How can "gamers" and "social justice warriors" get along?

[carnex]

if you ask me I would say the following

1) Don't jump on people's nuts. Whoever you are, on whatever side you are on, you are not all knowing paragon of goodness and knowledge. You have and opinion and if that opinion is not backed by valid research it's just your opinion and nothing else. Treat it as such.

2) Be positive rather than negative. Accusations will not get much if anything done. Point out what is good and state what you would like. Do not throw around you imaginary social weight or gaming cred. Act like a normal, somewhat humble human being.

3) Realize that there is place for everyone in this medium, for games with absolutely anything. From deepest stories to most simplistic twitch fests, from educational to dumb games, from most socially responsible to games that will disgust majority of population.

4) Whenever you want to write something, especially as reply to previous commenter or narrator, shut up and move away from keyboard. Wait a bit for things to settle. Often you will change quite a bit about you following speach/writing.

 

[NoeL]

Conservative gamers (predominantly young, white males - the market the bulk of gaming targets) are understandably content with the current state of gaming, and believe any and all attempts to include people that aren't them should be done silently off in the corner somewhere ("girls can have their girl games, gays can have their gay games, but don't compromise the industry that's serving me so well!").

Well... what's so wrong about this line of thinking, aside from the deliberately coarse way of putting it? We keep getting told that nobody's going to "take our games away" and that it's "not a zero-sum game". So, yes, I'd be perfectly happy if this hypothetical Liberal New Wave of gaming didn't visibly alter the kind of games I'm currently enjoying. Unless you're implying that we should expect gaming culture to alter, not just broaden?

Making games more enjoyable and accessible to others doesn't, or at least shouldn't make them less enjoyable for you. If you need your games to be sexist, homophobic etc. in order to enjoy them there's something wrong there, and I don't think the games industry should be encouraging that - regardless of whether or not it's more profitable.

The problem with not addressing these things in the AAA market is that the AAA market is far and away the most visible face of gaming to anyone not already part of the culture (and even within the culture there are plenty of people that will avoid any game that has the "indie" label because they assume it'll be cheap, artsy shit). For many people it is gaming. It presents that barrier to entry, and it's also needlessly divisive to have "games" (for young, straight, white males), then "girl games", "black games", "gay games" etc. "Games" should appear accessible to everyone, rather than the narrow (though large) 'young, straight, white male' market. It's kind of the same thing with "hardcore" games vs "casual" games. The "hardcore gamers" spit on casual gamers because they're seen as the "other", but if we were able to culturally lump hardcore and casual gamers as "gamers" we'd see comradery instead of conflict. It's human psychology.

The solution is to influence the market by voting with your wallet if you like what you see, and voting with your feet if you don't - not by trying to socially engineer an existing gaming culture to fit an agenda, or trying to legislate and dictate what people "ought" to like.

So you think people should just stay silent and wait for the games industry to read their minds? Why are you so against people offering their suggestions on how they could improve gaming? By the way, nobody is trying to legislate what people out to like.

No - far from staying silent, I think that the strongest message you can possibly send to the industry, and the one form of protest that they're 100% guaranteed to sit up and listen to, is by financially backing games/companies that reflect your tastes and values and conversely not buying games that you find boring or distasteful. If there's a demand, the market will cater to it, because what keeps the marketing executives at Activision up at night is the thought of how to get more money, not masterminding schemes about how they can best marginalise women and perpetuate racist stereotypes through the medium of pixels on a screen.

The "progressives" should put their money where their mouths are, and with the likes of Kickstarter that's easier than ever to actually do. What isn't constructive is to emulate conservative clowns like Jack Thompson in making flimsy claims that X in games actually causes X in real life; or else go the moralising, awareness-raising slacktivism route by endlessly clamouring about how "problematic" everything in games is. If that's not at least an implicit attempt to dictate to people and shame them into changing their consumption habits, I'm not sure what is.

As I mentioned before, the visibility of the AAA market makes the playing field severely unlevelled. A AAA game with a metacritic score of 10% is still almost certainly going to sell more copies than an indie game rated 98% (with rare exceptions like Minecraft that breach obscurity). You could show both of those games to the people that bought the AAA game and find that 90% prefer the indie game, but they still bought the AAA game because they didn't know about the indie game. Smaller games will very rarely outsell AAA games based on quality and appeal because they just don't have the same market visibility.

