Feminism

[RubixsQube]

 

Wait, has this been discussed? If it has, then maybe I apologize. This is Christina Hoff Sommers, a person who I do not agree with, making statements that I also do not agree with. She criticizes people who cherry pick research, and then does the same thing herself, which is a strange thing. Also, instead of attacking misogyny in games, she goes after the link between violence and games, which is a little silly. This is really, really difficult to watch. 

[Bjorn]

Sommers is someone who believes that bullying and belittling people both represent appropriate dialogue, but tries to sell herself as being someone who is setting the record straight when it comes to feminism. 

[Bjorn]

Here's an example of the kind of work she recommends, an editorial that suggests the increasing focus on sexual assault and rape in college is harming men, and the lone example is an anonymous and incomplete story (as written by the guy's mother) of a guy who worried that his obsessive sexual fantasies might make him at risk of harming someone and sought treatment multiple times for it on his own.  Three real women who he fantasized about were ultimately notified that he may be a risk to them, as required by medical ethics due to the concerns his treatment providers had.

[Synnah]

I'd heard Gaters talking Sommers up, but sort of dismissed her as someone who talks a load of crap after a perfunctory glance at what she's about. That video is a pretty cringe-y watch, and my opinion of her stands.

 

God, why did I read the comments. I'm going to go to bed in a bad mood now.

[sclpls]

My understanding about someone like Sommers is that there's always money in the conservative pundit stand.

[SecretAsianMan]

For a video called Factual Feminist, I'm surprised at the lack of actual... well facts.  I want to know who the gamers she talked to were and what academic studies she read.  If she hasn't actually encountered misogynist gamers, I feel like she's never used Xbox Live or joined a public server with voice chat on.  Also I reject her notion that men want to see male heroes and sexy women simply because they're men.  That ignores such a huge number of people many of whom are in fact men.

[jccalhoun]

after seeing tons of tweets and comments on /r/kotakuinaction about how awesome this video is I had to watch it. Wow. really? She doesn't even answer the question. The video is titled, "Are video games sexist?" and after spending a good deal of the 6 minute video on Video game violence she uses the old "there are different video games for different people" argument. As if being aimed at men makes it ok for a game to be sexist. That's good thinkering there...

[Mangela Lansbury]

Places like /r/kotakuinaction probably like it a lot because she takes their stance that girls are not gamers, and she gives them permission to be gatekeepers to an identity. She completely gets behind the idea that in order to be "a gamer" you have to be able to check off little boxes about how much you play games and what kind of games you play. In her eyes -- and the eyes of a lot of GamerGate people -- if you don't play enough games or you just play games like Bejeweled or Angry Birds, you are a filthy casual whose opinion and representation don't matter. I only watched about half the video before turning it off, but that's pretty much all I got out of it and it was enough.

[Henroid]

Oh okay, you guys have the Sommers thing going here. I'm currently talking to a friend about it (he agrees with her) and it's upsetting to me.

[Henroid]

Sommers is someone who believes that bullying and belittling people both represent appropriate dialogue, but tries to sell herself as being someone who is setting the record straight when it comes to feminism. 

Can you get a source on this by the way?

[Twig]

I just saw that someone posted this Sommers video on Facebook and so I finally watched it and I became angry listening to her horseshit and even angrier when I read the comment that person had made. I expressed my anger at the end of a hundred-long comment-versation on Facebook. This was probably not a good idea.

 

Of course this is a guy who once compared himself being extremely obese to one of our friends being gay as one of those "tests" God puts you through, and if our gay friend didn't stop being gay he'd go to hell.

 

He's so nice normally but then he has these beliefs that make me want to punch him in the face repeatedly.

[Gormongous]

I just saw that someone posted this Sommers video on Facebook and so I finally watched it and I became angry listening to her horseshit and even angrier when I read the comment that person had made. I expressed my anger at the end of a hundred-long comment-versation on Facebook. This was probably not a good idea.

 

Of course this is a guy who once compared himself being extremely obese to one of our friends being gay as one of those "tests" God puts you through, and if our gay friend didn't stop being gay he'd go to hell.

 

He's so nice normally but then he has these beliefs that make me want to punch him in the face repeatedly.

 

I remember you talking about this friend a year or so ago. I thought you said he was getting better at not just spouting out ignorant shit...? Not that the current cultural climate doesn't bring out the loudmouth in us all, for better or for worse.

