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The other thing is that there are just so many examples of people saying horrible things to her, why would she make this one up and risk her credibility if it comes to light? All else aside, she's media savvy and she's not stupid. The only thing this particular set of threats had that others apparently didn't is her home address. That's not a big enough differentiator in how people will view it to make it worth the risk.
So, yeah, I think it's real. And no matter what you think of her criticisms, the way a vocal minority of gamers respond to them make it clear that gaming does have a misogyny problem. Luckily, every time a new video comes out and this reliably happens more and more gamers and game media outlets are disgusted by it and take a stand with her. Men making it clear that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated is the thing that will do the most to stop it, unfortunately, because the men who are the problem don't value women's opinions.
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It's possible that Anita Sarkeesian got some genuinely harrassing comments from male teenagers who felt she was attacking their hobby. The problem is her reaction *afterwards* which seems to consist entirely of whining about these unpleasant insults/messages and entirely ignoring legitimate rebuttals to her arguments.
Playing the victim allows Anita Sarkeesian to avoid addressing well thought out rebuttals to her arguments. Playing up the fact that Sarkeesian received mean threats allows her supporters and ideological kin to avoid dealing with those same rebuttals.
She has said several times that she was attacked because her attackers were trying to preserve video games as a male space. It's a curious thing though, how women are just as free to spend their money on whatever that they'd like, and how they're free to spend their time however they'd like, yet the people who still end up being the core consumers of non-mobile gaming happens to be overwhelmingly male.
The answer that Social Justice Warriors and feminists have settled on is that women aren't part of the "serious" video game community as consumers because the male fans are, somehow, preventing them from being eager about spending endless hours playing Dark Souls or Diablo 3 because sexism.
The fact that the sexes could be pyschologically different and that spending endless hours playing challening or competitive games is inherently less appealing to women than men is never considered. One thing is clear, feminists and SJWs have noticed that the "serious" video game culture has developed to be a space occupied mainly by males, and they find this threatening.
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The thing your argument misses is that there are plenty of women who do enjoy console and PC gaming, and do vote with our dollars, and would like more games that we can play without having to participate in sexist acts to advance the game and deal with sexist commentary if we play online and enter voice chat.
I am a 41 year old woman. I have a standing date every Monday night with 2 - 4 other women, depending on who's available, to shoot stuff on Xbox. I spent upwards of 12 hours over the weekend playing Diablo 3 with another group.
I am not going to list games to prove some sort of cred. We are here. We exist. But even if we didn't, games as an art are still a valid target of criticism. It's a sign that the medium is growing up that it is getting this sort of attention. You should be thrilled.
Also, how did you happen to come across the forum? Because from your post, I would guess that you're searching for forums having this conversation and then pasting the same response in all of them. Just an observation.
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Well, few things are as obnoxious as 'whining' about 'unpleasant' attacks such as deluges of threats of death, rape, and death-rape. Such a nuisance!
You may very well not like what she says. Square deal! Maybe I am a feminist social justice warrior. But frankly? This stuff isn't 'unpleasant' and it's not 'whining' to object to it. Get on board with that, or get ready to continue being marginalized as a creep by everyone outside your particular choir.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Well, few things are as obnoxious as 'whining' about 'unpleasant' attacks such as deluges of threats of death, rape, and death-rape. Such a nuisance!
You may very well not like what she says. Square deal! Maybe I am a feminist social justice warrior. But frankly? This stuff isn't 'unpleasant' and it's not 'whining' to object to it. Get on board with that, or get ready to continue being marginalized as a creep by everyone outside your particular choir.
It's also not just "mean" either. He's going out of his way to trivialize what Sarkeesian (and others) have experienced. Trying to make it seem that she's just whining and overreacting, which is a very common way to dismiss and silence people.
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And as for around here, not speaking for the scuzzy stream of any kind of controversial topic commentary on YouTube, MrSquicky raised some reasonable and rational objections to Sarkeesian's work. A significant part of that is because he's got cred around here, but as and probably more important is that he didn't start off not just minimizing threats of death and rape but also actually criticized her for objecting to it.
If you're Clive, we'll know very soon.
