Anita Sarkeesian "I'm not a fan of gaming" leaked 2010 video reveals

[runic knight]

Fist of all: Cut out the condescending tone, please. Phrases like

that my friend

and

Bravo, was waiting for you to finally realize this one.

Just make you look like kind of an asshole in my eyes, and I don't see why I should converse with someone who acts like that.

Noted, but I have felt like I've been talking to a wall about certain points, so my apologies if I get a little snarky about some thing. Besides, they do nothing to detract from the points made, merely your opinion of me, which we both noted doesn't matter when coming to arguments.

To adress these two points in one: Why is the association brought up? Because frankly, if the issue had no real-world implications, there wouldn't be much reason to talk about it, would there? The whole project is founded on the belief that our culture informs our actions, and so it obviously is implied that sexism in games has negative real-world consequences. Is that a proven fact? Hell no. But for some people (including me) it seems likely enough to warrant some thought. I mean sure you can stay on the standpoint that until the exact interaction between games, culture and actions is proven with exact quantification, you will listen to no-one talking about any possible interactions. Whether that is a useful stance to take is another question entirely.

The implication that she thinks the tropes should be stopped is plainly obvious. It's not "hidden" behind anything, thats obviously the point of the series. I mean it's called "Tropes vs. Women", I think it's safe to say no-one will be mislead by what that title implies. Indeed, all your talks about how she is "cowardly hiding her true intentions" seems to imply that you accuse her of a much more sinister objective.

At this point I can't fathom how you would defend what you are describing. If I said you were the cause of death and destruction and human suffering and tried to defend it by saying "Well, you are a part of culture so you influence it therefore you do help cause suffering and pain" it would be completely honest, but also completely worthless even as a point of saying you affect culture as a whole. The reason being as it is not an example (no example of direct effect given), it is a means to blame.

I'll try to explain the issue here as best I can. Lets say I dislike a movie. Lets say it is because of the character in that movie. Now, if I wanted to be fair, I would come out and say I hate this type of movie and this sort of character and because of my personal opinion, if I had the ability I would not make any more like it. If I wanted to convince others, I may make arguments about the character being over done or lazy or too simple or too negative or unfit for the stories it is used in. I would limit the argument to the medium itself.
You know what I don't do? I don't make a convoluted piles of bullshit to claim that it kills people. It seems pretty simple why I wouldn't. It is dishonest, it is unfounded, and it is an underhanded way to push my opinion on other people. I could argue that movies affect culture and culture affects violence therefore the movie character affects murder rates. But we both know that is not highlighting anything truthful, it is an attempt to claim the movie with something so negative it is indefensible and as a result also implies defenders as enablers. I think we both know how well accusing people goes in "discussions". Furthermore, it ignores that the tropes of the movie may affect things differently then assumed, if at all.
How about another example, on that has happened before. Lets say I call you a communist in the McCarthy era. Or a witch during the inquisition. Lets say I call you anything with immediate social in-defensibility and imply you cause people pain and suffering? At that point it is pretty much just slander. I call her a coward because she doesn't have the guts to at least openly make the claim that tropes cause violence against women, instead relying on emotional appeal to make it for her.
Furthermore, the vagueness of the association is enough to condemn anything. Religion greatly affects culture, and Christianity's theme is highly anti-women. Does that mean I can call the entirety of the religion sexist? Does that mean I can say Christians promote a culture of violence against women? Or what about moviegoers? Surely they contribute to culture by consumption of and therefore propagation of the media, and since they use the same tropes, that must mean they too contribute to a culture of violence against women. At this point the question then becomes who can't be roped into being blamed for it? Can you understand why the entire thing is so worthless for discussion on the topic? How it derails and destroys any sort of idea of working for a solution to instead present it like one side is simply wrong?

But I didn't claim that the effect is "even across the board" or that it contributes "only" to sexist culture. The issue with tropes and stereotypes is that it doesn't much help if you are aware of them or not. Hear them enough and they will still find their way into your subconscious. Obviously you are misrepresenting the relation when you simply say that it "leads to" sexism, because that implies it's the main reason. But if you ask me if movies with racist undertones contribute to racist behaviours, like disproportionate police brutality, I would say "yeah, probably". I mean I don't have proof, it's just my opinion.

Prove it then. Give some solid evidence that the tropes cause any sort of effect at all. You make an assertion here they affect the unconscious, back it. No, you shouldn't, the one making the damn series with that as part of her point should have to, you are just the apologist.
You don't have proof, yet you are willing to condemn something because you think so...
I didn't realize but witch hunt seems more and more appropriate. Furthermore, that is the exact reason people keep comparing this bullshit with the "violence in games cause mass shootings" crap. It is the same idea. "I don't actually know but damn the effort of looking for the evidence, lets go with our gut on this one to condemn something". It is the same irrationality that had people blaming rock and roll, d&d, hiphop, video games, communist, atheist and whatever else. It has always been bullshit, so why do we let it slide here?

Err, no. An argument is valid regardless of whether the premises are true. I realize I might have confused the terms "valid" and "sound" in this discussion, I apologize. Assume that whenever I said "sound" I actually meant "valid".

Well, you confused me some there but I don't think I wasn't talking about valid or sound here, I was referring to the argument being hypothetical (if the premise is unproven) with true (if the premise was). Basically, both can work as argument, and can even be useful, but one has to note when the entire argument hinges on something that is not known to be true (hypothetical).
As for valid and sound, I again refer back to her giving explanation, not arguments, so valid and sound are different there.

Well, I feel this is kind of a tough argument to make. First of all you can't really fault someone for stating their premise, or thesis, outright and then attempting to prove it. That's generally how we structure academic papers (not that the videos would be very academic), so it's a valid way to argue. What I assume you are saying is that she is seeing patterns where there are none, because she wants to see them. But thats your conclusion based on arguments such as "cherry-picking", so I don't think it's and individual point to raise.