[Bjorn]

Can you get a source on this by the way?

 

Mostly just from my impressions from her from having been reading her Twitter feed off and on for awhile. 

 

Bully enabler may have been a better phrase.  Sommers is someone who will show up like clockwork to most public discussions about women and feminism, towing the conservative line and often supporting those who are trying to bully or harass others, and they use her support as justification for their actions (take a look at all the gaters she's retweeted and supported).  Part of that includes her trying to deny or minimize any of the harm women face over campaigns like gamerghazi. 

 

As for belittling, a regular tactic is to mock people or feminist ideas to belittle them, to reinforce that under no circumstances should she or her fellows take anything a feminist says seriously.  I just went back through her last few days on Twitter to pull out some examples.  The Trigger Warning link goes to a Google search for Roy Roger's horse. And I'm someone who's not entirely sold on the idea of Trigger Warnings (particularly not in academic settings), but I'm not going to mock and belittle those who prefer to use them.   

 

 

 

[neonrev]

Christina Sommers is literally the very worst of people. She's a conservative mouthpiece that has repeatedly blamed women for their own rapes, that has ignored or shouted down any women (or whoever) who attempts to portray their experience (She's heavy on the "They just enjoy/get money from calling themselves a victim" rhetoric.), that has argues that people in Women's Studies are simply mad at the pretty girls for being more popular. She's the official 'feminist' of the MRA crowd, and her latest fan is Richard Dawkins, who considers her the 'bravest' feminist he knows. I've spent some time in the crazy atheist trenches, have met her personally, and consider her to be one of the worst and most damaging people who exist as 'academics'. She's morally and academically bankrupt, and her primary function is to call herself a feminist and parrot GOP talking points in slightly more obscured language.

(I fucking HATE her, and have spent far to much time in my life listening to people use her as a legit source. Now she's edging into video games. I cannot escape her FUCKING BULLSHIT NO MATTER WHERE I GO ARRGGH.)

[Denial]

The fact that the far right is making a concerted pitch for gamers is one of the most interesting/horrible things about this whole megillah. And I guess Wikileaks is looking to harness the same... energy?

 

It does highlight something interesting, which is that the roiling discontent of the gamergaters is often categorized as "conservative", but it doesn't necessarily line up with the groups currently courting it. If this whole thing has an upside, it may be that at some point Breitbart.com is going to have to try to work out what its editorial position is on erotic My Little Pony fanart.

[twmac]

Anyone who quotes Camille Paglia is worrying. I mean, given that Camille Paglia is responsible for some pretty hateful stuff:

 

http://www.ldolphin.org/lesbian.html

 

"Homosexuality is not 'normal.' On the contrary, it is a challenge to the norm; therein rests its eternally revolutionary character Queer theorists - that wizened crew of flimflamming free-loaders - have tried to take the post structuralist tack of claiming that there is no norm, since everything is relative and contingent. This is the kind of silly bind that word-obsessed people get into when they are deaf, dumb, and blind to the outside world. Nature exists, whether academics like it or not. And in nature, procreation is the single, relentless rule. That is the norm. Our sexual bodies were designed for reproduction. Penis fits vagina; no fancy linguistic game-playing can change that biologic fact."

[ANTVGM64]

Hi there, so....with feminism as it relates to gaming kind of being at the forefront of the news cycle right now I saw two seperate articles posted about it today - one on Polygon, and another on Cracked. Anyway, I wrote hyper long comment that got some...decent feedback, and I figured I'd post it here and see if maybe the people that see where I'm coming from over there are bonkers or actually rational human beings like I believe myself to be. 

 

Anyway, I'm not so much trying to defend anyone or attack anyone or say people are right or wrong - I generally think that telling people that they're flat-out wrong about something as...broad as feminism is a good way to make someone an angry person. I'm not saying what I'm saying is wrong or right either, but it *is* how I feel, and I think there are other people, lots of people, who feel the same way - unfortunately I think a good chunk of those people react in vicious and inappropriate ways when they're challenged.

 

 

..This is revised and expanded. And long.

 

 

I think this whole...gamersgate thing is trickier than a lot of folks make it out to be for a few reasons, and the problem is that trying to quantify it requires writing at a length most people would only skim, pull out the egregious parts, and then cry they're offended. But I'm gonna try!

