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

[hyzmarca]

Also, from just what is presented there, leading wasn't a stipulation, so if it was added after the fact, that is even funnier, because he is retroactively disqualifying all counterpoints one by one.

With the no ensembles stipulation it becomes more difficult to name playable females who are defined by their sexuality or use it as a weapon. Sexuality isn't a big component of most games.

Off the top of my head, the only character I can think of who does use her sexuality as a weapon (opposed to merely making questionable costume choices) is Morgan from Darkstalkers, actually.

It also eliminates a lot of male characters, since a lot of game have multiple playable characters. And that includes most two-player games.

[Sam]

That would require courage and confidence and other traditionally male traits. Sarkeesian's not a fan of bucking gender roles.

Holy shit. Fuck you and the movement you rode in on.

[Username17]

That would require courage and confidence and other traditionally male traits. Sarkeesian's not a fan of bucking gender roles.

Holy shit. Fuck you and the movement you rode in on.

I genuinely think you missed a whole lot of sarcasm and subtext there.

I'll give you a hint: while Sarkeesian herself sits around getting people to pay her money to rant about video games she hasn't played by playing the victim card over and over again, one of her go-to complaints is that other people don't show female characters with courage and confidence and other "traditionally male traits" (her words).

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

That would require courage and confidence and other traditionally male traits. Sarkeesian's not a fan of bucking gender roles.

Holy shit. Fuck you and the movement you rode in on.

I think you should go read Sarkesian's master's thesis. Well, no, let's be fair; it's 75 pages long and even I haven't read it in its entirety. I'm only going to ask you to read the abstract. Having done so, you are free (and strongly encouraged) to come back and revise your response to Chamomile. I don't particularly blame you for not knowing what the fuck he was on about, but after having told you what to look up to find out I would very much expect a different response.

[Leress]

DSM, could you link to that thesis please.

[Chamomile]

DSMatticus is on the money, here (also Frank, but DSMatticus brought up the specific bit of Sarkeesian's duplicitous insanity that I was referencing, and yes, in retrospect it was a pretty opaque reference to a fairly obscure bit of information). While Feminist Frequency (what I've seen of it, at least) typically contents itself with merely being poorly researched and extremely obvious even when they do get their facts right, Sarkeesian's master's thesis is just a few notches less misogynist than the woman's body having ways of shutting the whole thing down.

Let's go ahead and paste the abstract here:

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.

What?! So it's good that women are being portrayed as strong and successful, but bad because they embody many "masculine identified traits." Like being strong and successful. In order to reinforce that yes, Anita is absolutely being this crazy and it is not just because the abstract does not fully explain things, I'm going to take a break here and list the positive male and female traits in the chart "Values for a More Feminist Television Landscape" found in the body of the thesis. First, she describes the purpose of the table:

To begin envisioning a strong female (and progressive male) character, I have reassignedtraits based on anti-oppression and social justice values (see Table 3).

Now here's the contents of the four sections on the table copy/pasted because I don't know how to make tables:

Violent
Emotionally Inexpressive
Dominant
Not nurturing
Competitive

Rational
Control of themselves
Self Confident
Objective
Independent
Decisive
Daring
Strong
Active

Shy
Weak
Dependent
Passive
Lack Self Confidence
Lack Self Control
Indecisive
Hysterical
Submissive

Cooperative
Emotionally expressive
Intuitive
Nurturing

This is kind of difficult to interpret. A lot of times the opposite of a positive trait will appear in the other gender's negative traits list, which might suggest that traits shouldn't be assigned based on whether they're "masculine" or "feminine" but just whether they're character flaws or character strengths. But this eminently reasonable conclusion doesn't really seem to gel with the fact that the attributes are in fact clearly labeled as masculine and feminine. If Anita wanted to say that in a more feminist television landscape positive and negative traits would be considered without regard to gender, she could've just said that, or maybe been kinda subtle about it by having identical lists of traits in both the masculine and feminine rows. But she doesn't. What she actually seems to be saying here is that violence should be portrayed as exclusively masculine, but it should also be condemned apparently without regard for context, and also that self-confidence and rationality are exclusively male traits WHAT THE FUCK.

Back to the abstract:

This paper analyzes strong female characters within nine television shows by deconstructing their stereotypically“masculine” and “feminine” gender specific attributes and cross referencing how they play within and against traditional archetypes.

