I wouldn’t object to players needing to visit sex workers for health points. I do have problems with violence against sex workers as “fantasy” - granted, yes - everyone gets killed. However, in the real world where sex workers are already in vulnerable situation due to many laws and policy that works against sex workers as well as inequality/class issues, I don’t think portrayal of violence against sex workers in games can be justified.
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Ah, finally an actual argument. Excellent!
Gail Dines is pretty ridiculous, yes. However, (a) anti-porn (while IMHO ridiculous) is not the same thing as “sex-negative,” and (b) even if it was, the fact the Sarkeesian owns one of Dines’ books and follows her Facebook page is hardly proof that she agrees with her in every respect. When I asked for a citation I genuinely was curious; sex-negativity is a problem that sometimes crops up in feminist circles, and it would be unfortunate if Sarkeesian labored under it. I had sort of hoped, however, that you would have some evidence from Sarkeesian’s own words, as opposed to a quick glance at her reading and Facebook habits.
It really feels like you are doing that thing that conservative pundits are fond of doing: latching onto politically-charged buzzwords that you don’t actually understand but that you know liberals are against, and trying to see how many of said buzzwords you can twist into applying to a person you don’t like.
BTW:
It is indeed obvious! So obvious, in fact, that I actually told you that I didn’t watch either video. I don’t think I could have made it more obvious if I’d tried.
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OK…this is getting tiring so, I’m going to bother to speak up just this one time.
First things first: you’re deliberately misrepresenting both Sarkeesian and her website. You make the claim that she only has extreme interest in two authors, then immediately post a video wherein a stack of books by 11 different authors appears. Those two authors are among them, but are only represented once. In fact, there’s another author, Andi Zeisler, who appears twice - in your own example clip. She must really like Zeisler!
You also talk about the books on “Feminism and Pornography” by those two authors that you are so opposed to as appearing for sale on her site. You fail to note they are the only two books in that sub-genre, but are far from the only two books available on the site, and are, in fact, the only two books by those authors linked through from Feminist Frequency to Amazon. In fact, it’s another author - Bell Hooks - who appears twice on her recommended non-fiction reading list. Clearly Sarkeesian is not trying to shove any one author down anyone’s gullet.
Then you make the claim (without knowing what it is she’s torrenting) that she’s pirating. She may not be. There are open source and free game developers that place their media onto torrent sites that make money from the advertising. Since she’s been downloading and writing about games, it’s entirely possible she’s doing something wholly legal. You can’t know any different without accessing her computer, and to make that claim is just using a logical fallacy to argue against her worth in general. For anyone who’s never had a clear example of an ad hominem, this was it.
Last bit from post one: I live really close to the porn capital of the United States, and I’ve known people in the industry. Neither they nor I have ever had a problem calling prostitution what it is. That’s true even for a person like me referring to both male and female prostitutes, and when I discuss the fact that I believe it should be legalized and taxed. This may be a regional issue where you’re taking umbrage because locally people have “found a better term”, but if that’s the case - you guys are the ones being negative by cleaning up terminology without cleaning up the industry itself.
Onto part two: I read Sarkeesian’s review of Slutwalks, and it’s completely fair. What she’s saying, a lot of people are saying. I’m guessing your damning quote from it would be this one (oh dear, it mentions radical feminism):
“I have been quite vocal in my little internet space about my strong dislike for SlutWalk, for the name and for the unstrategic organizing which sadly, seems to ignores the systemic and institutional issues of rape culture, victim blaming and well, radical feminism.”
That’s her… She also quotes fifteen other reviewers who also oppose the activity. Gail Dines is included - once - on the list. However, as Sarkeesian notes, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. “It seems that Gail Dines (author of Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality) has been one of the only feminists repeatedly invited on TV and radio shows to serve as the counterpoint.” In other words, Dines is the goto media contact for that point of view.
She closed that post by saying this:
“This is by no means a complete list but just a few selections that I’ve found. If you know of other articles that would be appropriate in this link round up please leave them in the comments.”
So she did leave the space open for more critiques from other sources. Again: she’s not forcing people to just use her sources.
You’ve made it pretty clear that, to you, the word “feminist” is a foul word. Seriously, you actually wrote this question, “Really, how much more evidence of Sarkeesian’s leanings are needed?”(As though she’s sacrificing kittens in her basement.) She’s openly a feminist. Her site is called “Feminist Frequency”. It’s not a shameful dirty secret. Get over it.
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Crime Simulator needs more links and attention.
It has nothing to do with anyone’s experience outweighing anyone else’s. It’s about actually understanding the other person’s position, and arguing your own position in a language they can understand. It’s about moving the conversation in a constructive rather than divisive direction.
Using dismissive language isn’t going to make someone reconsider a bad argument. It isn’t going to make them consider the validity of the source or relevance to the topic. It’s only going to make them resent not being taken seriously, and more likely than not, double down on that bad argument.
