Jake

Idle Thumbs 173: Ridonkulous Rift

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I feel like the discussion regarding games journalism (criticism included) and integrity has been all but entirely corrupted by the fact that Zoe Quinn happened to be a vocal feminist. I mean this in both the sense that

  1. many of the people calling it out on Twitter or other social media aren't doing it out of genuine concern for the legitimacy of games journalism and are instead doing it because they have a personal issue with Zoe's feminist beliefs
  2. the people who carry a feminist or more social justice oriented perspective are only seeing the anti-feminists and then assuming that everyone arguing that side of the debate is doing so for similar reasons.

This feels unfair because a real conversation about what constitutes the the line between professional and personal relationships in games journalism has every right to exist, minus all the spare baggage that goes along with the professional shouting match that is a modern social justice debate.

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I dunno.  On the subject of social justice warriors, I think there are real issues that deserve to be railed against.  But I'm genuinely tired of the outcry that seems to occur every time a game sexualizes any of it's female characters these days.  It feels like, for some reason, this is only an issue in video games.

 

Like, one of the most popular shows on TV right now is Game of Thrones, and I never hear anybody complain about all the naked titties on that show.  In fact, it seems to be considered one of the things people seem to like about the show.

 

TV, movies, comics, fashion etc, this generally seems to be accepted, but in video games, when it happens there seems to be a distinct "this is degrading, and it shouldn't exist" sentiment.  In fact, I remember back when Dragon's Crown was coming out, one of the regulars on Gamespot's podcast literally had the opinion of "why does this even exist, we should be past this".  Which is an attitude I find really offensive coming from a person who job it is to review games.

 

I can understand the "I find this offensive, I don't like this" attitude to be fine, but when is becomes "this shouldn't exist" it REALLY bothers me.  I think everything has a right to exist.  Everything has an audience.  And the "I like sexy ladies in my games" is a pretty sizable one.  And I realize that makes us a bunch of gross doofuses, but to say that it's wrong for people to be making the thing we like is...well...I find THAT offensive.

 

People like dumb shit.  And people who like dumb shit should be able to make dumb shit for other people that like dumb shit.

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Let’s take Aliens Colonial Marines as an example, now I can’t think of a Dev with more connections to the press than Gearbox Software through friendships or as former employees and yet the usual 6 month pre-launch cycle of reworded PR bullet points and pre-view puff pieces were never fact checked, challenged or questioned by those sites who had access to so called dev networking contacts.

All a lot of people are asking for is a little healthy scepticism and some transparency and not the pre-defined cycle of reworded PR BS like “Believe the hype” from likes of IGN.

They do that because every game is shit six months out from release. Games aren't made sequentially: they're shit, and they're shit, and they're shit, and then if they're lucky they stop being shit. Most journalists know this, and they try and compensate for it because it helps nobody to be honest.

 

The solution is to stop doing previews entirely but somehow the audience won't go for that.

 

Now on to the subject of Anita Sarkeesian, she has some fair points, but I think if I was an American and I had that platform I’d be more troubled about the 23 million US households that need food stamps to survive rather than this.

That would be true social justice not this video game related middle class navel gazing.

WE ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO HAVE ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME

SCREW YOU STARVING CHILDREN IN AFRICA AND HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN TIBET AND CREEPING FASCISM IN HUNGARY, WE ARE ONLY ALLOWED TO FOCUS ON AMERICAN POVERTY NOW

 

I'm going to guess you don't know what intersectionality means. That's okay. You've presumably got Google, you've got time, it's big and hard.

 

In RDR, you'd be riding through the world and might run into a store robber, a dude being hung in a tree, a wounded lawman who was shot by outlaws, cannibals and other horrible stuff.  This paints a picture that the world is a horrible place and bad things can happen at anytime.  In the context of the game, you thought the event was a horrible thing and shot the guy who did the horrible deed: A.K.A. "Old West Justice" trope.  Be it good or bad, RDR also plays off a lot of the established tropes in the western genre: The west is a horrible, lawless place, and a strong person with a gun is the only law.

