Feminism Thread

[Xantavia]

Can we stop using the lack of enforcement for rape, particularly for men, as an argument that something isn't rape? Rape is hard to prove, so it isn't enforced well, and for men, 95%+ of people don't give a shit at all. That doesn't make it okay.

I'm not sure if you saw what Ksandra was referring to. You said a guy saying he would use a condom and then didn't was guilty of rape because he misrepresented his intentions. She was asking the flip side, about if a woman said she was on the pill but really wasn't, is that rape too?

Or what if I agree to fuck a dude and it turns out his dick is too small for my liking yet I feel pressured/ashamed to back out of it.

Suck it up. Us guys with micro-dicks get fooled by wonderbras all the time.

[hey]

I'm not sure if you saw what Ksandra was referring to. You said a guy saying he would use a condom and then didn't was guilty of rape because he misrepresented his intentions. She was asking the flip side, about if a woman said she was on the pill but really wasn't, is that rape too?

Yes, of course.

[Callisto]

Are you sure about that?

Honest question, no snark. I have seen so many incidents where like a woman claims to be on the pill but lied to get pregnant, and the guy has no recourse. I can't imagine it's different with a condom.

Have you seen cases to suggest otherwise?

I think the issue with your example is when you say 'no recourse', I have never seen an example of this kind of story where it wasn't involving the guy fighting child support. He has no recourse in those situations because even if the child's conception was brought about via deceit on the mother's part, he's still the biological father and therefore responsible. I have never seen this type of story in the context of the man bringing rape charges against the woman, which would (or at least should) be entirely different.

[Gokku]

Questions/statements about the Feminist frequency / anita w/e the fuck her name is.

Now i am a very open and accepting person generally speaking but i cannot stand her or the flat out insane viewpoints she try's to push, yet when ever you see anyone even begin to refute her points there's a wave of "anti feminist" / white knight army.

i disagree with what the money shes collected has been put towards or the recognition shes received because in my eyes shes done nothing. Its the internet vigilante to getting a metal for showing up to the special Olympics with a captain fucking obvious sign stating rape is bad.

my problems with her stems from the way she presents the content that she cherry picks and the fact that instead of furthering the medium she instead antagonizes it.

I understand where the internet rage comes from though they did a hellva job feeding the fire with all the hate shit, but to me she seems like someone whos just in it for there 5 mins of fame.

prime example :"Of course the implicit underlying purpose behind these hateful harassment campaigns is to try and maintain the status quo of gaming culture as a boys club by creating an environment that is too toxic and hostile for women to endure."- AS

the notion that men dont want ladys to play games is ridiculous weve all played MMO's a lady hits the internet men loose they damn minds at the prospect of a female gamer.

all rambling aside if shes the gaming feminist Jesus people make her out to be why isn't she focused on involving girls in mainstream gaming more , getting them into the career field , going after those games that pan handle to "girls" as if they cant play the same games as men etc. I dont understand the focus of cutting down the old in-place of trying to fix the new.

[Mazmaz]

the notion that men dont want ladys to play games is ridiculous weve all played MMO's a lady hits the internet men loose they damn minds at the prospect of a female gamer.

Yea, and they treat the female gamer as a sex object, not an actual human fucking being. And if she's not hot, she's a bitch/bossy/crazy/manipulative/etc.

all rambling aside if shes the gaming feminist Jesus people make her out to be why isn't she focused on involving girls in mainstream gaming more , getting them into the career field , going after those games that pan handle to "girls" as if they cant play the same games as men etc. I dont understand the focus of cutting down the old in-place of trying to fix the new.

"But why isn't she doing EVERYTHING?! She has to do ALL THE THINGS"

[Correction]

I dont understand the focus of cutting down the old in-place of trying to fix the new.

I guess I'd have to ask you to elaborate in what ways Anita Sarkeesian is 'cutting down the old.' The project is a listing of ways in which women get used as devices in video games, and doesn't tell anybody what to play or not play.

[Gokku]

@ maz
Point 1: unless of course you treat them with dignity and just demand they play at the required skill level... It never mattered if you were gay, straight, by, female etc etc of I have to ask for haste everything you didn't make the cut.

@ may point 2
What IS she doing then? The amount of recognition / money collected and made what's been done to further the medium with her videos? I've watched them all, they range from no shit to tin hat at most times.
@correcttion

To me it's the blanket use of selective segments/clips then the small things like videos opening with statements that the entire point is to appeal to straight males. She doesn't put anything in contexts that don't suite her view point or the whole plot of some of the games.

She even notes in an interview that playing old games is a bittersweet experience now that she's searching for something wrong in them.

By no means is the gaming industry perfect but I don't see or understand how any of what she's doing benefits anyone but her. Shit I would donate myself if she was giving out ideas and alternatives / going to game devs pushing for stronger female leads.

I guess it's because I don't need someone to tell me the outfits in metal gear games are ridiculous or that some dudes wife being raped and murdered happens alot in games. I play them I know but she doesn't follow it up with anything of substance you don't learn anything from her videos.

[Correction]

To me it's the blanket use of selective segments/clips then the small things like videos opening with statements that the entire point is to appeal to straight males. She doesn't put anything in contexts that don't suite her view point or the whole plot of some of the games.

She even notes in an interview that playing old games is a bittersweet experience now that she's searching for something wrong in them.

By no means is the gaming industry perfect but I don't see or understand how any of what she's doing benefits anyone but her. Shit I would donate myself if she was giving out ideas and alternatives / going to game devs pushing for stronger female leads.

I guess it's because I don't need someone to tell me the outfits in metal gear games are ridiculous or that some dudes wife being raped and murdered happens alot in games. I play them I know but she doesn't follow it up with anything of substance you don't learn anything from her videos.

