Question, If Anita Sarkeesian is Right, why is Jack Thompson Wrong?

[Draconalis]

Yeah, it's not like this [http://www.feministfrequency.com/2014/06/women-as-background-decoration-tropes-vs-women/] exists and is linked under her youtube video. Look at all those nonexistent sources Anita doesn't use to back her academic statement. There's so many!

Let's start clicking those links.

The first one is a youtube link to a woman who's a professor of politics.

Nathan Heflick, who is at least a psychologist, but I've yet to find any peer reviewed material.

Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher and professor of law and ethics

Karen E. Dill, social psychologist. She seems to have actually published in peer reviewed material, but I haven't read the articles to know what was said. Anita is known to cherry pick and take out of context.

But I will count that as a source... so... I reascend my earlier statement.

 

[Draconalis]

Oh it's not?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=media+gender+roles

Top two are huffington post links... strong evidence indeed.

 

[Pogilrup]

Oh it's not?

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=media+gender+roles

Top two are huffington post links... strong evidence indeed.

There are also scholarly articles. If you want, you can do a more filtered search.

 

[Therumancer]

This is a legit question, not trying to troll the fans, not trying to say, "She is the devil and needs to be shut down" this is a serious question. According to Anita Sarkeesian if us men play a video game and do something against woman, we will think its ok to do something against woman in real life (kill, rape, beat, etc)

Jack Thompson went on many tirades against video games claiming that if we played violent video games we will want to enact violence in real life.


Now then, answer me this, why is it that Anita is right but Jack Thompson is wrong, its basically the same thing, video games will influence us to do something wrong.

Anita is simply conveying a message that the left wing wants to hear, whether it's correct or not. She is an attention troll, and was one to begin with, but picked her political platform well, and as such as plenty of people who will defend her because of the feminist trappings, regardless if she's dead wrong about just about everything she says. To be honest as long as she's been around now you would have figured she would have realized the truth through exposure over time if she wasn't just trying to get attention... which has always been the bottom line.

Jack Thomson on the other hand was at least well intentioned, where Anita is out to cause trouble and get attention for her own sake, Jack already had attention and a platform, he was totally wrong, but he at least meant well. I actually have more respect for him due to his intentions even if I don't agree with him or what he was fighting for.

At any rate, it's not really "fair" to say that Anita and Jack are the same, because at the end of the day Anita doesn't really have all that many people who really support her, and those who do, tend to do it out of blind political faith and liking the labels that come with her. This is why the mere mention of her name can start major battles. She's a great self-promoter though and has managed to spin infamy and that attention into ambassadorships of a sort where those who aren't aware of her actual relationship with the gaming community see her as something other than a troll. Especially seeing as she tends to appeal to left wing institutions like a lot of colleges, and a lot of media networks based on the whole feminist angle. People who will generally give a platform to anyone who seems like they might be relevant if they can present some kind of crusade or potential threat to rally against.

Of course Anita and Jack both do a lot of damage to gaming. Jack of course presented games as being something inherently dangerous to society. Anita claims that games represent a threat to women as they encourage misogynistic attitudes and viewpoints, which in turn makes little boys into unintentional girl haters. Where Jack at least believed in his position, Anita is spewing just for attention.

At any rate you will generally get a unanimous amount of support against Jack Thomson, claim Anita is right, and your looking at multi-page threads and a serious battle. Of course it's to the point where only real wing nuts and the truly ignorant believe in her, so for the most part mentioning "Anita Sarkeesian is right" is a troll attempt to spawn that kind of a thread, which is why some places will pretty much delete anything having to do with her. Indeed one of the first suspicions on mentioning her at all is that someone is trolling.

Mentioning Anita Sarkeesian in connection to video games is like mentioning FATAL in connection to paper and pencil RPGs.

 

[Nieroshai]

I don't know if this will un-bury the OP, but few of her sources are credible and the remainder are questionable in their neutrality. I don't understand why people don't think tenured professors can have agendas of their own.

 

[carnex]

Difference is simply that Jack says that games infuse that effect into humans, which is false, while Anita talks about reinforcing (never been really researched) already harmful existing standards of society (proven false many times over)

Fact is their positions are different and driven by different ideas (political power vs political agenda) but both are equally false.

 

[Pogilrup]

Difference is simply that Jack says that games infuse that effect into humans, which is false, while Anita talks about reinforcing (never been really researched) already harmful existing standards of society (proven false many times over)

Fact is their positions are different and driven by different ideas (political power vs political agenda) but both are equally false.

Ahem

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=media+gender+roles

Are you saying all that research is false or unproven? 100% percent of it?

EDIT: Yes I know that the lmgtfy is unfiltered, but there are research papers showing correlations. I unfortunately can't link most of them due to the paywall.

 

[Saucycarpdog]

While I don't like to get involved in anita sarkeesian threads, I under stand that there is an argument over what she said in her videos. Hope this clears this up.

