// Feminism again//
So I recently followed Will Wheaton on tumblr. I was shocked to see how interested he was in politics only knowing his interests were board games and alike. I enjoy reading what he reblogs or blogs about. But something came across my dashboard this morning.
“ “The point of all this is that when women do things, there’s a certain sort of person who wants to put them down and silence them. Not because what they’re doing is bad or wrong, but because they’re daring to do it at all. Sometimes it’s because they’re discussing sexism directly and working towards better awareness of how it pervades the culture. Other times it’s because they’re making things in fields men feel entitled to be the arbiters of, and their sheer presence neatly undermines a lot of common sexist stereotypes people don’t appreciate being made to re-think. Bonus if they have the audacity to be accomplished and good at it, too. Whoops. That’s a big old no-no, apparently.”
—Let’s Play a Game Part 2: Women vs. Tropes Trolling Felicia Day ”
Although I’m not dismissing this point entirely. I do have a few things to say.
The link to the article is from a woman named Mariah who has the bio stating “New York Times Bestselling writer of comics like True Blood, Angel, Illyria: Haunted, and editor of The Last Unicorn graphic novel. I draw squidly octopi girls, love monstrous beauty, and am a feisty little feministy lady.” I have no problem here, what I do have a problem is that she writes about trolling but yet she doesn’t grasp the concept of what it is.
Trolling - troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.
She states “However, trolling does seem to be catching on in real life to a worrying degree. See anything regarding women’s health or our current political “debates” for reference.” I think you’re confusing stupidity with trolling.
So I’m already questioning the article. But what really made me write this was the kickstarter she linked. (kickstarter) Now playing video games myself, I had to check this out, and this is where something hit home again about feminists and the feminist movement. I’ll focus more on the article in question later but I will mainly focus on the kickstarter and the person behind it.
But branching off from what Will Wheaton quoted. I think men kinda do have a defence mechanism when it comes to women wanting to join in, in the nerd/geek/gamer culture. Not that the mechanism is that they are better than men at games although people will argue until the cows come home that it is but in that they do not know what their true intentions are. They don’t want something to be exploited or ruined due to negative intentions. Again this is just my opinion not fact.
But for example the youtuber named UltraNeko who exploited her fans by pretending to play games and be a gamer. She was acting the entire time with her boyfriend writing scripts for her and then rumours speculated she moved to Japan etc etc. My point being, I am very cautious. Are they just doing it for attention? For example when do you ever see a guy go “I play WoW” and suddenly ladies start swooning over him. But flip it in reverse and men will give more attention to her because she plays games. And women who do geek/nerd stuff are seen as a small minority. And so be it, she be attractive then she’s the greatest thing on the planet.
Maybe this is just me and my “sexist” ways or being smart about it and then when learning it was just for attention, I’m not being hurt from it. (See quote below) Now you could say I am smearing the entire gender with a brush because of a few examples. Well next time a friend is in love and they get cheated on and other such things and then have trust issues, tell them to get rid of those opinions. Or when a girl complains “men are all the same”, much to my annoyance on facebook, tell them they’re just smearing the gender.
This is just an example but I am cautious of everyone, so don’t grip your shit too hard feminists and others.
“UltraNeko was once my idol. I actually started Youtube doing game reviews because of her. Now that idol is crushed. She lost her idolness in my eyes.”
-Taken from a youtube comment on this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpgiVLjKmdQ)
Although youtube comments are nothing to go by as fact. This brings me to the channel feminist frequency (the one running the kickstarter) where she uses youtube comments as justifying that women are being silenced if they stand up.
(http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/06/harassment-misogyny-and-silencing-on-youtube/)
But yet hypocritically has removed comments and has removed the ability to publish a comment or like or dislike on some of her videos. And it almost seems as if she is stating she is a lone warrior receiving these comments when this is not true. I once posted a video of a friend, who was not the sharpest tool in the shed, doing an impression of Cassius from the film “Little Nicky”. This was back in 2006 when youtube was still young. Unfortunately I had comments such as “Retarded faggot. Should go kill himself” and others such alike. I had to remove this video due to not wanting him to see the hurtful comments and be put down. Not to be un-sympathetic but this is youtube and the internet, welcome, and get used to it. And this is the same in real life, you will have these confrontations when you try to do something different.
