Jimquisition: Accepting the Isms

[I.Muir]

Whoa there mentioning Anita is one of the things that tend to blow up in your face

The reason I didn't like her getting abused were completely different to most other women on the internet. It got her attention and funding from masses of white knights so she can now live of the cash she would not have even used to make videos with no research anybody else could have done for free. She purposefully manipulates forum opinions to bathe in the adoration of idiots and anything at all especially if they make a good point is censored if it does not 100% support her opinion. Only it's not her opinion is textbook feminism and I have not even bothered to pay attention to what she has to say when she started to accuse Christmas carols of being sexist.

I live by a simple code with a few simple rules. Do not be a dick is the most prominent and I disapprove of harassment of all kinds male or female over the internet and on the street. Whilst Anita did not deserve to be attacked I think she has more than recovered from any slights and used the whole thing as an example time and time again about how all of us, gamers as a whole are misogynistic (some women included no doubt).

She will always take issue with stupid things unrelated to actual sexism but it's ironic that actual misogyny caused her to become what she is now. If it was not there she would be just another nobody and we would all be better off. Im just concerned with the amount of pull she has.

 

[Nurb]

I agree with almost everything, Jim, the needless black and white absolutism, the unwillingness to talk about certain subjects, and the lingering fear gamers have that their games will be "taken away".

Gamers are afraid their hobby and/or passion will be sanitized and homoginized in order to please every interest group, and to a small degree, that's true. The thing to remember though, with any creative medium, that it's not up to anyone but the creators to decide what goes into a game, despite some nashing of teeth from fanboys. Wether the game contains something that could be interpreted to be offensive to some people, or overtly doing it on purpose for all to see, offending someone is not a crime, and being offended does not make someone a victim.

Of course people can voice their opinion on a game, no one should be shut up for raising a concern and developers having a rational discussion about certain issues and deciding if something should be changed is always good, but in the end, we need to remember games do not influence behavior or alter thinking just as movies and tv don't. So if someone says something is offensive, that could be, but other than giving their opinion, it doesn't matter.

People don't seem to understand that not all stories are moral messages. Skyrim has a mission to abduct a priest into a cannibal cult and EAT him, this is not a "pro-cannibal" message. Like-wise the "slut-shaming" quest in skyrim is not "pro slut-shaming". Skyrim is a true RPG in that it gives you the option to be entirely unethical but lets you stop and do something else should you decide to.

I'll just repost this for the point it makes.

and there's this old chestnut from someone who's had to hear his very existence is offensive:

 

[Baresark]

As someone who adamantly thought the "Zombie Bait" thing was ugly and distasteful but couldn't agree that it was misogynistic in nature as was pointed out in the RPS article and then parroted ad nauseum by every pole jocking fanboy of that writer, it is stupid how people cannot see a problem with certain things. If something is in bad taste, it's not a condemnation of the entire game to say so. The annoying part is how people demand things get removed over it. I'll return to the "Zombie Bait" statue debacle. Was it in bad taste? Yes. Was it ugly and not incentive at all to purchase the game? Yes. Was is earth shattering and needed to be removed from the market? No, it wasn't. But everyone who was all over that wanted confirmation it was going to be taken off the market. It's not good enough not to like something and not support something. No, that thing has to be destroyed because it was overtly "misogynist and over sexualized".

I agree, people are stupid when it comes to how they will stick by something that is ultimately inconsequential such as some of the things you have mentioned. But peoples over reaction to those things are equally as ridiculous to people's over reaction to "Zombie Bait". Either way, neither perspective pushes the medium forward, just freezes it in it's tracks.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Jim's kind of got a point. And it's an unfortunate side effect of the world we live in. In a world where the mainstream media leaps to viciously blaming video games for things that they aren't responsable for, it's actually undertstandable that gamers are a pretty defensive lot.

 

[Magmarock]

Great video as always Jim and I'll be sure to check out move defense force.