Spoiler

17:33
Of course, we can?t really talk about sexual objectification without also addressing the issue of violence against women, since the two are intimately connected. Once a person is reduced to the status of objecthood, violence against that object becomes intrinsically permitted.

Spoiler

28:26
So why does any of this matter? What?s the real harm in sexually objectifying women? Well, the negative impacts of sexual objectification have been studied extensively over the years and the effects on people of all genders are quite clear and very serious. Research has consistently found that exposure to these types of images negatively impacts perceptions and beliefs about real world women and reinforces harmful myths about sexual violence.

Spoiler

29:15
But the negative effects on men are just as alarming, albeit in slightly different ways. Studies have found, for example, that after having viewed sexually objectified female bodies, men in particular tend to view women as less intelligent, less competent and disturbingly express less concern for their physical well being or safety. Furthermore this perception is not limited only to sexualized women; in what?s called the ?Spill Over Effect?, these sexist attitudes carry over to perceptions of all women, as a group, regardless of their attire, activities or professions.

Spoiler

29:46
Researchers have also found that after long-term exposure to hyper-sexualized images, people of all genders tend to be more tolerant of the sexual harassment of women and more readily accept rape myths, including the belief that sexually assaulted women were asking for it, deserved it or are the ones to blame for being victimized.

 

[Something Amyss]

The difference, I would think, is that Anita has never tried to ban video games for being "sexist."

I doubt most people would have given a crap about Jack Thompson if he wasn't suing game companies and trying to get games outlawed or restricted.

Anita makes dull videos about clichés.

Edit: I'm just going to clarify here that I'm not starting from the position that Anita Sarkeesian is right. The difference between one person stating opinion and another trying to state opinion and legislate should be fairly self-evident to anyone not starting from the position of "Anita Sarkeesian is evil," though.

See her latest video, she pretty much made the claim that video games that harm woman will infleunce men to do the same.

Can we get an exact quote on this, please? I mean, if she said it, it should be easy to produce. Hell, Anita even provides transcripts so you don't have to watch the video again if you don't want.

 

[Zhukov]

Which to my admittedly limited knowledge is true.

It's not...

But hey, if you don't believe me, feel free to look up all the sources Anita cites to back her academic statement.

Spoiler alert: She doesn't have any.

But yeah... if it were true, people would commit far more crimes.

Like I said, I'm not knowledgeable on the subject.

Although your devastating argument of "It's not" still isn't quite swaying me.

Given the last line of your post, I think you missed my meaning anyway. There's a big difference between "capable of influencing attitudes toward subject matter" (what I said) and "directly causes crime" (what you said). Which was kind of my original point.

I actually did a few quick searches for academic studies on the matter before replying. Sadly, it seems most online journals keep their content behind paywalls. They only let us plebs see previews and abstracts, such as this one [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0092656681900404].

 

[Callate]

As near as I can tell, she isn't saying that objectification, sexualization, or violence in video games directly causes rape or violence towards women, but that it causes a desensitization towards such acts in real life and an increased willingness to believe that, for example, women promote or encourage the act of rape by their actions.

That's not quite the same as saying rape in video games=rape in the real world.

But what she does say is still fairly lame, insulting, and lazy. Citing "studies" without giving specifics, the not atypical trick of failing to mention whether an "observed effect" in a media study could still be measured hours, days, or weeks after the media viewing, topping off with a pseudoscientific "and if you think it's not you, you're wrong, it's especially you"- Oh come on. This is the kind of bullshit that kills any attempts from non-true-believers to actually engage.

"...Well, since you've all got it wrapped up in a bow that says any dissent is automatically disregardable, I guess I won't bother..."

I'll be honest that I have a strong belief in free speech and expression that trumps any number of other causes, however well-meaning, under the premise that without free expression those causes could never establish themselves in the first place (and all too frequently good causes are eager to slam the gate behind them once they start to gain some momentum). I have to believe that we're capable of taking in information and processing it in at least a semi-rational manner rather than immediately going off half-cocked on the manipulation embedded in the message. I believe that seeing an erotic movie might make someone sexually aroused, or hearing a pumping rock song might make someone aggressive, or seeing a story of heroism might cause one to feel a surge of patriotism- but that those things are largely temporary, they're part of a broader experience, and they don't tend to unilaterally cause someone to act in a particular way without colliding with a million other pieces of learning and experience that have formed the person.

If I had to concede that we were such shallow meat-machines that we could be completely over-written so easily- even without that being the author's intent- then video games wouldn't even be in the top hundred places I would be looking to swing some hammers. Politics, commercial advertisement, religion- if we're all such sheep, never mind a little chauvanism; we're ready to rip the entire human race apart for the first PhD in Communications to get their evil genius on.

But I don't think we are, and I think it's pretty damn sad that there are going to be people citing Sarkeesian's alleged authority to suggest otherwise.

 

[Amir Kondori]

At the point that Anita makes the jump into suggesting that video games influence our beliefs and behavior she is wrong. Just as wrong as Thompson suggesting that violent video games make people more violent.