And that's the problem in a nutshell. People won't get to "vote with their wallets" effectively until highly visible, SJW-approved AAA games hit the market, and that's not going to happen on its own because publishers can only look at what's been successful in the past when mitigating the risks of developing their next game. AAA games are just too expensive to produce to try anything new/risky, which is why we've seen so much homogenisation over the last generation. But again, the Joe "what's an indie?" Publics out there don't know any better - new AAA games, even if they look like boring slop to older/more experienced gamers, is "gaming" to them. It's what they're invested in, what they're looking forward to, what they know... and they're never going to know differently unless we serve them something different.

That is why progressive gamers are so vocal about change in the AAA market. Backing Kickstarter projects and financially supporting games that do everything right is important, and people are doing that too, but it's never going to be enough. The big publishers don't give a shit about a critically acclaimed indie darling that sold 50,000 copies when the latest schlock they squeezed out from between their buttcheeks sold 2 million (and again, it didn't sell 2 million because it was a better, more appealing game than the indie darling, it sold 2 million because it had market visibility with brand recognition, reviews, shelf space, lets plays, ads etc.)

 

[Kingjackl]

I think the easiest way to find a middle ground is to stop acting like it's an 'us vs them' situation. "Social justice warrior" is a loaded term, often used to shut down conversation, and reduce a person to a meaningless strawman. There is a discussion to be had about diversity in video games, but it's not going anywhere while people are getting hung up on meaningless back-and-forthing.

At the end of the day, perhaps the people who are so aggressively opposed to the idea of opening up a discussion about diversity (aka the ones who unironically use "social justice warrior") should probably take the time to consider the stakes of the argument. Clearly there's a movement, clearly there are people who are dissatisfied with the current crop of diversity in video games, so why are you so opposed to it? It's the classic reactionary mindset, except there's nothing to be gained from trying to preserve the status quo. Either things stay the same or they change, and if they do change, what have you got to lose?

 

[Lieju]

I think the easiest way to find a middle ground is to stop acting like it's an 'us vs them' situation. "Social justice warrior" is a loaded term, often used to shut down conversation, and reduce a person to a meaningless strawman. There is a discussion to be had about diversity in video games, but it's not going anywhere while people are getting hung up on meaningless back-and-forthing.

Yeah, this.

The absolute majority of people complaining about these issues in games ARE gamers, especially if they hang out on a forum like this (which is where most gamers run into these kinds of arguments, I'm willing to bet.)

In general it would be nice to be able to have civil conversations.

And look at the things you like with critical eye. Video-game fandoms can have very fanboyish attitudes in general; 'You criticized the amount of content in this game, u r a hator lol.'

But I think it's worse for gender/sexuality/minorities representation.

People,it's okay to like flawed things.
I like plenty of things that don't have good female or gay representation, I acknowledge those flaws.

Even if you don't consider them flaws, and aren't personally bothered that the thing you like doesn't have any well-developed female characters, you don't need to take it so seriously and as such a personal attack if someone criticizes it.

I don't know how common those dreaded SJW's who want to blame you personally for being evil or whatever are, but I can't say I've seen much of the kind of attitude that 'if you like this you're evil'.

I see much more the kind of knee-jerk reaction that 'if someone calls the thing I like problematic, they mean I'm a bad person', which makes it seems like you want to feel persecuted.

 

[the December King]

...

I liked the fact that STALKER Call of Pripyat and the rest of the STALKER games have no women in them.

...

It somehow makes the game feel more desolate and intimidating, partially because I don't have any knowledge about the real Ukraine, and can imagine it as a sort of oppresive place that way- no offense meant to any Ukranians here, by the way. I'm certainly not talking about the real Ukraine!

But if I was a female gamer, I might not appreciate that, and I can understand that completely. I can see that. I can see how if they were still a growing franchise, some women who liked shooters might try to push adding female representation in there somewhere. Seems like they might have been working on that for STALKER 2, even.

But those games are still some of my favourite games of all time.

EDIT: I still don't seem to be able to quote anyone for some reason...

 

[Genocidicles]

Making games more enjoyable and accessible to others doesn't, or at least shouldn't make them less enjoyable for you. If you need your games to be sexist, homophobic etc. in order to enjoy them there's something wrong there, and I don't think the games industry should be encouraging that - regardless of whether or not it's more profitable.

But that's the thing, some people consider different things to be sexist, racist or homophobic.