 

However, if you take all scenes of violence against women, put them back to back in a video without any context, the result is perdictably gross, horrible, and most importantly, boring, because you have no investment in that world or the story anymore.

 

...What I am saying is keep in mind that you are seeing everything out of context in her videos, with her as the narrator.  Some of the examples may not be as bad as all that with the context provided by the overall game, the tone, and the story.  I usually side with lazy writing, and trope crutches used for 1000s of years in books, plays, movies, and TV.

 

I think you missed the point of the video (and that video really back-ended its argument, so if you skipped out early it probably came off as fairly nitpicky): the context is, as you describe, putting a rubber stamp on what is clearly shitty behaviour. What we don't notice that there's lots of games that lazily rubber-stamp objectification of women, and violence towards objects, as part of their fantasy, because we also have a context that rubber-stamps shitty behaviour towards women. That's why stripping it of its context is important: without the rationalisations, we see it for what it is, and we have to ask questions; for instance why exactly did no-one point out the run-down-a-woman-with-a-train achievement as potentially shitty? How were we all okay with that? And because we have that context out here in the real world, bad writers unthinkingly put it into their games. So it's bad writing, but it's bad writing that reveals something about the unconscious assumptions of the writers.

 

No-one is claiming that most writers in the games industry are women-hating misogynists. It's that, just like us all, they come from a culture that doesn't think objectification is really a problem. (A non-feminist example: why don't people jump out of the way of cars in games any more? They used to, back in the PS1 era. And why does no-one point out that it makes no sense for people to stand there and be run over, not anticipating your movements at all?)

 

This feels unfair because a real conversation about what constitutes the the line between professional and personal relationships in games journalism has every right to exist, minus all the spare baggage that goes along with the professional shouting match that is a modern social justice debate.

 

If you are genuinely smart enough to have that discussion without being taken in by seemingly-rational arguments that aren't secretly rooted in victim-blaming, sexism or a profound misunderstanding of how the games industry works, you're... well you're probably a liar because we're struggling with it here and we're better than average.

 

Considering that you characterise a social justice debate (which contains as part of the premise that one side of the argument has to justify whether they're allowed to even exist) as a 'shouting match', I'm going to guess you're not going to meet that criteria. It's okay. It's a journey, and we all start somewhere.

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Like, one of the most popular shows on TV right now is Game of Thrones, and I never hear anybody complain about all the naked titties on that show.  In fact, it seems to be considered one of the things people seem to like about the show.

 

How have you never heard of people complaining about sexposition

 

Like, one of the core third-wave feminist arguments is that people deliberately do not listen when sexism is pointed out to them, that people live in a sexist culture that lulls them into complacency, and here you are claiming that because you've never heard about people complaining about the imbalance of nudity on Game of Thrones then it mustn't exist

 

Also it's seemingly more prevalent in gaming because gaming is a new, participatory medium without a lot of gatekeepers and a history of shrugging its shoulders and going 'sure, why not' when representing female main characters, and it's on the cusp of shedding its last vestiges of cultural irrelevancy. It's a billion-dollar industry that appears in museums and inspires films and television and books and comedy routines and literally the last thing holding it back are 'gamers' and the idea that games are for teenage boys and not for everyone everywhere.

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How have you never heard of people complaining about sexposition

*shrug* I've only ever heard it referred to as a positive.

 

Like, one of the core third-wave feminist arguments is that people deliberately do not listen when sexism is pointed out to them

Who says it's not sexist?  It's clearly sexist.  But just because it's sexist doesn't mean it shouldn't be made.  Everything has it's fans.  And those fans have the right to be able to enjoy that thing.

 

It's a billion-dollar industry that appears in museums and inspires films and television and books and comedy routines and literally the last thing holding it back are 'gamers' and the idea that games are for teenage boys and not for everyone everywhere.

But that's just it.  Some games ARE for teenage boys(or manbabies with the mentality of teenage boys).  Just like there are movies for teenage boys, and TV shows for teenage, and books for teenage boys.  And yet nobody thinks of those mediums in their entirely as "for teenage boys".

