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 Da Boss wrote:
I would honestly be happier with a word that encompassed what I think you are talking about (ideas like "women and children first!" and so on). The word patriarchy I am using to refer to "existing cultural structures around gender" with I suppose a particular focus on male power. I think it gets really twisted when you look at the whole picture and realize that it is a bit more complex and patriarchy is likely too loaded on one side, but I still think overall it is the word we have and I do not know a better one.

There are many existing cultural structures around gender that favor women. Noted biases in education, criminal law, family law, a reverse wage gap for those under 35, social norms, and accessibility to emergency help.

 Da Boss wrote:
I have presented some limited evidence, you have disregarded it. You also disregard the evidence from larger studies as being explainable by individual choices, and to an extent that is true, but you exclude the cultural context the choices take place in.

I didn't disregard it, I asked questions challenging the assumptions you were making. That's not disregarding, especially given the difficulty in testing anecdotal evidence over a medium such as the internet, which is what you provided. I'd have to see these 'larger studies' that you didn't provide in order to answer the second part of this paragraph.

For example I certainly think it is true that women are judged on their looks to a much harsher degree than most men & that this can have an adverse effect on their health and well being, particularly as individuals operating in the world. But, to go back to the questions I formed in my original post (which are not even entirely my questions of course; I merely reiterated them) how much of that is the prejudicial judgement of men & how much is the prejudicial judgement of other women?

 Da Boss wrote:

And it is undeniable that men hold more power in the world than women, just because some men do badly out of it does not mean that a patriarchy does not exist, merely that said patriarchy can be bad for both men and women.

It is deniable, or at least questionable, that the definition commonly used to define patriarchy (which I gave some examples and links to in my previous reply) states that all men benefit from that system of power. And I disagree that it is 'some men' since the vast majority of the more dangerous and physical jobs in society are carried out by men. Those are also paid quite well for their danger by the way, which partially accounts for other disparities, such as in pay.

 Da Boss wrote:

I also have clearly said that outside of a tiny minority of cases there is no intent to create a patriarchy. Men traditionally held more power in most societies (undeniably true). Power tends to sustain and propagate itself (it is the nature of power to do so). There is no patriarchy master plan. It is a consequence of history.

This is the issue with oversimplifying every system and hierarchy into one of power. I agree that there were men who traditionally held more power in most societies, but they were a small minority of men & a lot of them also held a lot of responsibility. The revolutions throughout history against ruling classes demonstrates what happens when you don't take those responsibilities seriously and exploit the population. I need more information on the nature of power propagating and sustaining itself, particularly as an entity in it's own right as you have characterised it here. Although a good example might be found in the gulag camps of Soviet Russia under Lenin during the 1900s.

If it is a consequence of history, it is also a consequence of nature and becomes a much more involved question than one of simply arising out of the ether on an assumption of interpretive truth.

 Da Boss wrote:

You want objective, hard, scientific standard evidence of something you would accept calling a patriarchy. I am afraid such evidence does not exist- culture is too complex and interlinked to be immune from argument and presented in a scientific way. We must use other critical thinking tools to evaluate the evidence available to us, which will never be as solid as the evidence in more objective fields. This is the challenge and nature of studying cultures and societies.

I'm afraid you can't really assume too much of what I want. Even as an epistemological argument, what you have presented doesn't hold up in a dialectical sense either, hence my questions to you. So I have to go off what you stated as evidence & that evidence was anecdotal & assumptive.

As for the nebulous area of evaluating cultures & societies. Well it's fair to say that truth might ultimately be subjective or phenomenological, but it's also fair to say that there are ontological truths within those subjectivities. You can't just move the goalposts away from empiricism (which is tied into the sensory experience of reality) and then support an idea which is used to push equality of outcome systems that directly affect that sensory reality.

Equity of opportunity I'm all for. It's a very foolish person who would try to argue otherwise. But equity of outcome is a dangerously unbalanced notion, that lends itself to an increasingly fractured 'infinity of categories' with never ending consequences of exclusion and prejudice.

I'm also well aware of the limitations of empiricism, see such works as Iain Mcgilchrist's The Master & His Emissary, the Divided brain and the making of the western world, on the nature of brain hemispheric differences (beyond the simplified and inaccurate pop-cultural ones) as a very brilliant critique of how and where modern society has developed.

 Da Boss wrote:

Our problems are indeed deep and complex, and patriarchy is only one aspect of them. I'm much more concerned with environmental destruction personally, but I can stop and acknowledge that I exist in a patriarchal system.

Given what we have seen the evidence (not just in the empirical sense) does not suggest a settled view on the legitimacy of a patriarchy complaint. At least not in most western cultures.

And it's dangerous to assume a settled truth of that nature. So you can stop and acknowledge it, but you cannot assume anybody else has a reason to.

PS: Please note that this is not the same as me making the claim that women do not experience prejudice based on their gender.

Hm, a few things

First of all I would personally never take "I wish you were dead" and all that similar things you can hear in the Internet and real life as "death threats" a threat is well a threat and wishes, are wishes, I would question the humanity of an individual wishing somebody to die because they do not share the same worldview, but it is not an threat.

"I will hunt you down and kill you" is a threat, "I wish you die" is not.

Of course one needs to examine if it is an actual threat or the hyperbole of emotions of the moment, but as a baseline the first is a death threat.

