[Grizzly]

Gamergate

Gamergate got discussed in GenDisc and that lead to... unexcellency - let's not discuss it here, it's not like it's all that related anyway.

[swashmebuckle]

As for the privilege hierarchy, I'm guessing you would probably agree that when discussing the severity of difficulties faced by black women, black women's voices should be treated as being more authoritative than white men's for the same reason you would give more weight to a veteran's account of what it's like to be in a war versus a CoD player's.

Only if that black woman was talking about her own experiences AND NOTHING ELSE.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. This issue revolves around what types of environments (both in-game and in the real world) we want to create for men and women. It's pretty much entirely informed by the experiences we are having in those environments as they currently stand. If most women found the depiction of women in a video game to be degrading but most men did not, I would be inclined to accept that the depiction was degrading precisely because of the personal nature of their experiences. The depiction is degrading because it makes people feel degraded.

The thing is, it's absolutely true that men's voices are more respected than women's.

Since when?

Probably the Neolithic in a lot of places. You might live in a country with less gender inequality, but where I'm from women face a slew of deeply ingrained prejudices that lead to their contributions outside of a few narrowly defined roles being downplayed, appropriated, or suppressed.

@Luis I couldn't make it through either video. The first I had to stop because I was having Rent flashbacks, and that second one was like watching a car wreck. He could mail that in as a video application to join "the totally non-partisan American Enterprise Institute!" Is that what it feels like for you to watch the Sarkeesian videos? I think those two together form as good of a send-up of this issue as anyone could hope to wright. Great stuff!

[Luis Dias]

Gamergate

Gamergate got discussed in GenDisc and that lead to... unexcellency - let's not discuss it here, it's not like it's all that related anyway.

I think you're right! Sorry.

@Luis I couldn't make it through either video. The first I had to stop because I was having Rent flashbacks, and that second one was like watching a car wreck. He could mail that in as a video application to join "the totally non-partisan American Enterprise Institute!" Is that what it feels like for you to watch the Sarkeesian videos? I think those two together form as good of a send-up of this issue as anyone could hope to wright. Great stuff!

ahaha, I totally understand you on both accounts. I cringed in my viewing of that first one. I can't bear with hipsterdom, I get all Nicholas Cagey with the bees stuff with it. Regarding Sarkeesian, not at all. I actually don't get mad at all while watching her videos. Her videos are "fine", except for the lazyness that MP acknowledged and the unconvincing argument that stems from an all too obvious agenda bias. It's the outside shenanigans that drive me up the wall, the absolute rejection of any dialogue or conversation. At first I thought it was because they felt they would be pwned, but now I'm beggining to believe it's part of the ideology. They sincerely believe there's no such thing as "conversation" and reasoned debate. There's only Power, Status Quo and Revolution. The ones In Power must be defeated, anyone who doubts us stands for the Status Quo and therefore are the enemy, we will hammer home the point until we win sort of mentality.

[TrashMan]

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. This issue revolves around what types of environments (both in-game and in the real world) we want to create for men and women. It's pretty much entirely informed by the experiences we are having in those environments as they currently stand. If most women found the depiction of women in a video game to be degrading but most men did not, I would be inclined to accept that the depiction was degrading precisely because of the personal nature of their experiences. The depiction is degrading because it makes people feel degraded.

Problem is, a lot of things make people feel degraded.
Some people are VERY easy to insult.
Others are not.

So what exactly is so degrading for women in games?
That in SOME games women wear skimpy clothes? Well, I can't say that I ever saw a scantly clad women. Not in TV, not in magazines, not on billboards. Clearly a big problem.

That they have to be rescued? Again, only sometimes. You have to rescue SOMEONE. It's either a woman, a child or an older king/*president/whatever.

And today, more than ever, you get customization options and sex selection in games.
So I don't really see the MASSIVE issue.

Probably the Neolithic in a lot of places. You might live in a country with less gender inequality, but where I'm from women face a slew of deeply ingrained prejudices that lead to their contributions outside of a few narrowly defined roles being downplayed, appropriated, or suppressed.

Gender roles are normal, they were born out of practicallity more than anything else. Everyone had their crosses to bear.

Women didn't suffer nearly as much as some would have you believe.
Who did the most dangerous job with the highest mortality rates? Men.
Who was the last to be evacuated in case of disaster? Men
Who's life was worthless in combat? Men.
Women were prized. They were considered valuebale. It's a double-edged blade, but I've yet to hear feminists talking about the other edge.






But clearly, what do I know? I have a penis, therefore I'm a member of the dreaded patriarchy and my only goal in life is to shame and oppress women!

[Mars]

Gender roles are normal, they were born out of practicallity more than anything else. Everyone had their crosses to bear.

