Absolutely right. I hadn’t thought about the Portal series. Still two of the best games I have ever played.
1 Like
I will check that out, and the Steam summer sale should be right around the corner.
Hopefully they will port it to the PC as some point.
That’s the key. Consider the “Grand Theft Auto” series: the playable male character can commit almost any crime you might name, working his way up from a street punk to big-time crime lord. Theft, assault, murder, racketeering, arson, pimping, you name it—but one thing he can’t do is prostitute himself. If sex work in video games really had anything to do with free agency or a sex-positive attitude then why can’t your avatar suck a little cock just to get back on his feet? It’s hardly unknown for a down-on-his-luck ex con to resort to such things.
10 Likes
Yeah, right. Leave it to a friggin´ luck dragon to take a stance for all us scaly, toxic bastards. Check your fluffy, white poodle-privilege.
1 Like
Is that the link you meant to post? I asked for evidence that Sarkeesian is “sex negative.” That article doesn’t mention Sarkeesian and says that “sex negative” is a stupid label.
If you would like to link to specific passages in those videos I’d be happy to check them out, but I’m not watching three and a half hours of appallingly-shot video to get an answer to one specific claim.
Incidentally, speaking as another long-haired fat dude, it doesn’t do much for jordanowen42’s credibility that he’s willing to spend three and a half hours ranting about Sarkeesian, but can’t spare ten minutes beforehand to shave, brush his hair, and put on a clean shirt.
4 Likes
I believe acting like a know-it-all transcends class and race. Different people act that way for a variety of reasons.
That said, I think it’s commendable to be conscious of how we speak to other people, knowing that a phrase or tone of voice can affect different people in different ways. I spent many years being oblivious to this fact.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15304_the-sopranos-10-most-memorable-whackings_p2.html
Whacked By: Dominic “Fat Dom” Gamiello and Gerry Torciano
For: Being gay.
Method: Beaten to death, with the lovely added touch of having a pool cue shoved up his rectum.
Why It’s Memorable: Pool cue. Shoved up rectum. Also, the scene includes a weirdly heavy-handed moment in which Phil Leotardo, who ordered the hit, literally comes out of the closet before his goons kill Vito in a hotel room. Hopefully that was foreshadowing my predicted outcome of the series, a huge gay orgy.
mobsters and organized crime are most often (aside for the gay neonazi’s) not okay with homosexuals so that is why there are not even gay for pay option. So it is not analogous or fair to say that there are no options to turn himself some tricks for money.
It seems to me that almost all of Sarkeesian’s examples came from open world games (like Grand Theft Auto) that are essentially crime simulators. These are the sorts of games where crime, theft and murder are the core gameplay experience. They’re the videogame equivalent of mob movies like “Scarface” or “The Godfather,” which revolve around bad people doing bad things. The fact that these games contain prostitution or objectification of women shouldn’t be all that shocking, these are just more examples of the bad things that these bad guys engage in.
I like to refer to this as the “Literary Sympathy Fallacy,” where the presence of an element in fiction is brought up without paying any mind to whether that action is portrayed sympathetically or not. The objectification of women in GTA-like games is not usually portrayed sympathetically, since it’s an action attributed to criminals. Likewise with the Mass Effect example, the strip clubs are there to communicate that a place is seedy and a hangout for criminals. The strip club is not portrayed sympathetically, because it’s being treated as a bad place.
That’s not to say that all of her examples were bad. The objectification of women in Duke Nukem is portrayed sympathetically because it’s attributed to the de facto hero, Duke. But she didn’t have very many examples like that, and I feel like it weakens her case.
Essentially, while Sarkeesian is arguing that prostitution and incentivized objectification of women is endemic to videogames, these gameplay elements seem (to me) to be specific to games that otherwise treat crime as the central gameplay feature or are otherwise attempting to convey the seediness of a setting.
Edit: By the way, I’m not actually saying that Sarkeesian is wrong about women being used as window dressing for a lot of games, but she went for the low hanging fruit with games like GTA, and she missed out on the more convincing examples. The women giving trophies in racing games, the hyper sexualized characters in games that are otherwise aimed at kids, etc. I would have liked to see more of those examples, because it would have been far more enlightening than a 30 minute diatribe about how crime simulator games simulate crimes.
4 Likes
A-fucking-men.
3 Likes
i just randomly checked a few moments in the 3 hour video, and… i’m speechless.
I’m also absolutely amazed that someone like that can get attention, even the meagre 2k hits are too many. The comment thread is… ho boy. Youtube has found a new low.
Sarkeesian’s analysis, which is carefully and closely argued, and backed by solid scholarly research.
Really? Which peer-reviewed journal is her research being published in?
2 Likes
Eh, I’m not going to comment on that, because once again you’ve set up the argument for maximum shock value. I honestly have no idea how rampant this is, to be honest.
But at the risk of derailing the conversation, heh, check out what happened when I visited the front page:
(John Oliver ghosted out for emphasis.)