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: So, yeah, I think it's real. And no matter what you think of her criticisms, the way a vocal minority of gamers respond to them make it clear that gaming does have a misogyny problem. Luckily, every time a new video comes out and this reliably happens more and more gamers and game media outlets are disgusted by it and take a stand with her. Men making it clear that this sort of behavior will not be tolerated is the thing that will do the most to stop it, unfortunately, because the men who are the problem don't value women's opinions.
I doubt there's much that can be done in the foreseeable future about online death and rape threats, except maybe through Anonymous-style hacktivist vigilante methods. The MRA types have successfully created a self-reinforcing echo chamber for themselves. It's probably not going to go away until a sufficient number of them die or lose interest.
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There's plenty *being* done that will solve this problem. Video game companies are starting to realize half their customers are women, and that increasingly men *do* care about interesting stories that don't marginalize one of the genders.
Game companies like Ubisoft were laughed at (by men) when they said rendering female assassins would cost to much.
I'm biased because Anita's videos have impacted me deeply. But I don't think I'm especially unusual, I'm just a man who was fed this his entire life, and still somehow managed to be shown how sordid and awful a lot of it was. I guess I was ready for the message, even though I'm sure I would have been very opposed to Anita's message as a teenager. I wouldn't have threatened her, but I would have probably joked about her being a lesbian, or being sexually frustrated, or not a real gamer.
If it turned out Anita was laughing all the way to the bank and kept 90% of the Kickstarter funds, it wouldn't change the truth of the things she had said, or the examples she provided. And for that I'll always be grateful.
The prophet of the church I belong to did (what I feel) are some pretty rotten things as well. If we're only willing to listen to non-sinners, we're pretty screwed.
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I referred to the vocal minority for a reason. When people who don't think this crap is OK don't speak up, the people who do assume they agree. Views that are unpopular don't go away overnight, but they do become less comfortable. And that kills the echo chamber.
ETA: To Destineer.
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: Hi, and welcome to the forum.
The thing your argument misses is that there are plenty of women who do enjoy console and PC gaming, and do vote with our dollars, and would like more games that we can play without having to participate in sexist acts to advance the game and deal with sexist commentary if we play online and enter voice chat.
I am a 41 year old woman. I have a standing date every Monday night with 2 - 4 other women, depending on who's available, to shoot stuff on Xbox. I spent upwards of 12 hours over the weekend playing Diablo 3 with another group.
I am not going to list games to prove some sort of cred. We are here. We exist. But even if we didn't, games as an art are still a valid target of criticism. It's a sign that the medium is growing up that it is getting this sort of attention. You should be thrilled.
The criticism is off a bullying kind. A serious hobby of many people is being attacked, and when legitimate rebuttals of that "criticism" are put forth, it's soundly ignored in favor of sensationalizing abusive comments from 14 year old males.
I don't doubt that a subset of serious game nerds are female, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority is male. It's a development that has to be satisfyingly explained. I'm a Reagan millenial, and my female cohorts no doubt played "Sonic The Hedgehog" and "Mario" nearly as much as the boys, yet as we grew up, it's the males that continued to be into that stuff, that continued to buy the newer consoles and newer games while the girls by and large moved on. Why have things happened this way? This is the question that some feminists are wrestling with as they look out and see the video game industry as an ever growing and integral part of popular culture.
It was mainly dudes who bothered to line up at stores when consoles launch, who populate the various internet video game boards, who, by and large, produce and design video games (with some notable exceptions) and consume them. Random image from a "League of Legends" championship:
Where are the women? I'm pretty certain that most of those guys would be more excited to be there with more girls around, but the girls aren't there, and they aren't there because they aren't playing that game in question at the same rate that male gamers are, and that's hardly the sort of game you can write a "it's sexist!" treatise about.
In short, young women aren't as interested in video games that aren't on phones as much as men. This is no one's fault, but that doesn't deter some feminists from seeing that gaming community as a target of unanswerable shaming/bullying. The youtube vlogger "thunderoote" has taken great pains in rebutting Anita Sarkeesian, as have countless others, but I'm not sure why they're bothering, because Anita Sarkeesian and her allies are operating from the feeling that the core gaming community being mainly male is a threat, and you can't argue with feelings.
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quote:the girls aren't there, and they aren't there because they aren't playing that game in question at the same rate that male gamers are
I have an attractive female friend who plays League of Legends. She went to one large convention, and will never go again because of how she was treated. In other words, quite specifically, she at least is not attending LoL championships because men treated her dismissively and abusively when she did.
