Anita Sarkeesian has been designated Harvard Humanist of the Year 2014. Congratulations to her, and good on the Harvard Humanists!
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Anita Sarkeesian has been designated Harvard Humanist of the Year 2014. Congratulations to her, and good on the Harvard Humanists!
By the way, Greg Epstein seems to be getting dumped on by every nasty, petty misogynist I’ve blocked in the past couple of years…only he’s getting them all at once. He has my sympathy.
… I almost confused my Epsteins there for a moment.
Congratulations to Anita Sarkeesian! Very well deserved. I’m happy for her.
A well-earned award. Congratulations to Ms Sarkeesian!
Congratulations to Anita Sarkeesian!
My sympathies for the poor fellow who’s getting the Twitter storm right now
This is all part of Gamergate’s deep-cover cultural Marxist plan to elect her as ANITA I, EMPRESS OF KNOWN SPACE!!
or you’d think they’re deep-cover cultural Marxists, given their actual effects in the world.
I have often observed that if it weren’t for own-goals, GG would score no goals at all.
Congrats to Anita Sarkeesian. She deserves this recognition.
Who is Greg Epstein?
Congratulations to Anita Sarkeesian! And ugh, commiserations to Greg Epstein.
I really like this Twitter response from Greg Epstein:
Also, a hearty congrats to Sarkeesian. Huge fan of her work, and as a gamer, I feel that in order to be a respectable industry, gaming needs people like her.
My inspiration to become a game blogger, bravissima to Ms. sarkeesian.
Bravo to Harvard Humanists. Makes me even more disappointed in the AHA, who is awarding Lawrence Krauss Humanist of the Year. Krauss is still defending pedophile Jeffrey Epstein (no relation to Greg), only this time he’s claiming to know nothing of the allegations.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/01/us-epstein-charity-idUSKBN0L51G720150201
That’s not what he said in 2011…
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/04/01/bill-clinton-katie-couric-woody-allen-jeffrey-epsteins-society-friends-close-ranks.html
I see this was touched upon in the comments on the previous post. Sorry for any repetition.
Well, as long as it makes the Gamergate assholes’ heads explode…good!
Wonderful news!
I thought I heard a lot of popping noises this afternoon! It was Gamergate heads exploding.
That explains it.
Good for Anita!
The best thing about this will be the spluttering outrage from the GG shitheads.
I congratulate him for pissing off all the wrong people, but I guess that’s cold comfort when they’re all bleating at you en masse.
Wait, I meant pissing off all the RIGHT people.
Huh, I guess they reinstated the refractory period for commenting.
I didn’t know she was a humanist too? Awesome. The more I hear about her, the more I like. Unfortunately, though, I defriended my token facebook MRA a while back because he was turning into a sentient conspiracy theory, and I laughed at Gamergate too often and all my GG infected people did the same to me, so I almost never hear about her anymore. I’m going to have to start actively following her. In the online sense.
Huge congratulations to Anita Sarkeesian! Her influence on gaming and other popular media is helping to right some long standing wrongs, and her work is helping to change the culture for the better.
You had a sentient MRA to hand?
You should have preserved it for science. O.o
That’s kind of mean.
But not the least bit unfair.
sambarge @ 16:
I once read a proposal about measuring the health of coral reefs (and other areas of the ocean) by measuring the frequency and intensity of sounds made by pistol shrimp. The assumption was that if the pistol shrimp were numerous and hunting then that area of the ocean may be ecologically sound (no pun intended.)
Perhaps we can measure the ‘health’ of Womens Rights, Social Justice, and whatever else ticks them off by measuring the frequency and intensity of the sounds made by MRA/GG heads exploding.
Probably more of a ‘splutch’ sound than a ‘pop.’
This isn’t about Anita Sarkeesian, it’s about ethics in humanism award journalism!
Raging Bee, snortle.
What a fabulous choice! Good job Harvard humanists, it is wonderful to see Anita get recognized for her hard work by such a prominent organization, just as it was great to watch her appearance on Colbert. I hope to see more concrete social changes due to her work, such as the recent developments at IBM. Hooray for getting closer to true equality!
Congratulations to Anita!!! Great choice by the Harvard Humanists!
On a slightly related note, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo in a internal memo that leaked today “we suck at dealing with trolls and abuse on the platform” and that Twitter loses “core user after core user” because they are not handling these cases properly. Quoting a large portion of his first memo:
It will be interesting to see how (and how soon) Twitter takes steps, but it is encouraging to see such strong language at their highest levels.
Well done, Anita!
And Harvard Humanists!
@closeted #29
That is excellent news. Thanks for sharing that.
No. Not worthy in the bloody least.
@Faze #32.
Care to share the arguments that inspired your reasoning for this statement? I am curious, because it seems contrary to all the evidence I saw. Anita Sarkeesian has informed many men who play and/or develop computer games (myself included) about their unchecked privileges and how actual status quo in gaming industry reinforces damaging stereotypes about women (who are a tad over 50% of all human population). Pray tell why that is not a recognition worthy humanist cause. Maybe I and many people on this blog overlooked some crucial piece of evidence?
I will not hold my breath for you to put up.
“Care to share the arguments that inspired your reasoning for this statement? I am curious, because it seems contrary to all the evidence I saw”
I am not really sure that advocating against virtual violence and to proposed that it somehow affect real world violence can be consider an argument that can make one “humanist of the year”. Not to mention raising $150,000 for “research” on the internet, and using videos of others without their permission.
As far as I am concern, Jack Thompson didn’t get that for any year so far, quite unfair don’t you think?
“Anita Sarkeesian has informed many men who play and/or develop computer games (myself included) about their unchecked privileges and how actual status quo in gaming industry reinforces damaging stereotypes about women”
What are the privileges? I have examined her arguments. All of it have NOTHING to back it up, (I am assuming that you are referring to the 25 invisible privileges.) I have played a lot of rounds of CoD and there are little to no woman playing the games probably because the games are violent. And it’s male dominated because male have more testosterone, the cat calls and all that, literally NEVER happen, and there is nothing to back any of their other statements up in the videos, they are all pretty much weasel words.
“Pray tell why that is not a recognition worthy humanist cause”
Because it isn’t. Irrelevant to woman in India.
So you don’t think she’s worthy of this because… she raised some money for a project? What?
Faze,
Your post is so incoherent, but let me see if I’m reading you right:
Brilliant. That’s not sexist at all.
^ Speaking of no evidence to back things up.
Wait… you just acknowledged they’re male dominated and are now saying cat calls never happen… well, no shit.
Or are you saying cat calls never happen out in public?
Either way, you’re coming across like a dudebro idiot.
Have all the other “humanist of the year” nominations been universally relevant? Is Lawrence Krauss’ work relevant to women in India?
Faze,
And there’s Dear Muslima.
I got Bingo!
For that matter, is it universally irrelevant to women in India? I mean, I know they have their problems out in society but, seriously, are we supposed to believe that no women in India play games, or that none of those who do are bothered by the way that women are portrayed in them?
@32 Faze
Wow, the weight of your arguments has left me speechless.
—————
Congrats to Anita :) Not to take away from her merit, but i do admit that the thought of gamergater’s heads exploding as a result of this award is utterly delicious. This is not about them, though, it’s about Anita!
Whom did the cat call?
xDDDDDDDDD
Yeah, your “examination of her arguments” has as much value as a dead porpoise’s.
@Faze #34
Since you are reading this atheist and rationalist blog blog, I suppose you are familiar with some basic concepts that are under the umbrella “logical fallacy”? Hereby I would like to inform you, that you just commited a few:
1) hasty generalisation, whereas you are using one handpicked game (CoD) and experience of one person (you) in self selected community (other CoD players) to minimize or outright dismiss the experience of those whose experience does not match yours (i.e. me, Anita Sarkeesian and almost everybody on this blog).
2) non sequitur, by insinuating that someone getting paid for their work somehow automatically devalues given work from moral perspective. People gave her money voluntarily and sheu used the money for things they were given for. You would have to present an evidence of embezzlement or conflict of interests in order to have an argument here.
3) not as bad as / nirvana fallacy, on this blog also known as “dear muslima” where you deem something unworthy simply because it does not adress all problems everywhere. Again, you might have an argument here if you were able to point a person who did in 2014 more for worthy humanist causes and was overlooked. Then we could argue about merits of those works and whether your choice would be better. Without a name there is nothing to hold this argument together.
4) straw manning/misrepresenting your oponents position, because Anita Sarkeesian does not argue against violence in videogames. That is so gross oversimplification of her eloquently stated and explained stance, that you are either ignorant (in which case you should educate yourself) or wilfully ignorant (in that case, fuck off).
I still do not hold my breath for you to put forward cogent argument.
Faze @ 34
As opposed to your assertions which don’t even have arguments to back them up, much less evidence. Oh, but then you’re a MAN so your bald assertions always trump the arguments and evidence of mere women, amirite? Which is, I’m sure, exactly what you meant by “nothing”, isn’t it, asshole?
Athywren @ 39
The argument can also be made that improving the situation for marginalized groups in one part of the world helps pave the way for improving them in other parts. It’s setting the right examples, the activist groups that had previously focused locally would be able to extend their reach, the successes would hopefully attract more funding which could be spent to also extend the reach of activism, etc. etc.
Geeze, Faze. If your thought processes are as disconnected and incoherent as your writing, it is no wonder you have the beliefs that you do.
Maybe the gaters should stop whining and organise their own humanist of the year awards. I’m sure the results will be very informative.
@Faze
If you’d actually go and look up what privilege is, you’d recognise you just described several instances:
• Privilege means being able to brush away other people’s concerns and feelings as trivial.
• Privilege is not having to deal with or even know about something.
• Privilege means you can ignore problems that don’t affect you.
• Privilege means your group is automatically welcome, considered default.
Plus the other points: women in India most certainly get harassed and attacked online – Anitas message is relevant to them, women in India play videogames, use computers and their representation in IT is definitiely an important issue to many of them. I’m not sure, but to find out I’d ask them: what do women in india think of Anita Sarkeesian? Or I guess India has no problem with sexism … what with Times of India articles like this one:
Why do all of my facial muscles hurt so much?
#straightface
#she-pardnothe-pard
My male cousin destroyed his Gameboy after he lost the umpteenth time in a row playing Tetris against me.
I joked once with my then fiance that I’d only marry a woman who could defeat me in combat.
Later we ended up in an arcade playing a PvP mecha combat game. She won 2 rounds out of 3.
@Cynickal
Wat? No flawless victory? Pfff, weak! Women, eh? It just goes to show how terrible they are at teh gamezing. :P
Hey, now THAT I can get behind. Krauss as the AHA “Humanist of the Year?” NOT SO MUCH.
http://conference.americanhumanist.org/awardees2015/
Congratulations to Anita, and a bravo to Harvard Humanists.
Well, I think there are definitely significant problems with parts of her Tropes in video games series, but it was an interesting and thought-provoking endeavor, even though I disagreed with quite a bit of it. In addition, the fact that she persevered in spite of the torrents of horrible abuse was commendable and courageous. I don’t know who else was considered for the award , so difficult to say whether I agree she deserved to win or not, but given the nature of her work and all she’s gone through since 2012, she was a worthy contender.
Do you think you could add some more caveats about how you totally don’t agree, corvidd? I think someone in the back may have gotten the impression Sarkeesian might have done something right once.
FTR, I have a Very Long history with games and gaming, and I have yet to find an instance in which I thought she was mistaken. Like her, I play the games anyway, but I do have to grit my teeth sometimes.
As an example, I play GTA Online. I use a woman avatar. It annoys the hell out of me that I cannot buy a simple pair of combat boots without high heels. I can’t wear boots with any kind of long pants. I can’t get non-scoop-neck t-shirts. All my clothing options are sexified, like it’s Hallowe’en or something. It’s annoying, and it’s sexist, but I cope, because otherwise I can’t play with my friends. But coping doesn’t mean I won’t call it out, too.
That’s what Ms. Sarkeesian does. If you disagree with that, then you’re basically saying “any kind of noticing sexism is BAD”, and you are probably my enemy.
Or Red Dead Redemption, where the online game offers over 100 avatars for men, and only three for women. Nominally, there is one more screen of women avatars – eight or nine more, in total – but that screen (labelled “Misc Women”, as opposed to the mens’ avatars grouped by gang, or occupation, or nationality) doesn’t work. And if you try and enter it, you crash the game, and lose your progress. With all the updates they did for the online game, including new DLC and missions and such, they never fixed it, or mentioned trying to fix it.
So you’re stuck with the brunette white woman, the blonde white woman, and the Mexican prostitute.
Oh, and then you get called “WHORE” all the time by people in the game. :/
fpjeromeiv,
Well, it’s good to know the AHA doesn’t discriminate! Despicable humans have just as much chance of being rewarded as decent ones.
CaitieCat @55,
Seconding this. It’s amazing how so many people make sure to throw in the “I totally hate Anita’s videos!” disclaimer, even before saying something slightly supportive of her, and they never actually state which part of her content they disagree with.
corvidd @54:
Would you care to remove the Cloak of Vagueness and state what these problems are?
toska @ 58
And if you ask them to specify it becomes “well that would be off topic and I didn’t want to derail the thread.” Right. You didn’t want to derail but you just had to make sure everyone knew that you’re not altogether on board with this business of not hating her.
Seven of Mine @60,
Well, it would totally destroy my credibility if I actually agreed with any of the words that Anita “Oppressor of Men” Sarkeesian actually says!
toska @61:
Wait, I thought it was Rebecca Watson who was the “Oppressor of Men”.
Has anybody actually ever seen them together in a room? Maybe it’s just wigs and fake glasses and earrings…
I registered just to say this – although it will most likely be censored out in what’s ironically called Freethoughtblogs –:
A couple of years ago when the subject of my studies – biology – brought me to science blogs, I was a avid and enthusiastic reader of this blog and checked almost daily. Not only for the wonderful science writing, but also because of my interest in the whole evolution vs. intelligent design and creationism pseudo-argument. As I developed other priorities – work and less free time – this blog unfortunately fell of my radar.
