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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).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.

Piece of entertainment is piece of entertainment.

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.

 TedNugent wrote:

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:

 TedNugent wrote:

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.

 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.

 Melissia wrote:

 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.

 TedNugent wrote:

 Cheesecat wrote:

 TedNugent wrote:

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.

 Melissia wrote:

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.

 Melissia wrote:

 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."

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 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.

 TedNugent wrote:
Oh. Excuse you.

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.

 Melissia wrote:

 TedNugent wrote:
Oh. Excuse you.

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

nurture.

 TedNugent wrote:
No I didn't.

Except where you did.

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.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 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.

Maybe, but anthropologists study neither the socialization of children nor the impact of genes upon socialization.

 Melissia wrote:

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.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
An understanding of the groups involved.

So nothing, then.

Cheesecat wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 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).

 Melissia wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
An understanding of the groups involved.

So nothing, then.

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.

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

Sir Pseudonymous wrote:
An understanding of the groups involved.

So nothing, then.

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.

 Melissia wrote:

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.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 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.

Here, at the Tiger Beatdown blog.
Here and and here, at GeekFeminism.org.

 Melissia wrote:

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.

Here, at the Tiger Beatdown blog.
Here and and here, at GeekFeminism.org.

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.