There is nothing wrong with stating a thesis, but everything when you answer the thesis before doing the work.
"I will look into the implications of the tropes in relation to gender/sexism" is different then "I will prove the tropes are sexist."
When added to the way things are presented as explanation rather then argument and the various assertions about things, well, it is near unwatchable in that regard.

Ok, I can accept all that, these are perfectly valid criticisms. Thats what is worth discussing here.

I didn't forget, I answered you the first time and I will answer you again. Now the problem is I haven't played a single game of the ones you listed, except for Mario 1, so it's kinda hard for me to tell whether or not you are correctly presenting them. So I can only answer in somewhat broad terms.

Taking Mario 1 as an example, you are of course quite right that 7 toads are rescued before the princess. However, it should be noted that the story of Mario isn't "Mario rescues 7 toads and then a princess", it's "Mario rescues a princess and finds 7 toads along the way". And, though I cannot say this with any authority, I assume it's somewhat similar with at least some of your other examples: The hero sets out to rescue the princess from evil, but along the way there are lots of tasks to be done, and you also have to rescue a lot of other people from both genders. Which means that the theme "Hero rescues princess" is the story arc that binds everything else together. This is why I think "oh but
you also rescue x males" is not always a good argument. I hope I am making any sense to you.

The story is "Mario stops Bowser and saves the mushroom kingdom". He saves 7 toads. He saves the royal family member. He stops the big dragonturtle. When you look at it looking for gender, you will see only the princess and latch onto that. When the main point is to save the world, you seem to be very narrow in scope looking at only the princess as the point of the game. Hell, in Ocarina for example, zelda is not a prisoner until the last 5 minutes. The entire game was "save the damn world", yet you dismiss that entirely as though it was only about the princess. And that the princess was only about gender. The arc is "Hero stops bad guy/saves world" It would be the same arc with or without the princess in every game. Keep in mind the princesses represent the rightful rule of their countries and are usually some sort of magical counter to the big bad's evil plan in the plot. While you may see it as a simple "Save the princess" plot, many do not. Many see it more as "stop the evil guy" plot with the princess being captured to further show the big bad doesn't belong in charge. The theme you claim is there is your personal interpretation, which is fine, but when you can't even guarantee everyone else see it as such, any arguments about what the theme may do to affect culture as a whole already starts very shaky. And again, that is before any claim to the affect on culture being negative or promoting violence against women.

Well, it seems I have not made myself clear, let me try again. What I meant to say is that a "trope", by definition, is not a single instance, but a group of instances. You are certainly correct in saying that "the trend of using more of this trope is sexist, so the trope itself is sexist" is fallacious. However, when we look at whether the base trope is sexist, we are already looking at a group of instances. Consequently, it would also be fallacious to say "this single story using the trope is not sexist, so the trope is not sexist".

But even the tropes are not sexist because they are not a group. A trope is solely a character or plot element that is used a lot, it says nothing about how it is used within the story, nor is it limited to only one means, so claiming the trope is anything is still incorrect. Case by case arguments can be made, of course, but the trope alone is not enough when people can subvert or parody or add more depth then the trope itself. A damsel is just a rescued female character. On its own, at face value, there is nothing inherently more sexist to that then in the rescue of a male with exception that someone sought to make the damsel trope special by gender. It is a trope made by people looking to distinguish women being rescued as somehow different then males yet does nothing to demonstrate this as an aspect of the trope itself. Instead people often refer to the overall trend of use of one gender (often like yourself in overlooking the massive number of males being rescued) to justify that it is special, and by nature of that falling into the same fallacy as before. "damsels" are treated as special because the people who named it as a specific trope relied on a fallacy to validate them as being special. This is common of many gender-locked tropes. Women in refridgerators for instance, try to present the death of a female supporting character to continue a male character's arc as sexist, ignoring the amount of male supporting characters killed off for the same reason. The overall trend of more male main characters is used to try to justify the distinction, but beyond the trend which we already explained is a fallacy to try to use as it has been, there is nothing inherent in the tropes themselves that require the gender to be locked, and therefore if the trope is not discriminating against a gender because of gender, it is not sexist.

Good point, it wasn't a good argument.

I don't care much for your tone, but I can agree with that definition. So would you agree to say that a trope is sexist when the majority of characters from the same gender share very similar character traits?

No. You'd have to show actual discrimination on the basis of gender on the individual level, not just an overall pattern or trend. Again, same issue as before with fallacy of division. As for tone, I feel I have been repeating myself too much, so sorry if I occasionally get a bit snarky about things.

Ok, that point is somewhat settled, then.

Well she certainly seems to elicit a whole lot of emotions, that much is clear. I think you are touching on a very important point here: She is a figurehead. She has become bigger than life because by engaging with gaming culture (which not a lot of people have done before her) she has caused a big divide in the community. This has kind of made her bigger-than-life and also probably put her in a position where she really cannot live up to that responsibility. Which is why I think it's irrational to hate her, no offense. I think we would have these same discussions, these same heightened emotions if it were anyone else who had first raised the issue. But I am repeating myself. The reason she is still so prominent in the discussion is that apparently, the discussion still needs a figurehead. There is no rational discussion of sexism in gaming because there is still no consensus that it even exists. As long as there isn't even a basic consensus on what the issue is, the discussion will revolve around the people claiming there is an issue.

But as I showed before, she is not the first. Extra Credits did the topic justice, and they are not the only ones to do it well. The reason she is a figurehead now is not because of the subject matter or her insight, but her divisiveness and the negative backlash that propelled her into fame. Part of the reason I compared her to Bill O'Riley, he is not known as a beacon of conservative politics and a paragon of their values, he is a loudmouth who got famous for being a firebrand and because he is divisive and has no intellectual integrity in defending his position and attacking others, he gets more attention to the point people assume he represents the point of view because he is well known. It isn't a question of if she can live up to expectations, since for many there are no positive expectations to be had. It is a question of how do we undo her fame and figurehead status or at least contain the damage she is doing. Unfortunately the inverse idea applies and the ones that became the "figurehead" of the opposition were doing the same to her: The trolls.