 

So, about a year ago I attended a Kid Rock concert. Kid Rock is in my top three bands of all time. I know all the words, every one. I was blown away by this show, save for one detail. Every time one of his songs came to a ‘bitch’ or a ‘ho’ or a ‘slut’, he’d turn the mic out to the crowd and not say those particular phrases himself. This happened quite a few times. 

 

Now it’s possible it’s just part of the show, but it’s more likely Kid Rock has matured (and enjoyed cashing those RNC checks) to the point where perhaps he doesn't’ feel comfortable using that kind of derogatory language toward women anymore. Which is nice and all, but I know all these songs by heart, naughty words included , and you bet your bottom I’m going to shout the words Kid Rock wants me to shout when he points the microphone toward the crowd.

 

So thanks, Kid, I guess I’m the asshole. 

 

Thus, I think the ‘problem’ folks have with a lot of this is in the jezebel posts and youtube videos it feels 'feminists' (or any ists) are making media watchers feel asshole for liking controversial subject matter. You may tell me to check my privilege or something and get over it, but unfortunately you can't just decide to stop having sour reactions to this kind of thing. 

 

We're (Men, I suppose, but everyone really, too) being told every single transgression in our favorite games and movies and TV shows, and in many cases they're the ones that shaped our personality, ideas of art and creativity, all-the-while not being told what we're supposed to do about it except feel bad. It's like having your Grandmother glare at you from the back porch window after she gave you permission to smoke a cigarette. Do what you want, but you're a bad person for it, ya know?

 

I’m being told to be ‘socially conscious’ about things that are unconscious in nature - namely the creative process. It's baffling to me that I've heard honest-to-goodness paid journalists say things like "Its...'just time' for Grand Theft Auto" to have a female protagonist when those games appear to be written by almost exclusively by only two people - seriously sit down sometime and just 'hang out' with any of the female characters in the game. Even the strippers you can befriend. Call them up, go bowling, play darts, whatever. You'll be amazed by the depth of characterization and nuance and...I swear to god, gentleness these characters are handled with. Hell, I *still* remember the time Franklin took home a stripper - Mercedes, and they talked about her kid in a way that was so human it should win an award. I'm told that the gross rape and bomb-in-the-ueterus stuff in Metal Gear Solid IV is wildly offensive, despite the fact that those events set up the disintegration of two major characters' entire beings. And, in a rare moment of sanity for the franchise, is...arguably the kind of gross awful shit that could happen in that situation. 

 

Look, there are a bunch of reasons why a person likes anything, from soap to soup to nuts to nougat. Flavor, formula, fit - but most importantly feel - and you can't quantify feel. I can't tell you 100 percent why I get blurred lines stuck in my head, but it gets there, and I like it. In much the same way I can't tell you WHY I find a movie like True Romance - which has some just brutal scenes of violence toward women, actually kind of sweet in a weird way, but I do. 

 

But I think most of the disconnect, and the reason for the flames and the anger on both sides, lies in the idea of the activist subculture. When something you care passionately about is also a name or label for your very personhood, any and all criticisms become deeply personal attacks. In the 90s when politicians were legitimately concerned about a generation of kids growing up playing Mortal Kombat, every broad criticism and cheap shot was a personal attack and so were the valid ones. Politicians not only hated games, they hated *us* gamers. 

 

If it’s your job, your being, to support a given cause and call out any and all transgressions to that cause, it’s really hard for some people to completely buy in. 

For example, I caught my dad watching “The Nonbelievers” which is a documentary featuring a bunch of atheists thrashing religion for an hour and a half or so. I heard a fair deal of it, and person after person after person took the stage and spun their own specific story about how God clearly doesn’t exist, and that religion is vile, evil, vitriolic, judgemental, and has caused more death and destruction than anything else imaginable. 

 

This was all said in a vile, judgemental, and condescending tone of voice by the by. Religion was stupid, and the people who were religious were bigots cowering behind their bibles at worst, and naive simpletons who simply didn’t know any better at best. I’m not religious and am not sure if I believe in God, but for crying out loud Richard Dawkins could have kept his mouth shut, been sawed in half on stage in front of everyone, and come off less one sided than he did while giving his talk. 

 

This is a round about way of saying that if you’re looking for something that’s subjective in nature like sexist or racist or ageist content, you’re going to find it. Always. And when it’s your job, and career, to find that thing and write about it, it’s all you see - and it rings...sour to the people who haven't quite drank the kool-aid. 