Having returned out of curiosity just now and then, it deeply saddens me to see how a writer and biology professor who I took to be as an intelligent and rational person, has completely fallen on the wrong side of this whole issue. Hence my registration after years of lurking to vent my disappointment.
I’m not going to defend the vitriolic comments which have been employed by some of the internet’s worst “gamer” trolls – though I would argue they are hardly unique to her case – but Anita Sarkeesian is not a worthy of the praise she’s receiving. At first I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, acknowledging I’m a casual gamer myself and a longtime Nintendo fan and as such biased because she attacked one of my favorite youth memories – The Legend of Zelda -. As a trained scientist however I knew not to needlessly cling to my perspective as it may be proven wrong at some point in the future.
Now the dust around her has somewhat settled however, Anita Sarkeesian has not only proven to be a liar and a fraud, but also (and worst of all) failed to present any real evidence for her case. Never mind the lack of positive alternatives. She’s a critic without any rational arguments. In a sense she’s a bad version of Jack Thompson and the latter at least had the honesty of admitting to his real goals (being anti-gaming).
While positive feminism does deserve a place within the skeptical atheist community – certainly when you consider that organised religion is still a major source of oppression of the female gender – her variety does not, at least not if you want to call yourself a skeptical or a free thinking atheist.
I still wish you the very best PZ Myers, and would like to thank you for some wonderful years of reading your science writing. I can only say I hope you one day again start employ the same critical thinking to other subjects as well.
Kind Regards,
A disappointed former reader
disappointedformerfan , your submission of misogynist troll script #1 has been received. The Pullet Patrol™ rates it one star out of five for being trite, derivative, non-informational, and likely truthful.
Personally, I suspect you aren’t a scientist, as you don’t seem to understand evidence.
Dang # 65 end of first paragraph should be untruthful.
disappointedformerfan @ 64
I’m sure we’re all breathlessly awaiting the evidence for your case which I’m sure will be forthcoming any moment now.
disappointedformerfan, #64
Again, just like corvidd above: No examples.
No, feminism deserves a place within the skeptical atheist community because the skeptical atheist community is a source of oppression of the female gender.
@#65 Notice how you reply to my post, is derisive and accuses me of lying, and yet I’m the troll? No, I’m not going to upload a copy of my master’s degree, as I’d prefer not having my name in the open in this discussion, given the vitriol that is being spewed by both sides in this argument. But even if I wouldn’t have one, it would still be disappointing to see a blog that was founded on defending science, failing to live to it’s founding principles.
@#68 I have no intention of derailing this comment thread. Having read up some previous posts and comment threads elsewhere on this site, I’m aware that there’s little sense in repeating it, clearly the minds of those who still actively post here have been made up, or at the very least those who are on the other side – and which in my opinion far better fits the available factual evidence – have either left, or worse, have been effectively silenced. I will indulge you once: for examples of Anita Sarkeesian’s lies and fraud: I was amongst other things referring to her “stealing” of other let’s player’s their footage and blatantly misrepresenting the goals put forward in some games.
As for the skeptical atheist community oppressing the female gender… perhaps, but certainly not more so than for instance Islam is doing, or even christian anti-choice/”pro-life” legislators in some countries in the west. In fact I’d argue that the skeptical atheist community as a source of oppression of the female gender is probably way down in the oppression hit parade, and that there certainly isn’t any ideological component to skeptical atheism that promotes it whatsoever
I’d be happy to respond to private messages if there’s such a system on this site, but I mainly came here to voice my discontent, not to derail this comment thread, so I will refrain from continuing the debate here.
Seven of Mine, #60
Boy, they really are that predictable, aren’t they?
disappointedformerfan, #69
@CaitieCat
I’ll have a rather long reply regarding Anita’s series, but time constraints prevent me from writing that today. If you could check back here though tomorrow that’d be great, I should have it finished then. A few of the games/franchises I’ll touch on ( there might be a few more in addition ) :
Legend of Zelda
Super Mario Bros
Hitman
Dishonored
Bioshock
Gears of War
As to the point you make about GTA, I’ve no problem with it. I think the developers could easily have added in clothing options that weren’t sexualised.
disappointedformerfan @ 69
Yep. Not a derail to bring it up but backing up your claims? Totally off topic, yo.
disappointedformerfan, #69
That’s exactly what this thread is for. Post away.
You already have derailed the thread. Posting empty criticism of a person in a thread where people are praising them is the shittiest form of derail. If you had posted actual reasons and examples, it wouldn’t be a derail. It would be you correcting us. I for one would have appreciated that.
Bingo!
I didn’t even need the second post.
Spare us, please, the tired recitation of the evil, abusively misogynist and shitstinking slab of turdwaffle that is the boilerplate GamerGate crap, corvidd. Seen it, not the least bit interested in rewatching its self-interested hairsplitting attacks on perfectly cromulent critique. Just, no.
Go wank over it on YouTube or /$NUMchan or somewhere. I was only interested in the reflexive disclaimers you wallpapered your comment with.
Go ahead, ignore the two examples that I gave. Arguing with a Anita Sarkeesian fan shares a lot of similarities with arguing with a creationist: present them a rational argument that they can’t counter, and they either resort to ad hominem attacks or just ignoring your argument and focus their attention elsewhere.
Also, something to take away from debating with creationists: if someone makes an extraordinary claim such as Sarkeesian’s claim that the representation of women in video games harms women in real life, it’s up to her to provide evidence for her thesis, not her opponents to prove a lack thereof. I can’t disprove the omphalos hypothesis either, but I do think it’s extremely unlikely.
That being said, a lot of Sarkeesian’s other arguments however, can be positively refuted, o.a. by the presence of strong female protaganists in games which she clearly selectively ignores.
Not wanting to derail this thread is not an excuse to avoid the debate, like I said PM me if possible, or I’ll even happily leave an anonymous e-mail adress here. I however do not wish to be accused of purposely trolling and trying to start a discussion again which has already been “settled” here.
I came to voice my disappointment in PZ Myers choice of side in this. I’d say I hope he sees the light of reason one day, but that sounds a bit too religious to my taste.
@CaitieCat
I’m not sure which arguments you’re referring to. I’ve seen what i consider to be fair and legitimate criticism of Sarkeesian’s work, including from feminists. if you’d rather not hear what I have to say, no problem.
-“I’m doing a cultural analysis and this is my corpus. I’ll demonstrate that in all of them issue X is treated Y”
*”But it’s not treated like that in these products!”
-“Yeah, maybe, but they weren’t part of the corpus I was analysing”
*”But since issue X is treated Z in the things you did not analyse, your whole argument about how X is treated Y is futile, dishonest and not true!!! Also Lara Croft”
-“????”
What science do you talk about? As a 40+ year practitioner of science, I am unaware of what you refer to. Your lack of evidence is showing.
Too late. If you are a scientist, you know when you must put up the evidence, or shut the fuck up. That is now.
Ah, you present no evidence, as there is something called “fair use” of copyrighted material for critiques.:
The burden of evidence is upon you to show that the material wasn’t used for criticism.*snicker*
Why do I smell some exaggeration here? Frankly, say what you will. It will probably be non-sequitur and laughable.
disappointedformerfan @ 76
I didn’t ignore your examples. I asked you to back them up. Making a claim and defending it are, in fact, two different things.
Video games are part of real life, yo. Real people play them on real televisions while sitting on real chairs in real houses, and they think real thoughts while really playing them. For realz. This, as much as anything you’ve said marks you out as someone not to be taken seriously. How do you think ideas are transmitted, Mr. Trained McScientist, if not via various forms of media? Where do you think the subject matter and design of games comes from? Is it handed down from on high by some perfectly rational and objective deity, or does it come from human beings with opinions and biases?
You seem to be working with a rather odd definition of “refute”. When the claim is “this thing happens in these specific games”, showing that the thing doesn’t happen in a small handful of completely different games doesn’t refute the claim.
Nope. You can have this conversation where others can see it or you can fuck right off.
disappointedformerfan, #76
Oh, I didn’t know that’s how it worked! Strong female protagonists in some games cancels out the sexist stereotypes in other games.
Also, has she ever claimed that there are no video games with strong female protagonists?
You’re just a death threat short of being a Gamergater.
What the hell, if it’s too late I’ll probably be censored out of this echo chamber anyway:
1. I don’t consider criticizing a recipient of an award in a post about them receiving said reward, derailing. I do however not want to go into the entire Gamergate debate, because it has become too conflated with various other issues. Never mind the idiot trolls who poisoned the debate even further.
2. As for Anita Sarkeesian: I can only liken her crowd funding her videos and then taking other people their let’s play footage as a form of fraud, unless you can convince me that it really took that much money to edit other people their videos. Either that or it’s a highly successful con job: she knew how to push certain groups of feminist their buttons and got a lot of money out of it, which she certainly didn’t use for her video projects (or livelihood during the making of said videos alone). As far as I’m concerned that’s fraud.
3. The lying part consist mainly out of misrepresenting several games, foremost the Hitman series: where it’s clearly not the goal to go around killing women as one is penalized for doing so. She’s misrepresented various other games to various degrees as well from GTA to Super Mario.
4. She has failed to present evidence for the crux of her argument – real world negative effects from “misogyny” in video games -, while the burden of evidence is clearly on her side.
And allow me to add an additional, but not unimportant argument
5. Humanists shouldn’t laud a person who actively blocks open debate: she turns off her youtube comments and all her lectures are basically monologues, I’ve yet to see her engage in an actual debate. She’s effectively a creationist pastor who only preaches to her own flock.
It’s of course no coincidence that the same people who defend Anita Sarkeesian are the first people who vocally opposed the “I Am Charlie” campaign, all too happy to do away with free speech in order to avoid “hurting” other people their irrational sensitivities.
disappointedformerfan @ 84
A penalty which is removed if you successfully hide the body.
@#82
Yes, ideas can be transmitted through cultural media, so? Show me how a game about an Italian plumber saving a princess from some sort of reptile, is actively harming women? More so than say a religion such as Islam is by having women forced into burqa’s and sexual slavery?
And yes, games with strong female protagonists do balance out these games, certainly when you consider the gender of developers and the audience for video games. Small handful is a matter of debate, I’m mostly a Nintendo gamer, so if I take a look towards my 3 favorite gaming series: Zelda, Mario and Metroid, that’s one out of three with a strong female protagonist, and 3/3 with an important role for female characters which are increasingly becoming playable in the main games as well (after having been so in the spin-offs).
The fact that both games and gamers are real says nothing about how those ideas are transferred by the way. Take more violent games for example, I can perfectly read a book about an alcoholic who beats his girlfriend, while not becoming such a person myself, why shouldn’t I be able to do so in games? And so far there has not yet been any game where violence against women has been a goal on it’s own, A.S. has had to go out of her way and lie to make it seem as such (killing the strippers in Hitman was not the goal of the mission). If anything the opposite is true: if there’s one gender that gets disproportionately killed in either movies or video games it’s men, though then again maybe that’s sexist to women too… perhaps J.J. Abrams should include some female Storm Troopers in the next Star Wars, otherwise he may be accused of sexism!
@#85
As opposed to when you kill a male I presume? Unless there’s some uneven handling of the penalty for killing males or females, you can barely qualify it as sexism – at worst you can argue that strip clubs may not be friendly towards women – it’s a grim depiction of “reality”. As far as game about a hitman can be realistic of course.
Straight from the misogynist slymepit. Your EVIDENCELESS and unscientific views are dismissed as bigotry.
No evidence presented, so dismissed without evidence. You are no scientist, where third party evidence means more than your bigoted views.
I’ve yet to say any real debate with evidence from the misogynist side. It all consists of screams, hatred, intimidation, and attitude. Which you are shouting.
So, as I thought. Misogynist ravings of someone who can’t evidence their way out of a torn wet paper bag with a map, GPS and clue book.
disappointedformerfan @84
Rape and death threats are not “open debate.”
Only in misogyny land, not in reality. Evidence, not just repeating talking points, is what you need. You supply nothing. So, you are dismissed as nothing.
disappointedformerfan #86:
A game, book, film, whatever, portraying such a thing causes no harm. It’s because this is a trend that it matters.
As a self-described long term reader, you’ll be aware of the connotations of ‘Dear Muslima…,’ yes?
@86
The Hitman example she provided was definitely one of her weaker arguments I felt; there have been quite a few interesting discussions of this, and in the end I think it was a misrepresentation.
Sarkeesian claims that :
“Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
This is very, very tenuous in my opinion. Making the assertion that players are meant to take some sort of sadistic enjoyment out of desecrating female bodies is to me an extremely liberal interpretation of the freedom that ragdoll physics in games like Hitman gives the user. That it’s a possibility in the game does not mean that players are actually meant to engage in it. I can jump to my death in the original Super Mario Bros for the NES, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo intended/incentivized me to do it. As for the second part, that :
“It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
This is another tenuous assertion I’d argue. @86
The Hitman example she provided was definitely one of her weaker arguments I felt; there have been quite a few interesting discussions of thi, s and in the end I think it was a misrepresentation.
Sarkeesian claims that :
“Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
This is very, very tenuous in my opinion. Making the assertion that players are meant to take some sort of sadistic enjoyment out of desecrating female bodies is to me an extremely liberal interpretation of the freedom that ragdoll physics in games like Hitman gives the user. That it’s a possibility in the game does not mean that players are actually meant to engage in it. I can jump to my death in the original Super Mario Bros for the NES, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo intended/incentivized me to do it.
Gahhhhh, botched up post, apologies !
@86
The Hitman example she provided was definitely one of her weaker arguments I felt; there have been quite a few interesting discussions of this, and in the end I think it was a misrepresentation.
Sarkeesian claims that :
“Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters. It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
This is very, very tenuous in my opinion. Making the assertion that players are meant to take some sort of sadistic enjoyment out of desecrating female bodies is to me an extremely liberal interpretation of the freedom that ragdoll physics in games like Hitman gives the user. That it’s a possibility in the game does not mean that players are actually meant to engage in it. I can jump to my death in the original Super Mario Bros for the NES, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo intended/incentivized me to do it.