The discussion of sexism in gaming has been made before, and is still ongoing. There hasn't been much change in things, but that does not mean that gamers are ignorant of the issues, merely that the discussion has not had much in the way of progress because it is so scattered and has some many opinions. I think you may be assuming things here about what will result from the discussion and because they haven't happened yet, they obviously have not been having the discussion. You are right that many people don't agree on if it is a problem, though that does not mean the discussion on things can not still be made or that changes can't result from it, you just have to not presume that the changes you want will be the ones that result. also note that even if people do not think things are sexist or that there is a problem, they can still acknowledge benefit to variety or that there is at least a pattern used too often. Again, I will mention a thread I made discussing the topic with clear direction to exclude her from the discussion and to exclude overall culture problems as well. As a result, I think there was some progress made and some good ideas showed up. Unfortunately threads like that don't survive too well when another one of these Anita threads pop up every other day, and twice when she does something extra stupid or releases a new video. Remember what I said: She overshadows the debate topic itself now.

 

[wetnap]

Well, I feel this is kind of a tough argument to make. First of all you can't really fault someone for stating their premise, or thesis, outright and then attempting to prove it. That's generally how we structure academic papers (not that the videos would be very academic), so it's a valid way to argue. What I assume you are saying is that she is seeing patterns where there are none, because she wants to see them. But thats your conclusion based on arguments such as "cherry-picking", so I don't think it's and individual point to raise.

Yes you can

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwwFx-tz9TY
that video breaks down the problem, you can't go around pretending that you are speaking from academic research when you do not follow even basic requirements for research. She doesn't cite evidence or sources because she doesn't have what is required to support the arguments she makes. So people defending her based on the idea that she is supported by and is doing the work of academic research, and thus falsely give her "opinion" far greater standing than it deserves are just wrong.

The Predominance of Male Protagonists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5L2MBPBl3I

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRWkD79WqOAIKMWL8pGU2w3UgUiomRezh
this guy is a bit slow in going but he breaks down her videos quite well.

 

[Stephen St.]

So after Wetnap has brought this thread to my attention again, I figured I shouldn't let this discussion just hang here, unconcluded, so I want to make a last post in this thread. Thanks for the discussion! I think by now the arguments are mostly exchanged and there isn't much left to say on the majority of points.

At this point I can't fathom how you would defend what you are describing. If I said you were the cause of death and destruction and human suffering and tried to defend it by saying "Well, you are a part of culture so you influence it therefore you do help cause suffering and pain" it would be completely honest, but also completely worthless even as a point of saying you affect culture as a whole. The reason being as it is not an example (no example of direct effect given), it is a means to blame.

And I, on the other hand, cannot fathom why you read all these extremely negative statements into something that, to me, sounds mostly neutral. Saying "you are the cause" is simply not the same as "you, as a member of that culture, share part of the responsibility". I feel you are seeing blame where none is supposed to be. But this is your view, I don't know what else I could do to change it.

I'll try to explain the issue here as best I can. Lets say I dislike a movie. Lets say it is because of the character in that movie. Now, if I wanted to be fair, I would come out and say I hate this type of movie and this sort of character and because of my personal opinion, if I had the ability I would not make any more like it. If I wanted to convince others, I may make arguments about the character being over done or lazy or too simple or too negative or unfit for the stories it is used in. I would limit the argument to the medium itself.
You know what I don't do? I don't make a convoluted piles of bullshit to claim that it kills people. It seems pretty simple why I wouldn't. It is dishonest, it is unfounded, and it is an underhanded way to push my opinion on other people. I could argue that movies affect culture and culture affects violence therefore the movie character affects murder rates. But we both know that is not highlighting anything truthful, it is an attempt to claim the movie with something so negative it is indefensible and as a result also implies defenders as enablers. I think we both know how well accusing people goes in "discussions". Furthermore, it ignores that the tropes of the movie may affect things differently then assumed, if at all.

If you wanted to talk about a single movie, you should talk about the movie in detail. If you want to talk about Hollywood culture, you can argue the effects of that specific movie culture on society in general. I expect that if you want to link, for example, violence in movies to the acceptance of real-world violence as conflict solving, you would not simply claim cause and effect, but instead indicate that they are possibly related. And that, in my book, would be completely fine. I can entertain the notion that constant violence in the media has an impact on real-world violence without immediately jumping to "Hollywood is killing people". I feel that this would be a reasonable way to go about this. You seem to disagree and state that whenever I claim a relation, I need to be absolutely sure of the quality and quantity of the relation, and state these in exact terms. I don't think that is a usefull stance to take, but I accept this as your standpoint.

How about another example, on that has happened before. Lets say I call you a communist in the McCarthy era. Or a witch during the inquisition. Lets say I call you anything with immediate social in-defensibility and imply you cause people pain and suffering? At that point it is pretty much just slander. I call her a coward because she doesn't have the guts to at least openly make the claim that tropes cause violence against women, instead relying on emotional appeal to make it for her.

Again I cannot understand how you see these things in the video. It appears our perceptions of the world are massively different. Since when is sharing the blame for reinforcing a sexist aspect of culture (which is the maximum "blame" I can in any way extract from the videos) an isse of "immediate social in-defensibility"? You are defending it and I would never say you defending it is defending pain and suffering.

Furthermore, the vagueness of the association is enough to condemn anything. Religion greatly affects culture, and Christianity's theme is highly anti-women. Does that mean I can call the entirety of the religion sexist?

Actually, yes I would. Not any christian denomination, obviously, because they all have different interpretations of the scripture. But the catholic church? Seems pretty sexist to me.

Does that mean I can say Christians promote a culture of violence against women?

Not really, because the relation between the religion and it's members seems a bit different to me. Also culture of sexism =/= culture of violence against women. There are degrees of severity between these two "cultures".

