Rape, Feminism, and The Escapist Forums

[Phasmal]

As an aside, I really don't appreciate the label of these faceless misogynists as 'creepy'. As one creepy ************, I feel you're being unfair to unattractive men (I say men, because I've never heard a woman called creepy, I could be wrong.)

Ughh... Creepy is a thing you do.
Unattractive men are not creepy because they are unattractive.
Attractive men are not immune from being creepy.*
Creepy people are creepy because they are being creepy.

*Neither are women. Hell, one of the creepiest people I've ever met was a woman.

There are just things certain people can do that just put them in your instant `OH HELL NO` category.
For example: A male friend of mine smelling my hair when he thought I wouldn't notice. Ew. Nothing to do with how he looked.

 

[Cheesepower5]

As an aside, I really don't appreciate the label of these faceless misogynists as 'creepy'. As one creepy ************, I feel you're being unfair to unattractive men (I say men, because I've never heard a woman called creepy, I could be wrong.)

Ughh... Creepy is a thing you do.
Unattractive men are not creepy because they are unattractive.
Attractive men are not immune from being creepy.*
Creepy people are creepy because they are being creepy.

*Neither are women. Hell, one of the creepiest people I've ever met was a woman.

There are just things certain people can do that just put them in your instant `OH HELL NO` category.
For example: A male friend of mine smelling my hair when he thought I wouldn't notice. Ew. Nothing to do with how he looked.

I find that people are quick to say they don't base it on appearance, but in my experience just being a big guy late at night or having dark circles under your eyes is enough to get called a creep by most people who've never bothered to get to know you on a personal level. I know that (likely) nobody means to be offensive or rude when they call someone creepy, it's just an impression that's given and taken... But it doesn't really help me see people who throw the term around in a better light. Different sensibilities, and all that.

While it's natural for guys to find the smell of girl's hair appealing, I can see how stopping what you're doing to take a nice whiff could be considered an unwanted advance. There's a time and place, but I guess that wasn't it.

 

[Phasmal]

I find that people are quick to say they don't base it on appearance, but in my experience just being a big guy late at night or having dark circles under your eyes is enough to get called a creep by most people who've never bothered to get to know you on a personal level. I know that (likely) nobody means to be offensive or rude when they call someone creepy, it's just an impression that's given and taken... But it doesn't really help me see people who throw the term around in a better light. Different sensibilities, and all that.

While it's natural for guys to find the smell of girl's hair appealing, I can see how stopping what you're doing to take a nice whiff could be considered an unwanted advance. There's a time and place, but I guess that wasn't it.

o_0....

Sticking a nose in my hair is crossing a boundary. Crossing your friends boundaries is creepy behaviour. I never thought that'd be made out to be an `advance` especially considering making advances on your female friend in a relationship is pretty damn creepy anyway.

Still... moving on.

Unfortunately there are some times people get labelled unfairly, but it's often more about them than it is about you- take it from an evil feminazi fake geek male-space invader*.

If you're examining your behaviour and not finding anything you are doing, then you don't need to worry. But if you find yourself constantly being labelled creepy, it might be an idea to try and think of something you may be doing. You said it's from people you don't really know personally, so maybe it's just unfair, or maybe you don't come off well initially.

[small]*Hah Space Invader[/small]

 

[LetalisK]

I just wish mods would actively boot those threads to R&P, since they are not designed for OT and R&P can handle that kind of stuff. That was why they made it years ago anyways, to help curb this annual flame wars, but you'll still see nothing but political threads on OT for months. Sigh.

You rang?

The Mods don't get to browse the forums as much as they'd like during their free time, and when we do we prefer it to be "off the clock", so to speak.

However, if you spot more of these threads in future, you can always PM me and I'll move them to R&P as fast as I can!

Now to have an internal debate on whether or not I should move this one...

Yes. Feed us. We hunger for virgin sacrifices!

I say that only half-jokingly. I've noticed there are some things[footnote]Nothing to do with the CoC[/footnote] people can get away with in Off-Topic and Gaming that we'd call out and dissect so fast in R&P. I wouldn't be surprised if people consider us a little stuffy because of it.

 

[The Lunatic]

To me, I suppose they're an interesting curiosity.

I'm gay, and even in that, I'm pretty indifferent towards sex.

So, a lot of the unsavoury elements of female character design are practically wasted on me.

