Can you link to the the study that shows online abuse including death threats overwhelmingly happen more often to women involved in the games industry than men?
Adam Orth, Jack Thompson, Brad Wardell and David Vonderhaar might have something to say about that.
There are two studies that are relevant and were linked earlier in this very thread. One found an imbalance of almost 20:1 against women but was conducted years ago on IRC the other found little imbalance but focused on 'celebrities' and completely failed to properly share their methodology or statistics, etc making it worse than useless. It also included Piers Morgan and anything that includes Piers Morgan can piss off and that includes CNN.
Edit: dLMN8r did a much better job at offering useful studies above me.
This is somewhat related to this thread, but I feel I might as well ask this here seeing how it's so active.
In Anita's most recent video, she uses Watch Dogs as an example to show how women are used as backdrops in scenes of abusive/domestic violence and contrasts it with another clip from the game where two men face off and one is empowered to fight back. Later on, she highlights domestic abuse levels in the States as a major issue (which of course it is)...but here's my question:
Because we know Watch Dogs was aiming to achieve a realistic tone for its world, one in which crime is somewhat reflective of real crime (at least in these more mundane scenarios, ignoring the hacker shit), I don't see what her overall message is. Is she asking for censorship of this type of thing, or just pointing out its existence and how it reflects on women?
This is somewhat related to this thread, but I feel I might as well ask this here seeing how it's so active.
In Anita's most recent video, she uses Watch Dogs as an example to show how women are used as backdrops in scenes of abusive/domestic violence and contrasts it with another clip from the game where two men face off and one is empowered to fight back. Later on, she highlights domestic abuse levels in the States as a major issue (which of course it is)...but here's my question:
Because we know Watch Dogs was aiming to achieve a realistic tone for its world, one in which crime is somewhat reflective of real crime (at least in these more mundane scenarios, ignoring the hacker shit), is she not being intensely hypocritical by condemning this scene? Is she asking for censorship of this type of thing, or just pointing out its existence and how it reflects on women?
Virtually every game mentioned in that video is using the same realism or grounded excuse. That's sort of the point. What exactly would be hypocritical about condemning it?
Except the misogyny is much more present so why not go for the bigger issue and fix most of the smaller one in the process? Frequency has already gone into this better though.
This is somewhat related to this thread, but I feel I might as well ask this here seeing how it's so active.
In Anita's most recent video, she uses Watch Dogs as an example to show how women are used as backdrops in scenes of abusive/domestic violence and contrasts it with another clip from the game where two men face off and one is empowered to fight back. Later on, she highlights domestic abuse levels in the States as a major issue (which of course it is)...but here's my question:
Because we know Watch Dogs was aiming to achieve a realistic tone for its world, one in which crime is somewhat reflective of real crime (at least in these more mundane scenarios, ignoring the hacker shit), I don't see what her overall message is. Is she asking for censorship of this type of thing, or just pointing out its existence and how it reflects on women?
She's not calling for censorship, at all. And no, I don't think she's being hypocritical. She's calling attention to these trends in a subset of fiction (in this case video games)
And honestly? Yeah WatchDogs is going for a "realistic" tone but if some of the women were depicted as fighting back I doubt anyone was going to go "oh man, suspension of disbelief, broken right there"
That's really true for all of the marginalization and background women complaints: are these specific ways in which women are portrayed really so integral to the tone that players would notice their absence? Or is it more likely that developers are thoughtlessly parroting their own cultural sensibilities? The latter, by the way, is what some devs have actually said her videos helped them recognize.
Virtually every game mentioned in that video is using the same realism or grounded excuse. That's sort of the point. What exactly would be hypocritical about condemning it?
I rephrased my post a bit to reflect my confusion a bit better.
Either way, at some point...surely one has to acknowledge that it's just trying to be *real*. There's an obvious bridge you need to cross if you want to depict things that way, no?
There's no hypocrisy in her statements (At least, not as far as I can see.) since she's not contradicting herself on anything by pointing it out.
That said, you could make an argument that the game is justified in it's deception since it is supposed to be based on reality.
... But then, it's also a game where you get shot and walk it off many times, so I suspect you could find an issue about where you choose to apply your "Reality" in a game.