Or what about moviegoers? Surely they contribute to culture by consumption of and therefore propagation of the media, and since they use the same tropes, that must mean they too contribute to a culture of violence against women. At this point the question then becomes who can't be roped into being blamed for it? Can you understand why the entire thing is so worthless for discussion on the topic? How it derails and destroys any sort of idea of working for a solution to instead present it like one side is simply wrong?

Well, this made me think for quite a while. Do moviegoers contribute to a culture of violence against women by watching sexist films? The answer is yes and no. It's yes because they do contribute to a culture that still has quite a bit of unhealthy sexism in it. No because "culture of violence against women" suggests a much stronger interaction than just "culture of sexism". It's degrees of severity: "culture of violence" suggests that violence against women is routinely accepted, and that the movies portray this acceptance as "normal". This would be going to far. But as a general point, yes, I think consumers, and that includes moviegoers, share responsibility for the message the bought products send.

Prove it then. Give some solid evidence that the tropes cause any sort of effect at all. You make an assertion here they affect the unconscious, back it. No, you shouldn't, the one making the damn series with that as part of her point should have to, you are just the apologist.
You don't have proof, yet you are willing to condemn something because you think so...

Here it is again, that odd disconnect in perception. I am not condemning anyone, I merely accept the proposition that there might be a relation. I have experienced firsthand how easily racist sentiments creep into your subconscious when I was abroad.

I didn't realize but witch hunt seems more and more appropriate. Furthermore, that is the exact reason people keep comparing this bullshit with the "violence in games cause mass shootings" crap. It is the same idea. "I don't actually know but damn the effort of looking for the evidence, lets go with our gut on this one to condemn something". It is the same irrationality that had people blaming rock and roll, d&d, hiphop, video games, communist, atheist and whatever else. It has always been bullshit, so why do we let it slide here?

I let it slide here because the rhethoric is so different. Again I see no condemnation, and I have no idea why you see one. I guess I'll just have to accept that different people take very different things away from the videos.

Well, you confused me some there but I don't think I wasn't talking about valid or sound here, I was referring to the argument being hypothetical (if the premise is unproven) with true (if the premise was). Basically, both can work as argument, and can even be useful, but one has to note when the entire argument hinges on something that is not known to be true (hypothetical).
As for valid and sound, I again refer back to her giving explanation, not arguments, so valid and sound are different there.

I still have no idea what the difference between an argument and an explanation is in this context.

There is nothing wrong with stating a thesis, but everything when you answer the thesis before doing the work.
"I will look into the implications of the tropes in relation to gender/sexism" is different then "I will prove the tropes are sexist."

No, it's not different. You cannot "answer" a thesis, a thesis isn't a question. The two statements you use here are similar in that they both are statements of intent. The only way in which they differ is that one is bolder than the other.

The story is "Mario stops Bowser and saves the mushroom kingdom". He saves 7 toads. He saves the royal family member. He stops the big dragonturtle. When you look at it looking for gender, you will see only the princess and latch onto that. When the main point is to save the world, you seem to be very narrow in scope looking at only the princess as the point of the game. Hell, in Ocarina for example, zelda is not a prisoner until the last 5 minutes. The entire game was "save the damn world", yet you dismiss that entirely as though it was only about the princess. And that the princess was only about gender. The arc is "Hero stops bad guy/saves world" It would be the same arc with or without the princess in every game. Keep in mind the princesses represent the rightful rule of their countries and are usually some sort of magical counter to the big bad's evil plan in the plot. While you may see it as a simple "Save the princess" plot, many do not. Many see it more as "stop the evil guy" plot with the princess being captured to further show the big bad doesn't belong in charge. The theme you claim is there is your personal interpretation, which is fine, but when you can't even guarantee everyone else see it as such, any arguments about what the theme may do to affect culture as a whole already starts very shaky. And again, that is before any claim to the affect on culture being negative or promoting violence against women.

I see your point that we are only looking at one aspect of the story, and that there are other aspects, most notably "saving the world". You are somewhat correct. We are looking at these games in terms of gender. We are asking ourselves: Is there a part of these stories that is usually gender specific, and what does it say about the gender? The gender-specific part is usually capture and rescue of the princess - or analog. Sure men also get captured or killed. But it is fairly obvious that the quest for rescuing the princess constitutes a major part of these storylines. And I think you are not denying that, since you also say that the princess is usually in some way very important to stopping the bad guy. You also cannot reasonably argue that stories where a man is captured as part of the main storyline are as numerous as stories where a woman is captured. And since, as everyone assures me, the stories could be told just as well when a man was the main capture victim, the disparatity in representation here is most probably related to gender, full stop.

But even the tropes are not sexist because they are not a group. A trope is solely a character or plot element that is used a lot, it says nothing about how it is used within the story, nor is it limited to only one means, so claiming the trope is anything is still incorrect.

Ok, I see what you mean. It's not technically the storytelling device that is sexist, it's the fact that it's used a lot in exactly the same fashion. But since "it's used a lot/ is significant" is an element of the "modern" definition of trope, it's not incorrect to say that a trope can be sexist. Sites like TV Tropes aren't exactly judicious with what is used often enough to qualify as a trope, but technically a trope would is precicely something that is used often enough to have a core independent from any single story. At which point the trope can, idependently, be sexist.

Case by case arguments can be made, of course, but the trope alone is not enough when people can subvert or parody or add more depth then the trope itself. A damsel is just a rescued female character. On its own, at face value, there is nothing inherently more sexist to that then in the rescue of a male with exception that someone sought to make the damsel trope special by gender. It is a trope made by people looking to distinguish women being rescued as somehow different then males yet does nothing to demonstrate this as an aspect of the trope itself.

I agree that on it's own and at face value, rescuing a female and recuing a male are the same. When adding "widespread use/significance" to the definition of a trope, however, the distinction works. One is more significant then the other in current gaming culture.