No evidence, so it is ignored for what it is. Sour grapes from from a misogynist.
Why is it that every time I try to type this phrase it auto-corrects to “clueless misogynist asshat”?
Apparently Lawrence Kraus’s “scientific training” didn’t equip him to notice anything creepy about his buddy Epstein “surrounding himself with beautiful 19 to 23 year old women” or equip him to notice that at least some of them were a lot younger than 19.
disappointedformerfan, debate is not the goal here. See, we get a lot of creationists who think debates are the ultimate form of question-settling. Science doesn’t work like that. Science works through presentation of facts, discussion and consensus. Religion works through preaching, and that is what debates are: sermons.
YouTube comments don’t even rise to the level of debates, not even of preaching. They are often just screaming insults, and in the case of issues such as gamer misogyny, the comments are threats of rape and of death. That you think someone who chooses to not wade through that, just to read the comments that you think are worthy, and to reply in the comments, is stifling debate, well, that reveals a lot about your entitlement/effort ratio. If you want to respond to a video, make a video.
Make a case, not a whiney-ass complaint.
disappointedformerfan @84, the above argument made me laugh pretty hard. Are you conscious that “lecture” and “monologue” are synonyms? I have it on good authority that her chewing is also basically mastication, and her walking is basically ambulation, horrible person that she is.
disappointedformerfan, #84
You’re completely clueless, aren’t you? Have you not seen the vile shit she receives already? You think enabling YouTube comments will get her anything different?
The idea that YouTube comments are some sort of forum for open debate is ludicrous.
After all, Saarkesian, among others, disabled comments on the videos precisely because it was just an endless stream of misogynist rantings. But then, there’s no shortage of the anti-feminist crowd that seem to think, sometimes even explicitly say, hateful vitriol and harassment is really ‘open debate’ and definitely not harassment. There’s really no debate to have that way.
I’m sure that nintendo absolutely intended for players to die via missing a jump in SMBs. I’m also sure that this is not even remotely equivalent to creating a game that allows players to murder female sex workers and desecrate their bodies . Whether one is penalized isn’t particularly relevant in light of the fact that it is a disgustingly common trope in video games.
No thread about Anita Sarkeesian is complete without whiners like disappointedformerfan.
@64:
Yawn. Can you be a little more original with your complaints? We’ve never heard this one before.
Look, you are not entitled to share your opinion anywhere you want. Yes, you have freedom of speech, but that does not mean you get to have a platform for that speech. If any of the bloggers at FtB chose to ban or block you for any reason, that is their right. You’ve not been censored. You can go whine on Facebook. You can comment on Twitter. You can create your own blog. You can create a YouTube video to whine about anything you want.
There is a wealth of information on free speech on the Internet. I recommend you look that info up (also, look up what freethought means).
Oh no, PZ is on the correct side. The sexist and misogynistic treatment of female characters in video games is very real. But thanks for establishing your anti-feminist creds.
Oh wow. Unsubstantiated claims about her being a liar and fraud *and* that hoary old standby “she presented no evidence for her case”. Have you even watched any of her videos?
That’s advice you really ought to take yourself.
@69:
Has anyone made the claim that the atheist/skeptical community is more sexist than any other communities? To the best of my knowledge, no. What people *are* saying is that there *is* a problem and it needs to be addressed.
Why do I get the feeling that this isn’t your last comment in this thread?
Oh look, it wasn’t.
@76:
Those examples you gave were nothing more than unsubstantiated claims. If you honestly expected people to say “gosh, disappointedformerfan is right. Anita Sarkeesian IS a liar and fraud” without a shred of evidence, then you are sadly mistaken. You made claims. Back them with evidence. We’ll be waiting.
A long time.
When were you planning on presenting a rational argument?
The presence of some strong female characters in video games does not change the fact that many video games depict female characters in a sexist and misogynistic manner.
Oh yeah, advocating for full social, political, and economic equality for women is “a bit too religious”.
@84:
Oh lovely. The “echo chamber” whine. Another new one. Also, I love the continued whining about censorship. You’d probably be surprised to know this, but PZ doesn’t ban that many people.
Fraud? She asked for money for the series. People gave her money for the series (far more than she asked for). She subsequently made the 5 videos she said she was going to make. I think you’re working with a strange definition of fraud.
Ridiculous scare quotes around misogyny duly noted. I get it, you don’t believe that female characters in video games are mistreated.
This is the crux of her argument:
Oh noes…she turns off her YouTube comments. I don’t know what’s more sad, that you think she’s blocking open debate by turning off comments, or that you think debate is possible in the comment section of YouTube videos.
If she was “preaching to her flock”, how’d you hear about her? How did the GamerGaters hear about her?
BTW, just because she made multiple videos discussing sexism in video games does not mean that she is required to debate anyone on the subject.
Oooh, more unevidenced assertions. If you want to discuss Charlie Hebdo, and the reasons why many people did not embrace the “I Am Charlie” campaign, take your ass to the Thunderdome, bc this isn’t the place for it.
disappointedformerfan @86:
Sexism and misogyny in video games is a reflection and perpetuation of attitudes and beliefs about women in society. Sarkeesian would like to see less sexism and misogyny in video games. So would I. So would a lot of people.
People like you want to continue seeing sexism and misogyny in video games. Fuck you.
Also, it doesn’t matter if the treatment of women in video games is worse than the treatment of women by religions around the world. Am I to believe that you think sexism is only worth combating if it rises to a certain level? As Daz said, Dear Muslima much?
Since when is “more so than X” a necessary requirement for addressing any issue whatsoever?
If you’re going to apply that same standard to the Gamergaters and their pretend-cause “ethics in gaming journalism” then how are the actions of relative bit players like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian a problem MORE SO than the incestuous relationships fostered between the HUGE gaming companies like EA and all the MAJOR gaming magazines?
Anyone who thinks youtube comments in any way even approximates the facsimile of the shadow of the rumor of “open debate” has no business even talking about open debate at all.
disappointedformerfan @86
None of this is about a game. It’s about the broader landscape of games. It’s about trends. Mario games having the theme of a plumber saving an empty-headed princess who is always drenched in pink from a giant turtle/lizard evil mastermind character is not, by itself, a problem. The problem is that the vast majority of female characters in video games are passive objects to be rescued or abused by active male characters. The fact that some strong female protagonists exist, does not negate the fact that the overall trend is quite obviously that women are objects to be acted upon.
If you don’t believe that reinforces existing cultural biases about women, I don’t even know what to tell you, other than you’re incredibly naive. Anyone who has two brain cells and a couple of spare seconds to spend rubbing them together knows that, if you repeat something enough times, it becomes intuitive. That’s true of anything. You want to learn to play a musical instrument? Practice enough and you won’t have to think consciously about the fingerings and which notes are which and what rhythm is being described. You just see it, then do it. Why do you think human brains suddenly work differently when the concept being repeatedly thrown at you is that women are objects to be acted upon?
Yeah, when I get really into a game, whether video or otherwise, I find myself trying to use moves from that game in the real world. I have no reason to doubt that really focussed gamers carry attitudes from a game into their outside life.
Let’s not use “Metroid” as an example of an early “Strong female character”.
You play as a faceless armored character for the entire game. Samus in a bikini was your reward for playing well. This trend has continued in every Metroid game to follow. The better you do, the less Samus wears at the end of the game.
And the Mario series? Pure “Rescue the princess” for seven of the first eight games. The only reason she’s a playable character in the American Mario 2 is because they needed a woman to replace the original woman character when they adapted Doki Doki panic.
Same with Legend of Zelda. Zelda is completely helpless in all the early games. Zelda isn’t a particularly interesting or strong character except in Hyrule Warriors.
Sorry, but these series are not good choices if you’re trying to refute Anita Sarkeesian.
Anyone wanna lay odds that disappointedformerfan doesn’t believe in microaggressions?
Menyambal
I was banned from watching Power Rangers as a kid, for fear I’d put holes in the walls.
Nate Carr @108:
I’d be surprised if disappointedformerfan even knows what microaggressions are, let alone believes in them.
The gamergater charge of “fraud” is puerilely laughable.
The primary content of Sarkeesian’s videos, and the lion’s share of their “value” are her words, her analysis and discussion about the tropes used and their implications. This is Anita’s own intellectual property and she can charge damn well whatever she wants for, so long as the market is willing to pay for it, and the market WAS more than willing to pay for it.
The gameplay videos, from whatever source, are nothing but fluff and background. She could have done the same with still photos of game boxes, or even done it as a podcast with NO photos, and the overall value changes hardly at all.
Also as Nerd pointed out, the charge of “theft” of the videos is bullshit. Using footage for criticism falls under fair use, i.e. you don’t need the creator’s permission. Unless disappointedformerfan would like to attempt to make the argument that what Anita is doing isn’t criticism. Everything about the complaints anti-feminists make about Sarkeesian is predicated upon abject ignorance of every subject they’re trying to speak about. It’s even funnier when they try to talk about scientific method and rationality given that what they’re literally doing is parroting a bunch of ignorant ravings that they’ve accepted uncritically.
disappointedformerfan (really, the nym says it all. Why do people still think that starting with “I’m a long time reader but I’ve become sooo disappointed with Pharyngula” is original? If they actually read Pharyngula they’d know that they’re by now a trope for themselves)
1. As others have pointed out, you only get penalties if you do the job badly.
2. Hey, you can simply inflict some gratitious violence on women for no reason whatsoever just because you can, and you think that this is an argument against Anita’s point that violence against women in video games is often used as a cheap device?
Are you aware of a field called “sociology”? There are numerous studies about the effect of media on societal attitudes. ItS’ only often a bit more complicated than many “push the lever – get a treat” thinkers can grasp.
Complete bullshit.
First of all, why do you think we’re having all these debates about video games? Oh, right, because somebody decided to make a series about them. So it looks like there’s a lot more speech now than there was 5 years ago.
Second, yes, that’s kind of the nature of a lecture, isn’t it? That’s why scientists also publish papers and not Twitter chats
Thirdly, have you ever looked at the crap she gets? Tell me, how many rape and death threats should you be subjected to before you say “this is my place and since people can’t play nice they can’t play at all.
You would have a point here if there was actually a balance. But there isn’t. You sound like “racism is over because Obama won the presidency”
AKA damsel to be rescued and love interest for the straight dudely hero. head->desk. Shows what you think should be an important role for women.
Do you have any clue about how this works? You can actually read two books about alcoholics who beat their girlfriends. One of them portrays him as a horrible person, you feel empathy for his victim who gets portrayed as an actualy person with an inner life, thoughts, feelings and capacity for suffering, or you can read one where he is the character you relate to, where his actions become normalized and excusable while she is a two dimensional papercut for whom you feel no sympathy at all. Tell me, which game are you playing? All you say is “I want to be able to beat and kill virtual women without having to feel bad about it.”
Do you understand the concept of “work”? Just asking. If you are a scientist, you should be aware of a concept called research. So yes, watching hours of videos, writing a concept, scripting a video, filming and cutting it is work. People paid her to do taht work. Unless you want to argue that large parts of a Hollywood production should be considered “not work” you don’t have a leg to stand on.
corvidd
This is such dishonest bullshit. “Jumping to death” in Super Mario is a way of failing. That’s why it’s coded that way. Killing unsuspecting women is clearly not failing. There is NO reason to include the option unless you think it would be fun for players to kill them, at no penalty if they do it right.
Menyambal @ 106
A friend of mine and I used to play a lot of World of Warcraft. She played the hunter class a lot, which is an archer class who can tame wild animals to fight for them. One day at work, she was talking about resurrecting her pet after it died and I caught her unconsciously mimicking the way her character holds up her hands and rotates them around while casting the spell.
Obviously that’s a physical thing and not an attitude but it’s still an example of something that her brain stored and repeated unconsciously simply because she watched it being done on a computer screen a lot.
Even disappointedformerfan has illustrated the point by citing Peach’s supposedly important role in the Mario franchise which is almost exclusively to be alternately kidnapped and then rescued. So, clearly, he’s seen this trope so much that Peach actually getting to be an actor in her own story doesn’t even seem to be on his radar. In the single game in which Peach is the main character? She fights by hitting her enemies with a parasol and the game was widely criticized for being laughably easy. Because girls are bad at vidya games, amirite?
Just a note:
If we’re getting into critiques of Anitas tropes series, I’d say It would be possible to agree that at one point it seems that she is making the claim that violence against women in videogames leads directly to physical violence against women and she doesn’t provide any evidence for that. (i.e. gamers who rape and murder women in games are more likely to do so elsewhere). It’s the same problem as with other kinds of violence, our progressively less violent society does seem to benefit from moving physical violence into media instead of on the streets and it’s really difficult to quantify the effect of consumption of media on individuals or societies.
But I don’t think she was making that claim, and there’s ample evidence for the claim she was making: tropes that reinforce people’s biases and dehumanise whole groups are a kind of violence and harm on their own. Games that even casually promote hatred, and alienate half of their potential player base should be roundly criticised, and noting that a large majority of games do this as well is nothing controversial.
Anyway, people should go rewatch the series – Anita actually responds to most of the GG criticisms during the videos themselves, constantly noting “When I say this about game X, I don’t mean game X is all bad! Yes I know about game Z” Reading GG criticisms of Anitas videos is like reading creationist criticisms of Darwin, most of which he himself refuted in the last edition of his book.
Oh, and use of clips of other people’s video content for study, criticism and commentary is protected under fair use. If Anita is a fraud, then so is every let’s player on the whole of frickin’ YouTube! So is every “commenting on” video online, or “reacting to” video. Shit, one has to have been hiding under a rock not to know that using another person’s video in your critique is protected by fair use, what with all the nonsense YT channels get from false DMCAs.
so apparently “fraud” means “asking for funding to make a series of videos and then making that series of videos”. I learned something new today!
@Charly
“whereas you are using one handpicked game (CoD) and experience of one person (you) in self selected community (other CoD players) to minimize or outright dismiss the experience of those whose experience does not match yours (i.e. me, Anita Sarkeesian and almost everybody on this blog).”
