Feminism Thread

[ronin sparthos]

Why would I need to reply to something so blatantly off-base with anything deep and insightful? You place this expectation on me that you don't have on yourself.

You honestly believe the "typical" gamer is this recluse? Also, I don't know how you think probing questions are meant to be 'insightful' anyway. But please, answer them.

Only recently has gaming become something that you can freely state without drawing confused looks from your social peers. How many people muttered to their friends they played Street Fighter, Madden or Mortal Kombat to save face with their schoolfriends when probed on their hobbies? I'm willing to wager quite a few BGers if they're honest. Can't tell those friends about Final Fantasy though. It isn't manly. Doesn't even sound manly. The same thing goes for trading card games, RP, LARPing, enjoying vidya OSTs and other hobbies that gamers would be naturally drawn to.

Why is this? Because of our image of what constitutes a man. Real men don't beat up monsters on a screen. Real men would be outside beating up other men.

So yes, the hobby has been populated by socially rejected men lamenting their fate that they like slaying fire-breathing dragons or jumping from platform to platform but can't connect with the opposite sex or be accepted by society. Some by choice, some by trade. The mainstream has cast gamers as geeks, nerds and losers and so the misogyny grows when rejection caused by societal factors coupled with underdeveloped social skills comes to a head. Women are outsiders just like casuals are outsiders and can't possibly understand anything about gaming. So in turn women are attacked or objectified and gamers stratified.

What we see on the internet is simply an agglomeration of the worst offenders.

[Callisto]

I uhhhh

[archibaldcrane]

I never felt the urge to suppress what games I liked to my peers.

Maybe that's why I'm so awesome.

[RKenshin]

ib4 Hello Kitty Online

[Ksandra]

We played FFXI music at our wedding.

whatisthisIdon'teven

No, I don't think people hide the fact they play games.

In fact, my experience growing up around gaming nerds was that they wore it almost as a badge of honor to make themselves feel like special little snowflakes.

[BaneTheBrawler]

No, I don't think people hide the fact they play games.

lol. i hid FFXI from everyone but my closest friends. Only one of them played, and he switched schools. The rest knew two things: Don't talk about FF during school, and I'm unavailable Monday and Thursday evenings. The friend who switched schools could talk about it freely; he would play Pokemon with friends during lunch. He went to a large school, where there were enough kids to not single anyone out. Not so in my small-town school. Any time I even mentioned something that involved the internet (other than Myspace) my classmates eyes would glaze over, and the one time I tried to play pokemon during lunch I spent the whole time telling them to leave me alone. Books were far safer. Reading books during lunch (and every other period) made me the crazy smart kid, instead of the faggot who plays pokemon. The only game I could talk about in school was Diablo 2, and, again, only with my friends. We were the only kids in school who played anything other than Madden.

My school wasn't even bad about bullying. No one ever got shoved around; words were the worst we ever gave each other. But our class was just so small (90- maybe 60? idk its been a long time) that anything unusual like FFXI instantly marked you as different, someone to avoid. Teenagers are awful people. Young adults aren't much better. As a parent, you should keep that in mind. It will be relevant all too soon.

[Rhinox]

lol. i hid FFXI from everyone but my closest friends. Only one of them played, and he switched schools. The rest knew two things: Don't talk about FF during school, and I'm unavailable Monday and Thursday evenings. The friend who switched schools could talk about it freely; he would play Pokemon with friends during lunch. He went to a large school, where there were enough kids to not single anyone out. Not so in my small-town school. Any time I even mentioned something that involved the internet (other than Myspace) my classmates eyes would glaze over, and the one time I tried to play pokemon during lunch I spent the whole time telling them to leave me alone. Books were far safer. Reading books during lunch (and every other period) made me the crazy smart kid, instead of the faggot who plays pokemon. The only game I could talk about in school was Diablo 2, and, again, only with my friends. We were the only kids in school who played anything other than Madden.

My school wasn't even bad about bullying. No one ever got shoved around; words were the worst we ever gave each other. But our class was just so small (90- maybe 60? idk its been a long time) that anything unusual like FFXI instantly marked you as different, someone to avoid. Teenagers are awful people. Young adults aren't much better. As a parent, you should keep that in mind. It will be relevant all too soon.

Grats on your coming out.


Seriously replace ffxi with gay and Pokemon with not gay.

[Ksandra]

I didn't mean literally everyone. But I would say there's a lot fewer that hid it than those that didn't. As well, some may have hid playing FFXI, without hiding they played games.

I mean fuck, everyone I knew had at least an atari growing up.

[ronin sparthos]

My point was that many people have had to repress outward interest in video games because of the stigma attached to them. Most of this occurs when you're in those years of your life where you so desperately want to fit in with peers so many people bullshit or reinvent themselves with varying success. Repression is almost always a recipe for creating a shitty person. Only in the last 10 years or so have we seen a paradigm shift where even the geekiest genres are being marketed to everyday folk. Even with this progress things like LARPing are still frowned upon in the gaming community and someone will still give you shit if you break out a pack of Pokemon cards or say you play Magic the Gathering.

We've come some way but we're still in a transitory phase. I have no doubt eventually vidyas will become an accepted medium for entertainment (just look at games like Mass Effect, GTA, Skyrim) by the masses but lets not pretend that society hasn't frowned upon sitting in front of that console and playing *insert generic JRPG here*. It's not manly by societal standards, it's been frowned upon as a hobby and people see it as behavior to correct rather than equally as legitimate as fishing, knitting, metalworking, art etc.

Alot of the misogyny in the gaming world comes from rejection, isolation, laziness, hopelessness, fear and immaturity. If you've never got to meet someone of the opposite sex who shares your interest (very possible pre-internet) and you've been shut down because of your hobby it's not a huge stretch to begin hating the people you believe responsible for your misery. Casuals, women, the world.

