I'm tired of the anti-feminist circlejerk here (and every where else on the internet)

[Terminal Blue]

..really? You really think that "the majority of men" don't agree with you" because they are "incapable of understand" and not because they understand what you say but think that you're wrong? That's quite condescending of you.

I'm just going to copy-paste for every single person who does this.

Privilege is about value. It is not about who is advantaged or disadvantaged in different situations, because that is entirely situational. It is about whether your experience of the world is central to society or marginal to it. It's about how much your identity resembles that of the hegemonic (socially dominant) groups in society.

A black doctor and a white janitor work in a hospital. The doctor earns more money and does a more valued job, but this does not mean he has "black privilege". He's still a black doctor in a society where whiteness is, broadly speaking, hegemonic.

This is why arguments like "oh, I can't be privileged, my life is shit!" don't work. Privilege doesn't mean you're going to be respected and loved and showered with happiness, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed to have wealth or power, it just means you get to be normal and have the same chance of these things as a normal person would. This is why it's incredibly hard to see when you have it.

I wouldn't expect you to tell me what being punched in the face was like if you've never been punched in the face. I similarly wouldn't expect you to tell me what privilege is like when you've never encountered a lack of it. This is not because I think you are stupid, it is because your experience may (or may not, I have not made a single essential statement) have limits.

So does mine. I have plenty of areas of privilege, you're welcome to call me out on them.

 

[Promethax]

It seems that every place I go on the internet, there's someone that says, "I believe in gender equality, but I don't like feminists."

Welcome to the world of privileged teenage boys.

I wouldn't get too upset about them. One day we'll look back at such people with the same combination of quaint amusement and awkward embarrassment we feel when we think of the people who came before us who insisted that women were unsuitable for daily work or learning math. "They are a dying people. We should let them pass."

If this whole debate really is simply that two-dimensionally black and white, then there will surely come an age ruled by self loathing burger-flippers that spend their free time complaining about video game characters on the internet to justify their sociology degrees, and together we will march, hand in hand, as equals against those dang dirty PRIVILEGED plebeians who dare question our beliefs, and we will not cease until we take away their, and our own PRIVILEGE, because PRIVILEGE is a quantifiable mass that those SEXIST PIGS simply refuse to give up, not because we are the ones who decides who has PRIVILEGE and who doesn't, but because anyone who disagrees with us can only be and ever will be wife-beating PRIVILEGED misogynists, and the war will never be over until these totally-not-outlandishly-generalized-cartoon-characters are punished for perpetuating a system many of them claim to be against themselves.

And I, for one, welcome our new "nice guy" overlords.

 

[Giftfromme]

..really? You really think that "the majority of men" don't agree with you" because they are "incapable of understand" and not because they understand what you say but think that you're wrong? That's quite condescending of you.

I'm just going to copy-paste for every single person who does this.

Privilege is about value. It is not about who is advantaged or disadvantaged in different situations, because that is entirely situational. It is about whether your experience of the world is central to society or marginal to it. It's about how much your identity resembles that of the hegemonic (socially dominant) groups in society.

A black doctor and a white janitor work in a hospital. The doctor earns more money and does a more valued job, but this does not mean he has "black privilege". He's still a black doctor in a society where whiteness is, broadly speaking, hegemonic.

This is why arguments like "oh, I can't be privileged, my life is shit!" don't work. Privilege doesn't mean you're going to be respected and loved and showered with happiness, it doesn't mean you're guaranteed to have wealth or power, it just means you get to be normal and have the same chance of these things as a normal person would. This is why it's incredibly hard to see when you have it.

I wouldn't expect you to tell me what being punched in the face was like if you've never been punched in the face. I similarly wouldn't expect you to tell me what privilege is like when you've never encountered a lack of it. This is not because I think you are stupid, it is because your experience may (or may not, I have not made a single essential statement) have limits.

lol that removes a lot of debate. I haven't been to 99% of all countries on Earth, should I not comment on them? I have never been homeless, should I not comment on that? I've never been rich, should I avoid that topic too?

Seems a bit silly to just claim you can't discuss something you have no personal experience in. It is possible to read about things and know people who have experienced things we haven't. Else we might as well throw most of the discussion out the window.

 

[Terminal Blue]

lol that removes a lot of debate. I haven't been to 99% of all countries on Earth, should I not comment on them? I have never been homeless, should I not comment on that? I've never been rich, should I avoid that topic too?

