for it” with “it” being “running around with clothes that magically disappear whenever a superpower is being used.”
Yes, Bayonetta is absolutely an example of a female character’s gratuitous sexualization being justified in-universe with a reason other than the real one, which is that the creators got off on it. Any argument otherwise is absolutely bullshit. The fact that Bayonetta, who, as a fictional character, has no will or desires of her own and only does and wants what her creators plug into her, seems okay with her own sexualization, doesn’t make that sexualization any less gratuitious. It utterly baffles me how anyone could think otherwise.
And, while it is nice to see a term put onto it, the better term is IMHO one that is used in a post in the thread, specifically “sexualization by backstory.” “Baby got backstory” seems too precious and TVTropesish (little wonder, since it was proposed as a TVTropes page) to use with a straight face.
@BritterSweet
Did he actually think that excuse would totally dismiss any criticisms? Wow
@PoM
Many of the dudes in that thread (and in general) have this belief that, somewhere, somehow, there exists a heavily sexualized character who’s ‘totally not sexist’.
At least a significant amount of the anti-feminist stuff seems to come from people you could categorize as “mainstream liberals” in US politics. You can be in the moderate left and whatever civil rights causes happen to annoy you. Bill Clinton put less emphasis on stuff like feminism and civil rights so that the Democratic Party would seem less threatening to middle class white males. Their views on economics and foreign policy might be fairly left wing and they probably give token support for abortion and gay marriage.
In the case of 4chan, a lot of posters had those “liberal” political views or they were right libertarians. So the original “ironically racist” people on /pol/ actually were expressing their anxieties about social justice causes. Racist and far right groups (mostly “race realists” and KKK, Nazis are a minority) were aware of /pol/, but they were really put off by the crass humor and irreverence for traditional values. At some point after Obama got elected, a few far right moonbats got over that and tried to recruit people on 4chan.
GamerGate was essentially part of that recruitment strategy through a surprisingly effective use of crowd psychology and marketing techniques. You just need to give people an enemy to fear, make them feel helpless, and make them feel that some type of extreme measures are necessary to retaliate. Once people actually start doing extreme stuff, it’s harder for them to go back to a normal way of thinking. So you’ve pulled off a successful memetic hack and gotten people to incorporate anti-feminism into their belief systems. It doesn’t really matter what their political views are if you can play on their fear, anger, and disgust.
Curry: Yes, we appear to be in the same city. 🙂 Hi.
The initiative is beyond words. The more I look into them, the better I understand how incredibly useless they are. I was being a bit tongue-in-cheek about that whole “rich white women getting each other jobs at city hall” thing, but it turns out that’s actually quite an accurate summary. Right now their big thing is promoting a local blog by a (rich white) woman who decided to stay at home with her kids and is blogging her “transition”.
It’s beyond parody. But I’m sure interning there looks good on some (rich white) university girl’s resume.
It’s the sort of thing you’d expect cow(patty)town to fall for. I thought our city was better at selecting employees.
It is awfully cutesy, but for better or worse, TVTropes and other memeish things like that are the main driving force of media criticism these days. I swear to God, ninety percent of making a theory persuasive is coming up with a really internet-quotable name.
And I hate to agree with a passive-aggressive jab at rich university interns, but I think you might be right..
They really do like highlighting rich as fuck people, don’t they? The link to that photo shoot is just, wow.
I think they had a hollow word or two about intersectionality. OK.
Curry: Yeah, that was kind of unfair of me about the interns — it’s not their fault and at that point in your life you definitely do need whatever credentials or experience you can get. Still, I don’t see what this group exists for other than to provide some feathers for the caps of people who already have a lot of feathers.
But, I guess it doesn’t really matter. I’m just quietly blocking anyone who finds me as a result of my… uh… conversation with the initiative people. I’ve drafted a letter for my councillor but I don’t know if I’ll send it. I just don’t know if it’s worth escalating this. The video game mob seems to be trying to disguise itself — again — as honest and upstanding advocates for free speech and ethics, and are actively cuddling up with legitimate (if horribly executed) feminist groups. That alone is worth knowing about.