Like, look at Skullgirls. A fighting game made up almost entirely of female characters (two male characters are or will be DLC). A lot of the characters are dressed quite skimpily, and I'm fine with that. Some feminist from the depths of tumblr though probably wont be.

 

[Cecilo]

The only problem I have with SJWs is that apparently I am the worst thing on the earth because I am comfortable with being a masculine white male (Part of Patriarchy, White Privilege), of average build (Thin privilege). Wanna know the benefits of a being a while straight male? More likely to commit suicide, more likely to be placed in prison, that prison sentence will be on average longer. I can see why you want some of this privilege, perks are so good.

see your not supsoed to interperet it that way

and the fact that so many do somtimes indicates something of a self centered world view (SOMETIMES)

Well how am I supposed to interpret it then. When my entire gender, my entire race, and what I am is just judged based on the color of our skin and what we have in our pants, not necessarily on the merits of what we do. Where increasingly we are called sexists, racists, homophobic, or told to die, just for existing.

And yea, I get that not every SJW does this, I get that, but ya know what, every time I hear this subject brought up, I hear about rape threats, death threats and rape apologists, guess what, if you are going to use the argument that the entirety of the male gender can be held responsible for rape threats on the internet, I will hold you (Not you, you, a general you) responsible for death threats made by other SJWs on the internet.

The only problem I have with SJWs is that apparently I am the worst thing on the earth because I am comfortable with being a masculine white male (Part of Patriarchy, White Privilege), of average build (Thin privilege). Wanna know the benefits of a being a while straight male? More likely to commit suicide, more likely to be placed in prison, that prison sentence will be on average longer. I can see why you want some of this privilege, perks are so good.

ummm... how exactly are those statistics being calculated?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences_in_suicide
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/48/U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png/800px-U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png

I cannot actually find an article that is credited by a source I trust to be anything more than... crud for the longer prison terms, so I will cede that argument. Sorry.

Edit - And you know whats funny, before SJW, I would say I was more on the side of equality, I had no problem with anyone, but the more and more SJWs feel confrontational and the more they spew things like this, http://25.media.tumblr.com/f1c1f19f37178e4218b1aef0b6236569/tumblr_mvxfvb6Qn41riu9kko1_500.jpg

More of us are just going to get pushed away. Because apparently being racist, and sexist against us, is a good way to end racism and sexism.

 

[Vault101]

Well how am I supposed to interpret it then. When my entire gender, my entire race, and what I am is just judged based on the color of our skin and what we have in our pants,.

if I say most of western entertainment is geared towards white straight males I'm stating a fact, not attacking them, nobody should be taking it personally

 

[someonehairy-ish]

The problem SJWs have is that they're shite at getting their point across in a way that doesn't immediately grate on everyone in the vicinity. Most people will agree with you that most characters in games are badly written, that male fanservice is shoehorned in and often comes across as creepy, that there isn't enough representation of women and gay people and so on...

And that's fine.

When it gets irritating and people start resenting you is when-

a) you come across like cis white males themselves are the actual problem*. 'Check your privilege' basically translates to 'you could never possibly empathise with me so go fuck yourself' which is obviously problematic when you're trying to win people over.

b) you start seeing misogyny and patriarchy and objectification under every fucking bush and behind every tree. Can we maybe focus on the things that genuinely are misogynistic, rather than hunting through subtext with a fine toothed comb just to find new and bizarre ways of interpreting things so that they start looking vaguely offensive?


*[sub]The actual problem, just for reference, is that everything is targeted at cis white males.[/sub]

 

[carnex]

Well how am I supposed to interpret it then. When my entire gender, my entire race, and what I am is just judged based on the color of our skin and what we have in our pants,.

if I say most of western entertainment is geared towards white straight males I'm stating a fact, not attacking them, nobody should be taking it personally

When you face fact like that, and that is more or less true. I would say that it's geared primarily towards whites, then towards income group then towards gender since different medias are geared mostly toward different genders.

Now, what I would do i go looking why would industry do something like that and try to draw logical conclusion. Finally I would expose my conclusion to criticism. As I did until now and, truth be told, it wasn't very helpful since two camps are generally unwilling to accept anything other than their own view and mid dwellers already agree with me

 

[Vault101]

When you face fact like that, and that is more or less true. I would say that it's geared primarily towards whites, then towards income group then towards gender since different medias are geared mostly toward different genders.

