I’m sure that one of the great joys of being an opinion columnist for Breitbart is that you are completely unbounded by reality — you can just float on the clouds of wishful thinking, and even internal contradictions are irrelevant. Milo Yiannopoulos, right-wing non-gaming gamergater, was interviewed on NPR. Here’s the first bit of wafting non-reality:
It’s not borne out by facts to claim that the Internet is in any way a specifically hostile place to women,Yiannopoulos claimed, saying that according to one Pew Global Research poll, men reported being harassed and abused much more often than women.
We’ve got multiple women hounded out of their homes by death and rape threats; we have logs of conversations in which people plan to do horrible things to them; we can look directly at the men and women who criticize the whole #gamergate phenomenon, and see an obvious differential in how they are treated; the level of sexism in online comments is extreme, and even when we men are slammed, it’s often by trying insult us by calling us women. And Yiannopoulos wants to deny that? That’s crazy talk.
And then…
However,he concluded,this isn’t happening out of the blue to women who innocently tiptoe into this subject and get barrages of abuse. These women are professional provocateurs.Host Tom Ashbrook mentioned that Yiannopoulos had called the women targeted in Gamergate
sociopathic feminist programmers and campaignersin hisFeminist Bulliescolumn.
Women aren’t targeted for sexist abuse, but when they are, it’s because they deserve it, the bitches.
Ugh, not him again. The man’s a walking heap of retrogressive bigotries – he’s also a staunchly roman catholic homophobe who doesn’t let the fact he is himself gay get in the way of trying to make life worse for minorities in general and his own confreres in sexuality in particular.
Speaking of Gamergate, I had a fun argument with an MRA asshole who I’ve been engaging on and off for about a year. Our most recent argument played out over the course of a week or two, until I brought up Gamergate. The following is a transcript of our argument, unedited:
Him: I stopped from throwing some swears in there, if you can give a valid reason for feminism in the Western world, in any regard, I will change sides right now. Fire away…
Me: Ever hear of Gamergate?
Him: Fucking Oath, I hear gamergate, fail, try again.
Waiting…. Nutsuck.
Me: Why is bringing up Gamergate a “fail?”
Him: I am not going to explain, you know well why. If I sleep with you, will you 1+ my review? Fuck you [my name].
Me: Except that didn’t actually happen, and it was proven false in about 15 different ways. And while Zoe Quinn has gotten a depressing amount of abuse over the bullshit accusations leveled against her, guess how much abuse was targeted at the guy who supposedly traded sex for career advancement with her.
Him: Nope, that did happen, sorry. Not here to argue about facts champ.
Me: The fact is that it didn’t happen, and even if it did, why is all the abuse leveled at the woman in the supposed scandal but not the man?
Him: Oh, are you kidding? You would make excuses for Hitler. Admit it Nutsuck, you have nothing. NOTHING.
Me: Because a woman supposedly sleeping with a guy to get a good review which never existed is analogous to killing 12 million people and trying to take over the world.
(At this point he changes the subject, asking if he can post the conversation somewhere else. I said sure, provided I had the same permission, which he agreed upon.)
(Much, much later…)
Him: How is feminism looking now Bro?
Me: Better than ever. :)
Him: Pfft, reality is not your friend.
Me: http://thinkprogress.org/culture/2014/10/23/3583347/felicia-day-gamergate/
Me: You’re free to think that, because it sure as fuck isn’t yours either.
Him: Wow, swears. He he, you have nothing. Its funny.
Me: I have plenty. Saying I have “nothing” doesn’t magically make it so. You’d think you’d understand this by now
Me: Here I’ve given an example of a female public figure whose private information was exposed merely for expressing her support of other women attacked by Gamergate fucknuggets. And you’ll somehow wave it off as “nothing.” Because you’d rather live in denial of the fact that ANY pain exists outside your own.
Him: Bring some champ, give me some real.
Me: I just gave you something, you unholy demon of stupid.
Him: Give me a second, on the phone.
Me: Sure, whatever.
Him: Are you really going to nominate the Gamergate episode as a example? You will have to provide truth/facts. Given your example, you will have none. Again, champ, give me an example of the patriarchy. This is becoming fun yes? You have nothing (less emotive lies), and I have facts. You getting the picture yet?
Him: [my name], you are ultra predictable. Gamer gate is not a reason to support feminism, its exactly the opposite. You are stupid, or hard headed, you tell me champ..
Him: Nothing to say, the truth is right there to view, facts are facts.
Him: Yep, the truth is there to view, and Gamergate is a perfect example of why feminism is needed, unless you’re about to tell me that death threats are an appropriate response to someone supposedly bribing someone else with sex.
So [his name], do you think it’s appropriate to send death and rape threats, spread nude pics, and otherwise harass the shit out of a woman because she supposedly traded sex for career advancement (which never materialized, as proven over and over again)?
Him: So bribing people is okay? More emotion Doug, stick with facts that’s what men do.
Him: Here is what women do: http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s3592956.shtml#.VEq2vfmUd1T
Him: http://smdp.com/domestic-violence-requires-discussion/142562
Me: “Here is what women do.”
No, that’s what *a* woman did, not women as a collective gender.
Furthermore, I asked you if sending rape and death threats and harassing Zoe Quinn was an appropriate response to bribery which she never committed?
The fact that you’re mightily dodging the question makes me think that yes, you do think the death threats, rape threats, passing around of her nudes and other harassment is totally okay.
Which leads us around to the conclusion I reached before, which is that YOU are a perfectly valid example of why feminism is needed in the “Western” world.
Him: How do you know that Zoe Quinn received these threats?
Well [my name, IN ALL CAPS], you are the reason we need mens rights groups.
Him: Here is something else for you SJW http://www.halalchoices.com.au/index.html
Me: Because they were either public, screenshots were posted, or others confirmed they happened, including police. You’re not seriously going to claim that all of that was fabricated, are you?
Because if so, your case of denial is even worse than I thought.
Him: I don’t care if she received or not, if you piss people off you will get backlash. Man or Woman.
Give me another example of the patriarchy. Just for fun.
Me: Except no backlash was directed at the male supposedly involved in the scandal, and men who have prominently written in support of Quinn and others involved in Gamergate have been ignored too. Women have received the full brunt of all the rage and harassment by the mongoloids committing it.
Him: That is a shame, men should always be punished huh.
Me: So wait, when I point out that women are being attacked over this gamergate bullshit, you’re like “oh yeah, they totally deserve it” but when I point out that men similarly involved haven’t been attacked you act like it would be wrong if it were?
Which is it? Is it okay to harass and threaten those involved in a scandal or isn’t it?
MAKE UP YOUR DAMN MIND, YOU WORSHIPER OF HYPOCRISY.
Him: I actually don’t care [my name, IN ALL CAPS AGAIN], do you think women using their vaginas to profit is okay?
Me: Sure, why not? Conversely I also think it’s okay for men to use their dicks to profit. Why, you think prostitution is immoral or something?
Now, bribery is wrong, yes, but it’s wrong to accept bribes just like it is to offer bribes.
If you’re going to punish the guilty parties in a case of bribery, you punish both the one who offers and the one who accepts.
Him: That is correct, no tell me how do you know that the males involved in this did not receive any baclash?
Me: Because there has been zero evidence for it, unlike the mountains of evidence for the backlash against Zoe Quinn.
And let’s not forget that this supposed case of bribery never occurred.
Him: No there is not zero evidence of it, the men did not complain unlike women. Do you understand?
Me: oh, what evidence do you have that they were harassed, then?
Him: The same amount of evidence that you have that they weren’t.
Me: See, that’s not how burden of proof works. You make a positive claim. You provide evidence for the positive claim. Aren’t you an atheist? You know how this works.
Him: So the loudest complainers get the rewards?
Women control 88 percent of all purchases.
Me: As I thought, you have no evidence. The men involved haven’t been harassed. The women have, for something that didn’t even happen. Oh and it’s not just Zoe Quinn; Anita Sarkeesian is lumped in too, for merely pointing out the ridiculous level of sexism in gaming (and if you’re going to say that sexism doesn’t exist in video games, then kindly don’t, because it’s bullshit).
Him: Sexism in gaming, fuck off!! Had enough of your fruitloop shit for today [Note: he does this several other times throughout the whole argument; inexplicably get pissy and cut off discussion. ]
Me: lol, yeah, you don’t believe that sexism in games exists. You have your head buried way, WAY up your ass, [His name].
Him: You are an idiot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJeX6F-Q63I [Video by Thunderf00t]
Me: You’re seriously posting shit from Thunderf00t, compulsive liar?
I mean really, Thunderf00t, who freaked out over the concept of people wanting a convention to adopt a sexual harassment policy?
Thunderf00t, who spent a year deliberately painting a Muslim dude as some terrorist who was going to come murder him, all because South Park and Comedy Central didn’t air an episode due to death threats?
You’re using THUNDER FUCKING FOOT as a source? Man, your head just inched further up your ass.
He blocked me immediately after this. I find it ironic since a while back in the convo he proudly talked about how he was able to get other “SJWs” to block him, and was surprised I hadn’t.
And those poor guys just can’t help but to respond to these “professional provocateurs”? So his thesis is that men are noting more than reflex loops that have to respond to stimuli?
The first time he patronizingly called me “champ” I would have told him to fuck off.
tsig, in case you haven’t seen it, there’s a t-shirt on that subject from the Jesus & Mo author.
PZ: I just found it amusing; another fun highlight of arguing with him was being called a “mangina.” When I tried to point out the sexism inherent in that insult, he would have none of it.
Also fun was when I showed him data revealing that in Silicon Valley jobs, women are sorely underrepresented, especially in executive jobs. His response was that if women wanted to work those jobs, they’d have them. So he basically said that women don’t want to a) work with computers or b) be in charge. Again, he failed completely to see the sexism in that statement, and then refused to answer when I asked if his response also worked for the underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics in Silicon Valley hiring.
Ugh.. @Nero! I remember him “exposing trolls” at the Kernel. He is the worst of all humans.
Slight correction: this part of the conversation I posted should have been marked as “Me.”
“Yep, the truth is there to view, and Gamergate is a perfect example of why feminism is needed, unless you’re about to tell me that death threats are an appropriate response to someone supposedly bribing someone else with sex.
So [his name], do you think it’s appropriate to send death and rape threats, spread nude pics, and otherwise harass the shit out of a woman because she supposedly traded sex for career advancement (which never materialized, as proven over and over again)?”
@Thelastholdout:
That’s lovely. I actually gagged several times. However:
That was you, I think, not him.
Ah, you beat me. Never mind then.
That’s almost what the patriarchy teaches: if your Klingon honor has been insulted, you must retaliate disproportionately, you must not let the insult “sit on you”, lest you be seen as admitting 1) it’s true and 2) you’re weak – remember that being weak is terrible.
Whole wars have been fought for this very , this self-enforced learned compulsion.
In fact, I’m pleasantly surprised that Russia and Ukraine still aren’t at full-out open war; a whole list of incidents has happened each of which would easily have sufficed to trigger an immediate declaration of war around the time of WWI.
Milo, being the right wing hack job that he is, severely cherry picked and misrepresented the data.
Here it is for all to see:
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/10/22/online-harassment/
Results that he needed to conveniently ignore:
Young women are more likely to be victims of severe forms of harassment, including sexual harassment and stalking. MUCH more. Young men are more likely to be victims of name-calling and “embarassment”. Slightly more. Look at the second chart in the article. Young people are the most likely to be harassed.
When looking at men and women across all age groups instead, the higher likelihood of men being called names and embarassed is significantly higher than for women. And stalking and sexual harassment are still much higher for women.
You can see a few rather telling things on that last graph on the first page: online gaming is vastly more welcoming to men than women, and there is also a rather significant preference towards men over women in comment sections and discussion sites. The only place people viewed as significantly more welcoming to women than to men were social media sites.
Also page 6 of the report shows that women are more likely to be affected by the actual harassment. A lot more.
So it is pretty much exactly what the feminists have been saying all along, but the right-wing pundit, lies being their natural habitat, must paint the research as saying the opposite of what it is actually saying. I am sure this surprises everyone.
thelastholdout: You are saintly in your patience, even if it was your way of entertaining yourself. I was already fed up with the assclown in that conversation around the third thing he said. The fourth and fifth thing, which were basically just him saying “NOPE” would have put me in a full-fledged rage. I know a denialist and a sexist when I see one, and I don’t much care for either.
Peter: Yeah, I spent most of my editing effort on making sure our names were redacted. Don’t care so much if anyone knows my name, but I try to respect others’ rights to anonymity.
Anteprepro:
Thanks, lol. This was at the tail end of a week long discussion too. Which followed a full year of back and forth between us. I’ll admit that for a while in the public part of our discussion (in an atheist group) I was tired of actually engaging him and simply kept bringing up his ex-wife to distract him from attacking other feminists. (He claims that his ex-wife falsely accused him of rape to get her way in their divorce settlement, ergo women making false rape claims is a much bigger issue than men raping women). It was a terrible thing to do, but considering the shit he’s spewed before and after, I don’t feel too badly about provoking him.
thelastholdout:
Jesus. Fuck.
Like I said, from what I can tell, you showed restraint! Wound up being a good ending though, the way you did it. Let him fully illustrate what a hypocritical child he is, blocking you and storming away. Good show, I’m sure you enjoyed your fair share of popcorn.
Bonus shit from Milo The Pile-o-Shit:
First up,
“Nobody wants good Non-White Non-Male protagonists!”
Next up:
“Women should just suck it up like I do, the pansies!”
And finally, a paraphrase from the beginning of the article:
“You left wingers are SOOOO right wing!”
From anteprepro @ 17
Amusing bit of unintentional honesty there.
Seven of Mine: It was a paraphrase from the author of the article, so I don’t know exactly if that was how Milo might have phrased it XD
Anteprepro: Oh yes I did. I could post many other highlights of our argument, in which he showed blatant sexism, denialism, etc. And every time he was clearly losing the argument he would get pissed off and tell me to fuck off and never talk to him again.
One time when I pressed the issue he even threatened me by saying he’d “contact the relevant authorities.”
This from a man who had previously said he would “stop me from saying” the stuff I was saying if I was physically in front of me. In other words, he’d beat the shit out of me.
You know, I was actually unaware of the Pew Research cited by Milo until this article prompted me to find it. The data might actually be useful to us. Sure, it is basically just a survey of opinions and perceived experiences so it will not help us with people who want Teh Absolut Troof, but it does clearly illustrate what the problem is: women and especially young women get a disproportionately large amount of the worst forms of harassment and also have the highest negative responses to harassment, due to the disproportionate severity of it. Hell, the introduction page of the research specifically mentions Gamergate and the threats against Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. But even with it, it doesn’t matter: it will just be dismissed as Hysterical Wimmenz. Fuck.
thelastholdout: He sounds like a real winner. Jesus Christ, it’s like he fills all the worst stereotypes of Internet Tough Guy misogynist atheist troll.
The next time an MRA tells you that Gamergate is going after men too, point out that Chris Kluwe wrote a blog calling them all sorts of inventive insults yet somehow never got doxxed. https://twitter.com/ChrisWarcraft/status/525094762500456448
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If I was a corrupt gaming journalist/developer, gamergate wouldn’t concern me at all. Mostly because I’m a man, but also because they have shown no interest in stopping people from punishing sites for bad reviews, or taking bribes to give good ones.
If we’re going to share & enjoy gamer gate responses, here’s one that crossed my FB stream.
[Person A] “We want to tell the world about what you are trying to build. Or destroy. We don’t know. It’s been a bit tricky to piece together what it is you’re trying to do and how you’re trying to do it.” I agree with the author, I’ve read at least 3 articles on this shit and still have no idea what is actually going on.