 

[Ignatz_Zwakh]

Hmmm, I'm unsure if I'd label Skyrim sexist just based on that quest. I mean, couldn't you argue that any player who goes ahead with it is sexist? Or made sexist decisions? Especially since it's optional...though, then again. Whoever on the dev team concocted the quest is guilty of...ah what the Hell.

 

[ThePuzzldPirate]

I would like to thank the people debating here for proving the point of the video.

And just out of curiosity: HOW exactly did the pony argument start? (Not wanting to read through 7 pages of big-wall-'o-text)

I was wondering that myself actually XD. From what I had gathered from what I read, someone finds ponies too sexy cause they have big eyeballs and exaggerated eyelashes and that is the general consensus. The other defended saying that isn't the case which he than replied that wasn't what he was saying.

I'm just going to point big eyeballs are quite common as it is the easiest and fastest way to emote emotion, they are big so you focus on them. Exaggerated eyelashes again is another animation technique so you can tell the gender of something that isn't easily identifiable(ponies, dragons, cars) quick and easy. This is again widely used in many types of mediums.

Now it's my turn to get on topic. XD

I don't disagree that we need to stop fighting to stop these arguments but that is where it ends. From what I can tell, we are past that point and that we are willing to talk about it, just people haven't stopped pointing fingers and actually discussed it. For one every true call out for any of the "Ism", there are three that are completely moronic that you have to reach to get. Anita doesn't deserve any remorse as she went looking for a fight(4-chan of all places), would you feel bad for me if I walked into a black neighborhood yelling racial slurs and got beat up for it?

No, my big problem with the calls out for "ism"'s is we yell this is bad yet make no attempts to fix it just like Jim is done now. If your going to stir up shit, do something with it and say how to fix it. If not, shut up as all your doing is pissing a lot of people off for no fucking reason.

If we want to fix things Jim, you need to get your fans to document every "ism" you can find and point out why this is not acceptable. Document it to specific publishers and have their fans write letters about it. after a month or so, send it(whether electronic or not) to the CEO or whoever accepts packages in bulk. hell you could of made a video on that instead of making this video which could be summed up as "PLEASE PROTECT THE CHILDREN!"

We know it's there, we are past the point. now it's time to stop being lazy and do something about it.

 

[Phlakes]

-snip-

So there's nothing actually wrong with it, it's just given your social setting it presses the wrong buttons so to speak - i.e. "it offends you" or rather your society.

As a European liberal (liberal as in let people do as they want unless it directly harms others, not American liberal as in do as I say for the greater good) I axiomatically reject social sensitivities angle for moral criticism, you could of course still say it was rude or a bad business decision or it objectively upsets people. In fact the very same argument can be made in favour of slut-shaming - it upsets all the moral conservatives out there and you wouldn't want to do that - poor moral conservatives.

Now you've had your logical argument and we still disagree.

BTW: "mistreatment of women" has never not been looked down upon, just the definition of mistreatment has changed drastically

Go and open a book. Please.

Get an education beyond social justice 101

I know you're trying to put yourself above him with that, but I'd just like you to know that this is one of those stock replies with a 100% backfire rate.

Carry on.

 

[Gilhelmi]

To be perfectly honest I think this website in general has made me more paranoid in general. I don't want to talk about racism sexism or homophobia in video games, Hell, I'm starting to reach the point where I don't want to talk about ANYTHING in video games because this website can be rather volatile. And I defended the Tomb Raider reboot, I didn't think that it was sexist, and I did jump on the Hitman trailer, because I did think that that was sexist. I have opinions I guess I'm just tired of massive flame filled debates that seem to go nowhere. I'm really starting to think that's all that goes on here.