Now I do not think we (the western world) live in "the Patriarchy" we live in a structured society that has evolved through millennia to have its present form and will continue evolving and changing its shape, there was a post a while ago listing a huge amount of questions to be considered before we get into a definite conclusion about something, it was quite long and deservedly so, there are many reasons for an individuals choice and frankly"I have been forced to do it by a nebulous social structure against my wishes" is the rarity, not the norm.

As it is men and women gravitate towards different things, if one area is dominated by one gender it is entirely understandable individuals from another gender entering this field experiencing awkwardness and to some extent "resistance" in the other gender "intrusion" to their territory (in brackets because its hyperbolic) I enjoy a few hobbies that are "for women" and frankly I have experienced more or less the same reactions people say women experience in the wargaming hobby, should I assume the women are misandrist because they assumed I came to shop for my mother/ grandmother/ significant other instead of myself? or be shocked I do such a hobby? that is ridiculous its an entirely reasonable assumption and reaction because such a hobby is dominated by a gender.

Wunzlez: What you seem to be doing is engaging in a common argumentative technique whereby you ask a lot of questions which are difficult and time consuming to answer but never out forward a position of your own. I have acknowledged that it is absolutely possible to critique my ideas, and nowhere have I for example excluded women criticising other women from being part of a patriarchy. You have also then relied on definitions to narrow what you want to argue about, which is fine, but I do not think this is a particularly intellectually honest way of going about it.

Another common tactic is asking for studies and evidence in such an argument, and not providing any of your own. I reject this as it is a ridiculous standard to hold people to for an internet debate and you are not yourself abiding by it.
I am not really interested in rebutting every single point you made, I have other things to do. I was simply explaining my POV on the patriarchy and what it is. I'm sorry if you find that unsatisfactory, I mean no particular disrespect but what you are demanding of me is not worth the time investment it would require.

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I think they will be. Less under represented than in the past, particularly in the Western World, but in lots of other places women will continue to be oppressed.

I think we also focus a bit too much on the West, where women have the best chance at an equal life, and do not look at the rest of the world, where the patriarchy is glaringly obvious. Western Feminism is often guilty of ignoring the likes of Saudi Arabia, for example.

And we are going to solve this from this forum? Or from the GenCon stages?

If you want to look at the rest of the world, why do you choose to see men vs women and you don't see western world vs any other kind of world among people in general, not genders? Now that would be some inequality indeed.


Here's a line:

A-----B-C-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------D

Let's pretend this is the line of power/money/ you name it. A is the point of power of most people in the world that are not lucky bastards like you and me. People who live in Africa, Brazilian slums, middle east war-decimated countries etc. Then we go to point B. That's the mistreated and underprivileged women of the western world. Then on C we have ze men. You know which category of men. The one that needs to check their privilege and not speak so much etc etc etc. Example would be US and EU male citizens, predominantly white.

Then we have D. D is the people with real power. The kind of people who know that power doesn't come from what's between your legs but from what is in your wallet. This is how far away they are from all other points. For them, all points, A,B and C are practically the same. This is the inequality and the difference we should be shouting about. Instead you are consumed by that dot between B and C, as if it would make any difference in paying one's mortgage or managing the grocceries.

TV, movies, everything social is constructed to keep you angry and busy fighting over points B and C, while this makes you completely blind of point D and the vast horizon between your level and theirs. For the media, point A existing is harmful, so they don't get ANY representation. You will never see slums in the news, you will never hear of homeless people dying or kids starving to death. Because if you could look back at point A and realize how much power compared to A does your position of B or C give you, then you will also realize the completely different universe that people at point D live into. And then you would riot. So A is out of the picture. Equally, point D is also out of the spotlight. Media doesn't want you to know how far point D really is. They want you to know it exists, because then they can sell you the dream of maybe -if you try hard enough- you can also go there. Of course nothing screams trying hard enough more than buying this car or that gold credit card. But how far point D really is? This is a bad thing, never share it, just like they never share your actual odds of winning the lottery.

So instead of caring about the people at A or getting angry about the people at D, we consume ourselves and our time arguing between points B and C. The line above shows the futility of this endeavor.

Personally I come from Greece and live in the Netherlands. I see myself as directly impacted by the whole feminist movement. As a male, I had to attend mandatory military service after my studies. Meanwhile the female alumni went on to get hired by companies and get 2 more years of work experience compared to me. Then I moved to the Netherlands, where I lost multiple job positions because the companies wanted to be "equal opportunity employers". On paper this means they should not discriminate at all while hiring. In practice it means that they get government bonuses if they meet 50%-50% gender employment ratios. So in the engineering field, any woman engineer in the Netherlands will be an auto-hire on companies, strictly due to the fact that there are not enough women enrolling in engineering in universities. The irony here is that encouraging more women to join engineering -the very thing faminism is shouting about- would make it easier for me to get hired in the Netherlands. So on paper, feminism would be a benefit for me. In practice though, I got severely impacted by trying to force practices of "equality" without having the background set for it in advance.

I will back the whole "More women in STEM" movement once there is an equal movement for "More women in sewage cleaning" and "More women in mining". Until then, I will see it as a try to cherry pick benefits without assuming any of the forced responsibilities.

 Da Boss wrote:
Wunzlez: What you seem to be doing is engaging in a common argumentative technique whereby you ask a lot of questions which are difficult and time consuming to answer but never out forward a position of your own. I have acknowledged that it is absolutely possible to critique my ideas, and nowhere have I for example excluded women criticising other women from being part of a patriarchy. You have also then relied on definitions to narrow what you want to argue about, which is fine, but I do not think this is a particularly intellectually honest way of going about it.