I rephrased my post a bit to reflect my confusion a bit better.
Either way, at some point...surely one has to acknowledge that it's just trying to be *real*. There's a bridge you need to cross if you want to depict things that way, no?
But realism is broken in so many other ways. Even beyond the hacking shit you have the behavior of the police and civil authorities, the way other characters act, the way the main character acts, hell basically every gameplay mechanic...why are these specific ways of treating female characters so integral to that "realistic" experience?
If women are portrayed in a sexist manner in a video game = "it's just fantasy/sci-fi/fiction - anything goes!"
If women are portrayed in a sexist manner in a video game = "it's supposed to be realistic/historically accurate! Women are/were portrayed in a sexist manner in real life!
I guess anything to deflect criticism goes. (I'm not talking about securitypigeon's argument, just a general observation on these things)
@securitypigeon
Your argument has also been answered ad naseum in the latest Sarkeesian thread. if you're willing to browse through it
Many of those are actually addressed by gender equality. If women were not seen as the child rearing gender, men would then be on equal footing in custody battles. If women were not seen as the submissive and weaker and more emotionally unstable gender, men would then no longer need to put up a "tough guy" facade to hide their mental issues and would not be dismissed as having less serious mental health concerns. Equality would cause society to stop attributing strength to males and garbage like "be a real man" and "suck it up" and "grow some balls" will go away.
Many of the issues men face are directly related to their status compared to women. If the genders were equal, if women were brought up to the same status as men in all areas, you will find society to be a lot kinder to men as well.
The problem is that by framing it as a men's issue thing, it looks like people want to address these issues while keeping the status quo for women -- for men to have an equal chance in divorces/custody battles while women continue to keep our role as the child rearing gender.
Except the misogyny is much more present so why not go for the bigger issue and fix most of the smaller one in the process? Frequency has already gone into this better though.
But realism is broken in so many other ways. Even beyond the hacking shit you have the behavior of the police and civil authorities, the way other characters act, the way the main character acts, hell basically every gameplay mechanic...why are these specific ways of treating female characters so integral to that "realistic" experience?
I'm no designer but I have to imagine that conveying those sorts of scenes is easier to pull of than creating a "realistic" weapon damage system, or whatever. Of course there are concessions, but there are also levels of reality which games are currently more equipped to pull off than others.
That's why Volition talking about covering the prostitutes in Saints Row doesn't bother me at all - the game's so bananas anyway, they're more able to make those decisions without it harming some tonal aspects of the game as a whole.
If women are portrayed in a sexist manner in a video game = "it's just fantasy/sci-fi/fiction - anything goes!"
If women are portrayed in a sexist manner in a video game = "it's supposed to be realistic/historically accurate! Women are/were portrayed in a sexist manner in real life!
But your sneering at this is what I take umbrage with.
What if that is a game's intent, or is a movie's intent? What if it serves as a way of depicting tone, or the immorality of a certain character? Surely those are justifications that have meaning and aren't entirely throwaway..?
Can you link to the the study that shows online abuse including death threats overwhelmingly happen more often to women involved in the games industry than men?
Adam Orth, Jack Thompson, Brad Wardell and David Vonderhaar might have something to say about that.
The goal of this study is to determine how gamers’ reactions to male voices differ from reactions to female voices. The authors conducted an observational study with an experimental design to play in and record multiplayer matches (N = 245) of a video game. The researchers played against 1,660 unique gamers and broadcasted pre-recorded audio clips of either a man or a woman speaking. Gamers’ reactions were digitally recorded, capturing what was said and heard during the game. Independent coders were used to conduct a quantitative content analysis of game data. Findings indicate that, on average, the female voice received three times as many negative comments as the male voice or no voice. In addition, the female voice received more queries and more messages from other gamers than the male voice or no voice.
You even had women who to be anonymous for the Escapist article because of the harassment they would receive if they had divulged their names. That should tell you how fucked up this is.
This is somewhat related to this thread, but I feel I might as well ask this here seeing how it's so active.
