Anita Sarkeesian states that sexism against men is impossible

[Thaluikhain]

Christ. You know what? I'm honestly starting to wonder; if Anita gets crowned empress of the solar system and begins shipping all men off to work as slaves on mining colonies, will this be anything more than people deserve?

Nah, it's illegal to claim territory outside the Earth, they made that a law.

But yeah, I tend to agree with what she says, but she's not saying anything particularly new or insightful. She should be just another person talking about games, only with bigger earrings.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Prejudice without power isn't really the same thing at all. The whole thing reminds me of this:
[tweet t=https://twitter.com/sweatpantspapi/status/539259309214162945]
EDIT: just to clarify, the "early hours" being referred to are after the Ferguson grand jury decided not to indict. Black people fear being killed by cops who won't even go to trail, white people fear being called "mayonnaise boy". It reminds me of that old Margaret Atwood quote: "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

If calling someone a tar baby is racist than so is calling someone mayonaisse boy. Arguing that it's not racist because it's not as bad as getting murdered is like saying "a broken arm is no big deal, I knew a guy who had his legs bitten off by a shark".

Anyway Margaret Atwood doesn't have a clue what she's talking about

You ever heard the expression "don't stick your dick in crazy"? The meaning is that if you have a relationship/sex with a crazy woman she can cause serious damage to your life. People worry about getting in touch with a crazy women for more than just being insulted.

I actually feared for my life once when dealing with a woman.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Christ. You know what? I'm honestly starting to wonder; if Anita gets crowned empress of the solar system and begins shipping all men off to work as slaves on mining colonies, will this be anything more than people deserve?

Nah, it's illegal to claim territory outside the Earth, they made that a law.

But yeah, I tend to agree with what she says, but she's not saying anything particularly new or insightful. She should be just another person talking about games, only with bigger earrings.

As much of a bitter rant as my post came off, i really did have a good laugh when i read the tread title.
Anita Sarkeesian states that ...

It reminds me of those trashy celebrity magazines that produce articles every time someone buys a new pair of shoes, or takes their dog to the park.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Uuuuuugh, mygod. >_<
*deep breath*

Okay, let's talk about literal vs. practical definitions of words for a sec. Because generally speaking, if you're turning to a dictionary to make an arguement about social issues, there's a good chance you've missed the point.

Having seperate bathrooms for men and women is TECHNICALLY "sexist". But calling it such has no PRACTICAL purpose, because we all know that that's not the kind of thing we're trying to get across about when we identify something as "sexist". When someone says that we are living in a sexist society, they're not saying that we live in a society that has gender-specific bathrooms, they're saying we live in a society that oppresses people based on their sex. And a group that is in power (in this case, men) cannot be oppressed by the group that it is oppressing.

It's a very complex world, it's very possible for a bigoted female judge or cop to unfairly target men. And if that's not good enough how about the draft? It's institutionalized sexism that hurts men.

But she didn't say "society can't be sexist against men" she said sexism against men can't exist. The word sexism gets applied to individuals or pieces of media all the time.

Using that logic, can we understand why it's reasonable to say that women can't be sexist towards men, or black people can't be racist towards white people, or the poor can't be classist towards the rich?

Nope, still completely unreasonable.

 

[WhiteNachos]

She's right, even if it was worded a bit funny (140 character limit and all that). Individual cases of sexism against men can exist, however, these incidents do not have any effect on men on a systematic level.

How the hell can someone simultaneously believe this AND believe that video games can cause real life sexism without openly endorsing sexist beliefs (like having damsels in distress or whatever)?

Anyway [citation needed]

 

[ThisNickname]

Highly debatable, society isn't ruled by a specific gender with power, if that was the case there wouldn't be female presidents anywhere. Society is ruled by stigmas and said stigmas can give a specific subject power over other subject depending on the environment the subjects are living in.

Take for instance a man working as a nurse in a hospital where all the other nurses are women, by your logic he cannot be oppressed by the women working in the hospital. However in reality he represents the minority in that specific environment and as a result he's going to be picked on for being the odd one out.

Yes, it is possible to create a microcosm within our society in which women hold the power and the men are mistreated because of it. This only serves to reinforce the point, however, that only the advantaged members of a group can enact discrimination that is of any great consequence.
Unless you take exception to the assertion that affluent, white men are the most advantaged members of our society, I'm not actually seeing that we disagree on anything here.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

I disagree with that statement emphatically. I also think it's a good demonstration on why ideas requiring nuance and tact are not to be expressed via twitter, at least in absolutes like this.

 

[Bat Vader]

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

Why didn't you just think of her as a person? Why think of her as a feminist? Explain to me how this woman personally wronged you. For all you know she could hate or couldn't care any less about Feminism. Why generalize an entire gender just because some people in that gender say or do things you dislike?