Another common tactic is asking for studies and evidence in such an argument, and not providing any of your own. I reject this as it is a ridiculous standard to hold people to for an internet debate and you are not yourself abiding by it.
I am not really interested in rebutting every single point you made, I have other things to do. I was simply explaining my POV on the patriarchy and what it is. I'm sorry if you find that unsatisfactory, I mean no particular disrespect but what you are demanding of me is not worth the time investment it would require.

That's fair enough. The fact that those questions are difficult and time consuming to answer is exactly the point and the boiling down of societal ills to easy definitions (not necessarily from yourself but certainly from those such as Anita) is a poor and easy answer at best and not an answer at all at worst.

I don't think it was done in intellectual dishonesty though. And I only asked for studies since you mentioned that I ignored a larger body of studies. I'd be happy to provide some for what I've stated once I get back from work (although I work till the early hours of the following morning on Tuesdays) so you might have to bear with me on that. I certainly don't hold the value judgement that it is a 'ridiculous standard' to hold someone to.

But if that is indeed the end of our discussion, then so be it.

I have to point out that, the burden of proof is to the "accuser" not the "defendant".

If a study finds out something, it has the burden to provide the evidence that lead to the conclusion including the proof it was not biased or manipulated.

For me the one making a statement needs to be ready to provide the information and prove the information when challenged.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Give it a few years. The men who are in power right now (real power, not like your shift manager) have a very distinct identifier other than "being male". They are all 50/55+. Which means that they did their grind to power 20-30 years ago, and that field was waaaay too uphill for women. The effects of this we can see today, but you don't fix this by cutting women slack now.

Thankfully time is an unbiased cruel bitch and these "powerful" men will grow old, wither and die - ironically the same exact way as all the not powerful men and women. When this happens new people will come in power, and these people will have made their grind for power in our days. Do you think women will be under represented again at that time?

I think this is something most people ignores. I read a study that, in Spain, something like 70-80% of our judges are all male, and most of them are old, but the same proportion (70-80%) of new graduates in judiciary are all female, so the study pointed out that probably in 20-40 years, the gender distribution of our judges would totally inverse, and become a female-dominated field.

As much as we want to think everything is fine, 20-30 years ago women weren't threated equally to men. And as Topax said, most of those corporation big names are all old, because they reached those positions decades ago. You can't expect for women to BLAM, become instantly big corporation names in 5-10 years because "we are fine now". it takes time.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I have to point out that, the burden of proof is to the "accuser" not the "defendant".

If a study finds out something, it has the burden to provide the evidence that lead to the conclusion including the proof it was not biased or manipulated.

For me the one making a statement needs to be ready to provide the information and prove the information when challenged.

That’s been my stance since the start but apparently it’s unreasonable, only pol has actually attempted to back up his stance and I respect him because of it.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Video games and tabletop games have crossover. If she has anything relevant to say, there's nothing wrong with inviting her. Don't like her, vote with your feet. Free market, etcetc. Perhaps there are other people more worthy, if you think so, write in and tell Gencon who you'd actually like to see. If enough people name a specific person, they'll probably make an attempt to get them to show up.

I can not impress upon you how much this absolutely does not work. It was tried, things got worse anyway.

She's a minor (and rather poor) internet blogger.

She was probably the most important person in the game industry for several years and her influence was felt everywhere. She spoke in front of the UN, was on the Colbert show, is on Twitter's Trust and Safety council, was covered by national newspapers and media.... Minor, she isn't, though I will give you poor.

Without that attention in the first place, nobody would give a damn.

She played the victim card so much that even events that people weren't caring enough to attend were blown out of proportion and delivered weeks of articles about how gamers threatened her life. Even if people ignored her, they didn't actually need to provably interact with her for her to claim that she felt unsafe and was a victim of harassment. Nobody actually bothered to check if these people were real or not.

Then don't go. Talk about first world problems.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Ketara wrote:

Video games and tabletop games have crossover. If she has anything relevant to say, there's nothing wrong with inviting her. Don't like her, vote with your feet. Free market, etcetc. Perhaps there are other people more worthy, if you think so, write in and tell Gencon who you'd actually like to see. If enough people name a specific person, they'll probably make an attempt to get them to show up.

I can not impress upon you how much this absolutely does not work. It was tried, things got worse anyway.

She's a minor (and rather poor) internet blogger.

She was probably the most important person in the game industry for several years and her influence was felt everywhere. She spoke in front of the UN, was on the Colbert show, is on Twitter's Trust and Safety council, was covered by national newspapers and media.... Minor, she isn't, though I will give you poor.

Without that attention in the first place, nobody would give a damn.

She played the victim card so much that even events that people weren't caring enough to attend were blown out of proportion and delivered weeks of articles about how gamers threatened her life. Even if people ignored her, they didn't actually need to provably interact with her for her to claim that she felt unsafe and was a victim of harassment. Nobody actually bothered to check if these people were real or not.

Then don't go. Talk about first world problems.

That only solves the personal satisfaction part, and then only partly. First of all, why should I be denied my enjoyment because the event invites ambiguous guests to say the least? Sounds a lot like victim blaming more than a first world problem to me. Secondly, even if we don't go we are allowed to have a problem with potentially harmful people being in the spotlight for our hobbies. If Sarkeesian is on stage acting as a tabletop gaming representative/ person of influence while in truth she is not, then this labels all tabletop gaming as potentially serving some form of social agenda. And what does that make me, the tabletop gaming enthusiast look like?

