Feminist Kickstarter Project gets Harassed/Threatened

[BloatedGuppy]

I see we're talking about Dick Wolves now. Blast from the past, yo!

I still fail to see how using rape in the joke is horrible no matter the context.

If I remember correctly, Stanton was pretty clear in pointing out that she understood the joke, and didn't necessarily have an issue with the joke. She wanted trigger warnings on the joke, and she used the joke as a stepping off point to have a dialogue about rape culture.

Not blaming them for being victims or saying they have no right to be angry about rape, but the mere utterance of the word sets them off and leaves them unable to think clearly?

That's what the whole concept of "triggers" suggests, yeah. If you're familiar with PTSD you'd know it's not exactly a voluntary process. I have a family member who suffers from fairly severe PTSD, and I've had a first hand look at just how debilitating and disruptive it can be for them. This is really not something you should be making light of, regardless of where your opinion fell on the whole Dick Wolves issue.

And PA kinda floated above this for the most part. The two sides(those against PA and those for them) mostly duked it out with PA only commenting rarely. They didn't get into the melee, they didn't do much legwork. This whole thing kinda unfolded around them & they only engaged when it came around to them.

They most certainly did not. I think both sides of that ludicrous debate were guilty of profound opinion polarization, and spent most of their time tilting at windmills rather than addressing one another as human beings. But the guys at PA most assuredly played the role of provocateur early in the proceedings, particularly Gabe. I think they like to imagine that they're still guerrilla journalists shooting from the hip and holding court for a small and fervent audience, but their brand has grown past that many times over, and they showed a remarkable unwillingness to be open minded towards unfamiliar points of view.

I still want to know why the use of rape in a joke is so wrong. Especially when the joke itself is not about rape, not about making light of rape itself, & not about belittling victims. Because with all the articles i find on this subject its the same thing. 'how dare they mention rape in a joke' or 'as a rape survivor i find this offensive' but not any telling what is directly wrong about this. Context is wholly ignored in this matter.

The theory behind "rape culture" is that the more it's joked about and trivialized, the more normalized it becomes as an act. While I'm on the fence about whether or not I endorse this concept of a "rape culture" as valid, there is plenty of anecdotal and statistical evidence to support rape victims not being taken terribly seriously by law enforcement, and plenty of victim blaming and shaming by society in general. I can see why people, most particularly people who are themselves victims of rape, would be concerned about trivializing the issue.

For the record, I found the comic amusing, and I found the furor overwrought. But I do understand both sides of the issue. Underneath all the name calling and personal attacks and knee-jerk fundamentalism, there was actually an interesting discussion to be had regarding the Dick Wolves fiasco. It's sad that precious few people were actually having it.

 

[Vault101]

[spoiler/]

[/spoiler]

I swear this issue is more hot than Mass Effect 3

well....its at least good to know people care about sexism I guess?

i love your image.

thanks..TBH I think I was just looking for an excuse to use it

 

[Paradoxrifts]

All that happened IRL in the Penny Arcade fiasco was that people got reasonably upset with PA for using a triggering topic as a throw-away gag and PA became very hostile and defensive about it, then responded with a string of dick moves that were (rightfully) called out by the community as a whole. PA (rightfully) lost fans and some speakers at PAX, then issued a non-apology. I have no idea why some of their fans use such apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what essentially amounted to a learning experience for two man-children.

The folks over at Penny Arcade are the only people with an accurate headcount on the amount of unique page-views that they receive every year. So whether or not the loss of all those 'supposed' self-declared former fans has made any difference to their bottom-line is a matter of pure conjecture on your part. However judging from Gabe's cheeky support for the Sodapop Miniature's new Tentacle Bento card game, a game about tentacles, female college students and 'cram sessions' none the less, I sincerely doubt that they're feeling any consequences for their actions at all.

Now the fact that you can get nearly seven thousand people to spend almost $160,000 on a ideological circle-jerk doesn't really surprise me all that much, when you're dealing with human beings this sort of thing is really to be expected. What does surprise in fact surprise me is that she and her followers must think that publicly shaming gamers on the internet is going to do anything to change gamers and the wider industry as a whole. We're pretty much inoculated against shame tactics.

 

[Batou667]

I'm late to the party, so very little of this will be original or insightful, but...

- Most of this woman's beef with female representation in games could be levelled at society at large. Some may say she's found a nice little niche to milk dry with the usual self-fulfilling feminist "investigating".

- Videogames have poor, clichéd and single-dimensional female characters. This sentence is also true if you remove the word "female". There honestly are more important things feminism could be rallying against right now.

- Begging for money on the internet is the kind of thing you do in the knowledge that people will be lining up to call you a cheat, fraud, and worse.

- She got several thousand dollars for a few minutes begging work. In the heirarchy of people who have a right to complain about their lot in life, she's behind several billion people.