[Person B] Gamergate is pretty simple: It started with a pile of unfounded allegations of sexual infidelity against a woman who dared to make a videogame that wasn’t a cod blops. They accused her of using her womanly wiles to get good reviews from a guy that never actually reviewed her game. [… goes on for a few paragraphs ]
[Person C] Person B I suggest you stick to talking about things you know about. I have no idea how you managed to type that from inside of that despicable cunt Zoe Quinn’s ass, I guess she has WiFi in her colon. You never bothered to do any research. Knee jerk pseudo feminism helps no one when sociopaths use it to manipulate people she is nothing but a social justice warrior. That waste of skin has made her living off being a professional victim while gas lighting poor brain washed low self esteem geek guys and cheating on them with multiple people multiple times. It sickens me how easily people are manipulated when you throw around terms like racists, transphobic, homophobic, misogynist.
In regard to these idiots being attacked reality check, when 8-chan and 4-chan attack someone it doesn’t mean gamergate supporters are attacking anyone. ANYONE can hashtag a word. Person A if you want EVIDENCE based information with screen shots instead of woah is me I’m being attacked bullshit from a known nut job check out. http://www.reddit.com/r/kotakuinaction everything you ever wanted to know about the entire situation published in a calm even handed way. Gawker is done, they pissed on the wrong nerds. BTW this is the kinda shit Person B supports
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0arcm1CMAA6vJs.png:large
[Person B] Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, a real live gamergater!
[… a few more tame replies, including a link to the ants …]
[Person C] Ladies and gentleman I give you a half man, who uses supposed moral superiority as the lens through which he views the world. I don’t care if I look uncivilized or rude, mainly because I don’t have time for this horseshit nonsense you people jump through hoops for constantly. I’ll keep not being a eunuch and you keep being whatever the fuck it is you are. For the record I don’t support either side, I believe a lot of the problems on the gamergate side are created by giving these fuckhead journalists power of the community they have contempt for, now the community is taking away that power and you will read article after article on how terrible that is. I just hate misinformation and stupidity. You wont see a pound gamergate hash tag on anything I create. Also for the record several of my personal heroes support the crazy side of things exactly like you, among them Cory Doctrow. I honestly believe otherwise intelligent people turn their brains off as soon as they hear about anything that seems to be attacking a minority, or protected status individual instead of actually reading, and digging, and reading some more and weighing the truth of what both sides are saying. Maybe I’m the crazy one for being willing to swim through that much sewage to come to an opinion on something I don’t really care about. I treat each human I come in contact with on a case by case basis, if you are a waste of good air, and you have a vagina, I will hate you, EXACTLY the same way I would hate a white cis gendered dick head of equal fuckitude. I tried to ignore this stupid shit as long as I could and here it is popping up on my feed yet again. So finally I got in a wrestling match with a pig, and look we are both dirty, I accomplished nothing and the pig enjoyed it.
Oops, looks like my comment got into the moderation queue. Presumably because I was quoting an asshole.
Not necessarily: you may be an ineptly well meaning useful idiot with a strong moral sense and a crippling lack of judgement who earnestly repeat soundbites learned by heart without taking the time stop and reflect for a couple of seconds about their creepy implications.
drken, #22:
Not only that, but the gaters are actually fighting AGAINST ethics in journalism. Take the episode with Gamasutra, for example. Gamasutra publishes an editorial critical of gaters. Gaters respond by flooding Intel with complaints until Intel drops their advertising with Gamasutra, thereby demolishing any wall that existed between editorial decisions and marketing decisions.
This has been their pattern. They are AGAINST good ethics in gaming journalism, unless you define “good ethics” to mean “never publishing anything critical of gaters.”
I think that’s the Rupert Murdoch school of ethics.
Calling him “amoral” is being too charitable.
With regards to the “discussion” quoted upthread, I have to wonder if online MRAs could even pass a Turing Test.
Likely not, Rey. They’d probably just give wrong answers then deny that there’s evidence for the right ones, all before pretending that they’re being set upon.
They’re taking every trick from the Fox playbook all right.
Heh. Fox News is significantly more honest and ethical than anyone associated with Teh Breitbart Krew. Just look at James O’Keefe. It’s essentially equivalent to comparing mainstream Republicans to teabaggers: they are both terrible and unhinged from reality, but somehow the teabaggers/breitbarters manage to turn it up to 11.
thelastholdout, you might want to avoid using “mongoloid” to describe these shitweasels; it’s an insulting term for people with Downs syndrome, and so has a fair amount of splash damage.
Thank you for calling this asshole out. I had a recent misfortune of stumbling on to his articles.
jefrir
I agree though I didn’t know there was a connection to people with Downs syndrome. I thought it was just racist to use it as an insult given how it’s a term for an Asian demographic.
JAL
I grew up with “Mongoloid” as the accepted term for people with Down Syndrome.
I find it oddly pleasing that there are now people who have never known the usage.
The good Dr. Downs believed that was a to a , namely that of the . Greek -oides means “similar”.
SallyStrange
Yep. There is also the episode about the outrage about a bad Bayonetta 2 review that had them up in arms, especially since the explicit sexualization of the titular character was pointed out (including back breaking poses and crotch shots).
vaiyt wrote:
They’re the Tea Party: Gamer Edition.
I didn’t realize Mongoloid was a derogatory reference to people with Downs syndrome or Asian people; I had never heard it used in that context. I figured it was just a synonym for “Neanderthal” or other prehistoric humanoid term repurposed to insult supremely backward thinking humans.
Now that I know better, I won’t use it again.
@thelastholdout (#37)
It’s a good idea to be suspicious of any epithets that insult the intelligence or manners of modern humans by comparing them to prehistoric humanoids. There’s such a long, unsavory history of people of color and people with intellectual disabilities being abused, exploited and murdered based on the premise that they are “less evolved” or “throwbacks” or whatever (a history that continues into the present day, if much more covertly) that it’s really easy to stumble into saying something ugly by accident.
In French we say “mongol” outright, with no morphemes to diminish the slur. It always struck me as weird:
(a) The mongols conquered much of Asia and parts of Europe, and were quite destructive in their battles. Developmental difficulties is related to this how?
(b) Down’s people look nothing like mongols.
I’m not sure if I saw this comic linked here or not, but this is a good summary of Gamergate: http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/15/the-perfect-crime/
Either that or this one: http://chainsawsuit.com/comic/2014/10/09/ghostboysters/
Gamasutra publishes an editorial attacking its core market. Intel and other companies withdraw their money from anti-GamerGate media companies because they know that attacking your market is a stupid move and they are smart enough to differentiate between the gaming media and the gaming community itself, which is where they actually get their money from.
And make no mistake, the actual gamers (people who are actually part of the gaming sub-culture and who spend considerable money on games) are overwhelmingly pro GG. Most of the anti-GG crowd are liberal and feminist bloggers with little to zero interest in games.
thelastholdout @37:
I really appreciate hearing you say this. Thanks.
alejandro @41:
Got some evidence for your No True Gamer bullshit?
Given that women make up a sizeable percentage of gamers, siding with the harassing misogynists is the stupid move. Those companies could have done the ethical and moral thing and refused to acquiesce to the demands of anti-feminists trolls and assholes. Moreover, they *should* have.
I would bet real money that if a conservative christian was complaining about crotch shots and making statements against sexualization in the media, the kind of atheist that post here would be quick to mock his “archaic” and “anti-sex” conservative views.
Oh, the irony.
Also, alejandro, given that the face of GamerGate is a bunch of asshole misogynists who send rape and death threats to women and whose goal is to silence women, the fact that “the actual gamers are ovewhelmingly pro-GG” isn’t a good thing.
I guess you ::snicker:: are one of those people who think GamerGate is all about corruption in gaming journalism. Do let us know when the GamerGaters actually start fighting against that. They haven’t done so yet.
The term mongoloid was used to describe people with down’s syndrome because they often have a pronounced epicanthic fold, and because John Langdon Down was following the racist science of ethnic races that was prevalent in 1862.
This is a valid term when you are discussing the breeding of pedigreed animals. A throwback is a trait that is found in the parent stock but is not the desired breed standard in the resulting strain. Frinst, occasionally a German Wire Haired pointer will be born that is the size of the much larger Griffon that was part of its gene pool. Since selectively breeding people is generally not something that has happened, ( with one notable disastrous exception), it should never be used to describe people.
alejandro @44:
Don’t try reading minds. You suck at it.
While I can’t imagine a conservative christian criticizing crotch shots or speaking out against sexualization in the media, if they did, I don’t think many of the people here would have a problem with that. Such views are not archaic and anti-sex. They’re progressive and feminist views (which is why I can’t see a conservative christian ever saying the things Anita Sarkeesian does).
I should amend my #47 to say that it depends on the context of the hypothetical conservative christians’ (CC) criticism. If it’s coming from a feminist position that crotch shots and sexualization of women in the media are wrong, then yes, that would be appreciated. If the criticism stems from the CC being anti-sex, then yeah, I think people would have problems.
What alejandro doesn’t seem to understand is that the criticisms of sexism in video games don’t stem from an anti-sex position. They stem from a belief that there are sexist elements in many video games.
Gamers read editorials?
I bet Alejandro believes that the only real games are violent first person shooter games. That the many many people, both men and women, who like and enjoy other types of games aren’t playing real games. Chances are I’ve been playing games (both card, board, and computer) longer than they’ve been alive. Judging by the level of maturity that they have displayed so far.
As far as I can tell the article that got them so up in arms that they bullied companies into withdrawing sponsorship from Gamasutra was effectively saying that gamers are no longer all sad lonely people living in parents basements. Are they trying to say that this is untrue? That they really are all sad lonely people living in their parents basements? And that is the only thing that real gamers do? Perhaps they should read for comprehension a bit more. Or get out of the basement and get some fresh air.
Question fixed.
There seem to be a lot of people who don’t understand (or acknowledge?) the distinction between sex and sexism. alejandro’s crack about conservative Christians above is a very good example.
alejandro
1) Gamasutra didn’t publish an editorial attacking its core market. It published an editorial saying “Yo game developers! You don’t have to make games only for adolescent boys anymore!”
2) They’d get money from other people if they made games that appealed to other people. And dollars to donuts, many, if not most, of those games that appeal to other people would still be enjoyable to the dudebro stereotypical gamer. That’s MORE money; not less. There are plenty of games around which aren’t oozing with sexism that do quite well. Dark Souls manages to not sexualize its female characters and is still hugely popular. Mass Effect. Tomb Raider. And so on. The core market loses abso-fucking-lutely nothing if developers take notice that there are more than just petulant manchildren playing games. Other than the sense of self-importance they get from the idea that the entire industry of gaming revolves around their puerile whims, of course.
I’m sooooo sick of this “actual gamers” bullshit. I’ve been playing games since before your average GGer was fucking BORN. I got an Atari 2600 around 1981 and have never been without a console since. I’ve owned damn near fucking every console that has been released except for this current generation of new ones as I’ve become more of a PC gamer since the last gen of consoles. And when I say “every console” I mean Turbo Grafx 16 and 3D0, and all the Sega Genesis peripherals; not just the big ones. I shudder to think how many hours I’ve put into World of Warcraft, or Starcraft 2 or Diablo 3. Don’t fucking tell me I’m not a real gamer just because I fucking expect more of game developers than you do.
alejandro
Don’t use words you don’t understand, shitwit. There’s a difference between sex and sexualization. Paging Drs. Dunning and Kruger, please.
The editorial attacked sexism and harassment. The fact that a portion of this supposed core market thinks it is perfectly acceptable to be hateful misogynist shitspigots on the internet is the problem. If you feel insulted because you feel allegiance to this core, excellent!. Yell and scream more please, continue to have public meltdowns to protect your precious games from evil girl criticism cooties. Your bitter man tears nourish my black feminist soul.
Zoe Quinn and Leigh Alexander ARE actual gamers who are being attacked by you assholes because you’re insecure hateful sociopaths, and they are female. None of the men who agree with them are being subject to the abuse that you keep insisting that these women deserve. Go ahead and boycott your sorry self right out of gaming, one less sexist troglodyte on the internet works fine for us liberal type people.
alejandro,
Others have already tackled the No True Gamer bullshit, I would like to point out another thing.
There is nothing wrong with someone who isn’t interested in games getting involved in this conversation. I don’t want to become a Catholic nun and yet I don’t want nuns to be treated as slaves by priests, even to the point of being sexually abused. That’s called caring about people, even when their problems aren’t my problems.
When it comes to gaming, sexism among male gamers actually is my problem even though I don’t play games. Fighting sexism in the gamin industry brings positive change in overall attitude to women- gamers after all interact with women all the time.
Tethys @55:
I want.
On t-shirt!
alejandro wrote:
Well, I guess I better get rid of my fairly large Steam library of games, and the shelves of PS1, PS2, PS3 and XBox360 games. I also need to dispose of my PSP and Vita because I have zero interest in games according to alejandro. I suppose I’ll need some brain bleach to remove those pesky stains of fond memories of playing games all the way back to the Atari 2600/Colecovision days, too. Thank you, alejandro, for telling me who I am, because I was clearly mislead up until now!
You seem to have me confused with someone else. Bayonetta’s sexuality is just plain ridiculous. From her impossibly long legs, to the ridiculous contortions done to show ass and tits simultaneously, to the awkward camera angles that are supposed, to titillate to her clothes vanishing whenever she used her powers, I was rolling my eyes at how silly it all was. My reaction to playing the game wasn’t one of titillation, but rather embarrassment (it was like playing a game designed by a horny 14 year old), which is a shame because the game wasn’t bad otherwise.
And before you set up another straw feminist to burn down, there actually is debate on this game within feminist circles. If you were to take away the most ridiculous aspects of the game, you end up with a really strong woman character that is otherwise in charge of her sexuality, and uses it however she sees fit. The Gamergaters don’t want to have this debate, though. They have declared, by fiat, that feminist debate is not permissible, and must be eliminated.
Also:
Christina Hoff Summers and Milo Yiannopoulos. Two of the most prominent supporters of #GG aren’t gamers but I don’t see them being told they’re not allowed to care.
From the gamers I know in real life and just from looking around the internet (you know, in websites other than hardcore feminist blogs) You can do it yourself. Just take some time looking websites frequented by actual gamers and it will ddit and 4chanbe more than obvious on which side they tend to be. Im talking about gam specific boards and video game subforums in popular discussion websites like reddit and 4chan.
The only way you can reach the conclusion that women make up a sizeable percentage of gamers is by adding the stats of women playing casual phone and facebook games (an entirely different market) to the demographics for people playing hardcore material on PC and console.
Nope. Playing candy crush on your phone while waiting for the bus doesn’t make you a gamer anymore than writing “God sucks” on facebook makes me an atheist activist.
Actually, I think GamerGate is about keeping games the way we like them and not havng the left destroy the industry through hyper political correctness. We don’t need radical changes, other than those that lead to better gameplay. We don’t need feminist screaming about unrealistic beauty standards because the artist decide to portray female characters that a male gamer may actually want to look at. And we certainly don’t need every game to include a black-trans-lesbian-woman as a playable character to ensure that the 0.00000000001% of the population feels “included” and “represented”. If you think these kind of things will improve video games, you are welcome to prove your point by making your own games and driving those “sexist” game developers out of business, not by attacking game creator who actually focus on their what their target market likes.
Fucking idiot. The only way you can reach that conclusion is by counting ALL the people who play games!! Scandalous!
Or by including women and minorities under the heading of “people”. Either way it’s scandalous I tell you!!
@Alejandro:
If you’d actually read that editorial, you’d probably know that it wasn’t actually an attack on “gamers” generically. The entire point of the article was that the old stereotype of gamers (namely, being exclusively pasty white males) is dead, and people who play games represent a fairly diverse group now.
Never mind, of course, that tying gaming journalism even more tightly to marketing and ad revenue is making the problem worse. The entire problem with gaming journalism is its extremely close relationship with marketers and publishers. Decisions about content and reporting based on the whims of marketers and publishers represent real corruption in the industry. Curiously, nobody who is pro-GG seems to care about that; likely because it doesn’t involve an individual woman to harass.