Women didn't suffer nearly as much as some would have you believe.
Who did the most dangerous job with the highest mortality rates? Men.
Who was the last to be evacuated in case of disaster? Men
Who's life was worthless in combat? Men.
Women were prized. They were considered valuebale. It's a double-edged blade, but I've yet to hear feminists talking about the other edge.

That is because a woman was often the single most valuable piece of property a man would have.

[The E]

Women were prized. They were considered valuebale. It's a double-edged blade, but I've yet to hear feminists talking about the other edge.

Because a cage, no matter how gilded or comfortable, is still a ****ing cage.

[Luis Dias]

Are you talking about prisoner of war cages?

[MP-Ryan]

Re: TrashMan's "MASSIVE" issue, I don't see anyone saying that gaming has a "MASSIVE" issue more than any other form of media.  However, gaming clearly has issues with its history in depictions of women outside of very stereotypical gendered roles.  It can really be summarized like this:  games are far more likely to make three-dimensional interesting CHARACTERS out of male entities than they are out of female entities, and that is what's actually unacceptable.  Female "characters" are more frequently defined by their clothing, artistry, and stereotyped gender role than what actually makes them tick.  This does not dispute that there are many female and male entities in games that are solely backdrop and that they exist in gendered roles - I don't have an issue with that, necessarily - but rather that games still default to a straight white male character when they are making three-dimensional characters (especially protagonists), and that needs addressing.

The rest of your post is straight out of a Men's Rights Activist's textbook and largely ignores broader history.  Until very recently (and even then, the change has only occurred in some countries), a woman's power, agency, worth, and rights were solely a function of the men in her life.  This is still true in many parts of the world, and it was true in the Western nations well into the 1900s.  It wasn't until well-after the Second World War that women were able to be truly socially and economically independent from and near-equal to men.  My mother-in-law STILL regularly advocates for my wife to hold aspects of her finances separate from our joint accounts and ownership (which she does not, because I do not) because she could not buy a car or house or access any sort of credit as a fully-employed young single woman in England ~45 years ago without a *male* co-signor.

[SkycladGuardian]

The rest of your post is straight out of a Men's Rights Activist's textbook and largely ignores broader history.  Until very recently (and even then, the change has only occurred in some countries), a woman's power, agency, worth, and rights were solely a function of the men in her life.  This is still true in many parts of the world, and it was true in the Western nations well into the 1900s.  It wasn't until well-after the Second World War that women were able to be truly socially and economically independent from and near-equal to men.  My mother-in-law STILL regularly advocates for my wife to hold aspects of her finances separate from our joint accounts and ownership (which she does not, because I do not) because she could not buy a car or house or access any sort of credit as a fully-employed young single woman in England ~45 years ago without a *male* co-signor.

Historically, a women had less rights than a man, because she had less responsibilities. And even in the late 19th, early 20th century women enjoyed some privileges, a man had not. For instance, she had the right that her income and property were set apart from the family income and property, to which her husband contributed. So a man was legally not able to access his wife's assets without her consent. On the other hand, a man's income and property always became family property after marriage, belonging to him and his wife.
Another example, men could be drafted, women not. And after WWI it was the fact that men had been eligible for military duty with the age of 18 that was the reason to lower the age for the right to vote from 21 to 18 in the US (or Canada, not quite sure). It simply seemed unfair that the state could force young men to die for their country, in which they had no say about its policies. Appropriately, the first women to get the right to vote in Canada, where the Red Cross nurses who served in the European Theater during WWI. The majority of women got the right to vote without the possibilty of having to sacrifice their lives for their country.

Gender roles served the need for survival. No one asked if you were happy in your role. You had to fulfill it, because otherwise you jeopardized the lives of your fellow human beings. Only recently, because of technological and social progress, do we have the luxury of questioning gender roles. And it is a good thing, since it means that every one should be able to choose a way of life he or she prefers. But unfortunately, feminism focused, surprise surprise, almost exclusively on women's issues, leaving men alone with their traditional role expectations plus a large heap of new expectations, which often enough contradict each other and have led to inreased social pressure and insecurity.
I'm following Warren Farrell when I think that we need a gender liberation movement, which adresses issues of all genders, especially since these issues are often interdependent.

[MP-Ryan]

I'm going to do the selective quote thing because there are a few specific points that need addressing.

Historically, a women had less rights than a man, because she had less responsibilities.

Women had different responsibilities than men; you'd be hard-pressed to argue they were lesser in any meaningful way without an inherently gender-biased value judgement.

And even in the late 19th, early 20th century women enjoyed some privileges, a man had not. For instance, she had the right that her income and property were set apart from the family income and property, to which her husband contributed. So a man was legally not able to access his wife's assets without her consent.