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Oy. So what if she pays attention to the rebuttals? Are you really saying that people feel "bullied" by her commentary? Are people with this *ahem* serious hobby *really* worried it's going to be taken away like a half eaten lollipop?
This is the important thing that makes death threats in response to academic criticism less noteworthy by comparison?
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quote:the girls aren't there, and they aren't there because they aren't playing that game in question at the same rate that male gamers are
I have an attractive female friend who plays League of Legends. She went to one large convention, and will never go again because of how she was treated. In other words, quite specifically, she at least is not attending LoL championships because men treated her dismissively and abusively when she did.
We're now supposed to look at the young men in that image as likely sexists who are keeping away the eager female LoL championship viewers. The question of if there are enough female gamers interested in "League of Legends" enough to attend LoL spectator events is entirely sidestepped. One the one hand you have the people who are perceiving the "maleness" of the video game industry and gaming consumers as a threat, on the other hand you have many male gamers who don't share that feeling but nonetheless want to score points with feminists/women by parroting Anita Sarkeesian's points and giving her awards to prove they aren't the bad guys (whoever those might be.)
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Oy. So what if she pays attention to the rebuttals? Are you really saying that people feel "bullied" by her commentary? Are people with this *ahem* serious hobby *really* worried it's going to be taken away like a half eaten lollipop?
The combination of her hectoring, and the fact that her hectoring is amplified by journalists in the gaming circles and in some mainstream outlets, while simultaneously silencing and ignoring rebuttals to her arguments, amounts to bullying. Basically those "serious" gamers are being seen as losers who should shut up and put up with with this hectoring/silencing because they're just gamer nerds anyway, how dare they talk back.
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I don't think you know what bullying means. But you're a troll anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised.
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I referred to the vocal minority for a reason. When people who don't think this crap is OK don't speak up, the people who do assume they agree. Views that are unpopular don't go away overnight, but they do become less comfortable. And that kills the echo chamber.
ETA: To Destineer.
That's a strange blog post in the link... the suggestion that the only question under debate is whether players are allowed to choose the sex of their character in games is quite a distortion of the actual issue.
From the link:
quote:Literally the worst possible thing that can happen here is equality. That’s the worst outcome, that’s the nightmare scenario. If, today, every AAA publisher said “We will start to include women more in our games and represent them better”, the only actual difference this would make to anybody shrieking about how feminists are destroying games is that they might have to pick their gender in the next Call of Duty game. Terrifying, isn’t it. Stuff of nightmares.
This is just not an accurate way of portraying the issue. The real worry is that there may no longer be games with elements of exploitation, body horror, and sexual violence. If you think it's worthwhile to have games that explore these themes--which is my view, although I think many bad games do a poor job of exploring them--then there is a very real threat to some of the things you enjoy about the genre.
Anyway, people can say that sort of thing all they want, ban people from their forums, etc. I just don't see it having any appreciable effect on the amount of threats someone like Sarkeesian receives. The offenders will always have somewhere they can congregate, somewhere on 4chan or something, and I don't see much chance of them changing their ways.
@BlackBlade: I didn't say there's no way to make progress on the issues Sarkeesian concerns herself with. I said there's no way I can think of to stop the vocal/abusive minority from threatening her with death and rape.
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quote:Originally posted by Risuena: I don't think you know what bullying means. But you're a troll anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised.
No seriously, this is bullying. Male gamers are being told to shut up and listen to Anita Sarkeesian and not talk back or rebut her. If you rebut her, your arguments will be ignored or deleted. Anita's voice is automatically given more legitimacy and weight than anyone who would respectfully disagree with her.
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quote:One the one hand you have the people who are perceiving the "maleness" of the video game industry and gaming consumers as a threat, on the other hand you have many male gamers who don't share that feeling but nonetheless want to score points with feminists/women by parroting Anita Sarkeesian's points and giving her awards to prove they aren't the bad guys (whoever those might be.)
I think everybody should agree that people issuing death threats, or personally insulting Anita or people who agree with her, are most certainly bad guys.
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I don't disagree. Do you disagree with the assertion that the death threats are being sensationalized by Sarkeesian and her allies allows them to ignore real counter arguments? That Sarkeesian shutting down comments on her youtube vids allows her to evade both death threats *and* legitimate criticism?