In Anita's most recent video, she uses Watch Dogs as an example to show how women are used as backdrops in scenes of abusive/domestic violence and contrasts it with another clip from the game where two men face off and one is empowered to fight back. Later on, she highlights domestic abuse levels in the States as a major issue (which of course it is)...but here's my question:
Because we know Watch Dogs was aiming to achieve a realistic tone for its world, one in which crime is somewhat reflective of real crime (at least in these more mundane scenarios, ignoring the hacker shit), I don't see what her overall message is. Is she asking for censorship of this type of thing, or just pointing out its existence and how it reflects on women?
No she's not being hypocritical here, in Watch_Dogs every female character lacks agency, it's all about Aidan Pearse. Agency is important because otherwise a character is just there for plot purposes and is exploited, the slaves in the AC4 expansion are in a very similar grey area given that to the player they were little more than currency for upgrades. This is why IMO W_D suffers from the taint of misogyny lets list the female characters:
Aidan's Sister:
Losses daughter because Aiden is a criminal who was shot at by other criminals, asks him to stop, he doesn't, is kidnapped for most of the game (aka fridging) yet is weirdly calm about it the whole time, on release she and her son lose their entire world due to Aiden and his continued criminal career.
The hacker:
Has almost no story beyond
helping to target Aiden at beginning
, does whatever Aiden says, then dies
Random women in 'intercepted' vids:
Suffer violence or are engaged in sex acts, the only video I can think of that wasn't some variant on the first two was a rather touching scene of a guy playing with his daughter I rather wish there were more of those as I just gave up watching after a while. So many of those videos were just horrible to both genders but women got it worst.
Using the portrayal of a thing to titilate or as a cheap way of saying 'these are the bad mens' is just more exploitation. If they had allowed any of the women agency by say listening into a phone call of an abuse survivor reporting her abuse to a cop and getting help then we could say it raises awareness. Think of it like this you couldn't raise awareness of the problem of human trafficking for prostitution by having your main character have sexy time with a hooker nor do you raise awareness of domestic violence by using it as fuel for your male main character to feel better about inflicting more violence.
juxtoposition with feminism is the dumbest thing you could do imho. feminists can speak; and the problem that making these points gets lost in all the mysogony with the insistance that people change their passion to be about this or else and the complaining that feminists get air time and men don't. coat tailing on someone elses problems is hurting you both if your objective is change. accusing feminists of not caring about equality because they aren't talking about your stuff is very bad.
hell, even discussing this here in this thread is pretty distasteful because of the history.
I rephrased my post a bit to reflect my confusion a bit better.
Either way, at some point...surely one has to acknowledge that it's just trying to be *real*. There's an obvious bridge you need to cross if you want to depict things that way, no?
There's a difference between "realism" to paint an accurate picture of a bad situation (like, let's say, in many Scorcese movies) and using cheap tropes then claiming it's for "realism". I don't think Watch Dogs is trying to make a point with its depiction of women, nor does it add anything. I don't think anybody would claim the game is "unrealistic" if it wasn't here.
Instead of derailing the thread with your distorted idea of what feminism should and shouldn't be, why don't you go there instead, you'll feel right at home.
But your sneering at this is what I take umbrage with.
What if that is a game's intent, or is a movie's intent? What if it serves as a way of depicting tone, or the immorality of a certain character? Surely those are justifications that have meaning and aren't entirely throwaway..?
Of course, theoretically you might have cases where sensitive issues related to sexist treatments of women are justifiably portrayed and contextualized, despite the fact that the historical media landscape overwhelmingly use female characters short-handedly in a sexist manner to convey something or the other (which is what Sarkeesian goes into). Sure, something like that may exist, just like it's possible for a comedian to somewhat tastefully do a rape joke. It is possible, definitely.
*BUT* we are talking about video games. We are talking about schlock like Hitman Absolution, Red Dead Redemption, Watch Dogs, etc. Games who fail to provide justification or contextualization for their mistreatment of female characters. It's just superficial fluff, as if it's merely background noise with no regard to the sensitivity of the topic in itself.
So, it may very well be that there's some piece of media object that justifiably uses sexist depictions of women to convey and execute their theme, but the schlock that Sarkeesian goes through is demonstratively not such pieces of media objects. It's superficial, it's shallow, and it's simple-minded. To some people, it may even be offensive in how carelessly and irresponsibly those games choose to portray something as sensitive as (normalized) violence towards women.
