Is it time for feminists to step off our hobby?

[Something Amyss]

Here is a goose.

No cookie?

well...I accept your goose, but under protest due to lack of cookies!

I know what you mean. I've been getting involved with various issues since I was old enough to know how to. I think I went to my first protest when I was 10, possibly 11. And I've never stopped getting involved when I think things are wrong. Which is why I speak up when I see things that are wrong. Still, because I do have such a severe mental illness, I have to back down sometimes even when I don't want to, because I know what it can cause. There are only a couple of things that I can't back down from, as you saw in my last comment. The rest, sometimes, I just have to take a deep breath and say that I will come back to when I'm not so emotional.

Yeah, I honestly get overwhelmed sometimes. Sometimes I simply have to walk away from a subject because of it. Even this one.

I understand. A lot of people equate it with the MRA movement, when in fact it's nothing of the sort. And that's always bothered me, because that ends up making people that are honestly victims unable to come forward and get the help they need. If they honestly cared they'd stop this, and go out and help people. But the longer I'm alive, I realize more and more people care less and less about others and more about making themselves feel better about ?caring.?

Or simply "winning." I don't mind being wrong, which is why I admitted I overstepped in my reaction. I very much am actually for equality, though it's sometimes difficult to separate legit issues from MRA whining. I've even been ranted at my MRAs while agreeing with them that the draft is sexist and unfair. Although, I also find it funny that feminists have fought for draft equalty since the eighties, and MRAs often justify why women shouldn't serve on the front line, but at the root I agree.

Anyway, I fear we are doing this wrong. Agreeing, conceding points. This is not the way of the internet. Are we not supposed to bicker to the death?

That and the ill-man-ati using their secret female hate ray to wake me up.

One of their oldest tricks. It ensures you are off-balance.

But seriously, I understand what you mean. I guess it just comes down to how I was grown up around it.

Totally understand how that goes. I grew up in an environment that was very much pro-Israel and viewed Palestinians as animals. It can be hard to unlearn that sort of thing. Even if you're unlearning something that isn't true.

I think the education thing is also important just from an everyone perspective. Just think how many people could benefit just knowing what feminism actually meant. The people (and here I'm generalizing the MRA movement), that think feminism more or less means hating all men and wanting to bring down men down to be subservient to women. I always like starting with education. But then, my family wasn't very educated, and I was. So I think that perhaps that's where all this stems from. Just our different backgrounds, so we see different versions of what education can do for people.

Well, I do hate all men and want to bring them down to be subservient to women. But that's more a hobby. >.>

Unfortunately, we're sort of in this weird place with social media and the like where you can literally dial up only the media that only speaks to you. I try not to fall into that, but I know a lot of people do. I'm subscribed to one YouTuber who makes butthurt anti-feminists rants every couple of weeks, but she made one video complaining about the treatment of women and she had a bunch of "Fucking feminist! Ubscubscribed!" comments.

I mean, what she was talking about was both feminist and quite mild/trivia. It actually should have been relatively inoffensive. But one video, after several ranting about feminism, and UNSUBSCRIBE! ABORT! ABORT!

Saints Row and Volition did what games should do. They listened to their audience. That, in and of itself is rare. And more game companies should try it. They might get more games sold that way. I know when they make another (Gat Out of Hell is going to be great, I hope), I'm going to buy it. No matter the cost. They've secured my business by being a company that does good work, and the story was fun, especially 4. And the story was fun, which I won't spoil in case some people haven't played it.

That was the one were [redacted] became [redacted] and then you [redacted] the [redacted] from [redacted] only for [redacted] to [redacted], right?

I'm burned on Saints Row, but mostly because they keep chopping their games up. Still, I praise them for what they've done right, which is most of it. And the best part? They were apparently already listening to criticism with Saints Row IV, so we shouldn't have to fear anything. I mean, there are tentacle bats, anal probe guns, and boobs the size of planets in that game.

Mmmhmmm, password, okay. And your login must be ?Imabigbabyboy? right?

No way! It's "password." Nobody ever guesses it because they assume that's my password!

Is it wrong my hands keep trying to throttle me for even pretending to be that dense?

I'm glad we've come to an understanding. I would not like to be fighting you, but debating you, or just talking things out, that's much more my speed.

But again, this is not the way of the cyberland. The internet demands blood, and it must be sated.

Come at me, bro!​

I kid, of course. I'd rather be civil than confrontational any day. Now, let us all give thanks for tentacle bats.