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Ok, now we have a more definitive ding on the Clive detector with the 'males who disagree are fawning on feminists, not speaking authentic opinions' tripe. One or two more like that and I think it'll be fair to call it!
Anyway, you're doing it again, man. Unless you're just going to dispute the accuracy of Tom's anecdote, your response to a case of a female being actively driven away from the 'serious hobby' to use your words that she enjoyed enough to attent a convention was to totally pivot away from that as though it was irrelevant.
No one gets a pass to be a schmuck just because they really, really like a hobby.
Oh, I'm just going to head off a likely response to Tom assuming you do address it again: 'attractive female serious gamer' is not a contradiction in terms, nor is it an indicator that she was a 'fake' gamer seeking out male attention and money by playing on sex appeal.
(Mr Squicky, speaking for myself, if you amplify and multiply this stuff here by at least 5, you can imagine the difficulty in seeing I offensive, non hateful critiques of Sarkeesian.)
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For example, how do you feel about the excessive amount of depictions of prostitutes (and violence committed against them) in video games?
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quote:Originally posted by objects in mirror: I don't disagree. Do you disagree with the assertion that the death threats are being sensationalized by Sarkeesian and her allies allows them to ignore real counter arguments? That Sarkeesian shutting down comments on her youtube vids allows her to evade both death threats *and* legitimate criticism?
Death threats are a valid reason for anyone to shut down a YouTube comment thread. It's absurd to suggest it's not. Taking you seriously for a moment here, consider what you are saying: that for someone to espouse her position, threats of being murdered and raped are a reasonable price. It's nuts.
I'm sure you don't like to hear that, because it makes both your own side of this dispute so repellant and also so easy to dismiss, but there it is. You don't just get to *shrug off* when your camp has an ape throwing excrement. Sure, if he or she is doing so elsewhere there's a fine tradition in politics as old as politics itself for being allowed to pretend it doesn't happen.
You don't get to do that when they're right there in the mainstream debate, though. You've seen a way to have legitimate criticism responded to in this very thread. It's simple: don't roll your eyes and dismiss it when someone threatens to kill and rape someone for an idea.
If you can't refrain from that, you're not worth talking to anyway, and thanks for identifying yourself.
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quote:Do you disagree with the assertion that the death threats are being sensationalized by Sarkeesian and her allies allows them to ignore real counter arguments?
I'm deeply curious: what sort of dumbass counter-argument needs to be made against "video games and gamer culture in general should be more inclusive of women?" What is being asked of gamers that they should not want to supply? What is being demanded that is unreasonable?
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quote:Originally posted by Risuena: I don't think you know what bullying means. But you're a troll anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised.
No seriously, this is bullying. Male gamers are being told to shut up and listen to Anita Sarkeesian and not talk back or rebut her. If you rebut her, your arguments will be ignored or deleted. Anita's voice is automatically given more legitimacy and weight than anyone who would respectfully disagree with her.
This is either an oversight or a lie. There are two people in this discussion besides yourself who are challenging Sarkeesian, and they aren't being told to shut up. They're both male as well, I think.
Your window on not being a proven liar on this is shrinking rapidly.
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Anita Sarkeesian provoked a strong response by attacking the hobby of millions of people as sexist. A small subset of those people violently threatened her. Unfortunate as that is, that does not give Anita Sarkeesian (and her journalist allies) an excuse to sidestep any legitimate rebuttals, which is the whole point of sensenationalizing those "threats." The narrative should be "Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats" instead of it being merely "OMG Anita got death threats, poor victim."
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Also, note that objects in mirror has not actually rebutted Sarkeesian. Nor has he been told to shut up. He has just accused her and other women of being bullied, when they have been subject to harassment.
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quote:Do you disagree with the assertion that the death threats are being sensationalized by Sarkeesian and her allies allows them to ignore real counter arguments?
I'm deeply curious: what sort of dumbass counter-argument needs to be made against "video games and gamer culture in general should be more inclusive of women?" What is being asked of gamers that they should not want to supply? What is being demanded that is unreasonable?
Again, this is a distortion of the issue. I think games and gamers should be more inclusive and welcoming to women. But anyone who thinks this means Dragon Age or Bioshock Infinite should have been different in any way is wrong, IMO.