I agree with you. I am thinking about researching the Underground Railroad (American Civil war edition), The Masons of Europe (when they were being oppressed by the fallen church), and the French Resistance (WW2 edition). Why you ask? Because, based on the responses every time someone dares to say Religion has a right to exist, the Militant Atheist start the verbal attacks. Based on the history of most religions, that is usually shortly before the major persecution follows. First it is dissenting views (which are healthy, actually, as long as everyone remains civil), but then things go down hill when it get loud yelling, then the indirect persecution (such as denying rights given to everyone else, This is the stage of the persecuted Christians in the US. First Amendment does not apply to us, according to the president anyway), then the direct persecution (with attacking property, This was the persecuted Abolitionists(Christian) during the US Civil war who helped to Abolish Slavery).

I am wondering, if I should just keep my head low and clean up the mess after everything collapses, as history has shown, always happen when a nation gets overly arrogant.

 

[-Dragmire-]

This helps compensate for the badly-missed point of the "Easy Mode" video

Aww, you don't have to feel like compensating for missing the point of my video.

So Jim, all this talk about "compensating"...
Are you trying to tell us something?

Yes.

Instead of a penis, I have a really small talking car between my legs. It sings at night.

[sub].....Does it... Does it transform?[/sub]


OT: I, and I imagine many reasonable people who make up the midground in these debates, try to stay out of negative game related fiasco's, the bigger ones anyway, due to both sides' most vocal people being so heated on the subject that progress to any meaningful resolution or understanding seems impossible, through internet conversation anyway.

 

[xPixelatedx]

You can't defend something merely on the grounds that "that's what they intended to do".

Yes, you can, if that's the genre and the argument against it is "They somehow did something wrong by going through the guidelines of the genre". Racist isn't an accepted genre last I checked (at least I hope to god it isn't). It's not like we don't have movies, TV shows and other games where this kind of thing is prevalent. Mutilation, gore and even mixing in sex appeal(since people insist that gawd awful statue is supposed to be sexy) to make it all the more disturbing is part of the horror genre. That's why two college kids are usually screwing before a guy in a hockey mask hacks them up before they can even pull their pants up. That's the genre, if you don't like it, you don't like it. It's ok for people to be put off by it and share their displeasure, but I think it's going a tad too far to say it shouldn't exist. Some people like to be disturbed, scared, horrified and even grossed out, that's why the genre exists in the first place.

Compare and contrast it with Silent Hill 2, which featured the sexy nurses. Noone is complaining about them. Why? Because they are important if you consider their role within the context of the game. They have a good reason to be there,

Might I remind you the statue was of a dead person a bikini. The game is based on an island resort that has women in bikinis running around as flesh eating corpses that you blow away. So I am really failing to see the point of your Silent Hill nurse comparison. Again, why is everyone acting like this thing is somehow inappropriate for this game? ..To make the game look better? Yeah the statue is in poor taste, offensive, and otherwise unfit to bring to elementary school or tea parties; but the same could be said of the game it originates from, so why isn't that getting slammed? Like Jim said, no one is going to come in and take our games away if they turn out to be less then appropriate. If people didn't want such offensive things to be made, then why have we allowed video games to be offensive too the point that toys like this would eventually be made? Why is it ok for something like that torso to exist as visual data but not plastic? Maybe that should be the real discussion.

 

[MrBaskerville]

You can't defend something merely on the grounds that "that's what they intended to do".

Mutilation, gore and even mixing in sex appeal(since people insist that gawd awful statue is supposed to be sexy) to make it all the more disturbing is part of the horror genre.

I think some people believe that it´s getting out of hand. There were the infamous commercials for Captivity as an example, where it said: Abduction, Confinement, Torture, Termination that were shown allover the place in public, and ofcourse all the rather sexualised images of dead women in the Hitman Adds. It´s not so much a question of sexism or censorship, as much as it is a question of whether we´re going too far. Where is the line? When do we say, "hey, i think this might actually be pretty tasteless and disgusting"? It´s not really about censorship as much as it is a general question of whether there exist a line that can be crossed. Should we continue down this road, or constrain ourselves a bit? There are lots of ways to disturb and terrify audiences without using images bordering to fetichisme.

It´s not a matter of banning and censoring, but a matter of discussing the question at hand.

