Anita Sarkeesian states that sexism against men is impossible

sumanoskae

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This overlooks one of the primary issues with all oppression; that it hurts both parties. While the majority of direct oppression faces women, the unequal relationship homogenizes everybody. The stereotypes and roles we've built around gender continue to negatively affect the lives and relationships of both men and women to this day.

As for concrete demonstrations, there are situations in which women are at advantage; men are usually the presumed aggressor in any violent altercation, and only men can be drafted into the United States Military, for example.

Even if you want to argue that an unequal power relationship is required for someone to be labeled an oppressor, that doesn't change the fact that the mentality in and of itself is destructive. If you ignore the prejudice by people without power, then when the oppressive system is overthrown, the people who replace it won't be any better than the institution they overcame. The battle is internal as well as external. Taking the power out of the situation doesn't solve the underlying problem, so it makes no sense to focus on power alone.

It is absolutely vital that those who choose to stand against injustice never consider themselves to be beyond reproach, for that arrogance is itself a source of injustice.

"When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you"
 

sumanoskae

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crypticracer said:
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.
But it's seems kind of ridiculous to post your opinion on twitter if you know that your opinion can't fit into 140 characters. When you make a statement, you must assume that people will respond to the statement as you made it; nobody is obligated to do homework to better understand your point, and they aren't obligated to fill in the blanks for you. If what you say doesn't make sense out of context, don't say it out off context.

As for the definition itself, I honestly think it's a matter of semantics; the issues of personal bigotry and the institution of sexism are so closely intertwined, that I can't really fault people for treating them as one and the same. I must also reason that Sarkeesian is informed enough to reason what the reaction to such a post would be, so the post seems to be either poorly conceived or deliberately provocative; would it have not, perhaps, been better to link to the same articles that you did?
 

Lightknight

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Zeconte said:
Lightknight said:
She said that there is no such thing as sexism against men. If there is no such thing then there must be no institution in which women are in control or else sexism against men would exist. Furthermore, and I will clarify this every time I respond to this part of the discussion, I utterly reject her notion that sexism requires power. An utterly powerless man, a hobbo on the street with no legs, can be sexist against a woman just as easily as anyone else. To follow her insane definition of sexism would be to rule out genuinely sexist individuals who have no personal power whenever we look into the situation any deeper on any meaningful level.
Again this is nothing more than semantic gymnastics on your part,
We are discussing what she meant by what she said. Semantics is the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. There are sub-branches of semantics that are called, "Formal Semantics", "lexical semantics", and "conceptual semantics". When people complain that someone is debating about semantics as though that somehow defeats their points they are showing extreme ignorance of what semantics are and how wide a range of debates are purely semantic based because "what things mean" is central to learning and understanding. The only time where something being semantic is a relevant counter are arguments that are not concerned with meaning or if the particular word or phrase being focused on isn't central to the discussion and so is wasting time.

But seeing as this discussion is literally about what she meant, yes, semantics are at play. You're just going to have to deal with that. And the only people doing acrobatics are the people who are trying to interpret her meaning in other ways when she backed up what she said multiple times and with links.

where you take sexism to mean "gender-based discrimination"
Yes, the dictionary definition of the word. The actual definition of the word. This is called lexical semantics. Her entire point is to try to redefine sexism to suit her needs. Trying to make it so that women cannot be sexist in her world view merely because they are women. Because God forbid we start to consider that women do hold power. How in the world is a female manager who is empowered to hire or fire individuals not capable of combining said power with prejudice? So even with Anita's nonsensical attempt to redefine a word so that she can't be called sexist she is wrong that sexism against men can't exist.

and ignore that she takes sexism to mean "gender-based discrimination plus institutionalized power structures enforcing said discrimination on a societal level" in order to claim that she does not believe men can be discriminated against based on their gender (I.E. you are arguing against the idea that sexism does not exist against men based on your definition of the word, rather than her's).
You're not getting it. There are two problems here that I have regularly addressed. Point #2 below addresses this one.

1. She is wrong. The article she linked is not Merriam Webster. It is not an authoritative source in defining terms. It is an apparently written by a blogger named Andrea Rubenstein who went by the name of Tekanji online. She seems to have retired from writing but has also recently made two posts this year (one to Intel for removing their ads). While the other work I've seen Tekanji write is eloquent and intellectual, she is not in charge of defining terms. She does not get to take existing terms and decide that the way everyone uses them don't fit her own personal narrative and so she thinks it should mean "X". She has a BA in Asian Area Studies, studied Japanese, and as of 2008 had just finished 4 years in computer programming (the article Anita linked was in 2007).