“And experience of one person (you) in self selected community (other CoD players) to minimize or outright dismiss the experience of those whose experience does not match yours.” This argument can pretty much be reflected RIGHT back at you.
“by insinuating that someone getting paid for their work somehow automatically devalues given work from moral perspective. People gave her money voluntarily and sheu used the money for things they were given for. You would have to present an evidence of embezzlement or conflict of interests in order to have an argument here.”
People did gave her money voluntarily and if they feel it’s fine, fine, but we will point out that it’s a bloody fraud because considering that it is.
Let’s be honest. 150,000 dollars for research you can easily find by using Google is bullshit. (Adding to the FACT that she downright lied.
“On this blog also known as “dear muslima”(fallacy) where you deem something unworthy simply because it does not adress all problems everywhere”
Oh, but that’s even remotely not what I meant. It’s irrelevant to the real problem because it isn’t a fucking problem at all.
“because Anita Sarkeesian does not argue against violence in videogames. That is so gross oversimplification of her eloquently stated and explained stance, that you are either ignorant (in which case you should educate yourself) or wilfully ignorant (in that case, fuck off).”
Yeah fuck no. OF COURSE THE FUCK NOT THAT it’s not the sum total of all her points. That’s one of her most popular position hence why I fucking addressed it. When the fuck did I even state that it was everything she had? I can’t literally debunk every fucking thing she said in one bloody comment, but hey what’s your
“Wait… you just acknowledged they’re male dominated and are now saying cat calls never happen… well, no shit.”
Well no fucking shit, it’s male dominated but that doesn’t mean the minority of woman doesn’t fucking play it, and when they do they don’t get any catcalls (To clarify because I have a feeling you are going to claim I am grossly generalizing. Yes I am, most of the time, it doesn’t happen.) Get it? Do you get it? I don’t think you did.
“If you’d actually go and look up what privilege is, you’d recognise you just described several instances:
• Privilege means being able to brush away other people’s concerns and feelings as trivial.
• Privilege is not having to deal with or even know about something.
• Privilege means you can ignore problems that don’t affect you.
• Privilege means your group is automatically welcome, considered default.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/privileged
so… it’s fraud because people gave her more money than she asked for, and the cost of making the videos was less than the money she was given.
That’s dreadful. I hear there’s this company called “apple” that charges way more for their devices than they cost to build. FRAUDS! FRAUDS ONE AND ALL!
The money was paid for her ANALYSIS you sorry fool. That is her intellectual property and is worth exactly as much as the market was willing to pay. The research is just one tiny part of what she did. A cook is not paid just to gather the ingredients. The cook is paid to do something WITH those ingredients after they are gathered.
Next time, before you decide to use a term like “fraud” that consists of more than 3 letters, learn what it actually means first. You’d make less of a fool of yourself that way.
@faze 117:
“150,000 dollars for research you can easily find by using Google is bullshit”
You’re aware that she didn’t ASK for $150,000, right? She asked for $6,000, it’s just that the thing she was offering was popular enough that a lot of people wanted it. She detailed what the $6000 would be spent on, and what additional funding would be spent on. It’s been spent in those ways.
It’s telling that the only people crying “fraud” are people who didn’t actually pay any money.
I will just point out that faze is a bloody idiot because considering can’t even write a complete sentence.
Faze @ 117
She didn’t ask for $150,000. She ended up receiving that much because the manosphere’s wailing and gnashing of teeth over the mere existence of her kickstarter drew so much attention to it, that she ended up receiving 26 times what she asked for (which was only $6000). Because she met all of her stretch goals, there will be a total of 12 videos as well as a classroom curriculum. These are additional facts that you can easily find via Google.
Also, typing “FACT” in all caps does not constitute evidence that she lied about anything.
According to whom, other than you and your little self-selected group?
Why are you the authority on the experiences of people who aren’t you?
Leaving aside the idiocy of linking to a fucking dictionary to dispute the definition of a term of art, which part of those definitions do you actually think contradicts any of Charly’s bullet points?
It is also utterly irrelevant whether or not your character gets penalized in Hitman for killing the women or not. Unless the penalty is instant loss of the game (not level either, the whole game) a few points off your total score is nothing more than a slap on the wrist, equivalent to a murderer being fined $1.
Sarkeesian’s critique is equally valid whether or not the game is encouraging players to gratuitously kill women, or saying that the proper penalty for gratuitously killing women is a measly few points off your final score, with no other consequence to your player character whatsoever.
Faze
Oh FFS
She’s being paid for the work she does. Researching, developing the argument, scripting the video, shooting it, editing it. At the end of that work the finished product is the video. What you’re saying is “why should I pay the baker 5bucks for bread when I can get flour and yeast for 1$?”
As decided by you. Sure, women may talk about it, women may complain about it, sociology might do the umpteenth study on stereotype threat, but since it’s not a problem for you, it’s not a problem at all.
Also, the blockquote tag, use it.
Also, let’s remember for a moment how it came to Anita Sarkeesian getting 150k on Kickstarter. It was the direct result of misogynists trying to shut her down and hunt her off the internet. The massive rush of backers was a show of solidarity as a response to the harassment.
As a result, Anita was able to expand the original series (7 videos so far) AND build up her own brand. Yes, she gained popularity, respect, a contract with Intel. I guess that the ultimate reason off all the whining about her: You tried to shut her up and as a result she rose more powerful than you ever imagined and you made it happen.
Great gods, that must hurt.
@disappointedformerfan
Wat? No, really, what? Seriously, you’re a former fan, but you believe that censorship is rife and applied to any and all disagreement at the first offence? The fuck? Dude, just be honest. Here, I’ll start you off:
“Dear PZ
I just registered to say this – although I am a credulous fool who has never read your blog, and so think you’ll censor me outright because I believe everything negative that anybody says about it-:”
I’ll let you go from there.
Oh, and calling bullshit on your claim to be a trained scientist, because what sort of scientist doesn’t know the difference between cultural criticism and attack? I’m a “hardcore” gamer myself, and one of my favourite franchises is the Hitman series. She also “attacked” those games, specifically Absolution. You know what? I’m a fan, a big fan of those games, but her criticisms were accurate*. The fact that I’m a fan doesn’t change that, nor should the fact that you‘re a fan of the Legend of Zelda series get in the way of recognising that her
vicious and unproovked attackscriticisms of Zelda were valid.*No, you don’t have to point me to your rebuttal of her criticisms in this thread. I ctrl-f’d through to see if they were mentioned, since they’re a common one. She doesn’t claim that they’re the mission objective, and so pointing out the fact that they’re not doesn’t present any form of challenge to the criticism. You might as well argue that, since there’s no objective in Gunpoint that says you have to punch a guy to death, and then keep punching his increasingly pulpy corpse, then it’s not an intended element of the game… but you still get an achievement for it. You see, there’s the text… and then there’s the subtext, and sometimes there are things in the subtext that aren’t explicitly spelled out in the text. These legalistic, literalistic arguments about how you’re not explicitly commanded to perform these actions means you’re not supposed to fall utterly flat. They’re in the game – that means it was somebody’s job to animate it all out, code it, record the sound effects, and all of that takes time, which costs money. It’s in there, in the form it takes, for a reason.
Even having said all of that, Sarkeesian herself says that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying games like that, and that these are just things to be aware of. She’s tackling tropes in video games (If only there was some indication of that in her series title, huh?), she’s not saying that these games are evil or that you’re evil if you enjoy them, only that these actions toward women are there, they’re qualitatively different to the way men are treated in the games, and they’re not somehow incapable of influencing societal attitudes. That’s it.
Nope, you weren’t censored. Just very deservedly mocked.
A little bit of self-censorship, though, would have helped you avoid some humiliation.
Congratulations to Anita Sarkeesian! She is doing important work based on the kind of response she has been getting. No one should have to endure the response that she has, but by doing so she has revealed a group of disgusting people that are important for the rest of us to focus on.
It’s pretty damn amazing what I see out of people that have a problem with Anita Sarkeesian. It’s a group response by people motivated by “talky woman make my childhood feel bad”. I can’t see it as anything else based on what I encounter.
Most of the time these people bring up the same bit about Hitman. I see the other claims once in a while but this is the one that they have seized on and repeat over and over and over. This is NEVER followed by a transcript of what she specifically said about the game and a youtube link to the relevant time point. I’ve certainly never seen more than an emotional characterization of what is in the videos from anyone. It’s like these people lack the working memory capacity to type while watching and pausing every once in a while. I’m sure that some of them are capable of a reasoned substantive argument. But if there was anything to their claims I would see substantive responses to quotes all over the net instead of immature insults and personalized hate.
Lately when I encounter the ones that make the claim “People criticizing my games should go go play the games they want and leave the games I want to play alone!” (and similar variations) I’ve tried something that gets interesting results. I’ve responded with “what if the people criticizing your game say ‘NO. I’m going to keep criticizing your game.’?” and the results have been interesting. Often I get criticism-sensitive people that essentially say that someone should force the critics to shut up. I try to confirm it to by asking “are you saying that people don’t have the right to criticize things you like?”, and at that point it starts becoming obvious that it’s nothing more than social dominance at any cost.
We need more of this. This is not how civilization solves disputes.
@somebody or something (I don’t care, if it’s your comment, reply to it)
“According to whom, other than you and your little self-selected group?”
According to……..Oh wait a second, are you telling me to disprove a fucking negative? You people were the one that claimed it happened with personal experiences you now somehow want to reflect it back to me and scrutinize me when I used personal experience too, oh what a fucking load……
@somebody
“The money was paid for her ANALYSIS you sorry fool. That is her intellectual property and is worth exactly as much as the market was willing to pay”
Yeah, ANALYSIS, research, potato tomato. Not the bloody point, idiot, paid to accomplished a task, have yet to finish it even in the course of two fucking years. Considering the production cost, she probably can hired a few writers to help her speed up her production of videos and , in one’s humble opinion you might think this is somewhat a bloody fraud adding to the fact that it haven’t reached it’s production value (poorly researched point, almost all countered by numerous YTbers etc. MundaneMatt, Sargon Of Akadd, ThunerF00t but I am sure none of you will even look ’em up because it’s all MISOGYNY) and that she lied about recording the video herself when in fact she took the video from someone else’s channel. (Using someone else’s Art without permission to decorate her logos and also lying about being a fan of video game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afgtd8ZsXzI ) But in your fucked up lens of viewing things, she probably still have a mountain of credibility left.
@somebody
“Leaving aside the idiocy of linking to a fucking dictionary to dispute the definition of a term of art, which part of those definitions do you actually think contradicts any of Charly’s bullet points?”
No, you bloody idiot. That wasn’t even his fucking quote. But to address it just for the sake, privilege’s definitions means one having a special right reserved, I have already pointed it out in my very fucking first comment. There are NO privileges.
@somebody
“I will just point out that faze is a bloody idiot because considering can’t even write a complete sentence.”
Fuck off you dumb piece of fuck. English isn’t my first language. Hardly something to fucking mention considering that I am not completely incoherent.
Anita Sarkeesian could have refused those extra proceeds give it to charity but since she accepted it as a responsibility to make more fucking videos. Well, good on her. The campaign started two years ago, and we are only about halfway done!
Sidenote: I can’t reply to fucking everybody. There is literally walls of fucking text in this shithole.
This amazes me as well. Basically, they’re aknowledging that something was indeed wrong with those tropes… otherwise why would it “ruin” their childhood games?
Faze
Monitor note:
The Rules. Read them
I will even kindly quote you the part relevant to your last comment:
Faze, asshole misogynist:
Show me a time limit on how she has to spend the money, or shut the fuck up. Assholes make such allegations they can’t back up.
Ever hear of fair use Asshole? She is legal allowed to use copyrighted material without permission for:
Now, show with evidence that her use doesn’t all under fair use. Cite court cases, not personal opinions.
This isn’t the sociological definition used here. Your ignorance is showing asshole.
Freethought
Funny how those who complain about the title Freethought Blogs don’t seem to have the faintest idea what free thought means. It means challenging their tradition of male domination, privilege, and authority. So when they come here to argue, they use male domination, privilege and authority. Which doesn’t work, and just proves that they have no thought.
Can they convince us they are right? Sure, but they have to change their tactics to take out all forced evidenceless opinions, and actually do what AS does. Present outside evidence to back up those opinions. They need to take a lesson in how to argue from the victim of their hate.
What I find ironic, and they are too stupid to understand with their over repeated and already refuted memes, is that women like AS and RW become better known and come to the attention of people who give out awards, invitations to speak, and other leaders due to their hatred and overreactions. If they simply said “yawn”, when AS started her fundraiser, it would have been over in just the few films she could fund. If they said “yawn” when RW said “guys, don’t do that”, she wouldn’t be as famous as she is. And they wouldn’t look like such pathetic bullies who don’t know how to interact in society who are being marginized.
Congratulations to AS for her well deserved award.
Faze @ 129
So you are this stupid. There is a difference, cupcake, between using your own experience to say things happen to you and trying to use your experience to claim that things other people say happen to them don’t happen. Fucking moron.
You mentioned a thing called Google earlier. I recommend you go there and type in the phrase “term of art”. There many, many, MANY words and phrases which are used to mean very specific things within the nomenclature of a particular field of study that would not be covered by a dictionary definition. The fact that you think you can cite a fucking standard dictionary to dispute the use of “privilege” in this context does nothing but out you as a fucking ignorant blowhard.
Further, I have no shits to give how many times you’ve stated that men experience no privileges. Your word is worth exactly nothing against the massive body of research on these things. I recommend also you Google the term “sociology.”
Faze #129:
You selected text, copied it and pasted it. Copy the fucking nym while you’re at it. If you can’t be bothered to address people properly, why on Earth should they bother to read your diatribe?
There’s a time limit? Who set it, and on what basis?
Umm, you do know that one of those people we ‘won’t look up’ was for a short spell, a blogger on this very network, yes? But well done for citing a bunch of misogynistic arseholes (all of whom I do happen to have seen way too much of, and never want to see again). Hint: this does not help your argument, or bolster your reputation.