Now my real point is the kickstarter. First off she is wanting $6,000 which to me is an insane amount of money to do research which she most likely going to use the internet, then write a script and film it. But she says she’ll look at hundreds of different games, oh really now?
Taken from here (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_video_games_have_been_made)
I know this isn’t the most reliable resource but if she’s using youtube comments as fact, we might as well throw caution to the wind. “More than 9841”. That’s sure to be a lot of man hours (sorry, woman hours*) playing those video games to see every female in the game, see how they are portrayed and find where they are being sexist. But surely she’s got to buy these games right? I mean come on, she’s not going to pirate them so even if every game was $1 then it’d add up to $9841. But that’s fairytale land where games are $1.
And hundreds of games? What about the other 8000 games? Plus still in the hundreds. That’s 999 games. Let’s give it an average playtime of 4 hours for the game not taking into account games such as final fantasy where the gameplay is 45 hours+. That’s 167 days without sleeping, shitting, shopping for food, cooking, socialising and working. Wow I mean this seems like a hefty project.
But continuing on, what is she going to look at in the project? Well it’ll be 5 videos on:
- Damsel in Distress- Video #1
- The Fighting F#@k Toy- Video #2
- The Sexy Sidekick- Video #3
- The Sexy Villainess- Video #4
- Background Decoration- Video #5
The main problem I have with this is that she totally overlooks that men in video games are also portrayed with clichés and stereotypes. For example:
- The merciless killing machine
- All he cares about is revenge character
- The bumbling waves of male enemies and their hell bent villain master planning to take over the world
- Only concerned about sex character
- The steroid ridden superhero
You’ve got to look at it from both sides not just one if you are all about equality.
But it seems I have to make one thing abundantly clear. Video games aren’t real. I know, I just blew everyone’s minds. A guy who can throw cars 50 feet? (Crackdown) Damn, in my neighbourhood, we throw cars 100 feet, what a pussy.
The boobs you see in Dead or Alive and the apparent invisible back problems that come with them are not real, the guy with the bulging muscles and the no effort he went to get them are not real. And she notes games that do not have these tropes and shows the game Portal. Sorry I didn’t know you wanted games where the protagonist remained silent and practically invisible the entire game and the only ones who spoke were robots. Pardon me, while I go tell EA and other game companies to go back to the games like Adventure on the atari 2600 where you were just a square.
And not to burst her bubble but guess what? Sex sells. Advertising and media companies have been doing it for years. This is the thing, they only call sexism when it objectifies women but never men even though they are for equality. For example a woman with big boobs in skimpy outfits playing volleyball, oh the humanity, but the guy with the ripped muscles and bulging crotch, meh it’s cool.
Also she is so flimsy about being feminist. For example she has a video called “Too many dicks - Video Games” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PJ0JPLg_-8&feature=plcp ) where I assume she is talking about the lack of female protagonists in the gaming world.
I found this hilarious that in the description she states:
“It is no secret that the majority of video games these days star overly muscular men often carrying big swords, guns, baseball bats, chainsaws or other phallic weaponry. ”
You hear that Rockstar? In GTA 6, we should be a female and beat down the enemy with breast shaped bin lids and shoot vagina guns. To make it equal of course. You cannot compare a sports item and a tool used in the logging industry to an erect penis. And it’s kinda funny how she chose the song “Too many dicks” where the song is about trying to pull chicks but there’s too many dudes. Funnily enough I don’t think this song empowers women.
She also states:
“Not surprisingly the vast majority of game producers, designers and writers in the industry are still men.”
Maybe did you stop to think for a second and ponder, maybe there’s not many women in the industry because there’s not many women interested in designing games? I know, a thought that didn’t cross your head that maybe there is only a small percentage of women doing computer science which relates to designing video games, 28% according to studies in the USA. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html) Did you think maybe they didn’t necessarily go onto be in a video games company? Just a thought.
This is the thing with feminists, I’ve seen the statement, there are not enough women in the government from feminists but you never see them complaining about that only there is only 14.4% of women in the mining industry? Why? Because they want to be in the position of power. Most feminist ambitions seem to be being superior to men. No. That is sexist itself. This kinda justifies my point better than I could write it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JA4EPRbWhQ
But back to my point of the entire kickstarter, I think this video sums it up pretty well
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igXz_hXKUcE
Now the comments she did receive were to be expected but were not necessary. I do not advocate the use of rape or violence against someone because they have a difference of opinion.