 

It’s like going shopping for the first time after starting a diet and having that one asshole roommate chime in to let you know that the fish you bought is high in sodium, that granola is loaded with gluten, and that Spinach has been known to cause digestive problems. It seems the only way to not get sucked in a hyperbole laden, largely useless argument *about* sexism is to not do anything even remotely creative or unique or take risks.

 

Like in the Tomb Raider reboot. The Tomb Raider reboot embarrassed me. Playing in front of friends and family they bore witness to Lara being impaled, mauled, shot, and drowned over the course of my time with the game, all detailed in glorious HD via the power of my Xbox One. 

 

Worse than the hyper violence, Lara had the personality of a cardboard box. It was if the developers were afraid to give her character any flaws or unique personality traits for fear controversy. Outside of the way the dialog of the enemies you kill changes from “It’s just some girl?” to “oh no! it’s the girl!” as the game progresses, there’s nothing presented in “Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition” that speaks specifically to Lara’s femininity or the specific challenges and dangers and threats a woman in this kind of environment would face.

 

What’s worse is...I think that was the idea. To essentially palette swap a typical male protagonist for a female one and see if audiences react differently to a lady going through all the gruesome death scenes and violence and murder a male protagonist would. And yeah, I did. Christ who in the world would enjoy it? 

 

It seemed the developers were so desperate to distance themselves from the controversy surrounding the legendary objectification of Lara Croft’s ample nacelles, they created a wildly unrelatable character - A pretty, well mannered, smart as a whip, endlessly agile, and adaptive lady whose skin remains silky smooth and her hair stays flowing majestically throughout the entire game thanks to some technical jargon the back of the box. I thought the idea was to not objectify women, but Lara is exclusively her function - what she does and how she does it, not who she is. 

 

But I’ve been told by people gainfully employed as full time media critics that all of this is a-okay. Lara is a feminist hero because she’s doing all the things a man would do in an action platformer, down to the 2D characterization, and if that makes me uncomfortable, the problem is with me. The problem is with me because the game made the brave choice to show her getting eaten alive by wolves? In this specific instance, the violence toward women is some sort of rallying call? 

 

I'ma bring up GTA again here. In Grand Theft Auto V there's a character named Tonya, a lifelong friend and former romantic acquaintance of Franklin.

 

Tonya is addicted to crack. She breaks your heart. She goes on about the good ole days, makes excuses for her boyfriend that she supports because he provides a roof and a place to go, all the while trying to see if Franklin would sleep with her since she views him as a far more successful person. She’s a tortured soul looking outward for an inward kind of problem.

 

You end up meeting Tonya while doing tow truck missions Tonya’s boyfriend couldn’t do. She comes with you, talks your ear off, makes excuses for her situation, has mood swings, tries to insert herself into your life, and she’s a character that hits close to home for far too many players - everyone has that one friend you can’t think about with an elongated sigh and a shrug at what could have possibly went wrong.

 

But there’s a glimmer of something within Tonya that pulls you in. A personality that’s likable and endearing, which makes her current situation all-the-more paining. The problem with addicts is that they’re people you know and care about - and it’s often impossible to wrench them from the jaws of that cycle no matter how hard you try or how miserable they seem. You can even love the person, but what the substances do to that person forces you to disconnect before the pain becomes too great.

 

When people talk about well-rounded characters in games, people you care about - Tonya here is the brass ring. She may be weak, she talks in stereotypical 'urban' slang, but her character is *so* strong and complex. She does bad things, but has no malicious intent. She has a multitude of flaws, but means well. She has a history, but isn't an expository device. It’s so difficult to cast judgement on her as just a drug addict, or just a hanger-on, or just a “ho” that you keep swinging by that tow truck again to see what she’ll say next, and hope maybe she’ll figure herself out. She doesn’t. 

 

I guess, ultimately what I'm trying to say here is that...this stuff isn't simple. It's subjective. Is a 'strong female character' one who has strong qualities? Is rich in characterization, including flaws and in many cases relatable stereotypes, or is it the way Tomb Raider does it, where strong female character simply means they are strong in every sense of the word to the point where they're not even human, let alone female? 

 

The questions are endless and the answers aren't complete because every single person has a different soul, different eyesballs, and different life expierences that fill in the gaps for that very answer. I think Heavy Rain is wildly sexist because in the span of about 45 minutes of game time a female character is sexually assaulted, then in the next scene is ripping off her dress to do a seductive dance for some creep at VIP club who then...pulls a gun on her and forces her to strip to her underwear. 