 

[psijac]

Games is a billion dollar industry. If they don't win this space then they will be forced into mediocrity for another generation. It doesn't matter if you are a Feminist, Scientologists, or Future Farmer of America, if you don't even attempt to enter Gamer/Nerd Culture then you are loosing.

 

[Colour Scientist]

Why are feminists trying to take away our hobby, which we definitely legally own?

That's easy.

We forgot to renew the lease, guys. It's not ours anymore. The bailiffs will be here any moment.

Maybe feminists will take out a mortgage and move in.

Then you guys will have to step off of our hobby.

I can't wait to get the Male Tears franchise up and running.

 

[carnex]

Games is a billion dollar industry. If they don't win this space then they will be forced into mediocrity for another generation. It doesn't matter if you are a Feminist, Scientologists, or Future Farmer of America, if you don't even attempt to enter Gamer/Nerd Culture then you are loosing.

Please, why would anyone have to enter nerd/gamer culture? If I would be hard pressed to guess how many gamers are immersed in gaming "culture" I would have hard time imagining number higher than 5%. People don't give a damn about gaming "culture". They enjoy the medium. They enjoy their GTAs, their Candy Crushes, their Gran Turismos, their Minecrafts, their Farmviles, their Street Fighters, their Plants VS Zombies.

They enjoy their T'n'A on screen, they enjoy their unicorns, their bloodshed, their carefully created villages, their ultra combos of pain, their love stories, they take down huge monstrous dragons, and lovingly raise cute ones.

There is something for everyone in this culture. And like books, movies, music, paintings, sculptures etc vast majority doesn't give a damn about surrounding culture or their origin. They are there to be entertained, to enjoy the beauty, to have deep philosophical moments, to work out their stress and release their anger, to enjoy the competition, to take a quiet moment just for themselves, to retreat to their childhood, to ponder the future.

Do you really thing that all of them have desire to dive deeper in? I wouldn't agree with that notion.

You know what I see when I think about gaming "culture". Neo-nazi and black homosexual mentally challenged jew playing Mario Cart together and having the time of their lives and not caring even a tiniest bit about some "culture" that games supposedly have around them.

 

[Pink Gregory]

'Our' hobby.

I'm not one of you. What's with all the attempts at solidarity over fucking media, of all things?

 

[Dragonbums]

This is hardly the developers fault though. Pretty sure the publishers can shoulder most of the blame here, if not all of it. If the root of the problem is lazy, uninspired games, which i think it is, then i'm pretty sure it's the pub's fault. Not the devs, and certainly not someone commenting online. Honestly, if we could get rid of the burden of publisher demands, we'd all probably be better off. "Feminists" and "gatekeepers" alike.

Sure, but even taking publishers out of the picture the comment still stands. Now I'm not gonna call the devs racist or any other nonsense like that over this, but I know that regardless of whether or not publishers are in it or not, having black, female protagonists are still going to be as rare as unicorns. I can think of only one prominent indie game for instance that has one. Just one. Out of- how many indies?

Again, all this talk about "shoehorning", and "token" characters kind of miss the point in the sense that for people who are at the bottom of everything when it comes to representation, we really don't care all that much if the character is shittily written. At least with bad white female characters that demographic has a good 30% chance of having another female protag coming in next game for a second round. Us? Shit man we'd be lucky to see that in the next 5 years at best. So why be picky about how "good" a character is. We literally don't have that choice. So we take what we got.

 

[BrainWalker]

No, and for two reasons, primarily. 1) People like you, asking questions like this, and 2) The false assumption that there are not feminists who are actively involved in and enjoying "our hobby," despite perceiving that it has some flaws.

 

[Dragonbums]

1. More franchises with female protagonists.
What about ones with Black and other races, What about other sexualities

I'm fairly certain those issue have been adressed already. In fact last time I complained about it- as a black female feminist I got slammed with the statistics rebuttal and basically told to sit down and deal with it because my demographic doesn't "contribute" enough moneyez to the gaming industry to justify acknowledging my demographic existence. As for sexualities those have been addressed in tandem too. Often times they fall under the "SJW" category. Did you also miss the huge backlash Bioware got for adding not one- but two gay characters in ME3? Not to mention the whole thing with Kaidan being Bisexual (since he romances both Sheps) and people flipping their shit that everyone was "shoehorned" bisexual in DA2.

2. No more damsels in distress.

It is quite the overused and lazy trope. I don't see anything wrong with taking a break from that narrative and focusing on something more interesting.

