Feminism

[tegan]

I know, right? He states that he'll always add a disclaimer when his coverage is paid for and that he won't allow it to influence his comments about a game, but the problem is that it doesn't fucking matter. He can't possibly be naive enough to not wonder why companies with billions in marketing available to them would still pay for coverage that's not guaranteed to be in their favour, and they're not possibly naive enough to have never noticed that Flappy Bird took off the same day PewDiePie made a video about it called "DON'T PLAY THIS GAME." There's no such thing as bad publicity.

[Nachimir]

Yeah. Some of the youtubers they follow and champion are actually on the take, and have no ethical guidelines or codes of conduct whatsoever, but somehow that's fine. Because this is all about journalistic ethics and nothing to do with hounding women whatsoever. Nuh uh.

[James]

I don't really follow any YouTube personalities (I find most of them pretty obnoxious (which isn't to say I don't enjoy dumb or base things)), so my brain totally conflates JonTron, TotalBiscuit and CynicalBrit (and possibly others). I've been finding recent discussion pretty confusing.

 

I was also thinking about TotalBiscuit's response which amounted to "I'm going to take the middle ground, people on both sides are extreme." That's just such a bullshit non-statement.

Argument to moderation is something I have a tendency towards (although not in this instance, thankfully), but yeah, it's a fallacy. The truth isn't always in the middle, but it's easy to seem like you're being level-headed and more mature than those at the extremes. Kind of like how it seems cooler to be snooty about things than to be enthusiastic for them.

[Hermie]

Yup, TotalBiscuit has baffled me too. How can he say that " So much shit goes on behind the scenes, more than you could ever possibly know about.", when one of those things that came to light recently was that he and some other prominent names have taken a) direct pay to do a video, and 2) some have even taken a direct cut of profits?

 

Matt Lees has been linked multiple times in this thread already, but he keeps saying the Right Stuff. Here's an example of how most counter-arguments tend to go when he tries, and why he's given replying to people "that just want to debate the issue calmly".

[syntheticgerbil]

...I'm still mad that he had the nerve to say that when he openly accepts money from publishers for covering their games.

That's one of the reasons I really disliked the guy ahead of time.

 

He's also one of those guys who was largely screaming foul because Anita took footage from other Let's Plays on Youtube. I personally don't think that's wrong. If you do think it's wrong, I don't see how it's a big deal whatsoever in the case of wrong things to do. These people don't own the footage of the games and they don't legally have a leg to stand on. She obviously has a lot of work to do in terms of games to play and research, so I can imagine she can't be bothered to video capture and upload every damn thing she plays. TotalBiscuit is one of those guys who seem to be on the side that Let's Players are doing a lot of hard work out there (compared to actually making games) and that it's somehow infringing on their rights or profits. Really don't see it.

[Denial]

Zoya Street, whose geek credentials are hopefully established by having written a book about the Dreamcast, wrote a piece at the Border House that helped to capture an ill-defined discomfort that I had with Totalbiscuit's response, which has grown in clarity as he's doubled down.

 

TotalBiscuit thinks that he has nothing to learn about his own misogyny. “Any right-thinking individual knows that hating women is bad, we don’t need libraries worth of articles to tell us that.” This week’s events seem to demonstrate that there is a huge subculture within games composed of men who desperately need to seek help, and instead just reinforce each other’s disordered views on women and relationships.

 

I think that if one thing has definitely come out of this, it's that this "Haven't you heard? Sexism is over" stance (a line from Kate Beaton's amazing Strong Female Characters, mentioned above) is clearly inadequate to the realities of being a visible woman in games (or indeed anywhere else, qv the nude photo theft).

 

(Edit to fix HTML)

Edited September 2, 2014 by Denial

[Henroid]

I know, right? He states that he'll always add a disclaimer when his coverage is paid for and that he won't allow it to influence his comments about a game, but the problem is that it doesn't fucking matter. He can't possibly be naive enough to not wonder why companies with billions in marketing available to them would still pay for coverage that's not guaranteed to be in their favour, and they're not possibly naive enough to have never noticed that Flappy Bird took off the same day PewDiePie made a video about it called "DON'T PLAY THIS GAME." There's no such thing as bad publicity.

It's the Fox News argument. "Just because I call myself a _____ doesn't mean I have to operate in that fashion." All he cares about protecting is his income.