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Except Tom is calling out "video games and gamer culture in general" and not specific games. He may think that Dragon Age or Bioshock could be better or more inclusive, but he's not talking about them specifically. They don't represent games or the culture by themselves, they're one facet of the culture.
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quote:Originally posted by Risuena: I don't think you know what bullying means. But you're a troll anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised.
No seriously, this is bullying. Male gamers are being told to shut up and listen to Anita Sarkeesian and not talk back or rebut her. If you rebut her, your arguments will be ignored or deleted. Anita's voice is automatically given more legitimacy and weight than anyone who would respectfully disagree with her.
This is either an oversight or a lie. There are two people in this discussion besides yourself who are challenging Sarkeesian, and they aren't being told to shut up. They're both male as well, I think.
Your window on not being a proven liar on this is shrinking rapidly.
First of all, I have no idea why you're being so nasty. Calling me a liar is uncalled for.
Seocnd of all, I was not speaking specifically of this thread, but from what I see in feminist and certain gaming websites. There the tone is definitely one of bullying and "shut up and listen to Anita."
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quote:Originally posted by objects in mirror: Anita Sarkeesian provoked a strong response by attacking the hobby of millions of people as sexist. A small subset of those people violently threatened her. Unfortunate as that is, that does not give Anita Sarkeesian (and her journalist allies) an excuse to sidestep any legitimate rebuttals, which is the whole point of sensenationalizing those "threats." The narrative should be "Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats" instead of it being merely "OMG Anita got death threats, poor victim."
The rebuttals can stand or fall on their own. She's not obligated to respond to them.
You're saying she's "sensationalizing" things by pointing out that they are occurring and mentioning - with such temerity - that they should not occur. You would seem to prefer she take it quietly, as if it's in some way deserved or acceptable.
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She criticizes a lot of games, and always with the disclaimer that it's possible to enjoy the games despite the issues she has with them. And she criticizes a lot of games because the issues she's pointing out are common throughout gaming.
Maybe the developers of Dragon Age and Bioshock have legitimate reasons to make the choices she criticized and maybe the story backs them up (I haven't played Bioshock and it's been a while since I've played Dragon Age). Other games, might too. But a lot of them are very much taking a lazy way out and using women as decoration, as objects or saying women are too hard too animate.
To my mind at least, her point isn't that any one or two or a handful of games have problematic depictions of women, but that many games have them.
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quote:Do you disagree with the assertion that the death threats are being sensationalized by Sarkeesian and her allies allows them to ignore real counter arguments?
I'm deeply curious: what sort of dumbass counter-argument needs to be made against "video games and gamer culture in general should be more inclusive of women?" What is being asked of gamers that they should not want to supply? What is being demanded that is unreasonable?
It's an unreasonable demand because the hardcore gaming world might have become a male space due to psychological differences between the sexes. Maybe women don't care to spend countless hours playing GTA V or Fifa 2014 soccer and are more likely to see that sort of thing as a waste of time. The demand of "video gamers and gamer culture shoudl be more inclusive of women" is unreasonable -- and insulting -- because it assumes that gamers and gaming culture were taking active steps in prohibiting would be female gamers from joining their ranks.
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quote:But anyone who thinks this means Dragon Age or Bioshock Infinite should have been different in any way is wrong, IMO.
Wrong? Wrong? I mean, I played both games. I even enjoyed most of what they brought to the table, although my criticisms of each would be lengthy and varied (ranging from the brutal slog of the Deep Roads in DA to the false moral choices and abrupt tonal mismatches of BI). And some of those criticisms would indeed revolve around the games' treatment of women (although I think BI was less problematic than the original Bioshock in that regard, and both games were less problematic than Dishonored.) Dragon Age is a teenage male power fantasy that aspires to more and mostly fails to deliver; that it manages to aspire means that its failures -- especially the game's simplistic, demeaning handling of "relationships" -- are noticeable and jarring. Both BI and Dragon Age do a lot right. But I don't think that doing a lot right means that you can't come in for criticism for not doing even more right. Bioware insists that it's finally got the message, and that its portrayals of romance in DA3 will have some genuine depth and diversity. Of course, they've said that consistently, pretty much since Jade Empire. (I don't think the subject was on the radar much during KotOR.) As a company, they should be lauded for trying, but people should also call them out for consistently failing -- and consistently failing in many of the same ways, over and over again, because the people who make the games share an outlook with a fraction of their user base and thus don't seem to think outside those boxes.