What? How did you even get to that..

You can discuss whatever you want. But if you're going to claim, for example, that homelessness doesn't exist because you've never been homeless and neither has anyone important, don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

Anyway, sleeping now. Need to be bright and ready for the wave of bilious shit I'm going to wake up to tomorrow.

 

[Giftfromme]

lol that removes a lot of debate. I haven't been to 99% of all countries on Earth, should I not comment on them? I have never been homeless, should I not comment on that? I've never been rich, should I avoid that topic too?

What? How did you even get to that..

You can discuss whatever you want. But if you're going to claim, for example, that homelessness doesn't exist because you've never been homeless and neither has anyone important, don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

Anyway, sleeping now. Need to be bright and ready for the wave of bilious shit I'm going to wake up to tomorrow.

That's a self fulfilling prophecy. You will read something and see it as "bilious shit" and that will confirm what you wanted to see all along. Probably not a good attitude to have, as you will constantly be disappointed and blow things people say out of proportion.

snip

I'm just going to refute your pointless wall of text with:

The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.


Have you ever heard someone say "Gee, you know why this Batman movie sucks? He doesn't have quite enough abs, bro. I totally can't fantasize about being him, dude. We should watch something else, brah, with better muscles.

Just because a man is shirtless doesn't make him sexualised (sexualisation is not a property inherent in an action, status or character, but depends entirely on authorial intent). People can find anything sexually attractive regardless of authorial intent, so saying "I find wrestlers hot" isn't proof that wrestlers are sexualised.

Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?


Let's resolve this the old fashioned way.

I want to see 10 women portrayed as sex objects in videogames that came out in the past 3 months. Only PC & Xbox games please. And since we're talking about western culture, no japanese videogames please.

I'll confess I understood very little of that post. Or the post you quoted. Is the last meant as sarcasm?

"Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?"

That made no sense to me whatsoever lol.

"
The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.
"

I could come up with counter examples to your sarcastic comment (seems to be a lot of that floating in this thread) but this is a politically correct forum so best not to.

 

[the clockmaker]

As I have said before, I have encountered far too many self professed feminists who
-believe that men are incapable of understanding
-assign all male successes to the patriarchy
-are hostile to anyone who is not conformant with their views
-believe that men are inherently violent/physical/stupid
-throw out the word 'privilege' as some sort of magic shield
-fail to see a spectrum of divergent views.
-link a man's value to his sexual ability ('you said X, you must be a perma-virgin')
-are just generally belligerent
To be entirely comfortable with it as an ideology. I recognise that there are a lot of feminists who do good work, but the loud sub section of the ideology has effectively ruined it for me and I am much happier sitting under the umbrella of egalitarian.

 

[Trollhoffer]

I feel as though most of this thread validates the OP's thoughts. Many of you ought to feel very silly and foolish, because it's largely accepted fact that women are disadvantaged compared to men in the contemporary social context. The gap is somewhat mild at times in developed nations, but developing nations and undeveloped nations still have a lot of battles to win in the name of feminism. Even developed nations can be awful about this -- think of what was said last year in relation to rape by some US politicians.

Not to say that I'm some paragon of egalitarian thought. I'm probably sexist and racist and ways I don't fully conceive of. But it's clear to me, at least, that being a white male in this society is a great social advantage. I know this because I'm a white male, and I can observe how some people immediately think better of me for having been born with those traits when compared to a woman or a person of colour.

These aren't things that are necessarily easy to swallow, but women and people of colour live with the discrimination against them every day. No-one is trying to invalidate any individual person's suffering, and as I man, I certainly empathise with how difficult it can be to adjust to new information or a contradiction of how one might think things "ought to be". But it's much easier when you realise that much of the world's population is inherently disadvantaged compares to a white man. If nothing else, there's still a huge culture of female commodification -- just about any club in a city sees women as "worth more" than men. This might seem like it favours women, but the implication is that they're "worth more" because they're a potential sex partner from a heterosexual male perspective. So rather than being seen as people, as men are, they're considered valuable only for their breasts and genitals.