You're no victim in this scenario.you're whining about someoe you don't like being invited to a toy convention. Are you serious? If you can't handle someone who disagrees with you, your life is going to be very hard.

Edit: she's just one of three. Don't like it don't listen it's not hard.
Just take a break and go see Weissman instead.

She made a point, got the conversation going, video gaming and society in general needed to think a little more on the gender topics.

Personal opinion only, she seems to be more a spotlight seeker than a champion for change especially when some of the facts she presented in her videos seemed rather cursory to me.
They seemed to get more sensationalized as the videos progressed, again, what do you do for an encore?

She had her time and if I were to go to Gencon I would just not go to see her or hear anything she had to present: she has covered that rather well so-far.
There are lots of shiny things there in need of support.

I prefer approaching inequality issues with trying to keep all things equal in daily matters.
I don't need some You-tube star to lecture me.
I have found her manner rather irritating (uncomfortable truths? I dunno...) so I would be doing her a service not being in her proximity.
My thoughts.

 Talizvar wrote:
She made a point, got the conversation going, video gaming and society in general needed to think a little more on the gender topics.

Personal opinion only, she seems to be more a spotlight seeker than a champion for change especially when some of the facts she presented in her videos seemed rather cursory to me.
They seemed to get more sensationalized as the videos progressed, again, what do you do for an encore?

She had her time and if I were to go to Gencon I would just not go to see her or hear anything she had to present: she has covered that rather well so-far.
There are lots of shiny things there in need of support.

I prefer approaching inequality issues with trying to keep all things equal in daily matters.
I don't need some You-tube star to lecture me.
I have found her manner rather irritating (uncomfortable truths? I dunno...) so I would be doing her a service not being in her proximity.
My thoughts.

Exactly. If you're not a fan just look at the cool shiny stuff when it's her turn.

So after having a quick look at all this I think we may well be seeing Anita trying to make the jump into a new genre and probably can expect a video series based on all the systematic sexism in miniature gaming in the not too distant future. ("I've been playing rpg's and wargames my whole life!" (Anita Sarkeesian, Women in wargaming 2019))

Call me a cynic but her channel at the mo is pulling in around 2000 views an episode from a 224k sub base. I doubt sponsors or advertising could support her and her staff and with this much of a decline in relevance I don't see her behind the scenes work being anywhere near as lucrative as it once was. I think her donations and cash flow in general are down and she needs a new cow to milk.

All in all I can't see her appearance at Gencon as being anything but the start of a Gak show. Unfortunatley her previous opponents alone will bring enough of a circus to drown out any reasonable voices and the witch hunt will probably start in earnest.

I think our best hope in all this is the companies that run our hobby. As long as they don't immediatley panic and start attacking there customer base when the drama starts then things will probably blow over and we'll be able to approach any substantive issues raised with cooler less partisan heads.... Look for the "Wargamers are dead!" articles coming soon to a BoL's near you!

 Frazzled wrote:
You're no victim in this scenario.you're whining about someoe you don't like being invited to a toy convention. Are you serious?

Dude. Toy convention? Don't denigrate other people's passion for the things that bring them happiness, community, and purpose. You don't have to share that passion, but you don't have to be an donkey-cave about it either.

I believed in her original intentions about women in gaming. I thought it was going help produce better developed female characters and stories. She raised a lot of money and took along time to produce content. Unfortunately she did a horrible job. Even now I understand some of the points she tried to make. This was something that could of benefited gaming as a whole if it was well crafted but instead made us take a step backwards and pitted people against each other.

I can understand the rise for concern about the GenCon appearance. Let her speak. See what she has to say or don't. People are wiser to her shenanigans. She has made herself look more of a fool as of late. I think too many of us are over reacting about this. We don't want to repeat our past mistakes.

 Kiggler wrote:
I think too many of us are over reacting about this. We don't want to repeat our past mistakes.

In all honesty, I don't think she'll be able to do much damage. At least with miniature gaming, the majority of players seem to be older and married, so their concern about female representation would largely be based around inclusiveness for their children, not for potential mate material. And I think it is really easy to say, "this product is not intended for children" (like KDM) than to say "this product is not intended for overly sensitive people" (like KDM).

That being said, I think the fact that GenCon decided to invite her - especially after she became wholly irrelevant - means that the cancer has spread enough that this industry is about to be in for a fight.

Well these types of threads certainly show the real faces of certain posters. Hard to imagine it stayed open for this long.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Well these types of threads certainly show the real faces of certain posters. Hard to imagine it stayed open for this long.

It also makes you wonder about some of the accounts used to post on it, like if they were alt-/new accounts made long ago that people break out to talk about something they might not otherwise want linked to their other postings.

 Da Boss wrote:
-snip-
If you wanted to give the patriarchy a less loaded name (I know some people get upset by the terminology, look at how people react to the phrase "toxic masculinity" as though it meant all masculinity and not just those parts of the masculine ideal that are harmful for men to pursue), I would be fine with that, but we have the term patriarchy and I'm not going to get too upset about it.

Also, if we had a matriarchy, I believe that it would be just the same as a patriarchy in terms of sustaining it's position and power.