I'm gonna have to disagree somewhat..there is a disparity in how women are portrayed in most movies, they rarely if ever get the protagonist spot (outside of rom coms which are a narrow genre) and often are relegated into specific "token-esue" roles, I mean in the trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy the one female character doesn't get any lines...YES to be fair neither does the racoon but given the track record of thease kinds of movies..I'm not holding my breath

and no that does not mean every movie needs to fill a quota [sub/]this should REALLY go without saying but for the sake of clarity[/sub]

[quote/]Now, what I would do i go looking why would industry do something like that and try to draw logical conclusion. Finally I would expose my conclusion to criticism. As I did until now and, truth be told, it wasn't very helpful since two camps are generally unwilling to accept anything other than their own view and mid dwellers already agree with me [/quote]
taking the "middle" approach does not automatically make someone correct...in fact it can be a logical fallacy in of itself

 

[Thyunda]

or that Metro 2033 treats women terribly,

What women...? Come to think of it, the book didn't have many (if any) women either. Artyom had a mother but she got ate saving him from rats, and I actually can't think of any more.

And as for Last Light (which I know you meant), that was just a failure where character was concerned all round. Khan wasn't Khan anymore, Pavel was the only likeable guy and Artyom had apparently caught autism. Which I only mean semi-facetiously.

 

[Haru17]

Many gamers, myself included, would consider themselves 'social justice warriors', or a less mocking version of the term. A lot of people just have a strong moral compass, the bastards. Also, it's technically a free market right now. That said, some consumer expectations and a lot of corporate forces limit what developers can do. The background game developers come from also limits what they will do. When you have a lot of North America, Japanese, and European developers you're not going to see many games based in other cultures. No rational people are blaming those developers, it's just an intrinsic limitation with the background of game developers at this moment in time.

With the majority male game developer population and increasingly female playerbase sexism is a huge issue right now. I don't see a logical reason to object to better representation of women in games, unless you just hate women or equality. That said, it's not exactly sexist to not have a female protagonist in your game or have a poorly written female character in a game, to a point, at least.

Furthermore, anti-equality folks should just stop it. It's not like anyone wants to be Australia, with their severely censored games. Games with stupidly-clothed women without brains will be around long after we're all dead, so don't worry about losing those, though they'll still be really idiotic.

 

[carnex]

I'm gonna have to disagree somewhat..there is a disparity in how women are portrayed in most movies, they rarely if ever get the protagonist spot (outside of rom coms which are a narrow genre) and often are relegated into specific "token-esue" roles, I mean in the trailers for Guardians of the Galaxy the one female character doesn't get any lines...YES to be fair neither does the racoon but given the track record of thease kinds of movies..I'm not holding my breath

and no that does not mean every movie needs to fill a quota [sub/]this should REALLY go without saying but for the sake of clarity[/sub]

You really should not expect every single movie to treat both genders equally. that is unrealistic and counterproductive in my opinion. There are movies that are all females, or female dominated or from purely female point of view and that is perfectly fine. There is no need for men to be big deal or any deal in every movie. But sam e goes the other way arround.

Dumb blockbuster movies (like marvel movies for example) are deeply entrenched in stereotypes since they are based on such characters and since they are meant to be looked at with brain in never never land (don't get me wrong, most of them are really fun romps, highly entertaining excluding Ironman 1 and 2 for example). Stereotypical roles are there to ease watching for audience.

taking the "middle" approach does not automatically make someone correct...in fact it can be a logical fallacy in of itself

I never said that I'm always middle of the road guy. For example I feel that today's brand of feminism is toxic to society at large. Several of their core values are pure lies and machinations.

However, in this case, I am middle of the road guy who says "let creators do whatever they want and then vote with wallets" since I do believe it's most reasonable position of them all. You want to have a game where female protagonist castrates males in the name of feminism? Let them have it. If it's fun and self aware of it's dumb premise I'll be first to play it.

 

[Vault101]

You really should not expect every single movie to treat both genders equally. that is unrealistic and counterproductive in my opinion.