So in short, playing games = being gay.

[Ksandra]

Welcome to everything ever.

[ronin sparthos]

Welcome to everything ever.

Never said it was a unique phenomena.

In this case it explains why the pushback against women is so strong in the gaming arena and why women like Anita are able to peddle their schlock. She draws from a legitimate problem but does so in a sleazy and dishonest manner thus wasting everyone's time focusing on her rather than the underlying problems.

[Ksandra]

She draws from a legitimate problem

not really

The "problem" she focuses on has nothing to do with what you've been yapping about.

[quannum]

is hiding video games a real thing? didn't everyone play street fighter 2? i was flossin in my sonic 2 pre-order shirt even way back when. video games aren't the cause of your lack of social skills.

[Arelian]

is hiding video games a real thing? didn't everyone play street fighter 2? i was flossin in my sonic 2 pre-order shirt even way back when. video games aren't the cause of your lack of social skills.

Yes. It's a very real thing and it's a real shame.
http://penny-arcade.com/report/artic...-an-open-gamer

I know, I know. Penny Arcade Report. It's still a fair article, I think.

[Jefe]

Don't blame video games. It's your social ineptitude, your insecurity, the stench around you, the black cloud floating above your head.

[Callisto]

video games aren't the cause of your lack of social skills.

This times a billion, the exact same person would be just as shitty with women if they were a brojock, lol.

Tabletops and CCGs on the other hand, that's some nerdburger shit and they definitely can't get chix

[AoE]

This coming from a nigga involved the FGC. lol

Weltall is not a good example either because he has money.

[Callisto]

This coming from a nigga involved the FGC. lol

Weltall is not a good example either because he has money.

To wit, my g/f gets more cranky at me playing hockey than she does games, since that was eating more time and money.

[Tarage]

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f2...h/comic146.png

But seriously, the stigma is all but gone. Maybe it has to do where I live, but if you say "I play video games" people say "and?".

Hell, I'm a video game developer. Calling me a nerd isn't an insult.

[Kohan]

My biggest problem with Anita Sarkeesian is that she passes herself off as an expert on the subject, and many people give more weight to her arguments because of that. You can't blindly take a bunch of video submissions from your backers, look at them out of context, and then decide on the merits/flaws of those portions of a game any more than you can with clips/passages from movies/books. You can use them as examples, sure, but you usually can't divorce them from the overall context of the work as a whole, and this is where she fails the most in making a sincere effort to make arguments on how to improve the quality and artistic authenticity of games.

I've probably said this before, but I'd much prefer for the people who are trying to address any issues from the ground up, who are encouraging women to learn how to design and program games or who are creating their own indie companies to do it themselves, to get more attention and recognition. These are positive examples that don't seek to exploit a polarizing issue for personal gain.

Keep it 100, son. Right on the money.

This is essentially the same exact thing I said several pages ago, though I did so more elaborately. It's worth pointing out, as you'd suggested earlier that Kuya and I are in support of efforts like Anita's, and I clarified that this was never the case, but you didn't seem to believe that. As to why that's important, it implies a pathological aversion to the term "feminism," not the principles. That is why your behavior mimics extremism.

It can be likened to the stereotypical white male Republican aversion to all things thrown under the general label of "liberal." These sorts of people may be approached by an anonymous survey-taker, and asked if they enjoy various forms of health benefits. After they've acknowledged them, they're asked if they like Obamacare. They vehemently spout that they do not, but said surveyer then reveals that every health care point they endorsed is covered under Obamacare.

This is the same thing that I did to you in relation to that page listing various facets of feminism, and gender equality efforts. At the end, you were in denial due to the mention of "patriarchy," and not for any factual reason. It is the same as the white Republican; however, this should perhaps be expected, given that you also like many of the other things they fancy—not supporting gay marriage, not supporting various forms of government assistance, and so on. If you take this observation as an insult, I would suggest stepping away from yourself, studying your morals, and then comparing them against said far-right party members.

When Mazmaz implied that I have been subtle, and when I suggested that you do not understand nuance, both of these factors suggested that the only way to earn understanding is to hit someone over the head repeatedly with a hammer of information, as anything more substantial would not do. Mazmaz believes, evidently, that someone must be punched in the face with a labeled fist for them to understand the topic at hand; I was more respectful and thorough than that, but those efforts did not yield results.

Throughout this discussion, I and others have intricately and respectfully explained that feminism isn't defined by extremists. If you nonetheless define it that way, I would suppose that you do the same for every other group of every kind. Let's get a bit more personal, then.

You've rightfully defended yourself against someone else for being presumptuous about the life you've lived as a black man. I remember when you did this in spam. Someone made casual comments that led to you defending yourself for the unfair things you've had to deal with in your life. As a staunch humanist, I could only agree. You've also noted in the past that you appreciated my personality. I imagine this would be indicative of your likewise appreciating a good amount of the things I've said. Throughout all of that, I have always been a humanist. It's something that far pre-dates BG for me.

Now, let's say I wasn't a humanist. Let's say I sat there and mocked you for being black. You're illiterate; you're a thief; you hate everyone who isn't black; you mooch off of welfare to feed your ten kids, and you drive an Escalade. You'll never amount to anything in life.

That's fucked up, isn't it? That's me being an extremist. A racist white pig. I didn't mean any of those things, but I know you've dealt with people who made similar comments and meant every word. You have dealt with extremism.

This is why you shouldn't ever generalize any group according to what an extremist viewpoint depicts them as. It leads to racism, bigotry, animosity, and every combination of the aforementioned that you can think of. It leads to harmful legislation, mob mentalities, and so on.

To lay it all out in one TL;DR sentence: only extremism itself is the enemy to rational thought.