I threw away a water-damaged copy of “The Selfish Gene” the other day because I find his writing tedious.
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I’m glad he apologized, too, but I too, still have problems with him.
I still haven’t gotten to The God Delusion, actually. His public actions around events like this hasn’t made me too happy.
You know he’s married to Lala Ward?
I do now, but I did not know who she is/was. Ding think I saw those episodes (I’ve seen very little Doctor Who - wasn’t broadcast in South Dakota when I grew up, and read the books instead. Cringe.).
I did not know that. I’ve concluded that there is a “Philosophy Delusion” which is simply another form of “The God Delusion,” which has cooled my interest in many subjects. I think many people only figure that out at the end of their career and have a bitter deathbed experience.
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Ah, yes, the incident where a strong, independent woman was put in imminent danger by having a guy ask her out.
You do tend to go on when you get angry.
I’m more bothered that, in order to maintain a safe, equitable world for women, we have to keep the junior high school brats in line.
Honestly, I’m not a gamer, but when I hear team chat that goes into violent, misongynist, etc., territory, it’s kids. That, or people who are mentally ill. But God forbid a person bring up mental health when talking about these issues.
Anyone ever watch the Youtube videos of Brianna Wu’s main harasser? The guy had one video where he flipped his Prius on the ice, on his way to go do, I don’t know, apparently he was going over to Brianna’s to teach her a lesson, and the fact that he crashed his Prius on the ice was proof that he was the real victim and that it was a conspiracy by Brianna. Somehow. And that guy in California who went on a shooting spree, indiscriminately killing men and women, because he said women were denying him sex. Mental illness. It’s not derailing to talk about treating the mentally ill, for Christ’s sake.
I’m not sure I had much of a point, other than to say, “Hey, when you view everything through a particular lens, everything looks like x.” I mean, hell, there’s probably someone somewhere who has dismissed that video of the kid talking about women denying him sex, and have “concluded” it was Grand Theft Auto and that we need to ban video games.
Also, going on-line to trolley people for an argument is going to put someone in contact almost entirely with people who have emotional problems, and responding to someone driving trollies is the quickest way to get into a spat with someone that has emotional problems. Of course we all do that sometimes, but endless delusional intensity and a thirst for revenge are pretty sure signs of a mental illness.
BTW Santa Barbara killer, Elliot Rodger was perfectly described some years ago in a book that described a socially inhibited malignant narcissist.
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Getting emotional is like the accelerator or maybe high gear on a car. Floor it when you’re steering, and you’re not going to turn the way you should. When the road ahead is straight and clear, though, it helps you get where you’re going.
People like to criticize getting emotional, but I’ve never seen anything to convince the world is a better place when people stay dispassionate about abuse or injustice. Quite the contrary; progress works best when people are rational about it, but still most if not all seems to have come about because of people who were emotional about it too.
Well, marilove will know, but I think maybe this was a typo for pervasive? I agree that it isn’t persuasive to anybody who isn’t already inclined toward such things, but then it sure acted as a rallying point for many people who were, so I guess you could look at it either way.
Except we’ve been through this in detail; the paranoid harassers didn’t just dominate it but started it, and while they repeated a call for ethics in reporting, there was essentially no concern over instances of collusion except the supposed ones involving people like Quinn. Heck, the scandal that the reactionary movement grew around was one invented for the purpose.
The broader movement you are supposing of people simply against collusion was often claimed, but by all evidence seems never to have been an important part of gamergate. The death threats and harassment were always central to it, so much so that nobody could align with them without being able to at least overlook such hate.
I understand you’re trying to be inclusive, but it really is considered a hate group for very good reason. You can only cast it otherwise by closing your eyes to what was actually happening and what hate groups are like.
I’ve heard of that one. It’s as Mindysan33 said: an incident where a woman felt somewhat threatened by having a guy ask her out in a confined space early in the morning, reasonably politely advised people not do that…and guys reacted by making it a “gate” because nobody tells them what to do, and apparently any hint of that is the SJW brigade trying to ruin the world for men.
In making it sound as if Watson had been the one overreacting, you are closing your eyes to all the details of what was really going on. Cui bono?
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If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu
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Spot on about the Watson Elevator Occurrence.
