Anita Sarkeesian states that sexism against men is impossible

Lightknight

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ryukage_sama said:
Lightknight said:
This doesn't harm the cause of equality itself, but it should certainly tarnish her own personal reputation.
This is a semantic argument. And this is relevant to her professional reputation, not personal.
An argument being about semantics, or the field regarding meaning, does nothing to trivialize the necessity of the discussion.

If a person is a racist, it impacts both their personal and professional reputation. Here, Anita has revealed herself to be a sexist.
 

Dizchu

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Gorrath said:
Well I'm working on the assumption that men have historically had a broader societal influence than women, however your points aren't invalid. Maybe it's a matter of perspective and interpretation as sexism is difficult to quantify, really. As you said, there's physical assault but also more subtle forms of coercion that can be just as damaging.

Lightknight said:
My experience at the hand of sexism have been far more regularly dealt by women than by men. But, that is only my experience. Do you as a man or woman disagree?
I can't really argue with personal anecdotes but I don't doubt you. Personally, most of the harshest gender expectations I've had is from men BUT the most condescending, disrespectful person that has berated me was a girl. She went on a long tirade about how I "should be a real man and stop dressing like a woman" before storming off and severing all ties with me. It was pretty hurtful, not gonna lie.
 

Rattja

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Alright I may just be an idiot here, but I am having a hard time understanding what exactly it is that she wants and expect to happen.
Is it total equality?

Someone mind explain it to me? Because all I get out of her videos is "Man, she sounds not interested at all why should I care? I thought she burned for this"

Also, why does she have to change the world and everyone in it to fit her own picture anyway? Can't she just go to where she fits in and the like minded people are?
I think going together with everyone that agrees with her and making this own little society or something would be far easier that what she is currently trying to do.
 

SOCIALCONSTRUCT

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Found this on google image search:



source: tumblr [https://www.tumblr.com/search/there%20is%20no%20such%20thing%20as%20reverse%20sexism]
 

Entitled

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Rosiv said:
So to your quote above, why even focus on power when to prove power it can only be done contextually. Am i misunderstanding, because the way i parse it out, if a white gay man calls a black straight man a "n-word", where is the power difference in this scenario?
It's not about the person's power, but the idea's power. Both of the men in your scenario, are capable of citing powerful words that can greatly degrade the other, through the invocation of a historical oppression and it's present day supporters.

That's what everyone also misses when they go on about how patriarchy isn't real because some men are powerless and some women are powerful.

It's not that, say, a random reddit poster calling a female politician "ugly whore" is such a badass that he will utterly annihilate the whole politician, but that the phrase itself still invokes a lot different ideas, than, say, some other poster there who calls everyone other than herself "cis scum".

The latter is a bit like those trolls who signed a petition for Target to stop selling Bibles. It's not even just that they were sarcastic, it's that they would have been practically incapable of being anything other than sarcastic, because forcing a major store to stop selling the holy book of the dominant religion of the land, or hating all non-transsexual people, are both so out there, that it satirizes itself.

If some by chance a person meant it seriously, it's still not in the same ballpark as the reverse.

Rosiv said:
The concept of power in my opinion is too arbitrary to be a focus in discussing any -"ism", and we should focus on the prejudices instead, for that we can combat with logical thinking.
That's a nice starting principle for not being a raging dickbag, and you should definitely do that. But it's not an either/or decision.

Once you got the "prejudice is bad" principle covered, you might also want to get involved with analysis of how major historical prejudices got formed, what effect they had on society, and how their effect can get indirictly reflected on us often in unexpected manners.

(for example, like in my parallel discussion with WhiteNachos on how a "women are caretakers" stereotype ended up codifying the belief that a man who wants to travel alone with a kid, is creepy deviant. "Maybe I shouldn't unfaily stereotype men" is a nice starting sentiment, but sometimes people also want to understand the bigger picture.
 

totheendofsin

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SOCIALCONSTRUCT said:
Found this on google image search:



source: tumblr [https://www.tumblr.com/search/there%20is%20no%20such%20thing%20as%20reverse%20sexism]
Forgive me if I find Tumblr to not be a very good source

in fact, find me a dictionary, just one dictionary that uses the 'power+prejudice definition' WITHOUT ALSO INCLUDING 'discrimination or prejudice based on gender'

too many people these days seem to forget that words can have more than one meaning, and that meaning can change depending on the context, in the context she used in her tweet it was clear she was talking about institutionalized sexism, which I'm not sure I'd agree doesn't affect men, it certainly does, just in different ways than it affects women
 

Rosiv

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Entitled said:
Rosiv said:
So to your quote above, why even focus on power when to prove power it can only be done contextually. Am i misunderstanding, because the way i parse it out, if a white gay man calls a black straight man a "n-word", where is the power difference in this scenario?
It's not about the person's power, but the idea's power. Both of the men in your scenario, are capable of citing powerful words that can greatly degrade the other, through the invocation of a historical oppression and it's present day supporters.

