nacatak said:
Just to be clear: What are you trying to say when you say "So quit trying to make it about men, because we're talking about women here".
It's the common form of the argument. "Quit trying to make it about men, we're talking about women. If you want to talk about men, start your own discussion." While at the same time using the argument from primal misogyny (the argument that misogyny is ultimately at the root of anything gender related and thus holds a position of primacy in discussion as anything else ultimately is actually about misogyny) to make discussion of men's issues *really* about women's issues, leading back to the first point.
I've seen it used to argue that men's mistreatment in the family court system is really about women's rights and can be solved by more feminism. I've seen it used to argue that domestic violence against men can be solved by supporting a law that explicitly permits services funded by it to discriminate with respect to gender but also requires all such programs to service women because it's all *really* about violence against women anyways. I've seen it used as I described above to argue that gay rights are really about misogyny and thus we should really be talking about women's rights instead. It's silly, it's fallacious, but you see it fairly often.
nacatak said:
Also, do you agree with the "general consensus" regarding female/male spaces?
Personally? No. I think women's space (being space from which men are barred, as commonly defined) and men's space (using a similar definition, and not the "space that isn't women's space" definition, which if you think about it for a few minutes is comparatively rare) both serve valid and valuable roles. When it comes to male-dominant and female-dominant spaces (that is, spaces from which involvement is not restricted with respect to gender, but those involved strongly slant one way or the other), I'm not sure which way to go, but I think it should be consistent -- either it should be typical for the space to adapt to the atypical member of the group, or it should be typical for the person to adapt to the space, not dependent on which is which.
erttheking said:
It's not the word itself that matters, dick and c*** aren't equal insults because they don't have the same weight behind them. You don't call a man a dick because you're trying to oppress him for being a man, you call a man a dick because you think that he's a jackass. C*** on the other hand, while it can be used like dick, has a tendency to be used against women, insulting them for being women. Dick and c*** aren't even close to being equal. Men aren't being oppressed by being called dicks, because that insult isn't meant to be sexist. Women are being oppressed by being called c*** because it is meant to be sexist.
One of the best feminist arguments I've ever heard can be applied right here to exactly the opposite effect of what many of them would use it for: Intent Is Not Magic. If calling some a ****, twat, pussy, *****, slut, whore, etc is automatically and always sexist, then dick (penis), prick (penis), hell even jerk wad (semen), jackass (male donkey), and dork (penis). The use of virgin in a derogatory sense towards a man could be considered roughly analog to calling a woman a "slut" given that the goal is to imply that they are bad for not having the correct amount of sex.
SeanSeanston said:
Also, referring to an earlier thing about Infinity Ward employing predominantly men... it's not like they have a choice, is it? Women don't go into game development as much and that's just that. Take a look in a Computer Science course and see how many women there are. Probably almost none.
I suppose the men are keeping them away... after all, men are notorious for how little they like being around women as we all know, so it all makes perfect sense ;]
My own university was not terribly far off parity for overall student body when I attended, but the college of engineering as a whole was 7:1 male:female (economics, nursing, dental hygiene, and printing were all pretty female dominated and balanced the overall out), and the computer science department was 14:1. There was one woman graduating comp sci at the same time I did, and she was an exchange student from...Korea, I think. This was around the turn of the millennium.
erttheking said:
Remember that little incident with women being banned from the Battlefield 3 party?
That's the one where the private group ran a Battlefield 3 launch LAN party with no women permitted, and originally stated why in the most horrible way possible, then replaced that phrasing with something about it being a "gentlemen's retreat" and reiterated the no women, no pets, etc rules, right? That started a bit of a shitstorm about what imisogynistic monster male gamers were, if I recall.
SeanSeanston said:
Hmm... have to say I don't. Someone mentioned something that seemed to refer to it in a earlier post though. In relation to it being seen as fine to have a female-only party.
There's a private group that does a pre-PAX party at both PAX Prime and PAX East from which men are banned, as an example. No one seems to take issue with it (and I've certainly never heard anyone claim they were going to avoid PAX because of it, unlike people who threatened to boycott Battlefield over that non-official private launch party).
SeanSeanston said:
For instance, in sports where men and women can compete against each other equally (not too many I guess but w/e) you sometimes have women's leagues presumably because the women's game is much less developed and there are fewer women playing and otherwise there wouldn't be much of a way for the women's game to get better.
It's a confusing business, this.
Confusing, oh yes, it can be. Interestingly, Chess of all things in one of those acticvities where you have an open league (not gender restricted) and a women's league. I can't see any real reason for it at all except to allow players who can't win against the wider playing field to look better.
erttheking said:
I'm not arguing the facts, I'm arguing what you're trying to imply from the facts.
If I wanted to imply something horribly sexist from facts I could do better than the dramatic differences in on the job, military, and suicide deaths. Do you know what has an exceptionally high correlation to being divorced by one's partner in married men? Having recently become unemployed. Imply away.
Suicide is most common among older men (which suggests the idea that men are only valuable for the utility they provide does a lot of damage). That's why we target suicide prevention at young women.
Have a field day.
EvilRoy said:
2. Just Mute Them!
This one is just too easily reversible.
"If someone offends you with slurs on XBL, just mute them!"
"If you can't play a game without spouting slurs, just mute yourself!"
I'm a proponent of #2, and yes, they could mute themselves, but expecting assholes to be nice about their assholism is unrealistic. Honestly, I wonder if something like "If you are reported in too large a percentage of games played, too many people in a short period of time, etc (pick some reasonable way of calculating "is likely a trolling asshat"), you are auto-muted by default to all people not on your friends list, unless they remove your mute. This `quiet time` will continue until your numbers improve, among people who have unmuted you only. This could even be an automatically calculated stat, and could be displayed alongside people's gamertag during matchmaking (in a column labeled with trollface) -- maybe even add an option to set the maximum "trollscore" player you are willing to play with. As opposed to `You said a bad word about a girl, BAN!` (since we all know that all those lovely words that are explicitly male gendered will likely `not count` for one reason or another)."
shephardjhon said:
Everyone should try to follow Yahtzee's policy of not playing with anyone who isn't within hitting distance(or actually known to you, so you can hit them later).
Unless it is an MMO.
There are days when I would kill for a device that could punch people over the internet.
hooksashands said:
Well clearly because it happened to you, it means we should organize a misogynist witch hunt and ban anyone who even teabags their kills. Asking for a someone's number =/= sexism.
Didn't they get rid of "teabagging"? You know, by calling it a "victory crouch" instead? =p
. (I'd occasionally get the `RU A GIRL OR RU TWELVE` when I spoke, that's always funny).
