One may not, But when you see a couple dozen of them, you start to see that they are atleast present and affect you. You try having your Proff try to make you feel horrible just because of what is inbetween your legs.
And I didnt once insult you personally, but im damn near close.
hotsauceman1 wrote: One may not, But when you see a couple dozen of them, you start to see that they are atleast present and affect you. You try having your Proff try to make you feel horrible just because of what is inbetween your legs. And I didnt once insult you personally, but im damn near close.
And I've received, consistently over the more than a decade I've been on the internet, various rape and death (and "I hope you get raped to death", for the extra bonus points) threats from men who disagreed with my views. And my views are moderate and mild compared to many. Actually it's kind of gotten worse in the last few years, now that I think of it. Should I start labeling men violent, idiotic psychopaths who are little more than rapists waiting to happen, who should all be locked up for the good of society?
hotsauceman1 wrote: One may not, But when you see a couple dozen of them, you start to see that they are atleast present and affect you. You try having your Proff try to make you feel horrible just because of what is inbetween your legs.
And I didnt once insult you personally, but im damn near close.
And I've received, consistently over the more than a decade I've been on the internet, various rape and death (and "I hope you get raped to death", for the extra bonus points) threats from men who disagreed with my views. And my views are moderate and mild compared to many. Actually it's kind of gotten worse in the last few years, now that I think of it. Should I start labeling men violent, idiotic psychopaths who are little more than rapists waiting to happen, who should all be locked up for the good of society?
Mel, there are all kinds of donkey-caves on the internet. I myself am constantly getting told to go kill myself and rip off my balls before doing so (That was an awkward game, let me tell you...)
No one is saying women, or feminists, are bad. What myself, and many others don't like, is how whenever we hear about the Movement, it's usually the Feminazi's we hear about. It's kinda like religion with the Taliban/Westborrow. Religion isn't bad, but how many times did we all hear that the crazy Westborrows' were pickitting some "God forsaken homo *Insert three letter word here*. Makes ALL us religious people look bad.
What we need for Feminists to do is do something so sincere and awesome and then YOUTUBE THAT GAK and make it VIRAL. As it is right now, alot of Feminazi's get the publicity that you, the feminists need. What that is, I have no idea
I have a lot of bad experiences with misogynistic men. But I refuse to become a man-hater because I don't want those experiences to control my life. That said, I have a lot of empathy towards feminists who do teeter towards that edge. We are an oppressed, often victimized and marginalized group even in modern times.
Melissia wrote: I have a lot of bad experiences with misogynistic men. But I refuse to become a man-hater because I don't want those experiences to control my life. But I have a lot of empathy towards feminists who do teeter towards that edge.
I would like to start this post with saying I'm very sorry for both of you, Mel and Hotsauceman. Imagination runs wild, and it can't have been good. I personally, with the exception of people out of power/my ex-girlfriend have never experianced anything of the sort.
But I do think, at least, that both of you can see where the other is coming from, with just a little empathy. Both sides, hell all sides have our bad eggs.
I mean, you know how much fun it is being compared to people like Mr. Westborrow because I'm not catholic but still consider myself religious? I literally have an entire town that will not talk to me because I don't share their views and therefore am satanic.
For me I guess the big difference is EVERY female I know has a story about a man treating her badly in some form or fashion purely for being female, but not every male can say the same. Anecdotal and worthless technically, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same proved true for most Americans.
Anyway, the video this thread is about has nothing to do with feminazis.
I agree, It always annoys me because it affects men aswell. Im under the opinion that part of the reason nerdy hobbies are shunned is because of gender bias. For example, men should be strong, tough and love cars(you would be surprised how many times i get made fun of by my cousins because i dont know how to change the oil in a car.
I still like the feminist movement in concept, Equal opportunity. But what i don't like is the people i have meet. But then again i dont like much of the liberal movement where i am either, dispite being a liberal, so maybe its just the Know-it-all college kids im annoyed from .
But let me give you an example, in a class I was in we watched "16 and pregnant" and the teacher applauded the boy getting hit, when all he wanted was to see his son(or Daughter) he wanted to be in his life. I mean, What if it was reversed.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote: For me I guess the big difference is EVERY female I know has a story about a man treating her badly in some form or fashion purely for being female, but not every male can say the same. Anecdotal and worthless technically, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same proved true for most Americans.
Every feminist blogger, no matter how mild their views, has the same exact stories as well.
Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote: For me I guess the big difference is EVERY female I know has a story about a man treating her badly in some form or fashion purely for being female, but not every male can say the same. Anecdotal and worthless technically, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same proved true for most Americans.
Every feminist blogger, no matter how mild their views, has the same exact stories as well.
Well, that was rage inducing. I'm sure they get flake for "It's the internet, nothing you can do about it", but you can't tell me at least ONE blogger hasn't gone to the police with the evidence. Honestly, why didn't she give the police the info of the person who threatened her from his work? That right there is an actual threat, and could have been punished by law as assault if I remember right (Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Assault threatening someone, while Battery is actually doing the physical harm?)
Melissia wrote: She did, she said she forwarded the really threatening ones to the police, but never actually expected (or saw) any police action.
The thing is, these men do these sorts of things specifically to intimidate women in to silence.
But still, posting threats like that along with her personal information goes above and beyond any sort of "just internet" threat level. They should have done something about it... They should DO something about it.
Mind you, what can we expect when it takes less time for pizza to get to your house than the police.....
Just gonna post this here. No idea who the guy is, but thought it might be a tiny bit relevant to the topic in general:
Slarg232 wrote: But still, posting threats like that along with her personal information goes above and beyond any sort of "just internet" threat level. They should have done something about it... They should DO something about it.
They should, yes. I'm more concerned with the ubiquity of the threats myself.
It's basically a terror campaign by a very small group of highly motivated men.
To be 100% fair, how do we know that most of these people aren't some backwater neanderthal's in a third world country that still beleives that women are property?
Yes, the dude who was in the business and threatened her was definately american, so we cannot rule out it happening here. Having said that, the Internet comes from everywhere.
Melissia wrote: She did, she said she forwarded the really threatening ones to the police, but never actually expected (or saw) any police action.
The thing is, these men do these sorts of things specifically to intimidate women in to silence.
But still, posting threats like that along with her personal information goes above and beyond any sort of "just internet" threat level. They should have done something about it... They should DO something about it.
Mind you, what can we expect when it takes less time for pizza to get to your house than the police.....
Ill never forget when a drunk women was threatening to kill me, it took 45 min for the police to get to my house.
But i think bloggers of many colors get death threats. Anything controverisal gets them.
I think STFUparents recieved death threats from parents.
Slarg232 wrote: To be 100% fair, how do we know that most of these people aren't some backwater neanderthal's in a third world country that still beleives that women are property?
Yes, the dude who was in the business and threatened her was definately american, so we cannot rule out it happening here. Having said that, the Internet comes from everywhere.
I don't. But given my experience here in Texas, I have absolutely no hesitation believing that there is a small but highly motivated subculture of American men who do these sorts of things.
I was sexually harassed at work once by a much older lady (not remotely a milf). She got a slap on the wrist and I quit the job because it was too awkward to work there anymore. Had the roles been reversed it would've been a payday.
You're kidding yourself if you don't think women can get away with a lot of crap, but it cuts both ways. Still, for there to be actual equality, all double standards need to be removed. The vocal feminists don't seem to be interested in that at all. I can understand that a bit, since they are more interested in uplifting their gender. What I can't understand is people tolerating self admitted misandrists because men are in a position of power and women are simply 'rising up.'
Amaya wrote: You're kidding yourself if you don't think women can get away with a lot of crap, but it cuts both ways. Still, for there to be actual equality, all double standards need to be removed. The vocal feminists don't seem to be interested in that at all. I can understand that a bit, since they are more interested in uplifting their gender.
Can you give specific examples? In my experience of femimism, and as it was already described by multiple posters earlier in the thread, in fact most feminists do talk about removing double standards, and about equality as something which benefits men as well as women, and society in general. When you say that 'the vocal feminists" are not interested in removing double standards, only in advancing their own gender, you're leveling a blanket accusation at every feminist who speaks publicly. That's pretty inflammatory, and I have to say IME highly inaccurate. So again, who are you specifically talking about?
Slarg232 wrote: So tell me how you are going to get ANYTHING done if your so divided?
We HAVE gotten things done. Or perhaps you don't know the history of the womens' rights movement?
And do you know how much more you could get done if you actually got together and figured things out amongst yourselves? It's taken, what, 50 years for the first female vice president? Coulda done that alot sooner if there weren't so many feminazis...
Mind you, that might be near impossible with how indesicive most women are....
Slarg, get out of the pool. You're not welcome in the thread if you can't be polite and respectful.
Amaya wrote: You're kidding yourself if you don't think women can get away with a lot of crap, but it cuts both ways. Still, for there to be actual equality, all double standards need to be removed. The vocal feminists don't seem to be interested in that at all. I can understand that a bit, since they are more interested in uplifting their gender.
Can you give specific examples? In my experience of femimism, and as it was already described by multiple posters earlier in the thread, in fact most feminists do talk about removing double standards, and about equality as something which benefits men as well as women, and society in general. When you say that 'the vocal feminists" are not interested in removing double standards, only in advancing their own gender, you're leveling a blanket accusation at every feminist who speaks publicly. That's pretty inflammatory, and I have to say IME highly inaccurate. So again, who are you specifically talking about?
Well, I guess it is pretty inflammatory then, are you going to pitch a fit about it? I guess I can't share an opinion based on my experience if it differs from yours, can I?
Mannahnin wrote: Slarg, get out of the pool. You're not welcome in the thread if you can't be polite and respectful.
How was I not polite and respectful? Did I ever once call Mel the word you flagged me for? No, I quite specifically singled her out as one of the GOOD guys.... er... gals.
How am I supposed to know what is polite and respectful if no one actually says "Hey man, stop saying this, please" and instead directly goes to "Daddy" about it? If Mel, Hotsauceman, Cannerous, or anyone had said "Don't use that, please", I would have stopped.
And if I'm getting red flagged for saying "Women are indecisive", how could anyone take that as anything other than a joke? Maybe I should have posted wimminz, or maybe it wasn't 100% clear, which I apologize for, but seriously....
This probably comes across alot harsher than I mean it to, but come on...
Amaya wrote: You're kidding yourself if you don't think women can get away with a lot of crap, but it cuts both ways. Still, for there to be actual equality, all double standards need to be removed. The vocal feminists don't seem to be interested in that at all. I can understand that a bit, since they are more interested in uplifting their gender.
Can you give specific examples? In my experience of femimism, and as it was already described by multiple posters earlier in the thread, in fact most feminists do talk about removing double standards, and about equality as something which benefits men as well as women, and society in general. When you say that 'the vocal feminists" are not interested in removing double standards, only in advancing their own gender, you're leveling a blanket accusation at every feminist who speaks publicly. That's pretty inflammatory, and I have to say IME highly inaccurate. So again, who are you specifically talking about?
Well, I guess it is pretty inflammatory then, are you going to pitch a fit about it? I guess I can't share an opinion based on my experience if it differs from yours, can I?
By "pitch a fit", do you mean give you a suspension? We can go that route instead, of course, but rather than doing so I decided to give you the opportunity to clarify your comments so you didn't come off as a troll. In most of this thread you've seemed to keep a generally reasonable tone, so I was trying to cut you some slack.
Of course there's a difference between sharing an opinion about what you've personally experienced and making an insulting generalization about "the vocal feminists", in which you functionally accuse the entire group of bad faith and disingenuousness. I didn't just flag you for trolling, though, I instead asked you to explain WHO you meant by "the vocal faminists", so you could either substantiate your statement with evidence folks can evaluate, or you can retract or modify the statement. Up to you.
Mannahnin wrote: Slarg, get out of the pool. You're not welcome in the thread if you can't be polite and respectful.
How was I not polite and respectful? Did I ever once call Mel the word you flagged me for? No, I quite specifically singled her out as one of the GOOD guys.... er... gals.
How am I supposed to know what is polite and respectful if no one actually says "Hey man, stop saying this, please" and instead directly goes to "Daddy" about it? If Mel, Hotsauceman, Cannerous, or anyone had said "Don't use that, please", I would have stopped.
And if I'm getting red flagged for saying "Women are indecisive", how could anyone take that as anything other than a joke? Maybe I should have posted wimminz, or maybe it wasn't 100% clear, which I apologize for, but seriously....
This probably comes across alot harsher than I mean it to, but come on...
Sarcasm doesn't often work well on the internet. It's also not a very friendly rhetorical device; while it can be amusing between friends, in a tense or heated discussion, it's inflammatory, not conciliatory.
And do you know how much more you could get done if you actually got together and figured things out amongst yourselves? It's taken, what, 50 years for the first female vice president?
This comment seems entirely in ignorance of the history of the feminist and women's rights movement/s. You come off like a middle schooler who's never read anything about the suffragettes, about Women's Lib in the 60s, or anything at all on the subject, but are happy to condescend to feminists out of the (false) belief that no one's gotten organized. You made that comment based on one by Melissia about how Feminism is not one monolithic entity with hierarchy and one clear, agreed-on set of priorities and tactics. Which is true of most political movements which aren't a strictly hierarchical political party. Do all conservatives have the exact same beliefs and agree on the same priorities and tactics? Of course not. How about all liberals? All minority advocates against racism? Obviously not. You drew a risably false conclusion based on a silly premise, seemingly founded on sheer ignorance.
Coulda done that alot sooner if there weren't so many feminazis...
Nothing about the word "feminazis" is helpful or useful. Godwining a discussion by likening people advocating for their rights to Nazis is about the stupidest form of debate. I'm hoping you meant it ironically, but that irony doesn't come across clearly online. There are and have been clearly some jerks and misandrists in the feminist movement. Women like Andrea Dworkin, for example, but thankfully they're a pretty tiny number. Lordofhats and others in this thread argued earlier that Sarkeesian is also a jerk, and not helpful to feminism, as they believe she makes dishonest arguments. That's a worthwhile discussion to have. Do you see the difference between criticizing a specific person and behavior, vs. throwing around terms like "feminazis' which are mostly the parlance of idiots, trolls, and/or wife-beaters?
Mind you, that might be near impossible with how indesicive most women are....
Again, not the time for this kind of comment to come across as a peace offering or an effort to lighten the tone. If you were good friends with Melissia, this kind of joke (assuming it's a joke) might break the tension, cause her to laugh, chuck you on the shoulder, call you a jerk (also in good humor), take a deep breath and continue. It might serve as a tension-breaker. But because this is the internet, because there's already a certain level of hostility in the thread (partially based on folks using terms like "feminazi', which you just had in the previous sentence), because your first statement about feminists not being organized comes off as condescending and ignorant, and because you're NOT good friends with Melissia, it's a bad choice of a joke. It comes off as possibly being sincere, and sincerely insulting.
It is a little strange to criticise feminism as a whole for what some feminists say. I would suggest that the reason they get so much of the focus isn't a matter of "volume" or a failing of other feminists. With a cursory look, you can find lots of public material written by feminists on all sorts of topics.
The reason these particular quotes from a very limited subset of the feminist population get so much attention is because they are what some people want to hear.
Wow... This thread took off... and just kept going...
Feminism definitely has an image problem but come on. What major movement or group doesn't have an image problem? The 'Femnazi' is the Westboro Baptists Church of Feminism (EDIT: Or as we are learning in another thread PETA for Animal Rights). But most people recognize Westboro isn't representative of even a small number of Christians. Feminists seem to have a really hard time time separating themselves from the crazies in the public sphere and getting people to listen to them.
The issue I feel mainly for Feminists is they have nothing really big to rally behind. First there was the right to vote, the right to work, the right for equal protection under the law. All of those are big things that can be pointed to and definitively identified (and there still are quite a few such things like the difference between men and women's wages). When trying to change gender roles and the perception of gender you're really stuck arguing what people often think of in their heads but never realize they're thinking. It's really messy because you have to explain why that's a problem in grueling detail for people to get it and even then sometimes they still don't get it. How does one wage battle with the subconcious social expectations and identities of society? The long and arduous way, that's how. It becomes easier for the general public to be lazy, find some crazy people, and write off the whole group than to pay attention (and I say this as someone probably fairly indicative of the general population when it comes to this subject).