I do think that male characters are just as badly stereotyped as female ones. However, there are some really good characters for either gender.

What does depress me, however, is the fact that every single female character is treated as some sort of substitute girlfriend by the gaming community.

The Elizabeth threads were creepy, okay guys?

What's worse, is you can't even google these characters without Rule 34 coming up. Even fucking Ellie (Of Last of us Fame, not borderlands, although...) has this going on.

It's very strange for me.

So, I guess in a lot of ways I'm curious to see the validation of this from these threads. More generally speaking however, I think there are massive gender issues on either side, and likely from some point of bias of my own gender, I think the rape being treated as "Women only" issue, the complete disregard society has for a father's claim to his children and other such things significantly outweigh a lot of the hardships women have presently.

As to why they're so popular on this forum, it's rather odd to me, this forum really does appear to have a fair population of hair triggers in this regard.

People whom every small slight does not draw a reasonable reaction but instead the raising of the "Sexism" banner.

As I said before, I'm gay, I deal with people being homophobic on a fairly regular basis. And honestly, if I reacted this way to every dumb person on the internet, I'd run out of hours in a day. It'd completely de-vault any point I'd make and would ultimately just be dropping down to their level.

So, I'm curious as to why these people do this. I suppose I've always thought it was just an attention thing. These people don't want women's rights, they don't want to further equality between genders. They just want attention and somebody to listen to them, that's why the threads go on for as long as they do.

 

[Kasawd]

Like others have said, it's a hot topic for discussion. Anywhere, really, you'll have a variety of opinions regarding exact definitions and boundaries. On top of the basic variance in opinion providing interest, it's also taboo and, by virtue of being so, an interesting read.

Hell, I don't know what I'd do for entertainment before work without the R&P forum. This is the internet, though, so one can't really rule out the possibility of maladjusted individuals.

Like myself.

 

[Cheesepower5]

I find that people are quick to say they don't base it on appearance, but in my experience just being a big guy late at night or having dark circles under your eyes is enough to get called a creep by most people who've never bothered to get to know you on a personal level. I know that (likely) nobody means to be offensive or rude when they call someone creepy, it's just an impression that's given and taken... But it doesn't really help me see people who throw the term around in a better light. Different sensibilities, and all that.

While it's natural for guys to find the smell of girl's hair appealing, I can see how stopping what you're doing to take a nice whiff could be considered an unwanted advance. There's a time and place, but I guess that wasn't it.

o_0....

Sticking a nose in my hair is crossing a boundary. Crossing your friends boundaries is creepy behaviour. I never thought that'd be made out to be an `advance` especially considering making advances on your female friend in a relationship is pretty damn creepy anyway.

Still... moving on.

Unfortunately there are some times people get labelled unfairly, but it's often more about them than it is about you- take it from an evil feminazi fake geek male-space invader*.

If you're examining your behaviour and not finding anything you are doing, then you don't need to worry. But if you find yourself constantly being labelled creepy, it might be an idea to try and think of something you may be doing. You said it's from people you don't really know personally, so maybe it's just unfair, or maybe you don't come off well initially.

[small]*Hah Space Invader[/small]

Ah, sorry... I was trying to make a humourous understatement there, but I guess it didn't fly over very well. I know what that guy did was an invasion of your privacy, I was just trying to put a little bit of levity in my post to not come off as too depressive.

Anyway, I'm just a little more bitter about my appearance than usual because I found out it cost me a job. I know that most unkind words should be taken more as a negative reflection on the speaker than the receiver, but thanks anyway for trying to give advice.

Anyway, all I really want to say is that if somebody does something that makes you uncomfortable, then it's fine to distance yourself from them or stay away from them. Caution is always well advised, yes? But it can be hurtful, to those who are often called creepy, to (for lack of a better term) pull a Rebecca Watson and just tell the whole world about it and shame those people. Because whatever the reason they get the label, I doubt most people mean or want to be creepy. Like a guy who wants to have coffee with his favourite Z-list celebrity.

 

[Phasmal]

Ah, sorry... I was trying to make a humourous understatement there, but I guess it didn't fly over very well. I know what that guy did was an invasion of your privacy, I was just trying to put a little bit of levity in my post to not come off as too depressive.

Anyway, I'm just a little more bitter about my appearance than usual because I found out it cost me a job. I know that most unkind words should be taken more as a negative reflection on the speaker than the receiver, but thanks anyway for trying to give advice.

