Rebochan posted:

Oh boy, I think I'm going to have some fun reading that poo poo when I get home tonight.

I've yet to read a single "thoughtful" critique of Feminist Frequency yet. So far what you guys have quoted is the dumbest poo poo I've read yet trying to pass itself off as "intellectualism". And I don't want to write one because I know some loving Gamergater is going to run with it because not one of these "critiques" is actually, well, a critique. It's just a straight up attack on the mere existence of criticism and how harmful and evil it is that this mean woman is picking on our precious vidyas

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

I'm quite sure that "nice guys" morphed into MRAs. They had to go somewhere.

Jimbot posted:

Those essays are anything but what you described but I'm sure it'll seem that way. Confirmation bias and all that. It's quite alright to criticize someone's work but going in poised to hate something because it disagrees with your darling isn't a healthy stance to take.

Rebochan posted:

quote:

Gaming was founded on people who were bullied in other places. I won't be a part of becoming bullies ourselves. An attempt to oppress ones oppressor does not end oppression. We can't solve sexism with Mean Girling, and we can't solve a sense of female inadequacy with Queen Bee tactics. Anita Sarkeesian should not have the right to determine that my body type is inherently bad when used in video games.

There's absolutely no need to demonize anyone on the path to encouraging more dignity for everyone, no matter what any sales charts, surveys or statistics may suggest otherwise. This should be an ethical debate, not a popularity contest. The perspectives of gay and straight white cisgendered men matter. The perspectives of transgendered men and women matter. The perspectives of non-white people, male and female, gay and straight alike, matter. And the diverse, contradictory perspectives of cisgendered women matter too. These perspectives include the perspectives of sex workers, both those who entered into sex work of their own volition and those who were forced into it through poverty, human trafficking, or addiction. Erasing any group or people from video games will not make the real world issues affecting them go away. It will just make people like Anita Sarkeesian more capable of avoiding the issues entirely to avoid uncomfortable emotions and thoughts. No matter how you feel about the practices of prostitution and pornography, it's wrong to deny the existence and personhood of sex workers themselves. Video games are art, and art should not censor content simply to appease extreme North American political beliefs.

Right now, the gaming industry is catering to a handful of women who personify the nagging wife or girlfriend; that, in itself, is rooted in sexist assumptions about what women can be in gaming and the world at large. Female media personalities are still being cast as the "girlfriend" or the destroyer of fun. There is a surprising acceptance of women who have a hard time saying anything good about AAA games which just might hinge on the expectation that women just naturally hate those games. That assumption is wrong. I love Gears of War so much that I've come to see "Brothers in Arms" as a gender-neutral term. I'd be the one woman who wouldn't sleep with Kratos because I respect him too much. There is nothing inherently stopping women from accessing these games. Perhaps we just haven't been given social permission to give them a chance, because the narrative is that gaming hates women.

Sarkeesian, interestingly, fulfils both stereotypical female roles. She's an attractive, modestly sexualized woman beta male gamers can "protect," thereby assuming a traditionally male role they may rarely get to fill. In her own way, Sarkeesian personifies the "damsel in distress" that she so frequently criticizes. At the same time, her persistently negative focus sets her up as the destroyer of fun that perpetuates the idea that men are the "real" gamers: the assumption that gaming needs to change to be more welcoming to women presupposes that it is currently primarily for men. Now, I won't deny that some developers really need to get the memo that women are gamers too, but those guys are in the minority of the developers I've encountered. Still, there's an implied benevolence in humouring Sarkeesian's recycled theories which defuses any real threat to the assumed male hierarchy in gaming. Note that I'm offering this hypothetical as a potential mindset for Feminist Frequency's supporters.

quote:

Gaming was founded on people who were bullied in other places. I won't be a part of becoming bullies ourselves. An attempt to oppress ones oppressor does not end oppression. We can't solve sexism with Mean Girling, and we can't solve a sense of female inadequacy with Queen Bee tactics. Anita Sarkeesian should not have the right to determine that my body type is inherently bad when used in video games.

There's absolutely no need to demonize anyone on the path to encouraging more dignity for everyone, no matter what any sales charts, surveys or statistics may suggest otherwise. This should be an ethical debate, not a popularity contest. The perspectives of gay and straight white cisgendered men matter. The perspectives of transgendered men and women matter. The perspectives of non-white people, male and female, gay and straight alike, matter. And the diverse, contradictory perspectives of cisgendered women matter too. These perspectives include the perspectives of sex workers, both those who entered into sex work of their own volition and those who were forced into it through poverty, human trafficking, or addiction. Erasing any group or people from video games will not make the real world issues affecting them go away. It will just make people like Anita Sarkeesian more capable of avoiding the issues entirely to avoid uncomfortable emotions and thoughts. No matter how you feel about the practices of prostitution and pornography, it's wrong to deny the existence and personhood of sex workers themselves. Video games are art, and art should not censor content simply to appease extreme North American political beliefs.

Right now, the gaming industry is catering to a handful of women who personify the nagging wife or girlfriend; that, in itself, is rooted in sexist assumptions about what women can be in gaming and the world at large. Female media personalities are still being cast as the "girlfriend" or the destroyer of fun. There is a surprising acceptance of women who have a hard time saying anything good about AAA games which just might hinge on the expectation that women just naturally hate those games. That assumption is wrong. I love Gears of War so much that I've come to see "Brothers in Arms" as a gender-neutral term. I'd be the one woman who wouldn't sleep with Kratos because I respect him too much. There is nothing inherently stopping women from accessing these games. Perhaps we just haven't been given social permission to give them a chance, because the narrative is that gaming hates women.