But your sneering at this is what I take umbrage with.
What if that is a game's intent, or is a movie's intent? What if it serves as a way of depicting tone, or the immorality of a certain character? Surely those are justifications that have meaning and aren't entirely throwaway..?
It is a trope that deserves sneering, there are films and media that can pull off the high wire act of exploiting stereotypes and delivering a message that undermines those stereotypes at the same time these are very few and far between though and certainly W_D is nowhere near that level of sophistication in it's commentary. Remember we're discussing W_D not a hypothetical piece of media and W_D does not even try to do any of those things, women are purely used as rage fuel or as sex objects in that game.
I actually used Trevor from GTAV as an example earlier in this thread of a character who subverts the tropes of the GTA genre of a grounded character who commits thousands of murders without flinching into a character who enjoys these things and encourages the player too. They even shoved the fact that Trevor is a monster in your face after you've been encouraged to grow to like him
by telling you of his betrayal by Michael and making him the exclusive PC for an hour or so then having you witness his unjustified slaughtering of his partners cousin and fiance
No she's not being hypocritical here, in Watch_Dogs every female character lacks agency, it's all about Aidan Pearse. Agency is important because otherwise a character is just there for plot purposes and is exploited, the slaves in the AC4 expansion are in a very similar grey area given that to the player they were little more than currency for upgrades. This is why IMO W_D suffers from the taint of misogyny lets list the female characters:
Aidan's Sister:
Losses daughter because Aiden is a criminal who was shot at by other criminals, asks him to stop, he doesn't, is kidnapped for most of the game (aka fridging) yet is weirdly calm about it the whole time, on release she and her son lose their entire world due to Aiden and his continued criminal career.
The hacker:
Has almost no story beyond
helping to target Aiden at beginning
, does whatever Aiden says, then dies
Random women in 'intercepted' vids:
Suffer violence or are engaged in sex acts, the only video I can think of that wasn't some variant on the first two was a rather touching scene of a guy playing with his daughter I rather wish there were more of those as I just gave up watching after a while. So many of those videos were just horrible to both genders but women got it worst.
Using the portrayal of a thing to titilate or as a cheap way of saying 'these are the bad mens' is just more exploitation. If they had allowed any of the women agency by say listening into a phone call of an abuse survivor reporting her abuse to a cop and getting help then we could say it raises awareness. Think of it like this you couldn't raise awareness of the problem of human trafficking for prostitution by having your main character have sexy time with a hooker nor do you raise awareness of domestic violence by using it as fuel for your male main character to feel better about inflicting more violence.
Does it have to raise awareness in such a way though? Again, it could be a creative intention to be bleak and uncomfortable. (Granted, clumsiness than take place instead, which it often does to my eyes.)
I can see your point about the game having more positive female roles - there's nothing wrong with that, and I definitely agree that the world does need more of them throughout all sorts of media. All the same, I don't entirely buy your argument. Unfortunately, it seems to me there are many abjectly horrible men in the world who take advantage of women in all manner of ways..and that's what scenes like those highlighted in Watch Dogs convey,
There's a difference between "realism" to paint an accurate picture of a bad situation (like, let's say, in many Scorcese movies) and using cheap tropes then claiming it's for "realism". I don't think Watch Dogs is trying to make a point with its depiction of women, nor does it add anything. I don't think anybody would claim the game is "unrealistic" if it wasn't here.
I grant you it's not very elegant, but the creative intention is clear to me - a man is overpowering a woman with violence. That's not unusual.
Honestly, if a game was ever brave (or stupid) enough to realistically convey rape, I'd think it weird if a woman managed to overpower a larger man by sheer, natural force.
I'm saying that it doesn't really matter, because if pursuing currently covered issues ends up fixing one that isn't being covered so well why does it matter what way it gets resolved? As others have said covering one issue also doesn't preclude covering another anyway (although the Menrights brigade have kind of poisoned the well in regards to this).
Does it have to raise awareness in such a way though? Again, it could be a creative intention to be bleak and uncomfortable. (Granted, clumsiness than take place instead, which it often does to me eyes.)