 

[Callate]

I must apologize; some of my original post was referencing the points and point-of-view found in the article by Sophie Prell that Sterling cites early in the video, and that was probably less clear to readers than it was in my mind. The article he references, for anyone who might be interested, is here: [link]http://www.destructoid.com/studying-sexism-with-skyrim-fus-ro-va-gina--219799.phtml[/link]

 

[Starik20X6]

At this point I'm sure my commenting on this will have all the significance of spitting into a river, but thank god for Jim putting this so eloquently. I was having this discussion the other day and couldn't quite articulate my words, now I can point people to this as yet another example of Jim Sterling being better at voicing my opinions than I am.

 

[jthwilliams]

This helps compensate for the badly-missed point of the "Easy Mode" video

Aww, you don't have to feel like compensating for missing the point of my video.

So Jim, all this talk about "compensating"...
Are you trying to tell us something?

Yes.

Instead of a penis, I have a really small talking car between my legs. It sings at night.

Now there is an episode. The singing slong of Jim does Les Mis.

As to the topic at hand, this is one of those hard ones. Of course there is sexism, racism and ism'ism in games.

But you make a weird point in your video, now I don't know the full context, but the mission you cite doesn't seem particularly sexist. A particular character acts in a way that society doesn't approve of and you manipulate that character be threatening to reveal that information. That is black male and a strong way to coerce people. It even works in real life.

Now you might say that the idea that women who sleeps with 3 people is expected to be shamed by it and if a Man sleeps with 3 women he is expect to be proud of it is sexist. It is. The double standard is clear and it is based on the sex of the individual that is sexist. But the sexism is in our culture not in the game. The sexism is very real, but not part of the game.

Now here is the problem as I see it. You then run into the idea is the game saying that the woman should feel shameful or is it reinforcing the already existing sexist meme in society. As someone is an egalitarian, I could really buy the idea that the game should not use that story thread because it reinforces the normal. As someone who enjoys fiction can I believe that the richness of the experience should be forbidden to include something because the possibility that it strengthens a harmful meme. IDK. Weighing it my head, I would favor real improvement over fictional story telling, but at the same time I would still see it as censorship.

All that being said, you are certainly right that their is room for discussion.

If I were being honest, I would say that the reason people act in a unreasonable fashion is that Video games get scapegoated a lot and as someone who enjoys the medium it is hard not to feel that people insulting games are insulting your world view and you as a person. So it can cause people to become extremely defensive. It probably doesn't help that people use declarative statements like "XYZ Game is Sexist" rather than observational anecdotes like, "Wow, I became really uncomfortable when I realized that all the bad guys looked and sounded like an exaggerated version of me. It may the game less fun for me to play. Further anytime someone who I kind of identified with came on stage, the game did a lot to emphasize his/her primary and secondary sexual characteristics and it kind of made me feel like if I met people who really liked the game or the developers of the game, all they would be doing is looking at my primary and secondary sexual characteristics. So the game kind of made me feel more like a sex object than a person and it made it less fun."

When someone says the first, it is easy to argue with it. When someone says the second, I think it is harder.

 

[Lonewolfm16]

Will the males be wearing bikinis and have implant-augmented tits shoved in them? Because then you might have a fair comparison.

Your example is blatantly false equivalence.

The equivalent of a female made to appeal to men is a man made to appeal to women. Not some ridiculous monstrosity made with the sole purpose of saying, "Screw you men!"

While you are completely correct, I think what's most interesting about the analogy is that it is dificult to find female fantasies that involve completely dehumanizing and humiliating their male sex object. That's not unexpected though, given the nature of sexism.

There are females who prefer the dominant role and tend to be more on the sadist side of sadomasichism. perhaps they are a little rarer, but they exist. unless you are refering to wearing revealing clothing and acting provacative as being "dehumanising" in which case I direct you to the many examples of women saying that males actors are hot and prasing movies for shirtless scenes.