Instead people often refer to the overall trend of use of one gender (often like yourself in overlooking the massive number of males being rescued) to justify that it is special, and by nature of that falling into the same fallacy as before. "damsels" are treated as special because the people who named it as a specific trope relied on a fallacy to validate them as being special. This is common of many gender-locked tropes. Women in refridgerators for instance, try to present the death of a female supporting character to continue a male character's arc as sexist, ignoring the amount of male supporting characters killed off for the same reason. The overall trend of more male main characters is used to try to justify the distinction, but beyond the trend which we already explained is a fallacy to try to use as it has been, there is nothing inherent in the tropes themselves that require the gender to be locked, and therefore if the trope is not discriminating against a gender because of gender, it is not sexist.

I sure would like to see a quantitative analysis of how many main male characters are killed of or captured to support the hero's story in comparison to female characters. To date the only video with a significant sample size was the Tropes vs. Women video series, and that one disagreed with you. But I am always ready to accept new facts when such are presented to me.

I cannot make sense of your last sentence. Of course there is something inherent in the trope that requires the gender to be locked, the definition of the trope. It was defined that way because people felt that the use of female characters, specifically, was widespread and significant enough to warrant it's own trope. You disagree that such is the case, but here I tend to go with the majority opinion. Of course a trope doesn't "discriminate", because only decisions can be discriminatory, and a trope doesn't decide anything. Whats sexist is the fact that there even is a trope specific to female characters. The trope is the trend, and the trend is sexist.

No. You'd have to show actual discrimination on the basis of gender on the individual level, not just an overall pattern or trend. Again, same issue as before with fallacy of division.

Again discrimination applies to decisions. And it's not a fallacy of division unless I state every single instance of the trope is sexist as well, which I didn't. You have defined sexim as bias towards, or discrimination against, a gender. If the majority of characters from the same gender have similar character traits, then that is an indication of bias. It is indicative of the fact that the authors writing those characters don't consider other character traits to be possible or "normal", a biased view.

In conclusion, I remain unconvinced by your arguments. I am now quitting this discussion, because this has been taking up too much of my time. I will probably not be able to resist the occaisonal comment on similar topics, but I feel burnt out on the isse and therefore want to quit the discussion for now. Thanks for your time and dedication to discuss this with me. Though I disagree with you (strongly, at times) I appreciate the effort! Also please don't take this as me wanting to have the last word in the discussion. If you want to reply, I will read it, but probably wont comment any further.

Yes you can

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwwFx-tz9TY
that video breaks down the problem, you can't go around pretending that you are speaking from academic research when you do not follow even basic requirements for research. She doesn't cite evidence or sources because she doesn't have what is required to support the arguments she makes. So people defending her based on the idea that she is supported by and is doing the work of academic research, and thus falsely give her "opinion" far greater standing than it deserves are just wrong.

The Predominance of Male Protagonists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5L2MBPBl3I

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRWkD79WqOAIKMWL8pGU2w3UgUiomRezh
this guy is a bit slow in going but he breaks down her videos quite well.

I was merely pointing out that starting your work with a claim isn't unheard of, and is not an individual argument against the work. Of course that doesn't preclude you from stating how the initial claim was not proven properly. As said above, I currently have no desire to further argue her claims.

 

[runic knight]

And I, on the other hand, cannot fathom why you read all these extremely negative statements into something that, to me, sounds mostly neutral. Saying "you are the cause" is simply not the same as "you, as a member of that culture, share part of the responsibility". I feel you are seeing blame where none is supposed to be. But this is your view, I don't know what else I could do to change it.

Well, this is a bit of a thread necro, isn't it? Aw well, thanks for continuing anyways.
This is my view of your stance. I've tried explaining my problems with it in hopes you could either clarify or explain it better. From all you have given, it comes off as support of an attacking position done in a way that intellectually worthless to discuss. I've tried giving analogies of what I would relate to it in order to show flaw, as well as explain how flawed the idea is and why it is bad for the overall discussion within gaming itself. But no matter how I try to wrap my head around it, it always comes down to two extremely flawed ideas, neither of which you justify or explain any better then just repeating the very aspects that make them so flawed. It is either
1. Games affect culture, and therefore increase violence against women. This is a blatant attack, unproven by science and not presented as a "look at this" so much as "this is happening" with a heavily implied intent to stop the games from doing it. As I offered in my analogy, if I said something like "black people contribute to a culture of violence", I could use the exact same points of arguments to support it as anita did (They contribute to culture), and therefore I am not being a bigot, just making a point of awareness. It is a bullshit excuse to allow an open unjustified claim to be made solely because you sympathize with the cause, which is part of the emotional manipulation shit I been complaining about in the first place.
or it is.
2. Games affect culture and therefore affect violence against women, but in a means or way that is so subtle and as part of countless other factors. This is fairer then an open accusation, I will grant you, but flawed because again it is an unproven claim made as an open attack against the tropes for one, and for two, by refusing to define how or to what effect they have, you do no better then any person who ever claimed music, movies, D&D, dancing, reading books, not going to church every sunday or whatever other god damn agenda you can think of has done throughout history. It is a scapegoat that blamed the problem on something with no actual basis and as such actively harms everyone. It creates a mentality that the problem is getting solved when it is not and harms the medium itself by demonizing it unfairly.

The issue here is no matter how you try to spin it, Anita linked games and violence against women directly, and in doing so HAS created the implied impression of blaming games for it, or for at least being a part of it large enough to single out. If the argument is that games are to blame specifically enough to mention them, then it needs to be proven. If the argument is that games share an equal part as every other aspect of culture, then what is the point of mentioning games in particular if you have no evidence beyond it being part of culture itself, and no more legitimacy then saying Elvis's hips mades kids evil little heathens.

If you wanted to talk about a single movie, you should talk about the movie in detail. If you want to talk about Hollywood culture, you can argue the effects of that specific movie culture on society in general. I expect that if you want to link, for example, violence in movies to the acceptance of real-world violence as conflict solving, you would not simply claim cause and effect, but instead indicate that they are possibly related. And that, in my book, would be completely fine. I can entertain the notion that constant violence in the media has an impact on real-world violence without immediately jumping to "Hollywood is killing people". I feel that this would be a reasonable way to go about this. You seem to disagree and state that whenever I claim a relation, I need to be absolutely sure of the quality and quantity of the relation, and state these in exact terms. I don't think that is a usefull stance to take, but I accept this as your standpoint.