 

And the genre of video games has tons of stuff that's not "for teenage boys" these days.  There's no reason that people shouldn't be able to make stuff for teenage boys just because of how it "effects the perception of the medium".  Teenage boys(and manbabies with the mentalities of teenage boys) need games too.

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Like, one of the most popular shows on TV right now is Game of Thrones, and I never hear anybody complain about all the naked titties on that show.  In fact, it seems to be considered one of the things people seem to like about the show.

 

Have you looked for it? The week after it occurred every major news site ran some kind of critical story on the rape scene. These aren't obscure tumblrs:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/29/game-of-thrones-racism-sexism-rape

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/21/does-game-of-thrones-have-a-misogyny-problem/

 

http://www.avclub.com/article/rape-thrones-203499

 

Also, as somebody who likes some dumb/ignorant shit, it's also possible to be aware and critical of the things you like. 

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I saw the Zoe stuff on SA when it first came out, and my reactions have more to do with how the internet reported and discussed it. I was really surprised that there weren't tons of articles and discussion threads in places for so long. The lack of reporting was great from a journalistic standpoint, I can totally understand the morality behind not wanting to report on unsubstantiated text and text that will lead to harassment. However, there's been a wake of silence that resulted in, for example, no articles about The Fine Young Capitalists' women in games project. The lack of discussion on forums and whatnot was a little bit stranger, as I feel like that kind of dumb drama is stuff that people love to discuss endlessly. I don't know if those discussions are good or not, but at the very least inconsistencies tend to fall out and I get to see smart people drill to the core of topics. However, all the conversation has been so dominated by shitty people on the internet who use the acronym SJW seriously and as a pejorative, who yell out misogynistic insults and slurs and who threaten people. I guess I just wish so much of the discussion wasn't dominated by what those people say and will alwayd say, but they're incredibly loud.

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Have you looked for it? The week after it occurred every major news site ran some kind of critical story on the rape scene. These aren't obscure tumblrs:

 

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/29/game-of-thrones-racism-sexism-rape

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/04/21/does-game-of-thrones-have-a-misogyny-problem/

 

http://www.avclub.com/article/rape-thrones-203499

 

Also, as somebody who likes some dumb/ignorant shit, it's also possible to be aware and critical of the things you like. 

 

The issue i have with the complains about Game of Thrones sexism, is that the sexism is historically accurate and I feel its being portrayed in a way that makes people uncomfortable. We cannot have a media space where representing sexism is never allowed. Its a thing that happened and is still happening and is bad, but we can't just have blanket no sexism ever in media. We can attack media that glorifies sexism and violence against women, but I don't believe GoT does that. The violence is nasty, the rape is nasty, its a dark show about dark things.

 

There is a point to be made that video games, tv shows, movies, music, comic books etc have such terrible representations of women in general that even when a legitimate point is being made the vast majority of horrible portrays override it. I however don't believe that we shouldn't try to represent things accurately because most people suck at representing it. We can't just sit around and wait for popular culture to figure women's rights out before producing anything that looks at bad things that happen to women.

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Have you looked for it?

What am I gonna do, Google "opinions on nudity in Game of Thrones"?  That seems like the kind of overly granular search someone undertake only if they were expressly looking to get into an argument.

 

I generally just go find the Game of Thrones thread in whatever communities I'm involved in and read what people think.

 

These aren't obscure tumblrs:

All tumblrs are obscure tumblrs to someone that doesn't use tumblr.

 

Also, as somebody who likes some dumb/ignorant shit, it's also possible to be aware and critical of the things you like. 

Again, fully aware that it's dumb/ignorant.  Still think it's okay that it exists.

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The issue i have with the complains about Game of Thrones sexism, is that the sexism is historically accurate and I feel its being portrayed in a way that makes people uncomfortable. We cannot have a media space where representing sexism is never allowed. Its a thing that happened and is still happening and is bad, but we can't just have blanket no sexism ever in media. We can attack media that glorifies sexism and violence against women, but I don't believe GoT does that. The violence is nasty, the rape is nasty, its a dark show about dark things.