Sarcasm doesn't often work well on the internet
I think we've seen that in this thread more than once
LordofHats wrote: The issue I feel mainly for Feminists is they have nothing really big to rally behind. First there was the right to vote, the right to work, the right for equal protection under the law. All of those are big things that can be pointed to and definitively identified (and there still are quite a few such things like the difference between men and women's wages). When trying to change gender roles and the perception of gender you're really stuck arguing what people often think of in their heads but never realize they're thinking. It's really messy because you have to explain why that's a problem in grueling detail for people to get it and even then sometimes they still don't get it. How does one wage battle with the subconcious social expectations and identities of society? The long and arduous way, that's how. It becomes easier for the general public to be lazy, find some crazy people, and write off the whole group than to pay attention (and I say this as someone probably fairly indicative of the general population when it comes to this subject).
I think that is a problem for any large movement, once it wins the major battles it can easily fracture and lose its unified voice that often drowned out or regulated the more extreme elements. I think that is why we are seeing so many different strains of feminism, each looking at a different issue and from a different perspective.
Amaya wrote: You're kidding yourself if you don't think women can get away with a lot of crap, but it cuts both ways. Still, for there to be actual equality, all double standards need to be removed. The vocal feminists don't seem to be interested in that at all. I can understand that a bit, since they are more interested in uplifting their gender.
Can you give specific examples? In my experience of femimism, and as it was already described by multiple posters earlier in the thread, in fact most feminists do talk about removing double standards, and about equality as something which benefits men as well as women, and society in general. When you say that 'the vocal feminists" are not interested in removing double standards, only in advancing their own gender, you're leveling a blanket accusation at every feminist who speaks publicly. That's pretty inflammatory, and I have to say IME highly inaccurate. So again, who are you specifically talking about?
Well, I guess it is pretty inflammatory then, are you going to pitch a fit about it? I guess I can't share an opinion based on my experience if it differs from yours, can I?
By "pitch a fit", do you mean give you a suspension? We can go that route instead, of course, but rather than doing so I decided to give you the opportunity to clarify your comments so you didn't come off as a troll. In most of this thread you've seemed to keep a generally reasonable tone, so I was trying to cut you some slack.
Of course there's a difference between sharing an opinion about what you've personally experienced and making an insulting generalization about "the vocal feminists", in which you functionally accuse the entire group of bad faith and disingenuousness. I didn't just flag you for trolling, though, I instead asked you to explain WHO you meant by "the vocal faminists", so you could either substantiate your statement with evidence folks can evaluate, or you can retract or modify the statement. Up to you.
Mannahnin wrote: Slarg, get out of the pool. You're not welcome in the thread if you can't be polite and respectful.
How was I not polite and respectful? Did I ever once call Mel the word you flagged me for? No, I quite specifically singled her out as one of the GOOD guys.... er... gals.
How am I supposed to know what is polite and respectful if no one actually says "Hey man, stop saying this, please" and instead directly goes to "Daddy" about it? If Mel, Hotsauceman, Cannerous, or anyone had said "Don't use that, please", I would have stopped.
And if I'm getting red flagged for saying "Women are indecisive", how could anyone take that as anything other than a joke? Maybe I should have posted wimminz, or maybe it wasn't 100% clear, which I apologize for, but seriously....
This probably comes across alot harsher than I mean it to, but come on...
Sarcasm doesn't often work well on the internet. It's also not a very friendly rhetorical device; while it can be amusing between friends, in a tense or heated discussion, it's inflammatory, not conciliatory.
And do you know how much more you could get done if you actually got together and figured things out amongst yourselves? It's taken, what, 50 years for the first female vice president?
This comment seems entirely in ignorance of the history of the feminist and women's rights movement/s. You come off like a middle schooler who's never read anything about the suffragettes, about Women's Lib in the 60s, or anything at all on the subject, but are happy to condescend to feminists out of the (false) belief that no one's gotten organized. You made that comment based on one by Melissia about how Feminism is not one monolithic entity with hierarchy and one clear, agreed-on set of priorities and tactics. Which is true of most political movements which aren't a strictly hierarchical political party. Do all conservatives have the exact same beliefs and agree on the same priorities and tactics? Of course not. How about all liberals? All minority advocates against racism? Obviously not. You drew a risably false conclusion based on a silly premise, seemingly founded on sheer ignorance.
Coulda done that alot sooner if there weren't so many feminazis...
Nothing about the word "feminazis" is helpful or useful. Godwining a discussion by likening people advocating for their rights to Nazis is about the stupidest form of debate. I'm hoping you meant it ironically, but that irony doesn't come across clearly online. There are and have been clearly some jerks and misandrists in the feminist movement. Women like Andrea Dworkin, for example, but thankfully they're a pretty tiny number. Lordofhats and others in this thread argued earlier that Sarkeesian is also a jerk, and not helpful to feminism, as they believe she makes dishonest arguments. That's a worthwhile discussion to have. Do you see the difference between criticizing a specific person and behavior, vs. throwing around terms like "feminazis' which are mostly the parlance of idiots, trolls, and/or wife-beaters?
Mind you, that might be near impossible with how indesicive most women are....
Again, not the time for this kind of comment to come across as a peace offering or an effort to lighten the tone. If you were good friends with Melissia, this kind of joke (assuming it's a joke) might break the tension, cause her to laugh, chuck you on the shoulder, call you a jerk (also in good humor), take a deep breath and continue. It might serve as a tension-breaker. But because this is the internet, because there's already a certain level of hostility in the thread (partially based on folks using terms like "feminazi', which you just had in the previous sentence), because your first statement about feminists not being organized comes off as condescending and ignorant, and because you're NOT good friends with Melissia, it's a bad choice of a joke. It comes off as possibly being sincere, and sincerely insulting.
I never said that Feminists were like nazis. However, the crazy ones most certainly are;
nazi's blamed all their problems on jews, homos, and non whites and wanted them out of their "perfect world"
Crazy Feminists blame all their problems on men, and want them out fo their "perfect world".
The only real difference between the nazi party and the CRAZY feminists is that Nazi's had the power to act upon their ideas. Hence, Feminazi is an appropriate term for THOSE people whom are CRAZY FEMINISTS. I would bet $100,000,000 and my left nut that if somehow the CRAZY feminists got ahold of Congress and the White House, we would see concentration camps for men.
As to them not organizing, that's the problem with EVERY movement, not just Feminists, as you said. But if Women have it SOOOOO bad, they could easily organize and change things. Same with Liberals, or any other movement. Just because we are talking about the Feminist movement doesn't mean my stance would change if we were talking about any other political movement.
Save the Nazi party. Feth them guys.
Just because this is the internet does NOT give any the excuse to take offense at any post on a site other than 4Chan; I did not post porn, a death of an animal or person, or anything similarily obscene. I posted my opinion, and if anyone gets offended by another's opinion they honestly deserve to be offended. Also, as you said there are several different ways of reading any particular post. Just because someone lacks the skills to read a post in several lights before posting and judging it does not mean that I shouldn't post it.
As I have said and will ALWAYS say, I'm with the feminist movement on the idea that women need to have equal rights. I will not, however, sacrifice my rights or allow others to have more rights than I, after doing so.
The only thing you ever talk about is "feminazis". Almost every single post you've made in this thread you've mentioned "feminazis", called people "feminazis", referred to "feminazis", or generally act completely obsessed about "feminazis".
Just stop already, you only ever see "feminazis" because that's all you ever want to see, we get it. Can we can talk about the actual thread topic instead of you comparing feminists to nazis over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over again?
The only thing you ever talk about is "feminazis". Almost every single post you've made in this thread you've mentioned "feminazis", called people "feminazis", referred to "feminazis", or generally act completely obsessed about "feminazis".
Mostly because there is a very big distinction between the two, which you STILL are too obtuse to realize that I'm on YOUR side.
You asked why people don't like the feminist movement, and I told you why. Just because you don't like how I explain it, doesn't mean that I should explain it any differently.
Did I cringe and complain when manahain refered to me in the same sentence as a wife beater? No, because he wasn't actually refering to me and I know enough not to get upset over someone on the forums.
Did he say that ALL men are wife beaters? OF COURSE NOT. Just like I have NEVER said that YOU, or that ALL Feminists, are Feminazis.
Also, you yourself in every post have talked about Feminists. Are you completely obsessed with feminism? You call people feminists, refer to feminists. You want to know why? Because that's the topic we are discussing. Odd how that works, don't it?
Just stop already, you only ever see "is people against you" because that's all you ever want to see, we get it. Can we can talk about the actual thread topic instead of you comparing people on your side but with differeing opinions to people who don't want women to have equal rights over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over and and over and over and over and over again?
Slarg232 wrote: You asked why people don't like the feminist movement
No, I didn't.
And I wasn't referreing to your recent posts. You did this gak from the BEGINNING. From the very start, you've ranted on and on, non-stop, about "feminazis". You're STILL doing it.
If you have only insults to say, perhaps it is best if you stop saying it.
Spyral wrote: She is a heavily biased fool, who hasn't done her research. Why does she even have airtime?
At least her video had some moderate level of production value instead of being some half-assed one-line response slapped together on a forum behind an anonymous nametag.
Your post gets air time on this forum, when it is both heavily biased and ill-researched. Should we censor your post? Hell, I don't agree with everything she has to say either, but this is youtube we're talking about. By its standards, her video IS high quality. Why shouldn't she get air time in comparison to, say, a video about a drunk guy puking his guts out?
Spyral wrote: She is a heavily biased fool, who hasn't done her research. Why does she even have airtime?
At least her video had some moderate level of production value instead of being some half-assed one-line response slapped together on a forum behind an anonymous nametag.
Your post gets air time on this forum, when it is both heavily biased and ill-researched. Should we censor your post? Hell, I don't agree with everything she has to say either, but this is youtube we're talking about. By its standards, her video IS high quality. Why shouldn't she get air time in comparison to, say, a video about a drunk guy puking his guts out?
It is censorable as it's a privately owned forum. High quality video is irrelevant to the message.
Also by air time I probably should have said 'attention' rather than the ability to self publish to youtube which indeed, any vomitus expelling drunkard can do via iPhone.
Spyral wrote: It is censorable as it's a privately owned forum. High quality video is irrelevant to the message.
Her video has more intellectual value, more thought put in to it, and more research done for it, than any of your posts in this thread, yet you would say it should be censored because of its "lack of research", amongst other things. So, again, why should your posts, which are far less well thought out, and far less researched than her video was, remain when using the same standards you used to try to censor her post?
Of course, you aren't using the same standards, but that's obvious.
Spyral wrote: Also don't know if this has been posted yet:
I know of it. It's lame, stupid, and ill-researched, more focused on feminist-bashing than actually talking about the facts of the matter.
Spyral wrote: It is censorable as it's a privately owned forum. High quality video is irrelevant to the message.
Her video has more intellectual value, more thought put in to it, and more research done for it, than any of your posts in this thread, yet you would say it should be censored because of its "lack of research", amongst other things. So, again, why should your posts, which are far less well thought out, and far less researched than her video was, remain when using the same standards you used to try to censor her post?
Spyral wrote: Also don't know if this has been posted yet:
I know of it. It's lame, stupid, and ill-researched, more focused on feminist-bashing than actually talking about the facts of the matter.
I found it a highly amusing criticism of the aforementioned poorly researched feminist pandering video.
Slarg232 wrote: You asked why people don't like the feminist movement
No, I didn't.
And I wasn't referreing to your recent posts. You did this gak from the BEGINNINg.
And this was a feminist topic.
From the beginning.
Edit: BECAUSE WE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT THE MOVEMENT.
And yet most people in this thread are mature enough not to toss insults around.
Hell, I've done my best to try to not throw insults around when I was talking about people who told me "I hope you get raped to death".
And I'm not exactly insulting anyone in the thread either.
If people are taking offense to what I'm saying, that's entirely different to insulting someone. Because taking offense is the readers problem, not the posters.
Slarg232 wrote: And I'm not exactly insulting anyone in the thread either.
If people are taking offense to what I'm saying, that's entirely different to insulting someone. Because taking offense is the readers problem, not the posters.
If I call you a nasty name, I am responsible for doing do. It's rude, and being rude is a violation of the forum's rules.
If you make simultaneously ignorant and condescending comments toward other posters, while throwing around trollish terms like "feminazi", you are responsible for being inflammatory and offensive. As you are disclaiming responsibilty for the consequences of your posts, you leave me no choice as a moderator but to take responsibility for the impact of your posts on other users, and to hold you to the terms of the agreement under which you have been granted permission to post on this site.
Slarg232 wrote: And I'm not exactly insulting anyone in the thread either.
Yes, you have.
I'm a vocal feminist and you would say that most people like me are Nazis or like Nazis.
You probably are so ignorant of the history of the Feminist movement AND of Nazi Germany that you don't even realize how offensive that is. Nazi Germany went out of its way to exclude women from all positions of responsibility, especially in politics and academia. Women were not even allowed to become teachers or nurses under Nazi Germany. Hell, Nazi Germany was one of the most misogynistic, anti-feminist organizations to obtain power over a country in the history of modern society. It made southern USA two hundred years ago look goddamned progressive in comparison.
And yet you would declare practically an entire political group to be "like Nazis" for no goddamned reason except to fething insult us. I'm still waiting for your apology.
You know at first I thought, wow someone is gonna go through her video and suggest she's never played any of these games and might have misused some of them... But I was wrong. He's got some okay criticism in there but most of it is about as misdirected as her video.
Every single video I've seen criticizing her either has never had a point to begin with, or had a point then ignored it to go on some wild, idiotic tangent.
Which, ironically, also goes for at least 99.99999% of comments in youtube. But then again, who really expects intelligent debate out of youtube comments?
KalashnikovMarine wrote: Nice to see we're keeping a high standard of intellectual discourse in this thread.
It's feminism, the notion is asinine in the developed world frankly.
We only recently-- 1920-- gotten the right to vote. Our rise in the corporate and political world was even more recent, and is nowhere NEAR egalitarian. The American culture still places a much higher value on masculinity as opposed to femininity, and still values the input of men more than women. Hell, women only recently got the legal right to be considered combat troops, even though we've been actually participating in combat for more than a decade now. The double standards held to both women and men are harmful to both genders, and they still need to be broken down-- and the video game industry is no exception.
Anyone who thinks that the feminist movement is "asinine" is highly ignorant.
Spyral wrote: I agree that double standards are harmful but there are more important things than feminism.
What a nonsensical viewpoint.
Are you going to start whining about "first world problems" now? As if the billions of people on the planet cannot focus on more than one problem at any given time? Because if you only want people to worry about "the most important things" according to your bizarre standards, video gaming wouldn't exist to begin with. Nor would 40k or DakkaDakka. If you really gave a damn about your supposed "more important things" then you'd not be here to begin with. However, you don't. You're just using that wonkish argument to try to belittle the feminist movement, nothing more.
Even ignoring the asinine nature of your objection, it may not be important to you, but it sure as hell is important to the people the misogyny of society actually effects.
If folks don't actually want to discuss the topic, they can post in some other thread whose topic they like better. We don't need to hear about how you don't like the thread and aren't participating.
Search the thread, that little video has already been posted, and then nobody cared because it's pathetic and lame-- rarely ever actually having a point, and even when it finally grasps a valid point, it runs off in a wild, nonsensical tangent.
I think his valid points are limited to pointing out that Saarkasian isn't as intelligent on the subject as she seems to like to pretend she is (and once again her laughable thesis is brought up). He touches on the concept of actification and I find it funny that rather than make a video about that, he runs off on a wild tangent instead, bypassing the most valid point that can really be made about her videos. Other than that I think his only useful bit is pointing out that the games weren't made to be misogynistic but to turn a profit (though he again skips over the valid point that games marketed at a male audience will favor positive male PC's). The rest is kind of dribble. Like Saarkasian's video his valid points could have been summed up in about 5 minutes.
Oh and his hospital/police examples are kind of funny. A comedy bit could be made for some half decent stand up
And I actually wouldn't say the Double Dragon's Neon ending is grasping at straws. One could take that scene as mocking damsel in distress as a trope, and that she then used a game that mocks trope in her video shows that for a project in need of 'a great deal' of research she really didn't do any. Saarkasian strikes me as someone, frankly for lack of a better term, too stupid to actually make it as a meaningful academic on feminism. So she did what many failed wish-they-could-be-academics do. They peddle dribble to the internet.
Actually, Sarkesian did a bit better than he did. She qualified what she said-- these are great games, and they're very fun, but they're also still indicative of leftover misogyny in our culture-- which still needs to be fought against. It's not the games themselves that have the problem, but the overall culture especially in gaming. And it's still a problem today.
Most of what she said is absolutely true-- if you try to avoid watching her video mindset of "dat crazy feminist hurrr".
hotsauceman1 wrote: What she said is true. BUT she says it in a very rudimentary way. Sh doesnt touch on anything other then "This is indicative of Misogyny"
I agree that she could have done better-- as I said in my first post on this thread, I expected a bit more out of a video that she had raised money to produce-- but she's still far better than the videos that people have posted attacking her (often attacking her personally instead of her argument, even).