The structure of the FF videos is almost exclusively one of enumeration, and it's not uncommon to hear criticism that she doesn't go far enough, or doesn't really offer a way out for the existence of tropes that marginalize the roles of women in games, but arguably she never promised otherwise. She promised only to shine a light on it, and if we're serious about criticism of video games and we want to include a feminist perspective in said criticism, then the first step of solving any problems is to identify them, which the videos attempt to do. To a wide degree I do wish she'd tie her enumeration to what happened in the film/book/art critic circles once opportunities for feminist voices opened up in there so people would at least try to understand what's being started.

As for who it's benefitting, well that's up to people willing to learn from mistakes pointed out:

Jordan Thomas: Designer/Creative Director, Bioshock
http://i.minus.com/ibjmcIcwllopWt.png

Jean-Paul LeBreton: Designer/Lead Level Designer, Bioshock
http://i.minus.com/ijW0Xd3ySmQmO.png

The influence is hardly messianic, but it's a start? I guess?

Ultimately the message isn't 'hay look there's rape in this video game!' and more 'why was rape used as a storytelling device in this video game?' Because then maybe if critics are allowed to a) ask and b) mull about the answers then we'll have better criticism of video games than what we currently get. That's not a bad thing and doesn't represent the cutting down of anything you've professed to care about.

[Gokku]

So part of me was okay with the bioshock segment for the following reasons:

Murders of passion are not new, never will be old, and still happen for the same reasons today as they did 1000 years ago. So I don't really view that as a negative more so as something based in reality, a negative part of it but something that's real and happens every day.

Same goes for the inclusion of brothels / prostitution in some of the games she refenced asscreed / red dead come to mind. Now the frequency of them getting slapped around and killed in red dead was a valid point.

It may be that she just gives me a fox news half truth whole lies vibe, with the way she presents her points.

I swear to god my phone hates me!

[Quicklet]

The biggest flaw in Anita Sarkeesian's videos is that they just do not present compelling evidence in favor of her argument. It is demagoguery masquerading as intellectualism, and the typical defenses put forth skirt the core problems in her arguments and tend to appeal to false dichotomies ("if you don't agree with Anita you must be in favor of those harassing trolls") or appeal to authority ("she's a media critic therefore what she says must be true").

[Xno Kappa]

He'd get off because she was fucked up and he'd have a very easy time lying, but I think if he was honest and said "she said yes when I pulled out the condom, but I hate using them so I tricked her and removed it so I could fuck her bareback without her knowing" there's a decent shot a charge could stick.

Obviously I'm just going by the story, but there's nothing in the narrative to suggest there was a pre-arrangement where she'd only have sex with him if a condom was used. Even than, being a douchebag is not illegal, condom or not doesn't prove or disprove lack of consent.

[Mazmaz]

The biggest flaw in Anita Sarkeesian's videos is that they just do not present compelling evidence in favor of her argument. It is demagoguery masquerading as intellectualism, and the typical defenses put forth skirt the core problems in her arguments and tend to appeal to false dichotomies ("if you don't agree with Anita you must be in favor of those harassing trolls") or appeal to authority ("she's a media critic therefore what she says must be true").

k?

[Correction]

The biggest flaw in Anita Sarkeesian's videos is that they just do not present compelling evidence in favor of her argument. It is demagoguery masquerading as intellectualism, and the typical defenses put forth skirt the core problems in her arguments and tend to appeal to false dichotomies ("if you don't agree with Anita you must be in favor of those harassing trolls") or appeal to authority ("she's a media critic therefore what she says must be true").

It's true that it's a brush used far too often to tar those with an honest and intelligent disagreement, but the signal to noise ratio is too intense to simply dismiss the vitriol as the work of 'those pesky anonymous 12 year-olds.'

relevant to the last several posts

There's a common trope of framing Sarkeesian's work as "cherry-picked", as she takes isolated examples from many games and presents them as a stream of misogyny in order to create the illusion that all of these games are entirely misogynist, the entire way through. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is Sarkeesian is doing with TvsWVG, and what cultural criticism in general is. These are tropes - they're fragments of a whole. By definition they don't make up the entirety of a work of art by themselves, but are instead definable cultural touchstones which artists, writers, developers etc, can use when creating a fictional reality.

In other words, Anita Sarkeesian only presents sections of games as sexist because she's only talking about the sexist bits of games, and how, of the tropes developers choose to put in their games when designing for female characters, they frequently fall back on sexist ones. Seriously, she couldn't be clearer about this - in the introduction to the very first video she says:

This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, but remember that it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects."

[Mazmaz]

Correction where do you get all these great writings that you quote about Anita's stuff?

[Correction]

GAF members and Critical Distance, which is the blog for video game criticism.

[Quicklet]

It's true that it's a brush used far too often to tar those with an honest and intelligent disagreement, but the signal to noise ratio is too intense to simply dismiss the vitriol as the work of 'those pesky anonymous 12 year-olds.'

relevant to the last several posts

That article is pretty terrible.

[Teryu]

You actually read that entire novel of asspatting?

[Correction]

That article is pretty terrible.

care to elaborate?

[Rhinox]

Wonder if liberal and conservative talking heads get death threats.

[Stilzkin]

In other words, Anita Sarkeesian only presents sections of games as sexist because she's only talking about the sexist bits of games, and how, of the tropes developers choose to put in their games when designing for female characters, they frequently fall back on sexist ones.

When people critique her for cherry picking aren't they saying that fragments of designs or stories are incapable of being sexist, or not sexist, by themselves?