Anita Sarkeesian isn’t above reproach, and I’m not a particular fan of her video game videos (I thought the original series was better in general). She has a habit of just listing issues in a wooden manner, and she barely ever discusses appropriate ways to improve the situation without either putting women into the same role as men or removing women from the narrative entirely. I wish just ONE of these videos would just talk about the examples of great male/female interaction in games; maybe talking about the narrative in Prince of Persia and how the developers completely butt-fucked it in the sequel.
That said, I have never seen someone post a valid criticism of her work that was more than a few lines of text (spoken or otherwise). People pretty much go on tirades about her grabbing at less than straws, and are met with tirades against them that are more justifiable.
This is what the whole discussion come down to. Acknowledging and discussing a fact you admit to be true is “bullshit” unless the speaker also acknowledges and discusses another fact you would like to see compared and contrasted. I understand that the two facts are significantly related.
I think the problem here is that no one else can see why that would be the case. We have to get more nuanced and get to more assumptions to get there. People have made a race comparison: Could we discuss police brutality against black people without discussing police brutality against white people? Or, to flip the question around, could we discuss male suicide without discussion female suicide? Could we discuss elder abuse without discussing child abuse? Could we discuss living conditions for cows on factory farms without discussing the living conditions for chickens on factory farms?
I don’t expect you to answer all of those questions, but they also aren’t rhetorical. In each of those cases I think the answer is unambiguously “yes”. There are features of one discussion that are remarkably different than the features of the other discussion. One thing can stand on its own as a discussion without reference to the other. I see the discussion of the objectification of women in video games vs. the discussion of the objectification of men in video games as being similarly contrasted. You plainly disagree. The reason I ask these questions is because I want to understand whether this is part of a broader philosophical point Where we cannot consider phenomena in isolation, or whether there is a specific issue with the objectification of people in video games that does not allow the point to be broken down into sub-discussions among those interested in the narrower topic?
Edit: In case we are getting to close to dragon territory, I’d be happy to continue this discussion in another thread.
I was actually really encouraged when she brought out an example of a video game that she thought dealt with a complex, painful issue well in this most recent video (Papo & Yo). But if she hasn’t given an example of how a game could deal well with the issue of sexual abuse, it’s probably because she hasn’t encountered such an example. I certainly can’t think of one.
Still, I agree it would be nice to hear from her about what games did things well, or even whats parts of games were well done. That’s not a criticism, I’d actually like to check those games out.
Before the thread derails, I’m gonna dragon-splain something, this is about sexism in relation to females. Not males. No matter what some bipeds want to think. Further posts will be eaten. If you want to discuss how men suffer from sexism, by all means start a new thread. But don’t discuss it here.
While it doesn’t address sexual abuse, check out Prince of Persia: Sand of Time. There is a strong relationship between the prince and the female companion for the adventure, and both characters experience and arc that’s told well with a terrific climax.
“Anita’s argument has major flaws and a little bit of source checking will show it.”
1A) She argues that there are video games that contain gratuitous scenes of sexualized violence against women. She then shows clips of video games that contain gratuitous scenes of sexualized violence against women.
“your brain is going to be with you till you die, you might as well use it.”
2A) In addition to my brain, my eyes are going to be with me till I die – and I intend to continue using them to evaluate claims.
“The one argument from people who defend Anita, that I think is
absolutely moronic is: ‘the threats she gets shows that there is an
issue in gaming’. Since when did someone getting a bad reaction to
something they said make them automatically right? Sounds like a cop out
to avoid doing any real critical thinking. Just because you saw some
people say something stupid, doesn’t mean you should assume Anita is
right”
3A) If you are going to make a classic strawman argument, please offset your logical fallacy with paragraph breaks. I wasted too much time trying to figure out what you were responding to before realizing you weren’t making a good faith argument at all.
“What people do care about is people like you ignoring everything they
taught you in school and just believing in whatever people say.”
4A) Yet you offer ZERO substantiation for your claims. I don’t know if you can appreciate the irony of that, but many of the rest of us can.
I didn’t rain vitriol on you. I said I was glad that you were around to point out these connections that the rest of us missed. Particularly the connection between “Anna” and this thread. It appears you decided to take that as an attack… maybe you don’t think a person could actually be possibly congratulating you on your thoughtfulness? As if you already know that is outside the realm of possibility?
I think one might accuse you of “raining vitriol” when you say that Cory wants to create a “fox-news style echo chamber” or that Sarkeesian (this is who you meant by “Anna”, right?) is intellectually dishonest. Or were these things, rather than being vitriol, intelligent debate?
You talk about winning the hearts and minds, so let’s speak objectively. In 20 years, do you think that,broadly speaking, gamers will think that the current standard of “sexist” content is more or less acceptable than they do now? In other words, will the hearts and minds of gamers actually be swayed by this? I have a feeling this video series will have a better record than Iraq.
Earlier, I tried posting a reply to somebody. The Forum Police Message popped up saying I had exceeded my maximum number of posts and would have to wait eight hours before posting again.
I can take a hint, quick as the next guy.
And it’s difficult to disagree.
I have spent way too much time tic tac toeing on this post. Time to move on.
Please feel free to post replies to any of my posts. I just won’t be monitoring or replying.