The bolded part is why a lot of folk who agree with the fundamental assertion of patriarchy theory(ie, that a power hierarchy exists which systemically disadvantages and historically systemically persecuted women) take issue with the basic concept of gendering the idea and the criticism of it - in my experience, it's a rare feminist outside of actual academics that will acknowledge it's true. People react badly to phrases like "toxic masculinity" because they don't encounter those phrases in academic papers with the added context you specify, they encounter them when deployed by angry pop-feminist op-ed writers who either neglect to define the term or themselves misunderstand it, willfully or otherwise. They encounter it in the same way people often encounter "privilege" and "mansplaining" - as rhetorical tools used to silence dissenting views, or provoke a reaction which can then be used as evidence of the user's claims. They encounter it and the idea of patriarchy theory generally in the context of people who in fact do believe the patriarchy is a uniquely violent and oppressive construct because of its ostensible maleness and if they are willing to acknowledge other power hierarchies do or can exist at all(and fewer people I discuss the issue with are every year, instead suborning ever more general criticisms of society and all its nested power hierarchies into the singular gendered construct of patriarchy theory, and so men become in their minds the source of all its ills - racism, homophobia, ableism, all become masculine things that would not and even could not exist without the patriarchy), they do so only with the caveat that patriarchy is the worst in an absolute rather than temporal and relative sense(ie, not the worst right now, the worst, period, in all history and forevermore into the future).

Try debating feminism with non-academics(or, if you value your sanity, do not do that) even from a position of fundamental agreement on a regular basis and it will not be long at all until you begin encountering people who genuinely believe that women would run things better, that merely by switching from a male dominated power hierarchy to a female dominated one(or merely a population-share-equal one) the world would be a better place overnight; the end of war, more caring governments, less rapacious corporations.

Which is why people who do in fact value equality and the idea of a better society in which the broadly agreed core demands of feminism are realised get annoyed by the way so much of the critical language surrounding feminism is explicitly gendered - you can't use words and phrases that already have meaning to people in your academic work with different meanings and then wash your hands when people misunderstand the latter(or cynically exploit the relationship between the two).

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Well these types of threads certainly show the real faces of certain posters. Hard to imagine it stayed open for this long.

It also makes you wonder about some of the accounts used to post on it, like if they were alt-/new accounts made long ago that people break out to talk about something they might not otherwise want linked to their other postings.

Make me wonder why you're actually joining in on the thread other than to cast aspersions at those involved? There's been some back and forth but for the most part its stayed fairly civil. Especially as it seems to be on a fairly devisive topic.

If you have a point to make in all this maybe you should share rather than just muttering darkly about the character of the people taking part.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:
You're no victim in this scenario.you're whining about someoe you don't like being invited to a toy convention. Are you serious?

Dude. Toy convention? Don't denigrate other people's passion for the things that bring them happiness, community, and purpose. You don't have to share that passion, but you don't have to be an donkey-cave about it either.

what are you talking about? I am on a forum about toy soldiers. It's likely I have miniatures older than you are, maybe even your parents. It's a passion I am not making fun of.

But perspective is required.

 Sasquatch wrote:

HuskyWarhammer wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Well these types of threads certainly show the real faces of certain posters. Hard to imagine it stayed open for this long.

It also makes you wonder about some of the accounts used to post on it, like if they were alt-/new accounts made long ago that people break out to talk about something they might not otherwise want linked to their other postings.

Make me wonder why your actually joining in on the thread other than to caste aspersions at those involved? There's been some back and forth but for the most part its stayed fairly civil. Especially as it seems to be on a fairly devisive topic.

If you have a point to make in all this maybe you should share rather than just muttering darkly about the character of the people taking part.

Fairly civil? Perhaps to express disbelief at people throwing around terms like "HIV" and "cancer" about a woman who they don't agree with, even if Sarkeesian is a (depending on where you stand) liar/in it for the money? Perhaps in the men engaging in whataboutism and the oppression olympics to declare sexism over?

I'm not a fan of her myself, because I think she addresses the topic in a divisive and weak manner. But I do think the community has certain issues, as its nothing but a smaller reflection of society overall so it makes sense the issues are reflected and addressing them in anyway is always going to catch flak. Do I think she is the best person to address them? No. Do I think trying to polarize the debate for financial gain regardless of the side it happens on is beneficial? No. Do I think the response about this is in any way proportional to the issue? Hell no.

As Frazzled said, its about Sarkeesian speaking at an event you don't even have to attend.

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I think they will be. Less under represented than in the past, particularly in the Western World, but in lots of other places women will continue to be oppressed.

I think we also focus a bit too much on the West, where women have the best chance at an equal life, and do not look at the rest of the world, where the patriarchy is glaringly obvious. Western Feminism is often guilty of ignoring the likes of Saudi Arabia, for example.

And we are going to solve this from this forum? Or from the GenCon stages?

If you want to look at the rest of the world, why do you choose to see men vs women and you don't see western world vs any other kind of world among people in general, not genders? Now that would be some inequality indeed.


Here's a line:

A-----B-C-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------D

Let's pretend this is the line of power/money/ you name it. A is the point of power of most people in the world that are not lucky bastards like you and me. People who live in Africa, Brazilian slums, middle east war-decimated countries etc. Then we go to point B. That's the mistreated and underprivileged women of the western world. Then on C we have ze men. You know which category of men. The one that needs to check their privilege and not speak so much etc etc etc. Example would be US and EU male citizens, predominantly white.

Then we have D. D is the people with real power. The kind of people who know that power doesn't come from what's between your legs but from what is in your wallet. This is how far away they are from all other points. For them, all points, A,B and C are practically the same. This is the inequality and the difference we should be shouting about. Instead you are consumed by that dot between B and C, as if it would make any difference in paying one's mortgage or managing the grocceries.

