Removed

[Bara_no_Hime]

**snip**

Great article! Thanks for writing it! You are extra awesome!

I think a LOT of Escapist members could learn from this article. The examples given aren't the only examples of horrid behavior towards women in gamer culture - not by a long shot - and they need to end.

Thanks for writing this article and posting Ms. Hernandez's article - I've bookmarked both for future reference.

Edit: Also - wait, I could make money by streaming my gaming online?
Too bad it requires I game on a PC. If I could stream myself playing Skyrim on PS3, I'd consider creating an twitchTV account.

Edit 2: Also, I think Mia Rose is my new hero.

Edit 4: Note changes above based on clarification later in the thread.

 

[Saladfork]

Spoiler: I do not usually do this, but do not open this if you don't like profanity because I used a lot of it

Summarized: An internet **** is a **** to other online cunts, who may or may not have cunts, and they are in turn cunts to him, and cunts like us like watching them be cunts and commenting about how they are massive cunts.

As much as I agree that the golden mean fallacy is something to be avoided, both of these extremes (woman-hating shitheads and self-proclaimed 'feminists' with persecution complexes) are deserving of scorn at pretty much equal degrees. I can only hope they all fall into internet obscurity soon.

Also, apostrophes apparently cause an error inside of spoiler tags, so I had to extend my contractions.

 

[Samasson]

This discourse getting a lot of attention is overall a good thing. Regardless of what methodology you employ examination of your consumption and culture is almost never a negative activity. In this case I think it is incredibly important as there is not a lot of critical theory examining gender dynamics in video games. This lack of discourse ultimately speaks to the lack of artistic recognition most games suffer. However I think it is interesting that any militant and disrespectful reply to these critical investigations only serves to focus the critical gender theorists eye on the gaming culture and gaming artifacts. This is due to the fact that militant responses serve only to expose defensive symptoms of a much larger issue with gender and sexual representations in the larger gaming canon.

Ultimately the more critical theory is leveled at video games the closer the medium comes to gaining recognition as an artistic and truly cultural force.

 

[Mr.Squishy]

Soooo, basically, his attitude boils down to 'girls are icky!'/'No girls allowed'.
Well, that's kind of silly, isn't it.

 

[Xanadu84]

I think the extent of this anti-women mentality is...well, I hesitate to say blown out of proportion, but it is not the beast a lot of people say it is. The people who are genuinely troll-ish towards girls are a tiny minority, and most of that minority is either attempting to be sexist ironically, or being sexist purely for the sake of trolling ANYONE, not women in particular. Take an actual sample of viewpoints and mentalities of people expressing opinions about games, and its genuinely challenging to find a person who espousing the "Fake geek girl" mentality amidst a sea of people decrying that mentality. Even the monsters of this equation are often times not quite as terrible as they are made out to be.

There are DEFINATELY problems with how the community at large treats women, but those problems are not problems that can be solved by burning our flimsiest straw men. They will involve actively demanding a broader variety of games capable addressing issues of gender in more nuanced ways. It will involve actively dissecting common practices of how games are presented, and developers recognizing problems that they had no intentions of including. It will involve taking risks to add content to games that is not proven to make money, and representing women in a way that currently exists as little more then the rare exception. Imagine a world where if every year, if 100 games are released, if just 5 of them had a Alyx Vance, or Jade, Action Reporter? Or a game that sold sexy males as blatantly as others sell sexy women, and asks that I accept THAT as just part of the price for admission to a gaming experience.

I think that you really hit on a great point with how the community is afraid of loseing legitimacy. The whole culture is afraid of the rise of the casual, of the dumbing down of games, of the obsession with graphics, and many have a glimmer of hope in games elevating itself to where it is seen as just as legitimate, is not BETTER, then movies, books, music or the like. Girls represent this threat in a small way (Through a perception of the rise of the casual gamer), but in a much larger way, the fear is that if games are sexist, then suddenly, they are just defective toys. And that's wrong. Games can have plenty of problems and be legitimate. Just because it does something wrong doesn't mean that it doesn't do many other things right.we may not live in an age where people are very positive on self-criticism, but in the long run, it is better to be self-critical. Its better to acknowledge that a bunch of games can represent something sexist, and it doen't mean you have to stop likeing those game. It just means that there are even better games possible if we think around that sexism.