This has not been my experience. But then, what would I know? Gaming has only been my primary hobby for 19 years. I’m clearly not a REAL GAMER™. I’m just a “liberal and feminist”, which is clearly mutually exclusive with being a gamer.
alejandro @60:
That’s not evidence. That’s a personal anecdote. You need to learn what constitutes evidence. Your personal experiences do not count as facts.
I already know you’re playing the No True Scotsman fallacy. No need to reiterate.
Gaming encompasses a wide variety of activities, from playing a PS4 or XBox360 to playing World of Warcraft. Gaming stretches back to the 90s when arcades were popular and Nintendo was going strong. It goes even further back to include the Atari console. Gaming also includes board games and card games.
You don’t get to unilaterally declare what constitutes a game and what doesn’t.
Here’s some information you need to ram into your skull (from the Wall Street Journal)
48% of the game playing public are women. That’s a sizeable portion of gamers.
Well, it’s refreshing to find an openly sexist asshole. Cheers for wearing your misogyny on your sleeve douchemaggot.
Or we can do like others have done in areas such as tv, movies, and literature, and demand representation, since we are consumers of the product as well.
Hmmm, he read my #43 and #45. I wonder if our resident sexist pissant will ignore any comments from specific people…
A. Noyd, that’s probably a good rule of thumb. I do endeavor to learn the origins of words, and have found some interesting things. For instance, apparently in Hollywood you can slip some super shocking slurs past audiences as long as you pick them from other countries. For instance, Loki calling Black Widow a “mewling quim,” “quim” being an English version of the C word.
Also, in Once Upon a Freaking Time, an ABC DISNEY show, a random town guard called a disguised Evil Queen a slag, a Brit equivalent of “slut.”
You know, you’re right. It doesn’t make you a stereotypical gamer. The person playing candy crush on their phone while waiting for the bus probably doesn’t identify as a gamer either, if that’s the only kind of game they play. But it’s a game. And there’s a massive market for it.
What you’re doing here is equivocating between “stereotypical gamer” and “person who plays games.” Just like a creationist saying evolution is “just a theory.” The fact that someone doesn’t fit in the demographic that fits the stereotype doesn’t mean they won’t buy games if developers make them and publishers release them. It doesn’t mean there’s not a market for the kind of games those people would play. It doesn’t mean that Ubisoft and Activision and Rockstar will shrivel up and die. It doesn’t mean there can’t be games like Hitman. Nobody is going to strap you to a chair and force you to play Depression Quest or Gone Home. It just means there will be room for more than the stereotype. It means the industry won’t revolve around the stereotype anymore.
No links, assertion dismissed without evidence. Get use to that, as you have no evidence, just blather, lies, and attitude of a spoiled brat not getting their way.
I’m a bit perplexed. See, because on the one hand, we should ignore women in gaming because they’re a minority and don’t play the right games. But they’re a minority because of the toxic atmosphere against them within gaming culture. So people like Alejandro just get to cite “See, not enough women are gamers, therefore their opinion about gaming culture doesn’t matter.” as their prime defense. How the fuck are we supposed to get past this “old-guard” of gaming?
Don’t let them control the argument no matter how many times they hold their breath and turn blue.
The opinions held by the cesspit of the internet are as valuable as the contents of every other cesspit. It’s like consulting stormfront for their deep considered opinions on racism. .
Poor oppressed baby! The evil progressive people are destroying your He-Man Women Haters Club by talking about it!! Of course this will destroy all games forever and ever! How dare the evil feminists defile the sacred games!
Tony! You can make yourself any t-shirt using fabric marker pens. They are cheap and a lot of fun.
Alejandro
Sorry to be the one to break it to you, kid, but some of us were actual gamers before your precious FPS’ and MMORPGs were a gleam in a programmer’s eye. In my day, we knew that gamers use polyhedral dice and character sheets. And nary a one of all your Halos and your Warcrafts and whatall would have existed without us, neither. So don’t you and your greenhorn buddies try to tell me who’s a gamer and who’s not.
Alejandro, i’m happy to say that the true, hardcore gamers i know, and i know quite a few, are all much better people than you are.
No, what you need to do is take some reading comprehesion lessons becuse you clearly can’t tell the difference between “most” and “all”.
Thats me pointing you to the evidence. Go to websites with large number of visitors that discuss video games and you will get a clear picture of what the average gamer thinks about all this. Or just keep believing what the liberal dominated media feeds you.
Not in this context, which is the one of the entire gamer subculture. You do realize that your definition of gamer includes practically the entire population? From the 12 year old girl who played farmville once up to the grandpas who ocassionally play dominoes and chess… I guess those are quite the gamers too and the people who want to make another doom sequel should totally take their super important opinion into account, right?
The fact that there is now a large Lite Games industry in which women are the vast majority of the consumers doesn’t change a bit what continues to appeal and sell to young men. My entire point is that feminist are completely missusing this statistic. They are saying that AAAd evelopers should change first person shooter games because there are a lot of teenage girls who play Farmville on facebook.
Well, to begin with, how about you actually make some damn games? I assure you nobody will try to stop you if you go and try to make a game that appeals to gays or blacks or any token minority you want. But instead of that you are all too busy calling games misogynistic because they have young men as their target market.
Why don’t the people complaining about being shut down simply make and sell the games that they seem to think the world is waiting for but deprived of?
Hmmn. I play WoW and I raid. But because I think GGers are a bunch of idiots, apparently I’m not a ‘real’ gamer. Better cancel my subscription and delete WoW, and Diablo III, and Borderlands then, because I also happen to play Bejeweled Blitz on facebook.
Alejandro, one thing your natural bias isn’t accepting, is that a LOT of women who play MMOs and FPS hide their gender on forums and during play.
I don’t let anyone on WoW know my gender, and my alts never go into new guilds because I’m sick of hearing “Show us your tits!” the moment I join vent or teamspeak. Why the fuck would I want to let people know I’m a woman if all I get is requests for sexual favors?
Oh, do fuck off.
NO FUCKWIT.
No they’re not you ignorant fuckwit. They’re saying there is a massive untapped market of consumers who would line up to buy games that don’t glorify treating women like shit. I gave the example of the Souls games earlier. The story is about the world, not even about your character. The lore is all on item descriptions and in some NPC interactions. Your character can be male or female or anything in between or neither. Your character’s personal story is for you to tell. The female characters aren’t sexualized. Armor, for the most part, doesn’t turn into a bikini when worn on a female character. This is a vastly popular triple A title and its sales don’t seem to suffer at all from the fact that there are no nameless, helpless women to murder and abuse for giggles. It just isn’t fucking true that games have to degrade women to appeal to young men.
We’re told that GG is all about ethics in game journalism. Does this and this sound like someone who cares about ethics in journalism, or even knows what it is?
Dang, I hate keyboard shortcuts that accidentally are activated.
No fuwitted idjit, this is pointing at evidence: Misogyny. You’re no computer expert.
Like you keep believing what your delusional reactionary misogynist mind says without evidence? We have evidence, you don’t. Your evidenceless views are dismissed without evidence. Reality has a liberal bias, because we don’t believe in fairy tales repeat amongst your group ad nauseum. Reality is third party checks.
Appealing your minority view of misogyny isn’t profitable. It is just pathetic, like you are.
Evidenceless claim, dismissed without evidence. See where this is going? No link, what you say is dismissed. Get it? You aren’t saying anything repeating slogans you can’t back up.
No fuckwit, because they have immature misogynist fuckwitted sloganeering idjits who can only throw temper tantrums as their target. If you don’t see the difference, you don’t understand what it is to be mature person who treats everybody as their equal. Rape and death threats only at the women who speak up is saying they aren’t your equal. Personally, you are scared that they are your superiors. Nothing but fear from an epsilon male…,.
There are metric fucktons more women in gaming than alejandro realizes. In WoW, I play almost exclusively male characters and I never correct people who misgender me (which is pretty much all of them). I just recently reactivated my account and, as I’m running dungeons to level, so many people are in guilds or have names which are crude sexual references. There is a boss in one dungeon called Princess Theradras who is a very large, fat, ugly, four armed earth goddess in a bikini. You can imagine the kind of comments that routinely get made as we approach her. Women who game know better than to out themselves as female in unfamiliar company.
Along the same lines, my Twitch screen name is pretty obviously female coded and I still get misgendered A LOT which I usually don’t correct. My point here being that the bias that all gamers are male is so strong that it even overcomes a clearly female coded screenname.
I’m a bit confused. Is Alejandro actually trying to prove that GG is indeed about a bunch of whiny man-children not wanting girl-cooties over their games? Because he is doing a hell of a job then.
An noisy minority of insecure boys overusing sock-puppets to look more numerous than they really are does not a market make.
Citation Fucking Needed
Behind the already mentioned No True Gamer shitty rhetoric, “We spend considerable money on games” basically means “We can afford to spend Moar cash on our plastic toys than you peasants, therefore our voice is inherently more valuable than yours“: because sexism, tribalism and willingness to crush dissent with terrorism threats wasn’t enough, they just had to add class contempt in the mix.
No, because trying to “prove” something requires either intelligence or multiple millions of dollars to pay your attorneys as they wear down the opposition. There is no evidence of either.
What is highly likely is he(I assume) is, as you point out, terrified of cooties. That requires neither intelligence nor lawyers, and is totally consistent with his statements.
Could we have avoided much of this hassle if the journalist who wrote “Gamers Are Dead” had instead titled it “Gamers Are No Longer Trendy”?
alejandro @75:
And what you need to do is STFU until you can cite some evidence to back up your various assertions, which you’ve yet to do. All you’re providing is your very subjective, biased, limited opinion and treating it like it’s a fact.
That’s *still* not evidence. I asked you what your evidence was for this:
You have produced NOTHING other than your opinion, which is not evidence fool.
I’m aware of how encompassing my definition is. They’re all gamers though. Even if you redfine “gamers” to mean people who play games on consoles or online, women still make up a sizable percentage. Of course I’m sure you’ll dismiss the 48% figure I cited (notice how I did that? I went to a website that had figures n stuff and I copied/pasted the relevant material here and I provided a link n stuff. It’s easy peasy. You ought to try it Cap’n McDouche.)
No, actually that’s not what they’re saying. Many of the women who are playing these games that you hold up as “twoo games” are asking for women to be treated better in those games. That won’t substantially change your games, except to improve them by making them less sexist. I get that you’re fine with sexism and misogyny. Other people are not. And those ‘other people’ are not just those playing FB games you ignorant fuck.
No. That’s not something we need to do. As I already tried to get through your thick skull, criticizing companies for their output has been done before, and it’s resulted in success. Tv. Movies. Literature. Previously these were populated by and large with white men. As companies realized that demographics were changing and there was a wider audience they could reach, they changed the marketing and publishing plans. Also, the demand for representation of (for instance) black people in various forms of media contributed to companies representing them. It is not necessary to create your own product.
If you don’t like this, tough. People aren’t going to go away even if you and your vile misogynistic buddies continue lobbing rape and death threats at women.
Because that’s not feasible, little fucknuggett. There is nothing wrong with criticizing companies in an effort to get them to improve their product.
BTW, I notice you’ve only replied to me and ck in this thread, despite multiple people responding to you. Any reason you’re ignoring the others? Not all of them have female sounding names…
Alejandro @75
I did indeed notice the way you used weasel words so that you couldn’t be held culpable for lying.
It depends on the forum and the forum culture, the sort of discussion that happens on 4Chan is the sort of thing that could get you banned from SomethingAwful. I won’t talk about the “Average Gamer” because it’s such a nebulous term, however there’s no clear majority about #GamerGate, some are angered and saddened that yet again the toxic sludge associated with gaming culture is churned, some are buying into the myth that it’s about journalism, and there are people like you who revel in the opportunity to be a sexist asshole. Incidentally did you ever hear about that editorial on Gamasutra talking about how the definition of “Average Gamer” seems to be in a rut? It might help you understand why appealing to “The average gamer” is a fruitless proposition.
They are? I thought that the feminists were saying that maybe because gaming, even hardcore gaming, is played by more than just teenage boys you should stop being exclusively in a teenage boy mentality. Maybe you could actually get those teenage girls who play Farmville on facebook to play your hardcore games if you didn’t create and foment a culture that sees girls and women as no more than sex objects, or if our culture didn’t say that girls should play Farmville and boys should play Doom. Women play games, AAA developers looking for more wallets could do worse than try and market to them.
Gonna join the chorus in saying fuck off.
To respond to your sneering rhetorical question, have you ever heard of this game called Depression Quest? It was one of those games you sneeringly dismiss, but it marketed itself towards demographics other than exclusively teenage white male. You might remember it because it’s creator is weathering a firestorm of hatred from people like you, Alejandro, who are trying to kill her with their words and threatening to kill her with their actions. There is not a free and open market for there to be made games for everyone and anyone. As you yourself said you are trying to save the Teenage White Male focus of AAA games from the boogeyman of “The Left”. In doing so you show clearly that #GamerGate is a confederacy of entitled misogynists who are fighting kicking and screaming to avoid being dragged into a gaming culture that accepts women.
So again, Fuck off.
Would be easier to avoid it by the assholes just not being assholes.
Do we have to asshole-proof everything everyone writes?
I don’t think it’s possible. Assholes have a knack of finding a way to be assholes about anything.
I consider myself a member of the “anti-GG crowd.”
For the record, I have almost 1100 games in my Steam library alone.
I’m just stating this so you can completely disregard me and continue spouting the same bullshit as if I’d never said a word.
A quick look at http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming shows that almost nothing on the first page is what alejandro would consider AAA. So I went to reddit like he said, and found that he lied! Is that surprising at all?
*snicker* *teehee* *bwahahahaha*
About as surprising as where I live in Chiwaukee, the sun will rise over Lake Michigan in the morning.
alejandro #75:
“Token.” Uhuh.
Stll an’ all, I’m curious. What other products would you extend this philosophy to. If you complain your steak’s overcooked, would you accept other customers telling you to leave the chef alone and cook yer own damn food? That book you ordered that turned up with five pages missing? Stop complaining and write your own fucking book, matey.
Not only I know several women who like video games, I understand that most of them don’ give a fuck about the supposed “sexist tropes” in video games feminist complain about so much. They are not going to quit games at the sight of illusory misogyny when Bowser kidnaps Peach and Mario rescues her, nor they will stop playing Tomb Raider because Lara has bigger boobs than she does.
Neither do the sales of vastly popular first person shooter games seem to suffer from their “sexism” and lack of “diversity”, so these games are fine by your own metric.
So there are SJW approved games that are selling well? Fantastic. Keep making them. Play the games you like and let us play our games the way we like it. Let the market decide what is good and what isn’t. No need to go around playing thought police and accusing developers of being women haters for merely failing to confrm to your leftist politically corrrect views.
This is hilarious considering that the standard feminist narrative is that mainstream video games (and thus profitable ones) are completely full with misogyny.
Leftist can’t even get a consistent narrative.
I know this is hard for your leftist, quasi-comunist, money-hating brain to grasp, but if you are a game developer whose objective is to SELL games, then yes, the opinions of the people who actually intend to BUY your product and spend real money on it are more valuable that the opinions of those who won’t. Welcome to the real world.
smhll:
I’m sure the gators were delighted that Leigh Alexander couched her critical article in terms which gave them a semi-plausible reason to be offended, but I think it’s clear by now that any woman who is critical of GG, or gaming douchebros in general, is going to get piled on whatever tone she uses. Felicia Day being a recent example. Don’t we know by know by now what happens when a woman on the net says “guys, don’t do that”?
Gods, this guy is dense.
alejandro
Do you understand that this is all just a certain type of criticism? You can critique a game for content, playability, whatever you want. If enough people agree with you, developers may take it into consideration. No one is trying to shut down games or play thought police. They are making a critique of the content in some games. People are allowed to have opinions on the content of games, and the people threatening them until they are scared to say their opinion in public are the only ones trying to control the industry.
