I am in agreement with much of this. I also saw an article about devs in favour of Gamergate, some of which were women that had to be quoted anonymously out of fear of harassment and losing their jobs. There's a lot of toxicity on the internet. Because people aren't speaking face-to-face it gives them a greater threshold for the amount of absolute filth they think they can throw at others.The Almighty Aardvark said:I've seen some other gaming sites that completely blow the Escapist out of the water in terms of sexist posts, so it's certainly one of the better places. It's still got some massive polarization issues though. Too often an extremist feminist seems to be "a feminist I disagree with". If I looked at the "7 Female game developers speak about gamergate" thread I'm sure I'd find people calling them extremists.
I took my definition from the etymology of the word but that seems like a good definition too. It is an emotionally charged term which is why people take it personally when they are branded with it.I've never considered Tropes vs Women to be a confrontational title, and I don't think it's intended to be either. I also think that a lot of people misunderstand what exactly misogyny means, which is probably not helped by the vague and misleading definition. This is the one most people are probably using when they speak about misogyny.
As opposed the one most people who have an issue with the term go with which is "A hatred of women". I don't really watch her videos much because I find them bland and non-committal but I don't think those that I have seen even use the word misogyny, I'll search through the scripts of her episodes to see though.Misogyny said:Dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women
It appears I was mistaken when I said she uses the word often. I suppose it's just such a loaded term that it goes off like a nuclear bomb whenever it is used, and it distorts the argument. I apologise for that.
I know this is gonna sound awful but the casual sexism in Duke Nukem is extremely tongue-in-cheek. It's not an excuse but I get the feeling that the intent was to parody 80s action films rather than anything more malicious. That said, Duke Nukem Forever got blasted for it in a way Duke Nukem 3D didn't. Maybe because we're more culturally sensitive to topics like these nowadays? Maybe because the game itself just felt sleazy and awful?Said once in Women as Background Decorations Part 1 - "A line can be drawn from the crude sensationalized misogyny of Duke Nukem"
I have watched a few of her videos and she tends to overplay negative stereotypes while downplaying both their context and their exceptions. It comes off as cherry-picking. Instead of framing the Damsel in Distress trope as a patriarchal storytelling device where women are used as an (often cheap) emotional incentive to involve (the typically heterosexual male) in the (often lazy) story, she claims its use is because of female objectification where they have no agency of their own. I can see what she's trying to say but her language makes the problem sound worse than it is.As far as I've seen, she never really criticizes people, she criticizes tropes and uses of women that she thinks are objectionable. That's why I used the term non-confrontational.
Oh absolutely media influences people's attitudes. It's a circular process. However, I think issues of misogyny in the real world should be addressed if the misogyny present in certain games is a significant problem. This is the direction things are heading though, depictions of women in the media that were widespread in the 80s and 90s would be heavily criticised these days, due to factors like the growth in communication thanks to the internet and a growing trend of gender neutrality that I don't think will stop any time soon.Speaking about that Jack Thompson bit, I think it's really hard to claim that media doesn't influence people's attitudes. I'm not saying that if you watch misogynistic drivel then you will go off and beat women. However, when certain tropes are universally painted as normal or in a positive light I have a hard time believing that it won't influence your perception of it in real life.
That's a good point. I think a case can be made for media perpetuating gender stereotypes and traditional gender roles, especially media published by those that grew up in the mid 20th century.I think that violence is a lot easier to rationalize away because so often it's painted as so absurd you wouldn't assume it has any grounding in reality. How people act around each other or treat each other tends to try to appear grounded in reality though.
Personal attacks are what made the whole gender discussion such a minefield in the first place. It's probably why I started this topic, social media consists of loud voices shouting on top of each other and I tried to seek refuge somewhere where an honest discussion might take place.As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, I share your opinion on throwing dismissive labels at people. If you're looking for any sort of discussion with someone you should keep as far away from personal attacks as possible. If your goal is to get them to shut down and stand over their corpse as the victor, sure it could maybe work. But if your goal has anything to do with convincing them that what you believe is right then you're shooting yourself in foot
It's a terrible design and it made me cringe when I learned the game was getting released in the west just because I was anticipating the controversy. My friend has very strange and questionable tastes. She has the right to have them though.As to your last comment, that's one thing that I think depressingly gets lost in all of the talk about her objectification (something I have an issue with myself), just how god damn awful her design is in the first place
I'm not trying to assert anything, sorry if my initial post came off as "hurr you're all delusional idiots betcha can't prove this". I wanted evidence that such a large amount of exclusion was happening from people with rational points of view, not the mindless hyperbole you'll get elsewhere.Bakuryukun said:Ha. Buddy, the burden of proof is on you.