TV, movies, everything social is constructed to keep you angry and busy fighting over points B and C, while this makes you completely blind of point D and the vast horizon between your level and theirs. For the media, point A existing is harmful, so they don't get ANY representation. You will never see slums in the news, you will never hear of homeless people dying or kids starving to death. Because if you could look back at point A and realize how much power compared to A does your position of B or C give you, then you will also realize the completely different universe that people at point D live into. And then you would riot. So A is out of the picture. Equally, point D is also out of the spotlight. Media doesn't want you to know how far point D really is. They want you to know it exists, because then they can sell you the dream of maybe -if you try hard enough- you can also go there. Of course nothing screams trying hard enough more than buying this car or that gold credit card. But how far point D really is? This is a bad thing, never share it, just like they never share your actual odds of winning the lottery.

So instead of caring about the people at A or getting angry about the people at D, we consume ourselves and our time arguing between points B and C. The line above shows the futility of this endeavor.

Personally I come from Greece and live in the Netherlands. I see myself as directly impacted by the whole feminist movement. As a male, I had to attend mandatory military service after my studies. Meanwhile the female alumni went on to get hired by companies and get 2 more years of work experience compared to me. Then I moved to the Netherlands, where I lost multiple job positions because the companies wanted to be "equal opportunity employers". On paper this means they should not discriminate at all while hiring. In practice it means that they get government bonuses if they meet 50%-50% gender employment ratios. So in the engineering field, any woman engineer in the Netherlands will be an auto-hire on companies, strictly due to the fact that there are not enough women enrolling in engineering in universities. The irony here is that encouraging more women to join engineering -the very thing faminism is shouting about- would make it easier for me to get hired in the Netherlands. So on paper, feminism would be a benefit for me. In practice though, I got severely impacted by trying to force practices of "equality" without having the background set for it in advance.

I will back the whole "More women in STEM" movement once there is an equal movement for "More women in sewage cleaning" and "More women in mining". Until then, I will see it as a try to cherry pick benefits without assuming any of the forced responsibilities.

It's really racist and sexist to take notice of the harms of concentrated capital and futility of social justice movements. I am certain marginalized groups would rather have a bigger piece of 1% of the GDP of the country where they live than a less equitable portion of a 10 - 20% share. The fact that the top 1% control 95% - 99% of the capital in the most advanced Democracies is insignificant compared to the pronouns we use to refer to one another.

Further, your points about employment practices in the Netherlands make you sound like a white supremacist. Of course governments have an interest in expanding equitable employment options in engineering and not in sanitation. There is need for cishet white male engineers to contribute productively to a society once they have been replaced by female versions of themselves.

 techsoldaten wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I think they will be. Less under represented than in the past, particularly in the Western World, but in lots of other places women will continue to be oppressed.

I think we also focus a bit too much on the West, where women have the best chance at an equal life, and do not look at the rest of the world, where the patriarchy is glaringly obvious. Western Feminism is often guilty of ignoring the likes of Saudi Arabia, for example.

And we are going to solve this from this forum? Or from the GenCon stages?

If you want to look at the rest of the world, why do you choose to see men vs women and you don't see western world vs any other kind of world among people in general, not genders? Now that would be some inequality indeed.


Here's a line:

A-----B-C-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------D

Let's pretend this is the line of power/money/ you name it. A is the point of power of most people in the world that are not lucky bastards like you and me. People who live in Africa, Brazilian slums, middle east war-decimated countries etc. Then we go to point B. That's the mistreated and underprivileged women of the western world. Then on C we have ze men. You know which category of men. The one that needs to check their privilege and not speak so much etc etc etc. Example would be US and EU male citizens, predominantly white.

Then we have D. D is the people with real power. The kind of people who know that power doesn't come from what's between your legs but from what is in your wallet. This is how far away they are from all other points. For them, all points, A,B and C are practically the same. This is the inequality and the difference we should be shouting about. Instead you are consumed by that dot between B and C, as if it would make any difference in paying one's mortgage or managing the grocceries.

TV, movies, everything social is constructed to keep you angry and busy fighting over points B and C, while this makes you completely blind of point D and the vast horizon between your level and theirs. For the media, point A existing is harmful, so they don't get ANY representation. You will never see slums in the news, you will never hear of homeless people dying or kids starving to death. Because if you could look back at point A and realize how much power compared to A does your position of B or C give you, then you will also realize the completely different universe that people at point D live into. And then you would riot. So A is out of the picture. Equally, point D is also out of the spotlight. Media doesn't want you to know how far point D really is. They want you to know it exists, because then they can sell you the dream of maybe -if you try hard enough- you can also go there. Of course nothing screams trying hard enough more than buying this car or that gold credit card. But how far point D really is? This is a bad thing, never share it, just like they never share your actual odds of winning the lottery.

So instead of caring about the people at A or getting angry about the people at D, we consume ourselves and our time arguing between points B and C. The line above shows the futility of this endeavor.

Personally I come from Greece and live in the Netherlands. I see myself as directly impacted by the whole feminist movement. As a male, I had to attend mandatory military service after my studies. Meanwhile the female alumni went on to get hired by companies and get 2 more years of work experience compared to me. Then I moved to the Netherlands, where I lost multiple job positions because the companies wanted to be "equal opportunity employers". On paper this means they should not discriminate at all while hiring. In practice it means that they get government bonuses if they meet 50%-50% gender employment ratios. So in the engineering field, any woman engineer in the Netherlands will be an auto-hire on companies, strictly due to the fact that there are not enough women enrolling in engineering in universities. The irony here is that encouraging more women to join engineering -the very thing faminism is shouting about- would make it easier for me to get hired in the Netherlands. So on paper, feminism would be a benefit for me. In practice though, I got severely impacted by trying to force practices of "equality" without having the background set for it in advance.