Being a fan of YouTube dumbfuckery, I’m sure you’ll have come across the term ‘Fair use,’ on many occasions. Also, the irony of this argument, immediately following a citation of Thunderfoot, who has built a whole fucking career using video-snippets from other people’s work is, well, kinda fucking hilarious.
[Wikipedia Link]
And she’s still making videos. What the ever-loving fuck is your point?
————————————————————-
Structure of a comment.
Name (and preferably, also comment-number) of the person you’re replying to goes here.
<blockquote>Paste quoted text here</blockquote>Produces:Your inane rantings go here.
Has anybody ever complained about not getting value for the money who actually supported her Kickstarter?
Accusing her of taking so much time to make the videos makes no fucking sense becaue if she’d finished the whole series within 6 months she’d have gotten indeed more bucks because she’d have gotten them for 6 months of work instead of 24
@ Faze 129
Well aren’t you just a cute little lazy ball of sputtering discontent. Let’s do some of your homework for you and see how the exchanges went. Just for shits and giggles. After this first one I have to wonder, why anyone should take you seriously at all?
In #129 you said,
No you are not being asked to disprove a negative.
In #122 Seven of Mine in was challenging you to support the claim you brought in here. Your claim waaaaaayyyy back in #32,
Which is a positive claim that the efforts of Anita Sarkeesian are not worthy. The award has been given, it is your obligation to show why it was not worthy since you are the one that does not like the way reality turned out. Otherwise you fade to background noise and we just ignore your opinion because reality will stay the same without someone actually showing that the award was wrongly given.
Let’s look at the chain of responses that you were involved in that you seem incapable of following.
Seven of Mine in #122 was responding to what you said in #117,
…that you made response to Charly in #43,
…who pointed out your logical fallacy in #34,
… that you literally made in response to charlie in #32 who said,
… in response to your first post in this thread at #32 asserting that the award was not worthy without any substance. Your simple, unsupported “No. Not worthy in the bloody least.” It’s amazing what people will do to shift the burden of proof. Faze If you can’t take valid challenges to your statements you should avoid getting into arguments. This is fucking pathetic.
Whoops! I was off myself!
Seven of Mine was challenging your claim that the experiences of others were invalid in #122. So my apologies for misreading that.
My general analysis of Faze’s,/b> participation in here is still valid though. They are very resistant to actually supporting what they think about Anita’s contribution.
Looks like we can add “record”, “all”, and “no” to the list of words Faze does not understand and should not think himself qualifies to use in conversation. I was too generous before when I thought he could handle 3 letter words.
@Seven of Mine, 134
But but but… I don’t get government sanctioned cookies and doughnuts in the post each morning! How can privilege be a thing if I don’t get my government cookies?!
2 years is a completely reasonable time frame for producing what AS has so far produced, for a single person. That Fake doesn’t realize this simply means that he has had minimal experience with doing any form of honest work for a living.
One privilege Fake has that AS does not: he can post his opinions on the Internet, even among a hostile forum, and not need to worry about getting death threats.
“So you are this stupid. There is a difference, cupcake, between using your own experience to say things happen to you and trying to use your experience to claim that things other people say happen to them don’t happen. Fucking moron.”
……Fucking shoot me. I am this stupid? IAM THIS… oh goddamn me to fuck, What fucking point are you even making?
Right back at you, you fucking moron, then why the fuck do their points triumph against mine experience? This doesn’t happen to me, but they are saying that it does? What about that then you disingenuous piece of shit?
“particular field of study that would not be covered by a dictionary definition. The fact that you think you can cite a fucking standard dictionary to dispute the use of “privilege” in this context does nothing but out you as a fucking ignorant blowhard.”
How about you go fuck yourself asshole? I am not in a mood to play your shitty semantic game about what PRIVILEGE means. Either write down your fucking points, or fuck off.
Then fucking don’t. The quote itself is the fucking point, I have about umpteen fucking replies, I am only copy pasting the fucking points, Like the point I have fucking made. It’s your comment? reply to it. Now fuck off.
Time limits? No one set or said anything about any fucking time limits, I am making a point on how long she is fucking taking.
SHE IS TAKING HER OWN GODDAMN FUCKING TIME YOU BLOODY DUNCE
“Being a fan of YouTube dumbfuckery, I’m sure you’ll have come across the term ‘Fair use,’ on many occasions. Also, the irony of this argument, immediately following a citation of Thunderfoot, who has built a whole fucking career using video-snippets from other people’s work is, well, kinda fucking hilarious.”
Fuck off you dumb shit. How fucking far are you going to misconstrue? Is every single word not enough? Are the letters gonna be next? She didn’t credited the person she was using the footage from and CLAIM she recorded the video herself, and on the point of FAIR USE. Guess the fuck what? The series of video are fucking paid for as well, so not only did she not gave at least some credit, she is using them for video that are COMMISSIONED. Grow a fucking brain.
“[Wikipedia Link]”
[The neutrality of this article is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved]
Faze @ 143
THEIR word about THEIR experiences trumps YOUR word about THEIR experiences. They are not saying something happens to YOU. They’re saying it happens to THEM. Do you understand the difference between you and not you? Jesus jumping Christ on a pie plate, I think you might actually be the stupidest troll to ever ooze through here.
Faze #143:
I suggest that, if you are so emotional about this that you cannot even engage with the arguments presented to you, you should back off and go read a book or something. Seriously. What’s the point in trying to engage when you know for a fact that you are in an unfit state to do so?
Select the text from the nym down to the end of the part you want to quote. Copy. Paste into comment-box or whatever text editor you may be using. Delete the unwanted parts. Surround the rest with blockquote tags. Welcome to the wonderful wold of keyboard-use, where delete keys exist alongside Ctrl, C and V.
And I assume, since you believe her to be taking too long, that you have some sort of ideal time-span in mind, wherein her task should have been completed. We call this concept a ‘time limit.’ So I ask again: who set this time limit, and on what basis was it decided upon?
See above.
Citation please. Preferably unbiased.
There is an explanation of the concept of social privilege on that page. Please explain what you claim to be wrong with that explanation.
Gasp!!! How dare she not make videos in the manner in which you demand she make videos! You poor thing, I can’t imagine the horror and stress of such horrible mistreatment.
Oddly enough, all six of the videos in the series are available for viewing, despite the asshole contingents best efforts to get them taken down. Apparently youtube decided the claims of fair use violations are completely baseless. Frankly, she asked for funding for six videos and she has produced six videos. I wouldn’t mind a bit if she used the overage to buy herself a nice long vacation and some fabulous shoes just to further annoy troglodytes like blunderfoot and faze.
until you provide who is paying for it, other than her for criticism purposes, you are utterly and totally full of bullshit. You are wrong until you show evidence to make yourself right. And you can’t do that. So, all you can do is shut the fuck up.
Tethys @ 146
Which is telling because Youtube tends to err on the side of the claimant, not the owner of the channel.
Hello there. I am very angry about the fact that someone I do not like was paid money by people other than me to make videos I don’t want to watch and actively dislike. More to the point, I am especially angry that these videos that I did not pay for, do not want to watch, and actively dislike, are taking such a long time to produce. If this person that I haven’t given any money to doesn’t go ahead and produce videos that I don’t want to watch quicker so that I can dislike them sooner she is a fraud because of reasons.
You are not in the mood to use human language to communicate ideas to other human beings?
Well, it does seem from your output that hoots, grunts, and feces flinging is a more suitable argument style for you.
But if so you registered into the wrong forum.
We don’t actually have evidence of this ability from him. His performance so far seems definitely more in line with that of primates that fail the mirror test.
I was thinking, Amphiox, that it’s more like a hamster that fails the wheel test. Probably buys lottery tickets on margin.
Whether something is or is not “commissioned” is irrelevant to fair use, AFAIK.
The two aren’t mutually exclusive! He’s handily failing both….
At least we’re not getting the pleas for civility. That’s a fucking relief.
Since I just have to do an error free one now I’m going to look at this “fraud” thing.
For reference here is Anita Sarkeesian’s kickstarter page because that whole evidence thing is actually important.
In 129 Faze said,
and then tried to push things away from the fraud claim and towards something we would have to defend instead. Because people who just want to attack in a social sense and win at any cost are intellectual, moral and ethical cowards.
What started this chain of evasion and assertion was waaaayyyy back in Charly’s #33 where they asked
that was responding to Faze’s assertion that Anita was not worthy of the award in #32. This is reasonable. One person sees another on the internet and asks them why they believe what they do.
Faze responded in #34 with
which is a slightly expanded unsupported assertion that they don’t think looking at comparisons between entertainment and society is something that should get humanist of the year. This now splits the situation into two parts because Faze brings up an additional issue to try to shift the burden of proof, that Anita’s research was not legitimate and that using the videos of others was wrong.
In #43 Charly points out this logical fallacy
but of course Faze can’t allow themselves to be the one defending anything because that’s how “winning” instead of being correct works. Still I find what Faze does next to be interesting.
Faze continues by clinging to their fallacy and responding to the rest of Charly’s #43
which is a reasonable point. The work is different from the means of producing it, and even then Faze has a responsibility to show what is immoral or unethical. So in #117 Faze responds
and asserted that Anita is a fraud because: Anita used Google (like I did to find Anita’s kickstarter), his feelings about monetary worth are an argument, and unspecified lies (a new thing they think we should defend when they are not defending anything).
In response in #119 Amphiox said
which is a reasonable response. Faze’s feelings about how much someone should pay for research don’t mean shit. Especially as support for the claim that Anita did not meet the standards for humanist of the year. So Faze then responses with the comment in #129 that I started with.
That comment asserts without support that Anita had an obligation to finish an unspecified task in two years. Her project was funded on June 16, 2012. If you ignore the refocusing of her project because of the extra money and consider the multipart series as “one video” each she is technically not meeting her goal (I’m so sure that her backers are just in a frothing rage, /sarcasm). But if you take the refocus into account which includes each ~12 minute video for each subject blooming into ~25 minute in-depth multipart analyses I’m thinking that the opinion of someone like Faze is not worth a damn thing.
Seven of Mine #148
Yes, if there had been any truth to the fair use claims the videos wouldn’t have been reinstated after youtube investigated the claims of violations. IIRC they were down for less than 24 hours.
The list of words faze does not understand grows longer. I wonder if ze follows film critics or food critics around the web and harangues them if they use movie stills or photos of the restaurant.? ZOMG, how dare you reference the thing you are critiquing in your critique. Frauds!
Check your assumptions. Why should men favor violence? Why should women necessarily shun it? I’m a man, my favorite games are sandbox style games; I’ve seen my daughter get into a variety of games, like Assassin’s Creed.
Ah. Biological essentialism. You’re digging into idiot territory here.
You’re a boy. How would you know the catcalls never happen? Why are you denying the existence of screencaps? Do you think women are just making it all up?
Oh, boy, and with that Dear Muslima, you get the banhammer. Bye!
Perhaps faze will try that google thing and come across femfreqs latest post. It’s an inaugural annual report, complete with mission statement, audited financial status, and goals for 2015.
Actually, It’s About Ethics In Video Citation.
Funny how the brave defenders of the Free Market get so bent out of shape when people make money doing things that they don’t happen to like. I think the whole idea of crowdfunding, making money outside traditional models, really rankles the economic oppressors.
@Faze #117
Others responded to you already, but you seem not to get it, so I respond to you too. Maybe if some simple points are repeated enough times, you will eventually understand them.
It seems I was wrong in presuming that you have some basic knowledge of logical fallacies, because you just commited another one. This one is called “tu quoque” and it really should not be used by anyone who has grown above kindergarten age. Further you failed to understand completely the argument given.
Because no, you cannot throw it right back at me.
I was referring to Anitas videos and shared experiences of commenters of this blog. Anita Sarkeesian and many people on this blog experienced first hand harrasment in online gaming communities. They documented those experiencess and communicated them via videos and blogs etc. This bulk of evidence is positive proof that sexism in games does exist and that mysogyny in gaming comunities is real. Anita analyzed in her videos a plethora of games and people here shared experience from multiple online gaming comunities.
However, neither Anita in her videos, nor commenters on this blog, ever claimed that sexism is the only thing in games and that all gamers are sexist. Indeed people talked about how they are picky about choosing welcoming communities, for example. Which you would know if you educated your self on this before you started to blather.
You came along and started to talk about one game and one gaming comunity within that game and from this limited experience you have drawn conclusion that the experience of those who are saying different do not exist. You yourself have asserted negative! It seems from your further comments that you are avare that negative cannot be proven. Why therefore are you aserting it?
You are like the guy who denies that smoking causes lung cancer, because his grampa smoked like a chimney and died of old age.
Repeating that she commited fraud does not make it fraud. Fraud is legal term, and if you are accusing someone of fraud, you should be able to substantiate that claim with positive evidence. Such evidence should contain at least some proof of lying on Anitas side about her intentions.Good luck there – she promised to make videos if she gets mone, she got money, she produced videos. That she got more money than she asked for is irrelevant to the fraud acusation. You are posting no proof of fraud.
But by posting public accusations of fraud (which is a criminal act) you are commiting slander/defamation (which might be criminal act, but definitively is an asshole thing to do).
I am stunned. It is not every day that someone responds to explanation of logical fallacy by restating the same logical fallacy again.
No, it is not. Anita does not argue against violence in video games. She plays violent video games. You are arguing against straw man. Almost as if you did not watch her videos at all.
Why are you grossly generalizing? And why are you repeating the same fallacy again? Suddenly you acknowledge that “most of the time it doesn’t happen”. So you acknowledge that it happens some of the time? If you do, then why are you tying yourself in a knot when people point out that it indeed does happen some of the time and that it should not happen at all, because it is shit?
Maybe you are a lightning beacon of rationality, but this time around, you forgot to turn the lights on.
Oh, and just in case anyone actually thinks that catcalling and harassment “literally never happen” in Call Of Duty, go to http://www.notinthekitchenanymore.com where Jenny Haniver has sixteen pages worth of the crude sexual harrassment she gets just for playing games while female.
