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Roderick

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I'm a bit annoyed that YouTubers feel the need to have an opinion about everything. Many of them are badly informed about what happened the last weeks and yet they absolutely have to tell their fans and the world what they think about it. In the case of TotalBiscuit, JonTron and

the results haven't been too great.

Now NerdCubed couldn't resist the urge to add his opinion about the events. It's not the worst, but he explicitly says that he hates both sides and takes with this the higher ground or the moderate middle.

Maybe he doesn't want to fall into the simplistic trap of just adhering to one side, to not become part of an us vs. them mentality, so I guess he finds it preferable to say me and these idiots vs. those idiots.

 

https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356704262959104

This tweet confuses me. What does he have to feel relieved of? He wasn't attacked or harrassed or mobbed. He can make jokes at both sides of the debate, but what is there to joke about women being systematically harrassed out of the industry? I think generalizing the issue as two sides waging a war makes it easier to dismiss the whole issue out of hand. Look, here a feminist said something stupid, so this side is just as deserving of hate!

 

It's a case of lack of information. He seems to think that #GamerGate wasn't a smokescreen for aggressive mysogynism from the start. He might as well stop calling himself a feminist if people change from #GamerGate to #GameEthics because the former became toxic...

https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356936694505472

 

I'm not sure why people are so adamant on insisting that harrassment is always equally lashed out by both sides. Yes, the demonstrators in Ferguson dealt out just as much violence as the police did. Yes, Palestinians killed just as many Israelian children as Israelis did Palestinian. And feminists harrassed just as many misogynists as misogynists harrassed feminists. This is all absolutely true and I'm not being sarcastic at all. What else could he mean with a statement like this?

 

Pretty much everybody who actually wants to debate either side actually fucking hates the endless harassment and abuse being flung in both ways. (If you honestly think this is one way harassment then I’m surprised you can read this what with your head being stuck up your ass and all.)

 

Disappointing. Meh. I'm not sure where his anger is coming from, he has no reason to be angry considering his position on the higher ground he elevated himself to.

 

 

I think there should be more women in the games industry. I think it should be a comfortable place for them to work. I know games journalism is corrupt and hang on… they don’t seem like two opposing points.

 

He really hasn't been paying attention. Why does he feel the need to share his point of view, not just in private, but publically, as part of his YouTube personality to his fans and the world? Why not just admit "I don't know"? Contrary to TotalBiscuit though he has his heart in the right place. He is for equality and better representation of women in games. He just has no clue about what happened the past few weeks, he merely pretends he does. Maybe it is hard to get the right information if you're not part of the IdleThumbs community? Maybe I'm spoiled.

 

I'm sorry for my aimless ranting here, but I had to get this off my chest.

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I'm a bit annoyed that YouTubers feel the need to have an opinion about everything. Many of them are badly informed about what happened the last weeks and yet they absolutely have to tell their fans and the world what they think about it. In the case of TotalBiscuit, JonTron and

the results haven't been too great.

Now NerdCubed couldn't resist the urge to add his opinion about the events. It's not the worst, but he explicitly says that he hates both sides and takes with this the higher ground or the moderate middle.

Maybe he doesn't want to fall into the simplistic trap of just adhering to one side, to not become part of an us vs. them mentality, so I guess he finds it preferable to say me and these idiots vs. those idiots.

 

https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356704262959104

This tweet confuses me. What does he have to feel relieved of? He wasn't attacked or harrassed or mobbed. He can make jokes at both sides of the debate, but what is there to joke about women being systematically harrassed out of the industry? I think generalizing the issue as two sides waging a war makes it easier to dismiss the whole issue out of hand. Look, here a feminist said something stupid, so this side is just as deserving of hate!

 

It's a case of lack of information. He seems to think that #GamerGate wasn't a smokescreen for aggressive mysogynism from the start. He might as well stop calling himself a feminist if people change from #GamerGate to #GameEthics because the former became toxic...

https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356936694505472

 

I'm not sure why people are so adamant on insisting that harrassment is always equally lashed out by both sides. Yes, the demonstrators in Ferguson dealt out just as much violence as the police did. Yes, Palestinians killed just as many Israelian children as Israelis did Palestinian. And feminists harrassed just as many misogynists as misogynists harrassed feminists. This is all absolutely true and I'm not being sarcastic at all. What else could he mean with a statement like this?