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Note: what I find *pathetic* is not that some people disagree and argue with Sarkessian. It's that some people think that their disagreement with Sarkeesian relegates the nasty crap happening to her to an afterthought. Like this:
"Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats"
Nobody has to try to address the threats if they don't want to, but when a discussion *about the threats* gets steered toward the topics of her gamer cred or the fairness of her critiques, it shows that some people think their view of her sincerity has some bearing on whether she deserves the treatment she's getting. And it really, really doesn't.
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quote:Originally posted by objects in mirror: Anita Sarkeesian provoked a strong response by attacking the hobby of millions of people as sexist. A small subset of those people violently threatened her. Unfortunate as that is, that does not give Anita Sarkeesian (and her journalist allies) an excuse to sidestep any legitimate rebuttals, which is the whole point of sensenationalizing those "threats." The narrative should be "Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats" instead of it being merely "OMG Anita got death threats, poor victim."
The rebuttals can stand or fall on their own. She's not obligated to respond to them.
You're saying she's "sensationalizing" things by pointing out that they are occurring and mentioning - with such temerity - that they should not occur. You would seem to prefer she take it quietly, as if it's in some way deserved or acceptable.
She's not just pointing they're occuring -- her whole routine has now become one of wallowing in victimhood because some people threatened her online. The more she does this the more she can pretend her original arguments were so good that there's no need to respond to critical rebuttals. She may not be obligated to respond to them, but she would certainly be more brave and serious if she attempted.
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quote:It's an unreasonable demand because the hardcore gaming world might have become a male space due to psychological differences between the sexes. Maybe women don't care to spend countless hours playing GTA V or Fifa 2014 soccer and are more likely to see that sort of thing as a waste of time.
What demands do you think feminists are making of the developers of FIFA that would negatively impact the existing player base?
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"her whole routine has now become one of wallowing in victimhood because some people threatened her online"
That's not true, she's still producing critiques.
And it's wrong of you to call pointing out the misbehavior "wallowing in victimhood", and...truly curious that you don't think "my hobby is being threatened by FEMINISTS" isn't more wallow-y than that.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Note: what I find *pathetic* is not that some people disagree and argue with Sarkessian. It's that some people think that their disagreement with Sarkeesian relegates the nasty crap happening to her to an afterthought. Like this:
"Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats"
Nobody has to try to address the threats if they don't want to, but when a discussion *about the threats* gets steered toward the topics of her gamer cred or the fairness of her critiques, it shows that some people think their view of her sincerity has some bearing on whether she deserves the treatment she's getting. And it really, really doesn't.
Well, how about when she uses the threats themselves to buttress those same arguments, which she and her allies are obviously doing? The narrative is "Anita told hard truths and got death threats for it. This is obviously misogyny, not different from the sort of misogyny she was initially describing." The death threat issue and her thesis have been conflated by Sarkeesian's allies specifically as to buttress Sarkeesian's initial laughably weak arguments.
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I feel like you don't need to be female to have the opinion that Fifa 2014 soccer is a special waste of time.
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: Note: what I find *pathetic* is not that some people disagree and argue with Sarkessian. It's that some people think that their disagreement with Sarkeesian relegates the nasty crap happening to her to an afterthought. Like this:
"Anita made arguments that were soundly rebutted by many people, also she got some threats"
Nobody has to try to address the threats if they don't want to, but when a discussion *about the threats* gets steered toward the topics of her gamer cred or the fairness of her critiques, it shows that some people think their view of her sincerity has some bearing on whether she deserves the treatment she's getting. And it really, really doesn't.
Well, how about when she uses the threats themselves to buttress those same arguments, which she and her allies are obviously doing? The narrative is "Anita told hard truths and got death threats for it. This is obviously misogyny, not different from the sort of misogyny she was initially describing." The death threat issue and her thesis have been conflated by Sarkeesian's allies specifically as to buttress Sarkeesian's initial laughably weak arguments.
Probably because misogyny when challenged acts in precisely the way those making death threats, dismissing her points, or marginalizing the danger do.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Right, but Sarkeesian criticizes both those games heavily in her videos.
BI and DA are both exceptional games in that they're a not more thought out and nuanced than many games, but it's sort of like being the tallest dwarf among hobbits, in many respects.