I can see your point about the game having more positive female roles - there's nothing wrong with that, and I definitely agree that the world does use more of them throughout all sorts of media. All the same, I don't entirely buy your argument. Unfortunately, it seems to me there are many abjectly horrible men in the world who take advantage of women in all manner of ways..and that's what scenes like those highlighted in Watch Dogs convey,
Yeah but that's not what W_D even tries to do I mean the human traficking it portrays is sof far from reality it's almost a parody. You have victims parading around topless for the player to get a good ogle at, none of them appear abused or drug addled and there has never been a recorded instance of a high end hooker auction. It just seems the game wanted titties and rather than use the standard 80s film convention of 'meeting in a strip bar' they went down a way 'edgier' road that is far more gross IMO.
If W_D wanted to bleak and uncomfortable Aiden would have used an online dating site to arrange for dead eyed pre-teen to be brought over by her abuser. In the continental US there is a huge problem with teen runaways being traded for sex by their abusers, it's like a horrific perversion of the underground railroad. It does not involve giant neon nightclubs and parades of sexy ladies rather it involves dirty motel rooms and sobbing teens and preteens. W_D is many things but it most certainly not realistic in it's portrayal of human trafficking for sex.
This is somewhat related to this thread, but I feel I might as well ask this here seeing how it's so active.
In Anita's most recent video, she uses Watch Dogs as an example to show how women are used as backdrops in scenes of abusive/domestic violence and contrasts it with another clip from the game where two men face off and one is empowered to fight back. Later on, she highlights domestic abuse levels in the States as a major issue (which of course it is)...but here's my question:
Because we know Watch Dogs was aiming to achieve a realistic tone for its world, one in which crime is somewhat reflective of real crime (at least in these more mundane scenarios, ignoring the hacker shit), I don't see what her overall message is. Is she asking for censorship of this type of thing, or just pointing out its existence and how it reflects on women?
I just took it as highlighting the issue. The topic of gender violence is still in its infancy (and largely focused on male-on-female violence) and the Watch Dogs scenarios are merely a reflection of that. I absolutely agree that it's not an accurate reflection of society.
I still think the more interesting criticism would have been the lack of gender reversals. Female-on-male violence is considered inexistent by many in our culture and 'shocking' enough that this video went viral. There's something to be said when that almost feels like a satire.
Yeah but that's not what W_D even tries to do I mean the human traficking it portrays is sof far from reality it's almost a parody. You have victims parading around topless for the player to get a good ogle at, none of them appear abused or drug addled and there has never been a recorded instance of a high end hooker auction. It just seems the game wanted titties and rather than use the standard 80s film convention of 'meeting in a strip bar' they went down a way 'edgier' road that is far more gross IMO.
If W_D wanted to bleak and uncomfortable Aiden would have used an online dating site to arrange for dead eyed pre-teen to be brought over by her abuser. In the continental US there is a huge problem with teen runaways being traded for sex by their abusers, it's like a horrific perversion of the underground railroad. It does not involve giant neon nightclubs and parades of sexy ladies rather it involves dirty motel rooms and sobbing teens and preteens. W_D is many things but it most certainly not realistic in it's portrayal of human trafficking for sex.
Again, I think tone is important. You see those scenes as something for the player to 'ogle' at, I almost certainly do not think that. Even if it's not conveyed with 100% realism, the intention clearly isn't to give the player a boner. That seems patently absurd.
Again, I think tone is important. You see those scenes as something for the player to 'ogle' at, I almost certainly do not think that. Even if it's not conveyed with 100% realism, the intention clearly isn't to give the player a boner. That seems patently absurd.
But then that's even worse, trying to set a realistic "tone" based on something that is actually unrealistic. Which is innocent at best but absolutely becomes worthy of criticism when those unrealistic but based in stereotype foundations for the realistic tone come from actually important sociopolitical underpinnings, in this case the treatment and abuse of women
Again, I think tone is important. You see those scenes as something for the player to 'ogle' at, I almost certainly do not think that. Even if it's not conveyed with 100% realism, the intention clearly isn't to give the player a boner. That seems patently absurd.