First, yes, if you claim there is a correlation at all, you damn well better have some proof to back that up. That is even before we move to causation. See, whenever someone in some modicum of authority starts to make stupid unfounded statements, we have to be extra diligent and tell them to shut up or prove it because there are people out there who will believe them without double checking things. This isn't a case of some joe nobody making a video as an open talk about games based on opinion alone, this was presented as a researched and professionally made bit of journalism. Hell, we paid for it in order to make it happen. For some damn reason, people out there take Anita's words seriously, so claims of correlations need to be proven or called out for being bullshit pulled strait out of the bull's ass.
For an analogy, look up Jenny McCarthy and her making wild claims about a correlation between vaccines and autism. Yeah, she is entitled to her opinion, same as Anita, but in both cases when they start making those claims public, and because people pay attention to them especially, those claims have to be called for being baseless or worthless when they are. This, again, was why I called her out for emotional manipulation, because she isn't directly saying get rid of such tropes, but rather relying on a zealous audience to eat her shit up and then force the agenda herself.
Secondly, it is not the notion itself I care about, but rather then claim and the reaction the claim will get. If Anita thinks games are the cause of all human suffering, I wouldn't give a shit. But when she suddenly has an audience of thousands, I have to worry some dumb-asses out there might actually believe that unfounded crap and worse yet, might actually try to do something based on that faulty information. And I fear that because it happens every time someone raises the specter of violence in video games and tries to push for laws because of that. Same logical failure there, that of a lack of evidence and a gut feeling to pick a scape goat.
Now, I can easily entertain he idea that violence in movies or games can have an impact on people and through that culture itself. I am not denying the possibility there. What I am doing is calling bullshit on the witch hunter tactics and scapegoating accusations the likes of which games have had to put up with ever since rock music destroyed the religious groups attacking them and those groups needed a new target. If someone presents themselves as a professional enough to actually ask for money to fund a research project, you damn well better believe I will call it out for lack of professionalism and harmful behavior that results from abusing the faux authority being a "professional journalist" entails.

Again I cannot understand how you see these things in the video. It appears our perceptions of the world are massively different. Since when is sharing the blame for reinforcing a sexist aspect of culture (which is the maximum "blame" I can in any way extract from the videos) an isse of "immediate social in-defensibility"? You are defending it and I would never say you defending it is defending pain and suffering.

Perhaps I extrapolate some based on other arguments I have had on this topic with other people who watched the video. Perhaps upon seeing the way they responded, the similarities and mannerisms to other bullshit has given me perspective you have yet to run across. But I'll try to explain it.
Anita's video presents a correlation between video game tropes and violence against women. This has no founding or support, it merely is.
Now, the layout and presentation of the video leads to the connection being that video games tropes cause or contribute to the culture of violence against women. She rehashed the point well enough that establishing that causation is obvious.
From there, blame is created as the cause of something as bad as violence against women would create a standard emotional response to reduce the cause of violence. Tropes and the games that use them are blamed for the continuation of violence against women.

Now, this correlation itself is very similar to the way people would coorelate witches with bad things going on. Indeed it has a secondary hallmark of such a thing in that it is a biased view. It is looking solely for a problem to blame and ignores the rest of the factors in order to support the idea. Witch witches, anything good that happened with crops or weather were ignored, only the bad looked at and blamed applied to the "witches". In this case, violence against women is looked at exclusively, while ignoring details such as actual rates for it over periods of time. Again, I draw parallel to the "Games cause violence" bullshit, as they too forgot such details as violent crime rates actually decreasing in correlation to video game popularity. But that is just me pulling out yet another reason to have actual information before someone with an audience opens their mouth. God forbid reality contradict our carefully constructed persecution complexes, right?
You'll have to forgive my testiness here, the repetition of the topic and the flaws is wearing on me as I am running out of ways to explain why something that is so fundamentally wrong to journalism or intellectually integrity is, you know, wrong.

Actually, yes I would. Not any christian denomination, obviously, because they all have different interpretations of the scripture. But the catholic church? Seems pretty sexist to me.

Me too. I think they are horribly sexist. Would you say they help cause violence against women though? And make sure you do it the same way Anita does with tropes. You claim the individual is sexist, then justify that label by the trend. So, all Catholics are now sexist because the trend of the religion is. Then tie that into violence. Easy, because Catholics are a part of culture, therefore Catholics help promote a culture of violence. Then wrap it all together. Have a respected internet journalist try making that claim. See how far the excuses you have used go.
You know what I'd do before trying to charge people 20 thousand dollars to make a video about Catholicism being sexist? I have a plan to actually support that idea at the very least. Maybe start digging up statistics, basic data. Hell, bible passages, number of female clergy and general history. but that wouldn't be enough. I'd need some data to show a correlation between violence against women and the religion itself. Then I would have to explain how that was a causation. I would not be able to, with any degree of intellectually integrity, do what Anita did and tacitly accuse them of it.

Not really, because the relation between the religion and it's members seems a bit different to me. Also culture of sexism =/= culture of violence against women. There are degrees of severity between these two "cultures".

You know, I mentioned that point. That very damn point that a culture of sexism does not equal a culture of violence against women. When I mention it, I did so as a criticism of Anita because she jumped the step in logic where she explained how a culture of sexism lead to a culture of violence against women. She never made the distinction, instead relying on the case made about games causing a culture of sexism to lead into her protest about violence against women, thereby showing the train of logic she wanted her audience to follow, that being devoid of the distinction or how the one would lead into the other. You ignored it when I called Anita out for that crap, why do you try to call me out for it here, when I am using it flawed as part of analogy just so you can understand the flaw in logic with her argument?