Sexism is especially bad in gaming and gamer culture because it means there is no escape for women. White men have the privilege of being able to go into a game and have it work in their psychological favour. But a woman, a homosexual or a person of colour will often see the discrimination they face in the real world reflected within video games. Movies and books as well. Many, many factors conspire to remind these people of their abuse in the real world and to keep it going. It's why we need feminism and sexuality awareness and racial awareness -- a large amount of the world's population is inherently disadvantaged before they've ever made a choice in their life.

 

[Helmholtz Watson]

I wouldn't expect you to tell me what being punched in the face was like if you've never been punched in the face. I similarly wouldn't expect you to tell me what privilege is like when you've never encountered a lack of it. This is not because I think you are stupid, it is because your experience may (or may not, I have not made a single essential statement) have limits.

So does mine. I have plenty of areas of privilege, you're welcome to call me out on them.

Well I guess the one upside to have a justice system the punishes men more harshly for the same crimes that women commit and heavily favors the mother in custody cases, is that men are well aware of what its like to not have privilege.

 

[Dangit2019]

Hey, I argued in a feminist thread once! It was one of the worst decisions of my life on the Internet.

We've done this before, it's either "fuck all the feminists on this site", or it's "fuck all the antifeminists on the site". The end is always a bunch of people shouting at each other for petty shit that barely matters to their everyday life (for example, I argued about opening doors for women for a good 5 hours here) instead of bigger issues globally.

 

[bananafishtoday]

snip

If you want to see what a "female gaze" would look like, watch Twilight. In terms of writing, the movies take such an astoundingly dim view of men and women that I'd probably call them misanthropic if it weren't clear they were just... dumb. But the cinematography tends to set Bella up as an actual person, while Edward and the werewolf bro are framed as sex objects. Irrespective of the fact that the characters are written to be on similar intellectual/emotional levels (very, very low, but still relatively equal), they're displayed in radically different ways.

Flip the sexes, and you get the male gaze that informs the way men and women are presented in media far too often.

Also it's funny you mention Batman, because if you want to see how a character from that universe is rendered through a straight female lens:

It isn't hard to see the difference between Batman as a power fantasy and Nightwing as a sexual fantasy.

 

[Nieroshai]

So this thread will very quickly go from "interesting" to "unbearable." For what it's worth, I'm a feminist. Sup.

god feminists are arrogant.

what other ideology claims (implicitly or otherwise) to have followers that all 100% abide by the true tenets of said ideology? the "straw feminist" counterargument is the laziest shit ever. there are tonsss of feminists, some more vocal than others, who misrepresent true feminism horribly. that's stuff feminists should sort out amongst themselves, but instead, poof, let's pretend they dont exist. it's just a lazy no true scotsman argument.

Very few people would actually claim this. Feminism is actually notorious for its internal disputes. The problem with the "straw feminist" is that it's generally a caricature of the most extreme elements of one side of a huge debate back in the 1980's called the Sex Wars. It's not that people who hold these opinions don't exist. It's that they're presented as all of feminism when in reality they're relatively rare, and they're espousing viewpoints that most feminists considered discredited by the late 90's.

'Feminism is not needed, and it is in fact men that are being oppressed' As much as I agree with this view, it means you are disagreeing with feminism.

Speaking of focusing on an ideal as opposed to who it comes from, I find the use of the term "Feminazi" useful. A feminist is an advocate of women, clearly, but a "feminazi" is one of the very real few women who perfectly fit the stereotype. I don't care that Rush Limbaugh coined it, it's almost necessary now to make sure you're not confusing man-haters with suffragettes in history.

 

[The Selkie]

This seems to have shifted from the original topic of people disliking feminists to being about MRA.

My sole post in here: whilst men have advantages over women in many respects, there are aspects where women have advantages over men (generally concerning child custody and the like). Any "proper" feminist who genuinely believes in equality of the sexes will happily acknowledge these injustices to be just that. "Proper" MRA's happily acknowledge the advantages they have over women (and seek these to be rectified) whilst campaigning to become equal in the areas where women have the advantage.

The proper feminists in this thread aren't seeking to eradication male privilege and ignore areas where they have advantages and proper MRA aren't seeking equality in areas where they're disadvantages whilst maintaining privilege elsewhere.

There's nothing wrong with seeking equality. Whether that's seeking equal representation in the media or equal child custody rights is irrelevant. Equality is good.

** A proper feminist/rights activist is one who seeks genuine equality. Not an extremist on either side who claims women should rule the world/get back in the kitchen.