I hold the door open for men and women. They all say thank you.

 

[Colour Scientist]

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

That's rude, you should hold the door open for everyone.

It's insanely petty to take the time to think "no, this is a woman, I had better be rude to prove some inane point to myself."

 

[WhiteNachos]

Highly debatable, society isn't ruled by a specific gender with power, if that was the case there wouldn't be female presidents anywhere. Society is ruled by stigmas and said stigmas can give a specific subject power over other subject depending on the environment the subjects are living in.

Take for instance a man working as a nurse in a hospital where all the other nurses are women, by your logic he cannot be oppressed by the women working in the hospital. However in reality he represents the minority in that specific environment and as a result he's going to be picked on for being the odd one out.

Yes, it is possible to create a microcosm within our society in which women hold the power and the men are mistreated because of it. This only serves to reinforce the point, however, that only the advantaged members of a group can enact discrimination that is of any great consequence.
Unless you take exception to the assertion that affluent, white men are the most advantaged members of our society, I'm not actually seeing that we disagree on anything here.

"Advantaged" makes your statement redundant and meaningless. Having that power to enact discrimination of great consequence is an advantage.

Saying sexism or even "prejudice + power" can't happen against men is just objectively wrong.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

Why didn't you just think of her as a person? Why think of her as a feminist? Explain to me how this woman personally wronged you. For all you know she could hate or couldn't care any less about Feminism. Why generalize an entire gender just because some people in that gender say or do things you dislike?

I hold the door open for men and women. They all say thank you.

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

That's rude, you should hold the door open for everyone.

It's insanely petty to take the time to think "no, this is a woman, I had better be rude to prove some inane point to myself."

I think you are missing the point. While i don't agree with the general thinking of this statement, this isn't a new idea being expressed here, and it isn't about being rude towards women for some imagined crimes of feminists.
What it's about is the fact that some feminists do consider holding the door open for women to be sexist (it implies they can't do it themselves/implies that women need to be protected/other long held gender conceptions), and as such some people do get rather offended by it.
Even as somewhat of a misanthrope myself, is still hold the door open for anyone, when ever practical, and am yet to be called sexist for it. So i would regard this jumping at shadows, at best.

Again, not my opinion on the matter, just clarifying what i believe the general idea behind the post was.

 

[Bat Vader]

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

Why didn't you just think of her as a person? Why think of her as a feminist? Explain to me how this woman personally wronged you. For all you know she could hate or couldn't care any less about Feminism. Why generalize an entire gender just because some people in that gender say or do things you dislike?

I hold the door open for men and women. They all say thank you.

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

That's rude, you should hold the door open for everyone.

It's insanely petty to take the time to think "no, this is a woman, I had better be rude to prove some inane point to myself."

I think you are missing the point. While i don't agree with the general thinking of this statement, this isn't a new idea being expressed here, and it isn't about being rude towards women for some imagined crimes of feminists.
What it's about is the fact that some feminists do consider holding the door open for women to be sexist (it implies they can't do it themselves/implies that women need to be protected/other long held gender conceptions), and as such some people do get rather offended by it.
Even as somewhat of a misanthrope myself, is still hold the door open for anyone, when ever practical, and am yet to be called sexist for it. So i would regard this jumping at shadows, at best.

Again, not my opinion on the matter, just clarifying what i believe the general idea behind the post was.

I get the point. I just find it to be incredibly silly. Same with someone getting offended because someone is just offering a polite gesture.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

As mentioned last time this came up here, she is very clearly talking about institutionalised sexism. Yes, she's having trouble expressing a complicated issue inside the confines of twitter.

As irked as I was on a first reading? Whatever. I'll concede the point and give the benefit of the doubt due to how forcefully truncated the medium is.

I am, however, leery of her lack of...I don't know...using a simple "(1/2)" or something similar at the end of her tweet, then continuing/expounding upon the thought in a second one.

Or, eliminating extraneous words, like "that's because," and replacing them with relevant terms like "institutionalized" to properly convey the idea the first time around.

So, we'd wind up with something like...

There's no such thing as institutionalized sexism against men. It is prejudice + power. Men = The dominant gender with power in society.

Still not well phrased...but, eh, two minutes of my time.

I still disagree, mind, yet not having some sort of qualifier just makes it seem like either laziness or intentional baiting on her part and, according to her, she spends hours figuring out how to properly phrase her tweets so the latter feels more likely at this point.

Which is fine, I suppose. Trolls gotta troll. White noise of the internet and such.

I was at the bookstore today, and it just so timed that a lady was coming in the door right behind me.

I did not hold it open for her (dont wana becsexist after all)
And yes, i did think it through and come to that conclusion in the second it took to think about it.

Let them stew in the world they created.

That's rude, you should hold the door open for everyone.

