Stephen St. said:
And therefore the bit you quoted is a complete non-sequitur.
And therefore bacon.
See? I can pull incomplete assertions out of my ass too.
If my point wasn't clear, it's that asserting "influence" is not enough to assert causality or consequence.
Because there's no evidence, perhaps?
Burden of proof is on those making the argument that it is bad. Not on me.
It's amoral to view women as objects, I hope we can all agree to that.
Ayup...
Too bad that wasn't my point in the first place.
Why do we need to wait for consequences?
Because consequence provides the basis for relevance.
Just because you say something is a significant problem does not make it significant (though it can be a problem).
Here's another "non-sequitur" (by your reasoning anyway):
Lightning kills people every year, without question.
It is a real problem with real consequences.
People are dying, so obviously it's very significant, right?
Actually no. Lightning fatalities comprise an unbelievably TINY proportion of all fatalities in the US. I'm talking tens out of hundreds of thousands annually.
That isn't terribly significant. Sure, we can do things about preventing lightning fatalities, (promoting awareness etc), but it will never reach a significant level of controversy or widespread moral outrage because the event is rare.
Compared to something like Heart Disease in the US; which is not only a major cause of death, but one of the biggest by a large margin. And there is related controversy over it (like the recent hooplah about food standards in public schools and obesity in children).
And I'm being fair with those because at least they have some measurable impact and consequence.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/heart-disease.htm
(I'll save you trouble of hunting the numbers: avg 596,577 for heart disease vs 51 lightning deaths on a 30 yr average)
Good luck measuring highly interpretative social issues like correlating gaming tropes with ANY kind of negative behavior; especially those with some underlying crap like "Rape culture" (a popular feminist topic as of late).
Nevermind that the biggest shakers on the subject have little more to offer than criticism, which is highly subjective to begin with and hardly evidence in itself. So far, the worst consequence of all this is me having to listen to some nutters assert what a horrible misogynistic person I am (or will become) by playing these games.
This is my main question in this entire debate, what the fuck is it that we need to defend from the feminist critics? What exactly is there to fight for? Do Duke Nukem or Mortal Combat need our defense, and from what threat?
I actually agree with that, but from a different direction.
My question:
Why should I take feminist critics seriously in the first place? Why should I care? Why should I believe them when they say these tropes are influencing my behavior negatively?
Gaming doesn't need defense when the "offense" is so weak and poorly researched to begin with.
Call me cold if you want, but I'm frankly tired of the empty moral posturing and I'm REALLY fucking tired of the pretense coming from those that preach it.
The most I can do is empathize as such:
"You know, more games with strong female characters would be nice".
Ironically, something I already believed well before gender politics ever became this ubiquitous in gaming.
INH5 said:
I was kind of on Sarkeesian's side at the start, but with each video the representations got more dishonest and the logic got more strained, but no one in the gaming media seemed to notice. It was always "she's being harassed, so all of her critics must be misogynists"...
That's where I ended up with Sarkeesian. She's a critical darling with most of the popular games journalists because she brings in controversy, and controversy brings in the ad-hits.
I've never once seen a critical piece run on her on this site. In fact, I've seen the complete opposite: tons and TONS of gushing, unilateral support of her work, method and opinions.
(and I don't mean "critical" to be "scathing" or "in stark opposition to", I mean in terms of neutral or authoritative analysis; y'know, real journalism?)