Sarkeesian, interestingly, fulfils both stereotypical female roles. She's an attractive, modestly sexualized woman beta male gamers can "protect," thereby assuming a traditionally male role they may rarely get to fill. In her own way, Sarkeesian personifies the "damsel in distress" that she so frequently criticizes. At the same time, her persistently negative focus sets her up as the destroyer of fun that perpetuates the idea that men are the "real" gamers: the assumption that gaming needs to change to be more welcoming to women presupposes that it is currently primarily for men. Now, I won't deny that some developers really need to get the memo that women are gamers too, but those guys are in the minority of the developers I've encountered. Still, there's an implied benevolence in humouring Sarkeesian's recycled theories which defuses any real threat to the assumed male hierarchy in gaming. Note that I'm offering this hypothetical as a potential mindset for Feminist Frequency's supporters.

Darth Walrus posted:

I've already quoted parts from this section, but Imma just quote the whole thing here because it's so deeply, deeply strange:

quote:

Video games are art, and art should not censor content simply to appease extreme North American political beliefs.

Darth Walrus posted:

I've already quoted parts from this section, but Imma just quote the whole thing here because it's so deeply, deeply strange:

Junkfist posted:

quote:

Right now, the gaming industry is catering to a handful of women who personify the nagging wife or girlfriend; that, in itself, is rooted in sexist assumptions about what women can be in gaming and the world at large.

Rebochan posted:

This part got quoted earlier, but I have some actual CONTENT FOR THE THREAD that relates to it:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzPXObE7SUc

Just dropped today in fact.

Heroic Yoshimitsu posted:

I cannot honestly believe there is anyone on earth who cares enough about DmC to care what cuts are made to it.

dijon du jour posted:

WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN MOVIE NIGHT'S EPISODE 2 ON THUNDER IN PARADISE GOES WILD ON YOU?

Archer666 posted:

Good to see this guy is still around.

Leal posted:

Man, Marv from Home Alone fell on some hard times

Leal posted:

Man, Marv from Home Alone fell on some hard times

Darth Walrus posted:

Rebochan posted:

I guess the Furry Bandits didn't take off

Junkfist posted:

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

I really don't know what to say, and let's leave it at that. Wrestling! I always thought it was something dumb for my little brother, but I guess people care about it. Spoony's videos are a bit intimidating, is there any guide or history to a newcomer?

E. watching the Landis video

Darth Walrus posted:

I've already quoted parts from this section, but Imma just quote the whole thing here because it's so deeply, deeply strange:

MonsieurChoc posted:

As for the founders of gaming, they were a corporate conman who hired a bunch of stoners to make games for him. Then they sold out and became corporate and gaming was born. It's even a much more interesting story.

Tae posted:

I'm told the WWE Network has a bunch of ESPN style documentaries that are good intros to wrestling.

WickedHate posted:

It's not a story that lets them be victims, though.

Jimbot posted:

Gaming was founded by Ralph Baer and I won't hear anything otherwise!

quote:

For a long time I was afraid to publicly say what I really believed. Then Anita Sarkeesian encouraged the audience in an XOXO talk to "Listen and believe women" who claim harassment and abuse. Only women. That hit a nerve. I know three different men who have been falsely accused of abuse, and they had their lives dragged through the mud because too many people just took the woman's word regarding what happened.


To be clear, it's not my belief that they didn't do the things they're accused of. I know they didn't do it because I was a witness to some of the events that the accusers twisted. These men suffered social recriminations and in some cases, lost work. They became victims of female abuse, specifically a phenomenon known as relational aggression. This has made me concerned that we're not, collectively, keeping a close enough eye on the phenomenon of male victims of abuse because we limit our understanding of abuse to something that men do to women. Men do get abused, by women as well as other men. They aren't given nearly enough support by the system because men are expected to be able to take care of themselves due to extremely gendered assumptions about male power. This is is the stuff we're talking about when you hear feminists say that patriarchy hurts men too.

PresidentBeard posted:

First off I know that she's wrong, and tilting at windmills. The whole "false accusations are the real evil" is the most stereotypical conservative strawman there is. However patriarchal society does make it very difficult for male victims of many kinds of abuse to be taken seriously.

PresidentBeard posted:

First off I know that she's wrong, and tilting at windmills. The whole "false accusations are the real evil" is the most stereotypical conservative strawman there is. However patriarchal society does make it very difficult for male victims of many kinds of abuse to be taken seriously.

Sephiroth_IRA posted:

"For Anita, Zoe, Brianna, Matti," *breathes* "Leigh, Samantha and Jen." The lord of the nerds then raised his hammer toward Valhalla. A lighting bolt fell from the sky and in a flash of light he was gone.

Serene Dragon posted:

I think this is my main problem with her essays. There are occasional glimmers of decent points in there that are smothered by condescension, "I'm not one of THOSE girls" sentiment and sometimes just outright bullshit.

Rebochan posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzPXObE7SUc

Jack Gladney posted:

It's just weird to bring that argument into the discussion in the first place. It's not like anyone minimized the suffering of men under patriarchy in the first place, so I don't see how mentioning it constitutes a critique at all. Nobody who's read literally any introductory book about feminism would disagree that men suffer under patriarchy, and failed aspirational masculinity describes at least half of the gamergators, if not 90% or more. Ditto for women turning to "relational aggression" because they've been taught to avoid confrontation as a means of conflict resolution. Literally feminism 101.

Lichtenstein posted:

Coinciding with the whole wrestling talk here, I was just sent this by a friend. I'd love to know if there's some story behind it, or is it just a singular incident of folks goofing around.

Jack Gladney posted:

, and failed aspirational masculinity describes at least half of the gamergators,