Well, this made me think for quite a while. Do moviegoers contribute to a culture of violence against women by watching sexist films? The answer is yes and no. It's yes because they do contribute to a culture that still has quite a bit of unhealthy sexism in it. No because "culture of violence against women" suggests a much stronger interaction than just "culture of sexism". It's degrees of severity: "culture of violence" suggests that violence against women is routinely accepted, and that the movies portray this acceptance as "normal". This would be going to far. But as a general point, yes, I think consumers, and that includes moviegoers, share responsibility for the message the bought products send.

Why is it not too far to accuse games of the same? And if as you say they share some responsibility, is that not blaming them, in part, for the problem?

Here it is again, that odd disconnect in perception. I am not condemning anyone, I merely accept the proposition that there might be a relation. I have experienced firsthand how easily racist sentiments creep into your subconscious when I was abroad.

First, do note that while you may share her stance, and argue it as your own, my posts concern her and her stances specifically. My main beef is not the opinions you hold about violence but rather the ones she does because she has the podium, she requested the public funding, she presented herself as a professional researcher and she is causing harm by abusing her soapbox with how she uses it. While I certainly find major flaws within the arguments you are making, your opinion on the matter is fine. Hell, her opinion is fine so long as she is not abusing her fame to propagate bullshit or emotionally manipulate people, but, again, she is so of course problems there. Think of it this way. You can think that the President is a Muslim (to use a hilariously wrong example here). You have no proof, but it is your opinion and that is fine. A competent news anchor can not come out and claim the president is without evidence though, because they are suppose to represent journalistic integrity and because they have the public eye on them, have to be careful with the trust they are given as a voice to the people. Anita is abusing the voice she has in the way she makes her cases and the way she behaves in general. That has nothing to do with the topic she discusses themselves and everything to do with her character as a person.
Secondly, as I tied to explain before, the way you go about presenting your opinion here leads to condemnation, even if that is not your intent. If you call something sexist, that does not exist in a bubble. There is a strong negative stimga attached and when the label is applied loosely or unjustly, it damages those labeled it and weakens the value of the word as well. This is harmful to the discussion. Furthermore, when you claim something causes something negative, there is a standard reaction on either side. Those accused (an open unproven claim of causing harm, an accusation, yes?) will be defensive, and those who see the accused will want to do something to stop the negative (usually by stopping the "cause"). In the end, be it your intent or not, it is a condemnation and is divisive and damaging.

I let it slide here because the rhethoric is so different. Again I see no condemnation, and I have no idea why you see one. I guess I'll just have to accept that different people take very different things away from the videos.

See above, if need be I will try again.

I still have no idea what the difference between an argument and an explanation is in this context.

And argument is using a premise to support a chain of logic to determine a conclusion
An explanation is a conclusion that seeks to explain by using logic.
the difference, as best as I understood, was in where one starts. If you have a conclusion first and seek to fill in the blanks, that is an explanation. If you look at the premises first and then draw a conclusion, it is an argument. Explanations are naturally flawed as by going backwards, they risk being overtly biased and while the explanation may fit, the implications of the rational it took to get there may make it unfit to be an argument.
For example. (take all premise as true for sake of example.)
premise 1. all fish are blue
Premise 2. Billy is a fish.
Conclusion. Billy is blue.

As an argument, it is solid. If the first two premises are true, the conclusion has to be.

------

Now the explanation.
Observation. Billy is blue
Premise 1. All fish are blue
Explaination, therefore billy is a fish.

The second one seems right, but is flawed. Just because all fish are blue does not mean that is all that is blue. In the same way with much of Anita's videos, just because her explanation fits does not mean are right when actually done logically.
Observation. There is violence against women
Premise 1.Games promote sexism and a culture of it (again, for sake of example)
Premise 2. A culture of sexism leads to violence against women
Explaination, therefore games promote violence against women.

I am sure I am not using the right language to explain the concept. Pretty sure it is not a premise in an explaination, but maybe you can see where the flaw I keep harping on is in this.

No, it's not different. You cannot "answer" a thesis, a thesis isn't a question. The two statements you use here are similar in that they both are statements of intent. The only way in which they differ is that one is bolder than the other.

The first is a research into the topic. A seek of the implications based on study. It is a case made on evidence. An argument made on top of supported and true premises. This does not have a defined end result, it does not claim to know the answer before doing the work.
The second is an explanation. It seeks to demonstrate something it already promotes as true. It seeks to fill in the blanks to support the case. It is bad research and bad journalism.
Examples, because I love them.
Journalist A. I will look into the recent pollution in the lake.

Journalist B. I will prove industricorp is polluting the lake.

See how the second one allows no other answer but the one they started with? How all research would be biased to that goal and would only look for evidence that supports it? The first one seeks the answer, whatever it may be. The second seeks to prove an answer it already started with, regardless if it is true.

I see your point that we are only looking at one aspect of the story, and that there are other aspects, most notably "saving the world". You are somewhat correct. We are looking at these games in terms of gender. We are asking ourselves: Is there a part of these stories that is usually gender specific, and what does it say about the gender? The gender-specific part is usually capture and rescue of the princess - or analog. Sure men also get captured or killed. But it is fairly obvious that the quest for rescuing the princess constitutes a major part of these storylines. And I think you are not denying that, since you also say that the princess is usually in some way very important to stopping the bad guy. You also cannot reasonably argue that stories where a man is captured as part of the main storyline are as numerous as stories where a woman is captured. And since, as everyone assures me, the stories could be told just as well when a man was the main capture victim, the disparatity in representation here is most probably related to gender, full stop.

But a few problems arise here. First, you start with the idea that the princess is the main goal. That may not always be the case, but rather a side effect. Most of the time the stories have stopping evil because it is evil as motivation. the Damsel is usually added as additional emotional weight to the story. A cheap tactic but someone's life on the line seems more personally relate-able then a faceless world you don't actually see save the parts that try to kill you the whole time. Next is that we don't actually have the numbers of princesses rescued. We can assume, and I think we would both assume the same here, but neither of us know if that assumption is correct without some real data to back it. now for general opinion, not that needed. A self proclaimed researcher asking for money to fund a research project though? Well, less excuses accepted there. Finally, you you are right them being princesses and the trend of that are related to gender. But you can't apply the trend to the individual in the way you seem to keep trying to do.