 

[Catfood220]

Women playing video games? Unacceptable! They should be in the kitchen making my dinner and washing and ironing my clothes. That is of course if she is not busy giving birth to my son in the kitchen while making my dinner and washing and ironing my clothes.

Uppity women, what gives them the right to do the same things as us men folk...next they'll want careers and the vote. Not on my watch, not on my watch.

 

[Samasson]

I think the extent of this anti-women mentality is...well, I hesitate to say blown out of proportion, but it is not the beast a lot of people say it is.

I think to some extent you may be right based on the fact that the Tropes vs. Women Kickstarter absolutely shattered its fundraising goal. However, it is important to examine such things anyway given that just because an anti-woman mentality is not overt does not mean that is does not exist. But you do raise a fair objection to the backlash towards the overt anti-women gamers.

 

[HellsingerAngel]

This strikes me as a very weird thing to say either way. Say somebody accidentally bumps into you in the street. Happens sometimes, especially in crowded spots, and it's generally no big deal. Now you're alone in the streets except for this one other person, who makes a beeline for you just to walk into you, and rudely takes off. Superficially nothing is different, certainly the end result of both cases is that you've been bumped into, but do you mean to tell me the fact that in the second case the guy clearly wanted to annoy you of all people and went out of his way to achieve that doesn't irk you in the slightest?

To be fair, that's a flawed example. Ganking is an intended course of action. A better example would be to say that you're walking down an alley alone and someone coming towards you bumps into you because causing you grief will make him happier. A few moments later, a second person does the exact same thing but because you have blonde hair and that person just loathes people with blonde hair and wants to make their lives miserable. Both actions cause the aggressor to feel better and the victim to feel worse. Is there really a point to saying one is more acceptable than the other? Both cause the victim to be grieved and both are only for the personal gain of the aggressor. Both are equally bad, though arguably more so aggressor #1 because his act is just evil for the sake of evil, where as aggressor #2 at least has grounds for a discussion as the grief is identifiable.

OT: This article seemed promising but made me sad at the end. First and foremost, I'm not sure why questioning the credentials of someone is a bad thing. Isn't that what we're supposed to do before taking in the full breadth of a study? I mean, I could construct a study of equal worth this evening about how women are inferior gamers to men and get it published if credentials weren't a factor. I think it's a good thing that people are curious about the source of what they're about to ingest to see if it's the real deal or just another trash study done to skew the hearts and minds of people in this on going flame war.

The second, and worst, part of the article is the ending. While it doesn't completely discredit what's been said, it certainly changes the entire perspective of the article. Treating Shrine like a five year-old child is just petty and only goes to prove that the author is no better than Shrine himself. I know it's meant to be taken with a grain of salt but it's disgusting that for the entire article you praise the higher road and then stoop down to the sub-basement of mockery at the end to get that one last kidney shot in. In short, the article wraps up by mimicking the types of behaviours it spent debasing which then creates a paradox of hypocrisy.

In the end, everyone needs someone like Shrine. If people like him never existed, we'd never question our philosophies or affirm them as correct. Opposition is a driving force in our day to day lives and having a misogynist or two floating around will drive that many more women to achieve great things because someone simply said they couldn't. Creating articles like these, to me, is just another argument of "why doesn't everyone like me?" People are going to hate you just for being you but that doesn't mean it's right or wrong. If the women of the internet are confident they will be a driving force in the future without having to have these lone champions carving a path through all the men that are uncomfortable with them roaming about and making Chuck Norris jokes in The Barrens of Azeroth. I think Miss Ardent put it best when talking about women in the video games industry being prevalent when she said the best thing any women in the business can do is simply do her job to the best of her abilities and people will notice how great they are and I believe that to be true. Dramatic theatrics only serves to rile the forces within to reenact the deplorable behaviour you aim to avoid instead of simply being present and proving you're here to stay simply by playing by (most of) the same rules.