Should all our heroes just be doing it for a big pile of money at the end, how noble.

So....an anti hero? I mean, you have a very narrow perception of a hero. He/she might not be idealic and altruistic but that's far from a bad thing.

What about country, oh no I'm sure their are females in the country so no go there. Hey even gone home fit this bill, I remember my sister being a motivating factor in the game and to not go into spoilers, may have been in trouble.

This doesn't make sense....but good for your sister?

3. No more gender swapped female characters (like Mrs. Pacman) so any new female protagonists would have to be their own character instead of a spin off of a male one.

Are you kidding me with this one? Believe me Feminists were the last people to throw their shit over gender swapped characters. Unless you missed the female Thor debacle or the "Link being a woman" argument where it was very much the other side opposed to any of that shit.

Unless of course you were making a jab at Anita's video about the Ms. hero version of characters where she didn't advocate to be rid of those characters. She just considered them pretty lazy.

Dude raider! Also should we get up in arms on every gender/race swap in movies now,

People do a good job frothing at the mouths over this already.

Sure a couple of people are pissed about Thor and avatar

You have a very broad term for a couple of angry people.

4. No more random side missions that involve brothels and strip clubs

Who advocated for this? Oh I know! Nobody. Your just taking what Anita said in her videos and making it out to be something that feminists as a whole are pursuing.

Why they are interesting places,

Really? Because almost every strip club depicted ever is your same basic hot ladies on stripper poles with horny patrons watching.

A lot better then Random jungle or random 3rd world country town.

Perhaps you need to take a dive down to Google images and take a look at how much variety one can add into "random jungle" and "3rd world country" town, because it's definitely a lot more interesting and better than basic strip club.

If it's because you think only women get exploited in games in brothels and strip clubs I guess didn't play saints row 3 and DLC of 4 with all the men in gimp suits, pony carts and such. Even in normal games not the best representation of males either, Being all gang bangers or sexual deviants.

So can we just agree that your basically taking things Anita says and blowing it up to claiming that all feminists said/agree to this?

5. No more sexualized dead women.

Yeah, those evul feminists! How dare they say I can't get my dick hard or my panties wet over a corpse!

Another thing that's not Exclusive to the female gender. If people want to screw around with "Ragdolls" dead bodies, Well anything that can be done with a female dead body, can be done with a male dead body.

I think a lot more than feminists would be against the idea of fucking dead sexualized women. Yet alone dead male ones.

I think Feminism would do better if "THEY" were more inclusive, Humanism ftw.

Lol. 90% of your claims about what feminism was against were arguments against points Anita said in her videos and had nothing to do with what a good chunk of feminists in gaming even think.

Please come back with better claims that doesn't involve taking the word of one women and brushing it over an entire section of the feminist community.

 

[Eve Charm]

Please come back with better claims that doesn't involve taking the word of one women and brushing it over an entire section of the feminist community.

The problem is people take the words of one women and wear it like a patch and let her "Be the voice" of an entire section of the feminist community. It's like saying the president doesn't speak for the country they are running when a good portion of that county had to elect them. You can't get around not addressing her.

But at the end of the day inclusion is better then exclusion and feminist seem to be putting up walls rather then breaking them down claiming these are problem that effect them and only them. Whats more impactful, A group of feminists claiming harassment and misrepresentation in games or an larger group of people of all walks of life claiming the same thing? The latter hands down, Why build walls when you should be breaking them down?

 

[Dakkagor]

This thread turned out to be pretty awesome, despite the steaming pile of horse-crap posted by the OP at the beginning. Well done people, maybe there is hope for the human race yet. There has been a lot of very well constructed posts, and surprisingly they generally outweigh the bad ones.

8/10 would read again.

PS: I am a feminist, I am male, I am white. I game. I will NOT step off.

 

[neokiva]

Most women that have issues in the gaming industry is just the fact that sometimes they'd like to have some narrative from a different perspective. We're not trying to "take over your hobby" since we need to possibly step off it. There's nothing wrong with creating some new story lines. Why not have Nintendo do a Mario story where Peach is the main character going out to save Mario? Hell, at least it would shake up the franchise a bit.

It's not only sexism, it's being lazy and complacent because people will still buy the games. Hell, I still buy the games. But I have to say, it would have been kind of fun to see what kind of trouble I could have gotten into playing as Elizabeth instead of just Booker.

