- Or it means that gamers do not consider gaming's "sexism" as anything that is particularly troublesome or bad
Because neither This image:
or this image:
Aren't raising problematic expectations? Cartoonishness aside, these extreme caricatures are a serious problem when it comes to the defining of attractiveness in society. Both are completely unrealistic, and If you can't percieve that as "bad" then I have no idea what you percieve "bad" to be.
- Gamers have been talking about how stupid games portrayal of women has been for years. Gamers have been talking about how shitty all the COD releases have been for years.
You are right - in some ways. There has been increasing uproar about female costume, especially regarding fantasy Armour for women. However, the companies will keep on making them until gamers stop buying them - It's an economically viable strategy. It has been shown over and over and over again that people will still buy these games. You can say "well real gamers would never buy these games", but the fact is that all those millions of people who buy those games are gamers, even if they don't fit your personal definition. Gaming is not the small, nintendo helpline-calling group of upstarts it once was. Gaming, and gamers, are a Huge cultural and societal portion. With that growth comes the responsibility of dealing with the sexists, misogynists (and even misandrists) who co-opt your title.
Hundreds of games are released every year. I would love to see a list of 20 even remotely popular games from the past ten years that pass the Bechdel Test. It's a simple test: There must be two female characters (some people insist they have to have names), and they must talk about something OTHER than a man. You would be shocked and/or appalled to know how few pieces of media fail this test You would be even more surprised how few would pass if you added "Not talking about children or marriage" to the criteria. Most "nerds" would be unsurprised (though the masses would be) to see how many comic books actually pass.
- "But it's about Ethics in Journalism!" (edit: yes I know you did not say this)
Yet you feel inclined to bring it up?
Yes, I do, because this is the smokescreen that is continually thrown up around this issue. People hated Zoe Quinn long before anyone found out she was sleeping around. I don't agree with everything women like Sarkeesian and Wu have to say, far from it, in fact, but I do feel that they shouldn't have to move house to avoid the prank-called SWAT teams, and they shouldn't have to cancel speaking engagements because of mass-murder threats. It's never been about how these women did their business. It has ALWAYS been about what they had to say.
- Brian Williams has never publicized or pushed any death threats to the public, never given a platform to them. I am pretty sure there have been death threats involved.
Pretty sure? As you asked me about the things that I said re: harassers, where did you get that critical information? I'm sure that NBC would like to know, and the FBI if they haven't been informed.
- People on the internet do this thing, where they be extreme for the sake of getting attention. Give them attention, and you will attract those people, give them a platform, and you will find no end to the ridicule and threats.
And what would you have these women do? Go to the police? they've done that. Ignore them? tried it. Call their mothers? probably tried it.
The inference, by the way, that calling the mothers of twenty-somethings men Is a feminist issue, because it implies a.) that their mother was the primary caretaker, and b.) that these people, not being "real men", need to be chastised by their mother like children.
and regarding my sources for my "image" of these harassers Here's a great article about the "dominance by insult game". that one's about nerd being harassed, but people are doing that same thing online.
Here's another good one, written in response to Scott Aaronsen. It's probably the most on-pointe article i could post to respond to your assertions, though there have been droves of articles written about harassers in psychological journals (unfortunately a lot of them predate our internet culture and make them a little hard to use).
- This has nothing to do with anything, the person you are responding to portrayed feminism in a fairly positive light, and only refered to it in a way that spoke of people being against it for false reasons.
I disagree, not that the poster was portraying feminism "in a positive light", but that what I said doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about. The pivotal problem, as outlined in Arthur Chu's article above, is that shy, nerdy guys attack feminists and feminism because they think it's the problem (even though it isn't).
This is the problem with the idea of Privilege - It's hard to understand you have it when you don't have as much as other people. It's hard, also, to be the person saying "Yes, I understand you're under the poverty line, and have to fight for every single thing you have. Imagine having every single problem you have just outlined to me, and also being black, or also being a trans woman of Colour."
No one wants to hear how it could be "so much worse" than it is, because suffering is not a penis measuring contest. However, you still have to acknowledge those things.
My friend Eden is a clarinet major at my university. She comes from a relatively wealthy family, who bought her a (used) Lexus as the car for her to use to get back and forth to university. Eden also lives in a pretty nice suburb of Cleveland. Eden has also been pulled over and asked if she owns her car. She has shown the officer he license, registration and the title to the vehicle, and not been believed. She has had to wait outside her car while the police phoned her parents and the insurance company to make sure she is whom she says she is. Eden is Black.
I've never asked my friend Theron ( a Steinway Artist) about his experiences, mostly because I don't want to hear about the best jazz pianist I've ever met gets routinely pulled over while going to his high-society Gigs.
The point I'm making with this is that People with "not as much privilege" feel somehow attacked by both sides, because they have no concept of how much worse it could get if they had less privilege.
- The point of the photo is making is not that nerds are "lesser" men that can't get a date. It's that nerds are people who [...] become businessmen who make facebook or microsoft.
... you're going to have to clarify this whole section for me, because I feel like we're talking about the same thing. The "basement dweller etc" stereotype is a problem because it infers that people who are enthusiastic about MLP or whatever are somehow lesser in some way.
- Meanwhile, the gamers harassing others are the blame of gaming culture. Gamergate is the cause of those sending death threats.
You mistake my point. of course not all gamers are "GamerGate". Most of them are great people. But just like I call out bullshit feminists, you have to call out the bullshit aspects of gamer culture. You've got hold up the mirror to yourselves and point out your problems.
- Gamergate, or most people in it, are people who have legitamate concerns and legitimately want to see change in games journalism.
Gurney Halleck is not wrong in saying that the "well of GamerGate has not been poisoned". He is wrong, however, in inferring that it wasn't always poisoned in the first place.
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... I don't know why I'm even writing this anymore. I'm at a point where everthing I'm writing is semantics and rebuttal, and I just don't even give enough fucks. bioemerl, I see your perspective on Gamergate, and even if I didn't know you from around hubski already I can see that you are the sort of person who wants positive change. What i'm trying to say is that gamergate is not going to get it. Even if its cause was fundamentally good (which is up for debate), it's got too many bad apples and too many co-opted sections to get itself anywhere other than the derision of the masses. I sometimes think similarly of feminism, but feminism's been around for a hell of a lot longer and keeps kicking, so maybe I'm wrong.
have a good one.