Now, while she is an excellent writer and I might really enjoy her work (if I could find any games she's written on), she is not any kind of actual definition authority or scholar in the area of feminism. She cares about feminism and makes clear points in my opinion, but this is some person who basically decided that from now on the word "Universe" will be replaced with "Unicorn" because they like that more but here it's because the term change suits her agenda of being able to make sexist comments towards men without being called a sexist.

She also distinguishes between gender based prejudice and sexism. Implying that she is also trying to change the traditional meaning of the term sexism. That a woman can commit an act of "gender based prejudice" but because she's doing it to men then it's not sexism because men are privileged by the system in Anita's eyes. In a way, this is victim blaming. "Oh, she treated you poorly because you're a man? Well of course she did, you're a man. That's not sexism." That's simply incoherently offensive and should not be defended by anyone supporting equality.

2. Even if we entirely accept her definition that you are defending, there are multiple problems:
A. Women do have power and some men genuinely have no power. Let's think about the extremes here. Is a female CEO capable of being sexist (Anita's Definition) towards men? She certainly has power, if she is prejudiced against males and let's that bleed into the areas she has control over then how wouldn't that meet the definition. How about a homeless man on the street? Is he capable of being sexist (Anita's Definition)? Is she claiming that the homeless man on the street has power and is privileged just because he was born a man? If so, that's her being sexist (actual real definition of sexism).

B. I would debate against the notion that women don't have power or control at the higher social and government level. Not only do we see the likes of Hilary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kaganm and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the highest echelons of government, but we regularly see laws in clear support of equality for people of all races and genders being written into law through the efforts of both these female leaders and male leaders who support their cause. It isn't enough just for men to be in power for sexism against females to be the norm. The males who are in charge also themselves have to be sexist. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of men support equality with their votes and words. Regardless of what people believe in private, any step of sexism or racism is generally met with public outrage and is generally considered political suicide. Society itself is on the side of equality by a fair margin. As best as I can tell, the only thing that seems to be lagging is equality in marriage which again, the powers that be, are wading into it and overturning policies that were voted into law. So what area is she talking about that women haven't gained power in yet? Does she require that women be exactly 50% in control or higher before any sexism+power can take place? If it is merely as defined, then any power in the system allows room for sexism and women clearly have that and are only getting more and more in power every day (and good for that, let's please not forget that I am personally very pro-equality. My being here is because Anita is being anti-equality by what she said. She is being sexist.).

C. Males absolutely reinforce sexism against other males too. Society itself which women do affect greatly does reinforce sexism against other males too. She is trivializing and dismissing the sort of extreme sexism we can absolutely face and that's unethical of her to do.

It just doesn't follow in any meaningful way that would justify her saying that there's no such thing as sexism against males. It was a bigoted thing for her to say. Entirely sexist and it should not be deemed acceptable by you or anyone else in society. This would be as insane as someone claiming that there's no such thing as rape against males and insisting on only calling it sodomy when it happens to males but rape when it happens to females. You don't trivialize victims, you just don't. She is trivializing gender based prejudice when it happens to men by trying to rob it of the proper title of sexism it deserves just as much as it deserves when it happens to females. Shame on her for committing this egregious evil.
 

WhiteNachos

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MysticSlayer said:
1. How are we twisting her words? She says that there is no such thing as sexism against men. You have to twist her words for it not to be that. In followup to her tweet she continues to justify that men (individuals) still suffer because sexism exists even if they can't be on the receiving end of sexism themselves. How do you think it is being twisted when she backs up what she said?
In this case, "power" is holding a place in society where the prejudice can do actual damage to people, and right after that she points out that men possess far more power than the other genders. Both you and WhiteNachos have pretty much left this out of any response to her comment, and considering its importance to her comment, you aren't so much addressing her as your version of what she says.
I am addressing her for being objectively wrong about her definition of sexism.

But even if we pretend she is the using the correct definition she's still wrong. There are plenty of women with power in society. We have womnen who are politicians, teachers, employers, cops, lawyers and judges. Heck there's even women on the supreme court. So under her definition they have the ability to be sexist.

And as pointed out it's still possible for men to discriminate against men.
 