Anyway, all I really want to say is that if somebody does something that makes you uncomfortable, then it's fine to distance yourself from them or stay away from them. Caution is always well advised, yes? But it can be hurtful, to those who are often called creepy, to (for lack of a better term) pull a Rebecca Watson and just tell the whole world about it and shame those people. Because whatever the reason they get the label, I doubt most people mean or want to be creepy. Like a guy who wants to have coffee with his favourite Z-list celebrity.

Haha, no worries! Tone is super hard on the internet. I was like whuuut.

I don't want to shame people by calling them creepy, and I don't think I ever called that guy creepy. I think what he did is creepy though, looking back I kinda do wish I had said something to him, then maybe he could learn from it.

I still maintain creepy is something you do, and I agree that people being labelled it because of who they are is unfair.

 

[Saltyk]

Things tend to go in cycles. When the Bronies were a powerful force, every other thread was about Ponies in some way for a month. And about a third of all avatars were Pony related.

Of course that was entertaining. Half the time, I went into those threads just to see if there were any new Memes or pictures. Just because it was funny.

Though, I had no idea what it was about till I finally relented and looked in a thread... I grew up around horse, so my first thought was there was some sort of joke going around about wanting a Pony.

Anyway, you heard that sex sells? Well, some level of hate creates threads. Just say what you want, and look for the threads you are actually interested in.

 

[hooksashands]

Look, I'm not going to go with the typical ironic response here and tell you you're just perpetuating this bullshit.

But I will say that I thoroughly detest Sarkeesian topics, not because she's a feminist (that's cool in my book) or that she uses her free speech to whine about some vast conspiracy male video game developers are in on to subjugate her gender (she's entitled to her wonderfully imaginative opinions).

However
A) I don't agree with most of those opinions. Nor was I one of a thousand pigs who threatened to rape/kill her, thus making her disable all feedback on her videos. If I had to guess, I'd assume the reason most Escapists dislike her is because she produces content without wanting to take criticism, which already puts her at odds with our own community.

B) She takes things way too literally. She is the master of finding everything she wants to find wrong in a narrative, whether it (earnestly) portrays women as weak and helpless or she's just looking for the smallest detail to point to and highlight SEXISM as the underlying theme at work. It seriously borders on Poe's Law. In fact, most of us are probably still wondering if she's an actual fem idealist or just ten shades of crazy. My best guess is a little bit of both.

These kinds of topics feel like they're more at home on Tumblr, where you'll find out all you ever wanted to know (or didn't) about feminism, transgenderism, "rape culture" and of course "videogame culture"'s very own Anita Sarkeesian.

In other words, ged it oudda hay please.

 

[hooksashands]

quote=Anita Sarkeesian]
"Game creators aren?t all sitting around twirling their nefarious looking mustaches while consciously trying to figure out how to best misrepresent women as part of some grand conspiracy. Most probably just haven?t given much thought to the underlying messages their games are sending."

"Most often regressive attitudes and harmful gender stereotypes are perpetuated and maintained unintentionally. Likewise, engaging with these games is not going to magically transform players into raging sexists. We typically don?t have a monkey-see monkey-do, direct cause and effect relationship with the media we consume."

[/quote]

Even if we assumed that I was uninformed and never watched a single video or webisode or even response videos to Anita, why wouldn't I be able to both agree and disagree with her?

Here is the part of that whole spiel I found just a tad crazy:

She isn't saying that men are Pavlovian-trained to exhibit sexist behavior as a direct result of playing videogames (a concept she is in fact mocking), but that man's inner iD is manifested in videogames like cavemen painting with their own poop. What you just quoted to me is her literally saying that the ones who made the images, sounds and stories into certain games are in fact sexist at the very core of their being and have zero imagination when it comes to how women should be portrayed (she could argue that point for Metroid: Other M). They are subconsciously unaware of their own sexism, even in a dumbly self-aware "racist redneck" sort of sense, like the closest they'll ever come to irony. In Anita's world, sexist pathology is somehow molded into videogame culture like a dark primordial ooze and every game potentially seeps at its pores.

Who knew Shigeru Miyamoto was ushering in the era of the pimp hand when he made a game about a giant gorilla who throws barrels down stairs at an Italian plumber guy, and the whole premise of the game was to rescue a princess. Not him, that's for sure.