Spoiler: ........................I DON'T

[img/]http://25.media.tumblr.com/636ba4ac44991ba312044427eaa702f3/tumblr_mjiir1SjKO1rv7e8so1_500.gif[/img]

[quote/]There are movies that are all females, or female dominated or from purely female point of view and that is perfectly fine.[/quote]
oh thankyou....thank you for explaing that to me...really...no seriously thanks..my brain you know...my brains just goes compeltly nuts sometimes and it forgets movies...or something...I needed that....I really did

[quote/]There is no need for men to be big deal or any deal in every movie. But same goes the other way arround.[/quote]
so you basically kinda made a non-point there didn't you?

forgive my snarky sarcasm but going on this carousel a million times will do that to a person, so let me not pussy foot around and be clear

there are not enough female driven movies

there shocking I know


[quote/]Dumb blockbuster movies (like marvel movies for example) are deeply entrenched in stereotypes since they are based on such characters and since they are meant to be looked at with brain in never never land (don't get me wrong, most of them are really fun romps, highly entertaining excluding Ironman 1 and 2 for example). Stereotypical roles are there to ease watching for audience.
[/quote]
please don't hand me a a dead sea slug and tell me its a Banana...youre not fooling anyone

cause I'm sorry but I don't buy that

I've seen plenty of reasonablly "big-ish" movies that were actually good, some of them even had female charachters! something being dumb is not an excuse..I don't friggen excue how dumb the transformers movies are, I'd rather watch something decent

and if it has to be dumb then theres no reason it can't be eaqual opertinity dumb

 

[carnex]

-snip-

Wait, we agree that not all movies have to be paragons of political correctness (and you even attempt to mock me for it) yet when there is a movie that is not paragon of political correctness you cry foul. Please, make up your mind.

I stated my opinion, and I didn't see anything that would cause me to even think about, much less to reconsider it.

 

[NoeL]

Making games more enjoyable and accessible to others doesn't, or at least shouldn't make them less enjoyable for you. If you need your games to be sexist, homophobic etc. in order to enjoy them there's something wrong there, and I don't think the games industry should be encouraging that - regardless of whether or not it's more profitable.

But that's the thing, some people consider different things to be sexist, racist or homophobic.

Like, look at Skullgirls. A fighting game made up almost entirely of female characters (two male characters are or will be DLC). A lot of the characters are dressed quite skimpily, and I'm fine with that. Some feminist from the depths of tumblr though probably wont be.

That's why people have discussions about it - to see what is and isn't sexist/racist/homophobic. I haven't played Skull Girls, but from what I've seen it just looks like cheesecake, which is fine with me too. But if someone makes a case for it being sexist I'm willing to listen.

 

[Batou667]

Making games more enjoyable and accessible to others doesn't, or at least shouldn't make them less enjoyable for you. If you need your games to be sexist, homophobic etc. in order to enjoy them there's something wrong there, and I don't think the games industry should be encouraging that - regardless of whether or not it's more profitable.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. It probably wasn't deliberate but I think a bit of a bait-and-switch has just happened. Just because a game isn't - and doesn't aspire to be - an exemplar of progressive thought and inclusion, doesn't make it racist or sexist, and just because the fanbase is nonplussed by the idea of it becoming more inclusive, doesn't make them racist or sexist.

Let's take for example, hell, I don't know, Halo as a franchise. It's not a game that anybody could, with a straight face, call sexist, racist, homophobic or whatever in nature. However, it's also not a game series that goes to any particular effort to be a flagship for equality. Sure, there are some female characters, and at least one well-developed black character, but they weren't put in the game to meet some quota - their inclusion in probably more to do with variety than some progressive vision of diversity.

Now, let's say that there's a lobbying group who thinks Halo, as a triple-A franchise, has a moral duty to be more inclusive. Demands eager suggestions get made that Master Chief could be made a female, of he could have a gay love interest, and hey, would it kill 343i to include a character in a wheelchair? All small adjustments that would barely change the nature of the core game. Many fans probably wouldn't notice, and even if they did, what kind of bigot would object to more diversity? It could actually improve the game and make the plot more interesting. Who doesn't like diversity and choice and a broadened set of narratives? I mean, possibly some people require Halo to be sexist, ableist and homophobic in order to enjoy it, but really, are they they kind of people we should be pandering to?

See what I mean? A bit of mental gymnastics and a few verbal backflips and we've represented "Well, these ideas are interesting and possibly they'd make for a good game, but I don't feel they fit within the established narrative and characters of this series. Why not make your own game from scratch rather than appropriating and modifying something that's already successful, and if it's good, surely it'll stand on its own merits?" as "I cannot smile unless I have my reassuringly hateful virtual bigotry simulator game to enact oppressing minorities, this stems from my deep-rooted fear of women and homosexuals and the worry that they're coming to take away my guns and cut off my penis, also I'm a manchild, waah waah".