Lightknight

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VondeVon said:
I think she needs to check her definition.
The problem is that she gets her definition from blogs, so every time she checks the blog it will keep getting her a non-definition.

A dictionary though, that'd be a good thing to check. Hopefully she has one or has access to one.
 
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*reads tweet*

Ummm...I thought the definition of Sexism was "discriminating/insulting/bullying someone based on their gender"...

Because if I'm talking to a friend who happens to be a woman, and another woman jumps in and says "you're just talking to her so you can fuck her once and say you conquered her. Men cannot be friends with women because you're all fucking pigs who want to fuck everything you see, you sick asshole!", then that's pretty sexist towards men.

I think she means "Institutionalized sexism" or something of that nature. IE, men consistently being disadvantaged because they're men. There's a pretty big gap between the two.

From where I stand, it really looks like the only place in society where men are disadvantaged is in child custody cases, where the mother usually gets the child, even if the mom is a total psychopath. Aside from that, we as men are doing pretty good socially. Women DO still get screwed by the system in a lot of ways (doubly so if you're poor, even more doubly so if you also happen to be of an unpopular minority)
 

Snotnarok

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The issue is Anita has no interest in equality, her agenda simply falls under let's censor things so it doesn't offend people. Not helped by her lying about things in games or using straight up subjective things that can't be applied as a blanket term. The other issue is she doesn't allow discussion she will say what she wants and you get to shut the hell up because that's how her policy works. She can say offensive things like Christopher Hitchens is a racist man JUST after he's died or blamed school shootings on misogynistic men just HOURS after the event happened, but ANY discussion about how she couldn't even fact check the game she discussed? You're a sexist pig, and you're blocked.

That's pretty much summing up why discussing feminism is a waste of time because you do not get a say in it unless you you are of the proper gender to discuss it. I have a family member that talked out about sexism to us in games but would not let my brother nor I talk back because we don't understand because we're not women. Thing is she doesn't play games, she doesn't know the first thing about games so she's getting her info from people like Anita who are in need of some major medication to get their wacked out brains on the level.

That's the whole issue, no one wants to discuss it, they want to cry victim then anyone who doesn't agree, blocked, flagged and then possibly banned like Thunderf00t. There simply IS no discussion, just a...okay I'll choose my words carefully here- many extremists crying censor everything and then they insist you cannot participate simply because of your gender- how you cannot understand. Which is bullshit because if you're going to sum up an entire gender and deny them a voice? That's absolutely sexist and people like Anita very much ARE sexist, but that's okay because again they're not looking for equality, they're looking to censor anyone who says mean things or disagrees.

Let's also not forget her blowing away her goals on her crowdfunding, not delivering what she promised and still getting things straight up wrong because she couldn't even fact check.

Sexism and racism will always exist to SOME degree, because you cannot expect all of humanity to adopt the same standards. There's scumbags of all skin colors, genders, heights and weights and they aren't going to be swayed by someone trying to tell them what to say/do in a free country. People fight over what device is better than another, you think they're going to let physical stuff slide? People hate other people because of the upper most layer of flesh while they are the same god damned species.

I want equality, I want girls to have fun in games, I want there to be strong girls in games too. I want to see variety in the medium I enjoy and I want great days for both genders in reality. But I'm not going to agree to these morons who want everything censored or people not to say certain words because it offends them.

Stephen Fry said it bes:


It's a right to be offended, but it doesn't' give someone else the right to silence the person because what they say offends. You have a right to express it and if you don't like it, there's a way to avoid it.

I wish no ill will or harm to Anita and people like her, genuinely hope people just leave her alone- and with that said I want her to fade to obscurity by people leaving her alone not giving this idiot a voice. But I'm a guy so this is obviously a misogynistic rant against women and not a hatred of censorship and people forcing their ideals on others.
 

Deathmageddon

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Dear feminists,

Telling women that they are perpetual victims and demanding preferential treatment does not empower women. Instead of being misandrists in countries where women aren't being sold as legal sex slaves at age 8, how about you try to help women who actually need help?

Sincerely,
Informed men and women with the ability to reason

p.s. The "wage gap" is a myth. The frequently-debunked study you're citing did not account for the number of hours worked, the type of work, or any other variables that affect income.
 