You're going to need to dig up a citation for this.  While it may be an obscure matter of law that I'm not aware of in one particular country, it certainly was not a widespread phenomenon across Western countries.  There's also the question of whether or not that consent existed solely as a right on paper and was never actually exercised; keeping in mind that until the 19th/20th centuries, it was perfectly legal to beat your wife and children, even in Western countries.

Another example, men could be drafted, women not. And after WWI it was the fact that men had been eligible for military duty with the age of 18 that was the reason to lower the age for the right to vote from 21 to 18 in the US (or Canada, not quite sure). It simply seemed unfair that the state could force young men to die for their country, in which they had no say about its policies. Appropriately, the first women to get the right to vote in Canada, where the Red Cross nurses who served in the European Theater during WWI. The majority of women got the right to vote without the possibilty of having to sacrifice their lives for their country.

Voting was not originally tied to military service, but land ownership (something, incidentally, women were also denied until quite recently).  Voting did not move beyond land ownership purely on the basis of war, either; rather it was one among many reasons why voting rights progressively expanded in the last 200 years in Western democracies.  The narrative that young men earned the right to vote as a result of the draft is historically wrong; men who were not landowners earned the vote earlier, and it was expanded to a younger age it some countries with the incongruence of the draft age and other social policies (the US 26th amendment passed in 1971, after many years of various debate; the World Wars and the Vietnam War were just part of it).

In nearly all Western democracies, adult women gained the right to vote before the voting age was lowered to 18.

[SkycladGuardian]

With less, I meant fewer, and few responsibilities which would threaten her life (child bearing is the obvious exception). A man was (and is even today) expected to sacrifice his health and life to protect not only his family but also other people in danger or need. Though it is a noble thing to defend the weak and helpless, there was and is not a comparable expectation towards women to do that.

As to the property law, I mentioned: It refers to Section 50 of the Domestic relation law of the State of New York from 1909: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/DOM/4/50

Here's an article from the New York Times from 1910 refuting several half-truths regarding to family law feminists made even back then: http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.ca/2012/12/a-feminist-hoax-in-1910-strategy-of.html

Regarding the right to vote, I then stand corrected on this issue. Though it doesn't change much that different responsibilites lead to different rights in connection to social roles, which still have nothing to do with oppression of one gender by another.

[MP-Ryan]

With less, I meant fewer, and few responsibilities which would threaten her life (child bearing is the obvious exception). A man was (and is even today) expected to sacrifice his health and life to protect not only his family but also other people in danger or need. Though it is a noble thing to defend the weak and helpless, there was and is not a comparable expectation towards women to do that.

Women had fewer responsibilities than men?  Really?  You have an objective list of these responsibilities somewhere?  This reeks of a values judgement that assigns more value to roles perceived as requiring physical strength or capability toward violence than it does any actual comparison.  With regard to responsibilities that could be life threatening, are you really going to argue men were expected to place their lives in harm's way more often than women, because, with the exception of warfare - which women were generally prohibited from participating in yet many did so anyway - the notion that men were expected to die to defend their families and women were not is largely an entertainment media construct.

Even if this were true, it still assumes that a hypothetical expectation that a man risking his life for his family is a greater responsibility than that of traditional roles of childbirth, rearing, care, and general running of the greater family household and unit, and that a woman will not risk her life for her family in fulfilling any of those roles (an assumption which, on its face, is patently untrue).

Lots of conjecture and assumptions here; no data to support it.

As to the property law, I mentioned: It refers to Section 50 of the Domestic relation law of the State of New York from 1909: http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/DOM/4/50

That, as far as I can tell, is actually still on the books as of at least 2006: http://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/2006/domestic-relations/dom050_50.html  Regardless, one single law in one single state in one single country with an unspecified date of enacting does not a general trend make.  In general, matrimonial property is matrimonial property.  Furthermore, the notion of a dowry is long-standing and widespread, even today.

Here's an article from the New York Times from 1910 refuting several half-truths regarding to family law feminists made even back then: http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.ca/2012/12/a-feminist-hoax-in-1910-strategy-of.html

I find little credence in a piece on a blog entitled "The Unknown History of Misandry" with a historical piece from the opinion section of a paper in 1910, particularly one of which the author purportedly was the President of New York State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.  Are you familiar with the term "confirmation bias?"

Regarding the right to vote, I then stand corrected on this issue. Though it doesn't change much that different responsibilites lead to different rights in connection to social roles, which still have nothing to do with oppression of one gender by another.

Well, aside from the fact that females were long denied the right to own land, and even after that was gained were still denied the right to vote even as it was being expanded to non-landowning males, no, nothing to due with gender oppression at all...

