a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment

    You have to start somewhere. Does that mean that Gamers are just NIMBYs? "we see there must be a change, but do it somewhere else first"?

Or it means that gamers do not consider gaming's "sexism" as anything that is particularly troublesome or bad, and would prefer to see change in the medium come about naturally rather than having people refuse to touch topics because they may be considered sexist. 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. The push-back didn't occur until people started trying to relate video games being sexist to the people who play games also being so, or that games cause people to become sexist. It's regular that people find the games that try to attract people by way of big breasts and laugh at them. The shit has been ridiculed for ages.

    "But it's about Ethics in Journalism!" (edit: yes I know you did not say this)

Yet you feel inclined to bring it up?

    I wonder how many Death threats that Brian Williams has received so far?

A) 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.

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 the reason they continue to do so is because they are given tacit permission to represent you from the vast swaths of gamers who say nothing.

The vast swath of gamers openly dislike, if not hate, anyone going out threatening or attacking people.

Of course, when you conflate gamergate to people going out and harassing women, it becomes impossible to view anyone involved as capable of speaking against harassment. In reality, very few are for what you think they are for.

    Every time someone does not speak up against these radical people and continues to let the circlejerk happen you risk peoples lives. Real people.

Again, everyone speaks up against radical people, on both sides of the gamergate debate.

    People who are so messed up and who feel so out of place in society that when their only escape is shown for the problematic fantasy world it is, their response is to turn to violence.

How many people who do harass others have you spoken to? Are you a psychologist? Or is all this being pulled out of your ass and/or a recent journalist's ass?

    then you are not a man, relies on the idea that "femininity" or "Not manliness" is somehow superior. Feminism says "that's bullshit, manliness and not manliness are equal things".

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.

    because the implication that "nerdy people" are not just forever alone, but unworthy of love runs under the same implication that they are "lesser" just because they aren't "men".

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, across time, learned to define themselves over the dislike they received from the general community. People who were accused of being unhygienic, who loved playing with childrens toys, etc. People who, despite this sterotype, cared enough about the childrens toys to keep on doing it.

Imagine, ten years down the line, a bunch of people start calling themselves neck-beards and adopting watching anime, having obsessions over My Little Pony, and being all cool because of it. They aren't going to be neckbeards, the creepy fedora wearing guys who aren't good at interacting with women. Just as a cute preppy couple aren't nerds. Nerds are the people who spent their entire life in their basement playing with star treck models/comic books, and got laughed at for it.

Of course, that is fairly bullshit, as the only thing that defines being a nerd is "obsession over some topic", so you could honestly call any person who does have such an obsession a nerd. The comic above, however, seems to refer to the (imagined) sorts of people who adopt the nerd identity because it's cool, because nerds make a lot of money and become businessmen who make facebook or microsoft.

    Feminism says You gotta step up and look out for the people whom society treats as lesser. That runs for minorities, that runs for people being oppressed for what they have on (or don't have on), and any other thing you can think of.

Decent human being say this. Not just feminism.

    there's a lot of really shitty people who call themselves feminists. But I don't judge all christians on WBC or Muslims on ISIS.

Meanwhile, the gamers harassing others are the blame of gaming culture. Gamergate is the cause of those sending death threats.

Of course, they aren't really comparable are they, because gamergate is clearly a movement all about harassment of women, it started that way, and it is still that way, because that's what gamergate is.

Nobody dislikes feminsm as you say it is. Just as nobody dislikes gamergate as people say it is. In reality there is a middle ground, a large group of rational people with a decent point who are being shoved aside in order for people to gawk and point out the extremists. Feminism, by most people, and for most people, is a good idealogy that will result in a better world in the long run. Gamergate, or most people in it, are people who have legitamate concerns and legitimately want to see change in games journalism.

Yes, feminism has the idiots that think women is a word that refers to women as something as an offshoot of men, so they use wymmin instead because most feminists will support any ideas that seem to be progressive towards creating better treatment for women. Yes, gamergate has the idiots who think they are going on a crusade of justice by threatening those who dared criticize games, and think they are in the right because there are other people online saying that they are bad people. Yes, it is absolutely possible to shit on either movement because of those people, and because the whole movement is about pushing down men/harassing women.

To do either requires you put on blinders, bunker down in your ideaology, and see the world the way you want to see it. I don't think it's a coincidence so many gators (people in /r/kia hate the term, but I honestly love it) hold the view that feminism is a vile and bad thing, and that those who are feminist view gamers/gamergate as a vile and bad thing. It's a result of inability to see the broad picture, and both sides seem unwilling to see the broad picture of the other side.