 

[Something Amyss]

Straw man. Identifying a trope and criticizing it's common use is not the same as "preventing all games from using it". Unless you think TV Tropes is an angry manifesto attempting to silence all popular entertainment.

But that's different, because a woman didn't say it.

 

[Something Amyss]

"Game creators aren?t all sitting around twirling their nefarious looking mustaches while consciously trying to figure out how to best misrepresent women as part of some grand conspiracy. Most probably just haven?t given much thought to the underlying messages their games are sending."

"Most often regressive attitudes and harmful gender stereotypes are perpetuated and maintained unintentionally. Likewise, engaging with these games is not going to magically transform players into raging sexists. We typically don?t have a monkey-see monkey-do, direct cause and effect relationship with the media we consume."

What's even worse is watching people deny these quotes after claiming they've watched her videos. Or cleave to statements to the contrary. At some point, one has to presume some degree of malice goes into these statements.

 

[Malty Milk Whistle]

So long-time lurker, first time poster here.
I exclusively lurk these forums with my friends to see just how awful escapist deals with certain issues and just the worst damn entitled opinions people seem to share. It's like a bad addiction, I know it's bad for me but I just can't look away. I was just reading the thread about the Penny Arcade incident and man do you guys really not know how to deal with transgender issues.

Keep up the great work you guys.

Ohgod. The Passive agressive flood will consume you mercilessly!

OT: I am bored of this and I am bored of Sarkeesian and I am bored of Feminism topics.
Can we find some other great divide to split on? Like Mass Effect! That was fun .
I don't see what the big deal is, I have friends who are guys and friends who are dolls. (I may have been at a theatre rehearsal, but you get my point) and we all get on sparklingly. Why do I have to come to forums and be told that I'm either a womanised manjina or a misogynist pig. It's most disconcerting.

Can we please find some new topic to be the next big thing?
Like Whales.
Or Dolphins.
Or mental health issues.

 

[Devil's Due]

I just wish mods would actively boot those threads to R&P, since they are not designed for OT and R&P can handle that kind of stuff. That was why they made it years ago anyways, to help curb this annual flame wars, but you'll still see nothing but political threads on OT for months. Sigh.

You rang?

The Mods don't get to browse the forums as much as they'd like during their free time, and when we do we prefer it to be "off the clock", so to speak.

However, if you spot more of these threads in future, you can always PM me and I'll move them to R&P as fast as I can!

Now to have an internal debate on whether or not I should move this one...

Wait, wait, wait. I thought the established Rule of Law was to report posts using the nifty Flag for Review feature. You mean I can actually message you guys about misplaced threads, and it's a legitimate thing for me to do?

I didn't know I could do that the past 5 years here. I feel bad now. I always thought you only messaged Mods when it involved a user to user conflict such as PM harassment or such, but never about threads themselves.

As for this thread, I'm not sure where it actually goes either, but I believe this is one of the few actual OT threads since it's not about politics but more about The Escapist's and the userbase. I have no idea though. Thank you for all your hard work, though! There is a reason I still am an active user all these years.


CAPTCH: Power Seal Technology
Thanks for trying, CAPTCHA, thanks for trying <3

 

[sky14kemea]

Wait, wait, wait. I thought the established Rule of Law was to report posts using the nifty Flag for Review feature. You mean I can actually message you guys about misplaced threads, and it's a legitimate thing for me to do?

I didn't know I could do that the past 5 years here. I feel bad now. I always thought you only messaged Mods when it involved a user to user conflict such as PM harassment or such, but never about threads themselves.

As for this thread, I'm not sure where it actually goes either, but I believe this is one of the few actual OT threads since it's not about politics but more about The Escapist's and the userbase. I have no idea though. Thank you for all your hard work, though! There is a reason I still am an active user all these years.


CAPTCH: Power Seal Technology
Thanks for trying, CAPTCHA, thanks for trying <3

Of course, you can PM us about anything, really. We all started as normal users too

The report queue is pretty much the go-to response, but if you report a thread because it needs to be moved somewhere, chances are we won't know why and will just clear it. That's why PMing is a better response.

Also if you want to explain why you're reporting a post, it's a lot easier to deal with person to person.

There's also a Moderation User Group [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/view/Moderation-Team] which we all check often.