I think it'd be sensible to wait and see what the next videos are like. It's part one of n, after all. It might be really bad or really good, but it's hard to say without the others for context.
"Misogyny and regressive tropes are okay as long as you're making a profit from them!" is a pretty ridiculous argument anyway.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: "Misogyny and regressive tropes are okay as long as you're making a profit from them!" is a pretty ridiculous argument anyway.
That's not really the point. The point is that she frames these cultural trends as misogynist, which isn't really accurate. Sexist yes, but I don't think society and culture as a whole can be accurately painted as misogynist.
I don't think we should er to assume all sexism stems from a hatred of women. That being the definition one would find in most dictionaries, and if using some alternative definition should probably be stated upfront, cause that's gonna cause a lot of issues.
LordofHats wrote: I don't think we should er to assume all sexism stems from a hatred of women. That being the definition one would find in most dictionaries, and if using some alternative definition should probably be stated upfront, cause that's gonna cause a lot of issues.
Actually, I think there is a lot of leftover dislike of women in our culture. I have experienced it all throughout my life-- including in real life. And I'm hardly an outspoken person IRL (almost hte opposite of how I am on this forum really...).
And whether or not that dislike is personally acknowledged, or built in to the culture in a more subtle way, it's still misogyny.
Melissia wrote: Actually, I think there is a lot of leftover dislike of women in our culture.
I don't disagree, but dislike isn't hate (EDIT: After all, hate is a strong word ). Misogyny literally means woman hater (in the Greek). I don't think society hates women. Prejudice takes many forms and not all of them stem from hate.
Melissia wrote: Actually, I think there is a lot of leftover dislike of women in our culture.
I don't disagree, but dislike isn't hate (EDIT: After all, hate is a strong word ). Misogyny literally means woman hater (in the Greek). I don't think society hates women. Prejudice takes many forms and not all of them stem from hate.
You're grasping at straws with this sort of pedantry. I don't acknowledge your distinction. Whether or not the hate is expressed overtly or subtly, it's still hate. And if we're using the dictionary definition: "intense or passionate dislike", then that's even more reason to use the term, in my experience. Hate is exactly how I would describe someone saying "you stupid [c-bomb] I hope you get raped to death", or "shutup you [c-bomb]" followed by "she's a [racial slur] lover", or "slutty whore shouldn't have gotten drunk she got raped like women deserve"-- vehemently dismissing and attempting to silence any woman who speaks on topics regarding women and attempting to belittle us as a group, or women who are attempting to enjoy a "man's hobby". And then these sorts of comments are DEFENDED by other people whenever someone calls them out on them, trying to say "you deserved it and you should shut up".
None of these are isolated incidents. IT's been going on for all of my life. I've had people say these sorts of things to my face, not just over the internet.
Only problem I have with those whole thing is that she gathered 150k and now releases a video that you can make with less then 5k(and that's giving A LOT of extra). All she needed was a camera, greenscreen and a pc with video editing software.
This thing had almost no production values. Yeah, there will be more videos, but if they are all in this style they will have cost next to nothing to make after the first investment. With the current content you can't point to research either, so unless new videos will have some truly in depth hard to dig up stuff I'm still going to edge toward this all being a money grab.
(This is in no way about the whole feminism thing or what she's talking about, I'm just talking about the actual video itself, not it's contents.)
I actually thought she'd have release the next video by now but it's been nearly two weeks. I suspect more accusations of money grubbing with come if she doesn't establish a release schedule.
LordofHats wrote: I actually thought she'd have release the next video by now but it's been nearly two weeks. I suspect more accusations of money grubbing with come if she doesn't establish a release schedule.
I'd expect more accusations regardless.
But as for her schedule, if I had my guess, I'm thinking monthly or bimonthly. Just a bit of an ass-pull there, but she probably does have an IRL job she's doing alongside this.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: "Misogyny and regressive tropes are okay as long as you're making a profit from them!" is a pretty ridiculous argument anyway.
Indeed.
I hate it when people act like capitalism is some perfect ideal that needs to remain unadulterated and pure in the rela world.
It's bizarre seeing the number of threads about Games Workshop's crazy market-blind antics of the week alongside posts professing that the Magic of the Market would unerringly produce a product perfect for women if any such women existed (and, therefore, don't).
It'll be interesting to see how her more in-depth analysis turns out. I want to say that occasionally I've seen very shallow criticisms of games from non-video game playing feminist writers who should know better, but it'd be irresponsible to do that without an example and none are coming to mind (and google on the topic comes up almost exclusively with... Anita Sarkeesian!). I hope she can do the topic justice in the upcoming videos.
My guess when this first started was a weekly schedule. I mean she's have months to work on this already and the production quality isn't that high. I figured she'd released the first one cause all the videos were finished XD
LordofHats wrote: My guess when this first started was a weekly schedule. I mean she's have months to work on this already and the production quality isn't that high. I figured she'd released the first one cause all the videos were finished XD
Yeah, hell, standard procedure for anyone making a series is have at least 6 episodes done before you release the first so you have a backlog in case of trouble.
LordofHats wrote: Also not sure that game is real, cause I can't find a reference to it anywhere.
I'll find the link, from what I read it was an idea for a game for the 7 years Link was asleep in Ocarina.
EDIT: Nevermind it was fan concept that got a lot of posititive feedback.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Melissia wrote: Ah yes, more of the stereotypical and misogynistic "she'll never be happy so ignore her" nonsense. Lovely.
Wow you just jumped straight to conclusions...
I watched a few of her videos and she through a gak fit over Mulan because she dressed like a man, so a possible game where Zelda does the same wont make her happy at all, and actually after looking at her videos in general Im starting to wonder what the hell she actually finds entertaining.
And food for thought: CGPgrey does a whole series of videos on well researched subjects and doesnt need $150,000 dollars. Just saying.
Ravenous D wrote: Im starting to wonder what the hell she actually finds entertaining.
Seriously, another person saying this?
It's like people complain about the video without actually watching it.
Complaining about a game doesn't mean you don't like it. I have complaints about city of heroes and guild wars 2, but I still consider them the best MMOs released to date.
Ravenous D wrote: And food for thought: CGPgrey does a whole series of videos on well researched subjects and doesnt need $150,000 dollars. Just saying.
It is okay to think critically about something you enjoy. The damsel trope is an objectification of the feminine. That doesn't make the trope evil or mean it should never be used again. But like any trope it shouldn't be used over and over. And when it has been used over and over, its okay to think about why.
The only people who have any right to complain about her raising money for her videos are the people who gave the money in the first place. Seriously, these people willingly gave their money and time to see this set of videos come in to fruition. They weren't coerced. They weren't tricked, or lied to, or misled. She has started to deliver exactly what she promised, even if it isn't as good as it was expected to be, the fact is, the people who gave money to the project did so out of their own free will, and those who DIDN'T give money to the project had and still have no say in the matter.
I mean is this just jealousy or something? Man, I know I'm jealous. I wish I could raise that much money to talk about something I'd already be talking about anyway. But I don't hate her for it
There's no "attitude" here. I know you're not attacking me. I never claimed you were.
But you are annoying me through making nonsensical claims, like insinuating that she doesn't enjoy any games because she just so happens to criticize some parts of a few of them.
There's no "attitude" here. I know you're not attacking me. I never claimed you were.
But you are annoying me through making nonsensical claims, like insinuating that she doesn't enjoy any games because she just so happens to criticize some parts of a few of them.
Don't bother, this is an extremely common viewpoint help by the majority of those that play video games. You either absolutely adore a game or despise it, no middle ground, no room for critical analysis and if you try to critically analyse a game or *gasp* it's affects on our culture people will just pull out the "at least I'm having fun" line.
There's no "attitude" here. I know you're not attacking me. I never claimed you were.
But you are annoying me through making nonsensical claims, like insinuating that she doesn't enjoy any games because she just so happens to criticize some parts of a few of them.
Alright new start then.
She is going after movies, books, and even lego as well. I havent run into a positive video yet, Im looking for some praise or plan on her part.
And back to the Kickstarter she only asked for $25,000 for the project but is keeping the rest, no I didnt give her my money but anytime that happens and the money isnt returned its hard not to point it out and questioning the motive.
What motive? She asked for X dollars and people knew she had reached that and still gave more. It's not her motive but the motive of those who gave in excess of her goal that is at issue. Its my guess that they did not give more because they want to hear the same viewpoint as Jimquisition or Yatzee or any of the many many other extremely harsh critics who also think critically about video games. There is room for more perspective. There is room in enjoying a product to engage with it critically.
Your attitude seems to come from a fundamental misunderstanding of kickstarter.
While many projects provide further bonuses to try to get more money out of people to further fund their project once they've already reached their goal. But they're under no obligation to do so. Once they reach their goal, any money over that is extra-- if people paid in to it to fund a video series, they got the videos once they're done. If people paid in to it to get a dice ring, they get the rings they funded once they're made (although annoyingly, the dicerings have taken a long time to deliver, but that's life-- lots of people sent them incomplete forms of the wrong forms or what not). If people paid in to it to get a game, they get access to the game once it's made.
But the point of kickstarter is not to be a virtual store, rather, it's there to allow people to pitch new ideas and raise money so that they can act them out. That's exactly what she did. And there was no deception.
Actually she asked for $6,000 but I ask you why is it a problem that she got so much? She didn't ask for that much, didn't expect that much and since the initial asking of funds her original scope has almost quadrupled in size in an attempt to make use of all the extra funding.
Again I ask why is this a problem? Are you not getting your moneys worth? Oh you didn't pledge anything? So why are you complaining? As far as I'm concerned unless you actually pledge any amount of money you have no right to complain. Wait until those of us that actually funded the project to start making complaints before you start to discredit her.
EDIT: Also here's an interesting thought, maybe, just maybe the reason there are so few if any videos about the positive roles of women in pop culture is because well, there really aren't that many. Or maybe the point of the series isn't to praise those positive representations of women (even though one of the videos will focus on this) but is instead to raise awareness of the lack of positive representations of women in games.
I kind of wish I did give money, just to spite some of the people who angrily bashed her just for having the audacity to try to ask people for money to help her make videos to put on the internets where she tries to explain her opinion on a topic she holds dear to her heart.
I didn't find her video impressive. But I'm glad she's going through with it despite the attempts of so many people to silence her through bullying.
Manchu wrote: It is okay to think critically about something you enjoy. The damsel trope is an objectification of the feminine. That doesn't make the trope evil or mean it should never be used again. But like any trope it shouldn't be used over and over. And when it has been used over and over, its okay to think about why.
Of course it is.
It's the attempted "martyrdom" of the video's creator, and the poor execution of the video in question that seem to be the main points of contention.
The portrayal of Sarkeesian as the victim of a disproportionate amount of Internet abuse due to her gender, which is then used to shield her from criticism.
That is what's going on (well, not entirely because of her gender but rather because of the confluence of her gender and her views on gender), regardless if you want to call it martyrdom.
As for shielding her from criticism, the criticism I've seen her has been mostly emotional with a smattering of vague pretension. The video "feminism vs. Facts" was particularly sleazy.
Maybe if you consider the constant hateful attacks and attempts to bully her in to silence to be torture? Usually martyrdom is defined as "tortured or killed for one's beliefs", but that's kind of a stretch don't you think? I guess I can see it though. Although that... well... she isn't the one being put in a negative light, there, so I doubt he meant that.
I wouldn't call her a martyr, myself. I would say she's probably a bit braver than me. I don't use my real name or other personally identifiable information, but she does so. I have talked to several women who have received rape or death threats for speaking out about feminist topics... threats that included their address and other personally identifiable information. Some of them became scared enough that they don't even want to leave their house. And I could hardly blame them.
Manchu wrote: That is what's going on (well, not entirely because of her gender but rather because of the confluence of her gender and her views on gender), regardless if you want to call it martyrdom..
I think it's reasonable to disagree about the former, for reasons outlined earlier in the thread.
Manchu wrote: As for shielding her from criticism, the criticism I've seen her has been mostly emotional with a smattering of vague pretension. The video "feminism vs. Facts" was particularly sleazy.
That video was even stupider than the one in the OP, which is saying something. As for emotional responses and pretension, neither side has clean hands.
As far as I can tell, the damsels video clearly and respectfully makes a rather obvious point and even though the point is obvious she offers plenty of evidence. And this is even only part one. I have not seen ITT any argument to back up the outrage certain people have shown over this.
Madcat87 wrote: Actually she asked for $6,000 but I ask you why is it a problem that she got so much? She didn't ask for that much, didn't expect that much and since the initial asking of funds her original scope has almost quadrupled in size in an attempt to make use of all the extra funding.
Again I ask why is this a problem? Are you not getting your moneys worth? Oh you didn't pledge anything? So why are you complaining? As far as I'm concerned unless you actually pledge any amount of money you have no right to complain. Wait until those of us that actually funded the project to start making complaints before you start to discredit her.
Just because you didn't spend any money on it doesn't mean you can't complain like if she hypothetically used this project to spread racist propaganda I think I'm well within my right to complain.
The point is obvious to the extent that I can't help wondering what the purpose of the video is. I also reject the premise that the use of the trope indicates institutionalized misogyny.
The same people who are outraged by it are of the same ilk as the mouth breathers that make death threats to celebrities and political figures and write racist things on YouTube comments. Their bad behavior should have no bearing on the discussion.
Cheesecat wrote: Just because you didn't spend any money on it doesn't mean you can't complain
Completely missing the point here. Someone said that she should refund all of the money that she raised... because... uhm... I have no idea really, because they didn't like what she had to say? And the person who said it was not actually themselves someone who donated any money.
Making their complaints irrelevant. If they had actually donated money, their complaints might have validity because then their investment that helped contribute to her funds for the project. But they didn't. She raised money on kickstarter just like everyone else-- without any deception, without any coercion. People willingly gave this money to her to fund her project.
She is under no obligation to give any of it back, and your opinion is not relevant on the matter. Neither is mine really. It's entirely between her, those who gave her money for her project, and Kickstarter.
Cheesecat wrote: like if she hypothetically used this project to spread racist propaganda
Are you... serious? Seriously? You're comparing someone putting out a video explaining her feminist views... to someone spreading racist propaganda? Are you serious in comparing the attempt to help people understand the various cultural baggage we all grew up with... to someone who spouts hate and wishes for nothing more than to exclude everyone that isn't a part fo their own favorite little group?
I would honestly like to know the answer to that question.
I don't think the prevalence of the trope supports the conclusion of institutionalized misogyny but then again I don't think that is necessarily the point of the damsels vid. I think the point is that the damsels trope is pervasive in video games. She didn't prove or IMO even attempt to prove that its prevalence has a negative effect in wider society. If the damsels phenomenon does indeed make video games less welcoming or even more hostile to women then that will have to be proved or at least addressed in a further video. The argument at issue here is that female characters are objectified, that is, they are denied a great deal of agency, in a great number . And her argument on that point is reasonably persuasive.
As for why it needs to be made in the first place, the results speak for themselves. A lot of the critics in this case flat out deny that this obvious phenomenon even exists.
Cheesecat wrote: Just because you didn't spend any money on it doesn't mean you can't complain
Completely missing the point here. Someone said that she should refund all of the money that she raised... because... uhm... I have no idea really, because they didn't like what she had to say? And the person who said it was not actually themselves someone who donated any money.
Making their complaints irrelevant. If they had actually donated money, their complaints might have validity because then their investment that helped contribute to her funds for the project. But they didn't. She raised money on kickstarter just like everyone else-- without any deception, without any coercion. People willingly gave this money to her to fund her project.
She is under no obligation to give any of it back, and your opinion is not relevant on the matter. Neither is mine really. It's entirely between her, those who gave her money for her project, and Kickstarter.
Cheesecat wrote: like if she hypothetically used this project to spread racist propaganda
Are you... serious? Seriously? You're comparing someone putting out a video explaining her feminist views... to someone spreading racist propaganda? Are you serious in comparing the attempt to help people understand the various cultural baggage we all grew up with... to someone who spouts hate and wishes for nothing more than to exclude everyone that isn't a part fo their own favorite little group?
I would honestly like to know the answer to that question. My ignore list isn't long enough yet.
All my point is just because you didn't pay for something doesn't mean you can't complain about I'm not making a comparison between feminism and racism.
Again, the issue is not whether not pledging means you can have no complaint. The issue is that a person who did not pledge is not in a position to complain about being cheated out of their (nonexistent) pledge.
Melissia wrote: Then I suggest you read the entire conversation to find out what exactly was being responded to when those statements were made.