This is a lie. Anita does not deconstruct these stereotypes at all. She 100% embraces them and unsurprisingly churns out an incredibly misogynist work which is covered in feminist buzzwords that make the paper seem as thought it were written by two different people instructed under penalty of death to write a paper that appears to have been written by one person, however each of the two authors is trying to push their own perspective. Anita slingshots from condemning stereotypical gender roles to condemning Buffy Summers for breaking those stereotypical gender roles and having lots of "masculine identified traits." Fundamentally, Anita is taking both P and not-P to be true, which gives her leave to derive literally anything, and that's the fundamental basis of her con in this thesis. She can declare literally anything to be misogynist because something qualifies as misogyny both for conforming to and not conforming to gender roles.

Employing texts from cultural criticism and feminist theory, I explore how representations of groups in popular culture and mass media messaging uphold structures of power by giving higher value to masculine attributes as observed in patriarchal discourse.

Read: Having observed that almost all positive values are ascribed to men almost exclusively in modern media, I have come to the conclusion not that we should spread some of those positive traits around to women, but that we should lionize fictitious women for being simpering, limp-wristed characters whose only role is to encourage and support the men who solve all their problems for them and therefore encourage all women to be more like this. Feminism!

Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of why it is critical to foster television media that supports feminist ideals and breaks out of traditional oppressive gender binaries in order to promote, encourage and envision a just future society.

Break out of those traditional oppressive gender binaries by not actually breaking out of them at all, I guess.

The entire paper is driving towards the ill-thought out conclusion that television should encourage women to be emotional, nurturing creatures who solve all their problems through social connection and never employ violence or even rational investigation. That it should portray men not as being able to connect to others emotionally, but that it should just heap shame on them for being unable to do so. That women should not be portrayed as self-confident, but that their lack of self-confidence should just be portrayed negatively. If that sounds like a repugnantly sexist reinforcement of traditional gender roles to you that's because it is.

The entire paper could be given this kind of line-by-line WTF reaction, but it's 75 pages long and would require entirely more effort than it deserves, and in any case the Tropes vs. Women controversy was like 2 years ago and Sarkeesian just isn't a big deal anymore.

[Longes]

Emotionally Inexpressive

Control of themselves

Is it me, or does the self-control imply the reserved display of emotions?

Competitive

Wat? (as in, why is it negative or masculine?)

Feminine[/b] Traits]Cooperative

Wat? (as in, why is it feminine?)

[hyzmarca]

I believe this is relevant:

http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/11/pacifi ... great.html

[Neeeek]

I believe this is relevant:

http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/11/pacifi ... great.html

There are people who remember what the characters were named in Pacific Rim? Why?

[Longes]

I believe this is relevant:

http://www.btchflcks.com/2013/11/pacifi ... great.html

TIL that Obi-Wan is a strong female character.

[Sam]

http://www.academia.edu/4066522/ILL_MAK ... TELEVISION has the full text. It's not an especially long read; a good chunk of that 75 pages is tables and appendices.

Anyway, having read it, I stand by my Fuck You.

[Leress]

Anyway, having read it, I stand by my Fuck You.

Okay, I am really confused could you elaborate on why you still say that.

[DSMatticus]

Anyway, having read it, I stand by my Fuck You.

Then here is my rejoinder: no, fuck you. She very explicitly argues that in order to break out of the gender binary we should not encourage depictions of women with traditionally masculine traits nor depictions of men with traditionally feminine traits, but that we should instead celebrate depictions of men and women emphasizing the positive traits on their respective side of the traditional gender binary. That is contradictory from the word go, in that celebrating the gender binary is not escaping it. I am left wondering if she even knows what that fucking word means.

But more important than the fact that she doesn't seem to understand the terminology she is using, that is not a feminist argument. That is a social conservative argument. That is a "men have their place and women have their's" argument. It is straight up misogynistic and offensive and I very genuinely urge you to reconsider whether or not that is a stance you really support.

[Neeeek]

Anyway, having read it, I stand by my Fuck You.

Then here is my rejoinder: no, fuck you. She very explicitly argues that in order to break out of the gender binary we should not encourage depictions of women with traditionally masculine traits nor depictions of men with traditionally feminine traits, but that we should instead celebrate depictions of men and women emphasizing the positive traits on their respective side of the traditional gender binary.

And yet, none of that justifies calling her a coward for deciding not to show up to an event where she has received very specific death threats in a place where gun control laws are so stupid that it is illegal for the police to search people when entering a location where a specific, direct threat to kill everyone there has been made. Frankly, if I was her, I wouldn't enter the state of Utah. On the other hand, I'm not her and I still wouldn't enter the state of Utah.

[Kaelik]

Anyway, having read it, I stand by my Fuck You.