 

[TAGM]

Things have slowed down since the end of Sarkeesian's Kickstarter campaign, but gamers remain doubtful. People have gone on to question her credentials, wondering whether she's a real gamer or a real academic - next you'll tell me you?re not even convinced she's a real person.

Ok, stop.
I'll agree there are issues with how females in the gaming culture are treated. I'll agree that Sarkeesian got a lot of flak. Everything else this guy says is, at the very least, debatable, if not pretty much outright true.

But to say that everyone who questions her abilities as an academic are all just doing it out of fear and loathing because "She mite take mah videagaems away!" is akin to thinking anyone who kills a cockroach is doing it because they're evil nasty snake sympathizers. As in, Not true in any sense.
You want proof, go look for the various YouTube videos pointing out how she basically manipulated the comment sections to siphon off hate speech to a place she wanted (Or at the very least seemed to), how her other arguments have basically held no real merit, and how she at the very least seems to have the academic integrity of a 5 year old.

And how's that for an irony - The article mentions, among other things, how:

Fear is an undeniably powerful motivation, but it's also irrational. It drives you towards rash decisions based more on crude instincts than conscious thought. It poisons any attempt of reasonable discussion.

And then actively goes on to poison an attempt to discuss Sarkeesian by dismissing the other point of view as all based on fear.
Nice way to prove a point, I guess.
Here, lemme use his infallible logic for you on that point, or at least how the logic looks to me from the article;
Clearly he's doing this because he's fearful of his games being ruined by those filthy sexists! I mean, there's just NO other explanation what-so-ever, like, I dunno, empathy with women or just not wanting to be a dick, he's CLEARLY just doing it because he's a feminist sympathizer!

 

[Xanadu84]

I think the extent of this anti-women mentality is...well, I hesitate to say blown out of proportion, but it is not the beast a lot of people say it is.

I think to some extent you may be right based on the fact that the Tropes vs. Women Kickstarter absolutely shattered its fundraising goal. However, it is important to examine such things anyway given that just because an anti-woman mentality is not overt does not mean that is does not exist. But you do raise a fair objection to the backlash towards the overt anti-women gamers.

And I did go into that in my post. It is a very important topic to discuss, especially because though the majority of us jump on the opportunity to bash the truly vile sexists in our ranks, all we are doing is burning straw men. There are problems with the way that girls are treated in games, and the subtle problems are much more problematic then the, "Get back in the kitchen" jokes. Gamers as a culture are going through this sort of identity crisis as more and more mainstream players filter in, and as genres and design philosophies grow and vary. As a result, a lot of the attempts to retain an identity become arbitrary and unnecessary, and a lot of people don't even realize that they are imposing these gates more harshly on women. It doesn't help that the old mantra of, "Sex sells" can make it difficult to distinguish between a girl gamer who happens to be attractive and a cynical marketing ploy by an industry that itself ignores the female demographic.

 

[Agent Cross]

[HEADING=1]Fear Is the Mind-Killer[/HEADING]

I loved that novel as a kid, and it's one of my favorite works of science-fiction. That being said, and this is just some friendly criticism. Don't use that quote. Scrap it. Unless you are going for irony.

 

[knight steel]

DIRECTED TOWARDS THE GANKER [in the link]:
Look inside
Look inside your tiny mind
Now look a bit harder
Cause we're so uninspired, so sick and tired of all the hatred you harbor

So you say
It's not okay to be gay
Well I think you're just evil
You're just some racist who can't tie my laces
Your point of view is medieval

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please don't stay in touch

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause your words don't translate
And it's getting quite late
So please don't stay in touch

Do you get
Do you get a little kick out of being slow minded?
You want to be like your father
It's approval you're after
Well that's not how you find it

Do you
Do you really enjoy living a life that's so hateful?
Cause there's a hole where your soul should be
Your losing control of it and it's really distasteful

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please don't stay in touch

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause your words don't translate and it's getting quite late
So please don't stay in touch

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,
Fuck you

You say, you think we need to go to war
Well you're already in one,
Cause its people like you
That need to get slew
No one wants your opinion

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause we hate what you do
And we hate your whole crew
So please don't stay in touch

Fuck you
Fuck you very, very much
Cause your words don't translate and it's getting quite late
So please don't stay in touch

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you

 

[Samasson]

I think the extent of this anti-women mentality is...well, I hesitate to say blown out of proportion, but it is not the beast a lot of people say it is.