That's what everyone also misses when they go on about how patriarchy isn't real because some men are powerless and some women are powerful.

It's not that, say, a random reddit poster calling a female politician "ugly whore" is such a badass that he will utterly annihilate the whole politician, but that the phrase itself still invokes a lot different ideas, than, say, some other poster there who calls everyone other than herself "cis scum".

The latter is a bit like those trolls who signed a petition for Target to stop selling Bibles. It's not even just that they were sarcastic, it's that they would have been practically incapable of being anything other than sarcastic, because forcing a major store to stop selling the holy book of the dominant religion of the land, or hating all non-transsexual people, are both so out there, that it satirizes itself.

If some by chance a person meant it seriously, it's still not in the same ballpark as the reverse.

Rosiv said:
The concept of power in my opinion is too arbitrary to be a focus in discussing any -"ism", and we should focus on the prejudices instead, for that we can combat with logical thinking.
That's a nice starting principle for not being a raging dickbag, and you should definitely do that. But it's not an either/or decision.

Once you got the "prejudice is bad" principle covered, you might also want to get involved with analysis of how major historical prejudices got formed, what effect they had on society, and how their effect can get indirictly reflected on us often in unexpected manners.

(for example, like in my parallel discussion with WhiteNachos on how a "women are caretakers" stereotype ended up codifying the belief that a man who wants to travel alone with a kid, is creepy deviant. "Maybe I shouldn't unfaily stereotype men" is a nice starting sentiment, but sometimes people also want to understand the bigger picture.
First off, are you calling me a "raging dickbag"? Cause if so i don't like being called a raging dickbag, if that wasnt somehow clear. If not then disregard, and apologizes for misunderstanding.

Secondly, i still don't get this "idea of power". What does invoking negative emotions based on historical greviences have to do with someones "idea of power"? I understand your scanrio with how the patriarchy still exists even though there are women in power.

But i do not see the relation between a man calling a women a "whore", and then the "idea of power", the notion of a woman being a "whore" then upsetting/degrading the women? The mere act of a man insulting a women could do that in general though, as a white person insulting a black person. Any negative interaction between people who historically were in power and those disenfranchised by them could fall into the "idea of power" scenario. Is it unreasonable to assume a white slave whip cracker would not berate his slaves with words other than the "n-word", such as stupid or dumb?

Just because the "n-word" and "whore" were popularized doesn't make them the only "idea of power" , unless there is some magnitude that could be correlated with the popularization of a words use and then i dont know how one could compare which insult is more damning/powerful, for that seems to be a subjective thing.

For the transgender or just cisgender women calling others "cis scum", are you saying that the concept of a transgender or cisgender women hating cisgender people is so nonsensical that it becomes satire? I dont understand if that is the case, for i always equated it to black people calling white people cracker. Unless black people calling white people cracker is suppose to be satire as well?

In closing, i don't see how the "idea of power" is any less arbitrary than power, for both are purely contextual. And then if power is not only purely contextual, but vague(at least i see it as vague, or maybe I'm just slow) then it should be the case that we should focus our efforts on fighting prejudice instead. We don't have to solely fight prejudice, but to try and attack vague/abstract notions in my mind is a waste of effort,again bearing on the concept of them being vague i suppose.

Sorry if this is turning combative, from my post history I can be that way and i feel that this is my best attempt not to be as combative as before while keeping a level head.
 

NiPah

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Not The Bees said:
You know there's a really interesting conversation to be had about sexism, feminism, gender equality, all those types of topics. If only we could stop giving one single iota about Sarkeesian's Twitter account for just a moment. It's like no one wants to have an actual conversation about anything, they just want to stay within the preconceived boxes they have, and in this case Sarkeesian = baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad, and anything outside that box just should not be discussed.