Then here is my rejoinder: no, fuck you. She very explicitly argues that in order to break out of the gender binary we should not encourage depictions of women with traditionally masculine traits nor depictions of men with traditionally feminine traits, but that we should instead celebrate depictions of men and women emphasizing the positive traits on their respective side of the traditional gender binary.

And yet, none of that justifies calling her a coward for deciding not to show up to an event where she has received very specific death threats in a place where gun control laws are so stupid that it is illegal for the police to search people when entering a location where a specific, direct threat to kill everyone there has been made. Frankly, if I was her, I wouldn't enter the state of Utah. On the other hand, I'm not her and I still wouldn't enter the state of Utah.

On the other hand, I notice that when I hit ctrl-F on the last three pages only one instance comes up, and it is this post right here.

So it is almost exactly like no one called her a coward for not going to the event. In that it is exactly like that.

[Neeeek]

Then here is my rejoinder: no, fuck you. She very explicitly argues that in order to break out of the gender binary we should not encourage depictions of women with traditionally masculine traits nor depictions of men with traditionally feminine traits, but that we should instead celebrate depictions of men and women emphasizing the positive traits on their respective side of the traditional gender binary.

And yet, none of that justifies calling her a coward for deciding not to show up to an event where she has received very specific death threats in a place where gun control laws are so stupid that it is illegal for the police to search people when entering a location where a specific, direct threat to kill everyone there has been made. Frankly, if I was her, I wouldn't enter the state of Utah. On the other hand, I'm not her and I still wouldn't enter the state of Utah.

On the other hand, I notice that when I hit ctrl-F on the last three pages only one instance comes up, and it is this post right here.

So it is almost exactly like no one called her a coward for not going to the event. In that it is exactly like that.

The difference between saying this about her:

"That would require courage and confidence and other traditionally male traits. Sarkeesian's not a fan of bucking gender roles."

and calling her a coward is a distinction without a difference.

[Kaelik]

The difference between saying this about her:

"That would require courage and confidence and other traditionally male traits. Sarkeesian's not a fan of bucking gender roles."

and calling her a coward is a distinction without a difference.

Oh I see, you are too stupid to read, so you do not realize that the entire fucking point of that statement is to set up the "traditionally male traits" line which is the actual criticism.

[Koumei]

Yeah, Cham quite clearly made the post to make fun of her stupid argument, not to actually call her a coward for not being shot at. The real puzzling thing is why she'd consider going to Utah in the first place.

[Prak]

Complete digression here, but Sarkessian was on NPR the other day and talked about enduring racist tweets... I know nothing about her, but Sarkessian seems a very central European* name and she definitely looks white (though I don't recall whether I've seen an actual colour photo of her), so I'm just very confused what racism gets thrown at her.

*Well, Central European or Dune-ian...

Yeah, Cham quite clearly made the post to make fun of her stupid argument, not to actually call her a coward for not being shot at. The real puzzling thing is why she'd consider going to Utah in the first place.

Money? Maybe Utah is the only place that cares about her anymore?

[hyzmarca]

Anyway, having read it, I stand by my Fuck You.

Then here is my rejoinder: no, fuck you. She very explicitly argues that in order to break out of the gender binary we should not encourage depictions of women with traditionally masculine traits nor depictions of men with traditionally feminine traits, but that we should instead celebrate depictions of men and women emphasizing the positive traits on their respective side of the traditional gender binary. That is contradictory from the word go, in that celebrating the gender binary is not escaping it. I am left wondering if she even knows what that fucking word means.

But more important than the fact that she doesn't seem to understand the terminology she is using, that is not a feminist argument. That is a social conservative argument. That is a "men have their place and women have their's" argument. It is straight up misogynistic and offensive and I very genuinely urge you to reconsider whether or not that is a stance you really support.

To be fair, the point generally advanced by those making "Women are only respected when they act like men" arguments is that destroying the gender binary by eliminating femininity isn't exactly healthy or good.

While there is nothing wrong with allowing a woman to be masculine, saying that she must be masculine to be relevant is problematic. When traditionally feminine traits are depicted as liabilities that powerful female characters lack, that's what is being suggesting, even if unintentional.

Indeed, the opposite problem also exists. Male characters are often given feminine traits in order to imply that they ineffective or deviant or both, thus the whole laundry list of depraved homosexual tropes. (Indeed, it would be unfair to discuss anti-femininity without also discussing its relationship with homophobia).

That when femininity is depicted as useless or as a liability then neither males nor females will want to be feminine. If you want to break the gender binary, you can't just have masculine female protagonists. You have to show that femininity is okay, too.