I think to some extent you may be right based on the fact that the Tropes vs. Women Kickstarter absolutely shattered its fundraising goal. However, it is important to examine such things anyway given that just because an anti-woman mentality is not overt does not mean that is does not exist. But you do raise a fair objection to the backlash towards the overt anti-women gamers.

And I did go into that in my post. It is a very important topic to discuss, especially because though the majority of us jump on the opportunity to bash the truly vile sexists in our ranks, all we are doing is burning straw men. There are problems with the way that girls are treated in games, and the subtle problems are much more problematic then the, "Get back in the kitchen" jokes. Gamers as a culture are going through this sort of identity crisis as more and more mainstream players filter in, and as genres and design philosophies grow and vary. As a result, a lot of the attempts to retain an identity become arbitrary and unnecessary, and a lot of people don't even realize that they are imposing these gates more harshly on women. It doesn't help that the old mantra of, "Sex sells" can make it difficult to distinguish between a girl gamer who happens to be attractive and a cynical marketing ploy by an industry that itself ignores the female demographic.

I think you are spot on with your post and it is very important to bring up how blurry these issues can get when talking about these sorts of issues. Especially when we start to cross the lines between the actual game content and the real people working as booth babes regardless of whether or not their involvement in gaming culture is authentic. I think it is going to be very interesting to see how these sorts of criticisms and discourses develop as the gaming community becomes more and more splintered. Only time will tell if the 'hardcore' gaming community will be able to relinquish the sort of Sartrean bad-faith that comes from 'retaining an identity' as you put it.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Yeah, THIS IS THE EXACT REASON I AM ASHAMED TO TELL PEOPLE THAT I PLAY VIDEOGAMES AND WANT TO GIVE THEM UP ALTOGETHER!! Sorry for the caps, but I just had to get that out of my system. This is the single most disgusting gaming-related news I've seen all year. ARGH, I feel like kicking that little fucker's teeth down his throat right now. I cannot for the life of me think how a sane person can adapt such a vile mentality. My guess is that the guy's crush didn't want to go to prom with him and then he thought "Hurr all wimmen urrr eivull hurr durr".

Fuck that fucking fucker.

 

[sanquin]

->femnazi<- *sigh* What a stupid word.

Pray tell, how did she scam people? And if she indeed did scam people, where is the outrage from the ones that actually had a stake in this (as in: people who paid for the kickstarter)? Do you really want to imply that regular updates for the backers about her project (that obviously had enough information to keep her backers satisfied) are 'scam'?

And no. If we ignore the morons at 4chan (who, in my opinion, make up a big chunk of the gaming community) she got attacked because *gosh* she wanted to tackle a certain subject in video games. That's it. People got overly protective because they somehow assume that calling a certain aspect of a game sexist / bad makes them sexist / bad or that the person is calling them that. It is quite obvious a stupid conclusion but this is the simple reason as to why Anita got the hate she got.

Because at the end of the day: Her series is not going to change a thing, especially if her work continues to be on the same quality as it was until now. So why make all the fuzz?

It sounds like you haven't read a threat a while ago. Even her backers are restless. But they keep quiet for fear of being thrown out of the 'regular' updates and such. The 'regular' updates were mostly her doing interviews and going to meetings, with only a 'still working on it' about the actual project. One guy voiced concerns in an e-mail to her, and she bashed him for it. Another guy posted his concerns on a more public forum, and was banned from the updates list entirely for it.

And your last point is exactly what I mean. She has a web series that costs her barely anything. Heck, it probably costs her nothing but the camera she uses. Yet she suddenly needs money from kickstarter to do a documentary of some kind? There is no indication whatsoever that it will be of any higher quality than her youtube video's. Furthermore, did you see the photo of the games she bought? There were quite a few in there that had nothing to do with gender roles at all. Plus, she mysteriously suddenly had the money to buy an expensive new car after her kickstarter ended. That's why I call her a scammer.

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.

 

[DeadpanLunatic]

I have removed my words from this site.