It's insanely petty to take the time to think "no, this is a woman, I had better be rude to prove some inane point to myself."

Have to agree here.

Come on, man. You're just being selfish. Holding doors, for anyone, is just polite and makes someone else's day marginally better for very little effort on your part.

It'd be nice if people could do something even that small for one another without getting all political about it.

[small]Edit: Oh, 1000 posts. Woo! Wasting my life![/small]

 

[RaikuFA]

I thought after she blamed that school shooting on men everyone declared her batshit insane and decided to stop talking about her.

Guess not.

 

[persephone]

It isn't just Anita saying this, this is the consensus within feminism.

I wouldn't say that feminism has a "consensus" about anything. It's much too large and diverse a movement.

Addressing the original topic, though, that ... is just an incorrect statement. I'm kind of floored by how out of touch it is. Is sexism a bigger problem for women than men? Yeah, sure. But men do have to deal with it too.

 

[Jiggle Counter]

sexism is prejudice + power

So... the console wars... is sexism?

 

[likalaruku]

The internet can't distinguish, or at least refuses to accept, that there is a difference between normal feminists who want equal rights in certain places in the middle east & Africa, from man-hating feminazis who want men to pay for the sins of their forefathers by agreeing to have less rights than women to make up for it. Kinda like how when people think of Animal Rights Activists, they overlook the Humane Society & the ASPCA & look straight to PETA; the crazy uncle that makes the whole family look bad.

This is as dumb as an extremely racist man who hears & sees racist undertones in everything he sees & hears & believes that only racism against whatever he happens to be counts as racism at all. It's also as dumb as that guy on FOX who thinks there's a war on Christmas because some clerk at the Walmart said "Happy Holidays" to him instead of "Mery Christmas," or a fanboy who takes any review of something he likes, no matter how unbiased it may be, as a slander, because he doesn't believe in a grey area between love & hate. Basically, racists are the first to make an accusation of racism, & sexists are the ones calling everything left & right sexist.

Seriously, she started off with some legit points, but now she's kinda degraded into a troll. If you just ignore her, & Miley Cyrus, & Justin Bieber, & Taylor Swift. It's almost like they thrive on negative publicity, feed on it.

 

[Entitled]

The quote reminds me of the phrase i hear about how: "Black people cant be racist because they are not the dominant race in society."

Even if its true by definition, similarly to Sarkeesian's quote, I think when people claim someone is being racist or being sexist, they really mean someone is being an arsehole.

I would disagree with that.

If I am randomly prejudiced against blonde people, I might be an asshole, but I'm not going to get attacked for being "haircolorist", because generally, there is no system called haircolorism with any power behind it, it's just me being an asshole.

The very reason why sexism, racism, religious bigotry, classism, homophobia, and similar issues are considered "social justice" issues, and spoken of as great evils, is that they are not invented by individual assholes, but examples of deep-seated historical injustices and oppressions.

If anyone would try to reverse them, and be a "heterophobe" or a "misandrist", or a "black supremacist", that might be an asshole, but it's JUST an asshole, and not really an example of a similar trend.

The whole "prejudice + power" thing is not just semantic, but an attempt to match the term with it's intuitive usage that is about social injustice, not random asshole behavior.

I've heard that comment in relation to racism, that white people can't suffer from racism which was also wrong. Of course that comment also assumes that white people are one uniform group which hold power everywhere and don't discriminate against other white people based on ethnicity.

It's not that white people don't suffer from racism, but that white people suffer from, is racism against black people.

As it was already mentioned this thread, Anita followed up the first tweet directly with describing the ways in which men suffer from the patriarchal culture. The point is that there is only one culture, and that is patriarchal, even if harm to men can be it's consequence.

 

[Balimaar]

One of my mates was on a short domestic flight and the way the tickets/seating worked out he was placed next to an unaccompanied child.

My mate (male btw) was forced to move from his seat coz rules on that airline apparently say men cant be seated next to unacommpanied children.

Perfectly fine for women to be put next to said children tho.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Anita is is pretty out there when it comes to her beliefs vis-a-vis sexism in American culture. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by that tweet. I realized this when I saw some of her pre-kickstarter videos, where she said "Baby, It's Cold Outside" was about date rape, totally disregarding the context of the song and clearly showing that she was reading in her own personal biases into the song when her conclusions were not at all supported by the text itself. I find this to be a common theme with all her work.

Some people seem very threatened by her though, which might be why this "gotcha" was posted. I have a feeling if some people weren't so threatened by her she would never have had a fraction of the exposure she ended up with, as the quality of her work is just subpar, in my opinion of course.

To be clear, because some people seem to equate criticism of Anita to sexist beliefs, just because I think her work is subpar does not mean I don't think there are not some issues with gender representation in video games.