I have no problem with people funding the project my problem is being told I can't complain just because I didn't put any support into it (not that I would as I think there's some truth that men get better treatment than women).
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Manchu wrote: Again, the issue is not whether not pledging means you can have no complaint. The issue is that a person who did not pledge is not in a position to complain about being cheated out of their (nonexistent) pledge.
Oh sorry completely misinterpreted peoples words, OK ignore what I said.
Some people enjoy being tied up in leather and flogged. That does not make me vicariously and through extension immasculated by mere fact that this person was willing to compromise himself in that situation for his own personal enjoyment.
Further, we're talking about art. Saying that a videogame promotes misogyny is like saying my poking a needle into a voodoo doll causes you bodily harm.
Further, we're talking about art. Saying that a videogame promotes misogyny is like saying my poking a needle into a voodoo doll causes you bodily harm.
What do you mean? Depictions of gender in media (especially reoccurring ones) can have powerful influences on society
Further, we're talking about art. Saying that a videogame promotes misogyny is like saying my poking a needle into a voodoo doll causes you bodily harm.
What do you mean? Depictions of gender in media (especially reoccurring ones) can have powerful influences on society
Cheesecat wrote: my problem is being told I can't complain just because I didn't put any support into it.
Which wasn't what was being said.
Yeah, as I mentioned with Manchu a few posts up I had taken some poster's comments out of context (or misread or wasn't thorough enough, etc), sorry about that.
Further, we're talking about art. Saying that a videogame promotes misogyny is like saying my poking a needle into a voodoo doll causes you bodily harm.
What do you mean? Depictions of gender in media (especially reoccurring ones) can have powerful influences on society
Expound.
Humans are social creatures.
Much of our behavior is modified and shaped by the society in which we are raised. Those raised by a different society will often act and think quite a bit differently. For example, there is a strain of thought in China (which not all Chinese people believe in I should note, they have a wide variety of philosophies given their long and colorful history) which, to overly simplify it, says that the only reason anyone would try to help someone is because they are guilty, and therefor a person who finds a lost purse and returns it actually must have stolen the purse because no one in their right mind would do so otherwise. Compare that with the idea popular in western society and other parts of Chinese society that people are inherently good, and so the person very likely returned the purse out of good faith rather than having stole it. These philosophies are expressed through the literature, film, tv shows, folk stories, and religious beliefs of their society, such the tale of the Good Samaritan in Western culture-- which is so ingrained in our culture that it has become a phrase that many people don't think about its origins when they use it even as they (hopefully) understand its meaning.
Just one relatively basic example about how media can effect people if it is shown consistently enough. The way that society shapes children growing up, especially these days, is through media. The more pervasive a thought or idea is in media, the more likely that more and more children will believe in it as adults. Religion is a good example here.
Much of our behavior is modified and shaped by the society in which we are raised. Those raised by a different society will often act and think quite a bit differently. For example, there is a strain of thought in China (which not all Chinese people believe in I should note, they have a wide variety of philosophies given their long and colorful history) which, to overly simplify it, says that the only reason anyone would try to help someone is because they are guilty, and therefor a person who finds a lost purse and returns it actually must have stolen the purse because no one in their right mind would do so otherwise. Compare that with the idea popular in western society and other parts of Chinese society that people are inherently good, and so the person very likely returned the purse out of good faith rather than having stole it. These philosophies are expressed through the literature, film, tv shows, folk stories, and religious beliefs of their society, such the tale of the Good Samaritan in Western culture-- which is so ingrained in our culture that it has become a phrase that many people don't think about its origins when they use it even as they (hopefully) understand its meaning.
Just one relatively basic example about how media can effect people if it is shown consistently enough. The way that society shapes children growing up, especially these days, is through media. The more pervasive a thought or idea is in media, the more likely that more and more children will believe in it as adults. Religion is a good example here.
In spite of my mounting conviction that human beings are in large part fantastically irrational, I am finding it somewhat problematic to accept that people are totally subject to the impact of the arts and popular culture in developing their worldview.
For one thing, I feel strongly that any person with thinking faculties should be able to discern that a moving picture propagating an idea does not define the rest of the world around him/her.
I think a more reasoned explanation would be that people "believe" in fake systems because it gives me some actual benefit. For instance, I might say that women are weak and exploitable to excuse my abuse of them. I might say that certain minorities are inferior biologically to justify my exploitation of them. And that is what is really pernicious, not the cartoons.
TedNugent wrote: In spite of my mounting conviction that human beings are in large part fantastically irrational, I am finding it somewhat problematic to accept that people are totally subject to the impact of the arts and popular culture in developing their worldview.
Ahem.
Melissia wrote: Much of our behavior is modified and shaped by the society in which we are raised.
Much. Not all. Some behavioral differences are environmental-- brought on by diet or chemical imbalance, for example. Others, yes, are biological. But most of our behavior is learned, not innate. Even before our technology made it more and more pervasive, most behavior was passed on from parent to child, elder to younger sibling, and from peer to peer, pastor to flock, group to individual-- not known innately, but learned through social interaction.
TedNugent wrote: In spite of my mounting conviction that human beings are in large part fantastically irrational, I am finding it somewhat problematic to accept that people are totally subject to the impact of the arts and popular culture in developing their worldview.
Ahem.
Oh. Excuse you.
Melissia wrote: Much of our behavior is modified and shaped by the society in which we are raised.
Much. Not all. Some behavioral differences are environmental-- brought on by diet or chemical imbalance, for example. Others, yes, are biological. But most of our behavior is learned, not innate. Even before our technology made it more and more pervasive, most behavior was passed on from parent to child, elder to younger sibling, and from peer to peer-- not known innately, but learned through social interaction.
I am going to take a nap while you grab all of the scientific papers that establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that "most our behavior is learned, not innate."
"Misogyny and regressive tropes are okay as long as you're making a profit from them!" is a pretty ridiculous argument anyway.
That was not the argument that Tf00t was making, Tf00t was making the point that even if games like Double Dragon promote misogyny (which they don't), it's inadvertent and not part of some conscious conspiracy designed first and foremost to promulgate the male hierarchy.
Of course you are making a fantastic strawman in using the term "regressive tropes" in particular, and I don't see (at all) what is misogynistic (meaning characteristic of hating women) about making a fantasizing about something. Are you saying that fantasizing about an asymmetric power relation is implicitly representative of hatred.
I also don't see how a trope can be "regressive" unless you mean regressive in the sense that it is regressive to the art craft. In the way that Velveeta is regressive in the art of cheesemaking.
Actually, excuse you. You claimed I said something that I did not say.
As for the rest, the body of scientific literature on the subject is enormous, and would take a long, long time to go through. I can give you some recommendations for reading, however, if you want, but I am under no illusion that you might actually read them.
Actually, excuse you. You claimed I said something that I did not say.
No I didn't.
Melissia wrote: [
As for the rest, the body of scientific literature on the subject is enormous, and would take a long, long time to go through. I can give you some recommendations for reading, however, if you want, but I am under no illusion that you might actually read them.
I would love to have the recommendations posted here. It is good that you have no illusion that I might read them, because I probably wouldn't. But I might.
In any case, the alternative is that you have made a claim without substantiating it. Suffice to say I do not grant the premise out of hand.
I think Melissa is right on this as both my psychology and sociology courses came to the similar conclusion that most of the differences between the genders are social rather than innate, plus with psychology it can be sometimes hard to tell what effects on the mind are due to nature or
You said that I had argued that "people are totally subject to the impact of the arts and popular culture in developing their worldview". I did not argue that, and such an interpretation is a mis-characterization of what I said, whether or not it was deliberate. I argued that it had a strong influence, and much of what we learn is from fellow humans, especially via the various media. I did not, however, say it was total. There is a very important difference between the two arguments, and you attempting to conflate the two is insultingly wrong.
TedNugent wrote: I would love to have the recommendations posted here.
One particular book (which won a few awards) I can think of off the top of my head would be... Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality by Anne Faust-Sterling.
Most research done these days tends to try to ignore the old "nature vs nurture" divide, which is for the best, since "nurture" often prompted people to ignore environmental, media, and peer socialization.
Speaking of which, research in the development of socialization might help as well, but that's a huge topic. I might tentatively recommend Adolescents' uses of media for self-socialization, by Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, which discusses exactly what it says on the name, as well as how adolescents often have a lack of integration between how parents and media (plus peers) socialize the child.
Sterling, sexing the body wrote:They explained that she had been born with a condition called androgen insensitivity. This meant that, although she had a Y chromosome and her testes made plenty of testosterone, her cells couldn’t detect this masculinizing hormone. As a result, her body had never developed male characteristics. But at puberty her testes produced estrogen (as do the testes of all men), which, because of her body’s inability to respond to its testosterone, caused her breasts to grow, her waist to narrow, and her hips to widen. Despite a Y chromosome and testes, she had grown up as a female and developed a female form.
Patino resolved to fight the IOC ruling. ‘‘I knew I was a woman,’’ she in-sisted to one reporter,
Boy, this is good.
I may read this after all.
I love the use of "masculinizing,"
this is al-ready good. I am guaranteed to find good stuff in here.
Here we have a biological determinant for -both- her strong feelings about her own gender ("I knew I was a woman") and the cultural institutions that decided on the basis of her nonfunctioning testes that she was a woman. Seems here the misunderstanding is on the basis of definitions, but it's definitely having a social impact. I'll read more, but it will take me a while for obvious reasons. I kind of dislike when people give me just a novel to read instead of a page citation that supports their specific point.
Anyway, I'll go ahead and recuse myself from this thread until I'm quite a bit further along.
It's quite a good read, talking about the differences between biological and cultural constructs of gender and sex, and how the two differ. She was, culturally female (raised female, emotionally felt she was female, associated herself with female traits mentally), biologically both male and female (she had testes, yet also had breasts and a feminine shape), and genetically male (had the genetic combination to be male). It's quite interesting to look at the outliers like this, as looking at those outside the norm helps us realize how the norm is created. There are numerous disorders like this, actually, and it's not as uncommon as yo'ud htin.
And yeah, the novel is not exactly what you asked for, but it's a start.
As for specific page references, it's been a couple years since I read it, and I don't have a copy on me. You'll just have to enjoy your way through the book.
Cheesecat wrote: I think Melissa is right on this as both my psychology and sociology courses came to the similar conclusion that most of the differences between the genders are social rather than innate, plus with psychology it can be sometimes hard to tell what effects on the mind are due to nature or
nurture.
And anthropology says basically the opposite, in a way. It's quite clear that culture is generated from instinct, at least at the basic levels.
Now, in our modern society we are, more and more, breaking away from culture informed by impulse in favor of proper, learned behavior. We still have degenerates, yes, like the small minority Melissia keeps bringing up as though backwards outliers were representative of a systemic problem with modern society, or an unknown percentage of those lambasting Saarkesian (we can assume a nontrivial percent, perhaps even a majority, of them are just being facetious and joining in for the sake of being part of a mob), but these aren't indicative of society at large. And this is the fundamental problem with people arguing for feminism or anti-racism or whathaveyou in this day and age (and, specifically, in the first world, excluding Japan where these are all systemic problems): the targets of their outrage are outliers, and their arguments, which try to portray systemic problems, serve only to leave those of us who form the majority (to whom their criticisms don't apply) to feel that we're being attacked for the sins of others, who we ourselves hold in contempt as well.
we can assume a nontrivial percent, perhaps even a majority, of them are just being facetious
I don't.
What proof do you have as such? If a person walked in to a crowd shouting racial epithets and started shouting with them, would you say that they were just being facetious?
I view this as little more than apologism, especially along with the crap that comes after it.
Cheesecat wrote: I think Melissa is right on this as both my psychology and sociology courses came to the similar conclusion that most of the differences between the genders are social rather than innate, plus with psychology it can be sometimes hard to tell what effects on the mind are due to nature or
nurture.
And anthropology says basically the opposite, in a way. It's quite clear that culture is generated from instinct, at least at the basic levels.
Isn't culture less about instinct and more about making sense of the world? Well I guess some of the things in culture would be instinctual such as group forming as humans are social creatures.
we can assume a nontrivial percent, perhaps even a majority, of them are just being facetious
I don't.
What proof do you have as such? If a person walked in to a crowd shouting racial epithets and started shouting with them, would you say that they were just being facetious?
You make the assumption based off of apologism, nothing more.
An understanding of the groups involved. It's the 4chan crowd we're talking about here, 99% of what they do is just an in-joke. Have you never heard the "internets is srs business" meme? People join in their mobs just for the sake of being part of something; their community is doing something and taking part leaves them feeling connected, to put it another way.
And then there's the lunatics and children, who are either defective or simply don't know any better. In any of these cases, they're still not a representative sample of anything but 4chan's modus operandi.
Cheesecat wrote: I think Melissa is right on this as both my psychology and sociology courses came to the similar conclusion that most of the differences between the genders are social rather than innate, plus with psychology it can be sometimes hard to tell what effects on the mind are due to nature or
nurture.
And anthropology says basically the opposite, in a way. It's quite clear that culture is generated from instinct, at least at the basic levels.
Isn't culture less about instinct and more about making sense of the world? Well I guess some of the things in culture would be instinctual such as group forming as humans are social creatures.
Culture is the set of learned behavior and common knowledge within a group, specifically things that travel in a memetic fashion.
Melissia wrote:Maybe, but anthropologists study neither the socialization of children nor the impact of genes upon socialization.
They do, however, catalogue behavior from basically every group on earth. And what is seen at the more primitive levels is exactly the same divisions of labor between males and females across the board.
Science, despite a heavy leaning on learned behavior, still finds biases introduced by instinct, that are too subtle and unconscious to be cultural in origin. So we see that instinct informs culture to a fair extent, though of course we in civilization today form culture based more on reason than simple reinforcement of previous culture and instinctive biases.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote: They do, however, catalogue behavior from basically every group on earth.
Cataloguing behavior is not the same as understanding it.
The interplay between genetics and upbringing (be it parental, media, or peers) is one of the bigger concerns of modern research, yes. It's better to be inclusive than exclusive. But the fact remains, it's still a tiny, very subtle part . The activities of individuals have changed far faster than any genetic change can account for (genetic evolution is very, very slow-- over the course of hundreds of generations).
I just explained the reasoning. And I'll just repost this here, since this was one of the threads I had in mind while writing it:
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Not to single you out, as this is addressed to everyone across the board who responds like this to outrageous babblings on twitter or wherever: how do people in this day and age not understand what trolls are? When someone makes such egregious statements as we see in this image, they're either children who don't know any better or raving lunatics, and in neither case should be acknowledged, or else they're just being outrageous because they think it's funny, and so shouldn't be engaged. The gibberings of trolls aren't indicative of society, nor any widespread problem therein, just fringe outliers and people being facetious.
I just explained the reasoning. And I'll just repost this here, since this was one of the threads I had in mind while writing it:
Sir Pseudonymous wrote:Not to single you out, as this is addressed to everyone across the board who responds like this to outrageous babblings on twitter or wherever: how do people in this day and age not understand what trolls are? When someone makes such egregious statements as we see in this image, they're either children who don't know any better or raving lunatics, and in neither case should be acknowledged, or else they're just being outrageous because they think it's funny, and so shouldn't be engaged. The gibberings of trolls aren't indicative of society, nor any widespread problem therein, just fringe outliers and people being facetious.
I know what trolls are. I just refuse to excuse their actions like you do, nor do I make apologies for their actions, or attempt to justify their actions, like you do.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote: They do, however, catalogue behavior from basically every group on earth.
Cataloguing behavior is not the same as understanding it.
The interplay between genetics and upbringing (be it parental, media, or peers) is one of the bigger concerns of modern research, yes. It's better to be inclusive than exclusive. But the fact remains, it's still a tiny, very subtle part . The activities of individuals have changed far faster than any genetic change can account for (genetic evolution is very, very slow-- over the course of hundreds of generations).
Human instincts don't run the show by any means, but they do introduce subtle little biases here and there. Since we can see fairly similar behavior across the board, it must be concluded that these biases play a formative role in creating culture where there was none before. The greatest virtue of our society is the gradual replacement of culture ultimately predicated on instinct or outdated social concerns with culture that is more accurate to reality, and is informed by reason and design more than blind impulse.
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Melissia wrote: I know what trolls are. I just refuse to excuse their actions like you do, nor do I make apologies for their actions, or attempt to justify their actions, like you do.
It pays to remember that on the other side is a person, who more likely than not is just trying to piss people off. According them any response or notice is counter-productive and unhealthy.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote: It pays to remember that on the other side is a person, who more likely than not is just trying to piss people off. According them any response or notice is counter-productive and unhealthy.