Whoa. You’ve got a live one here! Angry, too.
This entire thread shall be awarded to you!
I think that back in the day, when God was answering Voltaire’s prayer, with His well documented poor aim, he missed (in space and time) and hit Anita Sarkeesian.
I know Faze is gone, but this comment by them stood out to me:
(bolding mine)
Funny, I thought GG’s said video games aren’t sexist or misogynistic. Here Faze seems to be saying one can easily find information on the sexism and misogyny in video games by searching online.
Brony, your #156 was a great summary of how stupid and see-through Faze’s misogyny was.
@Gilel 113
“This is such dishonest bullshit. “Jumping to death” in Super Mario is a way of failing. That’s why it’s coded that way. Killing unsuspecting women is clearly not failing. ”
It perhaps was not the best example, but still, Nintendo didn’t intend for players to simply run off the end of platforms and fall to their deaths purposely; the gaps/chasms are there to create a challenge for the gamer, not to provide him/her with a method of in-game suicide, yet that’s an option you have if you’re so inclined. I can drown Mario in Super Mario 64, or hurl Link into a pool of lava in Ocarina of Time; I’m permitted to do so, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo designed their games so that my goal was to engage in those actions, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’m meant to derive pleasure from seeing those in game characters suffer and die in horrible circumstances. My point here is that games give you quite a bit of freedom, but only a part of that freedom actually involves what developers intended for the player to do.
“There is NO reason to include the option unless you think it would be fun for players to kill them, at no penalty if they do it right.”
Well, the setting is a strip club, I don’t think it was unfair of the developers to add women performing striptease, in addition to placing some of them backstage in a dressing area. And anyway, it’s an optional route whether you go by them at all; and if you do, they’re not there as background decorations for you to murder ( you can kill them certainly, as you can any NPC, that’s nothing unusual or negative about that ), they provide more context about the primary target and his operation, giving more detail and definitely creating a greater sense of disdain for said target. I talk about this segment further down the post. Also, if you decide to murder the women in the central club area, you’ll quickly find yourself under attack from several adversaries; it is most definitely not in your interests to harm them .
The killing of civilians in Hitman is penalized, you’re deducted points for murdering them; furthermore, if you’re seen, it can alert dangerous NPCs to your presence and compromise your mission, and if you’re trying to achieve the Silent Bonus, which requires that you kill only the primary target and remain unseen, then distancing yourself from NPCs, to say nothing of actually refraining from murdering them, is a necessity. As I mentioned previously, it’s tenuous to suggests that the game encourages desecration of female bodies, and Sarkeesian really doesn’t support that assertion. Game engines are pretty advanced, and they improve with each new console generation; the fact that you can move bodies, any bodies, not just female, through more complex game physics is a manifestation of these improvements. That you’re encouraged to perversely manipulate them is significantly speculative in my opinion. Furthermore, this isn’t female specific, you can move male corpses in exactly the same manner and actually, if I’m recalling correctly, you can strip certain dead male bodies down to their underwear, something you can’t do for women. I suppose the counter argument to that would be that there’s no need to do so because the women are already walking around semi-naked, but it’s important to remember here that Hitman : Absolution has 20 sections, and only part, of one of these sections, is set in the strip club; it’s a minor, brief section of the game.
I also find it contentious that the women shown in the clip dealing with Hitman are simply objectified, sexualised, background decorations.
In Hitman Absolution, when/if you reach the strip club changing area, you can eavesdrop on a conversation in which one of the newer girls is clearly distressed; she’s heard rumors about “Hawaii” and has a minor breakdown while the others in the room are attempting to give her some comfort; they aren’t merely sexualized characters , you experience them as people with an aspect to their personality entirely outside of being background sex objects. That’s my interpretation anyway, and after overhearing that particular segment I have precisely zero inclination to harm those women, let alone murder them and desecrate their bodies . This setting is shown in the clip which Sarkessian uses in Women as Background Decorations ( Part 1 ), at about 22.05 while stating :
“So in many of the titles we’ve been discussing, the game makers have set up a series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female characters. Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during their play-through.
The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon,because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.
It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
I think it’s highly speculative for her to claim that “one can’t help but feel”. How exactly has she determined that players are compelled to approach women as such and that they’re designed for the single purpose of being “things to be acted on” ? Plenty of Youtubers who have posted videos of their Hitman : Absolution playthroughs clearly didn’t feel compelled to act upon them, given that they refrained from engaging with them at all. Surely skepticism should be invoked when dealing with such a claim, and likewise for the second one; again, where is the evidence that gamers experience a rush from the desecration of dead sexualised women, and that this rush derives from a mixture of sexual arousal stemming from the ” act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality ” ? To my knowledge she hasn’t conducted or provided a supporting study which bolsters this particular conclusion.
Corvidd, nothing but your own views, not back by linked evidence. Dismissed as fuckwittery, as it will be every time such a post occurs. Learn how to show evidence by links to back up your bullshit, or don’t bother to post. We will laugh at it.
Corvidd, BwaahahahahAHHAAZA
corvidd
Doing this
<blockquote>paste copied text here</blockquote>
Results in this
It makes comments with quotes easier to read.
Paragraph breaks also make reading easier.
The content is still your responsibility.
@chigau
Noted. Thanks for the information, I’ll blockquote in future posts .
Using the violent, graphical slaughter of faceless women as a “challenge” for the gamer to avoid or overcome is still an act of objectifying those women and the violence committed against them, and using them as background decoration to fill out the world, or as a mechanism of plot advancement for the player character.
And that was exactly Sarkeesian’s point in the particular video where she used that example.
And just because something is not part of the intended sequence of actions needed “succeed” in the game doesn’t mean the programmers did not “intend” the player to do it. If they programmed it in, it is because they foresaw that players would do it and WANTED the player to have the opportunity to do the action and experience the consequence of that action, whether it is for background, atmosphere, realism, or whatever reason. So hell YES Nintendo programmers intended for the player to fall to their deaths off cliffs, or drown in water, or die in a pool of lava. They knew players would do it, either deliberately or accidentally, and wanted and intended for the player to see the consequence of the act, and deliberately programmed the graphics of those scenes into the game.
Seeing the result of your actions in the game world is reward enough for some people. Enabling that action is a conscious choice to encourage the behavior.
For example in Skyrim where it is impossible to kill the children NPC in the release version of the game. They made the conscious decision that they did not want anyone acting out their desires upon those children. They did however leave the option open for modding to allow that, which means they ultimately must share responsibility for all the notoriously heinous things you can do in the game.
I’m just going to echo this one point for corvidd, et al who seem to have trouble understanding it:
All of this horrendous “optional” stuff in games that isn’t part of the intended path? Is purposely put there by human beings. People were paid money to spend company time to design, model, animate and program these things so that the players would have the OPTION (there’s that word again) to do them. They WANTED you to have the OPTION to murder and abuse the dead bodies of those strippers in Hitman.
And all this “but it makes it more realistic”. Tell me dudebros, why is the setting in these games so often a fucking strip club? Again, these are human beings making conscious choices to set the 30948573405983475034985704398573049th video game level in a strip club.
“Because the story”. Why do you suppose the story always involves these sorts of settings? Because people consciously choose to do it. Because something has given them the impression that it’s what their market wants.
These games don’t just magically wink into existence out of a vacuum. Real people make conscious decisions and spend large amounts of money and time DOING IT ON PURPOSE.
@corvidd 167
You could decide not to set part of the game in a strip club?
It always amazes me that people who like to think of themselves as rational and skeptical are so happy to just abandon all curiosity at the exact point where questioning why XYZ is the way it is threatens to undermine their conviction that things are fine the way they are. People question the presence of strippers in the game, and your completely facile response is “well it’s set in a strip club” as if there is some immutable Platonic essential Video Game which necessitates “set in a strip club” lest it simply not be a video game anymore.
@Seven of Mine
Games aren’t entirely linear, they give you optional paths; in a strip club, that one of those paths takes you through a changing room area populated by women doesn’t seem incongruent to me, nor, given the structure of the game, does the fact that you can kill them, similar to how you can kill any other NPC in the game, male or female. As I’ve mentioned before, advanced in game physics means more realistic body movements. The protagonist has the ability to drag bodies and really, the most plausible suggestion for that is that in a series centered on a professional hitman, which rewards stealth and remaining undetected, the ability to move bodies out of sight is a necessity. Why should the developers give these women, or any women, special consideration ? The ability to manipulate body positions, what Sarkeesian has described as “desecration” is just a by-product of complex game physics, and it doesn’t seem tenable that developers can avoid the latter while maintaining the realism that stems from these technological improvements.
Games like Hitman are set in a world of organised crime, which does have links to the strip club industry; those links are perhaps not as widespread as they once were, but to my knowledge they’re still there to some degree. That developers making games which deal with criminality choose to set some part of their game in strip clubs seems congruent to me. And as I mentioned in my previous post, Hitman : Absolution contains 20 sections, each with a handful of settings. The strip club is just one setting in one of these sections; it’s a tiny part of the game, and in my opinion it’s perfectly logical for developers dealing with the criminal underworld to include locations/businesses that have links to organised crime.
Anyway, my primary point really wasn’t related to the strip club setting, it was a criticism of Sarkeesian’s claims about player psychology and game incentives; she presented speculations about the former and I feel she misrepresented the latter. In addition, some people seem to be focusing on the ability to brutally murder female characters, as if that shouldn’t be permissible; games with mature themes allow you to brutally kill anyone, regardless of sex, profession and attire, and I don’t believe that should change.
corvidd @ 178
For the millionth time, the objection is not that these themes EVER occur. The objection is that this is very nearly the ONLY way women are EVER portrayed in games. It is rare for a woman to be portrayed as anything other than an object to be acted upon. It’s about trends, not each individual game. Trends. Repeat after me: trends. Really dude, it’s only one syllable. Six letters. It’s not that fucking hard.
Why should the developers listen to misogynist bigots at all asshat? Why don’t they understand that women game, and they don’t like being treated as second class citizens. Your fear is that women are heard, you won’t be. There is a word to describe that fear, and it starts with an “m”.
corvidd (mostly in ref. to 178)
Are there any male strip clubs ever in the games, where half-naked, muscular, hot young men can be murdered for a small number of demerit points?
Do the men in these games tend to walk around fully clothed and in a variety of body-types, or are they also dressed in revealing clothing, with shiny, athletic physiques?
I’m pretty sure men get trafficked, too. Why no representation?
I find this particularly hilarious because I don’t play video games often (I like them, I just don’t have a lot of time to play video games). I do play a weekly D&D game on Google Hangouts, however.
I play a Barbarian half-orc. Because I want to be able to fight and kill all the monsters. ALL THE MONSTERS. Really, most fun for me in D&D is killing monsters. It’s the best. FAKK SMASH!
(My character’s name is Fakk and she smashes monsters.)
And I’m a woman.
Also, I like first person shooter games wherein I can kill all the things.
Anyone ever watch that stoner movie “Grandma’s Boy”? For some reason I am now thinking of Grandma discovering the joys of a violent video game.
@rq
Not that I’m aware of, and given the paucity of male strip clubs in general that really isn’t a surprise; there’s a massive disparity between the number of male and female strip establishments. And regardless, only a very small number of games have strip clubs anyway. Attraction is subjective of course, but there are certainly muscular young men who I’d consider good looking that you can kill, and I think there’s at least one semi-naked guy if I recall correctly; in addition, you can strip certain male characters down to their underwear after murdering them, something that’s not possible with female NPCs.
Sure, men get trafficked (I’m thinking you’re referring to sex trafficking here ? ), but once again, the victims are primarily women, and with regard to prostitution, once again, there’s a massive asymmetry between male and female sex workers. As a minor example, I just counted the number of male and female escorts advertising in my city. The latter numbered 326, while the former numbered 13. On a nationwide scale, I think that disparity would be even greater. You could absolutely put male strippers and more male sex workers into games, personally I wouldn’t care , but I don’t think there has to be a massive overhaul with regard to women. Furthermore, there are significant differences in gamer demographics based on gender. As you’ve probably noticed, strip clubs/ sex workers are more frequently present in mature themed games, often dealing with the criminal underworld, a segment of society that has well documented ties to prostitution, sex trafficking and the strip club industry ( so their presence is certainly congruent and justified in my view. ). Plenty of women play these games, and overall, going on the latest stats I’ve read, there are actually more female gamers than male, but there are disparities in type, and this is a genre with a predominantly male base.
And with regard to body types, yes there’s quite a bit of variation in games ( although I’d agree that this could be broader for female characters ), and as mentioned previously, with regard to Hitman : Absolution, the strip club is only one small segment of the game; there are fully clothed women in a wide variety of professions in other sections.
@179 Seven of Mine
In my fairly extensive gaming experience that’s not true.
Corviid
Oh FFS, do you even comprehend the words you have written? The trope is “Women as Background Decoration” and YES we have a problem with women characters in games (and movies, books, advertising and all other forms of mass media) being commonly presented as mainly naked bodies to titillate and or murder rather than people with a broad and diverse range of roles. The degree to which you do not notice this, or see this as problematic, is the degree to which sexism is normalized within our culture.
Derp. Do you really think we object to realistic graphics? Again, the objection is that women are overwhelmingly portrayed in games as sexual things to be acted upon and ambulatory semi-sentient collections of body parts to look at rather than having a broad and diverse range of roles. Ya know, for the sake of realism.
Huh, what unfair!? Are you seriously trying to claim that asking game developers to write roles for women that are not sex workers and or murder victim/body to hide is somehow unfair? How about more games with female protagonists, bartenders, shopkeepers, spies, assassins, dwarves, etc…? The possibilities other than Barbie-shaped naked victim are literally endless.