I will back the whole "More women in STEM" movement once there is an equal movement for "More women in sewage cleaning" and "More women in mining". Until then, I will see it as a try to cherry pick benefits without assuming any of the forced responsibilities.

It's really racist and sexist to take notice of the harms of concentrated capital and futility of social justice movements. I am certain marginalized groups would rather have a bigger piece of 1% of the GDP of the country where they live than a less equitable portion of a 10 - 20% share. The fact that the top 1% control 95% - 99% of the capital in the most advanced Democracies is insignificant compared to the pronouns we use to refer to one another.

Further, your points about employment practices in the Netherlands make you sound like a white supremacist. Of course governments have an interest in expanding equitable employment options in engineering and not in sanitation. There is need for cishet white male engineers to contribute productively to a society once they have been replaced by female versions of themselves.

It makes me sad that I can't tell if you're joking.

 techsoldaten wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I think they will be. Less under represented than in the past, particularly in the Western World, but in lots of other places women will continue to be oppressed.

I think we also focus a bit too much on the West, where women have the best chance at an equal life, and do not look at the rest of the world, where the patriarchy is glaringly obvious. Western Feminism is often guilty of ignoring the likes of Saudi Arabia, for example.

And we are going to solve this from this forum? Or from the GenCon stages?

If you want to look at the rest of the world, why do you choose to see men vs women and you don't see western world vs any other kind of world among people in general, not genders? Now that would be some inequality indeed.


Here's a line:

A-----B-C-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------D

Let's pretend this is the line of power/money/ you name it. A is the point of power of most people in the world that are not lucky bastards like you and me. People who live in Africa, Brazilian slums, middle east war-decimated countries etc. Then we go to point B. That's the mistreated and underprivileged women of the western world. Then on C we have ze men. You know which category of men. The one that needs to check their privilege and not speak so much etc etc etc. Example would be US and EU male citizens, predominantly white.

Then we have D. D is the people with real power. The kind of people who know that power doesn't come from what's between your legs but from what is in your wallet. This is how far away they are from all other points. For them, all points, A,B and C are practically the same. This is the inequality and the difference we should be shouting about. Instead you are consumed by that dot between B and C, as if it would make any difference in paying one's mortgage or managing the grocceries.

TV, movies, everything social is constructed to keep you angry and busy fighting over points B and C, while this makes you completely blind of point D and the vast horizon between your level and theirs. For the media, point A existing is harmful, so they don't get ANY representation. You will never see slums in the news, you will never hear of homeless people dying or kids starving to death. Because if you could look back at point A and realize how much power compared to A does your position of B or C give you, then you will also realize the completely different universe that people at point D live into. And then you would riot. So A is out of the picture. Equally, point D is also out of the spotlight. Media doesn't want you to know how far point D really is. They want you to know it exists, because then they can sell you the dream of maybe -if you try hard enough- you can also go there. Of course nothing screams trying hard enough more than buying this car or that gold credit card. But how far point D really is? This is a bad thing, never share it, just like they never share your actual odds of winning the lottery.

So instead of caring about the people at A or getting angry about the people at D, we consume ourselves and our time arguing between points B and C. The line above shows the futility of this endeavor.

Personally I come from Greece and live in the Netherlands. I see myself as directly impacted by the whole feminist movement. As a male, I had to attend mandatory military service after my studies. Meanwhile the female alumni went on to get hired by companies and get 2 more years of work experience compared to me. Then I moved to the Netherlands, where I lost multiple job positions because the companies wanted to be "equal opportunity employers". On paper this means they should not discriminate at all while hiring. In practice it means that they get government bonuses if they meet 50%-50% gender employment ratios. So in the engineering field, any woman engineer in the Netherlands will be an auto-hire on companies, strictly due to the fact that there are not enough women enrolling in engineering in universities. The irony here is that encouraging more women to join engineering -the very thing faminism is shouting about- would make it easier for me to get hired in the Netherlands. So on paper, feminism would be a benefit for me. In practice though, I got severely impacted by trying to force practices of "equality" without having the background set for it in advance.

I will back the whole "More women in STEM" movement once there is an equal movement for "More women in sewage cleaning" and "More women in mining". Until then, I will see it as a try to cherry pick benefits without assuming any of the forced responsibilities.

It's really racist and sexist to take notice of the harms of concentrated capital and futility of social justice movements. I am certain marginalized groups would rather have a bigger piece of 1% of the GDP of the country where they live than a less equitable portion of a 10 - 20% share. The fact that the top 1% control 95% - 99% of the capital in the most advanced Democracies is insignificant compared to the pronouns we use to refer to one another.

Further, your points about employment practices in the Netherlands make you sound like a white supremacist. Of course governments have an interest in expanding equitable employment options in engineering and not in sanitation. There is need for cishet white male engineers to contribute productively to a society once they have been replaced by female versions of themselves.

How you got white supremacist from that boggles my mind.....

 Sim-Life wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, I think they will be. Less under represented than in the past, particularly in the Western World, but in lots of other places women will continue to be oppressed.