The history of gender rights, responsibilities, and oppression is rife with interest and advocacy, half-truths, data manipulation, factual inaccuracies, and a general political mess.  It's further complicated by the fact that you have to separate differences in gender roles from values assignment as to their worth.  But with all of those complications in mind, there is a very clear pattern that emerges through history and still exists in many parts of the world today that shows that women have not enjoyed a level of rights, protection, and individual freedom equal to that held by men.  People may have "justified" this situation in the past with gendered norms and a variety of other pseudo-arguments concerning capability, mental acuity, physical strength, desire, etc but, today, we know there really is no excuse for a law or social norm that treats one party inferior to another on the basis of gender.

[zookeeper]

Wouldn't a pretty obvious and basic indicator of gender inequality would be how common it is for people to actually believe that they'd have been better off had they been born to be of the opposite sex?

I doubt there's much hard data on it, but does someone really believe that historically, it has ever been anywhere near as common for men to wish they had been born women than it has been the other way around?

[MP-Ryan]

I doubt there's much hard data on it, but does someone really believe that historically, it has ever been anywhere near as common for men to wish they had been born women than it has been the other way around?

Maybe we should ask the pathetic excuses for humanity that frequent parts of 4chan.

[Grizzly]

Side nitpick: Linking to google as an argument may not work, as google's search results are personalized based on the browsing preferences associated with IP adresses.

[AtomicClucker]

So, being the evil person I am, went back to my heretical feminist roots.

This is partly derived over the game furor, but instead piqued my interest of gender demographics and the targeted roll of demographics of game types.

First, a few videos from an evil heretical feminist (Christina Hoff Sommers) who I attended a few lectures during my stint as a Philosophy major:

Sexism in Games (by a Feminist, oh noes!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MxqSwzFy5w&feature=youtu.be

War on Boys (yes, we go there~)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqOTj9NDv80

Welcome to fun facets of Academia and boring lectures. Yes, there are Feminists who actually fight for men and men's liberation, wonder how gamers would react to this?

Edit: For disclosure, I don't agree with all of her points- well, actually many of them, but she does raise some eyebrows on how times have indeed changed. Hell, don't get me started on the wage gap between sexes, but she does make a point with the danger of statistics and data manipulation.

[TrashMan]

Women were prized. They were considered valuebale. It's a double-edged blade, but I've yet to hear feminists talking about the other edge.

Because a cage, no matter how gilded or comfortable, is still a ****ing cage.

And it's still gilded and comfortable. The grass is always greener on the other side as they say.

Life sucked in many ways for both sexes, but for different reasons.

It can really be summarized like this:  games are far more likely to make three-dimensional interesting CHARACTERS out of male entities than they are out of female entities, and that is what's actually unacceptable.

Bollocks.

1) equality does not mean equal number of everything HAS to be there for both sides. What next - are you going to demand that every company has to exactly employ half males half females? That every game has a checkbox of things you have to put in so as to satisfy every group under the sun? Quotas are bull****.

2) There are more and more women characters and games for women each year. (And male characters aren't exactly deep) Women entered gaming relatively late so of course it's gonna take some time to pick up steam. Yes, I know - you want it all and you want it now. But it's a process that is well underway and it takes time.

[TrashMan]

I'm following Warren Farrell when I think that we need a gender liberation movement, which adresses issues of all genders, especially since these issues are often interdependent.

Frankly I think we need a "everyone just chill" movement.

@MP-Rayan.
The world is a big place. Many different countries with different cultures and practices.
I really wouldn't use the history of one country and project it to others. There are vast differences between countries, some subtle, some less so. Some things were basically common without being in any law book. Law on paper and situation in reality are two completely different things. At least in my country women were always respected.
There are a few villages around that 50 years ago didn't have running water or electricity and people lived like in the middle ages. And I can tell you a womans word was as much law as a mans was. Everyone pulled their weight.
I am fortunate enough to live in a country that abolished slavery very early.

[Mobius]

There are a few villages around that 50 years ago didn't have running water or electricity and people lived like in the middle ages. And I can tell you a womans word was as much law as a mans was. Everyone pulled their weight.

In my region there was some sort of hybrid model, where males essentially took the lead of each family but stepped down in favor of females very frequently. Even today, though not in my town, there are families that still apply a "modern" version of that.

[TrashMan]

You what they say - a law that isn't enforced is just dead weight on paper.

Even if women didn't have some right on paper, in may parts of the world they had them in practice. Out here, disrespecting an older woman? Unthinkable. Their word was law as much as any mans.

It's only when the life become more comfortable and it wasn't about survival anymore (appearance of wealthy middle class) that what was on paper became more important and many men started really believing they were the lords of the house and acting like it.