To put it another way, why are they topless? That's not realistic, it has no bearing on the scene that again bears no relation to reality. If they wanted to discuss how actual human trafficking goes down it would have been people stumbling from a shipping container or being yanked confused and scared from the back of a truck. Everything about the scene has an unnecessary and disturbing glamour to it, the 'cool tunes', the fact it is a nightclub, the people in all their high end clothes, I mean there is actually nothing in the scene that matches with the description 'an auction for sex slaves'.
I imagine what Anita is asking is why in a game that justifies so much with 'it's realistic' is this particular scene so overblown and stylised?
But then that's even worse, trying to set a realistic "tone" based on something that is actually unrealistic. Which is innocent at best but absolutely becomes worthy of criticism when those unrealistic but based in stereotype foundations for the realistic tone come from actually important sociopolitical underpinnings, in this case the treatment and abuse of women
To put it another way, why are they topless? That's not realistic, it has no bearing on the scene that again bears no relation to reality. If they wanted to discuss how actual human trafficking goes down it would have been people stumbling from a shipping container or being yanked confused and scared from the back of a truck. Everything about the scene has an unnecessary and disturbing glamour to it, the 'cool tunes', the fact it is a nightclub, the people in all their high end clothes, I mean there is actually nothing in the scene that matches with the description 'an auction for sex slaves'.
I imagine what Anita is asking is why in a game that justifies so much with 'it's realistic' is this particular scene so overblown and stylised?
There are no known instances of it happening and if we're going with the 'you can't prove it didn't happen' defence then what is there to debate? Ubisoft portrayed a deeply unrealistic auction of sex slaves and chose to do it with topless female characters, that's weird. Anita is just asking us to actually think about that for a moment.
There are no known instances of it happening and if we're going with the 'you can't prove it didn't happen' defence then what is there to debate? Ubisoft portrayed a deeply unrealistic auction of sex slaves and chose to do it with topless female characters, that's weird. Anita is just asking us to actually think about that for a moment.
I'm not being that dismissive of the notion, so I'll yield on that for now, because I can't say I know for sure that such an event has occurred in that exact fashion.
However, I still think any real world scenario like the one depicted would be equally if almost certainly more vile to view, toplessness being the least of our worries!
That said, I know the argument is about its purpose in the game of course.
And to be totally honest, watching it again now, I actually am more confused by her mention of the Hitman and Red Dead scenes. But maybe I won't get into that now
I'm not being that dismissive of the notion, so I'll yield on that for now, because I can't say I know for sure that such an event has occurred in that exact fashion.
However, I still think any real world scenario like the one depicted would be equally if almost certainly more vile to view, toplessness being the least of our worries!
That said, I know the argument is about its purpose in the game of course.
And to be totally honest, watching it again now, I actually am more confused by her mention of the Hitman and Red Dead scenes. But maybe I won't get into that now
There's a lot of great discussion in the thread for her video I'd encourage you to have a look, lots of great points pro and against each of her arguments (it's 46 pages use the thread search, I know I did!).
But your sneering at this is what I take umbrage with.
What if that is a game's intent, or is a movie's intent? What if it serves as a way of depicting tone, or the immorality of a certain character? Surely those are justifications that have meaning and aren't entirely throwaway..?
Of course it can happen. Just look at, say, A Song of Ice and Fire. The setting is deeply patriarchal, and the abuse and subjugation of women is omnipresent. And yet there are still plenty of female characters of all stripes with personalities, agency, strengths and weaknesses, etc. Abused women aren't just there to serve as background decoration for a "grimdark" setting, like they are in so many of these games.
Also bears repeating that the problem isn't necessarily with one instance of one particular game, it's the fact that this trope is repeated every so often as to become overly common and normalized.
juxtoposition with feminism is the dumbest thing you could do imho. feminists can speak; and the problem that making these points gets lost in all the mysogony with the insistance that people change their passion to be about this or else and the complaining that feminists get air time and men don't. coat tailing on someone elses problems is hurting you both if your objective is change. accusing feminists of not caring about equality because they aren't talking about your stuff is very bad.
hell, even discussing this here in this thread is pretty distasteful because of the history.
