[Non-political] News that makes you Laugh/Cry/Both...

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:25 am

DSMatticus wrote:
Sarkesian wrote:Heroic women in science fiction and fantasy television shows have done much to represent strong, successful women in leadership positions. However, these female roles that are viewed as strong and empowered embody many masculine identified traits, maintaining a patriarchal division of gender roles.
Those are the first two sentences of her paper. Seriously, the first two. From the word go, she is claiming that women with masculine traits reinforce a patriarchical division of gender roles.

How can you not see the problem with this? It's a woman! If you show a woman with masculine traits, you are by definition undermining the notion that those traits can be correctly labelled masculine to begin with. That weakens the gender binary. It helps widen the set of traits it is socially acceptable for women to adopt.

If you show a single woman with a set of masculine traits kicking ass and taking names alongside a bunch of dudes, you are actually reinforcing a patriarchal division of gender roles. You are also allowing for exceptional women to adopt the "masculine" role and be considered honorary dudebros and worthy humans. That's better than having mental qualities inextricably linked to the type of genitals a character possesses, but it's still bad when, if you have tits, you'd better not be seen smelling flowers or wearing pink.

ishy · Post by **ishy** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 10:09 am

Yeah, if you don't like pink, you're not a woman.
And if you're a guy and you like pink, gaaaaayyyyyy!

Ancient History · Post by **Ancient History** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 10:11 am

Or metrosexual. It's salmon.

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 10:50 am

Ancient History wrote:Or metrosexual. It's salmon.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:39 pm

Starmaker wrote:If you show a single woman with a set of masculine traits kicking ass and taking names alongside a bunch of dudes,

Firstly, I'll stop here to point out that this is not what Sarkeesian is criticizing or else she presumably would've brought it up when talking about Faith, since in season 3 Buffy the ass-kicking males are outnumbered. Buffy, Faith, and Willow starting to get in gear compared to Angel and Giles sort of counts as half because he's more badass than Xander even if he can't keep up with either of the Slayers or Angel or anyone.

you are actually reinforcing a patriarchal division of gender roles. You are also allowing for exceptional women to adopt the "masculine" role and be considered honorary dudebros and worthy humans. That's better than having mental qualities inextricably linked to the type of genitals a character possesses, but it's still bad when, if you have tits, you'd better not be seen smelling flowers or wearing pink.

Okay, so again: Where's the love for Cordelia? Why doesn't she even get mentioned until the appendix? Why doesn't she get a proper examination in the body of the paper? Also: Why aren't male characters like Xander or Giles examined, when they're portrayed positively, in supportive roles, and are also men and therefore doubly subversive in those roles?

You can keep grasping for what Sarkeesian really meant, and if you ignore chunks of her work it will even make sense. Ignoring chunks of her work is relatively easy because it's such a confused mess that doesn't really build on itself or flow, so one chunk can be ripped out and you can pretend it's a complete work since none of the rest collapses for lack of it. But the fact stands that they were all produced by the same person and her actual beliefs are teased out by considering all of the work plus the negative space of what she was clearly aware of but chose not to include. I already tried to give her the benefit of the doubt two years ago, and the only way to extract a reasonable belief system from this paper is to blatantly ignore either contradictory statements within it or glaring omissions that would've done far more to support the conclusion you are trying to attribute to her, but which are mysteriously absent.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 4:52 pm

Woman who's got 6 years experience in gaming industry does an AMA (verified by Reddit, but anonymous to protect her identity) says recent media fearmongering is scaring women away from games

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction ... s_been_in/

Kite Brite is also promoting an entry from a friend's blog that has the same sentiment, that mainstream media is slandering the video game audience and ignoring the women who are openly a part of it

https://twitter.com/Kite_Tales/status/5 ... 8085718018

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 5:48 pm

http://www.hendohover.com/#/ < = WTF! O.O
That just HAS to be some kind of sham or hoax or somebody is trying to play with my very fragile nerd-feelings again <.<;,

Ah, there it is:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14 ... hoverboard

Longes · Post by **Longes** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:35 pm

Netropolitan
The social network for the rich. It's exactly like Facebook, but you pay 9000$ for the first year of membership, and 3000$ every year afterwards.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 6:53 pm

So they really went through with that . .

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:06 pm

Longes wrote:Netropolitan
The social network for the rich. It's exactly like Facebook, but you pay 9000$ for the first year of membership, and 3000$ every year afterwards.

In before somebody successfully kickstarts a membership into this. Also inb4, some boards pooling $$$ to pay for troll accounts).

Stahlseele wrote:http://www.hendohover.com/#/ < = WTF! O.O
That just HAS to be some kind of sham or hoax or somebody is trying to play with my very fragile nerd-feelings again <.<;,

Ah, there it is:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/14 ... hoverboard

My brother posted this link today, too. My scam-alert went into maximum overdrive so I looked around. There's a forbes interview that manages to both say that these guys have a functional technology in their hands but at the same time point to some crippling limitations: http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley ... overboard/

I'm at this point unwilling to call this an outright hoax or scampaign, but their Kickstarter pitch seems way too optimist. By Forbes very untechnical article, "the battery inside the device work at an efficiency of about 40 watts per kilogram", and this looks like a show-stopper to me.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:21 pm

We have exactly one year from today to make hoverboards happen before we miss Back to the Future's deadline. I admire these guys for trying to make it happen. Not enough to actually donate, but still.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:25 pm

In addition to the efficiency hurdle, they'll also need to deal with the short battery life and noise problems. a Hendo-based train is apparently estimated to cost an order of magnitude cheaper than the maglev system.

hyzmarca · Post by **hyzmarca** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 8:49 pm

I suspect the point here isn't to make a practical hoverboard so much as to show that the technology works and a hovorboard gets publicity, no matter how impractical it is.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Oct 21, 2014 9:25 pm

OK, yes, the Battery Efficiency is very poor, but Samsung is working on bendable batteries and some other people are working on more efficient and much faster to recharge batteries, so if the battery tech indeed makes some advances, that could maybe be improved by quite a bit . .

