The Background
You can skip this part if you've been keeping up on current events.
We're in a prolonged high tide in regards to the the sexism-in-games discussion launched by Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games ("I want to protect her." comments [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/posts/242547] by TR-gritty-reboot executive producer Ron Rosenberg, and we have a field of debate fecund for polarization, presumption and vitriol.
Fun times!
Worse yet, pregnancy by rape [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Akin], as justification for his position against reproductive and women's health care services, such as birth control and abortion.[footnote]The Akins affair is also of note because, scientifically-challenged justifications aside, his opinion, that abortion restrictions should carry no exceptions for incidents of rape, incest or some health concerns, was simply an open expression of the the platform position of the GOP, which they hold at the demands of anti-abortion extremists. The 'publicans like to keep this quiet since it's not popular with moderate and even not-quite-so-radical Republicans. It gives fresh meaning to the term talking in mixed company. And watching the GOP distance themselves from Akins in a tiny (proverbial) room is proving quite entertaining.[/footnote]
So shit's crazy.
And now...
Idle Thumbs recently girlfriend mode controversy [http://blog.idlethumbs.net/post/29980547182/idle-thumbs-71-nothings-as-good-as-ya-eat-em], a debate that continues as of this writing.
Of equal interest to me (in the same podcast) was the unquestioned acceptance that Borderlands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands_%28video_game%29] was a particularly misogynistic game, the justification of which I do not comprehend.
This is something I don't quite get, and in the interest of giving my colleagues the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to presume the Idle Thumbs position on Borderlands' misogyny is more sophisticated than a reaction to are crazy [http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Mad_Moxxi], as is every other Borderlands character). Soooo...misogynist? How? Am I missing something?[footnote]Yes. I'm really asking this: Is there some major element of misogyny in Borderlands that I'm not seeing, or any major element of misanthropy that applies only to the women of the game? If there is, I'm missing it.[/footnote]
Getting back to the girlfriend mode issue, granted, there are better terms that could have been used, but we're talking about a developer's own nickname for the BFF skill tree, perhaps for want of a safer term coming to (his) mind (sweetheart mode? spouse mode? noob mode? muggle mode?) The prejudice I personally read from this is not that girls can't shoot[footnote]It's noted on Problem Machine [http://problemmachine.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/binary-world/] that reading girls can't shoot from girlfriend mode is rather heteronormative, and belies our own prejudices.[/footnote] but that friends and partners of gamers can't shoot, which is sometimes the case. Some of us have buddies and paramours that aren't as accurate as we are, possibly because they're playing on an Xbox (ka-ziiiing!)
Anyway, the girlfriend mode controversy is a good place to offer the idea that sexism and misogyny are not the Soulcalibur series [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_data_type], each with physicsier boob-physics than the last.).[/footnote] Differing opinions make make general acceptance of a single graph unlikely, but it is more important simply to recognize that there is a scale, and that more egregiously sexist incidents are worth calling out in contrast to minor ones (excessive reactions to which often work against feminism as a legitimate cause).
That said, a developer's poor choice of non-official terminology for a skill tree, I'd think, is hardly a blip in the maelstrom that is brewing, especially when juxtaposed to a representative running for senator using pseudoscience as justification to deny rights to women in the US. Of course, to attack scrutiny of the sexism-in-gaming tapestry bravely, more questions will have to be asked (and answered), one of which is Exactly what amount of sexism in a game is enough about which raising a stink is appropriate? At what level is it obligatory? And at what point is it so mild that a commenter would be regarded as "too sensitive"?
Does beefcake balance out cheesecake? If not, what does?
Are rape jokes (jokes that mention rape or imply rape) ever appropriate?
How can vagina dentata really be a thing in a society in love with fellatio?
238U[footnote]This is the first of what will be an ongoing series about the sexism-in-video-games debate, and about elevating the level of controversial debate on the internet at large, in this, what is (I believe) a New Golden Age of Philosophy. From what I've seen so far of Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women series on YouTube, and her Kickstarter project on video games, I'm not impressed. I figured it's going to be up to us (that is, the internetz and the video games community) to analyze what is going on, to model out not just where things are too sexually biased, but what is affects and how to create change. And I think it'll be truly awesome if we can do better than Sarkeesian, and do it for free.[/footnote]
You can skip this part if you've been keeping up on current events.