 

 

Disappointing. Meh. I'm not sure where his anger is coming from, he has no reason to be angry considering his position on the higher ground he elevated himself to.

 

 

 

He really hasn't been paying attention. Why does he feel the need to share his point of view, not just in private, but publically, as part of his YouTube personality to his fans and the world? Why not just admit "I don't know"? Contrary to TotalBiscuit though he has his heart in the right place. He is for equality and better representation of women in games. He just has no clue about what happened the past few weeks, he merely pretends he does. Maybe it is hard to get the right information if you're not part of the IdleThumbs community? Maybe I'm spoiled.

 

I'm sorry for my aimless ranting here, but I had to get this off my chest.

 

These are great observations.  The so-called moderate opposition seems to mostly be people cherry picking what elements of the discussion they would like to discuss and disregarding the rest.  I suppose the intent is to push the discussion into a more positive direction, but ultimately I think it plays into the suspicions of those who think the harassment is manufactured.  Like you said anyone who is paying attention sees the link, but those coming in late seem to see the discussion and harassment as separate.  I haven't paid all that much attention to youtubers regarding this, but from what I have seen there seems to be this belief that both sides must be given points in one category or another.  There is a lot of "Side A is right here, Side B is right there" going on.  They seem more interested in a philosophical discussion than examining the facts on the ground, probably in the hope of only remaining on the fringes to avoid the very harassment they are ignoring.

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I'm a bit annoyed that YouTubers feel the need to have an opinion about everything. Many of them are badly informed about what happened the last weeks and yet they absolutely have to tell their fans and the world what they think about it. In the case of TotalBiscuit, JonTron and

the results haven't been too great.

Now NerdCubed couldn't resist the urge to add his opinion about the events. It's not the worst, but he explicitly says that he hates both sides and takes with this the higher ground or the moderate middle.

Maybe he doesn't want to fall into the simplistic trap of just adhering to one side, to not become part of an us vs. them mentality, so I guess he finds it preferable to say me and these idiots vs. those idiots.

 

https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356704262959104

This tweet confuses me. What does he have to feel relieved of? He wasn't attacked or harrassed or mobbed. He can make jokes at both sides of the debate, but what is there to joke about women being systematically harrassed out of the industry? I think generalizing the issue as two sides waging a war makes it easier to dismiss the whole issue out of hand. Look, here a feminist said something stupid, so this side is just as deserving of hate!

 

It's a case of lack of information. He seems to think that #GamerGate wasn't a smokescreen for aggressive mysogynism from the start. He might as well stop calling himself a feminist if people change from #GamerGate to #GameEthics because the former became toxic...

https://twitter.com/DanNerdCubed/status/508356936694505472

 

I'm not sure why people are so adamant on insisting that harrassment is always equally lashed out by both sides. Yes, the demonstrators in Ferguson dealt out just as much violence as the police did. Yes, Palestinians killed just as many Israelian children as Israelis did Palestinian. And feminists harrassed just as many misogynists as misogynists harrassed feminists. This is all absolutely true and I'm not being sarcastic at all. What else could he mean with a statement like this?

 

 

Disappointing. Meh. I'm not sure where his anger is coming from, he has no reason to be angry considering his position on the higher ground he elevated himself to.

 

 

 

He really hasn't been paying attention. Why does he feel the need to share his point of view, not just in private, but publically, as part of his YouTube personality to his fans and the world? Why not just admit "I don't know"? Contrary to TotalBiscuit though he has his heart in the right place. He is for equality and better representation of women in games. He just has no clue about what happened the past few weeks, he merely pretends he does. Maybe it is hard to get the right information if you're not part of the IdleThumbs community? Maybe I'm spoiled.

 

I'm sorry for my aimless ranting here, but I had to get this off my chest.

 

This is why on various issue I'm not a fan of people getting angry because somebody hasn't spoken out on a specific issue...not everyone is informed on everything and sometimes its best to wait until you do know about an issue before you speak.  I've occasionally opened my mouth on various things without all the facts and it always goes badly I've found...so I agree that sometimes saying "I don't know" is the best response.