And people who don’t like misogyny in games don’t have to be completely separate from those games. Just like with criticisms of playability, there are degrees of dissatisfaction. You could still love and enjoy a game, but leave a review that says it would be better with or without a certain feature, or that feature can be so obnoxious that you stop playing the game and leave a completely bad review. Believe it or not, many of the people on our side play and love games, even the games you consider “real,” and even games that contain certain levels of misogyny.
Gamers buy games?
Don’t they usually just steal them?
Despite what you seem to believe the plural of “Anecdote” is not “Data”, and the opinions you share are not neither universal or definitive. “Me and my friends don’t have a problem with this” is not the same as “There is no problem”
“Thought police”, “leftist”, “Politically corrrect” [sic], and the unironic use of “SJW”. Yeah, I get the feeling you haven’t a clue who you’re talking about, what those people you’re arguing against actually say, or indeed why any of us awful Social Justice Warriors care about this issue.
They are though. Nearly every form of media is. We live in a misogynistic culture, and culture has been misogynistic for so long that being sexist is the default mode of representation unless we take steps to consider it. This quote coupled with the following sneer at “leftist narratives” reminds me again you don’t seem to have the first idea about what you’re arguing against.
If you weren’t the smug self-assured arrogant sexist fuckwit you might appreciate that among your “Average Gamer” metric there are actually Feminists. Of course in your universe Feminist Gamers are a myth perpetrated by the evil cabal of Social Justice Warriors, so it’s totally coherent that when you say “Developers should listen to their customers” you mean “Except if they disagree with mine”. Additionally many of the suggestions put forth to make Triple A games more egalitarian are simple and don’t affect the actual quality of substance of the games at all.
Of course you don’t care what I think since I’m one of the leftist liberal commie pinkos. I’ve not yet heard people who want to cut down on sexism in gaming an evil communist plot. You’re really in the wrong place if you think that dog whistling is going to get a lot of support.
My last post was to Alejandro @95 incidentally. Also I completely missed the way that they dismissed the actual lived experiences of women who have had to endure sexist comments in games with the classic “Some of my best friends are women!” dodge. Gotta say you are a charmer Alejandro, Fuck off.
#95 gave me a blackout bingo
Yeah, sorry. I was feeling whimsical. I didn’t intend to come across as an apologist who was literally asking for softer headlines, but it is understandable to me that it reads that way to most anyone who can’t read my mind.
I wanted to poke the pro-gamergate side and see if they could reset and reframe and understand that Leigh Alexander’s article is more than it’s headline and is not an existential threat.
To the people who think the gaming way of life is threatened, let me toss out my most melodramatic eyeroll.
(And again I’m not being serious enough. Blurgh. But it’s sunny here and my cough is getting better and I just watched the Wizard of Oz episode of Supernatural, with Felicia Day) and I’m all happy. I’m also happy that most mainstream media has been fileting gamergate into tiny chunks.)
alejandro @95:
Aww, you know women. And you say these women don’t have a problem with the sexism in video games. I guess that means no one else should at all. Heck, according to you, no one should complain about the lack of representation in video games because they’re not meant for anyone but heterosexual, cisgender, white males.
Of course, given that people *other* than heterosexual, cisgender, white males play video games, it makes sense for video game manufacturers to market to them too.
Did you know it’s possible to market a video game to a diverse group of people? I know, I know. It’s hard to conceive of video games that *don’t* sexually objectify women, or even ::gasp:: have LGBT characters. But really, it’s possible and if manufacturers want to maximize $$, they ought to tap into these untapped markets, instead of relying on your sexist shitspigots to sustain them.
Oh, well then. Since black people, gay people, and women all buy and play games, then game developers should listen to their opinions. Thanks for finally seeing the light!
Anecdote =/= evidence. Will the stupidity and self-serving fuckwittery ever end?
Nope, for our metric, take out the blatant sexism, and see what effect it has on sales. My guess is nada, zip, zero, zilch. The game can be less sexist, and you will still buy them, being a non-thinking epsilon male and all.
Nope, you show with this conclusive prima facie evidence you are a sloganeer, and not a thinker. Which will never, ever, convince us of anything. The narrative is that there is gratuitous misogyny in SOME games that can be removed, and not hurt the actual play. You haven’t, and can’t show otherwise, which requires something other than the mere opinion of misogynists fuckwits. Namely, third party evidence. Take it outside of yourself. You might find everybody LAUGHING at you.
Yes, but when those who buy the games are as stupid and fuckwitted, and bigotted as you, are a mere 10% of the sales, you are irrelevant. And you are. That is what you are scared of. Fearful that you aren’t relevant to anybody.
toska @98:
Of course not. Alejandro doesn’t seem to understand that thought police is a fictional idea. It’s not part of the real world and it’s not something anyone is trying to do.
But then, bigots love to claim that criticizing them is akin to policing their thoughts. If only we’d stop criticizing them, the poor dears would be free to say what they want–or so it goes. Of course they’re not self-aware enough to realize that no one is stopping them from saying whatever they want. They just want the freedom to say what they please without any consequences for voicing their opinions.
So apparently, playing video games is not a simple activity, like reading books or watching movies. There are (or there seems to be) “casual gamers” And there are (or there seems to be) “real gamers”, people who spend all their time playing, who dedicate all their thought process to thinking about games, who take pains in learning and knowing everything they can about games. Who consider all discussions in their field (for instance, concerning the honesty of specialit journalists) as a matter of vital interest. Who base their identity on being “real gamers” and certainly not being confused with “casual gamers”.
The only thing I can say is that I feel really sorry for them.
I’d suggest that they get a life, but they might fint it difficult, as it’s not on sale in their favorite game store.
Tony @106
It does make me wonder what mechanism these GGers think feminists are using to control the game industry. How is a non governmental, loosely (if at all) organized group of people stating opinions able to censor or control any industry? I can’t even wrap my brain around how this is anything but consumer criticism. smh
The market has decided that there is an unacceptable fucktonne of casual sexism in gaming, all other forms of mass media, and the general culture. I am not surprised that Alesandro has failed to notice that half the market is made exclusively of female type people with girl cooties.
Alejandro, Amoral Idiot:
You all are a very sensitive lot, aren’t you? At least sensitive to your own fickle wants and needs. Sensitive to the people who you harass, not so much.
I’m sure the citation for this is forthcoming. Any day now.
I’m sure you will prove this too. Because of course you will. And we will just completely ignore that the liberal, feminists involved in this debate have been accused of not being True Gamers, even though they are gamers. If you handwave enough I’m sure you will be right eventually!
(Me: Liberal for 14 years, atheist for 16, feminist for 13, gamer for 18)
The reasoning for the complaint matters. What you want them to do based on the complaint matters.
Did it ever occur to you your favored “True Gamer” platforms aren’t representative of all gamers? And, in fact, they are vastly over-representative of the most anti-feminist elements in gaming? I mean, for fuck’s sake, you chastise us for the imaginary action of only sampling feminist blogs and then you choose to rely only on some of the most infamously assholish, anti-woman sites out there?
Prove. It. Asshole.
So you are not just a typical Status Quo Warrior, you are a histrionic, self-centered, right-wing douchebag as well. Surprise!
Your “most” is bullshit as well. We are just mocking you for it. Should I also mention the irony of “reading comprehesion lessons becuse”? Well, too late. I will probably make a hypocrite of myself by the time I finish this post.
I’m sure you much prefer the views of Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Make sure everything is fair and balanced, amirite?
The label “gamer” doesn’t include people who play Dungeons and Dragons, and doesn’t include people who play Magic the Gathering, and doesn’t include people who play Arkham Horror or Munchkin or ?You are such a bullshit artist. Maybe some elements of the video game community exclusively use “gamer” to refer to fellow video gamers, but you don’t fucking own the word. You are myopic to the fucking extreme.
Did you know there is a movie called The Gamers? Guess what? It ain’t people yelling at each other through headsets while playing Call of Duty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gamers_(film)
Fucking ignorant, sexist, whining, privileged asshats that you are on social issues, you gaters are also consistently ignorant about gaming itself. It’s entertaining. It’s Dunning Kruger in its purest form.
You don’t even understand the criticism, do you? You pig ignorant fuckwad. You don’t even understand the problem, and you definitely don’t understand the proposed solutions. I’m not even sure if I should bother explaining this shit to you, because you seem to have a firm investment in Not Getting It.
So speaks a worshiper of the invisible hand. I might suspect you were Stephen Colbert, but if that were so, you would be more clever.
Ever hear of market development? You know, selling to people OTHER than the captive audience you already have?
http://www.mba-tutorials.com/marketing/117-intensive-growth-strategies-ansoffs-product-market-expansion-grid.html
Finance: One more thing you are completely ignorant about that you are overly confident to mouth off about.
Hey, alejandro? Alejandro?
Fuck. Off.
You see, Alejandro, there’s this nifty thing called reading comprehension.
This:
Has jack all to do with this:
To first answer your tangent, I’m not going to stop playing game I like because of the sexist tropes, but it would be nice to see less of them. In fact, pretty much none of us on the side of “there could be a little bit less of that” are going to stop playing games. In fact, we ALL acknowledge that just because a game has one or two troubling aspects doesn’t mean it’s a terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad game. So fucking stop building up the strawmen. I know it’s Hallow’s End in Wow, but Sylvanas has built her own wickerman, thank you.
To go back to MY point… There are MANY women who do not let it be known that they are women when they play games because we are tired of the sexual comments and being told “TITS OR GTFO!” It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy; there are no women in games because we’re fucking over the man-children we encounter. So we pretend that we’re male too.
Arguments from hypothetical mind-reading in thought experiments never fail to crack me up!
So, you have numbers on how many women and how many men play which kinds of games.
Have you even noticed where you’ve pulled these numbers from? Perhaps sniff them.
They have a rather insulting strawman version of young men as their target market, it seems to me.
alejandro @ 95
I’d like to invite you to reread your posts in this thread and then explain to me why any woman you know would tell you if they did have a problem with the sexist tropes in video games. You’re like the dudebro who says he’d be flattered if women were constantly telling him how attractive he is and cites the fact that none of the women in his life have complained to him about sexual harassment as evidence that it doesn’t happen nearly as often as feminists think it does.
I wonder how many more exceptions to alejandro’s rule are necessary before he even considers revising it. Although since he burned out with the “you’re communists!” thing, he may not be back.
ck #115:
How it works is, every single hypothetical liberal-feminist GGer is a datum and indicative of a trend, while every single case of harassment is an anecdote and must be ignored.
(Brought to you by Hypersceptics Unlimited®
We’re here for all your uncomfortable-fact denying needs)
Aaaand I completely misread ck’s quote in light of something I’d read somewhere else about there being really truly actual feminists in an anti-feminist movement. Hence my comment making little sense in the context.
*blush*
I can’t resist. This one looks kind of fun.
@ alejandro
I see people up thread saying they already play these games but they want to see things they don’t like change. Bringing this up does nothing in here because I see people trying to improve games, not quit them. Since you had no words for people that have to pretend they are not women, or avoid mentioning what race they are I’m just going to assume you missed this.
I would hate to think that you were afraid to actually talk to people with these problems. You aren’t afraid are you?
For the bolded part how about NO? I’m going to keep criticizing the games I’m playing now and I’m going to criticize the games I’m not playing. Every time I see something worth criticizing. What do you intend to do about it? Seriously! Do you really expect anyone here to just do what you order?
Also we are part of the market, and your opinion is assuming that customer and social criticism of products is not part of the free market. Would you mind showing me the school of economic thought that excludes social beliefs from consumer choices?
I have seen more than one person up thread tell you that they are playing the games they want to see changed. Either you are perceptually incapable of seeing and processing things that might conflict with your beliefs (which is fine, I like my enemies cognitively inept), or you are simply fearful of actually talking to people that represent something you want to pretend does not exist.
Which is it?
Daz @116:
You misspelled hyperskeptics.
Brought to you by the Hivemind Feminazi Grammar Thought Police™
Incidentally, when did Fox Gaming News Network launch? Because I keep seeing their buzzwords and fake controversies all over.
And when does the War on Christmas Video Game Sales start?
(Also, which games should I avoid because they aid and comfort the IslamoGamerFascists?)
Alas, Tony!, both varieties of spelling that are correct. Once again, the USA is not the whole world…;-)
http://grammarist.com/spelling/sceptic-skeptic/
I don’t get why criticism of games merits such a hostile response. All cultural properties — film, TV, books, music, theatre etc — are subject to critical reviews, and while a bad review can excite strong emotions, I can’t recall hearing of a film critic being driven from their home by rape and death threats, or a talk by a book critic being called off due to fears of a shooting spree. What makes games different?
That is the fucking point you fucking moron!! Holy fucking dimbulb…
You are so fucking self-centered and unempathetic that you think that the only market that should be cattered to is yours.
Consider a game, one with a shittone of degrading, sexist, pointless shit. The douchebags with no fucking humanity (that is you and your mates) are fapping over the naked, vaguely humanoid walking tits that serve no purpose, and meanwhile, there are OTHER PEOPLE playing that same game who are seeing all of that and are thinking “fucking hell, that is sick, this game would be so much better if it wasn’t so pointlessly and disgustingly mysoginistic”…and because they are costumers, they want to play games and they fucking exist, they are going to try to change things so that in the future, games don’t only conform to the sick tastes of juvenile douchebags, but to others as well. The costumers are trying to influence the market to improve the product they want to buy and enjoy. You are throwing a tantrum because you want the market to be ONLY what you and your sick fucking mind want, and fuck everybody else. You don’t want your precious mysoginistic shit to be taken away, because it is so precious to you. It is just so important for you that your games contain objectified humanoid tit racks that you get to beat and call b*tches, because it improves the quality of the games soooo much…no really, it’s what makes the game, isn’t it? Without it you are just left with nothing but a story, objectives, challenging puzzles that test your dexterity or intellect…you know, the shit “nobody” wants between whore number 1 and whore number 2.
I have bad news for you, the “others” are more numerous than you, douchebags, and we will influence the market to catter to our tastes as well. You know this, and that’s what gets you so mad…”my toys!!! Nooooooo!!!! They are MYYYY TOYYYYYYSSSSSSS”.
When i play L4D2 tonight i’ll be imagining that instead of zombies, it’s hordes of gamergaters.
@azhael I assume you meant ‘customers’ not ‘costumers’ though there may be some crossover with the cosplay crowd.
Alejandro @#60
You’re citing reddit and 4chan as evidence that most gamers are pro GG? Have you considered the possibility that fora notorious for their sexism and racism might not attract a demographic that’s truly representative of the diversity in gamers? Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy…
alejandro, you say “let the market decide”. Do you not realize what people mean when they say “the market”? In the case of video games, “the market” is the interaction between the people buying and playing games and the people producing and selling them. Therefore, the people criticizing games as being sexist and trying to bring about a change in the industry ARE part of the market.
@124 Ariaflame
Argh, yes, thank you for the correction.
Funnily enough, i was in the middle of practicing a test for english proficiency when i paused to write that. I need to study more xD
Can I use “lowbrow atavism” as an insult? There are no H. erectus around now that might feel insulted. As for the (insert suitable term) rape apologists, they can bloody well take it.
alejandro, #95
Congratulations. You just defended racist stereotypes in video games provided that that’s what people who buy the games want.
But I know this is hard for your misogynist, bigoted, money-worshiping pea-sized brain to grasp.
azhael, #123
The only difference is that zombies don’t specifically target women.
It’s entertaining to see alejandro actually defending sexism. What a pathetic little shit.
Says the defender of a movement whose whole point is “Garme jurnalizm for me, but not for thee!”
And they have. There are countless numbers of video games for different markets. As I noted myself, there is a growing industry of lite games that market for women. There are also plenty of very popular games like pokemon that appeal to both genders.
What feminist really want is for developer to stop making games that sell to what they describe as “sexits” males, which is never going to happen as these games continue to sell extremely well.