We're in a prolonged high tide in regards to the the sexism-in-games discussion launched by Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games ("I want to protect her." comments [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/566429325/tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/posts/242547] by TR-gritty-reboot executive producer Ron Rosenberg, and we have a field of debate fecund for polarization, presumption and vitriol.
Fun times!
Worse yet, pregnancy by rape [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Akin], as justification for his position against reproductive and women's health care services, such as birth control and abortion.[footnote]The Akins affair is also of note because, scientifically-challenged justifications aside, his opinion, that abortion restrictions should carry no exceptions for incidents of rape, incest or some health concerns, was simply an open expression of the the platform position of the GOP, which they hold at the demands of anti-abortion extremists. The 'publicans like to keep this quiet since it's not popular with moderate and even not-quite-so-radical Republicans. It gives fresh meaning to the term talking in mixed company. And watching the GOP distance themselves from Akins in a tiny (proverbial) room is proving quite entertaining.[/footnote]
So shit's crazy.
And now...
Idle Thumbs recently girlfriend mode controversy [http://blog.idlethumbs.net/post/29980547182/idle-thumbs-71-nothings-as-good-as-ya-eat-em], a debate that continues as of this writing.
Of equal interest to me (in the same podcast) was the unquestioned acceptance that Borderlands [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borderlands_%28video_game%29] was a particularly misogynistic game, the justification of which I do not comprehend.
This is something I don't quite get, and in the interest of giving my colleagues the benefit of the doubt, I'm going to presume the Idle Thumbs position on Borderlands' misogyny is more sophisticated than a reaction to are crazy [http://borderlands.wikia.com/wiki/Mad_Moxxi], as is every other Borderlands character). Soooo...misogynist? How? Am I missing something?[footnote]Yes. I'm really asking this: Is there some major element of misogyny in Borderlands that I'm not seeing, or any major element of misanthropy that applies only to the women of the game? If there is, I'm missing it.[/footnote]
Getting back to the girlfriend mode issue, granted, there are better terms that could have been used, but we're talking about a developer's own nickname for the BFF skill tree, perhaps for want of a safer term coming to (his) mind (sweetheart mode? spouse mode? noob mode? muggle mode?) The prejudice I personally read from this is not that girls can't shoot[footnote]It's noted on Problem Machine [http://problemmachine.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/binary-world/] that reading girls can't shoot from girlfriend mode is rather heteronormative, and belies our own prejudices.[/footnote] but that friends and partners of gamers can't shoot, which is sometimes the case. Some of us have buddies and paramours that aren't as accurate as we are, possibly because they're playing on an Xbox (ka-ziiiing!)
Anyway, the girlfriend mode controversy is a good place to offer the idea that sexism and misogyny are not the Soulcalibur series [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_data_type], each with physicsier boob-physics than the last.).[/footnote] Differing opinions make make general acceptance of a single graph unlikely, but it is more important simply to recognize that there is a scale, and that more egregiously sexist incidents are worth calling out in contrast to minor ones (excessive reactions to which often work against feminism as a legitimate cause).
That said, a developer's poor choice of non-official terminology for a skill tree, I'd think, is hardly a blip in the maelstrom that is brewing, especially when juxtaposed to a representative running for senator using pseudoscience as justification to deny rights to women in the US. Of course, to attack scrutiny of the sexism-in-gaming tapestry bravely, more questions will have to be asked (and answered), one of which is Exactly what amount of sexism in a game is enough about which raising a stink is appropriate? At what level is it obligatory? And at what point is it so mild that a commenter would be regarded as "too sensitive"?
Does beefcake balance out cheesecake? If not, what does?
Are rape jokes (jokes that mention rape or imply rape) ever appropriate?
How can vagina dentata really be a thing in a society in love with fellatio?
238U[footnote]This is the first of what will be an ongoing series about the sexism-in-video-games debate, and about elevating the level of controversial debate on the internet at large, in this, what is (I believe) a New Golden Age of Philosophy. From what I've seen so far of Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women series on YouTube, and her Kickstarter project on video games, I'm not impressed. I figured it's going to be up to us (that is, the internetz and the video games community) to analyze what is going on, to model out not just where things are too sexually biased, but what is affects and how to create change. And I think it'll be truly awesome if we can do better than Sarkeesian, and do it for free.[/footnote]