Again, this does nothing to further your goals.
The much better approach is to engage, correct any misinterpretations of your own position, determine the origin of the other persons’, and look for a similar experience that you can build upon. Invalidating someone’s feelings is never going to be as effective at winning them over as acknowledging them and establishing a common ground.
And my issue with privilege, again, is with the assumption of privilege. Yes, I’m a man- But how do you know I’m not transgendered and previously spent 25 years living as a female? How do you know I haven’t been raped or the victim of domestic violence? How do you know I wasn’t exploited as a child to make kiddie porn? Yes, I’m white, but how do you know I wasn’t raised in the Dominican Republic by a Latino stepfather? Or whether I have an African wife and mixed-race kids?
It’s not about whether a person has privilege, it’s about whether you assume that their position on any given issue is a result of that privilege instead of actually asking them why they think that way.
Listing a bunch of rare to absurdly rare conditions, you know, I don’t see this as an effective counterargument. Well, what if I am actually not a person but an advanced AI from the future? How dare you assume otherwise!
I don’t think privilege or mansplaining are dismissive words; it’s good and healthy to occasionally consider all the ways we are fortunate to not have to worry about stuff that others might. Consider it a modern version of this:
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You should be more careful here. You basically just said that trans men are so rare as to not be worth considering.
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Actual cites have been given, and soon after, removed by the mods. How that violates any kind of TOS is beyond me.
But at this point, yours will have to remain a rhetorical question, as it’s something that’s really not allowed to be answered here.
I don’t consider any of those things to be rare. I have at least 6 transgendered friends that I know of, and just as many with multiracial kids (which I know is a very low number, [but for NH, it’s actually kind of high][1] ). The number of males who are molested, abused, or exploited as kids is sadly, much higher, but we’re kind of brought up not to talk about it- I guarantee you know several, whether or not you’re aware of it.
[1]: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93608
Point is, I’m much more concerned with getting to the root causes of an issue and dealing with those directly. You can’t get to a point where that’s possible if you invalidate someone’s opinions instead of treating them as sincerely held beliefs: Right or wrong, something caused them to draw those conclusions, and if you can’t be bothered to find out what, you’ll never be able to make a persuasive argument against them.
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And a black woman in Boston has more opportunity than a white man in Moldova. If you’re struggling with something, the fact that somebody else is worse off doesn’t really help you.
I’m sorry, but it sounds like splitting hairs to me.
Privilege is cultural/systemic, comparing the privilege of a certain demographic between two cultures is, due to the actual definition of “privilege” in these contexts, 100% invalid. If there exists a cultural where white people are truly less advantaged than non-whites, then “white privilege” could be correctly said to not exist there. But we’re talking about a majority of first world cultures where these common privileges do exist, or the evidence that they exist is mightily weighted against the evidence that they don’t.
Comparisons are valid within the same culture. They are not between cultures because privilege is not something that exists outside of the specific cultural context. Because that IS the definition of privilege - you can’t even have it without a comparison of non-privilege.
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One of the big differences is that if you are in the US, the white man in Moldova isn’t your responsibility as much as the black woman in Boston. If people like the Moldovan guy come over to the US and are being treated badly, it is something that needs to be addressed. Issues like gender, race, nationality of origin etc. are areas of systematic difference in privilege, so it seems fair to focus more on groups that generally get the short end of the stick in order to promote equality at each community level. I think your main point was more along the lines that person X shouldn’t really tell person Y that they are privileged (especially online), as there are many more factors that could easily outweigh single factors such as gender. As a group, white males are clearly privileged, but individually people should be less quick to assume that the person they’re speaking to has it easy. I do think that straight white males need to be especially cautious though, there’s a lot that others have to put up with on a daily basis that we don’t see and we are usually not in the best place to notice our own privilege.
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Except that if the person’s stance is to defend the existence of privilege, or to dismiss the notion of such privilege or that there is any problem with it, then who or what that person is doesn’t matter, only their position does, which can either be supported coherently or it can’t. If the person wants to bring their own gender, sex, race, class, or other attribute into the argument, they can do so (or attempt it) but that’s on them, to state why it’s pertinent and how it could be a supportable argument for their position. It is NOT on anyone else to delve into their personal details as unless an argument is presented, it’s largely irrelevant.
The argument of privilege is fundamentally the same no matter who you’re talking to, unless a new argument is presented and it has merit. It doesn’t matter if you personally have privilege or not - if your stance is dismissive of the problem, then the counter-argument can still focus on how it’s privilege itself, being so engrained in our cultural, that creates these viewpoints. You can offer up how you don’t personally have such privilege (and maybe you’re right, maybe you’re full of poo) but that’s on you to make it an argument. Otherwise, the rest of us will continue to communicate fully while you wax philosophical on how whoever we’re speaking to might be holding back lots of info. Yeah, okay, either communicate that back or it ain’t a part of the convo. The end.
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