 

There is a point to be made that video games, tv shows, movies, music, comic books etc have such terrible representations of women in general that even when a legitimate point is being made the vast majority of horrible portrays override it. I however don't believe that we shouldn't try to represent things accurately because most people suck at representing it. We can't just sit around and wait for popular culture to figure women's rights out before producing anything that looks at bad things that happen to women.

 

Have you watched the latest FemFeq video? She directly addresses why "sexism is historically accurate" is such a nonsense excuse that allows creators to keep using these lazy writing tropes about abused women. For one, the abuse never reflects reality. In reality, women are far more likely to be attacked by someone they know, not some vile boogeyman that is often used in these games or other stories. Having the latter as the standard of how fiction defines rapists or sexual abusers makes it harder for real women to speak out against their real attackers, because unless your experience fits the ridiculous version prevented in fiction, many people are unlikely to believe you. This garbage not only normalizes abuse against women as "just the way it is", it also normalizes a completely inaccurate idea of what that abuse looks like. This is not real sexism. The fact that this overblown and unconsidered examples are being described as reflecting reality and just the way it is -- that's what sexism looks like.

 

Also, Game of Thrones is not history. It uses some clear tropes from Western history, but it is not history. It has dragons and magic and whatever else in it. Rape in that show is another cheap set piece. Women are abused, but their abuse is nothing more than a plot point.

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Are the dragons and zombies and 5,000 foot high medieval structures historically accurate? Have you ever noticed how people tend to focus on the supposed historical accuracy of injustice in otherwise totally outlandish settings?

 

Also, are you sure it's accurate? We have an actual medievalist posting here. We're talking about a made up fantasy land, but on earth, there were female rulers, and eras of enlightenment. There was no one way. If you're looking dark ages type stuff the society was deeply pious, with many decisions controlled by religious leaders, but that is rarely covered in many of the cartoon fantasies we're talking about. 

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I think you missed the point of the video (and that video really back-ended its argument, so if you skipped out early it probably came off as fairly nitpicky): the context is, as you describe, putting a rubber stamp on what is clearly shitty behaviour. What we don't notice that there's lots of games that lazily rubber-stamp objectification of women, and violence towards objects, as part of their fantasy, because we also have a context that rubber-stamps shitty behaviour towards women. That's why stripping it of its context is important: without the rationalisations, we see it for what it is, and we have to ask questions; for instance why exactly did no-one point out the run-down-a-woman-with-a-train achievement as potentially shitty? How were we all okay with that? And because we have that context out here in the real world, bad writers unthinkingly put it into their games. So it's bad writing, but it's bad writing that reveals something about the unconscious assumptions of the writers.

 

I did watch the whole video, and still think context is important. My post was specifically responding to Sean's example on the podcast and his reaction, because I've been there before.

 

As for the run-down-a-woman-with-a-train achievement, as horrible as that is, it is another Western trope.  Yep, if you take out the context it IS a pretty horrible thing to tie ANYONE to a railroad track.  It's pretty horrible to go kill a bunch of people because "they seem like bad guys to me".   Out of context it is a horrible thing to have a racist shop keeper constantly spewing anti-semiotic crap.  Out of context, shooting someone over a game of cards is horrible... Out of context, it is a horrible thing to hang someone from a tree because you think they wronged you somehow..etc..etc...

 

I can probably go through a TON of media I like and pull stuff out and say "LOOK, HOW HORRIBLE THIS IS!" because people do horrible things in both books, movies and games.  That is why context is important, because "rationalisations" allows you to decide if the content is good or bad on a whole.  (For example: I liked RDR, but hated Watch Dogs...)

 

Once again, not saying a problem doesn't exist..just like you aren't saying "games industry are women-hating misogynists".  However, I think your statement about objectification of everything in video games is probably closer to the truth.

 

My question for you is this:

"Because we have that context out here in the real world, bad writers unthinkingly put it into their games"

Do you think someone should be allowed to create a REALLY horrible, misogynistic jerk in something..ever?