Note, the whole "women can't get respect without acting like men" thing isn't something that media critics came up with. The initial complaints to that end came from businesswomen, particularly successful and powerful ones, who discovered that they had to be 200% more macho than everyone else in the in order to be taken seriously. But that's shit that's been talked about since the 70s and 80s.

Complete digression here, but Sarkessian was on NPR the other day and talked about enduring racist tweets... I know nothing about her, but Sarkessian seems a very central European* name and she definitely looks white (though I don't recall whether I've seen an actual colour photo of her), so I'm just very confused what racism gets thrown at her.

*Well, Central European or Dune-ian...

It's Armenian. Which makes her a member of an ethnic group that's endured genocide within the last century.

[Leress]

Complete digression here, but Sarkessian was on NPR the other day and talked about enduring racist tweets... I know nothing about her, but Sarkessian seems a very central European* name and she definitely looks white (though I don't recall whether I've seen an actual colour photo of her), so I'm just very confused what racism gets thrown at her.

She's of Armenian descent (second generation).

[Chamomile]

To be fair, the point generally advanced by those making "Women are only respected when they act like men" arguments is that destroying the gender binary by eliminating femininity isn't exactly healthy or good.

Sarkeesian's paper does indeed kind of come across like it was written by someone who's heard of this idea and knows she's supposed to agree with it but has failed to actually understand it. And the first step to that discussion is to avoid the trap you've just walked into and find a word for those traits typically assigned to females other than "feminine." Even if it is true that women are more likely to embrace those traits (likely, that's how culture works) and even if it is true that they are biologically predisposed towards those traits (I have no idea) the fact still stands that exceptions exist and aren't even all that rare. Describing traits common to like 80% of females as "female-like" is like if the FPS genre was just called "first-person games" and RPGs and adventure games that were first person got lumped in with them. More precise terms are important.

In any case, Sarkeesian clearly isn't simply critiquing a lack of supportive characters, because there are plenty of supportive characters, male and female, in the shows she turns her attention to. Joss Whedon in particular stuffs his shows full of them. Cordelia's entire arc in Angel is developing from an antagonistic character to a supportive one and there is an entire episode dedicated to showing how Angel's psyche pretty much collapses without her. Inara is entirely about embodying the supportive archetype in a positive way, and receives zero attention in the thesis. Giles and especially Xander are primarily defined by providing moral support to the team, and Willow often finds herself in a supportive role as well. If she wanted to critique television media for not glorifying supportive characters, Joss Whedon shows were the worst place to start, because he's the one legitimately bucking the trend. He isn't as feminist as his fanbase (and he himself) are convinced he is, but he is absolutely willing to swap gender roles, just for the novelty if nothing else.

Sarkeesian's confused and meandering writing makes it possible to tease out lots of different interpretations and also makes it easy to quietly gloss over parts that don't fit the message the reader wants to be there, but looking at the paper in context of what is included and more importantly what isn't, it becomes obvious that Sarkeesian only considers people with lots of "masculine" traits to be strong characters, refusing, for example, to examine Inara alongside Zoe (both from Firefly) or Cordelia alongside Jasmine (both from Angel). Then she condemns those characters for not having the traits which would have disqualified them from counting as "strong" in the first place according to Sarkeesian's own apparent selection process.

She keeps repeating the words "gender roles are bad" but when you dig into the details of her analysis, what we see is female characters condemned for showing "masculine" traits and praised for showing "feminine" traits. With a side order of slut-shaming.

[DSMatticus]

To be fair, the point generally advanced by those making "Women are only respected when they act like men" arguments is that destroying the gender binary by eliminating femininity isn't exactly healthy or good.

While there is nothing wrong with allowing a woman to be masculine, saying that she must be masculine to be relevant is problematic. When traditionally feminine traits are depicted as liabilities that powerful female characters lack, that's what is being suggesting, even if unintentional.

So, let's play a little game. We're going to grant that leadership and courage are traditionally masculine traits and widely respected while expressivity and empathy are traditionally feminine traits and less respected. Now, let's consider four hypothetical movies:
1) Hero Man is a movie featuring a male lead who exhibits leadership and courage as well as a female supporting character who exhibits expressivity and empathy.
2) Hero Woman is a movie featuring a female lead who exhibits leadership and courage as well as a male supporting character who exhibits expressivity and empathy.
3) Supportive Man is a movie featuring a male lead who exhibits expressivity and empathy as well as a female supporting character who exhibits leadership and courage.
4) Supportive Woman is a movie featuring a female lead who exhibits expressivity and empathy as well as a male supporting character who exhibits leadership and courage.

Of those four, name the ones which reinforce the traditional gender binary.