 

We've sort of been taught or conditioned or whatever that we should always have an opinion on things even if we aren't informed...that its important to form some sort of opinion.  I've found its actually far more useful to sometimes just say "I don't know enough to have an opinion on this...ask me later, I need to do some reading."  Even then its soooo fucking tempting to just jump in and go with "your gut" and that often goes really badly because you either A: end up locked into and invested in some half-formed view you won't back away from regardless of what new information you get, or B: you end up realizing you chose a terrible position on an issue you knew little about and you now regret that.  I've done this often enough to know it never goes well and sometimes its best to wait and think before I jump in...but on the internet it seems especially easy to just jump in anyway because its so quick and easy to do.

 

On the issue of false equivalence I think that a lot of people tend to be bad at weighing levels of wrongness.  People have this weird tendency of seeing imperfection as equal to wrongness.  You see that someone whose on one "side" of an argument saying something wrong or doing something bad, and on the other side you see a lot of people doing really mind-breakingly wrong fucked up shit...and I think some people go "oh those are both not perfect and therefore wrong" without realizing those aren't equal things.  People also suck at realizing that someone can say something shitty while still being factually correct...because one person out of the many saying "hey the harassment and misogyny going on is fucked up and wrong" might also say or do something that is arguably shitty or wrong doesn't mean that their statement about misogyny is somehow wrong...or that whatever they did is somehow equal to all that fucking harassment committed by a whole shitload of people on the other side of the argument.  It basically comes down to some folks seeing that people on both side of an argument are imperfect and then making the fallacious illogical jump to the conclusion that both sides are equally wrong or bad as though its a binary value.

 

Edit: I changed my text for the A: and B: thing because a 'b' followed by a ')' creates an emoticon B) which I for some reason didn't think of as I was typing this

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On the issue of false equivalence I think that a lot of people tend to be bad at weighing levels of wrongness.  People have this weird tendency of seeing imperfection as equal to wrongness.

There's an article I read a while back about how no one is a 'perfect' victim, and how that's often used to justify whatever horrible thing happens to them. It's something I've thought about a lot in the last few weeks, particularly seeing the attempted character assassinations of Michael Brown and Zoe Quinn.

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I'm wondering if there shouldn't be another fallacy as well (or maybe this falls more accurately in an existing one and I'm not making the connection).  But I think of it as the "everyone's a victim" argument.  The Daily Beast ran an article with the eye catching title "Men Are Harassed More Than Women Online", which if properly headlined, would have read, "Some well known Brit males harassed more than some well known Brit females under certain, strict criteria".  This argument inevitably tries to show that everyone really has the same experience, some people just whine or complain about it more.  Which I think it's important to ask questions like, "Is our perception of this thing accurately born out by data?"  Because we're humans, and we're fallible.  But it's usually obvious when someone is simply desperate to divert attention away from something, like that Daily Beast writer was.  Like it's interesting that the comparison chosen for Sarkeesian is Jack Thompson, a man who attempted to get legislation passed actually endorsing government censorship of games and was ultimately disbarred for committing dozens of violations as a lawyer.  Sure, no one should have been threatening to kill him, but to compare him to Sarkeesian seems to be trying to make a connection between their actions as well. 

 

You see the "everyone's a victim" argument pop up often enough.  Anytime a black, unarmed man is killed, inevitably there will be comments on the story about how white people get killed to, sometimes by black people! The argument is really that everyone's experience is identical, and anyone claiming otherwise has some ulterior motive. 

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I'm wondering if there shouldn't be another fallacy as well (or maybe this falls more accurately in an existing one and I'm not making the connection).  But I think of it as the "everyone's a victim" argument.  The Daily Beast ran an article with the eye catching title "Men Are Harassed More Than Women Online", which if properly headlined, would have read, "Some well known Brit males harassed more than some well known Brit females under certain, strict criteria".  This argument inevitably tries to show that everyone really has the same experience, some people just whine or complain about it more.  Which I think it's important to ask questions like, "Is our perception of this thing accurately born out by data?"  Because we're humans, and we're fallible.  But it's usually obvious when someone is simply desperate to divert attention away from something, like that Daily Beast writer was.  Like it's interesting that the comparison chosen for Sarkeesian is Jack Thompson, a man who attempted to get legislation passed actually endorsing government censorship of games and was ultimately disbarred for committing dozens of violations as a lawyer.  Sure, no one should have been threatening to kill him, but to compare him to Sarkeesian seems to be trying to make a connection between their actions as well. 