- Nobody deserves threats of death and rape. That's plain distasteful.

- Does this vindicate her original premise that the gaming community is systemically sexist? I don't think that's a valid conclusion to draw. All it really proves is the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is alive and well.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Not blaming them for being victims or saying they have no right to be angry about rape, but the mere utterance of the word sets them off

As BloatedGuppy said, this is the reason behind trigger warnings [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning] - people with PTSD and the like can experience a very strong response to "triggers" that can seen innocuous to others. An extremely flawed, over-simplistic analogy would be a Penny Arcade comic without a "seizure warning" tag that includes a strobing .gif.

This is why I have a very hard time seeing the controversy from Penny Arcade's point of view - there's no real equivalence between people who are psychologically "set off" by something and the people who refuse to apologize for setting them off and make fun [http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=3205] of them for being set off.

 

[Kahunaburger]

publicly shaming gamers on the internet

And here I was thinking that "Tropes vs. Women in Gaming" was going to be examining sexist tropes in games. Apparently a series about a particular kind of bad writing in vidya gaems is an attack on the people who play those games. Who knew?

 

[Evil Smurf]

Also some find it relaxing to troll. I poke my brother to relax some times.

 

[Darkmantle]

SNIP

What I was saying, is that I think you are wrong. It's not "mis-education" it's learning the facts. You are the one who doesn't know what feminism is, and instead follows an idealized version of it that no longer exists.

But as long as you are so certain that everyone ELSE is brainwashed, YOU won't be able to make sure you are not the brainwashed one.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

publicly shaming gamers on the internet

And here I was thinking that "Tropes vs. Women in Gaming" was going to be examining sexist tropes in games. Apparently a series about a particular kind of bad writing in vidya gaems is an attack on the people who play those games. Who knew?

That would be sarcasm, right? To critique the product is to critique the consumer.

Nutritionists for example, do not warn the public of the demonstrable nutritional bankruptcy of most fast food choices just to simply to better inform the general public, no, ideally they would like to see less fatties suffering from diabetes-induced complications clogging up the healthcare system.

 

[Kahunaburger]

publicly shaming gamers on the internet

And here I was thinking that "Tropes vs. Women in Gaming" was going to be examining sexist tropes in games. Apparently a series about a particular kind of bad writing in vidya gaems is an attack on the people who play those games. Who knew?

That would be sarcasm, right? To critique the product is to critique the consumer.

Let's see if that makes sense if we continue to follow your logic.

Someone who enjoys Ghost in the Shell: SAC, but points out that it engages in relentless objectification for no real reason, is calling themselves sexist.

Someone who enjoys ASOIAF, but finds Dany's Orientalist Imperialism Adventure to be full of racefail, is calling themselves racist.

If someone reads basically anything published before the last half of the 20th century and acknowledges the problematic elements that were products of the time the work was published, they're calling themselves whatever flavor of problematic those elements are.

Yep, turns out that (again) your logic does not hold up if we follow it, and (again) basically boils down to you over-systematizing things. I think it would be more accurate to say that you personally feel threatened by critiques of games that you enjoy. I'm honestly kind of confused as to why this is - I like plenty of games creative works in general that I will freely acknowledge bad or problematic elements of.

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Yep, turns out that (again) your logic does not hold up if we follow it, and (again) basically boils down to you over-systematizing things. I think it would be more accurate to say that you personally feel threatened by critiques of games that you enjoy. I'm honestly kind of confused as to why this is - I like plenty of games creative works in general that I will freely acknowledge bad or problematic elements of.

Running a little low on context, are you not? Allow me top you up.

None of those examples you just mentioned raised nearly $160,000 to build a soapbox in virtual space with which to broadcast their opinion.

So when Anita started openly and transparently raised that sort of bacon with which to throw her opinions around with, the pretense that she is just one little part of a grassroots feminist blogging movement to enact social change was dropped like a bagful of kittens off a waterfall. She is and always was a professional feminist propagandist, and this latest move has done nothing but further reinforce and cement that status. I will however admit that she's quite a clever person, clearly quite media savvy, it's just that I see the whole effort as a complete waste of time, money and effort.

Which is why I don't particularly feel 'threatened' by her professional existence up to and including this project. Wait, that's not entirely true.

My real concern here is that once these feminists realise essentially how useless it is effect change in popular culture by critiquing it then they will turn to that other mainstay of feminist action, legislation. Enacted wherever and whenever it can be applied in order to 'fix' the situation. And no I don't live in a place where the freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution, before you bring it up.

 

[Kahunaburger]

snip

Ah, so I see by the fact that you haven't addressed any of the response to your grandiose statement that:

To critique the product is to critique the consumer.

...you've made the wise decision to backpedal on that. Which is good, because you have this tendency to make grandiose statements that fall apart under the slightest examination.