Yeah, Feminist Frequency and Hip Hop Family Tree right next to each other. Hey, let’s check out the lyrics of the quoted Doug E. Fresh track:
Oh MC Rick my love is here to stay
And on and on and on she kept on
The bitch been around before my mother’s born
I said cheer up, I gave her a kiss
I said you can’t have me, I’m too young for you miss
She says no you’re not, then she starts crying
I says I’m nineteen, she said stop lying
I says I am, go ask my mother
And with your wrinkled pussy, I can’t be your lover
Yeah…and we won’t even bring up Boing Boing’s obsession with violent, misogynist television shows, and pinups.
EDIT: And I want to express my gratitude for BoingBoing’s BBS system. I brought this same issue up a year ago, and was swiftly banned by Antinous. Apparently calling on BoingBoing to live up to their own standards was forbidden back then.
EDIT2: I hadn’t even looked at the latest installment when I typed that. It refers to Vanessa Williams as a dumb slut and a “ho”, or whore. EDIT3: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think ya fingas too sticky is a reference to the Penthouse pictorial which caused her to be stripped of her crown. Check out the pictorial here (NSFW). So, add homophobia to the list.
2 Likes
That argument is basically saying it’s not sexist for only women to prostitute themselves because guys are sexist. Did it not occur to you to wonder WHY they’re homophobic in the first place?
4 Likes
I like this argument; it’s essentially philosophy because 99% of it will never be confirmed, due to the lack of male->female and female->male freaky friday experiments.
I’ma stand over there now -------------------------------->
I’m a mid 30’s white male and until the internet became the norm I didn’t really give a lot of thought to all these things…and now thanks to all the -isms I think even less of it.
As far as I’ve figured out I’m the root cause of everyone else’s problems, because
A. I’m white.
B. I have a penis.
That’s it in a nutshell. Growing up I was taught that movies and games were fantasy, killing things on a computer screen didn’t warp my mind, watching violent acts in movies hasn’t made me into a violent human being. So here I am a trying to be a respectful husband and father and the rest of society just wants to piss in my corn flakes. “The message” has been heard, and now when I hear it again I choose to turn off and tune out. If any group wants to start a serious dialogue then fine, don’t start by pointing out all the injustice and pointing fingers - that has been done. How about a solution other than “this needs to change”. You know I want 20 something guys to stop acting like assholes and to win the lottery; I think I’ve got better odds on the lottery.
And the overwhelming message I take from all the -isms, it isn’t about equality it’s about retribution and power. Where do you need to draw the line at? No objectifying women in games? Only strong women in games? Only the lead character is acceptable? Can the line be drawn on my side? Could I see a romantic comedy that doesn’t involve a fairly attractive man with an excellent career or lots of money? I’m pretty sure half of the enticement of a book like 50 Shades of Grey just isn’t the sex, it’s the fact the Mr. Grey was a buff billionaire (you know without all the entrapments that come from being such a thing in the real world - cause it’s a book and fantasy right?)
So you all can continue the fight, I’m gonna be sitting on the sidelines raising my kids to be respectful human beings because that’s the best thing I know how to do.
8 Likes
You mean like this:
I’ll come stand with you now…
1 Like
Sorta, I realize transgendered people can provide new/different insight.
But the long-form, philosophical argument, is about how culture creates a set of emotions in one group of people that is correlated to another set of emotions in an ‘opposing’ group.
The argument is simple: The way people perceive themselves and others, generates emotions which vindicate/necessitate action based on physical brain processes which we are unable to control at this time (pesky consciousness gets in the way of our civilized ant like nature).
Thus, even transgendered people may feel the stereotypes suddenly shift winds, and unless we could do some kind of instant experiment, ala freaky friday, you still have all those pesky hormones to deal with.
Thus you have a bunch of physical controls, such as hormones, with a lot of perceptual controls, such as culture, and the wonderful world of memes and simulacra.
I’m convinced that consciousness is the self-differentiating act of both being part of culture and being separable from culture.
But anyway, sure, simplify it how you wish.
You know what else can make you enemies in organized crime? Freakin’ everything else you can do in Grand Theft Auto. You can’t even proceed in the game without making yourself a target of the mafia.
Also, several missions in the series involve doing favors for gay characters, bisexual characters and even at least one pedophile, so I’m not buying the “male character can’t prostitute himself because it would offend someone’s moral sensibilities” story. The reason you can’t prostitute yourself in the game is because prostitution is depicted as a degrading act undertaken for the benefit of men, not an empowering career choice by a sexually liberated individual.
10 Likes
- I mentioned a false equivalency commonly made by people dismissing sexism in video games.
- You immediately accused me of setting up a “straw man.”
- I linked to a recent conversation in which people made exactly the argument I just described.
- You accuse me of “setting up the argument for maximum shock value” but admit that you don’t actually know how common the behavior I just described is. So why the knee-jerk reaction about me making a “straw man” argument?
2 Likes