Lol. If the market had decided that there was an unacceptable level of sexism in games, the creators of some of the worst “offenders” such as GTA would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. Instead, they are sitting in a pile of cash bigger than the likes of Zoe Quinn and her shitty games will ever make in ten lifetimes.
The market has not decided against sexism. A very small group of feminist whose objective in life is to be ofended every time a girl with big boobs appears on a video game have.
And I would like to continue seeing hot women on my games. So, for the 20th time, how about you play the games you like and let us play the games we like, without attacking us because the games fail to conform to your leftist ideology??
Is called trolling. Welcome to the internet. If you can’t handle some trolling you really should not be playing big, multiplayer games.
And meanwhile, in the real world, horrible “mysoginistic” games like GTA have reached historical sales record, so it would be very stupid for developers to change them because of a few feminist who can’t see a non-existing hooker getting hit by a non-existing car without fainting.
So you guess there are people who would buy these games if they weren’t so sexit? Fine, but developers are not so stupid as to blow off a proven market that consistently brings them money in favor of an hypothetical feminist market that claims that they would be totally buying lots of video games if only the girl weren’t so hot.
Specially when the vast majority of these “misogyny” turns up to be little more than depicting women with very big boobs or in poses that are too “sexual” for your taste.
I can’t recall any film critic trolling film fans on 4chan, screencapping the resulting “death threats” within seconds, then using them to ask for money either.
A more accurate analogy would be for me to go to a restaurant that always sells slightly overcooked steaks to people who like their steaks slightly overcooked, and then not only complaining that the steak is overcooked but screaming that everyone who likes their steaks slightly overcooked are terrible people and should be ashamed of themselves.
Hahahaha…kep dreaming. You are not as numerous as you think, and the big players are actually not paying any attention to you. No producers suddenly deciding that instead of a first person shooter, they are going to develop a game about going to the mall. Blizzard is not spending money to make sure there is a trans-black-lesbian character in every game, and certainly no AAA developers are fighting among each other to see who gets to hire Zoe Quinn as their lead designer.
@129 Saad
And any other reprehensible or sick thing they’d like…According to Alejandro, there is no way that what SOME people want in their videogames could be in any way reprehensible or ammenable to being critisized because it’s just a subjective taste and how dare you tell me what i’m supossed to like or not like!! So if people want to see violent pedophilic porn in their games for no reason whatsoever, what’s the problem, it’s what people want!! Get out of my games!!! The only important thing is that you do not express any criticisms about what some sick individuals want to indulge in with their videogames, Maybe Alejandro should grow up a little and learn to separate between videogames and paraphilic porn, you can have both, you don’t need to have them both at the same time. The game will still be a good game without it and more people will be able to enjoy it without having to endure all the shit that is apparently so important for you.
If eating cereal had historically been something overwhelmingly dominated by toxic masculinity, mysoginy and gratuitous, hipersexualized fodder, we would now have to endure listening to this arseholes complaining that there is nothing wrong with the pictures of tits on the cereal boxes and the inflatable whore toy that comes inside. People who want their cereal without tits and inflatable whores should just make their own fucking cereal and stop whining that the market keeps cattering to a bunch of infantile arseholes with sick and toxic tastes that have nothing to do with a healthy sexuality. After all, the experience of eating cereal would be destroyed, DESTROYED I SAY!!11!! without the image of a woman with 4 tits pouring cereal over herself right there in the package.
Nope, quit lying, and quit opining without presenting evidence. You are a proven liar and bullshitter. Nobody can reasonably believe a word you say since you won’t back it up with evidence. Hip waders are needed to read you posts.
Thanks for admitting you are a sexist pig. Makes your word even more dismissible.
Nope. There wasn’t any choice other than to play what was made. You fail history, as well as economics. Do you really understand anything other than the slogans of your cult?
Saad:
Also, zombies are more appreciative of brains.
Alejandro: sexism in games is not real, but totally sells games! If GTA was less sexist, then 8chan trolls wouldn’t buy them and Rockstar would go bankrupt! Totally!
*interjection from around post #104*
Isn’t it cute how Alejandro’s entire thesis consists of: Yes, it’s true that GGaters are trying to break down any barrier between advertising and editorial decisions, but it’s okay because gaming companies SHOULD market themselves as if only misogynist teenage boys play their games, because they are the only ones who play games, and I know because 4chan and personal anecdote!
Mighty convincing!
In truth, there is a problem for companies that might want to expand their market to tap into the non-woman-hating-he-man demographic, and that is: those women-hating he-man, like Alejandro, view any move towards accommodating other demographics as a sort of defilement. Any company that makes games that don’t insult women risks alienating what has indeed been their core demographic up til now. It’s not that they HAVE to stop buying games if developers start making other games that aren’t aimed exclusively at them. It’s that they WILL, probably, just out of spite and anti-woman bigotry.
It’s unsustainable, eventually they’ll become too unpopular. They are, after all, only a percentage of a percentage of the population. As costs of gaming equipment continue to fall, the market will eventually democratize to the point where the costs of not marketing to non-woman-haters outweighs the potential losses of marketing to woman-haters.
*back to reading*
Yeah, nothing really new there. Alejandro wants to be sexist and also not be criticized for being sexist. Sorry, nope! That’s not how things work.
Er, should be “the potential losses of alienating woman-haters.”
Thanks for your patience, folks, now, for some coffee.
alejandro @ 132
Riddle me this fuckwit. Why do you even bother trying to have a discussion with other humans if you’re just going to deny people mean what they say whenever what they say doesn’t fit your preferred narrative? What do you even hope to get out of it?
You still haven’t wrapped your minuscule little brain around the idea that they’re the same fucking games, have you? We play the games that YOU like. We LIKE the games that you like. Many of us would like them BETTER if they were less sexist and guess what, shitwit? We have every right to say so because we’re part of the fucking market. Our money is worth exactly the same as your money.
Nope. Wrong fucking answer. First, we do handle it. We avoid revealing our gender to avoid the worst of it. And notice us saying we still fucking play? We’re fucking handling it, dudebro. But we shouldn’t have to. Because you do not have the right to treat other humans like shit. I do not have to put up with whatever shit some jackass wants to dish out. If I don’t like the way I’m being treated I will fucking say so. And you can fucking cry a river about leftist agendas. And I will keep refusing to put up with being treated like shit.
“A more accurate analogy would be this inane hypothetical that would never actually happen in the real world and is not analogous to what anyone is actually saying.” Fucking dumbass. Nobody is saying that the people who play the games being criticized are horrible people because they play those games. The people we’re saying are horrible are the ones harassing women and the people who defend them out of their homes and their careers and badgering advertisers to abandon any publication that prints an opinion they don’t want heard.
I can’t recall any game critic doing that either. But I’m sure evidence that originated outside your fevered imagination will be forthcoming momentarily.
Because wimminz liek shopping amirite? Funny that you say that, because the only way you can convince yourself that the market is on your side is to pretend most of it doesn’t count.
Here’s a little math tip: we buy shooters. People who don’t hate women, POC or whatever else you hate also buy shooters, and they won’t suddenly leave the genre because it’s not catering only to crybaby haters. The only way the #GG crowd keep non-haters ambiguously on their side is by fabricating an opponent that doesn’t exist (omg anita wants to ban games just like jack thompson1!1!), because your real concerns are petty and stupid.
Alejandro @132
Stop trying to psychically intuit what feminists want. You really suck at it.
So boys will be boys eh Alejandro? Fuck that shit. If the best you can say to abuse is “Deal with it” then you really are scum. It must be nice to be privileged enough not to have to be on the receiving end of sexist bullshit. Also is the multi-year odyssey of hate and abuse women in the public eye get merely “trolling”?
What was that about “leftist narratives”? Because this is a not-at-all veiled reference to one of the innumerable lies spread about Anita Sarkeesian and how she’s a professional victim because she trolled 4Chan for publicity. Incidentally even if this were true (And it’s not) do you really think it’s okay for 4Chan to then go and start a concerted campaign of hate and harassment? Oh right, it’s just trolling and boys will be boys. Or you think it’s part of the evil feminazi Sarkeesian conspiracy so sexist assholes can dismiss blame for the actions of sexist assholes. Either way, again, fuck off.
You know if you were so gung-ho about the invisible hand of the market I think you’d let Zoe Quinn just make her game and not launch into a concerted hate campaign. Perhaps you’re only interested in the invisible hand of the market when it conforms to your biases? Rhetorical question I know, I mean the answer is obvious.
That’s about all that’s worth responding to really, the rest is just the usual tilting at strawmen feminists who fit into your narrative. I will remind you Alejandro that you are not quite as much a majority as you seem to think you are, after all why else would you try and explain away that unfortunate-for-you statistic that gaming is not all Teenage White Male anymore? The hardcore demographic of ugly sexists you’ve cast your lot in with is loud and full of sockpuppets and proxies. Like it or not there are larger demographics than you Alejandro, gaming is going through this teething period exactly because there are people trying to make it grow who have to square off with retrograde assholes like you.
alejandro, #132
You think we want Pokemon and “lite” games? Hah. Please keep undermining your position.
Maybe a simple analogy will work for your tiny little simple mind: Let’s take the medium of films or books. Do non-sexist films and books have to be simple or “lite”?
You are a sexist idiot.
Brilliant argument #1 from the misogynist jackass:
“It’s popular so it must be okay!”
Slavery and racial segregation were once popular. Thus, I will take your statement to mean you would have been in support of slavery and racial segregation.
You’re a racist fuck by your own argument.
Again, you put your tiny little mind on display by not understanding the issue: It’s not about the women being “hot”, but about how women are portrayed.
Brilliant argument #2 from the shitbrained misogynist jackass:
“It’s virtual, dude! Don’t take it so seriously!”
Black people being portrayed as inferior in a video game would be virtual too. Thus, I will take your statement to mean you would be in support of racist stereotypes in games and would defend them if they were reaching historical sales records.
You’re a racist fuck by your own argument.
Brilliant argument #3 from the piece of shit misogynist asshole:
“First person shooters have to necessarily be sexist”
Again, the little turd bouncing around in your skull fails to understand the issue.
Look at the movie/book analogy above again. Read it over and over. Then ask a child to explain it for you.
In conclusion, you are a pathetic little sexist (and admittedly racist) fuckwad. I’m glad to see you are being treated like the laughing stock that you are and that you and your MRA scum gaming buddies are also objects of ridicule. Social movements like racial equality, LGBT rights, feminism always, always win out in the end. They win because they’re right, and because they appeal to the reason and humanity of people. They change minds. That’s just how it works. Enjoy being on the wrong side, you little shitwit.
Alejandro, Dead Inside and Loving It
What you have failed to establish is that lite games specifically cater to women, and women exclusively play lite games. You are still bullshitting. You are not noting anything, you are making bald assertions, that are just blatant sexist assumptions.
On my phone, I have simple app games such as Temple Run, Flappy Bird, Street Surfer, Sword vs. Sword, Warmetal Tyrant, Adventure Town, Family Guy The Quest for Stuff, and something called Mechs Warfare that I’ve never played. These are all simplistic, lite games as you call them. Do any of those sound like they are specifically catering to women? Sounds like BOTH GENDERS to me.
Again, look up market development. And no, we don’t want them to stop selling games to the sexists, we want games to stop containing sexist elements. Sexist asshats can buy whatever they want, but we would prefer if our games didn’t have such inanity and such vileness in it. The sexist tastes of you and your ilk should be a fringe, and a mocked and reviled fringe at that. It should not be the mainstream, not if they want women and men who are half-way decent human beings to continue to playing, or to START playing (again, market development, fuckwit).
Zoe Quinn is an indie development who published her game and made it FREE. Of course Grand Theft Auto is making more money than her. Are you really this stupid?
As compared to a very small group of whiny, privileged asshats whose objective in life is to be offended every time a woman dares to speak ill of video games?
Boo friggety hoo. What did you say again? “How about you go make your own games then”, or something to that effect? You can go create your interactive pinup magazines and go wank off with other “hardcore gamers”. The mainstream, big money developers do not need to cater to the demographic of perpetual adolescents who want their video games to double as their favorite dirty magazine . Go cry about it.
How about you play the games you like, and let us say what we think about those games, and what we would like future games to look like? How about you stop attacking us for criticizing games, because our critiques do not sit well with your right-wing idiocy? It is just constructive criticism of the industry, customers voicing their opinion. Get some fucking perspective you whining little pissant.
It’s called sexual harassment. And you have just shot your credibility straight to hell, you empathy deficient piece of shit.
And the victim blaming emerges. Go. Fuck. Yourself.
Blatant fucking projection, gater. Seriously, who are the big names that support Gamergate? Adam Baldwin and Breitbart’s successor? Serious fucking gamer cred there.
Sexist fucking assclown. By fucking god.
So what do you have in your arsenal? Sexist assumptions sans evidence, argumentum ad gamer populum contra evidence, strawmanning feminism, and repeating yourself over and fucking over? That’s about it, ain’t it?
We are done here. You are beyond hope. I hope that your fellow gaters let you move up the ranks in the gater community. Become one of the faces of the movement, please. It will make our case against you all so much easier and clearer.
This is so quotable that quoters gotta quote.
For anybody who’s not yet completely fatigued by GamerGate discussions, Arthur Chu (@arthur_affect on Twitter) was also interviewed on that show, and he’s been a really tirelessly insightful and incisive voice on the whole thing. For example, his latest Daily Beast column provides a some really interesting historical context to the sort of reactionary masculinity that exemplifies GamerGate.
As background, he’s actually a somewhat controversial Jeopardy champion because his playing style was sort of (intentionally) erratic and irked longtime fans. He then parlayed that 15 minutes of infamy into a sort of personal crusade against social injustice in geek communities.
By the way, on the topic of sexist assumptions about gaming:
I am a man. And I fucking hate shooters. Some I will tolerate. Unreal Tournament is wacky fun and Borderlands’ RPG elements make it more enjoyable to me than the average shooter. But Call of Duty and Halo and shit like that? Do not like.
What do I like? RPGs and old school platformers, especially Mario and Sonic games. Also have much love for Donkey Kong Country and the Smash Bros. series. Nowadays someone who exclusively played cutesy and kid friendly platformers, or set-your-own-pace menu management RPGs, or maybe even both and no other kind of game, would not be bestowed the grand label of Hardcore Gamer. Yet, back in the day, it was the hardest of cores. The Mario and Sonic games were the heart of the gaming community, part of gaming identity. And they were hard as shit. You weren’t considered a hardcore gamer just because you decided to play Mario as a full time job, or for deciding to play Doom or Mortal Kombat instead of Mario (because Mario is, like, so lame guys). You were considered a hardcore gamer if you were GOOD at gaming. Because games were hard as fucking shit.
Now Hardcore Gamer doesn’t mean you are good, necessarily. It still sounds like a label of merit, but now it is just about being part of an exclusive men’s club. You play the right games, have the right attitudes about games, socialize in the right gamer circles, play the games for just the right amount of time. And sure, the criteria changes rapidly on a case by case basis, and the borders just happen to contract more rapidly when discussing women, but it has always been nebulous. It just now a label of affiliation and group identity rather than a method of complimenting someone for being fucking badass at Pac Man.
This comic is entirely about seagulls. Any resemblence to this situation is entirely coincidental.
Sorry, forgot the punch line in 147:
Men play the games that you sexistly dismiss as women’s games or as too casual.
And I, someone who has been playing games of a wide variety for fucking ever, would not be considered a Hardcore Gamer by the fucking clueless neophytes who think True Gaming is limited to Shooter of the Month and Madden 7093. Sorry, I haven’t mastered your latest banal point-and-click “Look at me, I has a gun!!!” simulators. Through your myopic views, that means I am not a real gamer. Not a gamer, no matter how many times I have rescued the Triforce in the Dark World. Not a gamer, no matter how many times I threw Bowser off the top of his castle, or how many times I beat Giganto Kid Bowser. Not a gamer, no matter how many times I have gone racing through the Death Egg. Not a gamer, no matter how many friends I have beaten using the Master Sword or Pikachu’s Thunder. Not a gamer, no matter how many of the good Final Fantasies I have beaten. Not a gamer, no matter whether I finally beat the final super powered boss hidden in Monstro Town. No matter how many crappy games I dipped my toes into, and no matter how many brutal games I have wrestled with (Super Ghouls and Ghosts, I’m looking at you). Not a gamer no matter how frequently I grew up drawing video game characters, humming video game music, writing stories inspired by video games, no matter how badly I wanted to make video games myself.