If you look at the original response by Watson It comes off as a gentle rebuke; a sort of playful chastisement. It felt totally proportional to the social gaff the guy made. It was then blown up into something else by people who didn’t even bother to view her response. They just projected their own version of what (someone they deemed) an overreacting activist would say (i was in fear for my life and worse, etc) and then used this to heap abuse onto Watson and accuse her personally of overreacting!
Quite remarkable. I think it will be a case study for years to come in how bias can make people blind to the facts of a case.
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For some context, @DocMelonhead is an ex-gamergater, an apostate, if you will. It’s only natural that he have some empathy with individuals that were his… colleagues is the wrong word, something like that. To feel otherwise would be close to sociopathic. He does not have the luxury of viewing the cohort as a faceless and easily defined other.
Doesn’t mean it isn’t a hate-group, though.
@docmelonhead - let need know if I should delete or edit anything here
A noble sentiment, if somewhat reductive.
Because even if there is an unjust power balance in favour of elephants, does that make all tactics employed by mice legitimate? And to break with the metaphor for a minute - given the fact that human beings are flawed, complex individuals, it also holds that at least some of those on the wrong end of a power imbalance are going to be proper assholes. Or maybe just people who do sloppy work. Or shameless opportunists.Or all of the above. Do we extend banner support to them just because they are part of a marginalized group? Do they get a magical free pass? Or do we accept that they are not beyond constructive criticism.
I submit that the best movements for social change are those that don’t close ranks to defend false idols because they are worried about showing weakness. Get to that stage, and you’ve already lost, or you need to start afresh.
‘Fellow travellers’?
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I despise ISIS (and the Taliban, aQ, etc), even while I understand that they didn’t come out of nowhere and that (some of) their objectives are legitimate.
But none of that applies to GG. GG is populated by arseholes, who have no valid platform or objectives. AS, ZQ, etc are not arseholes, they were just going about their day until a particularly hateful part of teh intarwebs landed on their heads (or tails, if you will).
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Well, you could say “fellow tools of hate propaganda that promotes exploitation of all available resource for their own Greed” if you wanted to go all out.
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Last night, my attention was drawn to some articles on efforts by white supremacist and far right groups to infiltrate the left. Some of Gamergate’s efforts fit the pattern.
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing; Racism, Anti-Semitism and Fascism: Infiltrating the Left
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Well, you know how far right wingers love to spread rumors of infiltrators - OMG!!!
You mean the incident where a man wouldn’t leave a woman alone very late at night after she tried to get rid of him, followed her into an elevator, and literally put her in a corner? And then most of the men at the conference when they heard about it said “what’s so bad about getting asked out?” That incident?
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Yup - exactly as I’ve been saying in all of these discussions.
Congrats basement-dwelling losers: You’ve given your enemy fame and a lifelong career trajectory.
Congrats white knights / Sarkeesian supporters: You’ve validated your opponents existence and viewpoint by responding to it, and you’ve made enemies of otherwise neutral gamers who you’ve thrust unwillingly into this fight irrespective of our views or behaviour.
Congrats BB/Time/everyone writing GG articles: You’ve collected a bunch of cash on impressions from all the peeps!
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My (and others who make the point without resorting to name calling/sexism/threats) problem with Anita’s videos is that she purposefully and manipulatively plays games in ways that 99.9% of people would not and makes out like it’s part of the story. That’s dishonest. Yes if you’re a sociopath there’s a lot of fucked up shit you can make happen in games - just like you’d be able to use kids toys to recreate 9/11 for an anniversary spectacular. Doing so wouldn’t make the toys bad, it would make the person playing with them a dick.
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Well, I agree with all that, but there is one area of “feminism” in gaming that I think could be generally better: always let players freely choose between female and male avatars.
I’m still utterly unconvinced that anything but a tiny, tiny number of women want to play the kind of shooting / stabbing / killing / stuff constantly blowing up kind of games that I enjoy. (I do not object in any way to other kinds of games existing, of course, that would be ridiculous.)
But for the ladies that do enjoy maiming humans online as much as I do, sure, at least have the option to play as a female avatar.
(I just finished GTA 5 and the story is absolutely written from a 100% male perspective with all male main characters. I mean you end up in strip clubs as part of the story. The whole thing is more awash in testosterone than an issue of Maxim magazine. But even there, online you can play as a female avatar, at least.)
