Hrm, where have I heard an argument like that before?
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Yeah, gender differences seem to show up in the most surprising places. Iâd put violence up there with porn, personally, since it scratches many of the same itches for me:
More than 1 in 4 dudes reading this have likely watched porn in the last 24 hours. I know I haveâŚ
Anyway, bringing me back to
This presupposes a one-way causality which is an unrealistic oversimplification. People form the society, while meanwhile, society also forms the people. We are presented with goals and problems, tools for solving them, and punishments/rewards for this - all tailored to what can be âreasonably expectedâ for a given âkind of personâ. You either get involved and control what sort of person you are / can be, or somebody else will control you instead.
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There was an interesting observation in one of the gender difference crime articles, noting that womenâs lack of violent crime could be due to social inequality â and youâd expect to see the violent crime stats for women increase and become closer to menâs violent crime stats over time, as social equality for women improved through the 1950s, 60s, 70s, etc.
No such increase has been observed, though.
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Or it could be that most men are conditioned to be jealous fools with poor problem-solving skills, in which case womenâs stats would be unaffected by this. The statistics are meaningless without defining what a man or woman is, or even what crime is. What is the sex breakdown of legislators? The Justice Department? What conditioning was used to make a given âmanâ or âwomanâ? In signal terms, these are all feedback loops. Making them one-way is tempting, because it makes models and solutions much, much easier. Media criticism is an effort to putting some variables into the other feedback loops which comprise a system. It provides a more accurate picture than simply saying âOf course it died, itâs an oak tree!â, which is a lazy approach to explaining a problem away.
What is at stake here is not what people âjust happenâ to like or do, but what makes them who they become.
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Sorry ladies, those CEO jobs just werenât made for you. You should stop trying.
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This assumption is part of the problem.
About 70 percent of female gamers said they played as male characters online in hopes of sidestepping sexual harassment
Which is exactly what I do since online spaces arenât safe for us.
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Theyâre not aimed at women; theyâre aimed at âwomenâ, just as the games being referred to by Sarkeesian and posters here on this thread are aimed at âmenâ rather than men. The point is that the games would be more interesting to more people if they werenât aimed at stereotypes of gender. Your self-perception might be closely enough matching to the stereotype to enjoy most games, but what if even more people could enjoy the same games in their own way? Among other things, the game investors would make more money, which is supposed to be a good thing in a capitalist society.
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The other take-away seems to be the news that Discourse, being non-violent, is implicitly for non-men.
And Iâm just going to throw the Crime Simulator out here, once again.
NB: where the heck is @anon50609448; she hasnât posted since March 20 (according to her profile). : 
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I donât think how I played Watch Dogs had any effect on whether or not the main characterâs niece gets killed and he then has to protect his sister. Youâre familiar with âwomen in refrigeratorsâ, yes? How anyone plays the game has nothing to do with it. 100% of the people who played that still experience the tired old trope of âthreaten a manâs women to motivate him.â
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âcompletely legitimateâ and âHitmanâ should never appear in the same sentence. Fer chrissakes, the series featured (trope warning) a gang of leather-clad BDSM dominatrix catholic nun assassins.
You may not be interested in critiques of how Cosmo or any other media that promulgates stereotypical ideas of women, but itâs a recurring theme for some cool bloggers.
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OMG
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The last day of this thread represents a good summary of why Gamergate got such a spanking from the media. The media, it bears reminding, being those among us who are paid money to tell stories every day.
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Curiously, the guy who wrote the book the Why do Men Fight thread is about, wrote another book about Storytelling [I first heard of this book yesterday in that thread; looking forward to reading it [the storytelling book]].
Something plainly obvious but marginally-argued (Sarkeeisan) gets talked at by folks (Gamergate) who think that complex objections to specific points and examples will communicate something meaningful about the whole. But what they miss is that their reaction reinforces a simple story about their inability to perceive the context in which those specifics (and their reactions to them) are understood by others.
The amusement (for smarmier mainstream writers) has been in consciously exploiting these discrepancies. But its also true that online forum-type environments are so inherently rewarding to that communication style that Gamergate will always think it is winning.
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That audience may explain why the things she points out are so common but doesnât change the validity of pointing them out, and I think this objection is a good illustration of whatâs really the issue here.
Itâs not really any of the things Sarkeesian has actually said about games. As people have pointed out, most of that is an extremely straightforward look at them from a feminist perspective. Yes, she may occasionally miss a mark or exaggerate, but itâs very far from the claims of manipulative dishonesty you see. To the contrary, both the analysis and mistakes are of the sort you generally see all the time for books, movies, art in general, and yes, even menâs or womenâs magazines.