Yup. Not a gamer. The most recent console I own is the Wii. I play games two hours a week if I’m lucky. I play mostly the old games I loved. Maybe you clods might still consider me a True Gamer, based on prior history or whatnot. Perhaps. Though the sad part is, if I was a woman, I would be certain that you wouldn’t even consider it.
Something that really fucking irritates me is the pretense that all men are supossed to want crude mysoginy in their games and need to see women treated like sexualized objects in order to be able to enjoy a game. Fuck you. You are not the norm, you are not what’s “natural” in men, your obsessions and kinks are the product of culture, a toxic, sexist culture, and it has warped your minds into an almost pathologic, putrid thing (if you think all men like to beat prostitutes in videogames, or that it’s even normal or healthy to enjoy it, you are wrong, and you are sick).
You are confussing what is a culturally influenced, learned bias, for a natural behaviour, and you are trying to pass your shit as “how things are” when it’s actually “how things have been made to be”. The current state of gaming is the product of culture, pressures from fringe vociferous sociopaths, etc…it’s past time that we use our culture and our pressures to change the festering cesspool it has become. And we will…you can be certain of that, but not because we are bullies or because of leftists agendas, but because there are decent human beings out there, and they outnumber you.
@150
Super Ghost And Goblins! I grew up with that game….i feel an unstoppable need to listen to the theme music now O_O
*listens to it*
Ah…yes…..that’s the stuuuff….
Now i need some Star Fox…and some Monkey Island…Ok, i’m going to have a bussy afternoon….
azhael at 151: Fuck yes, to all of that.
We’ve been trying to explain to you for a hundred comments now that the markets are not segregated like this – or anywhere near like this.
So far, your reaction has been pure denial.
You believe you know how many women and how many men play which sorts of games. Where are you taking this alleged knowledge from? See, as far as I can tell, you’re pulling it out of your ass – and you haven’t even noticed.
I’m a gamer and a feminist. Actually, I’d be considered a hardcore gamer by most standards (short of going to LAN parties and being a sexist ass). I build my own computers (actually, I’m up for a new one – I’m still rocking my Sandy Bridge build from three years ago). I have played and play a wide variety of games (modded Skyrim, the Witcher series, Titanfall, COD, Age of Empires, Civilization, Baldur’s Gate, Thief, Mirror’s Edge, Battlefield, Dishonored, Crysis, F.E.A.R, Counter Strike, the list will go on and on). Before I got into PC gaming, it was various console games. I’ve been playing video games for 20 years now.
I recognize sexism when I see it in games just as I recognize it when I see it in movies or hear it in music. Why the gamerdudes want to act like video games are some holy objects that aren’t part of our overall culture and thus immune from any of its shortcomings is beyond me.
So alejandro, you’ll just have to get used to the fact that you represent a shrinking cult of misogynists deluded in thinking they have a whole medium of entertainment and art to themselves to poison society with. Not the case, asshole. I’m a feminist, a video game enthusiast, and a vocal critic of sexism wherever I see it.
azhael: I actually had Super Ghouls and Ghosts, for the SNES. I think I managed to get to the second level once, possibly with the Game Genie. I was fairly young and it was difficult as shit. Though I loved the music for that first level. Probably only reason I didn’t throw my controller through the TV set back then. I probably only remember it now because James Rolfe (The Angry Video Game Nerd) is playing through it for Halloween. I am baffled by just how Nintendo Hard it is! If I made it past level two, the later levels would have destroyed my soul anyway.
I was never a fan of GnG to be honest. It’s the jumping. Super Mario Bros. got it right the first time, mid-air control is essential for a platformer (unless it’s Castlevania, which was meant to force you to be cautious).
I won Leisure Suit Larry back in the day.
vaiyt: I’m pretty sure GnG and Castlevania have the some platforming philosophy though: This is a game using horror motifs, so prepare to be scared because every five seconds we are gonna fuck you over.
By “won” do you mean you stopped playing it because you realized how sexist it was, you realized that the most fun you could get in the game was by figuring out all the different ways to get Larry killed, or you actually bothered to complete the game?
@alejandro 133
Damn but your idea of reality is completely ass-backwards.
The market has not historically decided against sexism. Since there are many men and women that are part of the market and want to see sexism in games eliminated, they are speaking out. See that bolded part? You have to start admitting that exists. They are in the market and pretending they are not reveals you have fear of a free market.
And you still can’t accurately describe anyone’s position. No sexism does not mean less beautiful women, it means less objectified women that are simply tools and things. No sexism does not even mean no naked women, it’s all about how women are presented. You argue against things you can not describe.
NO. We will continue criticizing games that are worth criticizing. This is particularly ironic considering the next bit I quote. This boils down to “Stop saying things about games and gamers I don’t like!” And this part…
…shows that while you give a shit when people are saying things that you don’t like about you and your games, you are not willing to let others have the same ability. So tough shit. We are going to continue criticizing games, and gamers. “Cause internet” is a shitty excuse, culture evolves and changes. That can’t be stopped so I’m going to knowingly participate in changing culture. You don’t get it both ways, that is literally discrimination based on sex in your example which makes you a sexist.
Seriously, this stuff is transparent and as long as it exists there will be people pointing that shit out. The very fact you are here shows that you are afraid enough of a changing culture to come in and attack what you are afraid of. If you were really not worried you would not even be here. So this white male is going to keep on doing what he is doing.
I messed up the nested quotes in 161. In the second and third pair of quotes the first bit is someone alejandro was responding to.
I really wish they would get it into their thick skulls that the market IS DECIDING AGAINST SEXISM RIGHT NOW. It’s been trying for quite a while, actually, but it didn’t succeed because gaming was this minority thing that was looked at with scorn, so the sexist arseholes had it easy to maintain control and dictate what everybody was going to get….now gaming is much more mainstream and there is much less stigma attached to it and you can’t possibly keep controlling it despite your pathetic tantrums, your criminal acts of harashment and the constant intimidation and abuse.
@156 anteprepro
xD I remember when my brother and i finally managed to (we thought) complete the game, only to be told we had to do it all over again with a new weapon. After much wailing we got to it, completed it again and then….nothing happened…we never reached the final boss, we just got the same message again and the game restarted. I remember my brother and i just looked at each other and said “it counts…” :P
Bloody good game, though, so many hours of pure childish joy :) Still, i remember being 9 years old and thinking “seriously…rescuing a pointless princess that does nothing but be pretty and helpless….again…??”.
I’m going back to binging on awesome oldschool videogame theme songs now :D
Stupid glitchy website ate my long, carefully formatted comment and insisted I log in again. ***deathglares** I have more words for our resident fuckbrained misogynist troglodyte, which I might rewrite and cite later, but I want to note one thing. My first game system was an Atari 2600, with the arcade game pack (pong, etc) and a game called Adventure. The rise of games with storylines that are as interesting as bad pornography was a conscious effort by all media to target market to 18 to 28 year old white males. I am so thrilled that it has only taken 30 years for marketing schools to figure out that women make 80% of all decisions to purchase goods.
Did you keep the bracelet the entire game? Because if you switch it out for a better weapon you have to try again. So not only do you have to play a hard game twice, not only is that hard game harder the second time, but they also saddle you with a mediocre weapon to play with.
I wanted to say something quickly to the sexist idiot that infested the thread.
No, “show us your tits” is not trolling. If it was trolling, guys would also be told “show us your wang.” But guys never get told that. NEVER. It is only women who are asked for sexual photos. A guy might face a homophobic rant for not conforming to the dudebro culture, but women too get homophobic insults flung at them for refusing to play along. But even if it was ‘just trolling’, that’s admitting that your gaming culture is a fucking terrible place. Trolling is being an asshole for the sheer joy of being an asshole. It’s letting every single bigotry you have fly proudly free.
And honestly, why the fuck to gamers care about ethics in gaming journalism when they don’t care about ethics in any other format? That alone shows what a paper thin screen the whole ‘ethics’ thing is. It’s nothing more than a furthering of sexism and general assholery, because they can.
If alejandro saw me playing Candy Crush while waiting for the bus, I’m sure he’d just tally me up as a non-gamer. Confirmation bias has him so firmly in its grasp, he wouldn’t bother to imagine that I also used to call DPS on Nexona in Veeshan’s Peak while healing for the MT group back when my guild was server-firsting all the latest raid content. Or that I just killed the Iron Golem¹ in Sen’s Fortress in Dark Souls tonight. Or that the first game I owned was a Coleco Pacman mini-arcade. Or that I bought a Dreamcast just so I could play the Berserk game.
…………
¹ An indication of progress, not prowess. This is one of the easier bosses, made even more so for me when the stupid fucker accidentally fell off the bridge at 1/3 health and died.
Guy here.
I play the hell out of Bejewelled on my phone. Guess I’m not a gamer.
Former anti-gamer Matt Forney and even Stormfront are backing up GamerGhazi now. The assholes keep gathering…
A. Noyd @ 167
Bought a Wii just so I could play Monster Hunter 3. Bought an XBox360 just so I could play Rock Band. Drums. Bought a 300$ Ion Drum kit. Just for Rock Band drums. Because the stock kit is poop. Bought a $1000 Roland e-kit, so I could play real drums but also so I could cannibalize it for Rock Band. My Guitar Hero guitar controller died and was quite a sad panda when I found they’re no longer in production anymore.
I never was a hardcore raider in WoW but I played when there were 40 person raids. I remember my server’s first Onyxia kill, and the first Nefarian kill. At level 80, a friend and I 2-manned 40-man Ony. I’ve soloed Molten Core. I participated in the Ahn Qiraj war effort (very cool server wide effort to open a raid dungeon that made even the lowest level noobs feel involved in something big that, for some reason, Blizzard never did again.) I was around during the old school PvP ranking system where, when you saw someone running around in Grand Marshall or High Warlord gear you knew they’d done some fucking work. I played when the flight paths weren’t connected and, if you wanted to get from the top of a continent to the bottom, you had to literally stop at every connecting flight path on the way. My hunter had King Bangalash (a white striped tiger) as a pet back when it was an elite mob and actually hard to kill/tame. I also had one of the snakes from Zul Gurub.
And I play Farmville. Guess I’m not a gamer.
Also @ A. Noyd *high five for having the mental fortitude to play a Souls game* I need to get Dark Souls. I’m currently working on Smelter Demon and Duke’s Dear Freja in Dark Souls II.
Oooh… Seven, that all brings back memories. Horrible horrible memories of my first character every that was on a PVP server. I spent more time running to my corpse than questing in STV. I also remember the joy of the flight paths and AQ… oh man was that war effort fun!
My favorite activity in Wow, oh-so-long ago was actually ending up places where I shouldn’t have been able to get. I found a way into the physical location of AQ 10 and 40 and it was beautiful in there. Took about 30 minutes to get there from the starting point in the hills of Tanaris. I ended up underneath Stormwind and on top of Undercity, found my way into the blood elf starting zone before it existed, found my way underneath Strath, and so many others. Heck, in Wrath I found a way to fly underneath all of Northrend! My guild title was “Magical Land Finder” and the running joke was that I’d one day have a GM message me with “What are you doing?” and the answer would be “Hearthing…”
But I’m a woman, so I can’t possibly be a real gamer.
Timed Strat runs for Dungeon 1 Set upgrades.
A guildy of mine once went AFK on one of the whelp eggs in Rend Blackhand’s chamber in UBRS. We were supposed to be taking a break but we spent the whole time rescuing him from the whelps he kept spawning. During Wrath, another guildy playing a character called Lulu did something I can’t even remember anymore and wiped us. Forever after, every time something went wrong, even if Lulu had nothing to do with it, we’d all go DAMMIT LULU! in vent/chat.
I’ve main healed Karazhan, Zul Gurub, Naxx 10, Ulduar, ICC. Leveled a priest back when leveling priest was a fucking chore, even as shadow. Ran a bazillion repeatable Darnassus rep quests to keep a friend company so she could get a cat mount for her human character back in the days before you could buy a tabard for a few gold and run a few dungeons to hit exalted in anything.
But female and Farmville and feminist, so none of it counts.
Oh and Timbermaw rep so another guildy could get the agility enchants. Killed a fucking lot of furbolgs I tell ya.
@165 omnicrom
*puts a watering can over the door*
*kneels under it*
*tears his shirt*
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo………..
We thought we just had to finish with the bleeding bracelet…not keep that weapon the entire game….
Man. What is with me and my stupid vagina thinking we like games when we clearly can’t possibly be real gamers? All those hours spent playing Resident Evil 4, 5 and 6 (4 remains my favourite), Fallout 3 and New Vegas, Dead Island (as the Feminist Whore ™, natch, and despite problematic severed lady-torso), Oblivion (Where my armour shockingly doesn’t turn into a bikini on my female Dunmer Mage! This apparently ruins games FOREVER for Alejandro and his ilk/stamp/kidney), Dishonored (enjoyable despite arguable fridging and damseling), Dead Space (various), CoD various editions (yes, even those, though they don’t half get fucking samey after awhile. They’re for non-thinky gaming moods, clearly), L4D 1 and 2 (also for non-thinky, as not enough story for my liking), Sid Meier’s Civilization, Sid Meier’s Pirates! in every form it has ever been released in, Binding of Isaac when I REALLY don’t want to think, and on and on aaaaalll the way back to text adventure games, Pitfall, etc, on my neighbour’s Atari, and my own first consoles being the original NES and then SNES (the latter containing my first experience of a game that benefited from the locating of a walkthrough (Jurassic Park), which I had to access by calling an 800 number on the game booklet, and write down the recorded instructions by hand. I still never managed to finish the damn game because there was no saving and I wasn’t allowed to play for long enough in one sitting because I was 13. Oh, the fits I did pitch over that. And I’m still bitter. But girls aren’t real gamers. /snark
Oh, and, Alejandro, your explicitly placing your own sexual titillation above the comfort of women at comment 133 was duly noted.
I love playing “historical” scenarios in Civilization just to see how bad I can screw history over. Once I managed to win WWI with Italy, basically conquering the entire Mediterranean and preventing the Americans from showing up.
I hope they make an Age of Mythology sequel. Jesus would be a hell of a myth unit.
Strong against villagers. Does not need transport ship to cross water. Regenerates. Resurrects.
Alejandro, blackface minstrel shows were quite popular (and, I would imagine, quite profitable) in their day.
Would you then argue that they weren’t racist because they were popular and profitable?
Or would you argue that their racism was just fine because they were popular profitable?
You are free to enjoy all of the misogyny in games that you like. But you don’t get to do so without being called out for that misogyny. Just as soon as you get tired of being called a misogynist, you can quit publicly acting like one.
Likewise for game designers.
I know you don’t believe it, but women actually know their situation better than you do. And many of them won’t tell you the truth about it, because they’ve figured out you don’t really want to hear it.
@96 Alejandro
@179 Anri
Not only that, they know full well that if they dare express any opinion that is not at least as sexist as yours and as dismissive of anti-sexist ideas as you are, they are going to become the target of abuse.
This is the same old shit we always get…those women who say complaining about sexism is stupid are the “good girls”, the cool ones, the ones aproved by the dudebros…until they express any humanity at which point they instantly become whores and whiny c*nts that want to destroy the industry….(as we’ve all learned thanks to Alejandro, not being able to beat up big boobed prostitutes in a game means the gaming industry is DOOOOOOOMEEEEEEED).
vaiyt @ 177
This is amazing. And terrifying. The train delays alone *shudder*…. and forget about queueing for anything ever. (Disclaimer: I’m Italian, so I can make fun of my people all I wanna. Nyar.)