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As for the run-down-a-woman-with-a-train achievement, as horrible as that is, it is another Western trope. 

You'd be hard-pressed though to find an instance of that trope where the woman was ever actually hit by the train.  It's generally a woman being rescued from being hit by a train.  The achievement is pretty much the opposite of the trope.

The issue i have with the complains about Game of Thrones sexism, is that the sexism is historically accurate and I feel its being portrayed in a way that makes people uncomfortable. 

I don't really think that "historically accurate" means anything in a fantasy setting.  There's no history that Martin is trying to accurately portray.  It's a made up world that obeys whatever societal norms he creates for it.  So historical accuracy doesn't really give it a pass in that instance.

 

Though, again, I don't think sexism requires a pass in the first place.  If that's what the creator wants to do, let them do it.  And let the audience decide if it's for them or not.

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You can't say the sexism in Game of Thrones is historically accurate when it takes place on the continent of Westeros which has a huge thousand foot high wall to keep out glowing white ice people, and its people live in fear of the return of dragons (which is an actually historically motivated fear for them as their king used to rule from a throne room filled with dragon skulls). If GoT was an actual history that covered actual medieval monarchies and political underpinnings that would have more weight to me, but since it's all made up it seems a little unsound for it to take that content for granted, and entirely unsound for its audience to do so. Make what you want of the content but I don't think ducking behind "it's historical" is on the table in a story about dragons and magical assassins.

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BTW to newbies we're usually more accommodating but if you come on the Idle Thumbs forums after a week of just horrifying harassment and say 'you know, those misogynistic shitwaffles have a point' the reception you receive might be a little icy. It looks like I might want to crack out the bingo card, because it looks like this might be a good thread for it.

 

The issue i have with the complains about Game of Thrones sexism, is that the sexism is historically accurate and I feel its being portrayed in a way that makes people uncomfortable. 

 

Yeah, all those historically accurate dragons and magic gods and zombies. George R. R. Martin chose to make his fantasy world with sexism and racism. He could have left it out! He made the world up! And then the show basically takes all that but leaves behind a lot of the bits where Martin shows how this systemic bias affects people who don't deserve it, and instead uses it to show how edgy and boundary-pushing the TV show is. There might be a legitimate artistic reason why, four seasons in, they haven't really gotten around to acknowledging the presence of sexism other than to make misogynists more comfortable. Considering most shows never bother to acknowledge it, and Game of Thrones supposedly holds itself to a higher standard of writing, it's understandable why people are getting a little impatient.

 

What am I gonna do, Google "opinions on nudity in Game of Thrones"?  That seems like the kind of overly granular search someone undertake only if they were expressly looking to get into an argument.

 

I generally just go find the Game of Thrones thread in whatever communities I'm involved in and read what people think.

 

You're not really helping your case as an informed and aware viewer of media here. You're pretty much saying you kind of mix in your own circles and don't really try and challenge your own opinions, but you still think that your opinions are probably pretty watertight.

 

But here is the thing: your ignorance, and your ignorance of your ignorance, opens the door for people to do actual harm. I mean, this is Game of Thrones, it's problematic but it's got cool battle scenes and it's big budget fantasy but it's small-time in the grander scheme of things. But the same blind spots apply when we're talking about, say, rape. Or domestic violence. Or sex trafficking. There's this whole underbelly of stuff that you'd never be part of, but because you only mix in your own circles and you're quite sure it's not a problem because you've never seen it as a problem, you give the people who do it a blank cheque to do what they want, because the only reason they get away with it is because most people have the same blind spots as you. So we're at the ridiculous situation where it's apparently easier for women to wear special nail polish that changes colour when there's a date-rape drug in their drink than it is for one of the hundreds of people in the bar to shout 'hey, that fucker's drugged that woman!'. So when you say that 'everything has a right to exist' you're also prioritising the freedom of the most awful people to do and say what they want over the freedom of their victims to live safely. And that's fucked up.