 

[Tumedus]

I am not going to debate the core argument being made here except to say that there is a valid statement being made but its being applied inappropriately.

My complaint is actually with the tediousness, espeicially on this site of late, of game journalists defending their own overreactions to everything by calling out gamers. Sorry journalists, getting bent out of shape over the torso thing was an overreaction and you are guilty.

Stop blaming us for calling you out when you take something too far or defend something that shouldn't be. I am not worried that they are going to take my games away. But don't pretend, especially if you are going to question my empathy simply because I think "you" are dumb for getting indignant over something so trivial, that controversy cannot spread like wildfire.

Internet media can be like a virus. One scathing opinion gets linked and relinked hundreds of times and becomes a major thing. Then, when you realize that maybe it isn't as big of a deal as you tried to make it, you hedge your bets, claim that "well I am not offended personally but I get it and it could have been handled differently" and then accuse us of doing all the things you just did to make the situation worse.

 

[leviadragon99]

Huh... I haven't run into that particular Skyrim sidequest, but yeah, that is one I'd definately go out of my way to avoid.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I've pushed this for a while, now. I'll come to the defense of games that are widely disliked by my peers, like Mass Effect 3, Resident Evil 6, or the new Devil May Cry, but I won't for one moment ignore the issues that are within them. I can very easily see how anyone would have a problem with the games I've listed. Maybe I just have practice because my favorite Final Fantasy installment is number eight - a title where it's pretty much impossible to not recognize the bad, but something about it still resonated with me anyway.

People should feel free to defend games as much as they want, but there's nothing wrong for accepting some games for what they are. At the end of the day, you have to recognize something's flaws, otherwise it's just blind worship.

 

[-Dragmire-]

This helps compensate for the badly-missed point of the "Easy Mode" video

Aww, you don't have to feel like compensating for missing the point of my video.

So Jim, all this talk about "compensating"...
Are you trying to tell us something?

Yes.

Instead of a penis, I have a really small talking car between my legs. It sings at night.

[sub].....Does it... Does it transform?[/sub]


OT: I, and I imagine many reasonable people who make up the midground in these debates, try to stay out of negative game related fiasco's, the bigger ones anyway, due to both sides' most vocal people being so heated on the subject that progress to any meaningful resolution or understanding seems impossible, through internet conversation anyway.

I'm honestly curious. What is the other side? Are there people who argue an honestly misogynist point of view, or is it just a bunch of feminists critiquing the culture against trolls? I know that people criticize the feminist point of view, but I have never heard much what could be called debate points for misogyny in games, so much as a breaking down of the criticisms.

I was thinking about of the state of people after that school shooting and video games were brought into it when I wrote that. Sides were taken and it looked like both sides had a, with us or against us, feel to them, at least that was my interpretation.

As for people arguing about gaming's other hot buttons, be it for things like accusations of sexism, racism, use or misuse of religious symbols, political views etc.. in games, I tend to not stay for those, but from the video it seems like the common go to counter argument for an unfortunately large(or seemingly large) section of vocal gamers is to say stuff like, "it's just a game, get over it", "it's not that bad, I didn't find it offensive. You're overreacting" or other similar things that cut the dialogue off from one side without any consideration or empathy or people who have a different point of view. Jim thinks it's through some kind of misguided paranoid overprotectedness of their passtime that they have a knee jerk reaction to any outside criticism of gaming and instantly want it stopped, censored and removed without any consideration of potential points that person may have had.

I have, in all seriousness, heard several people honestly defend and support sexist and racist views. In their mind the world has a set unseen hierarchy of where people are "supposed" to be and a persons value as a human is tied where they exist in that system. That is "right" to them and trying to explain to them otherwise would either fall on deaf ears or be interpreted as a "hand me down" story from the "respectable" parts of the hierarchy. I'm really toning this down, it got so much worse.



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[sub]I'm rather tired at the moment so I might not be very good at conveying my thoughts now, been 2 days since I last slept.[/sub]