Seven of Mine (#170)
Well, I did play King’s Field, from the same company, back on the PS1. Dark Souls reminds me so much of that. More than Demon’s Souls, which I tried for a little while but got tired of when a spear-wielding mob managed to kill me by stabbing in the ankle through a pillar. Maybe I’ll try it again after Dark Souls.
Is there like a lenght limit here or something like that? Been trying to post something like ten times
So you are thinking with your vagina? No wonder you come up with stuff like that. Try thinking with your brain next time.
Even if you are a “real gamer”, what you fail to understand is that for every girl like you, there are ten or more male gamers who very much like games they way they are now. Im not the one who says it, this comes from real, detailed statistics made by companies who are actually in the bussines of selling games and who actually employ professional marketing people to find out what the market really wants:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/137348-NPD-Survey-Shows-Core-Gamers-Are-Male-Casual-Gamers-Are-Female
“The survey found that the majority of gamers in the two “core” groups were male, while the casual group was “overwhelmingly female.” (…)The largest segment is Casual at 56 percent, with Light Core at 24 percent, and Heavy Core at 20 percent.
So, since 56 percent of the 49% female survey was overwhelmingly female, then what does that tell you about the Core categories? That there are practically no women in them.
And producers also know very well whose opinion matters the most:
“Core gamers are really the lifeblood of the industry, spending tremendous amounts of time on their hobby of choice,”
https://www.npd.com/wps/portal/npd/us/news/press-releases/the-npd-group-reports-34-million-core-gamers-spend-an-average-of-22-hours-per-week-playing-video-games/
Uh, could it possibly be because is mostly heterosexual males doing the trolling who dont want to see your wang?
If it is such a terrible place then go away. We won’t miss you. We certainly don’t want you, as if it wasn’t obvious from the reaction your kind have gotten so far.
You couldn’t be more clueless. If the market was deciding against sexism, then the creators of”sexist” games like GTA would be going bankrupt instead of breaking sales records. You have zero idea what the market is. It is the people who spend money on games, not those who want leftist ideology being pushed into every possible corner there is.
The day sexist games stop selling is the day you can say that the market has decided against sexism, not before. And this day is very, very far away. Leftist know it, which is why they want to pressure producers into not making “sexist” games instead of just making their own politically correct games and beating the sexist ones in the free market, the way the would if their ideas were actually as widely accepted as they claim.
Wow. You leftist are really a bunch of hypocrites…accusing others of doing they exact thing you are doing.
If there is anyone who wants to control what everyone gets, is the feminists. Nobody is trying to prevent feminist and leftist from making games. Nobody is trying to stop women from making games that show women doing awesome things, suchs as female warriors unrealistically beating up men twice their size (of which we have plenty already). Zoe, Anita and the likes are not getting the hate because they want to make pro-feminist games, they are getting hate because they want to make sure the kind of games that fail to conform to their fascist gender ideology don’t get made. They want to dictate what should and should not be acceptable in the media.
And we, the real gamers, are saying that we like our games the way they are.
And thanks for confirming what we have been saying: That what the feminists like you consider sexist is little more than normal male sexuality (because of course “likes to see hot women in video games” = sexist pig)
Shut up alejandro. At the moment I am wishing that I had enormous battle boobs that come equipped with lasers and stupid seeking missiles. It would make my evil feminist heart so happy to make “Tits or GTFO” a reality for you. You get your boobs, I get to blow you to virtual atoms. Seems like a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Reported to the FBI as death threat
Wait…teenage boys are mean to each other use bad words on the internet? OMG how horrible!!!!!!!!!!!!!! CALL THE POLICE, someone was mean to a woman on the internet!!!!
Next thing you’ll tell me that teenage boys use bad words on the football field!!
And I find absolutely hilarious that you think I am not on the receiving end when you have a sudy at the very beggining of the thread that shows men are the victms of “harrasment” (trolling) just as often as women are. Is just that we don’t cry about it.
Most games give you an option to mute other secific players for a reason. Use it. If I cried like you do every time someone was mean to me on the internet you would be drowning in my tears.
There is HUGE difference between seeing conventionally attractive women in video games and having women as pointless decorations whose only purpose is to be sexualized…let alone having games were women are just things to beat up. For that matter there is a difference between good ole porn and the systematic objectification of women…
You have no idea what a normal male sexuality is because it’s pretty clear by now that you have a pretty sick perspective of what that involves…
You also don’t understand that a market can create demand and that the choices of people are influenced by it and by their culture…
As for the shit about nobody trying to stop “feminists and leftists” (fucking hell xDD) from making their own games…yeah, tell that to all of the harashers and abusers…ah no wait, i forgot they don’t exist because actually, it is about ethics in gaming journalism xDD
You are transparent, Alejandro..and you are also a sexist fucking arsehole…The fact that you can get past the stupid idea that because something is popular and in demand (so was heroin in Glasgow, by the way) there couldn’t possibly be anything wrong or objectionable about it says it all about you.
Oh, and yes, you are right to a very limited extent, we do want to “control” in a way what everyone gets, but that’s because there is something wrong with what everybody is getting right now and we want and it definitely needs to be better. Your band of douchebags however want to control gaming, period…not just the content of games, but who gets to be a gamer…you want control over all of it….We just don’t want a content that is demonstrably damaging for people. You don’t give a fuck…you just want tits on your screen and being able to continue to harash, discriminate and abuse…You want things to continue to be exactly the way they have been because it allows you to be the piece of shit that you let yourself be…and because you don’t give a flying fuck what impact that might have to others…
Vete a la puta mierda…
Maybe the users on those sites are skewed towards pro-GG. But if we are talking about skewing the data in gaming sites, don’t forget the fact that many moderators in game sites such GameSpot, IGN, RockPaperShotgun, etc are actively deleting pro-GG content and even banning people who speak about Zoe.
Because that is the only way the left can delude themselves into thinking most people are on their side: Disqualify the opositon as assholes whose opinion doesn’t matter, ban and delete content critical of your position, and close the comments when is clear the audience largely rejects your message (i.e, anita’s videos on youtube)
There are alread plenty of non-sexist games (even by the ridiculously broad standard feminist define the term). Up thread there was someone giving several examples, as to show that games don’t need sexism to be good. So clearly there are already games marketed towards people like you.
What you actually want is for ALL the games to remove the elements YOU don’t like. You have a problem with the entertainment choices of other people? That’s your fucking problem, not theirs.
lol, what does that even supposed to mean. All the elements in games are tools and things. All of them are objects. None of them are persons. Is every female characer supposed to go on a half an hour monologue about how smart and strong and independent she is and how she is taking a Masters degree in gender studies?
You don’t want critcism. What you want is gatekeeping. You want to make sure that the games you don’t like, never get made. You want to shame producers who makes these games and players who enjoy them. Well, though shit, because these games have and are generating billions in revenue, and producers are not stupid enough to blow off real, proven markets for hypothetical ones.
Yet they are making bilions doing exactly that. And unlike what most of you seem to think, the actually spend real money doing real marketing research on what their customers actually want.
Whenever right wingers complain about gay marriage, or abortion, or something like that, liberals always respond among the same lines:
“nobody is forcing you to get an abortion, if you are against abortions don’t get one”
“nobody is forcing you to have a gay marriage, if you don’t like it don’t get one”
Well guess what, nobody is forcing you to play GTA either. Don’t like GTA? Don’t buy it. Don’t play it. No need to attack people who do and demand producers to cater to your hypersensibilities only.
BTW, you do know that feminist who have criticized the Mario games as sexist because Peach is way too stereotypically feminine? Look it up if you don’t believe me.
Because OF COURSE Mario would be so much better if instead of rescuing Peach, we had Mario rescue his gay lover Manuel. Why can’t those terrible homophobic developers understand that? Must be because of patriarchy.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA
Do you even see the irony on a leftist talking about what is and isn’t “normal” in male sexuality? Your side constantly celebrates men smearing lipstick all over their faces and pretending to be women, and you are going to lecture me about what is natural in men???
That’s ALL you fucking do…
I see the amoral, lying, misogynistic fuckstain (aka alejandro) has returned.
At this point, the real question is whether alejandro will stop his fucking whining already.
Anyone want to place bets?
alejandro @183:
If any of your posts included gendered or bigoted slurs, it will get caught in the filter PZ has set up. Also, if you have more than 6 links…same thing. Although come to think of it, you’re not fond of backing up your opinions with links to evidence, so I guess that’s not likely the case.
I say let him continue. Only thing he has proven is that GGers are indeed sexist asshats. Congratulations, you bravehero!
@189
Sorry, that should be “The fact that you can’t get past the stupid idea”
Also:
@190 Shitstain
How would that in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER impact the quality of the game? If Peach was less ridiculously stereotypical or if Mario was in fact rescuing his gay lover, how would that make the game in any way less enjoyable? It’s the same fucking game. Everything that matters about the game remains absolutely intact…the only change is that you’ve improved it by not hammering little girls over and over with the same bullshit about pink dress wearing princesses whose job is to be pretty and helpless.
Just like GTA would still be a great game without beating up prostitutes or with the occasional realistic female humanoid…
Wow, stupid, sexist, and homophobic. Proud bigots are so boringly predictable.
Oh poor thing, demands his right to ogle boobs and then whines when the boobs go all nuclear on his sorry ass. Go ahead and report my battle boobs to the FBI fool. I’m sure they will take your concerns very seriously.
No maybe. If you lie and bullshit about that, what else will you lie and bullshit about. EVERYTHING.
No links, no third party evidence, no logical evidenced backed arguments. Why should anybody take anything you say as anything but self-serving bullshit from a misogynist?
In fact, show me how eliminating the completely over the top, pointless mysoginy of games like GTA would make the game any less good. How exactly would that game be impoverished in any way. Do the cars suddenly not work? Does the game collapse because it runs on b*tch juice or something? And consider this (if you can)…if it turned out that sales were vastly different between a GTA with pointless extreme mysoginy and a GTA without it, in favor of the one with, how the fuck is that not a terrifying thing? How is a culture that actively craves and favors utterly pointless and disgustingly sexist shit something to not be horrified by?
alejandro @184:
I wonder why you didn’t include this from the link:
They’re not talking about the gender breakdown across all gaming platforms; rather, they’re talking about people who play on PCs and Macs. So your Xbos, Wii, and Playstation doesn’t count in that survey.
Duh. We know that. The point is “show us your tits” isn’t trolling. It’s sexual harassment. You really need to go learn these concepts before trying to have this discussion. You’re not even at the 101 level.
Nah. See, some of us realize that we have just as much right to play games as you do and we have the right to voice our opinions every bit as much as you misogynistic fuckstains do. I see you’re not even trying to hide the fact that you have no problem with women you don’t like being bombarded with rape and death threats or threats of physical violence. You’re a swell woman-hating asshole.
Interestingly, your argument “get out if you don’t like it”, is the same as bigots in the US say about people who push for secularism in the US or those of us advocating for LGBT equality. They don’t own the US. You don’t own gaming. We live in the US and we game. We have every right to try to make both better and more egalitarian for everyone, not just you hateful sacks of shit.
You don’t seem to understand how the market works. Something else you need to educate yourself on. You also seem to think the people here, or the feminists online, or the people who oppose GG don’t spend money on games. You’re deeply, deeply mistaken. They buy games. They play games. They are part of the market and they have the right to voice their opinion and seek to make things better. Just as you have the right to speak up in favor of excluding people you don’t like or supporting women being sent rape and death threats.
@185:
I guess you missed the part where people have said we’re not interested in making our own games. We’re interested in the games we already play being more egalitarian. Which is our right. If you don’t like us criticizing the sexism in games, then why don’t you just go create your own games to play by yourself?
No, they want developers to realize that sexualization and sexual objectification of women is sexist and wrong. They want the developers to stop creating games that are demeaning and degrading to women. That’s not trying to dictate anything. That’s expecting developers to be ethical and concerned with the equitable treatment of women. Something you’re clearly not concerned with.
And we, those of us who are also gamer, are saying we like many of the current games out there, but think there is room for improvement; say, by eliminating the sexist tropes in video games and treating women better. Not too much to ask for our fellow human beings to treat women with respect (well I guess it’s too much to ask of you Mr. MRA dudebro).
alejandro @ whateverthefuck in response to Rowan:
Welp.
alejandro @187:
You live in a world where breasts have lasers?
@188:
They do. And if those words are racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic, those teenage boys deserved to be called out and criticized for their hurtful language which contributes to systematic oppression of marginalized people.
Geez, I just realized you have no idea what that paragraph means.
@190:
Not that it would dawn on you because this conversation is about 16 levels above your head, but it’s likely because they’re engaging in misogyny, or issuing rape and death threats.
Oh, and deleting pro-GG comments has nothing to do with skewing data.
Do you even know what the definition of sexism is?
We don’t mind criticism as long as it is reasonable and reality based. The GG crowd has delivered neither.
And no, I don’t see anyone saying “don’t make these games”. What people are saying is “we enjoy these games, and would like them better if you made a few changes”
And yes, shaming producers who talk about how difficult it is to include female characters or shaming players like you who are sexist assholes is something we do. Just like many of us shame the Westboro Baptist Church and Pat Robertson for being homophobic assholes. Or just like many of us criticize and shame the KKK or Stormfront for being racist fucknuggetts.
Nothing wrong with shaming when people are engaged in bad behavior.
And they could make even more with a few changes.
Do you really want to introduce something else you don’t understand into this discussion? None of this has to do with sexuality. Your preference for women being sexually objectified, degraded, and demeaned is not about your sexuality. It’s about your misogynistic views of women.
Look cupcake, that’s not how the world works. We can voice our concerns over bad shit any time we please. We can buy GTA and play it and criticize it. That’s our right. We can hold the producers to a higher standard than you do. We can ask them to be better human beings and produce better product. The sexism isn’t essential to these games and would improve them dramatically…without fundamentally changing them.
Yes. You know why? Because it is shameful. Perpetuating a culture of mysoginy and objectification is wrong by itself….but when on top of everything it’s done for no fucking reason whatsoever because it contributes NOTHING to the game, i’d say that is a perfect reason to shame someone if there ever was one.
I look forward to somebody saying those exact same words to you when you find yourself outnumbered and repudiated for being a shitty human being. You’ll of course be given the opportunity to improve yourself and stop being a fucking arsehole, but somehow that is not looking very likely…
And you still have the vile to continue to pretend that it is not possible to be a real gamer and not be a sexist, racist, homophobic piece of shit like you.
Why is alejandro the only RealGamer™ commenting on this thread?
Where are the rest of Them?
Probably secretly playing Candy Crush.
For shiggles, I did a lvl 90 LFR, SoO. I was pulling 15% of the damage in a 25 person raid, and up to 25% of the damage, depending on the boss. Oddly enough, the other people in the raid wanted ‘my kind’, or at least ‘me’, there. “My kind” is better at WoW than most people. I’m usually in the top 3 dps be it LFR or Flex. And it’s not like I have amazing gear or anything. So yup. “My kind” is a better gamer. BOOYAH.
Alejandro proved my point about ‘show us yer tits’ that it is indeed sexism, not trolling. If it was trolling, it would be equally directed at everyone. But because it’s only directed at women, it’s sexism.
Explains a few things about him, doesn’t it?
chigau @204:
Perhaps if we say ansatz three times alejandro won’t be alone any longer.
What a fucking disgusting dumbass you are alejandro. You aren’t even worth responding to, because your idiocy and bigotry are obvious to everyone except yourself. Keep whining about “leftists” too, that definitely adds to your credibility.
I think alejandro is a liberturd. Total arrogant and ignorant abject loser.
It is impressive how much power he seems to think “leftists” and feminists have. The idea that these groups could somehow prevent new GTA games even if they wanted to is rather amusing. Even the shit feminists are nearly unanimous in opposing (like beauty pageants, for example) show little sign of disappearing any time soon, yet if they’re allowed to oppose misogyny in games unchallenged, ALL TEH GAEMS WILL BE GONE!!!!1!!