Misogynist bullshit, all the way down. Oh, do you and your social circle spend a lot of time visiting strip clubs? Are strip clubs somehow a normal everyday part of life in your world? Have you noticed that strip clubs are generally places that cater exclusively to the sexual pleasure of men by literally selling womens bodies and are usually abusive environments for women? No? So why the hell are strip clubs and prostitutes common as dirt ( normalized ) in video games and other media? The links between normalizing violence against women up to and including rape and murder, and how media portrays them are pretty well documented social science. Saying that killing the strippers is penalized is completely beside the point. Nitpicking over that one tiny quibble just makes it seem as if you are desperately seeking a reason to ignore the actual, broader critique of Anita Sarkeesian. Perhaps you will understand the problematic issue with our culture better if it is explained by men using Kim Kardashians butt as an example? Everyone should really watch this video, it is both hilarious and a thoughtful experiment in how women are portrayed in media.
corvidd @ 184
Bullshit.
Funny how Corvidd is repeated the same refuted bullshit that has been discussed several times before. Corvidd, unless you can take your posts out of the gamergate talking points, and present real third party evidence to back up your claims, your posts will continue to be laughed at.
Bwahahahahahahahahaha
@Seven of Mine 186 & 179
I disagree; women for the most part are not just sexualised background decorations in videogames, more often than not they’re NPCs with a wide range of identities and professions. I’ve already stated my position that I believe it’s unfair to characterize the women in the Hitman : Absolution clip as mere sexualised objects, and there are quite a few games which Sarkeesian discusses where the majority of female characters have roles that aren’t simply sexualised decorative objects to be acted upon. Take GTA V; as you’re already aware, there are sex workers populating certain parts of the game world. However, they’re a minority of the female NPCs, and in your travels across the city you’ll see many regular women wearing unremarkable everyday attire; in addition, you’ll find them employed in roles such as bank clerks, barbers and receptionists.
The Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time, is another game she discusses in her series, and here again you’ll find women in many different roles. The Gerudos, for example, are a warrior race comprised entirely of females, trained in swordsmanship, archery, equestrianism and are rumored to engage in the periodic kidnap and, I’d argue, rape, of male Hylian citizens. Impa, a member of the Sheikh tribe, is the guardian of princess Zelda, and founded a village for Hylian citizens near Hyrule castle. Saria is the protagonist’s best friend, and in addition to playing a pretty important role later in the game, she’s the only person among the Kokiri to defend him against malicious rumors that he was responsible for the death of the forest guardian, the Great Deku Tree. Aside from these prominent examples you’ll find plenty of other female NPCs populating the game world; few, if any, which could be considered as mere sexualised objects.
I can give many many more examples from other series/games; it’s simply not true to say that women are only rarely portrayed as anything other than sexualised objects to be acted on; on the contrary, I’d argue that the reverse is true.
When do we get the gay bars and lady’s clubs in games on a scale as rampant as gentleman’s clubs?
And, oh, awesome, non-playable characters. That’s the sound of the glass ceiling shattering for video game women you’re hearing, right?
Fuckwitted idjit, nobody is saying women are only portrayed as sexualized objects, but it happens much to frequently. And you didn’t evidence you last claim, so it is dismissed as fuckwittery. You need more that your own words. Third party evidence, which you never provide.
Your argument is typical misogynist bullshit. We must take YOUR WORD seriously. And I don’t do that, if you won’t back up your words with third party evidence.
So, your posts are laughted at Bwahahahahahahaha. You can’t be taken seriously.
Okay, first you’re oversimplifying what Anita Sarkeesian was saying. One of her examples was women used as background decoration or as sexual objects to be acted upon. Not all games have that problem. Many do. Nintendo may not make all the women in their games sexual objects, but that doesn’t mean all their representation is good representation.
The Gerudo are hardly good representation. Yes, they’re skilled. They’re also bog standard stereotypical man-hating amazons. Oh, and the most powerful of them…is a man.
Don’t forget the Great Fairies, which are designed entirely to be creepily sexual.
The Zelda series may have done better with successive generations, but don’t forget that the first three games were pure “rescue the princess”.
Nintendo may do better than many publishers but in the end their three core franchises don’t deviate too far from sexist norms.
Women are rarely elevated beyond support.
The princess must be rescued.
Samus Aran is always offered as a sexual reward for either speed or completion (depending on the game).
And that’s just one publisher. Honestly, I can’t remember the last gritty AA title I played that didn’t have female sex workers.
Deus Ex? Yup.
GTA? Yup.
Watchdogs? Yup.
Borderlands? Yup.
Dishonored? Yup.
Saints Row? Yup. But at least they have male prostitutes too.
Hitman? Yup.
Sure you can argue that a realistic city “needs” strip joints, but why is it necessary for the character to access them? In the case of Hitman, Watchdogs, or Dishonored, why does the narrative require venturing through some aspect of the sex trade?
In none of those games does the presence of sex workers add anything. And if it were just one game deciding to go there, fine. No problem. The problem becomes how ubiquitous it’s become. It’s one-sided too. If you’re going to argue in GTA that having strip joints and brothels makes sense because it’s a city, then you should expect to see strip joints catering to gay men as well. But you never do. Because apparently the game doesn’t have to be that realistic.
I find it telling that corviid completely elides the part of GTA where you can kill the sex workers and use their bodies as weapons . I think he hasn’t actually watched any of the femfreq videos, but is just a fan of one of the various youtube hate mongers who have a frothing hate obsession for AS because she dared to point out problems in their precious games .
Oh do fuck off you disengenious ass. The Gerundos as an all female race obviously have to reproduce with somebody, and it’s rumored to be Hylians. The abduction and rape are figments of your twisted imagination. Even if this was a feature of game play, changing the gender of the victim does not make it less problematic.
Your weasel words are noted. Nobody here claimed that all females characters are sexualized . A quick glance through any form of media is pretty incontrovertible evidence that women are frequently and commonly portrayed as sex objects and sex workers. Arguing that the reverse is true is simply irrational.
My gast is still flabbered at the baldfaced contradiction inherent in this syllogism:
1. Women aren’t disproportionately background decoration or overtly sexualised, because
2. Women are all sorts of Non Player Characters, some of whom are receptionists, hair stylists, and store clerks.
How does one brain hold those two ideas at once and not melt down like Norman failing a basic logic conundrum?
Corvidd, your necklace should be blinking while you say “ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! PLEASE EXPLAIN!”
Going back to GTA, which I was playing this afternoon: there are no women cops in the game. There are now, since a couple of updates ago in the online game, women among the gangbangers who are to be fought against, which was a pleasant surprise when i shot one and she had a clear woman’s voice. Yes, pleasant surprise: with this tiny move, I felt much more included in the game play.
That’s all it takes to move some of us out of the background and into the foreground: put guns in their hands and let them shoot back at me.
Ridiculous! Blasphemy! How dare I imply that games might have some sexist tropes, why here’s a list of exceptions that show that no more than 90% of any game is actively sexist, checkMATE feminists!
corvidd @ 188
I’m not sure there’s a better way to refute your argument here other than to ask you to read it and really try to comprehend what you’ve written. NON . PLAYER. CHARACTERS. corvidd. NON PLAYER. That means they’re…wait for it…NOT PLAYERS. They’re…IN THE BACKGROUND.
I’m sure June Cleaver will be thrilled.
@Tethys
Can you use the dead bodies of sex workers as weapons in GTA ? ( I don’t recall Sarkeesian mentioning that in her Tropes series ) I wasn’t aware of that, in which one ? Why is it a negative that you can murder sex workers in a game where every NPC is killable ?
I was giving an example of women in games who aren’t merely sexualised objects to be acted upon, I’m not sure what you’re arguing against here; it’s rumored to be the Hylians yes, but the fact remains that with the exception of one man born every 100 years, the Gerudos are an exclusively female race. I could be wrong, but I thought there was an NPC in Ocarina of Time who informs you of some rumor/hearsay that the Gerudos kidnap men to mate with; I could well be incorrect on that issue however, but again, my primary point was regarding portrayal/representation of women as being other than sexualised background decorations, and Ocarina of Time provides many examples.
Seven of Mine, in post 179, made the comment that :
I was responding to this, and I still believe it’s very much false.
Note words saying “very nearly” and “an object to be acted upon”, which are significantly different from “always” and “sexualized”.
And NPCs, in which category women characters fall with a heavy majority, are rather often objects to be acted upon, not playable characters. This would be the issue that Anita Sarkeesian addresses, not necessarily the sexualization (though that is an issue in and of itself).
@corvidd, 167
If you don’t take that optional route, you’ll quickly find yourself under attack from several adversaries. That is the optimal route if you want to pass the infiltrator challenge. It’s also the optimal route if you just don’t want to needlessly risk your precious health and equally precious ammo.
If you’re trying to pass the chameleon challenge, then you have to take every disguise available. If you’re trying to pass the suit only challenge, then you have to refrain from taking any and all disguises, remaining in your default suit from beginning to end.
I’m just saying, the fact that a course of action is to be avoided if you’re aiming for a specific goal doesn’t mean that it’s to be avoided if you’re aiming for a different goal.
And what do you take from that? Are revelations about Hawaii meant to humanise the women, or to demonstrate just how evil Osmond is? Just quickly skipping games here, Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a level set in the “Alice Garden Pods” complex in Hengsha. You have a couple of side missions in there, which lead to you getting at least a passing familiarity for the people who live there. When you complete your main mission and van Bruggen forges your TYM access card for you, Belltower soldiers storm the building and kill everyone. Why? What’s the point of this act? Sure, it’s another challenge for you, the player; you have to Elvis the building without getting dead, but what else? Does it humanise the poor of Hengsha, who are already living under such grinding poverty that a bed with some shelves and a curtain constitutes an apartment, or does it show us definitively that Belltower are fucking evil monsters for whom there are no depths too low to sink? Those people have lives, hopes, squabbles, dreams, but they are still just a way of telling you that Belltower are bastards. It doesn’t matter how well fleshed out the background is – it’s still the background.
@iamrennie, 176
Yes, but then how would we know that the target’s a bad guy?
@corvidd, 183
It would be possible if we had a Hitman-style game with a female protagonist! (Because the reason you can’t strip them down to their underwear after murdering (or simply incapacitating) them is that you’re only stripping them for a disguise.)
184
In my also fairly extensive gaming experience, it really is. The fact that you can find examples where it’s not the case doesn’t change that fact. Here, have an example:
The targets in the Hitman series tend to be vile people.
Your first target in Blood Money is Joseph Clarence, an amusement park owner. A ferris wheel collapsed at his park and killed the client’s son. He’s not a vile person, he’s a fuckup. His negligence cost lives, but he’s not a monster. In his desperation to get his life back on track, he’s allowed drug smugglers to use his now dilapidated park as a base of operations, but Clarence himself is not a bad guy, he’s just pathetic. Frankly, I don’t think there’s any argument that he deserves to die, and I think it’s sad that you have to kill him in order to play the rest of the game.
Your first target in Absolution is Diana Burnwood, your handler. Ok, sure, she works for an international guild of assassins, so she’s hardly Little Miss Purity, but she’s not a vile person either. You’re going after her because she betrayed the agency. Because she freed Victoria and, in order to escape, exposed the agency, leading to the events of Blood Money. So, sure, there’s a reason you’re going after her, and it makes sense, but she’s no monster. (Btw, why is it that you attack her in the shower?)
So, if I can quickly come up with two examples of targets who weren’t terrible people, does that mean that it’s not true that the targets tend to be terrible people?
corvidd @ 195
And you keep smuggling the word “sexualized” in. You’re even fucking quoting a statement wherein the word “sexualized” doesn’t appear in an attempt to justify it.
And here’s another news flash. Reality doesn’t comport itself to what you rully, rully, earnestly, honest to goodness believe. It is what it is.
Evidenceless assertion, dismissed as fuckwittery. What YOU think is irrelevant. What you can and will honestly reference and put into proper context is. You fail at that utterly and totally. Hence, BWAhahahahhahahhahaha.
And again, note the invisibility filter has been set to On, for me. Can someone nudge the button again?
IIRC, when Link gets captured by the Gerudo, he proceeds to go and trounce their best warriors, after which he is accepted as an honorary Gerudo and at least one of the wandering NPCs is interested in marrying him.
Yeah. Not problematic at all.
if corviid had actually bothered to watch (or read…the full transcipts are freely available at femfreq) the first Tropes vs Women; Damsel in Distress part 1, he might have noticed that it cited Ocarina of Time as one of the better games.
But why bother with addressing the actual problems with the damsel tropes? Simply fabricate some rumors of abduction and rape of male NPCs and presto, equality is achieved! /ew, not enough bleach in the world to remove the stench of such twisted “reasoning” from my keyboard Even though it is better than average, Ocarina still uses the same tired princess/kidnap damsel trope eventually.
It is clear that corviid has no interest in logical, honest discusson, but is simply interested in attacking the credibility of AS and defending sexist representation of women in games. He thinks its a game that must be won at all costs.
Which is why he lost the argument before he even started. In order win the argument, he must present evidence to support his misogynist claims. The whole gamegate is incapable of presenting evidence to refute AS. Therefore, they fall back on male privilege to dominate the argument, and make other folks think they know what they talk about. But it doesn’t, and won’t, fool this old baldheaded male, who understands the bully technique being used, looks beyond the attitude, and looks at the evidence. Not even thin gruel. More like water with a soupcon of course flour. No meal there.
CaitieCat
waves I can see you! I have had the same invisibility problem up until that last bit of drivel and obfuscation from corvidd. Its not much fun to discuss an issue with a troll who is so dishonest that they fail to notice the titles or content of the videos, or that there are multiple videos addressing separate tropes. shrug As my granny used to say, you can’t fix stupid.
I see you, CaitieCat! [waves]
Perhaps corvidd (an affront to clever and discerning Corvidae everywhere, that name) is just waiting for the required four male witnesses to testify. Until then how can they take seriously anything said by a mere female?
I mean, I’m not a gamer and I’m one of those mere fuzzy-brained females, and even I can see that corvidd is prevaricating.
Nerd
Stone soup, perhaps? The detractors offer little in the way of nourishment, but do serve to provide talking points for discussion. The far more substantial contributions of many other people provide the meat of the thread, so to speak.
Optimal sure, but there’s still no reason to go near any of the women, let alone harm them; the game’s incentive structure is framed around precisely the opposite.