I think we also focus a bit too much on the West, where women have the best chance at an equal life, and do not look at the rest of the world, where the patriarchy is glaringly obvious. Western Feminism is often guilty of ignoring the likes of Saudi Arabia, for example.

And we are going to solve this from this forum? Or from the GenCon stages?

If you want to look at the rest of the world, why do you choose to see men vs women and you don't see western world vs any other kind of world among people in general, not genders? Now that would be some inequality indeed.


Here's a line:

A-----B-C-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------D

Let's pretend this is the line of power/money/ you name it. A is the point of power of most people in the world that are not lucky bastards like you and me. People who live in Africa, Brazilian slums, middle east war-decimated countries etc. Then we go to point B. That's the mistreated and underprivileged women of the western world. Then on C we have ze men. You know which category of men. The one that needs to check their privilege and not speak so much etc etc etc. Example would be US and EU male citizens, predominantly white.

Then we have D. D is the people with real power. The kind of people who know that power doesn't come from what's between your legs but from what is in your wallet. This is how far away they are from all other points. For them, all points, A,B and C are practically the same. This is the inequality and the difference we should be shouting about. Instead you are consumed by that dot between B and C, as if it would make any difference in paying one's mortgage or managing the grocceries.

TV, movies, everything social is constructed to keep you angry and busy fighting over points B and C, while this makes you completely blind of point D and the vast horizon between your level and theirs. For the media, point A existing is harmful, so they don't get ANY representation. You will never see slums in the news, you will never hear of homeless people dying or kids starving to death. Because if you could look back at point A and realize how much power compared to A does your position of B or C give you, then you will also realize the completely different universe that people at point D live into. And then you would riot. So A is out of the picture. Equally, point D is also out of the spotlight. Media doesn't want you to know how far point D really is. They want you to know it exists, because then they can sell you the dream of maybe -if you try hard enough- you can also go there. Of course nothing screams trying hard enough more than buying this car or that gold credit card. But how far point D really is? This is a bad thing, never share it, just like they never share your actual odds of winning the lottery.

So instead of caring about the people at A or getting angry about the people at D, we consume ourselves and our time arguing between points B and C. The line above shows the futility of this endeavor.

Personally I come from Greece and live in the Netherlands. I see myself as directly impacted by the whole feminist movement. As a male, I had to attend mandatory military service after my studies. Meanwhile the female alumni went on to get hired by companies and get 2 more years of work experience compared to me. Then I moved to the Netherlands, where I lost multiple job positions because the companies wanted to be "equal opportunity employers". On paper this means they should not discriminate at all while hiring. In practice it means that they get government bonuses if they meet 50%-50% gender employment ratios. So in the engineering field, any woman engineer in the Netherlands will be an auto-hire on companies, strictly due to the fact that there are not enough women enrolling in engineering in universities. The irony here is that encouraging more women to join engineering -the very thing faminism is shouting about- would make it easier for me to get hired in the Netherlands. So on paper, feminism would be a benefit for me. In practice though, I got severely impacted by trying to force practices of "equality" without having the background set for it in advance.

I will back the whole "More women in STEM" movement once there is an equal movement for "More women in sewage cleaning" and "More women in mining". Until then, I will see it as a try to cherry pick benefits without assuming any of the forced responsibilities.

It's really racist and sexist to take notice of the harms of concentrated capital and futility of social justice movements. I am certain marginalized groups would rather have a bigger piece of 1% of the GDP of the country where they live than a less equitable portion of a 10 - 20% share. The fact that the top 1% control 95% - 99% of the capital in the most advanced Democracies is insignificant compared to the pronouns we use to refer to one another.

Further, your points about employment practices in the Netherlands make you sound like a white supremacist. Of course governments have an interest in expanding equitable employment options in engineering and not in sanitation. There is need for cishet white male engineers to contribute productively to a society once they have been replaced by female versions of themselves.

It makes me sad that I can't tell if you're joking.

I don’t think he is, I think we have a prime example here of someone seeing what they want to see and not what is actually there

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Well these types of threads certainly show the real faces of certain posters. Hard to imagine it stayed open for this long.

It could be a good thing. After all, the only way these things get noticed is by putting them out in the open. Take the notion that feminism is about replacing Patriarchy with Matriarchy. That's, well, I don't quite know what to say about that except it's a kind of fundamental misunderstanding. But at least we know who thinks that, and what else they think. Likewise it'll be good to find out what Ms. Sarkeesian has to say about the tabletop gaming hobby.

 Formosa wrote:
I don’t think he is, I think we have a prime example here of someone seeing what they want to see and not what is actually there

It sounds like sarcasm from here.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nurglitch wrote:

 Disciple of Fate wrote:
Well these types of threads certainly show the real faces of certain posters. Hard to imagine it stayed open for this long.

It could be a good thing. After all, the only way these things get noticed is by putting them out in the open. Take the notion that feminism is about replacing Patriarchy with Matriarchy. That's, well, I don't quite know what to say about that except it's a kind of fundamental misunderstanding. But at least we know who thinks that, and what else they think. Likewise it'll be good to find out what Ms. Sarkeesian has to say about the tabletop gaming hobby.

It certainly is.

As for Sarkeesian. I doubt she will have many new/relevant things to say for those who have reflected on certain parts of the hobby community. In my opinion she holds little authority on the subject overall, mostly keeping to the surface issues/low hanging fruit. She wasn't the first on this subject and won't be the last, but she certainly acquired the most fame/infamy. It certainly will turn the spotlight on it and drags us all down into the sewer with the inevitable backlash.