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My point about historical accuracy was not that GoT itself is historically accurate, but many of the elements of the show are. I agree that "it happened in history, so its ok" is a bad argument. What I was trying to say is that sexism happened and is happening and we should be able to discuss it through media. GoT has female rulers, it has more enlightened characters, but to pretend that women had equality with men in the middle ages is ridiculous (women still don't have equally). I just worry that the arguments I am hearing are leaning towards never representing anything bad ever, even when it is showing how bad that thing is. 

 

Also I'm confused about what "just a plot point" means.

 

EDIT: Example of why I think historical accuracy in media is important: One of the things I hate about pirates representation in most media is how inaccurate it is. They were by and large terrible violent people and they are always shown as loveable rogues who don't constantly rape, murder and steal. While there were a very small number of female pirates historically, its nothing like what is represented in media. I would like an accurate movie portrayal over Pirates of the Caribbean any day.

 

Similarly fantasy/medieval media rarely shows how terrible life was for the vast majority of humanity. They lived on farms as practically slaves, they were drafted to fight in wars they didn't care about, their families were killed by other armies, their farms burned and they died in droves. Meanwhile the Aristocracy lived in huge houses wasting tons of wealth on feasts. Part of representing historic eras should include showing the bad side.

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You're not really helping your case as an informed and aware viewer of media here.

I guess it's a good thing I'm not making that case then.

 

I'm a stupid manchild that likes dumb, sexualized content.  Explosions are pretty good too.

 

So we're at the ridiculous situation where it's apparently easier for women to wear special nail polish that changes colour when there's a date-rape drug in their drink than it is for one of the hundreds of people in the bar to shout 'hey, that fucker's drugged that woman!'. So when you say that 'everything has a right to exist' you're also prioritising the freedom of the most awful people to do and say what they want over the freedom of their victims to live safely.

That's quite the slippery slope there to imply that because I like boobies on TV, I'm also a-ok with date-rape.

 

And for the record, I DO think the most awful people have the right to say what they want.  A creator of a work should be allowed to put anything they want into that work.

 

But they definitely don't have the right to do what they want.  And I think it's dumb to imply that support of the one equals support of the other.

 

A person can make a video of shooting puppies out of cannons to be enjoyed by other fans of shooting puppies out of cannons, as long as they don't shoot any actual puppies out of cannons.

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You'd be hard-pressed though to find an instance of that trope where the women was ever actually hit by the train.  It's generally a woman being rescued from being hit by a train.  The achievement is pretty much the opposite of the trope.

 

Well, that probably was the point, in my opinion.   You are Snidely Whiplash and (please read the follow in dude speak) it is taking a trope and flipping it upside down, bro (because you can be super evil in the game if you want).

 

Does that justify it, probably not.  I never got that achievement, and judging by the gore in the game, it was probably pretty horrible.  I was more making the point that I can see how someone could think of it. 

 

I can see someone in a studio meeting go:

"Hey, let's have a rescue the girl on a train track achievement!"

"Oh..better..let's let the villain win!"

"OH COOL!"

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What am I gonna do, Google "opinions on nudity in Game of Thrones"?  That seems like the kind of overly granular search someone undertake only if they were expressly looking to get into an argument.

 

I generally just go find the Game of Thrones thread in whatever communities I'm involved in and read what people think.

 

All tumblrs are obscure tumblrs to someone that doesn't use tumblr.

You need to work on your reading comprehension, all of those are links to major websites discussing the subject.  It is a pretty regular subject in most articles I have seen about the show in the mainstream press.

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As for the run-down-a-woman-with-a-train achievement, as horrible as that is, it is another Western trope.  Yep, if you take out the context it IS a pretty horrible thing to tie ANYONE to a railroad track.  It's pretty horrible to go kill a bunch of people because "they seem like bad guys to me".   Out of context it is a horrible thing to have a racist shop keeper constantly spewing anti-semiotic crap.  Out of context, shooting someone over a game of cards is horrible... Out of context, it is a horrible thing to hang someone from a tree because you think they wronged you somehow..etc..etc...