Actually, no. They are not just trying to "piss people off".
This is not merely trolling. It is a concerted effort by a minority of the population to attack, intimidate, bully, and silence women in general, and feminists in specific, often through threats of violence, especially sexual violence. It has been going on, consistently, for quite some time, before 4chan existed, and people like you, making excuses and attempting to justify their actions, have only further allowed them to continue. Ignoring your problems does not make them go away.
But since I've become aggravated, I'm gonna do myself a favor and stop here, before I go any further. Instead, I'll let a few people more eloquent and... mentally collected than I talk about the subject while I go grab a glass of tea.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote: It pays to remember that on the other side is a person, who more likely than not is just trying to piss people off. According them any response or notice is counter-productive and unhealthy.
Actually, no. They are not just trying to "piss people off".
This is not merely trolling. It is a concerted effort by a minority of the population to attack, intimidate, bully, and silence women in general, and feminists in specific, often through threats of violence, especially sexual violence. It has been going on, consistently, for quite some time, before 4chan existed, and people like you, making excuses and attempting to justify their actions, have only further allowed them to continue. Ignoring your problems does not make them go away.
But since I've become aggravated, I'm gonna do myself a favor and stop here, before I go any further. Instead, I'll let a few people more eloquent and... mentally collected than I talk about the subject while I go grab a glass of tea.
Because nothing lends legitimacy to a point like conspiracy theories. Trolls are trolls. There's no doubt that a portion of them are genuine degenerate lunatics, just as I don't doubt that you've had run-ins with said degenerates in real life, but it all being some great conspiracy?
I won't argue that the actual misogynists are a problem, but they're not a systemic one. They're outliers like any other batch of lunatics.
How about, instead of dismissing my statements as a "conspiracy theory", you actually educate yourself on the topic? Just because I stated there was a "concerted effort" doesn't mean I think there's some sort of grand conspiracy. What it does mean, however, is that these are NOT your typical "troll".
[edit: removed my own potentially inflammable section . Sorry if you already read it.]
Perhaps conspiracy theory is too dismissive a term, but I think you're seeing the situation from a biased perspective. No one likes to feel as though they're part of a group that's being targeted for abuse, and your experiences are causing you to see this in a more malevolent light. Are there lunatics out there? Without a doubt. My point of contest is that I cannot believe that a 4chan mob's actions are in whole manifestations of this.
I'd posit a fair number are kids (who are basically just lunatics who haven't been taught better yet), and a fair portion are just being outrageous for the sake of being outrageous, without giving a second thought to any wider meaning or pattern.
Do I approve of this sort of behavior? Of course not. But I do see it for what it is: a bunch of meaningless white noise wrapped some small core of genuine radicalism.
Sir Pseudonymous wrote: My point of contest is that I cannot believe that a 4chan mob's actions are in whole manifestations of this.
I don't believe that "a 4chan mob" is behind it to begin with.
That's YOUR assumption, not mine. I make no assumption on what kind of person does this sort of thing, aside from a tendency for them to be men.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I seriously recommend you read the three links I gave you earlier. You do not appear to have read them thoroughly. This is not a pleasant topic, but it is a topic that needs to be approached. It's not a "grand conspiracy" or anything, but it IS a big problem. And ignoring it will NOT make it go away, it'll only encourage them more.
Wasn't 4chan spammed with links to it? I'll confess I haven't visited 4chan in many years, except once to search /rs/ for a tabletop rulebook I couldn't find elsewhere (for the record, I couldn't find it there either), so I can't confirm this firsthand.
I'm not going to go so far as to assume she did that herself, since there are plenty of trolls who'd do it just to hit both sides at once, but the most explicit attacks look like 4chan or something similar. Which means outrageous for the sake of outrageous, with the joke being on anyone who let's themself be upset by the gibberings.
A partially related point is that from what I've read, misogyny can be an idiosyncratic symptom of clinical narcissism. From my experiences, it seems to hold true. Every misogynist I've ever met has also been a narcissist, which would seem to indicate that it's not so much a cultural problem (in the first world, excluding Japan) as it is a mental health issue. Perhaps in more backwards places it remains cultural, but it's not like those aren't riddled with unacceptable ideas and behaviors anyways...
It's weird of you to call it a conspiracy theory at all, given that your explanation is the one that calls it a literal conspiracy and ours calls it a manifestation of a negative cultural undercurrent in society.
The story goes that she posted it like crazy all over /V with the intent purpose to piss people off and spread the video. After receving a massive amount of negative feedback including death threats she was featured on national news where she absolutely played the victim and managed to plug her Kickstarter on TV.
There is a lot that stinks about this:
- I dont know a single person who would post on 4chan looking for anything positive to come out of it
- Being upset and "not knowing" there would be a massive backlash. I can play call of duty for 5 minutes and my life is threatened and Im called many horrendous things. Its not right for that to happen to anyone, but when you throw yourself out there, how are you surprised? Every gamer (girl or guy) knows that.
- She's a youtube partner that gets money from views, infamy is just as good as fame, and as profitable.
Manchu wrote: But like any trope it shouldn't be used over and over.
Except that's exactly what a trope is (using the now common TV Tropes definition of Trope). I like TV Tropes as a site, but I'm probably gonna bash them a bit here for taking the word trope and equating it to cliche in spite of their silly page where they redefine tropes as cliches and then say they're not cliches.
Manchu wrote: I don't think the prevalence of the trope supports the conclusion of institutionalized misogyny but then again I don't think that is necessarily the point of the damsels vid. .
That case has been made rather fervently in this thread, however.
Manchu wrote: I think the point is that the damsels trope is pervasive in video games. She didn't prove or IMO even attempt to prove that its prevalence has a negative effect in wider society. If the damsels phenomenon does indeed make video games less welcoming or even more hostile to women then that will have to be proved or at least addressed in a further video. The argument at issue here is that female characters are objectified, that is, they are denied a great deal of agency, in a great number . .
So is it argument for argument's sake? What is the desired end result?
Manchu wrote: And her argument on that point is reasonably persuasive. .
Well, it's like making a video proving that the sky is blue most of the time. A lot of games are based on the same tropes as other types of entertainment, damsels in distress being one of them. I guess my hang up is whether or not it is bad, and what one thinks should be done about it.
Manchu wrote: As for why it needs to be made in the first place, the results speak for themselves. A lot of the critics in this case flat out deny that this obvious phenomenon even exists.
See above.
For everyone else, as to vs. nurture, I'd advise reading a undergrad psychology textbook to realize how profoundly uninformed the discussion on the topic is in this thread.
Ravenous D wrote: The story goes that she posted it like crazy all over /V with the intent purpose to piss people off and spread the video. After receving a massive amount of negative feedback including death threats she was featured on national news where she absolutely played the victim and managed to plug her Kickstarter on TV.
There is a lot that stinks about this:
- I dont know a single person who would post on 4chan looking for anything positive to come out of it
- Being upset and "not knowing" there would be a massive backlash. I can play call of duty for 5 minutes and my life is threatened and Im called many horrendous things. Its not right for that to happen to anyone, but when you throw yourself out there, how are you surprised? Every gamer (girl or guy) knows that.
- She's a youtube partner that gets money from views, infamy is just as good as fame, and as profitable.
Funny how these allegations that she spammed it on /V only come out after the first video was released and we had never heard of it during the whole fund raising campaign when it actually would have mattered. I'm sorry but unless I see any actual proof or a source this is nothing more than her detractors grasping at straws because they realised death threats and abuse isn't working. I also find it quite funny that the same people who did said abuse are now crying foul that they were used. I must have missed the part where she forced people to harass her.
I also must say that this kind of attitude disgusts me as it reeks of victim blaming that is a plague on our society, that maybe she is partly responsible or perhaps even deserved it.
You know what makes this even less believable, this is not a once off thing.
Bioware, Jennifer Hepler made some comments about writing in their games, she then received a torrent of abuse not unlike the kind Anita received. Are you going to say she planned that aswell. Or how about the article about problems in gaming journalism written by Robert Florence. The article mentioned Lauren Wainwright and some questionable things she had done in the name of gaming journalism. After some legal threats the article taken down, and guess what the internet did. Lauren Wainwright received a torrent of misogynistic abuse that we gamers are starting to be known for.
This kind of behaviour is becoming VERY common and it is laughable to suggest that she started it.
Funny how these allegations that she spammed it on /V only come out after the first video was released and we had never heard of it during the whole fund raising campaign when it actually would have mattered.
Uh, check the date on some of the videos. Just because we're only posting them here now doesn't mean their new. I doubt many people here had even heard of her until Ahtman posted her first video. The accusations go all the way back to the Kickstarter video and her blog posts.
As for Jennifer Hepler. She's a writer for Bioware. Have you been to the Bioware forums and seen how much hate is there for the writing in ME2, DA2, and ME3? It's like a swirling tsunami of people who apparently have nothing but time to hate on a developer because they didn't like their game. Of course one of their writers is going to get hate.
And again, why do people continue to confuse the form the hate takes with why the hate is directed in first place? Lauren Wainwright got hate because when a guy talked about the nature of gaming journalism and called out some names, he lost his job, and Lauren Wainwright went onto twitter and said she didn't see the problem. Especially on the PC end of things, the nature of game's journalism has gotten criticism for nearly a decade. Then in response to an article pointing out some of the problems, instead of explaining her behaviors she just said that she didn't see a problem with it, which was stupid because Florence's article basically accuses games journalists of mass corruptions and she said "yeah so what?" Of course she got hate.
People get hate when other people don't like them (even when the reasons for not liking them are stupid, namely the case of Jennifer Hepler, who hadn't even worked on some of those games).
LordofHats wrote: Uh, check the date on some of the videos. Just because we're only posting them here now doesn't mean their new. I doubt many people here had even heard of her until Ahtman posted her first video. The accusations go all the way back to the Kickstarter video and her blog posts.
I wasn't aware of her work until I'd seen this thread.
Manchu wrote: As far as I know, a trope is a narrative structure or a literary device. It doesn't have to be a cliche but can be deployed in a cliche manner.
Tropes are rhetorical devices. I.E. Irony, Metaphor, Simile, etc. Cliche essentially meant (at the turn of the 20th century) a commonly used motif, symbol, narrative device, etc. However, in the hay day of dime store novels and pulp magazines, literary critics began to use the term cliche negatively and it adopted its now negative context of 'tired and irritating.' TV Tropes, rather than use the technical terms (and probably because TV Cliches just doesn't have the same ring to it) simply took to the expanding use of the word trope, which expanded to match the expanding use of the various devices it represented (and because no one wants to use cliche anymore for what it originally meant).
I don't necessarily have a problem with the new usage of the term. But by that very definition a Trope is something that is used over and over again, so criticizing a trope for being used over and over again, is kind of pointless. Something doesn't get to be a trope for being novel. It gets to be a trope for being commonly used.
Things get used over and over in various senses. The letters in the alphabet get used over and over and that's not an issue. Repetition in video game content, however, is a different matter. If a huge number of female characters are portrayed the same way, that's at the very least boring.
Manchu wrote: If a huge number of female characters are portrayed the same way, that's at the very least boring.
I don't disagree (though there is actually a trope for that: Save the Princess), but Damsel in Distress is probably one of the most common tropes. Period. You'll be hard pressed to find a series that never invoked it even once. I mean there's so many examples, TV Tropes needed to give most of the categories its own page and those pages are just the tip of the iceberg. EDIT: One can even say that fantasy fiction practically ran itself on this trope back in the 60's and 70's.
I have my issues with characterizing the trope as inherently objectifying for women, because as a plot point it's an extremely vague one that can be used in numerous ways, but video games are hardly the only media that uses it constantly (EDIT: Well, used is a more appropriate term).
Yep, this is part of Feminist Frequency's argument -- that this is one of if not the most pervasive portrayal of female characters in video games.
LordofHats wrote: I have my issues with characterizing the trope as inherently objectifying for women, because as a plot point it's an extremely vague one that can be used in numerous ways
In order to be a damsel in distress, the character in question must (1) be helpless as to escaping the distress and therefore (2) rely on someone else to save them. That's really paring the definition down, such that a male character could be a damsel in distress or that a female damsel in distress could be saved by a female protagonist. What Feminist Frequency further points out is that the damsel trop doesn't exist that way: the damsel is overwhelmingly female while her rescuer and abductor are overwhelmingly male. That is to say, in most of the examples of this trope actually being deployed in products, the female character has no agency herself and is rather the object of the agency of male characters.
Manchu wrote: In order to be a damsel in distress, the character in question must (1) be helpless as to escaping the distress and therefore (2) rely on someone else to save them. That's really paring the definition down, such that a male character could be a damsel in distress or that a female damsel in distress could be saved by a female protagonist. What Feminist Frequency further points out is that the damsel trop doesn't exist that way: the damsel is overwhelmingly female while her rescuer and abductor are overwhelmingly male. That is to say, in most of the examples of this trope actually being deployed in products, the female character has no agency herself and is rather the object of the agency of male characters.
If one takes her poor framing of the trope as the only way it's ever used. Most often it's but one plot point among many, especially when you get out of the 80's and out of simple excuse plots. As I said on the first page of the thread, is she condemning the trope (She strikes me as doing this), it's usage, or that video games have poor writing?
I don't think she's condemning anything -- except the beginning of Double Dragon. Instead, I think she's pointing out how this trope as deployed tends to result in objectified portrayals of women.
It seems that she's establishing that the trope is used and widespread, presumably as groundwork for the upcoming episode(s). I don't think she really did anything more than that.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: It seems that she's establishing that the trope is used and widespread, presumably as groundwork for the upcoming episode(s). I don't think she really did anything more than that.
She also explained a theory of how the trope objectifies female characters.
HiveFleetPlastic wrote: It seems that she's establishing that the trope is used and widespread, presumably as groundwork for the upcoming episode(s). I don't think she really did anything more than that.
She also explained a theory of how the trope objectifies female characters.
Then we have those games that literally objectify female charters. As in make them into objects. Like the fairies from Zelda, or the DiD form spunky.
Melissia wrote: Without any supporting evidence save a few half-assed videos that themselves have no real evience.
It's also mentioned in bunches of forum posts going all the way back to summer last year, a few articles referencing trolling by 4chan users, and you know: http://archive.foolz.us/v/thread/139813364/
Damn you all for making me actually find that. Whether it's actually her is speculative, but that post was spammed on 4chan and still exists in the archive. It doesn't take that long to find.
Is it bad that I actually laughed at the "Anita Broom" joke? Sorry, Mel and all other women reading this.
Yes, I did read most of them. And the OP admitted s/he wasn't Anita. I think it was a fan trying to solicit funds or a troll trying to direct 4chan's hate machine towards Ms. Gets100ktoplayvideogames.
At the risk of stereotyping...I have a feeling a lot of Anons and...whatever it is people called those who use 4chan (btards?) were/are nerds and never scored a reasonably attractive, let alone hot girl. They are now resentful and hateful towards all woman, because woman won't be the whores they desire...or if they are whores, they're ignoring the Anon crowd.
That and the /v/ board has A LOT of stuff that's really hateful towards women. A lot of it. I can't say a lot enough times my eyes are still bleeding and I only caught a glimpse of it. It really is the cesspool of the internet @_@
FWIW, I think the topic deserves some serious thought and I think FemFreq did a good job getting the ball rolling. A good next question would be, has the prevalence of the damsel trope in video games limited the role of female characters in a wider sense?
What ratio of damsels to Samuses would be acceptable, then?
And before we get carried away, I've seen the "damsel in distress" trope more or less used with male characters in various media. Rambo 2 springs immediately to mind.
Female characters in video games are objectified along these lines far more often than not. The fact that Samus stands basically alone by comparison is actually a pretty good place to start when considering whether the damsel trope has limited female roles otherwise, i.e., she's the exception that proves the rule.
Monster Rain wrote: And before we get carried away, I've seen the "damsel in distress" trope more or less used with male characters in various media.
I really don't think your problem is overthinking. The issue isn't that certain males are sometimes objectified in this way; it's that this pervasive portrayal of female characters as damsels conveys the idea that part of being female is not having agency. In Rambo 2, there may be a male damsel. But there is also a male rescuer. Rambo 2 does not contribute to the worldview that men are helpless.
Monster Rain wrote: She doesn't stand alone at all, bro! You're kidding, right?
Manchu wrote: The fact that Samus stands basically alone by comparison
It's also not that you're reading too carefully ...
Manchu wrote: A good next question would be, has the prevalence of the damsel trope in video games limited the role of female characters in a wider sense?