Umm yeah there is a peach game it's called super princess peach and it's on the ds. in fact there are lots of game where there are female protagonists if you'd actually look. Tomb raider, beyond good and evil, bayonetta, gun witch, the resident evil series has always had female protagonists, silent hill 3, x blades, shantea, ms.pacman, ms.explosionman, blade kitten,
perfect dark, oni, mass effect, fear effect, sonic eventually added rouge the bat and amy rose, the tales of series, primal, dreamfall and the longest journey games, fable 2 and 3, remember me, mirrors edge, the pokemon games, metroid, parasite eve, dino hunter, final fantasy X-2, final fantasy xiii, final fantasy xiii-2, final fantasy lightning returns, the female pcs in the borderlands series, bloodrayne 1 and 2, the Dungeons and dragons games, every single samurai warriors every single dynasty warriors and every game based on these two in between, skyrim, oblivion, morrowind,the saints row series. look at that several titles all with playable female characters fancy that. you know if your going to claim something do your research first. the issues aren't "there aren't any female protagonists" it's they aren't marketed enough people "supposedly" Don't buy them enough, it's called marketing so you want this to change vote with your purse/wallet. or make your own games, as it stands it's wrong to dictate what an artist is to do with their art it's entitled behaviour and it's disgusting, feminists/sjw only seek to ruin everything by crying and whining about imaginary slights.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

let her "Be the voice" of an entire section of the feminist community. It's like saying the president doesn't speak for the country they are running when a good portion of that county had to elect them. You can't get around not addressing her.

See i dont really follow Anita or any of this stuff but this statement always weirds me out. Like how do we NOT let her. She makes shit, people watch it... i dont know what anyone can do about it.

Do you want us to like... hurt her? Its really weird when you think hard about how exactly we should STOP her, short of physical violence or threats i cant imagine how anyone can STOP her doing anything. Its like when people are like "Yeah exclude X Y and Z from your movement". Like how? Killing them? Saying i dont agree? I do the second part but apparently its not enough. Will murder do it? I just dont know how to force someone to stop without resorting to well... force.

The other option is to fracture a label repeatedly whenever someone poisons it from within, but by that logic i can "destroy communism" by making shitty videos about it and getting it all wrong.

 

[Eve Charm]

let her "Be the voice" of an entire section of the feminist community. It's like saying the president doesn't speak for the country they are running when a good portion of that county had to elect them. You can't get around not addressing her.

See i dont really follow Anita or any of this stuff but this statement always weirds me out. Like how do we NOT let her. She makes shit, people watch it... i dont know what anyone can do about it.

Do you want us to like... hurt her? Its really weird when you think hard about how exactly we should STOP her, short of physical violence or threats i cant imagine how anyone can STOP her doing anything. Its like when people are like "Yeah exclude X Y and Z from your movement". Like how? Killing them? Saying i dont agree? I do the second part but apparently its not enough. Will murder do it? I just dont know how to force someone to stop without resorting to well... force.

The other option is to fracture a label repeatedly whenever someone poisons it from within, but by that logic i can "destroy communism" by making shitty videos about it and getting it all wrong.

You lost me completely, Especially with half cutting my post. It's Extremely hard to have a conversion about feminist in gaming, without mentioning Anita, it's a topic that's going to come up, Even if you yourself don't talk about it, someone is going to bring her up in a response and the topic is going to drive there sooner or later at least for a little while. Asking why people keep talking about Anita, Short answer People keep bringing her up. It's not about keeping her quiet, your gonna talk about her or someone quoting her if your having a big discussion. Same with things like Youtube and talking about pewdiepie and so on.

 

[Vivi22]

So what do you guys think? Is there endemic sexism within the game industry and feminists complaints are valid, or is it a storm in a tea cup?

Of course there's an issue with gender equality, sexism, and the depiction of women in games. This isn't even debatable.

 

[EternallyBored]

As far as "artistic integrity" goes, artists aren't free from criticism. That's the primary way audiences interact with their work. An artistic can't bask in praise while shunning negative feedback as illegitimate. Want to be free from criticism? Paint in your basement and never release it to the public for their opinion. Not to mention how much of this "art" is be committee. Just look at Ubisoft to see how rote the design of their AAA games are. Art, more often than not, is a commercial product. Hence your suggestion to "vote with your wallet".

The design by committee philosophy is why I've always found the artistic integrity argument to be largely uncompelling, apparently, when a publisher changes the artists vision we all bow to the god of capitalism and justify it as just a business decision, but the ramblings of the internet masses with little actual power to force change are apparently derided as attempts at censorship.