Bernie Sanders can’t go anywhere. In a general election, he is too far outside the Overton window to be elected. More importantly, in the primary, he hasn’t done the legwork and put in the effort with black voters that the Clintons have done. His comments about reparations are just one problem among many wrt him and African Americans. Hillary Clinton is problematic as hell in many ways, but she and Bill have gone into black spaces and talked with and listened to black Americans many many times, over the course of literally decades. Too many Democrats take the black vote totally for granted, and the Clintons have never done that. It’s not like black people don’t notice this, but it’s no shock at all when white people don’t.
Yes, Clinton’s response to BLM was tone-deaf in many ways. Yes, she is hardly the ideal candidate of black Americans’ dreams. However, Sanders hasn’t done a fraction of what Clinton has done with the black Democratic base and can’t hope to ride her occasional gaffe to victory. And he definitely can’t win if black Americans line up behind Clinton.
Now, this is a true story: during the 2008 primaries, I was on a message board with some people who were die-hard Clinton fans and haaaaaaaaated Obama. When Obama took the primary victory, one of them was so outraged that he declared he was abandoning the Democratic party and voting Republican from now on. I don’t know if he carried through with this, because I dropped the board not long after, but given what I knew of his personality, I would not have been remotely surprised if he had. I would not be remotely surprised if some Sanders fans do a similar thing when Clinton wins the primary, which would really demonstrate their character.
@darkstatistic
The responsiveness of local government really depends on the local political culture. Sometimes there is literally nothing you can do to change it. With a small enough government, and enough energy and dedication on your part, tireless lobbying and prodding of the media can, over the long term, force a cultural change. However, not everyone has that kind of energy and if you don’t, that’s nothing to be ashamed of but it does mean there’s nothing you can do.
My city has an interesting culture, in that our government is dedicated to being culturally and economically diverse, but radically fails at this for assorted reasons, with the reasons being different depending on the agency/board/whatever. One major reason is that there is a limited number of people who have the time and energy to dedicate toward what amounts to volunteer service, and that time and energy is easier to come by if you are well-paid, which is to say, fairly high-income. Since it is also easier to be high-income if you are white and male, the demographic failure frequently occurs when most of a board or commission winds up being wealthy, white, and male, simply because those are the people who have knowledge, interest, and the leisure time to dedicate toward the commission. Networking and familiarity bias are also factors. Overcoming this requires effort and time, which nobody really seems to want to put in.
In the instance of my city, the dedication toward diversity and the lack of easily-located candidates with enough leisure time because: racism and sexism directly collide, and convenience always wins out. The city is party to several lawsuits because of this, but even the lawsuits haven’t changed anything.
I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but that’s kind of pessimistic.
One option available to you is always the media, if you think you have a local media outlet that will present a balanced story. It probably won’t wind up on the evening news, but there will likely be a story written about it for the paper, and the paper’s online version.
Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. It’s a tough situation to navigate, but I’m still pissed. It’s just perpetuating the privilege, and of course the marginalized can’t do much about it because they’re marginalized to begin with. It’s a wasted opportunity, at best, because they could have been more inclusive and actually done some good.
Maybe the media idea will work. I could send a few emails.
Sanders’s policies wouldn’t even get through a heavily Democratic Congress. Neither he nor Clinton would be a strong and effective left wing president, unfortunately.
Clinton is probably hoping that both the Democratic base and moderates will vote for her. If it ends up as Trump vs. Clinton, Trump will have to backpedal on all the bigoted stuff or he’ll unelectable.
@darkstatistic
The more you research this story yourself, and the easier you make it for the reporter, the more likely it is that you will get one. A reporter with a deadline is more likely to use a story that requires minimal research and just some fact-checking than one that is merely a one-paragraph story suggestion. That shouldn’t be difficult with GG, since they have left evidence everywhere.