Certainly true, but what aspect of the Chameleon and Suit Only challenges changes the incentive to avoid coming into contact with, let alone harming, the women in the strip club ?
They fulfill both roles but I’d argue here it’s primarily to further villify Osmond; this really isn’t specific to female characters, sexualised or not, and I think it’s a necessary approach . People are subjected to harms to develop a sense of antipathy for the antagonists, and to create a resolve in the player. I really don’t see how this is dispensable. Resident Evil is probably my favourite series after Zelda, and in Code:Veronica, for example, the character Steve Burnside is transformed from a reliable ally to an horrific abomination through human experimentation. On a grander scale, as you progress through the various series locations, you’re gradually made aware of the scale and depravity of Umbrella Corporation’s activities; same for the Los Illuminados cult in Resident Evil 4. Those organisations and the members of their respective upper hierarchies become the focal point of your antipathy through the suffering of others.
True that ! And maybe they will create a Hitman ( well, Hitwoman , as would be the case ) spinoff in the future with a female protagonist.
If we’re talking about regular female NPCs present simply to flesh out the plot/game world, then I don’t think it’s a fair argument; the vast majority of NPCs don’t have anything beyond a rudimentary characterization/backstory, and that holds for both male and female characters; it would also be correct and accurate to say that men are very rarely represented as anything other than objects to be acted on/background decoration. In open world games you can direct actions towards many many NPCs, but that’s as normal for men as it is for women; it’s not really a trope so much as a basic feature of gaming. You might have a different opinion, but often I don’t think it’s necessary or feasible to go beyond basic information/representations when it comes to these figures ( although Fable does actually give quite a bit of detail to each NPC, more than usual anyway ) . If we take the Vixen Club in Hitman : Absolution as an example, how would it be possible and why would it be necessary to give added depth to the personalities of the many patrons in the central floor area ? You’re only in the club for one segment of one section, so it seems a bit pointless for the developers to give these characters anything other than a basic representation.
You made some other good points about Deus Ex and Hitman which I’d like to discuss in another post.
Sorry that last post was in response to Athywren #197
@CaitieCat #200
You’re not invisible ! I’m just trying to respond to all these posts with limited time available, I’ll write a reply to yours next.
@ Seven of Mine
My apologies if I misconstrued your post , I thought you were referring to sexualised women who could be acted upon.
The whole point of Anita’s Tropes series is to raise awareness and get more diversity into gaming. Why is it so all-consumingly important to prove her wrong? More diversity is practically always a good thing*. CaitieCat’s anecdote about some female NPCs being allowed to shoot back in GTA is a perfect example of that. So why fight so hard against the idea?
* I mean, sure, if we get enough diversity maybe we’ll end up suffering from some sort of choice paralysis, but that’s not exactly a bad thing either.
corvidd
Why are you giving these examples?
Your unevidenced assertions isn’t evidenced discussion. It is simply you giving a meanlingless sermon, which everybody will LAUGH AT. Bwahahahahahahhahaha.
Nobody here gives a shit about your unevidenced views. Only those views, which when third party evidence is show through links, stand up and back your assertions. And that is what is MIA. You can’t back up your claims. So they are dismissed as fuckwittery. As they should be.
Take one assertion, and back it up with third party evidence, like AS does. I doubt if you know how to do it even.
It’s like a million and one books, films, plays, video games and gawd knows what other forms of art featuring damsels in distress waiting passively to be rescued have somehow slipped completely under corvidd’s radar. Unbelievable.
I don’t understand why xe’s giving examples of games that don’t do such portrayal of women. What point are you attempting to make, corvidd?
Are you suggesting that Anita and our position is that ALL games are sexist? That would be the only reason to give examples of games that aren’t sexist. Or are you telling us there isn’t a trend of such sexism in video games?
It seems to me that corvidd is working with a rather idiosyncratic definition of “rare” which goes “has happened one less time than the exact number of examples corvidd can think of”.
corvidd @207
And if they do, it will be almost entirely due to the work Anita Sarkeesian has been doing in the video game industry for the last few years. And misogynists will wail at the injustice of it all.
I don’t believe I constructed that syllogism . If your post is in reply to my comments to Seven of Mine in #197, I was remarking that the vast majority of female characters are not sexualised background decorations, I didn’t make an argument that women aren’t overtly and disproportionately sexualised because of the fact that women fill many NPC roles . In any case, I appear to have possibly misconstrued her. On that topic though, I don’t think that women are disproportionately background decorations ( I’m presuming you mean vis-à-vis men here ? ) , if by background decorations we’re talking about generic, non-important NPCs populating game worlds.
That’s cool, wasn’t aware they’d added that.
By “overtly” I take it you’re referring qualitatively to the sexualization of individual female characters vis a vis male ones .
Sorry, in #218 that should read :
” I didn’t make an argument that women aren’t overtly sexualised and disproportionately background decorations because of the fact that women fill many NPC roles.”
Ugh, sorry once again, it should be :
“comments to Seven of Mine in #188”
The problem is that your examples don’t prove that. The Gerudo have sexual overtones and are submissive to Link after he trounces their best warriors. Link’s “harem” of girls has sexual overtones. The Great Fairies are blatantly sexual.
My only guess is that it is at such a low level, and so very common, that you’re simply not registering it.
corvid at # 220
That’s exactly what you said. corvid at #188
It’s been days of of explaining that there are separate tropes, and trying to get you to clearly state your reservations with tropes vs women: and you have done nothing to back up your nebulous and ever changing complaints with Anita Sarkeesians critique Not all NPCs are sexualized, all NPCs are background objects. This isn’t really a difficult concept. Princess Peach isn’t sexualized, but she is definitely an object or prize in mulitiple games. The fact that she is a playable character is a few games does not negate the fact that she is far more often the sole female character, and is generally a NPC.
Four posts corvidd, and not one link to evidence. Your evidenceless preaching is dismissed as fuckwittery.
Either start defining and obtaining third party evidence, or shut the fuck up. You prove you have nothing new to say with each trite and prior refuted post. You are a boring over opinionated idjit.
corvidd @ 218
corvidd @ 188
This is a single sentence corvidd. You’re making an absolute fool of yourself here. Words are not magical incantations. You don’t get to say “I wasn’t making that argument” when everyone can scroll right the fuck back up and see you saying almost word for fucking word what you claim not to have said.
Saad @215:
Trying to make sense of incoherent ramblings like corvidd produces can often be quite confusing.
corvidd @ 218
Emphasis mine. “I don’t think” is not an argument. Nobody gives a shit what you think or what seems to you, etc. Women are, by and large, not the protagonists in video games. On the rare occasion that they are, they’re often sexualized. See: Bayonetta, Bikini Samus as a payoff for beating Metroid, most incarnations of Lara Croft, etc. The total number of video games ever released is well into the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, and yet even the staunchest anti-feminist will run out of exceptions to that rule before they run out of fingers and toes to count them on.
Nate Carr
what!? Are you saying that an all female warrior tribe would not wear a costume that looks remarkably similar to the harem pants and bralette worn by Jeannie in I dream of Jeannie? Bare shoulders and midriffs are impractical and inadequate protection from desert sun and wind? I do wonder if any of these game developers have ever been in proximity to a live horse, much less ridden a horse? Horse hair is not pleasant to bare human skin. The mere thought of laying my bare belly on a sweaty horse makes me go itchy. And the archers without armguards? Arrgh, one might think they are mere sexualized caricatures of female warriors rather than proper terrifying screaming Valkyrie.
@Tethys #228
Exactly! It’s so obvious when you really look at it. If Corvidd is being honest when they say that they don’t see it in the game all I can think is that it’s just…so prevalent everywhere that it doesn’t even register as sexism to them.
Which is exactly the point Anita is making. It’s really basic 101 level stuff.
Unfortunately, it should be 090 level stuff, for those that need a refresher before real college courses, where it is presumed you know your misogynic privileges.
@Tethys
Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. By disproportionately, I took it to be a suggestion that there are more female NPCs than male, and hence women make up the majority of these background decoration characters, present in game worlds simply to add a sense of color and liveliness. I don’t think that’s true; I doubt anyone will ever do a quantitative analysis of the numbers of male vs female non-playable characters, but my impression is that there really isn’t too much of a difference between men and women filling these roles. For protagonists, absolutely, there’s a considerable disparity, although for certain genres that attract considerably more male gamers than female, I don’t think there necessarily negative; at the moment though, things are just too asymmetrical.
Maybe you could clarify your position on this matter. In post 185 you state :
I did provide examples of issues I have with Anita Sarkeesian’s videos earlier in this thread, and elaborated further on them; since then things have gotten slightly tangential, so allow me to once again recap my original criticisms :
1. I think Sarkeesian has misrepresented the possibilities of complex, in-game ragdoll physics by claiming that the game encourages players to “desecrate” the bodies of dead sexualised women. The game’s incentive structure is centred on stealth and minimal violence to NPCs; to get to the stage where it’s even possible to come into contact with limp, dead bodies, you have to commit murder or incapacitate someone. In Sarkeesian’s clip, this is against the women in the strip club; for doing so you’re deducted points, and there’s also the risk that a more dangerous NPC could be alerted, and hence jeaprodise your mission The game’s protagonist is a professional hitman, so stealth is an essential aspect; to possess that, there has to be the ability to move the bodies of NPCs to remain undetected, hence why you can drag corpses.
2. I was critical of Sarkeesian’s conclusions about player psychology, which I think are speculative and unfounded. In her “Women as Background Decorations ( Part 1 ) she says the following :
“So in many of the titles we’ve been discussing, the game makers have set up a series of possible scenarios involving vulnerable, eroticized female characters. Players are then invited to explore and exploit those situations during their play-through.
The player cannot help but treat these female bodies as things to be acted upon,because they were designed, constructed and placed in the environment for that singular purpose. Players are meant to derive a perverse pleasure from desecrating the bodies of unsuspecting virtual female characters.
It’s a rush streaming from a carefully concocted mix of sexual arousal connected to the act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality.”
I think it’s highly speculative for her to claim that “one can’t help but feel”. How exactly has she determined that players are compelled to approach women as such and that they’re designed for the single purpose of being “things to be acted on” ? Plenty of Youtubers who have posted videos of their Hitman : Absolution playthroughs clearly didn’t feel compelled to act upon them, given that they refrained from engaging with them at all. Surely skepticism should be invoked when dealing with such a claim, and likewise for the second one; again, where is the evidence that gamers experience a rush from the desecration of dead sexualised women, and that this rush derives from a mixture of sexual arousal stemming from the ” act of controlling and punishing representations of female sexuality ” ?
In addition, I’ve responded to why I feel games often have sexualised female characters :
3. On why places such as strip clubs/brothels appear frequently in mature themed games, I’ve stated :
…strip clubs/ sex workers are more frequently present in mature themed games, often dealing with the criminal underworld, a segment of society that has well documented ties to prostitution, sex trafficking and the strip club industry ( so their presence is certainly congruent and justified in my view. ).
Games like Hitman are set in a world of organised crime, which does have links to the strip club industry; those links are perhaps not as widespread as they once were, but to my knowledge they’re still there to some degree. That developers making games which deal with criminality choose to set some part of their game in strip clubs seems congruent to me. And as I mentioned in my previous post, Hitman : Absolution contains 20 sections, each with a handful of settings. The strip club is just one setting in one of these sections; it’s a tiny part of the game, and in my opinion it’s perfectly logical for developers dealing with the criminal underworld to include locations/businesses that have links to organised crime.
4. In response to points on why male prostitutes / male strip clubs / other male sexualised settings aren’t populating game worlds more :
Other brief points :
I also have an issue with her using the ability to kill women in GTA IV and GTA V for cash in her argument; this is in no way female specific, you can murder any man or woman in the game world and collect their cash.
In Fallout : Last Vegas she talks about being able to pick up lifeless female bodies and drag them around; as with other titles she discusses, this feature is not gender specific, it can be done to pretty much any NPC, male or female, including the male prostitutes in the game.
Gahh, sorry, meant to expand a bit further and omitted soemthing.
@Tehys Perhaps you could clarify your position on this matter. In post 185 you state :
What’s your definition of commonly here ? This would appear to me to suggest that you believe female characters are rarely portrayed as anything other than sexualised objects in these games; I think that’s false, only small numbers are depicted as such. Seeing as I’ve talked about Hitman :Absolution quite a bit on this thread, I’ll use that as an example once again. The number of women who are “mainly naked bodies to titilate” is small relative to non-sexualised women throughout the game world, so it certainly wouldn’t be fair to argue that they’re “mainly naked bodies to titilate”. As for your point about murder, i don’t think it’s a fair one; in mature themed games it’s possible to kill NPCs regardless of gender.
It also doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve refused to respond to every other rebuttal of your use of OoT.
This claim by corvidd simply does not pass the smell test. There is no way any honest person could follow this thread and think that “disproportionate” could even possibly refer to the TOTAL number of female background NPC’s, or the percentage of female NPC’s used as nothing more than naked bodies to ogle or commit violence against.
Disproportionate has always meant in comparison to the male NPC’s, wherein the number of male NPC’s deliberately put in for the player to commit sexualized violence, as distinct from non-sexualized violence, which is a different problem altogether, against is essentially zero, which makes pretty much any number of female NPC’s so depicted disproportionate.
Also, “strong and capable” is yet another irrelevant red herring. You can depict and use strong and capable female NPC’s as sexual objects for the player just as easily as you can use weak and incompetent female NPC’s. Indeed, there are some male gamers who find strong and capable female NPC’s more appealing as sexual objects than weak and incapable female NPC’s. So it is utterly disingenuous of corvidd to attempt to make an issue out of the Gerudo women’s depiction as “strong and capable” (though in fact they are not. They are never any threat to Link in combat and they actually do nothing useful whatsoever plot wise in the game. Essentially their role is just to stand there looking tough and sexy for the p,Ayer to ogle) as if that had any relevance to the issue at hand at all.
I still see that corvidd is blathering away without linked evidence. Bwahahahahahaha. I’m laughing at YOU corvidd. Youe preaching is dismissed as fuckwittery from a misogynist fool.