I've been keeping quiet for the most part in this discussion because honestly, embarrassingly, watching her videos was the first time I really stopped to think about the sexist tropes in video games and it's taking me a while to figure out exactly what I think about this. I know, for example, there are also games that have strong female characters and pretty effectively avoid any overtly sexist tropes (I'm playing the android Chrono Trigger remake atm, which is a great example) and I'm not sure exactly how pervasive these tropes are.
But I really am enjoying reading the posts in this thread, so for the love of God, can you guys just all ignore Clive and carry on? It was really interesting before he showed up.
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Anytime hatrack needs a single new poster all it has to do is get involved in a potentially contentious discussion involving women's issues
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I do think this issue brings up something of interest on any controversial topic, whether it's political, social, economic, religious, cultural, anything contentious I can think of right now in fact.
It's what to do with the fringes of a given movement or idea. I don't think it's a slam dunk to dismiss someone based on idea association, but I also think it can be a useful indicator marking someone out as a sleaze or someone so fanatic useful conversation isn't possible. 'A fanatic is someone who won't change his mind and won't change the subject' I think is close to the exact Churchill quote.
In this instance, sexist and outright misogynistic portrayals are frankly obvious enough that to dismiss them is an indicator. But if you follow that too strictly, you weed out useful discussion such as that offered by MrSquicky and Destineer.
So they get noted, so long as one doesn't associate ideas with fanatics too strictly, as having productive things to say that it's important to hear. But what to do with those really straddling the line of fanaticism? In this case we have a poster who is determined to either minimize the fact of threats of murder and sexual violence, or even to criticize the victim of such threats for complaining.
So I suppose one question is, when faced with someone who is aggressive about offering up something reprehensible that it is actually important to reject publicly, is it better to say 'I'm not discussing this as long as you bring up position x' or is it better to treat it as though they hadn't spoken the fanatic position, and address other points?
I often tend to the former, for a variety of reasons. Anger and distaste, a sort of preemptive weariness, but sometimes fascination (I have been called by one guy in particular both a communist and a royalist, of all things, with the utmost conviction).
But what's the best way to handle that sort of thing? One or the other, or a blend, or something else altogether?
('Fanatic' here is, to some extent, just shorthand. Although in this case I think an unwillingness to say 'threats of murder and sexual violence are unacceptable, those making them ought to be ashamed of themselves and I reject them, even if the person in question DID poke them with a stick beforehand' to be so absurd an so marginal as to be fanatical.)
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quote:But anyone who thinks this means Dragon Age or Bioshock Infinite should have been different in any way is wrong, IMO.
Wrong? Wrong? I mean, I played both games. I even enjoyed most of what they brought to the table, although my criticisms of each would be lengthy and varied
I suppose in the end my claim is that the moral problems with the portrayal of women in both games were all there to serve the story, and did so well enough that I wouldn't change anything of that sort. Although I like a long RPG and had no problem with the Deep Roads.
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Dragon Age is a teenage male power fantasy that aspires to more and mostly fails to deliver; that it manages to aspire means that its failures -- especially the game's simplistic, demeaning handling of "relationships" -- are noticeable and jarring. Both BI and Dragon Age do a lot right. But I don't think that doing a lot right means that you can't come in for criticism for not doing even more right. Bioware insists that it's finally got the message, and that its portrayals of romance in DA3 will have some genuine depth and diversity. Of course, they've said that consistently, pretty much since Jade Empire. (I don't think the subject was on the radar much during KotOR.) As a company, they should be lauded for trying, but people should also call them out for consistently failing -- and consistently failing in many of the same ways, over and over again, because the people who make the games share an outlook with a fraction of their user base and thus don't seem to think outside those boxes.
Specifically to this point: this would be a good criticism if it were important to Dragon Age that the relationships be complex. But the relationships weren't there to be realistic. They were there to help lend the game an "epic movie" feel. So there was no need for them to be deeper or more fleshed-out than the relationships in a Lord of the Rings movie. I think they were a little deeper and more fleshed-out than that, but then the game was much longer than a movie. They served their purpose in the story.
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I would also defend the problematic scenes in the original Bioshock, by the way. The game had strong elements of horror, and horror scenes with female victims are very effective. The reasons for this are indeed due to problems with our culture's conception of women. But that is the nature of horror, to lay bare our darker nature and exploit it.
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