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Roderick

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Fark predates the .com bubble. It's ollllllld. It's not quite old enough that there are people who can drink that were born before it started, but that'll happen in a couple of years depending on your jurisdiction.

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As a nice mirror to that article from a while ago by a woman about how she became an MRA, Jenn Frank just linked to an old one about how she stopped being one.

 

(The article refers to it as how she used to be sexist, but her tweets over the past hour - which include some tough reading about her childhood - refer to herself as an ex-MRA. tl;dr - working in the games industry cured her of it.)

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In more positive news, this is happening.

 

 

I normally loathe Jezabel - the writers on there are absolute garbage (probably because they've never been taught how to write). However, the community is pretty good: this article on http://jezebel.com/a-conversation-about-friendly-catcalling-with-my-husban-1619535048'>catcalling had some really insightful comments. I was honestly lost in thought about it while sitting reading the comments at work. Made me rather sad.

 

It also made me think about how one should deal with casual sexism. I've intervened a couple of times, but I've also not intervened many more than I'd like to admit. I think my biggest fear is that the woman will tell me either

a ) it's not sexism, or

b ) that helping her is sexist in and of itself.

 

How do you deal with casual sexism? I'm not talking about blatant stuff, but more underhand or innocent seeming comments? 

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Generally: if it's a friend being sexist to another friend, I'll bring it up; if it's a stranger being sexist (racist, misogynist, creepy etc) to a friend, I won't say anything in the moment (unless there's physical danger) but bring it up later with the friend and let them know I'll speak up in those instances if they want me to.

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I think the language "apparently legitimate concerns" needs to be observed.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who spotted this. Those three words together made me laugh pretty fucking loud, then get a little angry.

 

Any "public interest" argument put forward about a woman who makes games having or not having sex with some people is tabloid level bullshit, and leads me to conclude anyone advancing it is at best misguided, at worst a really crappy human being. As she and many others have said, her private life: none of our fucking business.

 

Internet manbabies: "But she did bad stuff!" *

 

Still none of our fucking business. "Apparently legitimate concerns" and "public interest" are weasel words used to justify shitting on someone.

 

* "AND it was a conspiracy but we're just conjecturing about that while completely ignoring other, separate, out-in-the-open ongoing bad stuff because, er, it… doesn't involve any women"

 

 Edit: Anyway, Merus is right about using scorn. I enjoyed this just now:

 

hi can I be Social Justice Bard or Social Justice Healer please

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Social Justice Witch Doctor. Oh nooooo I sidestepped into casual African stereotyping. :( I like that this has somehow become the topic in two banter threads.

 

Anyways, re: the Jenn Frank thing. The first of her tweets last night regarding the reversal on her own MRA beliefs referenced a dude named Ryan Perez, which seemed a non sequitur.  I saw in the string of replies that dude and then remembered that he was the one who wrote that Felicia Day article on Destructoid that called her a glorified booth babe (and got summarily fired and publicly shamed). He's still doing his veiled misogyny thing, btw. Anyways, it seems so tame an issue to have dealt with in comparison to some of the stuff women are dealing with in recent memory.

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I normally loathe Jezabel - the writers on there are absolute garbage (probably because they've never been taught how to write). However, the community is pretty good: this article on catcalling had some really insightful comments. I was honestly lost in thought about it while sitting reading the comments at work. Made me rather sad.

 

I get the same feeling.  I go to Jezebel every now and then for the occasional insightful article, but most of them come across as pretty juvenile.

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I don't find Jezebel to be any more immature or any more poorly written than some gaming blogs.  Much like Buzzfeed or Kotaku, they serve up a lot of mindless, entertaining crap along with their quality stuff. 

 

Edited to add: I'm not sure that's much of a defense, but I was just pointing out that they fit the pattern of many other sites. 

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As a nice mirror to that article from a while ago by a woman about how she became an MRA, Jenn Frank just linked to an old one about how she stopped being one.

 

(The article refers to it as how she used to be sexist, but her tweets over the past hour - which include some tough reading about her childhood - refer to herself as an ex-MRA. tl;dr - working in the games industry cured her of it.)

 

Thanks for linking that Jenn Frank piece. Very thoughtful, honest, and well written.

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I don't find Jezebel to be any more immature or any more poorly written than some gaming blogs.  Much like Buzzfeed or Kotaku, they serve up a lot of mindless, entertaining crap along with their quality stuff. 

 

Edited to add: I'm not sure that's much of a defense, but I was just pointing out that they fit the pattern of many other sites. 