Ok, I see what you mean. It's not technically the storytelling device that is sexist, it's the fact that it's used a lot in exactly the same fashion. But since "it's used a lot/ is significant" is an element of the "modern" definition of trope, it's not incorrect to say that a trope can be sexist. Sites like TV Tropes aren't exactly judicious with what is used often enough to qualify as a trope, but technically a trope would is precisely something that is used often enough to have a core independent from any single story. At which point the trope can, independently, be sexist.

The trend can be argued as being sexist. I find it a little hard to make that argument sometimes (I define sexism as a bias towards or discrimination against one gender on the basis of that gender alone) since most of the time the trope itself is just a gender defined split of a trope, separated into subcategories. At that point, it is looking at a larger trope, and just defining it by the gender identification. It would be like looking at a woman and calling her a woman even though the overall word to define her would be "human". It is a gender distinction, and while that can be considered a discrimination based on gender for the sake of gender alone, it seems a bit of a moot point. It is a distinction made based on gender in the first place, on a trope not limited to the gender. It would be as sexist as a bathroom with a female image on it marking it as the woman's restroom. Possibly, but not the target to go after by anyone reasonably looking into the discussion.

I agree that on it's own and at face value, rescuing a female and recuing a male are the same. When adding "widespread use/significance" to the definition of a trope, however, the distinction works. One is more significant then the other in current gaming culture.

But are they really? They are more widely recognized, more widely perceived as special, but does the data support that? Think back to how many kings are saved, how many princes or monks or fellow soldiers. How many best friends or aged heroes or masters. How man mentors, wise men, commanders and generals are saved in games or any story telling we use. How often do we not even given them special consideration even when, on paper, they are as plot required as their female counterparts? I've said before that games will use a princess because of an emotional connection. It is the distaff counterpart to the hero (most of the time), and usually seems the pairing or romantic interest, even if that is actually less common then people's headcannon believe). What if the significance of the princesses or damsel is not from the story itself even, but the emotional value placed on her because she is a female and because our culture values women above men? Furthermore, what if that mentality is what is being intentionally tapped into when choosing a princess instead of a prince, not because she is a women, but because of the emotional response a female will garnish when in peril? Now, the question becomes, if that is the case, if they choose a female character because of the emotional reaction it gets, is that a bias for female characters because they are female, or a bias for female characters because the emotional response has a better chance to resonate with players and get a better response/more sales? Is it done because they are females or because females being chosen has a different effect and they desire the different effect?

I sure would like to see a quantitative analysis of how many main male characters are killed of or captured to support the hero's story in comparison to female characters. To date the only video with a significant sample size was the Tropes vs. Women video series, and that one disagreed with you. But I am always ready to accept new facts when such are presented to me.

That wasn't an analysis, that was cherry picking the hell out of things. But if you'd like a general idea, just google it. I am sure someone has at least made a list of various characters saved. Hell, off the top of my head I came up with dozens before, and even more basic character types that are frequently captured above. But, if you'd like, I can give it a look. Just limited to games or all media?

I cannot make sense of your last sentence. Of course there is something inherent in the trope that requires the gender to be locked, the definition of the trope. It was defined that way because people felt that the use of female characters, specifically, was widespread and significant enough to warrant it's own trope. You disagree that such is the case, but here I tend to go with the majority opinion. Of course a trope doesn't "discriminate", because only decisions can be discriminatory, and a trope doesn't decide anything. Whats sexist is the fact that there even is a trope specific to female characters. The trope is the trend, and the trend is sexist.

There is a problem with this. This presumes that the trope is sexist because other people decided to segregate the trope into a gender specific identity. You are calling the trope sexist because someone looked at in based on gender and decided to make it noteworthy based on gender alone. That seems to be using sexism to call something sexist.

Again discrimination applies to decisions. And it's not a fallacy of division unless I state every single instance of the trope is sexist as well, which I didn't. You have defined sexim as bias towards, or discrimination against, a gender. If the majority of characters from the same gender have similar character traits, then that is an indication of bias. It is indicative of the fact that the authors writing those characters don't consider other character traits to be possible or "normal", a biased view.

Anita, when she says the trope is sexist, does just that. And make sure you add the last part to my definition. It is bais or discrimination to a gender because of that gender. There will be biases and discrimination that have gender trends that are done not based in gender at all, but as a result of individual choice. That similar traits are shared are not enough to call it sexist any more then a trend that shows one race drives more red cars then another is racist. Trends will occur, it is the motivations for the trends, if they are done because of gender, that defines sexism. Otherwise we could label every disparity that exists between genders as sexist and the word loses almost all value and meaning as a result.
As for the biased view, that is very narrow. It is a personal interpretation that you apply on others. You are accusing them based only on your own inability to understand they might have other motivations for that decision. While it may make a good explanation, it doesn't mean it is right or will always be the case. That is the danger of such explanations. And that is why I define sexism as I do.

In conclusion, I remain unconvinced by your arguments. I am now quitting this discussion, because this has been taking up too much of my time. I will probably not be able to resist the occaisonal comment on similar topics, but I feel burnt out on the isse and therefore want to quit the discussion for now. Thanks for your time and dedication to discuss this with me. Though I disagree with you (strongly, at times) I appreciate the effort! Also please don't take this as me wanting to have the last word in the discussion. If you want to reply, I will read it, but probably wont comment any further.

No, not a problem. and I do appreciated the discussion, for all the frustration and repetitiveness I feel within it. In spite of it all, I do want to have the best supported arguments I can, and if that requires I chance my stance to the best, then that is fine. I think we might end up talking again, the topic comes up with frequency in these forums, but until then, have a good day.