Darkstatistic, when this first came on my radar, I thought about contacting the media or the mayor.
I decided against it because a)I can’t handle the storm, we’ve seen how they destroy lives of even And b)obviously there’s cultural issues at the city level and they don’t give AF if this was allowed to happen in the first place. I’d love to see the email chain between the social media person and the supervisor when they were first harassed. How that turned into a “ok interact with these people who don’t live here and actively try to destroy women’s lives” given their mandate is just a wtf of epic levels.
“I’d love to see the email chain between the social media person and the supervisor when they were first harassed.”
You and me both, friend. What a principled stance! Such courage. Such advocacy. Such… bullshit.
I’ve been doing more research and it seems that we’re not the only ones in town who have questions/concerns about this group. I’ll keep digging.
Hey, Michigan resident here currently living in Detroit for college.
Has everyone heard about the Flint Water Crisis?
Look at this bullshit:
http://www.occupydemocrats.com/travesty-leaked-emails-reveal-republican-officials-made-fun-of-poisoned-flint-residents/
People have died:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/01/23/flin-j23.html
Also, the government knew the water was dirty for 10 months.
This isn’t the only city or neighborhood affected by this kind of negligence. Hell, I spent my teen years living with dirty water in a mold-infested trailer in a very poor trailer park. Mud came out of my faucet more than once. A few weeks after we moved there I got sick. It smelled like sulfur. The water was clear most of the time, but sometimes we did get Flint quality water. The well was old and we lived near a water treatment facility. A few years before my family left, the water was tested and it was found to have elevated levels of arsenic and e. coli bacteria, probably due to the well’s age and location. There was talk about switching to the city’s water supply, but that never happened.
Basically, it was Flint on a smaller scale. I’m also pretty sure the whole place was just there so the rich owner could continue to exploit the poor who were living there. Like, he sued these people because, apparently, they didn’t have the titles of their homes. We suspect he erased records. The place is still open and from what we know, the same old shit keeps happening.
A topic came up in a discussion in class and there was a woman who lived in a similar situation, trailer park and everything and I asked her if she was from my former neighborhood. She wasn’t.
Things like this affect poor people, and on larger scales such as Flint and a latinx neighborhood in California I heard about, poor PoC.
This pisses me of so much. Because the vast majority of Americans have clean water, we act like this isn’t such a big deal. But it’s an even bigger deal because we do have the resources to guarantee clean water, it’s just that a lot of poor people are being denied access.
I’ve heard about it all over tumblr. It’s gross, and sickening that people are expected to live like this.
And all of this on top of the shitty, god-awful state of some of their public schools as well.
(And slightly OT, feel free to ignore: Is your username a Homestuck nod?)
Yeah, there were also public school problems in my hometown, but the problems in Detroit are worse. I saw kids protesting at the beginning of December at a Midtown/Cass Corridor event. The state of Michigan has been fucked up for a while now, just before and ever since the economic collapse, especially cities that used to manufacture things, like Detroit and its neighbors.
I have to move away soon, I can’t stay in my hometown. There is a good fine arts scene for hobbyists, but no jobs for someone who wants to do storyboarding. Even unskilled labor jobs are hard to come by.
(Yes, it is. :33)
(:D The reason why I chose green for my icon is a bit of a Homestuck nod as well (my aspect was Doom), so I figured I’d ask.)
OT: I just got into a conversation with a guy on twitter that says that feminists all lie about rape threats and when I showed him the thread about AVfM calling for information on the woman that reported Sage Gerard for breaking into the women’s restroom after he asked for instances of MRAs harassing feminists, he says “well they were doing public research on a feminist. And?”
AND HE JUST BROUGHT UP ERIN PRIZZEY, GOOD LORD. This guy doesn’t know when to shut up.
Open records request. They’re not just for media. If your city has a robust open records policy (most do at this point) you can get whatever you want.