 

You see the "everyone's a victim" argument pop up often enough.  Anytime a black, unarmed man is killed, inevitably there will be comments on the story about how white people get killed to, sometimes by black people! The argument is really that everyone's experience is identical, and anyone claiming otherwise has some ulterior motive. 

It might fall under False Equivalence in some way.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

 

I think the biggest problem with it (the "everyone's a victim" argument) is that it ignores numbers...in order to make that argument you have to show that statistically the victimization is happening to all people at about the same rate (I'm probably wording that wrong...my brain isn't firing on all cylinders this morning).  If a group of people are more victimized than others then the "everyone's a victim" argument falls flat.

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I think the biggest problem with it (the "everyone's a victim" argument) is that it ignores numbers...in order to make that argument you have to show that statistically the victimization is happening to all people at about the same rate

 

That kind of reasoning also seems to be motivated by the idea that if something is widespread, it is acceptable or inevitable, which is particularly disgusting to me.  I heard a lot of the same kind of language when the sexual assault in the U.S. military issue was picking up steam, some were even claiming rape to be an occupational hazard.

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It isn't necessarilly a fallacy but it is just incomplete logic. Men get harrassed but who is doing the harrassment? Is it women or other men? Women get harrassed but who is doing the harrassment? Is it men or other women?

I think in both cases it would probably be more likely to be men who are the harrassers.

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It might fall under False Equivalence in some way.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

 

I think the biggest problem with it (the "everyone's a victim" argument) is that it ignores numbers...in order to make that argument you have to show that statistically the victimization is happening to all people at about the same rate (I'm probably wording that wrong...my brain isn't firing on all cylinders this morning).  If a group of people are more victimized than others then the "everyone's a victim" argument falls flat.

 

The biggest problem to me with "everyone's a victim" is the definition of "everyone".  If you get a large enough sample size (such as all white men), then of course you're going to find some cases.  The argument isn't that people of color and ONLY people of color or women and ONLY women are victims.  The examples where people point out that a straight, white male is also being harassed don't weaken the argument that harassment predominately happens to people who aren't straight, white men.  It strengthens the argument that harassment is just a terrible thing overall and needs to stop period.

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The biggest problem to me with "everyone's a victim" is the definition of "everyone".  If you get a large enough sample size (such as all white people or all men), then of course you're going to find some cases.  The isn't that people of color and ONLY people of color or women and ONLY women are victims.  The examples where people point out that a straight, white male is also being harassed don't weaken the argument that harassment predominately happens to people who aren't straight, white men.  It strengthens the argument that harassment is just a terrible thing overall and needs to stop period.

 

Yeah, I was going to post something about the susceptibility of the human brain to anecdotes, meaning that you only need one case of an "attacker" being abused by a "victim" to upset the entire narrative in the eyes of most people. That ties in with the article on "perfect victims" Problem Machine posted above.

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You see the "everyone's a victim" argument pop up often enough.

 

It's a seductive argument that makes a lot of sense until you actually think about it. It's almost impossible to reduce to logic to a silly degree that it still won't stand.

"People in my country go hungry, therefore I'm not concerned about those in another."

 

It's also ridiculous because it implies that something shouldn't be done. I've seen the argument "but male representation sucks in games too." Ok, it does, but how is that a coherent argument against trying to improve the representation of females (which is far worse, but that doesn't really matter for the point I'm making).

 

Relying on anecdotal evidence is actually a fantastic trait to have in an evolutionary context. Unfortunately we didn't evolve in a world full of 6 billion people.

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I got in a discussion with some guy quite unhappy with Anita Sarkeesian and have come to the conclusion that people really think she's saying that all patriarchy is deliberate and as a result she's accusing everyone of being blatantly misogynistic. I bring this up because I read Denial's statement that "words mean things" from the ethics thread. It's quite an annoying conclusion, considering the fact that her whole premise is the opposite - namely, that many game design choices are tropes that we've gotten used to but aren't right even though there may be some contrived explanation that could make them "reasonable".

 

I don't really know how to combat them reaching this conclusion, because it seems a fundamental misunderstanding of patriarchy; they seem to be making patriarchy out to be some sort of cult that they're not a part of, but it's a social system that we're all vulnerable to in some capacity.

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I don't really know how to combat them reaching this conclusion, because it seems a fundamental misunderstanding of patriarchy; they seem to be making patriarchy out to be some sort of cult that they're not a part of, but it's a social system that we're all vulnerable to in some capacity.