She is and always was a professional feminist propagandist,

Oh, look, it's a grandiose statement that falls apart under the slightest examination. Unless you think that someone who releases youtube videos for free as a "passionate side project" is a "professional propagandist."

time, money and effort.

Karutomaru?

My real concern here is that once these feminists realise essentially how useless it is effect change in popular culture by critiquing it then they will turn to that other mainstay of feminist action, legislation. Enacted wherever and whenever it can be applied in order to 'fix' the situation. And no I don't live in a place where the freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution, before you bring it up.

Oh, look, it's a grandiose statement that falls apart under the slightest examination. If you're honestly worried that a handful of freelancers who make thoughtful youtube videos about popular media are going to spearhead legislation limiting freedom of speech, you need to put all this in some perspective. What jurisdiction do you live in? Do men and women (for example) receive equal pay in this jurisdiction?

(Also, the concept of feminism being able to make a concerted effort to influence legislation breaks down when you realize that "feminism" is actually an umbrella term for a wide variety of philosophies, many of which can't agree on questions like "is porn theoretically O.K.?")

 

[Paradoxrifts]

Ah, so I see by the fact that you haven't addressed any of the response to your grandiose statement that:

You're the one who stripped the context away in the first place in order to go on a tangent. I simply put it back where it belonged.

She is and always was a professional feminist propagandist,

Oh, look, it's a grandiose statement that falls apart under the slightest examination. Unless you think that someone who releases youtube videos for free as a "passionate side project" is a "professional propagandist."

It stopped becoming a passionate side project when it started generating real and sizable revenue return. Is grandiose another one of those words you happen to really like? Like 'over-systematize'? Because c'mon, you can do better than that! Get nasty on me with a thesaurus, show me your big words with all those filthy syllables and consonants.

Oh, look, it's a grandiose statement that falls apart under the slightest examination. If you're honestly worried that a handful of freelancers who make thoughtful youtube videos about popular media are going to spearhead legislation limiting freedom of speech, you need to put all this in some perspective. What jurisdiction do you live in? Do men and women (for example) receive equal pay in this jurisdiction?

There you go again with the use of the word grandiose. And yes, men and women in Australia do receive equal hourly pay for equal hours worked. Even certain female dominated industries whose national award rates have been systematically undervalued are achieving fairer wage parity with the rest of the economy. That's probably what I would call the last vestiges of gender wage inequality left.

 

[axlryder]

Looking at her past videos and just her general attitude, she'd be the last person I'd ever want to hire to make a documentary on anything, least of all about sexism in video games. Those stupid little graphics with Peach and Zelda perfectly highlight what's so off about her. Zelda and Peach have been progressively shown as more and more competent as the years progress (Peach had her own game for crying out loud and tetra was a pirate captain). You'll notice that Nintendo is managing to make this transition with a fair amount of grace. The fact that the two characters often wear dresses just means that they're princesses. Of course they're going to wear dresses. It makes sense for the characters. There's nothing inherently sexist about that (especially when you consider their alternate canonical portrayals). Shoving them into highly masculine outfits to get your point across just seems way too forced and awkward. What's more, putting decidedly butch captions next to their images is just extremely obnoxious and totally out of character for both of them (which is the part that really bothers me). Bastardizing their characters in the name of "equality" is stupid to me, especially when you're attempting to make a documentary. I understand that it might be harmless to some, but it exudes an aura that really rubs me the wrong way and I'm sure there are far more balanced and skillful video makers out there who could make extremely informative, interesting, insightful and progressive videos on the subject of sexism in video games (Extra Credit anyone?). This girl, on the other hand, has mostly said things that were already WELL trodden on TV tropes and various other websites. Her work seems lazy, banal and somewhat off-base, which is probably the thing I find worst about her. All in all, I would never give money to this girl and I don't believe she deserves the massive sum that she received (or anything close to it) to make some 10-20 minute youtube videos that will most likely be sub-par in content quality.

That said, people's behavior here was clearly wrong, and they're a bunch of stupid fucks for doing what they did, as they only managed to take the flame bait and shoot themselves in the foot in trying to quell this campaign with ignorant and volatile remarks. In that sense, there's a certain amount of poetic justice to the outcome. A small part of me suspects this girl might have planned it to be this way (given that 4chan rumor), but that's likely just overreaching conjecture.

Note that I'm not saying sexism isn't a problem or any of that. I just don't particularly like this girl or her "work".

 

[Jun_Jun]

-snip-

You are my hero

Also OT, somehow I think if I saw a documentation on lower class 'poverty class' Australians on youtube getting hateful comments also being marked as terrorism because the lower class in Britain wasn't acknowledged, somehow I don't think those commenters would be hailed as 'white knights' that would bring light to the 'real issue', What about 3rd world poverty? Well that's not what the documentary is about, find one that highlights the issue that you want to see highlighted and stop harrasing people who do bring light to very real issues regardless of severity.