What sheâs doing that is so radical is saying anything about games at all. Treating them as something comparable to other media that you can look at from a critical perspective, instead of something âfor menâ and so somehow beyond her consideration. At heart, it seems to me like almost all the objections to her work have been over that general concept more than any particulars, as in this case.
Personally, though, I have a tough time seeing it as a defensible complaint. No other media has ever been immune to criticism for how it portrays one demographic just because it targets another, and if we were talking about any split other than gender I doubt many here would entertain the idea.
And video games arenât just puerile time-sinks for guys, but a major part of our culture on the whole, of the sort that deserves such examination. You know, I can remember gamers being proud to hold them up as a form of art, something worthy to be taken seriously; and heck, I can remember Penny Arcade making fun of the idea things could be beyond criticism.
Sarkeesian is a taste of the serious consideration many of us have argued games deserved, and I for one am very disappointed so much of the response has been to instead try to claim them as something people like her shouldnât talk about.
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I have a few extra copies of âThe God Delusionâ if you are interested.
Extra, because I was working in Kansas for an extended period of time, and noticed that my hotel nightstands always had a copy of the Bible and the Book of Mormon. So I started trying to leave behind copies of Dawkins books, because that seemed like a pretty hilarious thing for the next occupants to find.
The hotel maids, unfortunately, were very good about checking for items left behind, and my book was always waiting for me at the front desk the next time I checked in.
Itâs not a bad read, but the title makes it sound like something it isnâtâa fact he acknowledges in the preface, and attributes to pressure from his publisher.
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Right now Iâm going to get down to brass tacks about why Iâve trolled on this subject, under more than one name in the past.
I canât stand knee-jerk reactions.
BoingBoing is one place I see it, but I see it elsewhere. Not only do I see the kneejerk reactions, but when someone who has spared more than 10 seconds thought weighs in, people feel the need to angrily defend their initial kneejerk reaction.
Take Blurred Lines, for example.
If you want more proof that the repetitive âI know you want itâ chorus isnât creepy, letâs do a closer reading of the other lyrics. The end of the chorus goes: âThe way you grab me/ must wanna get nasty/ go ahead, get at me.â The last part, âgo ahead, get at meâ very clearly kills any ârapeyâ vibe. In fact, heâs putting the ball in her court by telling her to make the move and not the other way around. Heâs saying, âYouâre clearly turned on by me. Go for it.â (Again: Douche? Sure. Rapist? Probably not.)
And thatâs about all Iâll say about how a hyper-douchey, mildly misogynist, ultimately insipid and forgettable song about a guy awkwardly coming on to a girl who got âhandsyâ with him turned into the most misogynist, most controversial song of the decade. If not for the sturm und drang, it would have been forgotten by September 2013.
But kneejerk reactions arenât just how Blurred Lines, erm, âgateâ happened; thatâs also how Gamergate happened, how Elevatorgate happened, and how both Anita Sarkeesian and Stephen Moffatt ended up receiving death threats. Itâs also how every non-story blew up last year, whether they were angry because dudes were offended, or because people wanted justice for the oppressed.
And simmering anger is where conservative comment sections word salad comes from (âGod damn America Barry OâBummer socialist Marxist Muslim ruining America Hopey Changey!â), Gamergate objections to Anita Sarkeesian (âI donât like video games!â), Leigh Alexander (âIsnât she the one who made that racist tweet about âhood ratsâ?â) or, hell, look at how any time an issue championed by menâs rights groups gets brought up, how quick some people are to bring up fedoras, dudebros, and shoehorn in, say, âNot All Menâ. Or hell, Gamergaters automatically assuming thereâs absolutely no difference whatsoever between critique of video games, and calls for banning videogames, because Tropes Vs. Video Games reminds them of the NRAâs reaction to Sandy Hook.
All of this is a lead-up to me saying why I brought up the connotations of Wil Wheaton accusing GGâers of hysterics: because words mean things; but also, because weâre all human and sometimes we fuck up. Sometimes we even fuck up unintentionally because we genuinely donât know. How many people really realize that âhystericsâ is a comment about women? How many people really realize, without being told, that Chris Tuckerâs act has racist roots? Or how many people have you heard say âshuck and jiveâ, then after ages of grinding your jaw, you find out they have no idea that itâs the least bit racist? And so on. Itâs a teachable moment, not a moment to club 'em over the head. And itâs their chance to learn from it, not angrily defend it.
TL;DR instead of getting angry, first ask yourself: What Would Spock Do?
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I donât know that it proves something. Time is just noticing that sheâs influential.
The gamergaters that believe itâs actually about ethics in journalism canât deny that. If she had no influence, they would have no truck with her.
OTOH, the women-hating gamergaters would probably still be going after her.