Okay: blackface is a vaudeville trope. No-one does blackface any more because what is good about vaudeville doesn't require you to perpetuate vicious stereotypes about black people. Rockstar didn't need to tie a woman to a railroad track or make an anti-semitic shopkeeper, but they chose to perpetuate those tropes in 2012.

The context isn't just in-game, but in the environment the work was made and everything it draws from. If you're going to use the same old tropes to say 'hey, the West was nasty', you're also regurgitating the racism and sexism of earlier Westerns. There are people who can get away with it - Django Unchained was explicitly trying to make an old Western without the latent racism - but Rockstar aren't Tarantino no matter how much they wish they were.

 

However, I think your statement about objectification of everything in video games is probably closer to the truth.

Yes, but remember that objectification of women is more widespread and more limiting. Men don't get objectified as often, and when they are they tend to be more varied.

Do you think someone should be allowed to create a REALLY horrible, misogynistic jerk in something..ever?

Yeah! At least it'd better be because I'm writing one, but I'm also keeping in mind that, as the creator, it needs to be done with full awareness of what I'm expressing, and that if I'm not going to challenge this in the work, I should leave it out. This means that if I don't have the time to handle, say, racism, I have to just gloss over it, because otherwise I'm simply reinforcing racism as normal.

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You are Snidely Whiplash and (please read the follow in dude speak) it is taking a trope and flipping it upside down, bro (because you can be super evil in the game if you want).

I believe in non-dude speak they refer to that as "subverting a trope".

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I probably shouldn't complain about this conversation happening here because it's (relatively) calm and it's on-topic for the podcast in question but

 

daaaamn I'm so used to this forum being a safe-haven from this bullshit. ): 

 

Bless all of you with the fortitude to have this argument over and over so many times.

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That's quite the slippery slope there to imply that because I like boobies on TV, I'm also a-ok with date-rape.

Good thing I'm not making that argument! I think it's a pretty safe assumption that you're not, in principle, a-okay with date-rape. But there's a very big difference between opposition to date rape and actually expressing that opposition in the small window of opportunity you'd have to prevent it, given that there's lots of date rape going on, the people who do it aren't particularly sophisticated, and most people are also opposed to date rape. Yet when it happens no-one in a very crowded room manages to notice a woman falling unconscious and being dragged out by a guy. That seems like a pretty big oversight, don't you think?

 

We know why that is: we know that in the heat of the moment people think, 'oh, this probably isn't a problem' and they ignore it. They don't think to ask, to help, to bring it to other's attention; they stay in their own little bubble and they don't think to challenge their assumptions. Moreover, it's the same initial assumption, the same programming, responsible for both 'Game of Thrones is gritty and realistic, it's probably fine we see lots of boobs and not many dicks' and 'it's probably fine that he's taking her home while she's barely able to walk'. It is an underlying assumption of our culture that leaks out in a thousand ways.

The rest of your argument gets into a free-speech argument, which is the one thing I don't argue on the internet with Americans about, so someone else can take that one.

Bless all of you with the fortitude to have this argument over and over so many times.

I get to make the same jokes over and over and over again and people thank me for it, what's not to like

(and they say feminists don't know what a joke is)

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Good thing I'm not making that argument! I think it's a pretty safe assumption that you're not, in principle, a-okay with date-rape. But there's a very big difference between opposition to date rape and actually expressing that opposition in the small window of opportunity you'd have to prevent it

So your argument isn't "Liking boobs on TV means you approve of daterape", it's just "Liking boobs on TV means you'd probably let a women get dateraped".

 

Glad we cleared that up.

Yet when it happens no-one in a very crowded room manages to notice a woman falling unconscious and being dragged out by a guy. That seems like a pretty big oversight, don't you think?

I certainly do.  I also don't think that has a single thing to do with what I was talking about.

 

Moreover, it's the same initial assumption, the same programming, responsible for both 'Game of Thrones is gritty and realistic, it's probably fine we see lots of boobs and not many dicks' and 'it's probably fine that he's taking her home while she's barely able to walk'.

I disagree.

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