Over 1,800 Gaming Professionals Condemn Hate Speech in Open Letter

[A-D.]

Her claim is clearly that the people making games hate women, and that playing the games makes you hate women too.

Except, you know, for her repeated and explicit statements to the exact contrary.

She has no trouble calling all manner of people misogynists. I fail to see where she has said the exact opposite.

In, like, every video.

If that is true tell me where. You are not contributing to the discussion by being obtuse and smug about it.

Pretty much every video. If you haven't heard her say it, then you haven't actually listened to her points. And if you haven't properly watched her videos, it's not my job to explain every detail to you of the videos you are arguing about.

Example. If you say "I have seen every Monet painting, and I dislike that he only ever uses cubism", all I'm going to bother saying to you is "Monet is not a cubist painter, he is an impressionist painter". I'm not going to bother proving to you that all his paintings are impressionist.

I think you are getting to hung up on synonyms. If you are really going to split hairs between hatred and extreme dislike...

Or, as those definitions say, 'mistrust', 'contempt', 'ingrained prejudice against' and 'dislike' (note the lack of 'extreme'). The point remains - your own sources show you up.

And arguably, you could be said to be getting hung up on it yourself, since that was not the thrust of Zachary's initial post - just an addendum. You haven't really answered the main points - that you said three factually incorrect things to support your position. Regardless of the definition of misogyny, Sarkeesian never says that using these tropes makes one a misogynist.

Two points of contention there. First she uses the "Of course" argument to avoid the reality of the argument she is making. "These tropes are bad and anyone employing them, for whatever reason, does it because they believe women are inferior, >OF COURSE< not all games or developers are bad for using them". Yes its not the actual quote from her but i cant be bothered to mine everything she says for quotes because the point of the matter is still the same. She argues that tropes are bad and shouldnt be used, she does not give alternatives as which trope to use instead or how these offending tropes could be used in a good way. Then she turns around and claims that using these tropes does not make the people using them bad people, even though she implies this exact thing to begin with by claiming the only use for them is to devalue women, therefore to specifically use a trope that devalues women, you must first devalue them yourself or you would not use the bad trope. Her entire video series lives on the pure fact that thanks to long-winded monotone speeches using as many "big words" as she can come up with, you will have forgotten part of her entire argument when she finishes it.

And for your definition of Misoginy, you are aware that except for the oxford dictionary, which has recently adopted the word literally to stand for figurative and literal implication (Literally now means both actual literally and figuratively because people kept using the wrong word and language changes to adapt), is the only dictionary that he cited specifically that uses the concept of "ingrained prejudice"? Misoginy means hatred, disdain and contempt for the entire female gender, not a specific type of the female gender, ALL OF IT. To be a misogynist, you must disdain or hate (contempt is pretty much the same anyway) all women simply because they are women.

Hating one woman, regardless of reason, does not make you a Misogynist. Hating a woman for a specific reason also does not make you a Misogynist. If you keep shifting the goal post and the definition around, the word misoginy will lose all meaning. The same way harassment has lost all meaning because people have started to adopt the idea that insulting someone is the same as harassment. Hell i have seen instances where harassment is then linked to be exactly the same thing as rape.

 

[Six Ways]

She argues that tropes are bad and shouldnt be used

That's an oversimplification. She argues that given the societal context of these games, the use of these tropes is generally sexist. She does not say 'This trope is bad'. She does not say 'This trope should not be used'.

she does not give alternatives as which trope to use instead or how these offending tropes could be used in a good way.

That's not the job of a critic, in any medium. Of course, they can suggest changes, but not doing so does not render their criticism invalid.

Then she turns around and claims that using these tropes does not make the people using them bad people, even though she implies this exact thing to begin with by claiming the only use for them is to devalue women, therefore to specifically use a trope that devalues women, you must first devalue them yourself or you would not use the bad trope. Her entire video series lives on the pure fact that thanks to long-winded monotone speeches using as many "big words" as she can come up with, you will have forgotten part of her entire argument when she finishes it.

I disagree. She doesn't imply this - she says that sexist tropes in video games are an example of, and contribute towards, the state of sexism in society. The fact that society has an undercurrent of sexism is not because of 'bad people'. It's due to the fact that people are brought up in the very same society so don't see it. And in not seeing it, help to perpetuate it. So people generally use these tropes innocently.

Put simply - good people can do bad things.

[Definition of misogyny]

When all the sources give alternatives to 'hatred', that does mean something. Ingrained prejudice was not one I was hanging onto, just another example of the alternatives given.

Regardless, again, this is irrelevant - the larger point is that Sarkeesian does not, in general, claim that people who use these tropes are inherently misogynists.