 

[The Almighty Aardvark]

They had much in common after all, both being people who never where into video games nor had any interest in starting to play them, but still wanted them censored and changed to suit their image of how it should be.

I am always seeing people making these claims about those crazy feminists trying to censor our games when all they're really doing is criticizing an aspect of them.

If a game critic pans a game he thinks is bad, is he engaging in censorship? When Yahtzee says we should have less grey-brown military shooters is he trying to censor the game industry? How is criticizing a game (or more accurately, the general trend of games) and promoting changes only censorship when it's about broadening their audience beyond straight while males or how a demographic is overwhelmingly depicted?

Anita Sarkeesian isn't trying to censor the games industry, she's trying to build a case for why we should maybe start realizing that videogames can be for more than just a select group of people, and we should be treating characters in those other groups as more than just convenient plot driving stereotypes.

I'm not even that fond of her, I've found many other people far better at expressing the message she's trying to get across. But criticizing something is miles away from censorship. She's not saying people can't do this, she's saying they shouldn't

 

[Suhi89]

The answer is probably politics and tribalism. When someone on your side of an argument argues for something you are much more likely to take their argument at face value and rationalise your reasons for doing so. I think we all do. I know I do but I try to check myself.

Both say that media influences our attitudes and behaviours. Both are right to a certain extent, but the actual manifestation of that influence isn't entirely predictable. You can't stand on your pulpit and claim that playing violent video games encourages violence in young people, or actively killing prostitutes encourages young men to thing of women as disposable objects, just because it seems obvious to you. You need to perform a number of well conducted, large sampled, representative studies to determine the exact effect. Otherwise you're just making shit up that seems plausible.

An aside on studies. A large number of studies, despite peer review, have poor methodology (don't use a large enough sample, don't use a representative sample, ask leading survey questions to get the desired result) and/or make claims that aren't supported by the data or do neither of those things and still churn out misleading results based on chance or maybe an unknown unaccounted for factor. This is true in the "hard" sciences and even more so in the social sciences where data manipulation is easier. On top of this, they are often then presented to the public as if they make claims that they don't actually make. Often, when you read the study itself, it explicitly says you can't make the conclusions that some media hack is trying to make.

Then you have publication bias, reviewers bias and readers bias. If you set out with an aim to get a certain result and you fail to get that result, you are less likely to publish your paper. If the paper agrees with the peer reviewers preconceived ideas, they are more likely to recommend it for publication. Then when you or I read the study, we are far more likely to try to find flaws in the methodology of a paper that goes against our already held beliefs and gloss over or even actively dismiss in debates the flaws of papers that conform to our already held beliefs.

All that was a very long winded way of saying that just because someone quotes a couple of studies, as both Jack Thompson and Anita Sarkeesian have done, it doesn't necessarily prove that they're right, or that their position is even supported by the paper they're citing. If a number of well performed studies came out and backed up either one of their conclusions I would sadly have to change my views, but I would be willing to bet a fair amount that for every one of those studies you'd get people on the escapist saying how obviously flawed the study is and it's nonsense and what do academics know anyway.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Who the fuck thinks that Anita is right? She's an idiot. She couldn't construct a valid logical argument if her life depended on it.

 

[Mordwyl]

I came across this little number somewhere on this very forum yesterday, where I think it applies. I'm all for equality, but she's a fraud and is not immune to creating propaganda to further her own agenda.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

Anita probably gets a little more leeway because she seems (to me anyway) more about a sort of grass roots spread the message that something should be changed. Jack Thompson on the other hand tried to actually invoke the law; which steps the game up considerably.

As for me, Jack Thompson as been reduced to a punchline from gaming's early days and Anita's just one of many voices in the wilderness trying to make her opinion and point heard and popular. I'm not fussed about either of them. At least with her I could agree on some broad points because I'd like to see game protagonists more diverse than 30-something white guy and a slacking off of certain old attitudes towards women in media in general even if she's chosen a poor way to go about it. With Jack Thompson, all I could do was man the barricades to make sure the dickhead never got one foot in the door.

That said if she ever talks smack about Bayonetta, she's dead to me.

 

[JayRPG]

Not quite, both argue video game influence people to do bad things....

Like both said, you are oversimplifying her statements. I'd suggest to actually try and understand what she argues.

She argues that in open world games you can do whatever you want to women with little or no repercussions, but she argues this point as if you can't do the exact same thing to all the men in the game too, or any NPC in the game, regardless of gender, for that matter.

She made that 'point' (I use point loosely because it's a very misleading statement at best) in one of her videos, directly citing Hitman of all games, and then Just cause 2, and only showed clips of the player shooting up a gentlemen's club and conveniently ended it before you see him shoot the bouncers, who are men.

 

[DOOM GUY]

I don't think Anita is right at all, but I don't pay any mind to her really, 'cause it's not worth my time.