Pseudo Stupidity · Post by **Pseudo Stupidity** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 11:51 am

OgreBattle wrote:Woman who's got 6 years experience in gaming industry does an AMA (verified by Reddit, but anonymous to protect her identity) says recent media fearmongering is scaring women away from games

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction ... s_been_in/

Asking a chess Grandmaster about war is stupid. Asking a game developer about sociology is also stupid. You will get anecdotal and wrong answers.

Lady Developer wrote:Basically just lack of desire to get into the field. I don't think it really runs deeper than that. I have friends in the industry and friends outside of it, and the ones outside of it are in NO way women I could see making games. This isn't due to intellectual capacity, they just aren't gamers and aren't interested in games... and contrary to what some people are trying to shove down people's throats, that's perfectly ok.

That is fucking stupid since adult women are the largest demo in games. Then she could at least consider there's something wrong with the environment when so many women play games and so few want to get deeply involved with the industry. Maybe it's because nobody wants to get treated like an outsider, even if it means being treated extra polite?

Edit: And god-fucking damnit.

Lady Dev wrote:I'm anti-SJW and anti-feminist.

This is one of those people you can point to and say "this person is wrong and bad and thinks false accusations are more of a problem than actual problems."

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 6:27 pm

Meanwhile in Hungary:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/10/2 ... RI20141022

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 7:03 pm

Chamomile wrote:Firstly, I'll stop here to point out that this is not what Sarkeesian is criticizing or else she presumably would've brought it up when talking about Faith
(...)
Okay, so again: Where's the love for Cordelia?
(...)
You can keep grasping for what Sarkeesian really meant, and if you ignore chunks of her work it will even make sense.

I don't watch Sarkeesian, and I can't stand Buffy. (The only teen show I could stand was some Czech thing about a lady dictator in power armor.) I'm just saying that if all strong women in the work are dressed like this

and all useless civilians are dressed like this

said work might have been progressive by XIXth century standards but is sexist in 2014. It's good to allow or encourage your daughter to play with toys for boys, it's still bad there are separate aisles at all.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 7:49 pm

But Buffy was dressed like this:

Your argument is invalid. Seriously. It doesn't even apply.

Sarkeesian was claiming that Buffy was misogynist because she had masculine traits. Not that she was portrayed as a dude, or even had exclusively masculine traits. But that she was things like physically strong and assertive and shit, and Sarkeesian thinks that women shouldn't be portrayed with traits like that.

It's... insanity.

-Username17

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:38 pm

FrankTrollman wrote:It's... insanity.

I dunno, I can sort of understand where Sarkeesian is coming from. She's still extremely wrong about the problem of sexism and it's solutions, but I can sort of understand why someone might hold her views.

Gender binary isn't just about women being like X and men being like Y, it also involves certain traits being coded as "feminine" and "masculine". Part of sexism is that traits coded "feminine" tend to be denigrated and if a work of fiction "empowers" women by having them reject "feminine traits" and embrace masculine ones it's questionable how not-sexist that work is.

Now obviously the solution to the problem is not to enforces the gender binary even harder like Sarkeesian seems to want, but it is true that stories that are supposedly about "strong female characters" can still reinforce sexist narratives.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 8:55 pm

Jesus, why is Sarkeesian even a thing.
I'm just going to drop THIS off here - it's a pretty thorough debunking of her and her ilk.
I especially like the "if men acted like feminist" series.

Leress · Post by **Leress** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 9:19 pm

ACOS, I am not even going to look at the link and I can guess that is Thunderf00t. I subscribed to him during the whole evolution vs creationist "debate" and it was a related video.

Shrapnel · Post by **Shrapnel** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:37 pm

Starmaker wrote:I don't watch Sarkeesian, and I can't stand Buffy. (The only teen show I could stand was some Czech thing about a lady dictator in power armor.)

Wha huh?

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 10:48 pm

Leress wrote:ACOS, I am not even going to look at the link and I can guess that is Thunderf00t.

Mistborn · Post by **Mistborn** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 11:20 pm

You know I really hate when we have this sort of thread, because finding out that seemingly inoffensive Denners are raging bigots is always such a downer.

ACOS please ditch the fedora and rethink your life choices.

ACOS · Post by **ACOS** » Wed Oct 22, 2014 11:36 pm

Lord Mistborn wrote:You know I really hate when we have this sort of thread, because finding out that seemingly inoffensive Denners are raging bigots is always such a downer.

ACOS please ditch the fedora and rethink your life choices.

edit:

HERE. Is that better?

Also found this interesting.