 

That's sexist, right? Or is that giving a woman agency by using her sexuality to her benefit? Is it *more* sexist that this character seems to have absolutely zero side effects from her assault at the hands of a crazy drug-dealing rapist doctor, or *less* because it speaks her character's resolute will in the face of peril?

 

Can you see what I mean when I say this stuff gives me a nosebleed when I think about it too hard?

 

 

[neonrev]

The fact that the far right is making a concerted pitch for gamers is one of the most interesting/horrible things about this whole megillah. And I guess Wikileaks is looking to harness the same... energy?

I personally welcome the far right taking in as many of them as they can. Super pumped every time the GOP courts radical anti-women groups. Just grabbing more rocks to put in their sinking ship. If they want to make hating women their main deal then by all mean, do so. Not like women are the backbone of the democrats. Not like alienating women more is going to somehow HURT the far-right. I'm glad to see them define themselves as the asshole party. Easier to find the assholes then.

Also, use of the word megillah? Not really getting the reference. I'm still cool with getting real drunk later if that's what you're getting at.

[Denial]

Thus, I think the ‘problem’ folks have with a lot of this is in the jezebel posts and youtube videos it feels 'feminists' (or any ists) are making media watchers feel asshole for liking controversial subject matter. You may tell me to check my privilege or something and get over it, but unfortunately you can't just decide to stop having sour reactions to this kind of thing. 

 

We're (Men, I suppose, but everyone really, too) being told every single transgression in our favorite games and movies and TV shows, and in many cases they're the ones that shaped our personality, ideas of art and creativity, all-the-while not being told what we're supposed to do about it except feel bad. It's like having your Grandmother glare at you from the back porch window after she gave you permission to smoke a cigarette. Do what you want, but you're a bad person for it, ya know?

 

I’m being told to be ‘socially conscious’ about things that are unconscious in nature - namely the creative process.

 

The creative process is not unconscious, though. How many people worked on creative aspects of GTA V - i.e. including artists, designers, writers, coders, not including QA, testers, localization etc? A few hundred? They didn't sit down, go into a fugue state for ten hours and then recover and go home. A AAA game is a huge collection of decisions, from very high-level decisions about setting (the core team that worked out the high concept of Destiny was about five full-time people) down to individual choices about dialog lines and particular approaches to animating a particular action.

 

The auteur theory that holds that GTA V is created by Dan Houser, or the Metal Gear games by Hideo Kojima - with the rest of the development team acting merely as a kind of idea loom - is itself a function of marketing. There are certainly more or less hands-on creative leads, and you can see authorial intent, but it's a romantic notion to suggest that GTA V is a pure transmission of an unconscious creative intent to the player, unmediated by the thousand-odd people involved in making and marketing the game. Houser may be more hands-on than many, and Rockstar may have more autonomy than many corporately-owned studios, but. If you want auteur, Jason Rohrer is over there. The end product may well reflect or exemplify unconscious attitudes, but it isn't the product of an unconscious process.

(A good example might be Duke Nukem Forever, which for a whole range of reasons was unusually gross and offensive for a notionally AAA release - to the point where its content and its approach to that content possibly even hurt its sales. It's notable in that context that a whole bunch of decisions - and non-decisions, in the sense of decisions not to make a change to a created piece of work - led to that product shipping in the shape it was in.)

 

Either way, at the end of the process, you have an object designed to fit into the culture, and to be understood and purchased as such. And as cultural objects, I don't see how (or why) they should be exempt from cultural criticism. If some of that criticism makes you feel bad, then I think that's probably something for you to deal with. One way to do that is by examining the object in the lens of that criticism. Another is dismissing the criticism (which is a valid response in many cases! It's OK to discard the Fox News critique of Mass Effect as a graphic gay sex manual in game form, because it's unrelated to the object). Yet another is deciding that your hurt feelings justify a lengthy campaign of terror against women.

 

If you don't think you're being given any advice on how to respond to cultural criticism, though, I honestly don't think you're listening. Like, think about what these cultural objects are doing, and how they fit into the culture. Maybe raise your expectations of the products you're consuming, or indeed creating. A number of creatives - notably Steve Jaros, formerly of Volition and now of Valve - have noted that cultural criticism of their work has helped them towards making better work. That seems to be a good response.

(neonrev: Totally cool with getting drunk later, also, but I was thinking of "the whole Megillah" in its idiomatic use to mean a long, drawn-out story...)