Lightknight

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Snotnarok said:
The issue is Anita has no interest in equality, her agenda simply falls under let's censor things so it doesn't offend people.
Beware of using the term "censor" when discussing Anita. That automatically turns other people off as Anita has been very mindful of not using censorious language and has actively denied wanting to censor games (such as saying she just wants developers to consider what they're doing before automatically jumping on the sexist bandwagon). You and I likely agree that claiming that these games cause harm to society the inevitable conclusion is the same as Jack Thompson's claim that violent games reinforce and perpetuate violent behaviors, stopping the harm, but Anita has not directly advocated that so much as indirectly by claiming harm. But see, me even bringing up Jack Thompson has a similar impact as you saying the word "censor".

I strongly agree with your comments on the hostile nature towards men in these discussions. That any attempt to weigh in is automatically deemed as "mansplaining" regardless of content. It is a truly sexist environment and women do have control over the discussion in this way in most places the discussion is being had.

There's really a lot of garbage being flung from both sides and terrible sexism and stereotyping is being born from it.

Deathmageddon said:
p.s. The "wage gap" is a myth. The frequently-debunked study you're citing did not account for the number of hours worked, the type of work, or any other variables that affect income.
In a sexually dimorphic species there may also be tendencies one gender has compared to another that gives and advantage regarding advancement in the workforce. Variances in risk aversion and aggression are commonly cited differences between men and women.

We've also got areas of the industry that women weren't traditionally part of until more recently. In those industries we would typically see a significant amount greater experience on the male side of the equation with few women matching or exceeding the norm. That's not going to go away until those males start to retire and them being rewarded for having more experience isn't sexism as long as any females that have commensurate experience make similar incomes.

However, I wouldn't necessarily call it a myth without also seeing a study that deals with it. It would be nice to see legitimate studies that tackle the issue more head-on by accounting for those contributing factors. Since the gender wage gap for people ages 20-30 is almost nonexistent and in some countries like the UK is actually reversed, we may actually have a scenario where the goal has been accomplished and time is going to take care of the issue (since the people in that age group are more likely to have similar education, training, and experience due to less opportunity to gain an advantage there that time grants).

This is an absolutely fascinating subject. I'd love to read more about it from objective sources.
 

WhiteNachos

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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,
ANYONE can do that.

You ever seen Penn and Teller Bullshit? They had an episode about profanity and to make a point they insulted people using very sophisticated words and if you looked up what they meant they were pretty vicious.
 

Fangface74

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Don't worry about it everyone, if Anita said something that wasn't sensationalist click bait, then her patreon/kickstarter/donations/whatever might suffer, and we can't have that can we?
 

Lightknight

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Fangface74 said:
Don't worry about it everyone, if Anita said something that wasn't sensationalist click bait, then her patreon/kickstarter/donations/whatever might suffer, and we can't have that can we?
This is a little bit different from her typical sensationalism. This is her stepping out and making an actually sexist claim the trivializes victims of sexism who happen to be men.

This is a departure from her typical bids for equality or stating that the environment is unfair. That's at least something that can be discussed and debated. This is her taking the Donald Sterling route but people don't seem to care this time because it's sexism against men that she's perpetrating. Unless we're also going to claim that Anita doesn't also have power of any kind.
 

SOCIALCONSTRUCT

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totheendofsin said:
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
But the ultimate source is a text book. Please note the yellow highlighter. I wrote before that Sarkeesian's tweet was representative of feminism, that it was the "consensus within feminism". What I intended to say, and perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, is that Sarkeesian's view is dominant among professional feminists. By "professional feminists" I mean opinion leaders whose career is focused on publicly advocating on behalf of feminism and by "career" I mean that they do it for a living.

I clarified this in an earlier post:

SOCIALCONSTRUCT said:
When I read the OP I was quite familiar with the statement in Sarkeesian's tweet. I have already read it elsewhere from others, phrased slightly differently but conveying the exact same content. Sarkeesian herself isn't the originator of the idea, she is simply writing in accordance to theory that she learned. In this case, Sarkeesian's feminism is the feminism taught in universities. There have been some posters in this thread that have indicated that Sarkeesian's statement is at odds with their own personal understanding of sexism. She also got some twitter comments disagreeing with her along similar lines. Ultimately this is a semantic argument, in other words, it is an argument about what the word "sexism" should mean. According to academic feminism there is, by definition, no such thing as sexism against men. If nothing else, we should at least applaud her honesty.