It’s why he is paranoid. If those who tell him and his cohorts “mature out of this phase” have as much power as he hopes he has, he is in trouble. There is a disconnect between bullying somebody with death/rape threats which his cohort engages in, better known as juvenile bullying, and persuading with moral arguments like the vastly superior “leftists” make without bullying.
Back when I was in college it was during the Viet Nam war and the radicalization of campuses. I don’t think he has any idea of a true leftist sounds like. They sound nothing like my arguments, coming from slightly left of center in the political spectrum. I don’t do any of the political sloganeering done by both the true left and the RWA/Liberturds.
Liberturds are morally bankrupt. He simply can’t make a moral/ethical argument. He has no morals.
It seems the horde trying to kick out Anita, Zoe, Brianna and other women from the industry didn’t get the memo.
Funny how alejandro hasn’t hit upon the correct way to market his sexist games. Make the main release one that isn’t blatantly sexist, and sell a “porno module” for those misogynist fuckwits like himself that must see virtual naked bodies. That way, the gaming manufacture maximizes their profits, by having a middle of the road game for the masses, and specialized high-prices module for only those who want it. That is the hand of the market at work….
You know there’s such a thing as pornography, right?
Yeah, no kidding. I wish they’d all just get blowup dolls and shut up already.
Hey there, alejandro.
I just wanted to repeat my question in case you missed it earlier.
If you don’t wanna answer, just let me know and I’ll shut up, okay?
Rey Fox, #215
But how will he virtually stomp the pornstar to death? In the video games, he can interact with the wimmenz based solely on their gender in a way he would never want his female relatives interacted with. But since it’s a video game and a lot of people buy it, it’s okay.
Especially since it’s apparently not part of the magic free hand of the market if that happens.
@alejandro 184
1. See Tony’s comment at 200. Skewed sample is skewed.
2. I don’t even give a fuck if it’s true.
Imagery that treats women as replaceable things or other dehumanizing ways of treatment are going to get criticism. Tough shit. Even if there were no women in gaming at all I’m still not going to pretend that this shit stays on the screen. You are going to keep getting criticized. There will be more Anita Sarkeesians and on one level I understand why the people harassing her on others have to do what they do. They have nothing else.
No it’s because women get treated differently than men in social dominance displays. There are ways of seeing naked women that don’t involve treating them like commodities. Evolution put those emotions and feelings there for reasons.
No women should not have to leave, you should stop engaging in primitive, juvenile sexual harassment designed to make women more accepting of male authority as a group. I don’t care how awful your relationship skills are collectively. You need to be called out. Criticism will not stop.
Oh bullshit. Of course people made money off of GTA. Yes yes I know what happened in the past. I don’t give a fuck. What happened is not the issue, the issue is what happens from now on. More and more women are going to be gaming and I want to see them accepted. Future GTAs can make even more money if they cater to everyone. And I simply don’t believe that “tru gamerz” require misogynistic and sexist imagry, or to be able spew gendered, sexist and misogynistic harassment. I think more of men then you because I believe that they need to hurt other people in bigoted ways to enjoy games. fixing this will not prevent future GTAs from making a profit.
You will keep getting criticized.
That day has to be created. You keep cowardly ignoring the fact that the “market” is a living breathing social thing that we all get to try to manipulate through social persuasion, and shaming. We are here to remind you of that fact. This is all a transparent attempt to prevent that change. The criticism will continue.
As for this “leftist” dribble, since the political right is pretty sexist, racist, xenophobic and other shitty behaviors go right on ahead. I’m not even mad.
@alejandro
So persuasion, criticism and shaming is “control” now? That’s some grade A exaggeration right there. I understand though, those social emotions from the criticism and shaming are unpleasant, but still not “control”.
They would make the games if women had the same respect as men in gaming. Both in making and in playing. The real attempts at control are from the harassment via threats and more that target the people doing the criticism, especially the outspoken women. I bet you authoritarian types just can’t stand seeing a woman up there with an opinion of all things! A negative one! About you! So it’s the dominance displays through pack harassment, threats, mythologizing. Behavior you just have to minimize by any means necessary like a simple “getting hate”.
I’m not going to pretend “traditional” type guys are not terrified of losing control. That’s why you act the way you do. Fear.
Your definition of “normal” seems to involve being in total control of everything. Women are objects. Women get harassed and abused to keep them in their place, and prevent them from getting a foothold as game consumers. Women get portrayed as replaceable things and worse so you can try to keep the old system of partner ownership going.
Fuck you. The criticism will continue. The same shit that hurts women hurts men too. I want a partner and equal in as many things as possible including social power. Not whatever primitive fantasy you have oozing around in your head.
@188
Again, they are not just mean words. They are dominance displays and expressions of social power. I’m not going to pretend otherwise, as a white person watching you do this shit. I’m from a conservative military background, I know what this looks like. The police don’t need to get involved in areas where social shaming can work. Which is why you are here, trying to prevent that from getting a foothold.
By the way,
Humor is meant to suppress fear. You are afraid. You would not be here otherwise. Your ilk would not be trying to preserve your ability to use gendered and racial domination behaviors. Such a predictable meat machine…
I’ll look at the last one tomorrow. You are quite fascinating.
In #220 there was a bit that should have read “…because I don’t believe that they need to hurt other people in bigoted ways…”
I like how, to Alejandro, I am a ‘girl’, despite being 32 and a licensed professional with a full time and very demanding job.
Brony @220:
I agree. I’ve been getting a good chuckle at this chucklehead’s attempts to insult us by calling us oogedy boogedy leftists. That’s like calling us social justice warriors as an insult. Maybe he’ll break out the ultimate insults and call us anti-racists or anti-transphobes.
I just do not know what to do with the fact that the only thing Alejandro took away from my post is that I apparently think with my vagina.
I just honestly do not.
I can’t even.
Let’s try this:
Me gamer.
Me woman.
Me want less sexist BS in games I play.
Me can criticise games for sexist BS and still like play.
Me gamer. Me consumer. Me part of market. Me woman.
You no more important to market than me.
More out there like me.
We want change.
Dig?
alejandro finds it hilarious that people who aren’t angry sexists want to play “his” video games. Well, I find it equally hilarious that a bunch of dedicated trolls and reactionary opportunists think they’ll be mistaken for a grassroots movement if they just try hard enough.
I have to say, it’s also a little ironic to see the gamerghaziists talking about “real gamers” when many/most of their most public faces for their BS movement aren’t gamers at all. Adam Baldwin (who coined the term) isn’t a gamer. Christina Hoff Sommers isn’t a gamer. Milo Yiannopoulos isn’t a gamer, and used to spend time making fun of them. 8chan founder Frederick Brennan has now also admitted to not being a gamer. So, if this is a consumer revolt aimed at restoring ethics to garme jurnalizm, why are all the big leaders and spokespeople admitted non-gamers?
It’s painful, but maybe #GGers should just admit that you’re being used as useful idiots by people who don’t actually give a shit about you or your hobby.
In other “things that are hilarious” news: Alejandro apparently thinks that admitting he can’t enjoy games unless they hypersexualise and victimise women somehow won’t out him as a vile misogynist with an emotional age apparently frozen at about 13 to anyone who’s actually reading his words.
Shorter Alejandro: I WANNA BEAT UP PROSTITUTES AND WANK OVER IT BUT YOU ANTI-SEX HARPIES KEEP HARSHING MY BUZZ. ALSO MARKET SOMETHING SOMETHING.
Yeah, a bit more about those totally unbiased real research dudes in Marketing.
Devs Had to Demand Female Focus Testers for The Last of Us
Obviously listening to women’s feedback and having a non-sexified girl on the cover and gay characters in the game ruined The Last of Us completely. Which is why it got wide critical acclaim and awards and has sold over 7 million copies after the second-largest PS3 game launch sales of 2013. (wiki link)
ck, but you see, alejandro and his mates have decided that anybody they declare to be a real gamer is in fact a real gamer even if they don’t play games at all and think people who do are pathetic losers, while people who have played, invested in and know more about games than they have can’t possibly be real gamers because that doesn’t work well with the ficticious and astonishingly prejudiced and biased narrative they have invented in their heads.
I say let them immolate themselves, they are doing an outstanding job of it. Popcorn anyone?
azhael @ 229
I recently discovered maple bacon flavour. Yes, please.
Pteryxx @ 228
I remember seeing posts from various places around the time The Last of Us came out from people who felt it did ruin the game. Of particular concern was the fact that Ellie seemed to have her shit together more than the teenage male character that she and Joel travel with for a while. She was better with a gun and less prone to panic than the boy which is, of course, totally unpossible. Breaks one’s immersion, doncha know.
@230 la tricoteuse
That sounds so goooood…..
By the way make sure to wear your special goggles when watching Gamergate arseholes destroy themselves, they tend to burn really bright before they go.
18 times, actually. The same thing, the same long post so typical of everything you write, posted and reposted 18 times. I wondered why the spam queue suddenly lurched upwards, and figured it would either be some bigot tripping the spam filter with banned slurs, or some really incompetent n00b who thinks repeating the same thing over and over again 18 times would suddenly make it work.
Surprise! It was both! A #gamergater poseur on a rampage!
Bye, Alejandro, you’re to much of a repulsive dumbass to post here. Go back to Breitbart, you’ll fit in perfectly there.
@alejandro 190
Irrelevant. The only way the question is getting answered is with a transparent attempt to gather data. Selecting preferred examples of any sort is still anecdotal, the opposite of data.
Sensitive snowflake is sensitive. Point out where someone said that the opposition’s opinion does not matter. Quite the opposite, we talk about you because you matter.
Your points on bans, deletion, and closed comments is also contradictory with your earlier position. If the market wants communities that can control content and comments, then it gets that.
Of course beyond your contradiction I don’t see a problem with individual communities getting to control their rules of conduct and content. Frankly it’s pointless of you to bring that up here like it matters since you are getting to be critical and comment. Without you showing me why these other sites banned or deleted particular content, I’m not going to assume that there was a problem without evidence. It’s also possible IGN and others want to ban slander, libel, and dishonest or deceptive content related to gamergate. You do not have my sympathy.
With respect to youtube, there is a reason that youtube comments are the butt of jokes on the internet, the quality is usually little but juvenile emotionally overwrought dominance behavior identical to that in gaming trash talk. Complete with sexism and misogyny. The fact that you can in fact comment on these videos in other parts of the internet renders your point dull and boring. The full audience finds wading among the sewage to be exhausting and pointless so the comments are locked and we discuss the videos in places like this.
Which completely avoids the point that we are interested in eliminating sexism so I really don’t give a fuck. You want to keep your games that present you with a fantasy that encourages shitty cultural values, we want to encourage all of society to treat women like individuals and persons. I will not pretend that your values stay in the games (as ours affect our actions and beliefs as well). This is not negotiable. We will continue to persuade, and shame where necessary. Just like you are trying to persuade and shame with your cultural values. The criticism will continue.
Correct! But through choice. I say to you the same thing I would have said to others that enjoyed the casual racism in entertainment of not so long ago. I know it’s my problem. That is why I am criticizing and shaming you all over our collective culture. Yes, I have a problem with the entertainment choices of other people and you don’t get to tell me to stop trying to change the culture. We all individually try to do that and you are essentially telling us to stop doing something basic to humanity because you want us to. Fuck off. The criticism will not stop.
Thank you. This is basically admitting that you have no idea what the people you are opposing are actually saying. You are simply responding to people emotionally and I don’t have to respect the opinions of someone that will not take the time to understand what they oppose. You are literally just acting dominant and puffing around.
You can start with Anita Sarkeesian’s videos. Or not, I enjoy pointing out your ignorance just as much as I would enjoy finding out if your views on her specific points make sense or not. Of course I never do get anyone like you to actually tell me what parts of her videos that you specifically have problems with and why.
Bullshit. By going through public persuasion and group shaming this is the opposite of gatekeeping. If the majority finds us persuasive and chooses to leave out sexist and misogynistic imagery that is not force. I want to see you neglected and ignored (unless sexist values cause someone to act criminally) just like the people that like casual racism. I do not want to see you harassed and abused.
On the other hand the harassment and abuse within gamergate that seeks to force critics to be silent, contently tries to change the subject from human suffering, and other means of suppressing attention drawn to how women are treated. Now that looks like a group that wants to be gatekeepers.
And if we change the way the culture looks at how women are treated in our media they will make billions by catering to other tastes. Like I said in my previous comments, what has happened is not my concern except as context. What will happen from here is what I care about.
You are allowed to try to persuade people to change culture back to one where abortion and gay marriage is illegal. You are allowed to try to persuade people that we are wrong about games. We are allowed to persuade people that sexist and misogynistic games should not be made. We are consistent. If the people around you think your ideas are horrible and criticize and shame you that is just how the social behavior works.
But if your arguments are shit, and they are, they will not be persuasive. This is why your side has to engage in harassing and abusive dominance behavior. They are shit on the abortion and gay marriage issue, and at least with the gay issue you have to watch what you say now (and I really don’t give a fuck). Just like I don’t give a fuck about the people that can’t be casually racist outside of the internet without criticism. And yes, I want to see the social rules on the internet change in similar fashion.
Your entire strategy here involves trying to frame this in ways that ignore our right to persuade the culture that things should change in a particular way. It’s why you ignore that social persuasion on taste is part of the free market. Sorry, I’m not going to abandon the tools that evolution gave me without more than aggressive bluster.
See? Again you have no idea about what you are arguing against. You have to provide a hyperbolic replacement. Do you think people don’t notice that you are totally inept and dishonest when it comes to actually understanding what you oppose? This is why people had to try to make SJW into a general slur against all social justice that they don’t like for emotional reasons. It’s the “talk shit about it, ignore what it really is, and hope it goes away” strategy. By all means, keep going with it.
And the men that do use lipstick should be allowed to do so without harassment and abuse. You are not knowledgeable about anything but what masculinity was considered to be in your experience. Looking at the rest of the world and history you find a lot more possibility when it comes to what can be considered masculine.
You fear the definition changing so you feel the need to defend gendered harassment and abuse. Those “masculine” and “feminine” traits can be found in cis women and cis men, and in gays, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, transexuals, asexuals and lots of other types of people that your definitions try to suppress and hide. You are the one hurting men by supporting cultural bullying. The criticism will continue.
Brony @234:
I’ve read a few comments from people who say they condemn the harassment Anita Sarkeesian has received, and then they go on about how they have problems with some of her videos, but I don’t recall hearing what these problems are. Like you, I’m still waiting.
Usually it’s “context.” “But the quest is about breaking up a sex trafficking ring so obviously there has to be buxom women lounging about looking as if they’re posing for a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog.”
@ Tony
That’s the pattern that I have been seeing more and more.
For me the most useful way to see it is that we innately have a cognitive system that just creates emotional sensitivity to a person’s physical sex. Culture chooses to associate different things with each sex, and the sensitivity simply exists as an unconscious impulse as a default. These people just don’t examine why they feel the way they do, the fact that they feel how they do is good enough for them.
Their ignorance is our strength. It just has to be delivered more effectively.
I’m wondering about that lipstick comment now. Were there ancient lipstick trees on the African savannah, that enticed women with their vivid colors but were otherwise invisible to men? Could this be where the (apparently) long historical preference women have for pinks and reds came into being? And how did prehistoric women deal with the carnivoristic variants of the lipstick tree that would’ve inevitably evolved?
Could be a hammer/nail issue, but I suspect the ‘lipstick men’ are BigotArgot for ‘trans women’, i.e., a straight-up transphobic attack.
@CatieCat,
I’m sure that’s exactly what it was, but I’m just amused by the idea that there’s anything at all natural about men or women applying lipstick. I’m always struck by these people’s utter lack of imagination when it comes to their own bigotries. It’s as if they are completely unable to conceive of a world in any way different from what they know, so they come up with these kinds of absurdities and think they’re somehow compelling arguments.