Completely agree. Gawker sites are all awful, I also really dislike the idea of a news site pretending to be a blog. I avoid buzzfeed like the plague, those titles drive me nuts. I wasn't aiming to single out Jezebel, it's just the article was interesting.

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Jesus, if things weren't insane enough, Phil Fish was doxxed a few hours ago apparently for defending Zoe Quinn. People are saying addresses, phone numbers, passwords, bank accounts, financials, pretty much everything for Polytron.

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Jesus. I couldn't believe what was on twitter when I woke up. It's becoming a fucking war, and the misogynerds are targeting and trying to expunge anyone who expresses support for feminism or social justice. I know a bunch of women who make games or write about them, and have quit Twitter or are thinking about it.

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One of the first times I'd heard of doxing, it was used against a lawyer based in Florida that was doing something regarding eliminating privacy for the common folk (forgive me, I can't remember the details exactly, it's been a few years). Or maybe it was him disregarding someone's privacy for some court case or another and being a brazen dick about it. At any rate, the internet struck back by doxing him. Back then, I thought, "This could be a useful thing to do to people like that guy."

 

Surprise, it hasn't happened since.

 

Every incident of doxing since then has been against people for having opinions about this or that, and it's generally become a shitty practice.

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I wonder whether we'll ever get to a point where we have an effective defence against this kind of thing. I'm quite disturbed by the idea of prominent people being intimidated out of ever speaking out about issues that matter.

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I thought this was a good summary of the mindset behind these attacks: http://ellaguro.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-right-wing-Video game-extremism.html

 

JP LeBreton posted this older NPR interview that gets how women's underrepresentation in media ingrains a lot of these bad attitudes in us from an early age: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=197390707

 

The most important thing people can do now is speak out against the harassment and support those who are on its receiving end. It's frustrating that there isn't some kind of instant off switch we can pull to stop the abuse but that's the reality of the culture we've created. Until it's normal for women to be seen -- not just in games, but in all areas -- this shit is likely to continue for at least a little while longer. (Should go without saying that I in no way feel that we should give up because it's too hard, obviously.)

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Edit: Agh, Argobot your post appeared for me as I hit post :)
 
I'll leave these quotes here.
 
 

most game journalism is already tremendously confused and broken, and at a much bigger and more fundamental level that these people think this Zoe Quinn "scandal" is.
 
for one, my big criticism of this new indie culture - that it's an extension of tech culture and is ultimately product-driven despite it often grasping for another image, that it's not nearly as open to new people or new ideas as it wants to believe it is, that a lot of the interesting things that are going on in independent games (like a lot of free games by people like increpare and stuff on gamejolt or warpdoor or forest ambassador, for example) are not really recognized as part of the "scene" or given much of any coverage from mainstream outlets, that writers who do focus on devoting their time to looking at more interesting aspects are constantly marginalized and ignored inside and outside the scene, that a lot of what comes out of the visible indie scene just reflects the same triple-A, game industry values despite people purporting to be more progressive/feminist/whatever, is totally absent from these criticisms.

 

and so they find simple explanations for these complex phenomena that fit within their bigoted worldviews - boogeymans of evil, manipulative and misleading women like Zoe Quinn or Anita Sarskeesian. they view themselves as anti-authority and anti-power, even as their actions are tremendously conservative and tremendously serving of the interests of power. they view social justice activism (and indie games) as a product of the rich, elitist, and entitled who is using their agenda to infiltrate into major media outlets and ignore the common gamer market as an audience. they look to "normal guy" personalities like JonTron or Totalbiscuit, or Penny Arcade - who don't serve any kind of larger journalistic ethics aside from "being funny" - to reflect their perceived values and lifestyles. they employ the same logic that you see applied against LGBT and marginalized people that leaders in power in places like Iran or Russia do - social justice is a realm of Western entitlement and indulgences that are actively destroying the ways of lives of average, common people.

 

this all seems, in a way, to be a last gasp of desperation from the weak and empathy-deficient against the inevitable turns towards progress. it's an intensely self destructive act - it's as if they know they've lost in the end, so they're trying to take down anyone they can with them. and all i can really do, in the end, is just feel sorry for them.

 

On this:

 

speak out against the harassment and support those who are on its receiving end.

 

Leigh Alexander wrote a good piece on how to support. Not that I ask this, but it hadn't occurred to me before how unhelpful and stressful it is to be asked "How can I help?" by an otherwise sympathetic person.

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