I'd argue damsel in distress is a symptom, not a cause. Ignoring that and the role of women in video game's has definitely expanded since the hay day of damsel in distress games back in the 80's and mid 90's (maybe it hasn't expanded as much as women want, but we definitely see more women now than we did 20 years ago). Some thoughts I have or others have had and I will repeat:
Male demographics remain the target audience. Not going into whether men are the majority of the demographics, it's hard to argue that they're not the primary target audience. Games have long been associated, and still are, primarily with young boys even as statistics show the average gamer is getting older (cause no one pays attention to statistics apparently). Publishers and developers have been happy to adapt themselves to their aging audience with more mature games and content, but they still haven't picked up on making games targeted at girls. I think this plays into the perception that girl gamers are tomboys, reinforcing that video games are a boys thing. The assumption then becomes that a girl gamer will like what boys like.
And that leads me into my next point: Modern marketing practices. We've all been to toy stores, clothing stores, w/e stores. Most of them have defined sections for boys and girls. With video games starting out as a boys market, marketing continues to focus on this. To a large company, the idea of building a girl's market would entail making girl games. We do see stuff like that every now and then but usually they're targeted at little girls under the age f 12. Modern marketing practice separates the genders, and developers/publishers in this mentality, think of girl games as something no one does. If some girls buy their games that's great but they see no value in building a 'girls' market. Rather than making games to appeal to men and women, they just make them to appeal to men and think of it as a one thing or the other. This is true of most media, where tv shows, books, movies, and even music at times, tends to be marketed towards men or women with only a few pieces intended to breach both markets.
Add to this that Save the Princess was so prolific during the golden age of 8-bits. Most games had an excuse plot back then, where the player was sent off to get some MacGuffin, and often times that MacGuddin took the form of a female character. Rose tinted glasses being what they are, many people probably look back on those days fondly. So they keep using damsel in distress (even if it ceases to generally be an end goal). This is reinforced culturally, as damsel in distress goes back thousands of years so the trope is very present in the cultural mind and continues to be prolific because it is so easily recognized. If one were to sit back and just think of simple plots, damsel in distress is likely one of the ones to pop up.
Next:
Developers are primarily men. Since most game makers are men, they make games that appeal to men. This obviously entails male main characters, depictions of men and women that appeal to men, plot lines in which men get center stage. Since men tend to be judged on their ability to act culturally, a game about a man would be about his ability to act. This focuses the industry from it's inception on action which we still don't associate with women culturally. This is especially true of action games, obviously.
I don't think developers really understand what women want (and I think Mel had a sig about this a long time ago). I personally think this one is important. There were complaints going all the way back to the turn of the decade in 1990 from men and women. This got reflected by the growth of more female characters in game's, but because the developers were men, and men were the target audience, not much thought actually went into those characters. Today, usually the girl characters in many games are just token characters. They're there to be there and not much else (and the games that tend to break that trend are RPG's, horror, adventure). Women want to see strong women in games, so the developers literally put in action girls, but still put no real thought into the characters either because they have no interest, don't think its that important, don't have the time to spend, etc.
EDIT: As for Samus, I'll just say what most people said when Metroid's ending made a spash. She was probably made a girl as a joke. I don't think Nintendo ever really intended for her to be the girl game icon she became.
Yeah, marketing reinforces gender roles, maybe even helps develop and assign them -- now you're getting further than I was, coming up with the argument as to why pervasive damseling is socially harmful.
Getting to developers, it's not just that they are men -- it's that they are men who begin and end their work not thinking very hard about female characters. That is to say, they came from video games that didn't do this and are making games for a market that they perceive, accurately or not, as not caring about this.
So it's kind of important that women actually be able to say, "hey we'd rather not play games like that all the time."
The damsel trope explains some of that, why developers in large part continue to think its okay to objectify female characters and why they still don't listen to women very carefully: "it's always been done and girls don't like video games anyway."
Monster Rain wrote: And before we get carried away, I've seen the "damsel in distress" trope more or less used with male characters in various media.
I really don't think your problem is overthinking. The issue isn't that certain males are sometimes objectified in this way; it's that this pervasive portrayal of female characters as damsels conveys the idea that part of being female is not having agency. In Rambo 2, there may be a male damsel. But there is also a male rescuer. Rambo 2 does not contribute to the worldview that men are helpless.
Monster Rain wrote: She doesn't stand alone at all, bro! You're kidding, right?
Manchu wrote: The fact that Samus stands basically alone by comparison
It's also not that you're reading too carefully ...
I'm reading carefully. Even with the qualifier Samus isn't "basically alone".
You also seem to be contradicting yourself. I thought you had established that this was a thought exercise without any wider application, but now we are back to video games reinforcing gender stereotypes.
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nomotog wrote: If we just remove the perception that we are making games for boys only, then we are 99% there.
nomotog wrote: If we just remove the perception that we are making games for boys only, then we are 99% there.
If they'd remove the perception of making games for any specific gender they'd be there.
Although it'd probably piss marketing off-- marketing, as a collective group, has a tendency to cling to overly simplistic and often insulting viewpoints because it's easier than understanding people as actual people. See: Della and the ePad Femme as great examples of the failure of modern marketing. There's some examples of really good marketing as well, but as a whole it has a lot of baggage.
Monster Rain wrote: I thought you had established that this was a thought exercise without any wider application, but now we are back to video games reinforcing gender stereotypes.
And yet here is what I said:
Manchu wrote: I don't think the prevalence of the trope supports the conclusion of institutionalized misogyny but then again I don't think that is necessarily the point of the damsels vid. I think the point is that the damsels trope is pervasive in video games. She didn't prove or IMO even attempt to prove that its prevalence has a negative effect in wider society. If the damsels phenomenon does indeed make video games less welcoming or even more hostile to women then that will have to be proved or at least addressed in a further video. The argument at issue here is that female characters are objectified, that is, they are denied a great deal of agency, in a great number . And her argument on that point is reasonably persuasive.
I'm not sure what you mean by thought exercise but I guess it something like "does not actually matter at all." So we should probably abandon that term to the extent that it's a dismissive weasel word. Moving along, as I mentioned in the text immediately above, FemFreq's basic argument is that (1) the damsel trope has been pervasive in video games and (2) the damsel trope objectifies female characters. I said that anything more, like whether the trope has wider consequences in video games or society at large are further questions to be addressed. And then I posted:
Manchu wrote: FWIW, I think the topic deserves some serious thought and I think FemFreq did a good job getting the ball rolling. A good next question would be, has the prevalence of the damsel trope in video games limited the role of female characters in a wider sense?
And, yes, Samus, is basically alone in comparison to the huge amount of disempowered, objectified female characters in the medium.
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Melissia wrote: it's easier than understanding people as actual people
It's not about what's easy. Marketing is not about understanding people as people. It's about understanding people as investors and consumers. There is obviously a lot more to a person than the facets of their personality that contribute to how they spend their money. But marketing doesn't care about that and I'm not sure that it's fair to expect marketing professionals to do so. Now, at the same time, I'm not saying the video game industry has done a great job of understanding the market -- especially the female demographic -- just that whether they're doing a good job of it or not is not about "understanding people as actual people."
That depends on how you define"understanding people as actual people".
Even when you're looking at demographics, you still have to understand that there are often things that people of almost any demographic want. For example, a good, well-written storyline, and interesting antagonists, are both wanted by just about everyone. Trying to pigeonhole entire demographics in to "what do they want that no one else does" oftentimes leads marketing to do incredibly racist and misogynistic things.
Things which backfire and cause the product to fail.
I think a more accurate mentality is "what do they want that will get them to buy our product." Inherently, this will lead to making decisions that will make others not want the product. Making a very broadly appealing product is exceedingly difficult. Just look at any media and find me the products that break genre and demographic lines. There' really aren't that many. It's infinitely more profitable to pick a group, budget for them, and then make the product. That's capitalism for ya XD
And I'd also propose marketing isn't always about understanding what people want. It's about making people think they want it. Remember that thread a year ago about Dove's ad campaign that didn't use super skinny super models? That got a lot of praise from commentators and critics, but sadly Dove actually lost sales as a result of that campaign.
In many ways, the market doesn't actually know what it wants. So there is something to the saying that marketing is all about telling them what they want. Of course, this mentality can be applied to girls in gaming. The big issue right now is imo there isn't a large female market, so developers don't feel the need to pay attention to the one that exists because they view it as less important (and they're right in a way cause it hasn't really hurt their bottom line). We're kind of waiting for someone to get their stuff together and decide to start growing the untapped market.
I think the problematic aspects of marketing come from assuming that one demographic speaks for all others because it is the "most important." Publishers seem to think that sales of games like MW, for example, coming from outside of the male demographic are merely incidental. Therefore, to the extent that incidental sales exist, marketing toward the male demographic adequately accounts for them, too. The notion of catering to what they assume to be incidental customers is assumed to be hostile to the important demographic and therefore absurd -- why risk the base? This identity as the base, the normative standard is what's called privilege.
I disagree that this causes products to fail, however. It has been pretty damn successful.
I'd propose though that the the blurb for the game (which is now taken down) is telling as to it's makers intent:
Anita Sarkeesian has not only scammed thousands of people out of over $160,000, but also uses the excuse that she is a woman to get away with whatever she damn well pleases. Any form of constructive criticism, even from fellow women, is either ignored or labelled to be sexist against her.
She claims to want gender equality in video games, but in reality, she just wants to use the fact that she was born with a vagina to get free money and sympathy from everyone who crosses her path.
My point in pointing it out is that the game was made (obviously) because its makers didn't like Saarkesian. They were one of the first to propose the conspiracy theory that she orchestrated the events on 4chan for financial gain and clearly were very dedicated believers. Beat um up games are common for public figures and I'd rather not have the thread get side tracked into another "is it because she's a woman" or "no it's because people don't like her not because she's a woman" debate.
We've already done that like, five times now. And nothing really useful comes from it.
As to the marketing discussion, I think this is the nail +head:
The notion of catering to what they assume to be incidental customers is assumed to be hostile to the important demographic and therefore absurd -- why risk the base?
This is a common mentality not just in games but in nearly any industry. When a formula is found to be working, people don't want to rock the boat and risk screwing it up. It's the same reason that people say innovation is dead in gaming. Why innovate when a rerelease of MW4 for the 5th year in a row will make you another hundred million dollars with near no development costs?
It's pretty clear that the people who made the game don't like her. Why they don't like her and how they've chosen to express this is what's relevant. No one can argue the style of the game is an accident -- the specific reason it was chosen was memorialized by its own creators: "There’s been a disgusting large imbalance of women who get beaten up in games. Let’s add a lady to help balance things." This is pure retribution. They didn't single her out for being a woman. By their own freely advertised goals, they made this game to punish her for the "scam" of being a woman who talks about women in video games.
Manchu wrote: And, yes, Samus, is basically alone in comparison to the huge amount of disempowered, objectified female characters in the medium.
I really can't fathom that you actually believe this. All things being equal, this is far removed from reality. I mean, I hate to use the term "weasel word" but "objectified" can mean pretty much anything, so I'm sure you can semantically distort the goalposts wherever you want them to be, but I'm actually shocked that you would make such a statement.
Manchu wrote: It's pretty clear that the people who made the game don't like her. Why they don't like her and how they've chosen to express this is what's relevant. No one can argue the style of the game is an accident -- the specific reason it was chosen was memorialized by its own creators: "There’s been a disgusting large imbalance of women who get beaten up in games. Let’s add a lady to help balance things." This is pure retribution. They didn't single her out for being a woman. By their own freely advertised goals, they made this game to punish her for the "scam" of being a woman who talks about women in video games.
Yep.
This is exactly what I mentioned earlier, and I linked to a few articles (most notably and famously, this one) to that effect.
@Monster Rain: I know what a thought experiment is but I don't think your usage in this case -- specifically, that what we're talking about has no wider implications -- matches the definition. So you used a word that does not agree with the context you supplied; I looked to your other posts to supplement the meaning. I don't think it's reflexive: the rest of your posts are dismissive, culminating with the idea that you've given the subject more thought than it deserves.
Content note: This post includes excerpts of threats and abusive language.
I got my first rape threat as a blogger when I was on Blogspot, so new that I still had the default theme up and hadn’t even added anything to the sidebar. I can’t even remember the pseudonym I was using then, and I probably had about 10 hits on a good day, seven of which were me compulsively loading the page just to make sure it still existed, and the other two of which were probably my friends. I wrote a post about some local political issue or another, expressing my misgivings, and a reader kindly took time out of his day to email me.
‘You stupid [C-Bomb],’ he said, ‘all you need is a good [Expletive]ing and then you’d be less uptight.’
I stared at it for a couple of minutes, too shocked to move. There it was on my screen, not going away. Someone really had thought it was appropriate not just to write this email to a complete stranger, a totally unknown person, but to send it. I deleted it, and spent another few minutes staring at the blank hole in my inbox where it had been before shaking it off and moving on.
It was harder with the next one, and the next, and the next, but by the time I’d clocked around 20 threats, and was up to around 30 readers, I’d learned the art of triage. The quick skim to find out if there was any actually personal threatening information, like identifying details, or if it was just your garden variety threat with no teeth behind it. I kept them all in a little file in case I needed them later, and forwarded the worst to the police department, not in the belief they would actually do anything, but in the hopes that information would be there, somewhere, in case it was needed someday.
‘I hope you get raped to death with a gorsebush,’ one email memorably began. I gave the letter writer some style points for creativity, but quickly deducted them when I noted he’d sent it from his work email, at a progressive organisation. I helpfully forwarded it to his supervisor, since I thought she might be interested to know what he was doing on company time. ‘Thanks,’ she wrote back, and I didn’t hear anything more about it. Several months later I attended a gala event the organisation was participating in and watched him sitting there on stage, confident and smug.
I thanked my stars that he had no idea who I was, that he didn’t know that the ‘stupid, fat bitch’ he’d emailed was sitting there in the audience, calmly staring back at him. Later, I wondered why I didn’t just turn around and walk out the minute I saw him. I certainly stopped donating and supporting, and I happily told people why.
He’s still there, and people tell me I’m not the only one who has received alarmingly graphic communiques from him for speaking my mind. His was the first of many emails so meticulously detailed that it felt like the uncomfortable realisation of a fantasy, and it only got worse when I changed platforms, to TypePad and then WordPress, accumulating more and more readers along the way, being more and more outspoken, being more and more open about who I was, finally writing under my own name, a calculated decision that exposes me to considerable risk, every day, a decision I cannot come back from. It is not a decision I regret, but it did bring home a new risk for me, that I had made it a lot easier for those electronic threats to become a reality.
I was careful in all the ways they tell you to be, to make it difficult to find my house, for example, and most of the rape threats, and the death threats, the casual verbal abuse from people who disagreed with my stances on subjects like rape being bad and abortion being a personal matter, weren’t really that threatening in that they didn’t pose a personal danger to me, and I was rarely concerned for my safety. That wasn’t the point, though, which is what I told a friend when she got her first rape threat and called me, sobbing. I wished she’d been spared that particular blogging rite of passage, but unfortunately she hadn’t been.
‘They want you to shut up,’ I explained. ‘That’s the point of a rape threat. They want to silence you. They want you to shrink down very small inside a box where you think they can’t find you.’
And it works. I see it happening all the time; blogs go dark, or disappear entirely, or stop covering certain subjects. People hop pseudonyms and addresses, trusting that regular readers can find and follow them, trying to stay one step ahead. Very few people openly discuss it because they feel like it’s feeding the trolls, giving them the attention they want. Some prominent bloggers and members of the tech community have been bold enough; Kathy Sierra, for example, spoke out about the threats that made her afraid to leave her own home. She’s not the only blogger who’s been presented not just with vicious, hateful verbal abuse, but very real evidence that people want to physically hurt her, a double-edged silencing tactic, a sustained campaign of terrorism that is, often, highly effective.
It took a few years to reach this point, but I finally have, the point where I do have concerns about my physical safety, and have had to reevaluate certain aspects of my life and work. I’ve gotten those emails that send a long chill down my spine and create a surging feeling of rage, mixed with helplessness. People have sent me my social security number, information about my family members, identifying details that make it very clear they know exactly how to find me. They have politely provided details of exactly what they’d like to do to me and my family, they send me creepy things in the mail.
‘I’m glad your stupid cat died,’ someone wrote me last October. ‘You’re next, [female dog],’ and followed up with my street address.
‘I’m in the process of moving,’ I told the officer who responded, ‘but it concerns me and I wanted you to know.’