You will notice that she didn't get any meaningful pushback from her tweet, which came out in mid November, and certainly no pushback from within feminism. Her star is still rising, including a [a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-26/anita-sarkeesian-battles-sexism-in-games-gamergate-harassment"]glowing cover story[/a] for a recent issue of Business Week. To put it another way, Sarkeesian's tweet is unremarkable and poses no obstacles to her career of any kind. For a woman allegedly fighting the power structure she seems to be having a pretty sweet ride.



Her follow up tweets basically boil down to "patriarchy hurts men too" which, as Lightknight has already pointed out, has really nothing to do with whether there is such a thing as "sexism against men". In no way did she walk back on the tweet in the OP. Whether or not you share her ideas of patriarchy is neither here nor there.
People keep saying "not my feminism" when their leading figures do or say unusual things. Whose feminism is really in the driver's seat here? Perhaps feminism isn't the wonderful thing that they thought it was after all.
 

ryukage_sama

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EternallyBored said:
This thread was stupid the first time, and it's still stupid now. It's the same dumb power politics redefinition of racism/sexism that has existed since the 80's, it holds some minor academic value on macro level studies, but sociology and humanities majors pushing it on the general public is still dumb.

Anita pushing the view does not make her nearly as terribly sexist as you think though, this redefinition of sexism still acknowledges that men can face bigotry, hatred, and discrimination, the entire concept is just substituting the concept of institutional or societal macro level sexism for being the only definition of sexism.

Seriously, dragging up this month old dead topic was a bad idea, and this thread is just going to die in flames like the last one, I can only hope this one dies faster.
Thank goodness I was able to find someone who understands what she was saying. I was afraid I would need to read through pages of dictionary entries and "Well Actually".

Establishing new meanings for words as part of a different academic discussion is problematic, and Twitter is the wrong forum for academic discussions. I believe that the notion that sexism goes both ways is a false equivalency. There are people resentful of men, but their influence is of much less consequence than the older, more entrenched perceptions and treatment of women in the workplace.
 

AgedGrunt

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SaneAmongInsane said:
thaluikhain said:
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.
This. Folks, just because the statement is true on grande level doesn't mean you, individually, can not be discriminated against for being a dude. So calm the fuck down.
Except it's not true at any level, and she wasn't talking about individuals. Sexism, like racism, isn't defined by power (I'll have to assume Anita is referring to majority power). This is the same bullshit dogma that leaves society blind and tolerant of racism against white people, because accepted doctrine is that whites are the majority institution of racism.

Anita Sarkeesian is a sexist. Everyone who has a functioning, thinking brain not manipulated with her brand of bullshit already understood this, but lately she has been making it transparent even for people in the center who have found common ground with her.

This isn't an out-of-context tweet prevented a full understanding of a "complicated issue", it the concise perspective of a radical in all their insanity. For these moments I'm grateful because it's through transparency and bluntness that people can see through the propaganda and academic laurels for who this manipulative, self-aggrandizing, sexist ideologue really is.

One thing about this tweet: it will stand the test of time. Her minders/cultists that try to manage everything she says or go out on the attack, they won't. People will find the source and judge her by her words, the way it should be. They are not going out to a forum to listen to them try to defend the indefensible.

And for the record, no, nothing of value has been lost here.

ryukage_sama said:
I believe that the notion that sexism goes both ways is a false equivalency. There are people resentful of men, but their influence is of much less consequence than the older, more entrenched perceptions and treatment of women in the workplace.
Oh, I didn't see this gem. So sexism against men does happen.. but it's not as big a deal as women. Got it.

Don't you love it when someone says that you don't face enough discrimination to deserve equal respect and attention?

I'll urge people to use Twitter more. Like Anita, you can't hide your true feelings with a character limit. More of you should just out yourselves in 140 characters or less.
 

mecegirl

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agent_orange420 said:
is this allowed to be rationally challenged/debated? or does that make you a horrible nasty person?
No, it might make you uniformed though. Like others have stated in this thread, the concepts that Anita are talking about are not new. This particular horse is dead and has been thoroughly beaten. About the only reason why anyone is talking about it here and now is because Anita said it(or rather regurgitated it). The idea isn't newly formed from her mind, and anyone who regularly reads about feminism, or is in debates about feminism, has long since picked a side. You are honestly better off ignoring it and everything Anita says.
 

Phlap

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The fact that such a well known feminist is having such a hard time telling the difference between sexism and institutionalised sexism is giving me a headache.

And the sad thing is, she won't be the only person to start believing this kind of stuff...