[Justin Leego]

I sort of think of people on Idlethumbs as friends or people I really like if that's strong and strangely a lot of people's opinions here seem to align very well. The current set of users here probably comprise my favorite Thumbs Forum formation yet.

[clyde]

In reference to enjoying the art of people who are abusive: Recently it was discovered that the male-lead from one of my favorite shows of all time beat up his girlfriend. I'm disappointed in him, but I still want to watch one of my favorite shows of all time. I'm comfortable enjoying something that was made by a abusive boyfriend before I knew they were abusive. That may change. I feel like I was arguing the opposite recently. I probably wouldn't feel comfortable about it if I knew the victim.

[Merus]

I don't really follow any YouTube personalities (I find most of them pretty obnoxious (which isn't to say I don't enjoy dumb or base things)), so my brain totally conflates JonTron, TotalBiscuit and CynicalBrit (and possibly others). I've been finding recent discussion pretty confusing.

 

I can imagine! TotalBiscuit styles himself as the Cynical Brit, so they're the same person.

 

Also I've known of him since my WoW days - his first big break was beta coverage of the Cataclysm expansion - and he's always been a dipstick. In that time we've seen a lot of YouTubers connect with their audience and develop a more mature and inclusive persona, but TotalBiscuit's mostly just gotten more views.

[itsamoose]

I don't really follow any YouTube personalities (I find most of them pretty obnoxious (which isn't to say I don't enjoy dumb or base things)), so my brain totally conflates JonTron, TotalBiscuit and CynicalBrit (and possibly others)

 

If anyone is like me and finds watching others play games fascinating, but would rather not have to deal with some of the childishness often found, two youtubers I watch are tokshen and the3nd3ffect.  They aren't nearly as big as Totalbiscuit and the others mentioned here but they tend not to use inflammatory language from what I've seen.

[JonCole]

PewDiePie has shut down comments on his YouTube channel. Though not strictly pertaining to feminism/sexism, I think this is a really great move away from that toxic environment to places with at least slightly more accountability like Twitter or Reddit.

[namman siggins]

Someone tried to 3D render that horrible Spiderwoman variant cover and oh boy are the results... well, the stuff of nightmares:

 

 

Seeing that led me to this really interesting Tumblr where the the main point is he posts completely unrealistic drawings of women and the people submit "redraws" where they try to adapt or modify the art to actually fit human physiology. The most fascinating part is that if the goal is to make these drawings look really sexy, most of the redraws are pretty much just as conventionally attractive but manage to not contort the body or misrepresent how a body is formed.

There are some many things that piss me off about that cover:

 

1. The shit anatomy

2. The shit response from Manara

3. That Marvel, in response to trying to have more positive female characters, pulls this shit.

4. That Marvel got motherfucking Milo Marana, the great erotic artist, to do a cover for something they're trying to do for #3

5. That Manara did a TERRIBLE fucking cover! I expect more from the man! He's a brilliant draftsman--though his women look the same and have almond eyes--and he knows how to fucking draw.

 

Jesus Christ, your head spins. If you're going to get a well known Euro Erotic artists, at least fucking go all out and use his talent.

Also, MM is not wholly a erotic artist, he did some great collabs with the illustrious Hugo Pratt.

[Griddlelol]

In reference to enjoying the art of people who are abusive: Recently it was discovered that the male-lead from one of my favorite shows of all time beat up his girlfriend. I'm disappointed in him, but I still want to watch one of my favorite shows of all time. I'm comfortable enjoying something that was made by a abusive boyfriend before I knew they were abusive. That may change. I feel like I was arguing the opposite recently. I probably wouldn't feel comfortable about it if I knew the victim.

 

Separating the art from the artist is difficult. While my instinct is that they should be entirely separate, it's hard to get the idea that their child abuse/sexism/racism doesn't affect their work, and I really don't want to be consuming something that has paedophilic/sexist/racist undertones. 

[Gormongous]

Separating the art from the artist is difficult. While my instinct is that they should be entirely separate, it's hard to get the idea that their child abuse/sexism/racism doesn't affect their work, and I really don't want to be consuming something that has paedophilic/sexist/racist undertones. 

 

Or rewards/supports the livelihood of an abuser/sexist/racist. But we've had this conversation before in this very thread and mostly decided that it's up to each of us to decide what we can live with.