I haven't been on Escapist now for a week or perhaps two, because this is how it is. Instead of having a discussion on sexism, and how it effects people in the gaming sphere (seeing as how this is a gaming site), and does it exist for males on the same level as it does for women, or whatever you want to talk about, it turns into a hate fest against Sarkeesian again, and if anyone puts up any kind of "well here, lets talk about this" argument it's shot down by "BUT LOOK AT HER TWITTER!"

I think I shall just retire from Escapist for good. Peace.
Ah dang, it looks like you won't be seeing this, but I actually really agree with this.

I've never agreed with the idea that sexism is prejudice+power, following that logic leads to the very real possibility that a group that is seen to have all the power cannot be the victims of sexism. Following that, there is also the issue that in many circumstances power maybe switched (also what would be the definition of power in the first place?).

In gaming one could make the argument that men are often in the seat of power, be it through leadership or majority, but in the real world this is not always the case, women make up a huge segment (some studies find them to be the majority) of the market, and there are many amazing high level programmers/producers/writers ect in the gaming market (although administration to my knowledge is still a "boys club".

There is also the case of males being sexist against other males, or females against female, the dialog that can be had (and really should be had) about sexism in the gaming world is big...

But like you said it's just not a thing that really happens...
 

blackrave

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Sad really, the more I read and learn about her and other particularly loud feminists the more I pity them.
They give a vibe of totally not understanding people.
It would be really interesting to find out what their childhood and teens were like.
I'm fairly sure there would be certain moments when other people hurt them (more or less).
 

VikingKing

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And once again, Twitter is the place where people go to post things they'll regret tweeting for years to come. Sometimes I wonder if the site is run by Satan....
 

Erttheking

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Stupid person says stupid thing on the internet.

Can we please talk about something other than this woman? I never and I mean NEVER understood the fixation the internet has with her.
 

ninja51

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I think it's funny how many wildly different ways this has been interpreted by people. "No no no, shes saying something about institutionalized sexism." "Not at all! She's making a huge generalization and in black and white terms saying sexism towards men doesn't exist!"

Its representative of this whole situation that Anita doesn't even need to try to stir up talk and arguments about herself, she just needs to say something and both sides will go ahead and fill in the blanks. Good thing I haven't seen any of her videos on her channel, dis ***** is already a frightening genius at marketing. I don't know if she monetizes her shit or not, but I'll just keep going on loving humanity as a whole, steering clear of this entire thing, and making sure she or anyone in this situation doesn't make a dime off me.
 

crypticracer

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Please. Just do a small, tiny bit of research. Or you know, just read this thread. She ISN'T saying men can't be the victims of prejudice.

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/glossary/a/sexism.htm

https://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/sexism-definition/

there are two sources. Right on google. That is how she meant it. You don't have to agree with the definition, but if you keep making up her meaning, then your point means nothing. You should just stop talking. At this point you know everything she is gonna say and you know you won't like it. When in fact, you are making up something and then getting offended by it. That is beyond pathetic. It's just... terrible, disgusting, and repulsive, so much so that I am ending this post.
 

carnex

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crypticracer said:
Oh, lets ask people who advocate for theory that men as a group opress, abuse and discriminate women as a group for unbiased definition of sexism.

If you ask me it's equivalent of asking KKK about justification of discrimination of blacks (not equating KKK to feminism just to make that clear) etc. You don't go to the source of controversial position for unbiased opinion, you go to independent party.

As for Anita, it's just another stupid remark from her that has nothing in common with reality. Nothing more, nothing less. Sexism against men is alive and well, and she is in the thick of it.
 

VanQ

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erttheking said:
Stupid person says stupid thing on the internet.

Can we please talk about something other than this woman? I never and I mean NEVER understood the fixation the internet has with her.
How else would people get thei On Fire badge if not by posting about Anita or Feminism? It's damn near impossible to reach the post/view count required with a thread about games these days.
 

Tsun Tzu

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VanQ said:
erttheking said:
Stupid person says stupid thing on the internet.

Can we please talk about something other than this woman? I never and I mean NEVER understood the fixation the internet has with her.
How else would people get thei On Fire badge if not by posting about Anita or Feminism? It's damn near impossible to reach the post/view count required with a thread about games these days.
This.

And, let's face it, most of us are obviously bored.

Therefore? Arbitrary posts about an asinine person! Woo!
 

Thaluikhain

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carnex said:
You don't go to the source of controversial position for unbiased opinion, you go to independent party.
Like who? Who is an independent party to consult on a serious social problem?