 

[Stalkingpanda14]

Does anyone want to talk about TJ and his horrible comments being ignored despite him being much larger than Anita Sarkeesian?

 

[Nieroshai]

lol that removes a lot of debate. I haven't been to 99% of all countries on Earth, should I not comment on them? I have never been homeless, should I not comment on that? I've never been rich, should I avoid that topic too?

What? How did you even get to that..

You can discuss whatever you want. But if you're going to claim, for example, that homelessness doesn't exist because you've never been homeless and neither has anyone important, don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

Anyway, sleeping now. Need to be bright and ready for the wave of bilious shit I'm going to wake up to tomorrow.

That's a self fulfilling prophecy. You will read something and see it as "bilious shit" and that will confirm what you wanted to see all along. Probably not a good attitude to have, as you will constantly be disappointed and blow things people say out of proportion.

snip

I'm just going to refute your pointless wall of text with:

The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.


Have you ever heard someone say "Gee, you know why this Batman movie sucks? He doesn't have quite enough abs, bro. I totally can't fantasize about being him, dude. We should watch something else, brah, with better muscles.

Just because a man is shirtless doesn't make him sexualised (sexualisation is not a property inherent in an action, status or character, but depends entirely on authorial intent). People can find anything sexually attractive regardless of authorial intent, so saying "I find wrestlers hot" isn't proof that wrestlers are sexualised.

Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?


Let's resolve this the old fashioned way.

I want to see 10 women portrayed as sex objects in videogames that came out in the past 3 months. Only PC & Xbox games please. And since we're talking about western culture, no japanese videogames please.

I'll confess I understood very little of that post. Or the post you quoted. Is the last meant as sarcasm?

"Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?"

That made no sense to me whatsoever lol.

"
The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.
"

I could come up with counter examples to your sarcastic comment (seems to be a lot of that floating in this thread) but this is a politically correct forum so best not to.

Shall we take your statement to mean that you believe women don't want to look and feel sexy, or that men should stop fantasizing about being handsome muscular secret agents? Either way, a flame shield would be a good thing to grab.

 

[Giftfromme]

lol that removes a lot of debate. I haven't been to 99% of all countries on Earth, should I not comment on them? I have never been homeless, should I not comment on that? I've never been rich, should I avoid that topic too?

What? How did you even get to that..

You can discuss whatever you want. But if you're going to claim, for example, that homelessness doesn't exist because you've never been homeless and neither has anyone important, don't expect anyone to take you seriously.

Anyway, sleeping now. Need to be bright and ready for the wave of bilious shit I'm going to wake up to tomorrow.

That's a self fulfilling prophecy. You will read something and see it as "bilious shit" and that will confirm what you wanted to see all along. Probably not a good attitude to have, as you will constantly be disappointed and blow things people say out of proportion.

snip

I'm just going to refute your pointless wall of text with:

The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.


Have you ever heard someone say "Gee, you know why this Batman movie sucks? He doesn't have quite enough abs, bro. I totally can't fantasize about being him, dude. We should watch something else, brah, with better muscles.

Just because a man is shirtless doesn't make him sexualised (sexualisation is not a property inherent in an action, status or character, but depends entirely on authorial intent). People can find anything sexually attractive regardless of authorial intent, so saying "I find wrestlers hot" isn't proof that wrestlers are sexualised.

Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?


Let's resolve this the old fashioned way.

I want to see 10 women portrayed as sex objects in videogames that came out in the past 3 months. Only PC & Xbox games please. And since we're talking about western culture, no japanese videogames please.

I'll confess I understood very little of that post. Or the post you quoted. Is the last meant as sarcasm?

"Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?"

That made no sense to me whatsoever lol.

"
The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.
"

I could come up with counter examples to your sarcastic comment (seems to be a lot of that floating in this thread) but this is a politically correct forum so best not to.

Shall we take your statement to mean that you believe women don't want to look and feel sexy, or that men should stop fantasizing about being handsome muscular secret agents? Either way, a flame shield would be a good thing to grab.

Both.
What a women wears has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on how she wants to portray herself. All women are the same and decisions for making clothes are done in a vacuum, which no bearing what others think about clothing decisions. A women doesn't want to look or feel sexy as that would be objectifying her or treating her as a sex object, which is a bad thing.