I spent the remaining week almost entirely at the new house, working on the house during the day and slinking home late at night, leaving the lights off to make it look like I wasn’t home, leaving my distinctive and highly identifiable car parked at a distant location. My neighbours left their porch light on for me, illuminating the backyard in a wash of harsh, white light. I’d spent years seething about how it kept me up at night, but those nights, I was grateful for it, reading my book under the covers in the dim glow of a flashlight.
‘You must be worried about fans finding you,’ my landlords say, and I want to laugh it off, the idea that I have ‘fans’ who would be dedicated enough to come this far to find me.
‘It’s not the fans I worry about,’ I say, darkly.
It’s a good week, these days, if I only get 15-20 emails from people telling me how much they think I should die, or how much they hope I get raped, or how much they hope my cat dies or I lose my job or fall in a hole or get shot by police or any number of things people seem to think it’s urgently important to tell me in their quest to get me to shut up. We are not talking about disagreements, about calls for intersectionality, about differing approaches, about political variance, about lively debate and discussion that sometimes turns acrimonious and damaging. We are talking about sustained campaigns of hate from people who believe that we are inhuman and should be silenced; the misogynists, the ‘men’s rights activists,’ the anti-reproductive rights movement, the extreme conservatives, the fundamentalists. The haters.
Joss Whedon fans in particular seem to be especially creative, although Glee fans are running a close second; Glee fans tend to be more fond of sending me photoshopped pictures of myself covered in what I think is supposed to be cum, although it looks more like mashed potatoes, or possibly whipped cream. Joss fans prefer to say it in text, intimately, lingering over the details. And of course there’s the usual abuse from people who think that people like me are not human beings, and thus feel it’s entirely reasonable, even necessary, to assault us, the people who write about topics like reproductive justice, domestic violence, intersections between race and class and disability and gender and the social structures that contribute to continued oppression.
I don’t talk about it very often because I don’t really know what to say. I get rape and death threats. I get emails calling me witch, r#tard, all the other epithets you can think of and then some. I get abusive phone calls, and sometimes have to unplug my landline for a few days. So do a lot of other bloggers. It never really stops, unless you stop, which means that every day you need to make a conscious decision. Do I keep doing this? Do I keep going? Or is this the day where I throw in the towel and decide it’s not worth it anymore?
Like a lot of bloggers in the same position, I have tried to balance a desire to not remain silent with the need for increasing caution; not, for example, making information about where I stay when on trips available, making it clear that the only place people will find me is at public events in locations where there’s a security presence, being careful about pictures I post of my house and neighbourhood to make it harder to find, making sure close friends have contact information for me and my neighbours in case of emergencies. Thinking carefully about the kinds of events I want to attend. Things that are second nature to me seem to disturb other people, but I’ve learned the hard way that this is what I need to do to be safe.
But I’m still not going to shut up, and not just because I am bullheaded and don’t take kindly to being told to be silent or die. I don’t shut up for all the people who were forced to shut up, for the ghosts who drift through the Internet, for the people too terrified to leave their homes at all, let alone try to coordinate safety concerns to attend events, for the people who ask friends to open and sort their email because they can’t handle the daily vitriol. I don’t shut up for all the people who have been silenced, who did throw in the towel because they just couldn’t take it anymore. Not because they were weak or not committed to the cause, but because they, and their families, were in danger.
When it became evident that I wasn’t going to shut up, that I wasn’t going to let threats from hateful donkey-caves dictate what I chose to cover and not cover, the campaigns shifted; I still got rape and death threats, but then came the websites dedicated to hate and speculation, the harassing phone calls. Then came the commenters sowing insidious trails at sites that linked me or discussed my work, the emails to friends and colleagues, the attempts to discredit me.
And, of course, the attacks on my readers. One of the reasons I was forced to close comments on my personal site was because people would stalk my readers to their own sites and harass them, and we had similar problems at FWD/Forward, and I see them here at Tiger Beatdown as well. Puzzled and upset readers sometimes forward the email they’re sent after they comment, or talk about something in a post, or attempt to participate in discussions; anti-abortion activists, for example, sending them hate screeds for being open about their abortions in what they thought was a safe space. Hateful people pick on people they assume are small and helpless, simply for voicing their opinions, or being present in a space, or being associated with the target of their hatred.
Then came the hackings, the repeated attempts to silence me in the crudest way possible.
This is something else people don’t talk about, very often; the fact of the matter is that if you run a feminist or social justice site, you will be hacked. Probably on multiple occasions, especially if you start to grow a large audience. Some of these hackings are just your usual cases of vandalism, people testing servers to see if they can do it, not with any specific malice directed at you. Others are more deliberate, more calculated, and they come with taunting and abuse.
Many feminist sites stay on services like Blogspot because of the higher security they may offer; people who host their own sites do so in awareness that if they aren’t very knowledgeable about technology, they need someone who is for when they get hacked, and it’s not if, but when. Readers often don’t notice because it flashes by, or it causes problems with the backend, the site management, not the front end. Sometimes they do, when hackers inject malicious code that changes the appearance of the front page, or attempts to load malware on the computers of visitors, or just takes the site down altogether, sometimes with a message making it clear that it’s personal.
Then your readers start screaming at you because the site isn’t working, and when you wade through your inbox it’s an even split between taunting messages from the hacker and readers demanding to know why the front page looks funny, yelling at you if you were asleep when it happened and didn’t have time to post an update somewhere to let people know what was going on for several hours.
You wake up every day wondering if your server is still up, and how much cleanup you may need to do to keep the site operational. That’s the reality. You wake up wondering what will be in your inbox, your moderation queue, your Twitter stream, and sometimes you lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if you really want to keep doing this. The reality is that when people recognise you in public spaces and shout your name, you tense; is this person going to harm you? You spend the first five minutes of your interaction fighting the flight instinct, not paying attention to a single word the person is saying. When someone emails to ask to meet you when you’re traveling, your first reaction is not ‘oh, it would be lovely to meet readers, yes, please, let’s hook up at that dark shady bar in a city I don’t know.’
It’s concerted, focused, and deliberate, the effort to silence people, especially women, but not always, as I can attest, and particularly feminists, though again, not always, as I can attest, online. The readers, the consumers, the fans, may not always notice it because people are silent about it. Because this is the strategy that has been adopted, to not feed the trolls, to grin and bear it, to shut up, to put your best foot forward and rise above it. To open your email, take note of the morning’s contents, and then quickly shuttle them to the appropriate files for future reference or forwarding to the authorities. To check on the server, fix what needs fixing, and move on with your day. To skim the comments to see what needs to be deleted, to know that when you write a post like this one, you will have to delete a lot of heinous and ugly comments, because you want to protect your readers from the sheer, naked, hate that people carry for you. To weigh, carefully, the decision to approve a comment not because there’s a problem with the content, but because you worry that the reader may be stalked by someone who will tell her that she should die for having an opinion. And when it happens to people for the first time, they think they are alone, because they don’t realise how widespread and insidious it is.
All of the bloggers at Tiger Beatdown have received threats, not just in email but in comments, on Twitter, and in other media, and the site itself has been subject to hacking attempts as well. It’s grinding and relentless and we’re told collectively, as a community, to stay silent about it, but I’m not sure that’s the right answer, to remain silent in the face of silencing campaigns designed and calculated to drive us from not just the Internet, but public spaces in general. To compress us into small boxes somewhere and leave us there, to underscore that our kind are not wanted here, there, or anywhere.
*GAG GAG GLUCK* You have discovered the only vocables worth hearing from Sady’s [Expletive]-stuffed maw…die tr*nny whore…[slut walk] is a parade for people who suffer from Histrionic Personality Disorder aka Attention Whores…I know where you live, r#tard…why don’t you do the world a favour and jump off a bridge…Feminazi…
A small sampling of the kinds of things that show up in our inboxes, in comment threads, on attack websites, in things sent to our readers.
Rape threats happen. Death threats happen. People threaten friends, families, jobs, household pets. Stalkers go to considerable lengths to collect and exploit information. People who are open about this, who do talk about threats and stalking and danger, and they are out there, are punished for it. They get more abuse, they’re told that they’re making it all up, that it’s all in their heads, that they are exaggerating, entirely new hate sites spring up to speculate about them and talk about their ‘desperate ploys for attention.’ That’s what I have to look forward to for writing this piece, for laying out some of the costs of social participation for you, for openly discussing the thing which dare not speak its name, the brash, open hostility reserved for people who do not shut up.
This is a reality, and it doesn’t go away if we don’t talk about it.
This was written by s.e. smith. Posted on Tuesday, October 11, 2011, at 3:21 pm
Are those beat people up games really their own little genre? I remember a game from twenty years or so ago where you could beat up a big smiley face (IIRC), put it in a blender and stuff, but if people are really making those of actual people they don't like then that's a whole new level of creepy.
Maybe there should be a game (I'm thinking like Double Dragon, or maybe an amalgamation of all the games in her Damsels in Distress video) where you play as Anita Sarkeesian and go around beating up misogynists.
The definition for purposes of this discussion begins in the FemFreq video: subjects act, objects are acted upon; objectification is therefore the process of turning one who acts into one who is acted upon. The damsel trope relieves a character of agency, that is, the power to act, and in doing so puts that character into the position of being acted upon. It objectifies. Again, I don't believe that you have given this subject too much thought.
Manchu wrote: @Monster Rain: I know what a thought experiment is but I don't think your usage in this case -- specifically, that what we're talking about has no wider implications -- matches the definition. So you used a word that does not agree with the context you supplied; I looked to your other posts to supplement the meaning. I don't think it's reflexive: the rest of your posts are dismissive, culminating with the idea that you've given the subject more thought than it deserves.
Manchu wrote: I don't think the prevalence of the trope supports the conclusion of institutionalized misogyny but then again I don't think that is necessarily the point of the damsels vid.
Manchu wrote: The damsel trope explains some of that, why developers in large part continue to think its okay to objectify female characters and why they still don't listen to women very carefully: "it's always been done and girls don't like video games anyway."
Clearly I haven't thought about it enough to draw two completely different conclusions.
The term "thought exercise" fit the context of the second post of yours that I have quoted above.
The definition for purposes of this discussion begins in the FemFreq video: subjects act, objects are acted upon; objectification is therefore the process of turning one who acts into one who is acted upon. The damsel trope relieves a character of agency, that is, the power to act, and in doing so puts that character into the position of being acted upon. It objectifies.
Well, now that we have a solid definition of the term for the purposes of this discussion I urge you to reconsider your statement. While the number of female characters that are relieved of agency are higher than that of men (though they do exist), the disparity isn't nearly what you have made it.
By their own freely advertised goals, they made this game to punish her for the "scam" of being a woman who talks about women in video games.
By they're own advertised goals they made the game to mock her for using her status as a woman as a shield. The hate is clearly directed at the perception of her behavior held by the game's maker.
And just so nothing is confused: Beat um up games are stupid. Obviously it's maker had a little too much free time to hate someone that much.
Are those beat people up games really their own little genre?
Yeah. They got them for Obama, Hillary Clinton, Justin Beiber (too name others that I've heard of).
By their own freely advertised goals, they made this game to punish her for the "scam" of being a woman who talks about women in video games.
By they're own advertised goals they made the game to mock her for using her status as a woman as a shield. The hate is clearly directed at the perception of her behavior held by the game's maker.
And just so nothing is confused: Beat um up games are stupid. Obviously it's maker had a little too much free time to hate someone that much.
You're implying she was somehow using her status as a shield...
Monster Rain wrote: Clearly I haven't thought about it enough to draw two completely different conclusions.
Yes, it is clear that you are not thinking hard enough or reading carefully enough. As I have already explained to you, in the very post from which you quoted, I did not say this discussion had no wider implications. I said that the first FemFreq video did not address much less prove those wider implications. And then I further said what I thought would be a good place to start beyond the points made in the FemFreq videos. By all means, explain the contradiction.
The gamemaker wished to bully and silence her in whatever way he could, because she's a woman who speaks out in a way he doesn't like.
These are not your normal trolls. They don't go away if they're ignored, and they don't want attention, they just want women to shut up and "know their place".
Monster Rain wrote: While the number of female characters that are relieved of agency are higher than that of men (though they do exist), the disparity isn't nearly what you have made it.
How much or little of a disparity are we talking about in your opinion?
Monster Rain wrote: Clearly I haven't thought about it enough to draw two completely different conclusions.
Yes, it is clear that you are not thinking hard enough or reading carefully enough. As I have already explained to you, in the very post from which you quoted, I did not say this discussion had no wider implications. I said that the first FemFreq video did not address much less prove those wider implications. And then I further said what I thought would be a good place to start beyond the points made in the FemFreq videos. By all means, explain the contradiction.
It's a completely pointless distinction that you're making. If institutionalized misogyny, or anything else for that matter, can be extrapolated from the overt content of a given source it is reasonable to assume that it was intended by the creator.
Monster Rain wrote: While the number of female characters that are relieved of agency are higher than that of men (though they do exist), the disparity isn't nearly what you have made it.
How much or little of a disparity are we talking about in your opinion?
You give me an acceptable Samus to object ratio, and then I'll crunch the numbers.
LordofHats wrote: they made the game to mock her for using her status as a woman as a shield
How does giving her cuts and bruises mock her for that? It seems to me that what it mocks is her talking about how women are portrayed in video games -- hence that they sneeringly said their game was adding balance.
Manchu wrote: How does giving her cuts and bruises mock her for that? It seems to me that what it mocks is her talking about how women are portrayed in video games -- hence that they sneeringly said their game was adding balance.
They're mocking her 'playing victim' by making a game that's point is to beat her up. This isn't even uncommon trolling in real like. Someone cries foul, so you play to their cry to mock them. It's pretty standard in High School in my experience (and boy do I have experience in that department XD).
So you think a "normal" troll would stalk someone for months, despite the fact that they're being ignored and not giving any response to their troll attempts, attempt to learn their rel name, their IRL address, and send threatening emails saying that they're going to come over there and rape them, that "I'm glat your cat is dead and you're next" followed by the person's real address?
Because that's not my experience. These aren't your garden variety, attention-seeking trolls. And while not common, they're a lot less uncommon than any of us would like to think.
So you think a "normal" troll would stalk someone for months, despite the fact that they're being ignored and not giving any response to their troll attempts, attempt to learn their rel name, their IRL address, and send threatening emails saying that they're going to come over there and rape them, that "I'm glat your cat is dead and you're next" followed by the person's real address?
Because that's not my experience. These aren't your garden variety, attention-seeking trolls. And while not common, they're a lot less uncommon than any of us would like to think.
Monster Rain wrote: It's a completely pointless distinction that you're making. If institutionalized misogyny, or anything else for that matter, can be extrapolated from the overt content of a given source it is reasonable to assume that it was intended by the creator.
The distinction I am making is between what the first FemFreq video accomplished and what more can be said on the issue. I don't see what your point about attributing motive has to do with that one way or the other. Also, I don't agree that consequences necessarily imply motive. Any trope, including this one, can be used uncritically. That is, it's not clear that all storytellers who use the trope intend to objectify certain characters much less any wider implication that objectification might have.
TheCustomLime wrote: The bearded hordes of Anonymous are a spiteful but blind group. All one needs to do is show them the way and they will attack without relent.
That or anything that discusses male privelege gets hated on. Probably some sort of innate desire to silence disent.
Amaya wrote: At the risk of stereotyping...I have a feeling a lot of Anons and...whatever it is people called those who use 4chan (btards?) were/are nerds and never scored a reasonably attractive, let alone hot girl. They are now resentful and hateful towards all woman, because woman won't be the whores they desire...or if they are whores, they're ignoring the Anon crowd.
USA Today wrote: "Anonymous got as much information as they could posted all over the Internet and questioned why these guys weren't being prosecuted for obvious rape," Housh says. "Everyone got mad. They developed a furious consensus, that's how hacktivism happens. Anonymous helped make news to the point where the prosecutor had to pay attention."
Melissia wrote: So you think a "normal" troll would stalk someone for months, despite the fact that they're being ignored and not giving any response to their troll attempts, attempt to learn their rel name, their IRL address, and send threatening emails saying that they're going to come over there and rape them, that "I'm glat your cat is dead and you're next" followed by the person's real address?
Yes actually. I'm maybe weird though as I've had that happen to me more than once back when I ran a CoD4 clan. I'll also bring up the Bioware forums again. There are people over there who hang around for years, pretty much just to rain on the parade. Infinity Ward forums too.
Melissia wrote: So you think a "normal" troll would stalk someone for months, despite the fact that they're being ignored and not giving any response to their troll attempts, attempt to learn their rel name, their IRL address, and send threatening emails saying that they're going to come over there and rape them, that "I'm glat your cat is dead and you're next" followed by the person's real address?