Instead of derailing the thread with your distorted idea of what feminism should and shouldn't be, why don't you go there instead, you'll feel right at home.
If it's not clear enough, It's not my idea of feminism, its common profiles/responses I've met and my thoughts depending on questions that establish what they think the scope/framing of feminism is - because feminism is not monolithic.
I see that my phrasing earlier could be misunderstood. What I meant to ask is whether you truly believe that every single women's rights issues is more important than every single men's rights issue or even better phrased - If the least significant women's right's issue is greater than the most significant men's rights issue.
If that is truly your then I really don't have much else to say. I can only hope you read this again someday and realize how insane a position that is.
I'm saying that it doesn't really matter, because if pursuing currently covered issues ends up fixing one that isn't being covered so well why does it matter what way it gets resolved? As others have said covering one issue also doesn't preclude covering another anyway (although the Menrights brigade have kind of poisoned the well in regards to this).
because the perspective you come from and the legacy that comes with it colors perception - you can't have a holistic view by ignoring other viable vantages
I feel like this may be difficult to tease out of this conversation. I think a large part of what GamerGate constitutes is a general lack of understanding of the basics of feminism. While I agree that one should not have to explain basic feminist principles ad nauseum, I think it may be necessary in such a case? It seems like concerted effort and constant re-explanation of basic tenets is necessary for people to start to "get it." Maybe that's just a result of our schooling system teaching us that repetition is how to learn. Maybe it's something more troubling in our society. Hard to say.
Regardless, I do agree that it should not be necessary to allocate so much time to discussing what I feel should be self-evident (and is a relatively simple discourse to understand).
Apologies if I missed something, I haven't yet had time to go back through everything.
It's super common in feminist discussions for people to take the vernacular, imagery, or personalities of the opposition and try to turn it against them. It's typically just dumb and wrong as hell like this.
This is a radical position, and I think by taking it you forfeit the right to complain about the existence of MRAs.
You're asking suicidal men and soldiers with PTSD to get in line behind women offended by sexual imagery in media. You cannot pretend that feminism is the movement for gender equality, nor can you be surprised that men in these position will form their own group.
What do you mean by women are not deprived of their right to disown their child? If a man has custody of the children, the child support laws apply to the woman then. She can't just cut and run.
I really don't want to derail this with MRA nonsense, but -- and I'm not about to list them out -- this kind of thing actually goes too far in the other direction. The problem with advocating for Mens' Rights issues on the internet is that it is often utilized as a distraction from a topic about women face to mitigate the seriousness of whatever the topic at hand is by noting that "we all have problems." For instance, women are paid less? What about how men get screwed over time and time again in divorce court, huh? Yeah, we all got problems! So quit your whining!
That kind of sentiment is counterproductive. However, it's undeniable that men do face problems that are unique to men.
This is a radical position, and I think by taking it you forfeit the right to complain about the existence of MRAs.
You're asking suicidal men and soldiers with PTSD to get in line behind women offended by sexual imagery in media. You cannot pretend that feminism is the movement for gender equality, nor can you be surprised that men in these position will form their own group.
I really don't want to derail this with MRA nonsense, but -- and I'm not about to list them out -- this kind of thing actually goes too far in the other direction. The problem with advocating for Mens' Rights issues on the internet is that it is often utilized as a distraction from a topic about women face to mitigate the seriousness of whatever the topic at hand is by noting that "we all have problems." For instance, women are paid less? What about how men get screwed over time and time again in divorce court, huh? Yeah, we all got problems! So quit your whining!
That kind of sentiment is counterproductive. However, it's undeniable that men do face problems that are unique to men.
This is a radical position, and I think by taking it you forfeit the right to complain about the existence of MRAs.
You're asking suicidal men and soldiers with PTSD to get in line behind women offended by sexual imagery in media. You cannot pretend that feminism is the movement for gender equality, nor can you be surprised that men in these position will form their own group.
This is a radical position, and I think by taking it you forfeit the right to complain about the existence of MRAs.
You're asking suicidal men and soldiers with PTSD to get in line behind women offended by sexual imagery in media. You cannot pretend that feminism is the movement for gender equality, nor can you be surprised that men in these position will form their own group.