 

This is the exact sentiment I've been trying to explain to my room mate for a couple weeks now.  It's difficult to explain because you will at some point need to use examples, to which the response is always "well just stop doing those specific things".  The idea that portrayals of women are only an issue because developers have levels set in brothels (or similar specific-action arguments) is just ridiculous, but for someone who is not willing to admit that a larger trend is taking place it seems perfectly reasonable.

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I wonder if it helps to explain patriarchy as "we both agree that this is wrong, correct? That it's got a lot of problems. So here's the question: if this is so obviously problematic, why is it normal? When exactly did we decide that we weren't going to notice this and say 'that's the way the world is'? I didn't make that decision, but someone did, and they've managed to convince everyone to go along with it."

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A lot of them just don't see it as problematic. It's perfectly logical in their minds - males are the majority demographic, so it makes sense that games would be tailored to them. Women are brutally killed for dramatic effect, but men are also killed and to much greater numbers so how is it not balanced if not sexist against men?

 

It's so hard for me to convince them that the reason you're killing mostly males in games is because they're majorly over-represented. Or that while lots of men are killed, they aren't killed seemingly every time a bad guy is being characterized to show just how sinister he's being like when a bad guy inevitably kills a helpless woman for that effect. Or that while males may be or even are a majority, that doesn't mean it's fair that probably less than five percent of protagonists are female.

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I've always been aware that, at least in the UK, the news media tends to focus on young attractive females. Is there a murder/someone missing/car crash? The young attractive female story lasts 3 weeks, has pictures and a 2 page spread in the papers, while the unattractive or old female, or male finds a tiny column or 5 minutes on TV. 

 

My initial reaction was "Sexist! News doesn't care about men." "Lookism (god that's a shit word)! News only cares about attractive people!"

 

However, after ruminating on that thought again recently, I don't know whether my opinion has changed, but I can see that my initial reaction could possibly be wrong. Is it actually the literal opposite? That the news is focusing on young attractive females as victims because the news is aimed at men? The best way to please an audience is to show them images of attractive members of the opposite sex, make them the victim, whilst ignoring men, not because men are less important, but because the demographic it's aimed at doesn't want to feel like a victim? 

 

Last last paragraph was a bit of ramble, so I guess tl;dr version: Is the news really aimed at men by focussing on women as victims?

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Last last paragraph was a bit of ramble, so I guess tl;dr version: Is the news really aimed at men by focussing on women as victims?

 

Like brkl said, yes. Also, it's worth pointing out what I meant to post when we were talking about explaining the patriarchy and "reverse sexism" to skeptics. In the patriarchy, men are still vessels for violence, but only women are simultaneously vessels for violence and sex. It's disturbing to me how easy it is for me to imagine a "sexy" dead girl but how hard it is for me to imagine an equally "sexy" dead guy. Is he just buff and dead? I mean, it works, but it's hardly a stock image in Western culture...

 

It's also worth pointing out proportions. What percentage of men who are the subject of news reporting are victims of violence, what percentage of women? It's interesting how gender influences what is "newsworthy" about someone. This applies to games as well. You shoot a lot of guys in any given shooter, but I bet a lot of guys don't get shot in them, too. Meanwhile, every woman in almost every AAA game is the victim of violence or sex or both, which isn't too hard to achieve when there's like a half-dozen women in each game.

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Yes.

 

That's pretty much the answer I needed. Glad I came to the conclusion myself and had it reaffirmed here. 

 

Hurrah for learning! 

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http://laurie-penny.com/why-were-winning-social-justice-warriors-and-the-new-culture-war/

 

This is a culture war. The right side is winning, at great cost. At great personal costs to people like Anita Sarkeesian, Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn and even Jennifer Lawrence, and countless others who are on the frontlines of creating new worlds for women, for girls, for everyone who believes that stories matter and there are too many still untold. We are winning. We are winning because we are more resourceful, more compassionate, more culturally aware. We’re winning because we know what it’s like to fight through adversity, through shame and pain and constant reminders of our own worthlessness, and come up punching. We know we’re winning because the terrified rage of a million mouthbreathing manchild misogynists is thick as nerve gas in the air right now.

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God, I WISH these guys were trolling when they say stuff like this, but you know these are exactly the kind of people who have absolutely no self awareness.

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