Yes actually. I'm maybe weird though as I've had that happen to me more than once back when I ran a CoD4 clan. I'll also bring up the Bioware forums again. There are people over there who hang around for years, pretty much just to rain on the parade. Infinity Ward forums too.
I've had to ask the moderators to ban people on this very forum because of this kind of stalking. Also on IGMB. Also on other forums as well.
No one seems to have read the article I posted... it's just one of many, many such articles by feminist bloggers, but it is probably the most influential and famous, amongst this particular subculture. You're just making excuses and justifications for it and it's pissing me off, hatlord.
I was actually referring to the article I posted above.
I thought Anita's name and location were both fairly common knowledge...oh wait...you were referring to the blogger lady.
Oops.
LordofHats wrote:
Melissia wrote: So you think a "normal" troll would stalk someone for months, despite the fact that they're being ignored and not giving any response to their troll attempts, attempt to learn their rel name, their IRL address, and send threatening emails saying that they're going to come over there and rape them, that "I'm glat your cat is dead and you're next" followed by the person's real address?
Yes actually. I'm maybe weird though as I've had that happen to me more than once back when I ran a CoD4 clan. I'll also bring up the Bioware forums again. There are people over there who hang around for years, pretty much just to rain on the parade. Infinity Ward forums too.
Manchu wrote: The distinction I am making is between what the first FemFreq video accomplished and what more can be said on the issue. I don't see what your point about attributing motive has to do with that one way or the other.
That we came to the same conclusion after watching the video (whether or not we agree) implies that there may have been intent.
Manchu wrote: Also, I don't agree that consequences necessarily imply motive.
In every case, it is posible that they do not. In this case I believe that they do.
LordofHats wrote: Cause now we're just banging our heads together. Again. Over something completely unproductive.
I find the current discussion quite productive because I am learning a lot about rationalizing violent prejudice as righteousness. I mean, would you say the people who made this game are on a mission to criticize everyone who uses the media for profit?
Do you know what that means? That means users downvoted it so much that they yanked it from the site for being a bad game. Keep in mind this is a website where nude dress up dolls and "Kill Justin Bieber" videos are standard fare.
Monster Rain wrote: That we came to the same conclusion after watching the video (whether or not we agree) implies that there may have been intent. [...] In every case, it is posible that they do not. In this case I believe that they do.
Okay, I think I explained that your last post struck me as a nonsequitur. So given that, I admit I can't understand these further comments at all.
It was only two people really (and maybe ironically for this situation, both women... well sort of). The rest of the guys and gals were great. Still know most of them and still operate the old TS server.
Do you know what that means? That means users downvoted it so much that they yanked it from the site for being a bad game. Keep in mind this is a website where nude dress up dolls and "Kill Justin Bieber" videos are standard fare.
^^^^ higher rated than your game. OMG EVIDENCE OF MISANTHROPY
In case you haven't noticed, Newgrounds has bad content and Huffingtonpost is full of mindless, sensationalist journalism.
How does that make the game any less relevant? There was still intent and it was still created. The fact it was downvoted is really meaningless in regards to its creation.
Given how you described your experience, compared to the combined, overall experiences of many, many feminist bloggers and female activists of various kinds, you really don't have much experience on the topic, LordofHats.
Again, Hatlord, please stop making excuses and justifications for what they do, you're encouraging them to continue doing it.
Amaya wrote: The fact it was downvoted is really meaningless in regards to its creation
Agreed. I think the poster is a bit confused. It's one thing to shout a slur in public. It's another thing to get a standing ovation for doing so. Either way, the slur is still a slur.
Amaya wrote: The fact it was downvoted is really meaningless in regards to its creation
Agreed. I think the poster is a bit confused. It's one thing to shout a slur in public. It's another thing to get a standing ovation for doing so. Either way, the slur is still a slur.
The person did not get a standing ovation for it, the person got blammed, trashed, put in the garbage, the video is no longer available.
It's comparable to Westboro baptist. They come out, spread their vile message and then people throw rocks at them. The thing you should pick up on is that people overwhelmingly opposed the message.
It's easy to draw such a conclusion. But given the very long history of our society, both recent and distant, I wouldn't say we've gotten over it yet.
If "people don't like misogyny", then decades-long (and probably longer than that) campaign of hate focused specifically against women activists in general and feminists in specific wouldn't still be going on.
But it is. "People" are more complex than you give them to be.
TedNugent wrote: It was blammed because it was incredibly unpopular and people hated it.
Ergo people hate misogyny?
Most people ostenbily are not pro misogyny or pro racism. Does that mean both of those magically do not exist?
I didn't realize I was taking the position that misogyny did not exist. Misanthropy exists too. Can I cry about it now?
I thought the point of the video was as it regards the prevalence of misogyny in our culture rather than that some isolated someone, somewhere, happened to say something misogynistic one tiem.
Melissia wrote: Again, Hatlord, please stop making excuses and justifications for what they do, you're encouraging them to continue doing it.
And that's the reason the game got made in the first place. To mock that anyone who even suggests the hate directed at her might not necessarily be a result of her biology gets accused of encouraging sexism, being sexist, misogynist, etc. There's a difference between attempting to identify the source of backlash and encouraging backlash, especially when the source of the backlash is at the heart of the issue. To shut down any attempt to do so as encouraging the behavior is to shield the target through a false dichotomy.
TedNugent wrote: The person did not get a standing ovation for it
It was merely a rhetorical point -- i.e., reception does not change motive. Whether someone takes offense is not what makes a joke offensive.
TedNugent wrote: The thing you should pick up on is that people overwhelmingly opposed the message.
I am one of those people who are opposed. I am not going to stop being opposed to it once a lot of other people also are. Yes, it's good that a bunch of people are opposed. The problem, the source of the opposition, is that the game was made in the first place. However many people oppose it, it remains unacceptable.
Melissia wrote: No one seems to have read the article I posted... it's just one of many, many such articles by feminist bloggers, but it is probably the most influential and famous, amongst this particular subculture.
I read it back when you linked it originally. It wasn't surprising to me, but is important context for anyone trying to comment on whether Anita Sarkeesian was "playing the victim." This stuff is depressingly common for women who write about sexism, especially in whatever pop culture you care to name.
Do you actually believe that misogyny played no role in creating that game or is this just academic -- some kind of reductio ad absurdum argument that no one can know the true motives of the game's creators except (and maybe not even) them?
TedNugent wrote: The person did not get a standing ovation for it
It was merely a rhetorical point -- i.e., reception does not change motive.
TedNugent wrote: The thing you should pick up on is that people overwhelmingly opposed the message.
I am one of those people who are opposed. I am not going to stop being opposed to it once a lot of other people also are. Yes, it's good that a bunch of people are opposed. The problem, the source of the opposition, is that the game was made in the first place. However many people oppose it, it remains unacceptable.
I oppose the content of the message.
As Voltaire said, I do not approve of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. "Unacceptable" seems to me one step further than disapprove, and that's where I part ways. Art, free expression, and free speech are always acceptable.
Take solace in the fact that you are in the majority and the fact that you are in the right.
Meet words with words and meet action with action.
Manchu wrote: Do you actually believe that misogyny played no role in creating that game or is this just academic -- some kind of reductio ad absurdum argument that no one can know the true motives of the game's creators except (and maybe not even) them?
No. My argument is that they're statement clearly directs their distaste for Saarkesian at their belief she is a scammer. Not that she's woman. Not that she's a woman who talked about women in video games. To conflate that to misogyny and to claim that pointing out why the game was made (in the words of its maker) is somehow encouraging the behavior is to engage in a dishonest argument.
My position was clearly stated. I've also clearly stated several times that I'm sure woman haters played a roll in all this drama. I just don't think it's viable to claim all of it comes from misogyny. Unfortunately anyone who doesn't like her for any reason other than her being a woman, now gets accused of encouraging the hate of women.
Amaya wrote: Sorry, I don't see a particular reason to tolerate blatant hate speech.
It becomes relevant because people constantly claim the hate comes from her being a woman. So it kind of ends up being an issue. Those people, then deny any possibility to refute that position by claiming that to oppose it is to encourage the behavior. It's not that difficult a thing to understand.
LordofHats wrote: It becomes relevant because people constantly claim the hate comes from her being a woman.
When the overwhelming majority of the insults and hate is gender-specific, it is very apparent that her being a woman is why they hate her. They attack her as a woman, for being a woman. And this has been going on for decades. You just so happened to notice now because it finally made the news.
Your ignoring the content of the insults does not make you correct.
Melissia wrote: When the overwhelming majority of the insults and hate is gender-specific, it is very apparent that her being a woman is why they hate her.
Your ignoring the content of the insults does not make you correct.
I get called various male genital related insults all the time. Do you think I've been insulted because I'm a man or that the insults simply takes its form as a result of my being a man?
I was about to say at least it wasn't a rape based game and then I had an idea...so I went and googled Anita Sarkeesian Rule 34 and got this gem from the third hit courtesty of /v/:
Why do you think it has to be one or the other? I'm sure there is room for these disparate facts to float around in the heads of those hurling the abuse, blending together to form some kind of especially disgusting soup.
Amaya wrote: Sorry, I don't see a particular reason to tolerate blatant hate speech.
It becomes relevant because people constantly claim the hate comes from her being a woman. So it kind of ends up being an issue. Those people, then deny any possibility to refute that position by claiming that to oppose it is to encourage the behavior. It's not that difficult a thing to understand.
Sorry, but when every other insult towards her involves ejaculating on her face or brutal rape it is obvious that either the hate comes from her being a woman, the insults are gender specific, or men like raping everything they don't like.
I'll admit, the third option is a distinct possibility.
It's a distinct possibility that you have. But that's nothing more than a lame distraction from the issue.
Calling a woman a [c-bomb] is inherently misogynistic. So is saying "I will rape you so you can shut up" or so many other sexual epithets, rape threats, and intimidation attempts. The very ACT of doing many of the things that have been done towards Sarkesian-- and feminist activists as a general whole, not that you have actually read any of the articles I linked to you or paid a single goddamned bit of attention to anything I've said-- indicates a level of hatred for women and a desire to victimize women in order to silence them. To silence us, I should say, since I've been on the receiving end of the exact same thing innumerable times, including on this very forum.
Deny it all you want, you're just lying to yourself in doing so.
Melissia wrote: Would you use a certain n-word to refer to as a black person and then get surprised that you get called a racist?
I've never used the word [see forum posting rules] as an insult but sometimes use it in a joke, neutral or historical context and I never thought of witch being like the [see forum posting rules] equivalent for women to me it was just a gender neutral insult that I love saying.
Melissia wrote: Would you use a certain n-word to refer to as a black person and then get surprised that you get called a racist?
I've never used the word [see forum posting rules] as an insult but sometimes use it in a joke, neutral or historical context and I never thought of witch being like the [see forum posting rules] equivalent for women to me it was just a gender neutral insult that I love saying.
Yes, I do believe it as such. That's how it's been used by hate groups, and by misogynistic men throughout recent history.
It is the insult that the Men's Rights Movement has co-opted as its calling card. Frequently, not a single post goes by in MRM discussions in less moderated place without said bomb being dropped... and the target being a woman, often with a synonym for "stupid" before it, because these people do not believe that women are intelligent enough to deserve to be able to control our own lives.
In regards to the vulgarised word of Spanish ancestry. I've used the "A" it accidently a couple of times around men of a darker persuasion and luckily I was familiar enough with them that they didn't take offense to it and kill me. I have seen whites, hispanics, and blacks use it freely in mixed groups. It is a situational word. I've been called it a few times, as in "my <censored>" for example.
I would never call a woman a runt simply because it is always intended to be somewhat offensive especially when used as dumb runt.
Melissia wrote: Would you use a certain n-word to refer to as a black person and then get surprised that you get called a racist?
I've never used the word [see forum posting rules] as an insult but sometimes use it in a joke, neutral or historical context and I never thought of witch being like the [see forum posting rules] equivalent for women to me it was just a gender neutral insult that I love saying.
You would say that you insensitive cheeky witch.
Having a good laugh are we?
Just so were clear by neutral context I don't mean I call black people [see forum posting rules] I mean that if someone asked what [see forum posting rules] meant I would tell them what it means.
Melissia wrote: Would you use a certain n-word to refer to as a black person and then get surprised that you get called a racist?
I've never used the word [see forum posting rules] as an insult but sometimes use it in a joke, neutral or historical context and I never thought of witch being like the [see forum posting rules] equivalent for women to me it was just a gender neutral insult that I love saying.
You would say that you insensitive cheeky witch.
Having a good laugh are we?
Just so were clear by neutral context I don't mean I call black people [see forum posting rules] I mean that if someone asked what [see forum posting rules] meant I would tell them what it means.
It's a distinct possibility that you have. But that's nothing more than a lame distraction from the issue.
Calling a woman a [c-bomb] is inherently misogynistic. So is saying "I will rape you so you can shut up" or so many other sexual epithets, rape threats, and intimidation attempts. The very ACT of doing many of the things that have been done towards Sarkesian-- and feminist activists as a general whole, not that you have actually read any of the articles I linked to you or paid a single goddamned bit of attention to anything I've said-- indicates a level of hatred for women and a desire to victimize women in order to silence them. To silence us, I should say, since I've been on the receiving end of the exact same thing innumerable times, including on this very forum.
Deny it all you want, you're just lying to yourself in doing so.
I have been called, and have called other people, male genitalia of various kinds and so has everyone and their brother.
I don't know if you realize this, but when women are in the company of men they act differently than when they are in the company of other men. The language that other men use around other men is completely different. It is literally unsuitable for polite conversation, polite conversation meaning conversation including members of the opposite sex. You don't even realize that men automatically self-censor and by social convention are expected to self-censor around women.
They also tend to use horrible insults against each other, in person, to each others faces. Basically, whatever men say on the internet is what they say to each other in real life when women are not around. It's not unusual. People get insulted and bullied on a daily basis.
It's a distinct possibility that you have. But that's nothing more than a lame distraction from the issue.
Calling a woman a [c-bomb] is inherently misogynistic. So is saying "I will rape you so you can shut up" or so many other sexual epithets, rape threats, and intimidation attempts. The very ACT of doing many of the things that have been done towards Sarkesian-- and feminist activists as a general whole, not that you have actually read any of the articles I linked to you or paid a single goddamned bit of attention to anything I've said-- indicates a level of hatred for women and a desire to victimize women in order to silence them. To silence us, I should say, since I've been on the receiving end of the exact same thing innumerable times, including on this very forum.
Deny it all you want, you're just lying to yourself in doing so.
I have been called, and have called other people, male genitalia of various kinds and so has everyone and their brother.
I don't know if you realize this, but when women are in the company of men they act differently than when they are in the company of other men. The language that other men use around other men is completely different. It is literally unsuitable for polite conversation, polite conversation meaning conversation including members of the opposite sex. You don't even realize that men automatically self-censor and by social convention are expected to self-censor around women.
They also tend to use horrible insults against each other, in person, to each others faces. Basically, whatever men say on the internet is what they say to each other in real life when women are not around. It's not unusual. People get insulted and bullied on a daily basis.
In case you haven't noticed, men on the internet rarely censor themselves.
Melissia is an internet and gaming fiend...she's probably heard most all of it even if she hasn't engaged in it outside of a screen. You're making assumptions about her just because of her gender...
Feth, I've known women who talk raunchy as hell around everyone. Men are generally worse about it, but it's not like women are these pure virginal beings. They're fething humans as well.
I was just saying it's not unusual or particular to women to be verbally abused, insulted, and named after genitals. It happens constantly.
It's also not particular for women to be marginalized, raped, enslaved, murdered, hanged, drawn and quartered, sawn in half, cut into bits, flayed, or otherwise mutilated.
I just told you outright that I have been verbally abused and been called everything in the English language. I've also dealt as much as I've received, I can tell you that much.
This isn't a hypothetical.
Also, did you not just get done telling me that the rate of something offensive does not affect the fact that its objectionable? Is the verbal abuse I've received qualitatively different? Is it not worthy of mention because I am a man? Is it not worthy of mention because I am not psychologically traumatized by it? I mean, literally last night right before we got into this discussion I watched two dudes hurl obscenities all night long.
Dude said right there it's pretty typical when you play games or go on the internet to get verbally abused constantly, and I'm telling you that it happens with the same level of frequency to your typical guy in locker rooms, in gym class, on the playground, at work, walking down the street, at parties, hanging out with friends, you name it.
). Misogyny literally means woman hater (in the Greek). I don't think society hates women. Prejudice takes many forms and not all of them stem from hate.
Well I guess some of the things in culture would be instinctual such as group forming as humans are social creatures.