[Cyborg771]

I feel the same way about JonTron that I do about Mike Krahulik and a fair number of people I see discussing this stuff in public. They mean well and they think they're being even handed and reasonable. Anything hurtful they do is purely out of ignorance. I can't hate that too much because I myself was ignorant of a lot of this stuff until only a few years ago. He isn't particularly harmful in and of himself, he just provides harmful people with a rallying point unintentionally. It's disappointing but it doesn't stop me from being able to enjoy their work.

[Nachimir]

Today, someone told me that a particular developer who has been named more than enough "sets feminism back centuries, especially in the video game industry", then another told me that it's definitely not about her.

 

I came up with a handy one sentence summary of #GamerGate: "Transparency crusade led by teenagers mysteriously zeroes in on women and their sex lives"

[Henroid]

I also saw someone with the GamerGate tag post this gem:

 

Seriously filing FOIA on @femfreq PD report. It's the smoking gun and it's there for public consumption. If not SF, where is she? #GamerGate

But guys it's just about journalism right? (My favorite part is "the smoking gun." Holy shit.)

[Henroid]

PewDiePie has shut down comments on his YouTube channel. Though not strictly pertaining to feminism/sexism, I think this is a really great move away from that toxic environment to places with at least slightly more accountability like Twitter or Reddit.

By the way, quick note - I saw someone among the GamerGate folks say that PewDiePie was "now in their corner." But I went looking through PDP's stuff to see what they were talking about and found nothing of him talking about what's been going on. I can only assume they meant his decision about comments, but the thing is, in his explanation he talks about the toxicity comments create rather than be an inclusive thing. Not to mention that shutting down comment functions is something the GamerGate believers denounce (see their reactions to Sarkeesian's videos).

 

There's so many people co-opting the stupid thing that it means nothing and contradicts itself at every turn. "Gamers are united!" Apparently not.

[Griddlelol]

Could you explain that tweet? There there are so many acronyms I'm lost.

[Ozzie]

My guess:

FOIA = Freedom of Information Act

PD = Police Department

SF = San Francisco

[feelthedarkness]

 came up with a handy one sentence summary of #GamerGate: "Transparency crusade led by teenagers mysteriously zeroes in on women and their sex lives"

 

haha. A+

[Mangela Lansbury]

My guess:

FOIA = Freedom of Information Act

PD = Police Department

SF = San Francisco

 

That'd be it. FOIA requests are just requests for information that you think should be released. The agency you submit them to can either give you what you ask for or tell you why it's unable or unwilling to. I guess they're just trying to guess what police department they need to file with to get their requests (a slow process where requests are usually rejected if they can find any reason to and which typically costs you money to receive the results of as a private citizen).

 

I'm just clueless about what "smoking gun" someone could possibly think they're going to find by looking at a police report about threats and harassment.

[Jordan A]

I'm just clueless about what "smoking gun" someone could possibly think they're going to find by looking at a police report about threats and harassment.

 

I'd guess they think that "there isn't a police report, because there was no harassment."

[Bjorn]

That'd be it. FOIA requests are just requests for information that you think should be released. The agency you submit them to can either give you what you ask for or tell you why it's unable or unwilling to. I guess they're just trying to guess what police department they need to file with to get their requests (a slow process where requests are usually rejected if they can find any reason to and which typically costs you money to receive the results of as a private citizen).

 

 

FOIA is specifically the law that governs the release of documents from the US federal government (but is often a catchall phrase for making any request).  Each state has their own "Sunshine Laws" that govern the release of documents which vary in requirements, and it depends entirely on the agency (or even individual) you are dealing with on how big of a hassle a request will be.  I've made some that were completely painless.  I also once made one for some financial documents and was told that it was going to cost several thousand dollars to hire data specialists to retrieve the information I wanted.  Once I informed them that I'd be writing an article just about how incompetent their system was and about how it was in violation of state law, as the data I wanted was required to be tracked, suddenly the information materialized and it only cost ~$30 in fees to have several hundred pages printed out. 

 

FWIW, the vast majority of police reports are dreadfully, painfully boring, and usually not that useful.  I've read upwards of a thousand, and only a few jump out of my memory as being terribly useful on their own.  At best, they are usually just an arrow pointing you towards what might be an interesting story.  My favorite one I ever read was when a couple of pieces of art were stolen from an exhibit that was all about male genitalia.  The officer managed to get through the entire report without ever using the word "dildo".  The entire exhibit was nothing but hand made or drawn dildos.