A man fantasizing about being a handsome muscular secret agent is in fact chauvinist, sexist, misogynistic and is against all values in society.

 

[dmase]

I looked at NOW's recent news, many are perfectly valid causes that majority of people on this website could get behind. Anti-violence campaigns, roe vs wades, etc.

However this is just ridiculous. http://www.now.org/issues/media/hall-of-shame/index.php/advertising/super-bowl-ads-promote-sexist-attitudes-offensive-behavior

There is sex in commercials, there are stereotypes all over. I mean I can look at these commercials in plenty of ways, the go daddy commercial makes it seem like all nerds/geeks are the same as Walter. The audi commercial perpetrates the stereotype that Jocks are assholes that deserve their gf to be stolen. Then it supports heterosexual relationships over any homosexual relationship. Add that to the fact that these commercials occurred during the most "mainly" of sports where every men should be like those meet heads.

Are there commercials that deserve boycotts and complaints because of their sexism? Yeah but this is just nitpicky bullshit. You live in a consumerist world pick your fights where you'd actually do some good feminists. Instead of going out of your way to break gender norms... here is a hint if you need to go out of your way to break gender norms like body image then you are going against what you want as a person because feminism says I'm being used in this way. People have free will and you know occasionally they might have a personal preference for body image things that feminism calls submitting to a male dominated society.

 

[Darken12]

I'm just going to refute your pointless wall of text with:

The whole sexualization of women comes from women wanting to be sexualized. They want to have those perky breasts and perfect round buttocks. It's a fantasy for them, to be honest. When the camera zooms on a female body, it's because it's meant to be a fantasy, where a female member of the audience can put herself in the role of the sexy female cameo and feel pretty. Women don't want to be in positions of power, or to be portrayed as skillful. They want to be eyecandy for males.


Have you ever heard someone say "Gee, you know why this Batman movie sucks? He doesn't have quite enough abs, bro. I totally can't fantasize about being him, dude. We should watch something else, brah, with better muscles.

You haven't paid attention to all the stuff I've said about cinematography and the camera, have you? The differences between power fantasy and sexual fantasy are clear as day when you examine the way the camera engages the character. If the camera wanted to sell the idea of a sexy woman as a power fantasy for women, it wouldn't linger on her cleavage or ass (or any part of her body), it wouldn't feature close shots of anything but her face, and it would involve the woman doing something with her appearance. Just like a man with muscles in a power fantasy uses them to lift things, punch things and otherwise exert force unto the world, a woman who would use her appearance as a weapon would use it to accomplish her goals. The power fantasy is about agency. A woman needs to exercise her agency in order to fit the role of power fantasy, and most objectified female characters are allowed little to no agency by their creators.

Actually, I have heard something like that, though not phrased exactly so. I have definitely heard that X or Y actor weren't/wouldn't be convincing enough in their roles because they weren't big/ripped enough.

Soooo....just because I find Dead or Alive hot as hell (I don't, this is just for sake of this argument), it doesn't mean it's sexualized? Authorial intent? How the fuck do you know how the author wished to portray a character?

That's correct. If the authorial intent isn't to sexualise, it's not sexualised. That you find them sexy doesn't make them sexualised, as Rule 34 means that anything ever can be found sexy by someone.

You can discover authorial intent by the same way you discover another person's intentions in your daily life. We are not constantly broadcasting our intentions to the world, so we make assumptions about other people's intentions. Most of the time we're right, sometimes we're wrong. In general, we pick up cues very well, and Dead or Alive is plagued with such cues.

Let's resolve this the old fashioned way.

I want to see 10 women portrayed as sex objects in videogames that came out in the past 3 months. Only PC & Xbox games please. And since we're talking about western culture, no japanese videogames please.

Been there, done that in another thread, will gladly do it again:

Spoiler: Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings

Spoiler: Hitman Absolution

Spoiler: Rifts: Storm Legion

Spoiler: Assassin's Creed III

Spoiler: The War Z

Spoiler: Dead Space 3

Spoiler: Darksiders II

Spoiler: Borderlands 2

Spoiler: DmC: Devil May Cry

Spoiler: Batman: Arkham City Game of the Year Edition

I will say, though, that with so many restrictions (Western only, XBox or PC, last 3 months), I barely had 30 games or so, so it was actually harder than I thought, considering that over half of those are aimed at children or are about vehicles/robots/soldiers in power armour.