But back to the article Mr. Wheaton linked. She states
“I’m happy to say that not only is Sarkeesian standing up and talking about this, her project is funded, and has raised a whopping $155k+. That’s a goodly amount more than the original $6 thousand goal. So, kudos internet trolls, you just made sure she’ll be making a LOT more of these, and opened up a massive can of worms that no one who isn’t a giant asshole is going to defend.”
“you just made sure she’ll be making a LOT more of these” - I have a feeling that she’s going to keep quite a bit of the money for herself but we’ll see what she does with it. I mean she was only $100,000 away from being able to make her own video game. (yogventures) Although I would be interested on how she spent the money but time will tell.
“and opened up a massive can of worms that no one who isn’t a giant asshole is going to defend.” - Arguable.
She then goes on about how Felicia Day got a load of comments on her country music video, which was in my subscription box and I watched it but it didn’t do all that much for me, they were all trolling or being mean. Again this is just the internet, when people are given anonymity, they get a sense of power. People will try to bring you down if you try to do something successful or new. People will throw the word “Hater” around to describe it but I think it’s overused just like “epic” was. But I think people expect not to get called mean things. I mean do you ever think youtubers such as boogie2988 don’t get called fat, come on people.
She then concludes with a paragraph saying these are intertwined.
“How you treat women online who say things you don’t like is directly related to how you view women in general.” - That’s not technically true is it? You say this as if it is fact. It is not. If it is fact, please provide the relevant evidence.
“It also relates to how you view female characters and what kind of backstory gives them “depth” - Referring to the Lara Croft reference earlier in the blog post about her rapey backstory gives her depth. I did not know the backstory of Lara Croft till reading this because I find the games boring. But citing one female character is bull. What about other’s backstory? This is all your opinion but citing it off as fact.
Let me cite an example. Mario’s backstory. We all know mario is a podgy italian plumber and adored the world over. But where did he start? Donkey Kong. Now what did he do to Donkey Kong? Oh, he mistreated his pet. But surely I mean my representation of an early video game character gave me the view that all men who mistreat animals are awesome, right? (http://www.cracked.com/article_19321_5-classic-games-you-didnt-know-had-wtf-backstories.html)
She then goes on about connecting all these things into the fact that I have been viewing women as less than men all these years and I will inevitably rape them. “It relates to the casual use of rape threats to try and silence uncomfortable discussion about gender in media. Which then relates to the problem with our rape culture, where 1 in 3 women will be sexually assaulted.”
“Which can then be viewed by how in some places in the world women are raped as a form of genocide. That is then related to the fact that we’re currently seeing some of the most regressive reproductive health laws/bills in the U.S., and being told that “women don’t care about it”, they care about the economy, (I don’t know much about American politics so I can’t comment on this) only we were just denied equal pay, again. (I’ve made a blog post about this) Then there’s how women’s economic power is directly related to issues of poverty, and that the more economic growth women have, the better the world wide economy is, not to mention improvement in education and children’s welfare.” (Cannot comment on this as I do not know much about the topic)
She then concludes: “So, sure, I guess you can dismiss this stuff as “silly” if you really want to. But the reality is that if you treat women as “things” to any degree, you’re part of the larger problem. And I’m pretty sure women in general are really sick of it.”
I have dismissed a lot of the article as silly but there we go.
But I will conclude now by saying, yes it is true, women should not be treated as “things” nor be raped or killed and they should have the same rights as men. But, and this a big but, they should not be superior. No one should. So when I go to a job interview and I can do a job better than the women there, I expect to be given that job. If a woman is better at me in a job, give her the job. But if I am better in that job and not given it due to my gender then that is bullshit. When it comes down to it in certain occupations such as the fire service, I don’t care if there are no women in it if they are not better than any man. When my life and others are on the line in a fiery apartment building, I want the best to get me out of there regardless of gender but I do not want mine and the lives of others at risk because they needed someone of a different gender to come in to avoid discrimination.
It is equality for all.