Of those four, name the ones which reinforce the notion that leadership and courage are more respectable than expressivity and empathy.

You should notice that the answers aren't the same, which means from the word go Sarkesian's paper is a schizophrenic mess that doesn't know what it's trying to say. It is legitimately a call to tear down gender roles by placing the spotlight on characters who adhere to the gender roles expected of them. It's complete and total gibberish. Women assuming roles of leadership do not reinforce a patriarchical gender binary, and anyone who says they do is either an idiot or running a hit job on feminism while simultaneously trying to pass that hit job off as credible feminist thought. I'm going with the former, but it isn't really much consolation.

[Prak]

Complete digression here, but Sarkessian was on NPR the other day and talked about enduring racist tweets... I know nothing about her, but Sarkessian seems a very central European* name and she definitely looks white (though I don't recall whether I've seen an actual colour photo of her), so I'm just very confused what racism gets thrown at her.

*Well, Central European or Dune-ian...

It's Armenian. Which makes her a member of an ethnic group that's endured genocide within the last century.

Complete digression here, but Sarkessian was on NPR the other day and talked about enduring racist tweets... I know nothing about her, but Sarkessian seems a very central European* name and she definitely looks white (though I don't recall whether I've seen an actual colour photo of her), so I'm just very confused what racism gets thrown at her.

She's of Armenian descent (second generation).

Ah, ok. Ignorance remedied, thank you.

[tussock]

You really have no credibility on matters of feminism. You burnt it all up when you spent... what, years? defending the notion that the only real difference between red team and blue team were the colors of their shirts.

My refined point there is that, in a representative democracy, politicians are appointed by the swing of small numbers centre voters, and if they're all dicks then the people who might replace them will also have to be dicks. The red states elect those people because that's what a gerrymandered-plurality of voters there want.

But I'm growing as a person, dude. Over time. Slowly. My stance from, yes, years ago, is in fact rather more conspiratorial and "they're all just the same" than it is now. Time, study, just reading more widely and listening to different voices, including those here that offered a good deal of evidence when I found myself in a hole and went digging here.

We had an election here in NZ just recently, and I followed it, and its fallout when the party with shitty policies won and the good guys lost again, all the backstabbing that ensues in the losing side, because of lies and deceit and … let's face it, a genius marketing campaign that hit every dog whistled note to perfection from the winners. And thus will the poor be kicked quite a bit harder for the next three years down here, with state housing already up for the chop despite promises of the opposite.

Having to explain repeatedly to young non-voters that they just voted for that by staying home. That their bitching about imperfections in the good guys must in fact be weighted against the vastly greater problems in the bad guys. Which I guess I learnt here in part.

It is perhaps inappropriate of you to jump into a discussion on feminism days after discovering that you have been helping (however slightly) kick feminism in its metaphorical balls for years. That realization should probably come with a period of introspection and reevaluation where you consider your beliefs, discover a bunch of them are piles of ass, and toss them out to start over. Think of it like growing out of libertarianism. Embarrassing that you had the phase, but you'll be a better person in the end.

That's what I just said. What, are you going to tell me when I'm allowed to be a better person at some point or can I just get on and do it as I figure it out? Or do I need to switch back to team nihilist for a bit to let you yell at me?

But your qualifications to discuss feminism aside, what you just did is called the fallacy of relative privation. It has a wikipedia article. You are encouraged to read it, and in so doing better equip yourself to not make terrible posts in the future.

No, I don't believe I did. And even if I had I think you've made the fallacy fallacy there. I'm not wrong just because I made a logical error in my statements. I think it's a real thing that we are all here talking about Anita Sarkeesian because she (as an imperfect person, with imperfect arguments) was a target of mass misogyny.

My digression was in support of that, logically, we're not in a place that argues about game reviewers, we are in a place that argues about human rights including feminism and misogyny, and yet here we're talking about the quality of the game reviews of a feminist under fire largely from gross and quite disturbing misogyny. The rape and assassination threats. Where some people here are actually saying she should just risk it. That's incredibly fucking creepy. I do not approve. I think the important issue for Anita is in fact the death threats, and not her takedowns on youtube vids where the comments were full of rape jokes and death threats. That's technically illegal, yes, but the legal means of fighting that are essentially bullshit and unavailable, so fuck the law.

---

There's real issues for google there, and I know they're currently struggling with the open comment system and what it leads to internally, the dark little self-sustaining cesspit that can quickly form. There's a bit of public talk about getting the creepy stalker and harassment videos off youtube, for instance, more user bans. Facebook has similar issues they're struggling with. All the big places.