[Merus]

Man, I don't want to do a personal tutorial for a guy who's clearly just turned up with all his baggage, but on the other hand maybe there'll be more light than heat from the discussion? I don't know, let's suck it and see I guess.

 

The chief argument of feminism is that there are all these behaviours that presuppose weird gender stereotypes that most people think of as normal, and that if we want to be done with them and be more truthful to reality, we have to make them not normal somehow. The best/only way anyone really knows how to do that is to keep pointing gross stuff out so people can see for themselves how they've been conditioned to see gross stuff as normal. So the activism you're seeing from feminists is not just trying to promote their views, it's literally trying to achieve their aims.

 

If you watch, say, Tropes vs Women, and you agree that the examples are gross, then Sarkeesian's aims have been achieved. You're more likely to see the same tropes somewhere else, and maybe you'll say something. Either way, it helps make it not normal.

 

At the start of the videos, Sarkeesian talks about how it's possible to still enjoy a work while still noticing the problematic elements of it. This is important because the whole point is that sexism is deep-rooted into culture. It's unavoidable; it affects everyone, and you've still got to live in the world and there's lots of entertainment where if you can get past the shitty bits there's lots of fun to be had. In that sense it's just like uninspired camerawork, or that one actor who clearly isn't as good as the rest and you just sigh every time they turn up and fuck up their line readings.

 

Same with people unthinkingly perpetuating sexism; they didn't intend to do it, they're just following what the culture tells them is acceptable. No-one expects you to not be sexist in the same way that no-one really expects you to not be rude or forgetful or whatever: if you fuck up, you just apologise, and try to make it up to people. Which is why people who care about these things get madder at the response than at the original sleight: Penny Arcade's dickwolves comic was a pretty good joke that also unfortunately helped to normalise rape as just something bad that happens, but what set people off wasn't the comic, but Penny Arcade being dicks about it, and then selling T-shirts so people could declare they were on Team Dickwolves.

 

I am deliberately ignoring about half that gigantic screed for now.

[JonCole]

Re: ANTVGM64

 

I was starting to write a response but Denial and Merus kinda hit most of my major points. I agree with Denial in that it's a smokescreen to think that these games are "created" by one or two individuals. There are so many actors that influence the story that's being told whether it's the animators who portray how a character moves and acts visually or the publisher who bankrolls the thing and would not surrender 100% of the creative control because nobody with money does that.

 

As Merus said, this isn't about your grandma glaring at you. I feel like a lot of the pushback on feminist issues has been rooted in this thought that feminists are trying to punish misogynists with humiliation and guilt. The thing is, almost every person has been raised in a culture of patriarchy. Nobody is glaring at anybody because every person "deserves a glare", so to speak. We've all consumed things that have some element of sexism rooted from patriarchy and will continue to do so probably forever. We should all be a little bit guilty and possibly a little more choosy in our buying decisions. I'm personally a little more likely to buy the next Saints Row game than the next GTA, because if Volition is trying to change and 2K is staying largely the same because of "authorial vision" or something I'll probably want to support Volition more.

 

Small things - who is holding up Lara Croft (2013) as a feminist icon? I seriously haven't seen that view represented by almost any feminists in gaming that I follow. Most people agree that while the character might be written in a strong way, the ways that she's treated mechanically (mess up a QTE -> brutal death) discount the impact of those writing decisions.

 

I also think it's worth noting that the only female characters you held up as good ones were a drug addict, a hooker, and a lady with a bomb in her uterus. I know you were trying to prove a point, but the simple truth is that if the only notable female characters with any depth can be described in that fashion those games are not progressive. I don't think that "pick up a random NPC girl and take her to play a minigame" is a particularly compelling argument in favor of GTA.

 

The primary featured female in Hideo Kojima's next MGS game is a woman wearing torn tights, a bikini top, and gloves who literally cannot talk and has jiggly boobs -

 

 

I mean... c'mon.

[neonrev]

(neonrev: Totally cool with getting drunk later, also, but I was thinking of "the whole Megillah" in its idiomatic use to mean a long, drawn-out story...)

Ah, I am a fan of rabbinical things but sadly not actually Jewish so I guess I obviously may have missed some context. I only knew it as a thing that relates to purim, which I primarily experience by way of semi-serious drinking parties. You can get drunk whenever you wish, I currently am too drunk (unrelatedly) to really care about either mordecai or haman. We can commune through time and space.