Generally this argument smacks of wanting to have your cake and eat it too, games are apparently a commercial product whenever it is convenient, but they are also some form of mythical sacrosanct artistic vision as soon as some form of criticism we don't like comes along, not just with diversity arguments either, I see this form of argument get trotted out for a lot of other things too.
It's people pretending that they care about the artist's vision for a game, except when the publisher comes along and forces story, gameplay, or artistic mandates in line with their focus-grouped marketing studies, then apparently all those artists and writers can go fuck themselves because games are suddenly a business product again.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Please come back with better claims that doesn't involve taking the word of one women and brushing it over an entire section of the feminist community.

The problem is people take the words of one women and wear it like a patch and let her "Be the voice" of an entire section of the feminist community. It's like saying the president doesn't speak for the country they are running when a good portion of that county had to elect them. You can't get around not addressing her.

But at the end of the day inclusion is better then exclusion and feminist seem to be putting up walls rather then breaking them down claiming these are problem that effect them and only them. Whats more impactful, A group of feminists claiming harassment and misrepresentation in games or an larger group of people of all walks of life claiming the same thing? The latter hands down, Why build walls when you should be breaking them down?

That analogy is terribly broken and you know it. Besides, most people I've seen discussing Sarkeesian hasn't treated anything she said as gospel. Even her most ardent defenders seem to admit that she is coming at the topic from a very basic angle. She isn't speaking for all feminists or pro-diversity people in gaming, the only ones claiming that are her detractors because it makes it easier for them to build strawmen.

Either way, your second paragraph is whimsical and bordering on non-sensical. How exactly are you putting up walls by pointing out poor representation and asking for something better? It is the very definition of showing people the wall and asking them to remove it. Besides there's nothing wrong with specific groups talking about their specific problems. It is exactly how social discourse should play out most of the time. Just like black people in America banded together to protest racial segregation in the 60's, or women came together to be allowed to vote in the late 19th century. That you don't like the particular group driving the issue doesn't mean they are building walls. It means you are having an issue with a certain group or their goal, their methods or rhetoric. The one building the walls is you, not those looking to instigate a change unless they specifically state that you, or a group of people you belong to aren't welcome to help them. The latter almost never happens and most certainly isn't what Sarkeesian or pro-diversity proponents in gaming are doing.

 

[Mandalore_15]

But since it's not my argument, I don't keep "men are raped more than women" studies around. Hell, I don't generally keep links to any study I find disingenuous, "my side" or otherwise.

I've read quite a number of studies on this topic. The consensus seems to be that in most Western societies, the ratio of men to women raped is about 40:60, so long as you don't include rapes that occur in prison. Once you include that, the trend completely reverses and the ratio becomes around 75:25 (like you I don't have specific studies at hand but can do some digging if required). There are inherent problems with defining methodologies in each case of course, as it is a lot harder for men to be classified as being raped through the course of normal heterosexual sex (most legal definitions of rape require some kind of penetration of the victim) and it is not often clear how large a part statutory rape plays in the statistics. Also, "non-reported" rapes are often included, which are indefinable and generally pure conjecture. In other words, we've a long way to go before realising the full extent of the problem.

 

[Mandalore_15]

Feminism -

1: The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities

2: organized activity in support of women's rights and interests

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism

That's what feminism is. If it isn't an activity in support of women's rights and interests, or a belief that women should have equal rights and opportunities to that of men, then it's not feminism.

Femenazi is an oxymoron. Like carnivorous vegan, or wrathful pacifist. It makes no sense. It doesn't exist. Don't use it.

Oh come on. I can tell you're intelligent enough to know that the dictionary definition of a word and its use in real life are different things. Particularly words that are political in nature and hence are being redefined all the time. Take the word "liberal" which Merriam-Webster defines as "believing that government should be active in supporting social and political change" and tell me that takes into account all uses of the word.

Besides, the definition you provide doesn't even support your conclusion. Supporting "women's rights and interests" can be done at the expense of other groups' rights and interests. I don't like to use the term "feminazi" as I believe it's loaded and over-used, but there are certainly people out there to whom it would apply and whom cannot be separated from the feminist movement. Andrea Dworkin for one.

 

[Mandalore_15]

I can't wait to get the Male Tears franchise up and running.

I can't tell if you're kidding on the square. I seriously hope not.

 

[Kailow Krow]

Yeah they could step of our hobby and go bother gunpla for the feminine representation in the nobel gundam and the fact that Merida is a cyber newtype and and pilots the significantly inferior Banshee.
God what am doing with my life...