The problem with not addressing these things in the AAA market is that the AAA market is far and away the most visible face of gaming to anyone not already part of the culture (and even within the culture there are plenty of people that will avoid any game that has the "indie" label because they assume it'll be cheap, artsy shit). For many people it is gaming. It presents that barrier to entry, and it's also needlessly divisive to have "games" (for young, straight, white males), then "girl games", "black games", "gay games" etc. "Games" should appear accessible to everyone, rather than the narrow (though large) 'young, straight, white male' market. It's kind of the same thing with "hardcore" games vs "casual" games. The "hardcore gamers" spit on casual gamers because they're seen as the "other", but if we were able to culturally lump hardcore and casual gamers as "gamers" we'd see comradery instead of conflict. It's human psychology.

I don't understand why this is an inherently bad thing, why it should change, or in fact how we'd change it without blatently rigging the market to represent a progressive agenda rather than mainstream tastes. What are we going to do, force developers to gamble millions of dollars and years of development time on experimental games? Pop music is the mainstream face of the music industry, but indie music exists. Hollywood blockbusters are the mainstream face of film, but arthouse cinema exists. There's no need to directly intervene in the medium; just provide the choice and if there's a demand for games with transsexual Maori wheelchair users, people will buy it, it'll be profitable, and the market will have broadened itself to accommodate the demand.

As I mentioned before, the visibility of the AAA market makes the playing field severely unlevelled. A AAA game with a metacritic score of 10% is still almost certainly going to sell more copies than an indie game rated 98% (with rare exceptions like Minecraft that breach obscurity). You could show both of those games to the people that bought the AAA game and find that 90% prefer the indie game, but they still bought the AAA game because they didn't know about the indie game. Smaller games will very rarely outsell AAA games based on quality and appeal because they just don't have the same market visibility.

...and? Again, that's the reality of the market at work. Not all games are created equal, nor are they all entitled to the same degree of exposure - that's why multi-million dollar ad campaigns exist. I'm not sure how we'd even go about "correcting" this, or why it'd be beneficial.

And anyway, indies and crowdsourced projects arguably have it the best they ever had. With the Internet, publicity is essentially free and word-of-mouth can operate on a global scale. There are plenty of examples out there of games that started off as bedroom projects and have snowballed into million+ user titles - not just Minecraft, but things like Dwarf Fortress, World of Tanks, Day Z started off as a user-created mod, Alien Hominid was a Flash game, Team Fortress was originally a total conversion of Quake, Counterstrike was a Half Life mod, and so on. If it's a good enough game, it'll attract attention and thrive.

That's why I get the impression that the progressive/SJW crowd have an an inexplicable expectation of entitlement about them. Nobody else gets to dictate to developers what they should and shouldn't include in their games, nobody else gets to wag their fingers at the gaming public and tell them their tastes are wrong, nobody else gets to demand AAA games and publicity. I understand some of the arguments in favour of extra diversity, but this entitlement is just plain, pie-in-sky, moralistic fallacy. And no, I'm not trying to "silence" or "censor" anybody -people can make demands as loud as they want, just don't be surprised when publishers say "lolnope, we're not doing that". Pick your battles, start off small and realistic, and show us that the alternative is worth playing and investing in. You can't just say "X is crap, ergo we should shift to making Y" and stand there arms crossed and tapping your foot impatiently.

 

[Genocidicles]

That's why people have discussions about it - to see what is and isn't sexist/racist/homophobic. I haven't played Skull Girls, but from what I've seen it just looks like cheesecake, which is fine with me too. But if someone makes a case for it being sexist I'm willing to listen.

But what if them complaining about sexism gets it changed?

 

[Silvanus]

I know the OP was arguing in good faith, but 'SJW' is not a useful term. It's a blanket term, intended to shut down any kind of debate by lumping any and all who argue about representation or equal treatment into one big group (and stereotyping their behaviour). As it's usually applied, it's a sneery, dismissive, denigrating term.

I don't think the OP intended it that way, but that's how it tends to be applied. It's just a sarcastic little technique. If we want the debate to progress, or get calmer, or come to more common ground, then people should stop using it to discredit opposing views.

I understand some of the arguments in favour of extra diversity, but this entitlement is just plain, pie-in-sky, moralistic fallacy.

"Entitlement" to... exactly what most people already get to experience, remember: characters that represent them.

It tends to chafe when somebody who does have something tells somebody who doesn't that they're acting entitled to it.