Also not going to fully engage that quoted text either, except to say that I honestly personally get where you might be coming from, and to say that you should seriously consider the posts above mine. They do a far better job of explaining stuff to you than I could, and I can say without reservations that whatever the (long term, painful, personal and intrinsic) discomfort with shedding your own (possibly lifelong) views, you will feel better after. The world makes more sense, and you have to justify less to yourself. You're not a bad person for who you are or were, so long as you're willing to change in response to outside criticism. Your environment makes your base setting, it's your job to improve that any way you can.

Also merus is really smart. Just felt like saying it.

[SecretAsianMan]

ANTVGM64:

 

Denial, Merus, and JonCole said lots of good stuff.  Others after me will also probably say things better than I can.  But I'm going to say stuff anyway.

 

First, I'd like to thank you for taking the time to consider the situation the amount that you have.  It's nice to see someone who doesn't automatically assume an aggressive posture.

 

Second, I hope you don't take this the wrong way but if you feel like an asshole, maybe you should.  That doesn't make you an evil person, it doesn't even make you a bad person.  I'm an asshole about certain things, everyone is really.  But if you feel bad at all (and it sounds like you do) it means that at least part of you recognized why these things being pointed out are harmful to some people.  I totally get taking criticism personally, I think we all do.  It is very difficult not to feel hurt when someone says something bad about something you love.  But that's not the goal of criticism, at least not in this case.  Media cannot evolve without change and change doesn't happen without critical thinking which is really what people like Anita Sarkeesian are trying to encourage.  Sometimes the change is good, sometimes its bad.  But we won't get anywhere if we don't take a look at what games are doing, both right and wrong.  Its totally ok to like a flawed thing.  Its not ok to ignore the flaws if they harm others.  Its not easy but things worth doing rarely are.

[Synnah]

Re: ANTVGM64

 

Most of the points I wanted to raise in response to your post have been covered by the smart folks above, but I've got a few things that I want to say, regarding feminism and what it is. Because a lot of what I've been reading by the anti-feminist proponents of GamerGate seems to bely a lack of understanding of the movement, and what its intentions are. Feminism, as the majority of the movement exists these days, isn't about making people feel bad about enjoying things that are sexist, or have sexist content, but instead making them think about why that content is sexist, and what kind of societal pressures created that sexist content. It's about self-reflection, which is surely something that you've done before; maybe a friend told you that something you said upset them in some way, and rather than telling them, "Fuck you, I do what I want", you thought about why you said it, and maybe resolved to try to avoid saying it in the future. Feminism is about getting society to do that, basically; in the case of intersectional feminism not just about issues that affect women, but those that affect people of colour, people with disabilities, and so on. Because if people start questioning the power structures that cause those issues, those power structures become easier to dismantle. It sounds like idealism, but it's kind of a nice thought, yeah?

 

Towards the end of your post you ask what sexism is several times, and seem to be unclear on the subject. When you say, "Is a 'strong female character' one who has strong qualities? Is rich in characterization, including flaws and in many cases relatable stereotypes", the answer is basically yes. When someone like Anita Sarkeesian is asking for better representation for women in games, this is the kind of thing she's asking for, and you'd probably be surprised at how rarely it actually happens. That's the whole purpose of her Tropes vs. Women series; to shed light on the various ways women are represented in games (And media in general), and to highlight why none of them qualify as 'strong characterisation'. As JonCole said, Lara Croft is in no way a feminist hero, because of the way the story treats her. It's less about her strength of character, and more about her suffering. Also, if you're concerned that Lara is just a male character reskinned as a woman,

is about that very thing. I don't think that's particularly what's problematic about her, but it's certainly an element of it.

 

So yeah, you're kind of on the right track, but there's confusion in a lot of your statements. It's worth reading up on a lot of this stuff. It's fun to learn!

[Denial]

Ah, I am a fan of rabbinical things but sadly not actually Jewish so I guess I obviously may have missed some context. I only knew it as a thing that relates to purim, which I primarily experience by way of semi-serious drinking parties.

That's where it's from - a megillah being a scroll, literally, more specifically one of the Megillot, the five books of the Ketuvim, and most commonly the Book of Esther, because it gets read out at Purim. So, ganze Megillah in Yiddish - the whole Megillah - is used to mean a lengthy, complete account. 

(This has little to do with feminism. Although I guess Esther is a strong female protagonist...)