[Grizzly]

I think it's absolutely silly to discuss hypothetical feminists when these feminists you describe do not exist on this forum - it's just another red herring - or strawmen building. I have not seen these people, and their (non-)existence does not matter to this discussion.

[SkycladGuardian]

That is actually true up untill the last part - There are quite a few armies which have employed women in the field troughout the ages (Israelis, Russians, Persians, and I would say Vikings as well - you don't get buried with your sword if you don't own a sword and you don't own a sword if you don't know how to use it)- not so sure about the 50:50 ratios.

"Viking" children were also buried with weapons. So it does not have to mean that the buried person was a warrior. It could mean that the weapons were heirlooms, passed on to the last surviving child of a family. Or it could signify the status as head of a household. Or maybe it was thought that the buried could bring these weapons to a previously deceased person, who had not had a decent burial (lost at sea, or some such). If it was normal for women to be warriors during the viking age, archeologists should have discovered more graves of women with weapons.

[Grizzly]

archeologists should have discovered more graves of women with weapons.

The problem si currently that, whenever graves of swords and such were found, the archeologists have naturally assumed that these were men due to them projecting their ideas of that society onto their findings - Determining the sex of a skeleton is actually rather hard, which is why it is rather hard. recent studies reveal that roughly half of the danish settlers were women - This does not mean that half of the warriors were women, obviously...

But it does not exclude that possibility either - at this point, it is impossible to determine whether or not the danish used women in their armies - assume either way. If you want to state that vikings employed all-men armies, you are going to have to come up with solid evidence.

[SkycladGuardian]

archeologists should have discovered more graves of women with weapons.

The problem si currently that, whenever graves of swords and such were found, the archeologists have naturally assumed that these were men due to them projecting their ideas of that society onto their findings - Determining the sex of a skeleton is actually rather hard, which is why it is rather hard. recent studies reveal that roughly half of the danish settlers were women - This does not mean that half of the warriors were women, obviously...

But it does not exclude that possibility either - at this point, it is impossible to determine whether or not the danish used women in their armies - assume either way. If you want to state that vikings employed all-men armies, you are going to have to come up with solid evidence.

Ah yes. I read about it. And I do not want to state that Vikings had an all-male army. And I also do not want to state that women were delicate flowers that had been put away for protection. My main gripe is the notion that across all time until the 1960s women had been oppressed and exploited by men solely to men's benefit. Society is far more complex than that. Moreover it is an insult to both women and men. The former being helpless and clueless victims, unable to live their lives in autonomy, the latter being oppressive, cruel misogynists until feminism showed them the way.

[Grizzly]

I oppose that notion as well, albiet for different reasons.

[MP-Ryan]

Not all women. But some. And what's wrong about the MRA?

So, so much.  But that's a different topic.  Suffice to say that MRAs are basically equivalent to radfem in terms of usefulness and ability to actually argue fact or reasonable premises.  Both types of groups suffer from severe myopia.

On an earlier note on suffrage. It was indeed connected to military service, though indirectly by the right to own land, since in the Middle Ages every free man owning land had to render military service to his liege, or pay him an approbriate sum. Though the reason behind suffrage for land owners was that only these would pay taxes (property tax).  In revolutionary France, men who did not have suffrage could even be drafted.

Most countries (etc) defined original right to vote by landownership exclusively; you will not find mention of military service as a prerequisite to the right to vote in the histories of most democracies (of course, there is the odd exception).  This is largely because the vote was conferred on nobility, aristocracy, and the upper class originally.  The right to vote came about well after the Middle Ages (in terms of modern democracies; obviously the Greeks and Romans had it previously but still not all Greeks or Romans) during the Renaissance/Enlightenment.  The link between military service and voting has always been tenuous; voting never guaranteed military service, nor did service guarantee a right to the vote (in most places).

There is a notion among the so-called Mens' Rights groups - some of the ideology of which both Trashman and SkycladGuardian have espoused, be it unintentional or not - that women want more rights than men but are unwilling to shoulder the same responsibilities as men in society, a narrative that is often linked to one or more of (1) military service, (2) defense of home and hearth by violence, or (3) hard labour.

There is also the opposite and just as wrong notion among certain feminist circles, which love to argue how men allegedly had it better or have it better overall than women, basically pointless and subjective opression olympics, or so called male privilege (while in reality the privilege very much varies based on the matter in question). This toxic notion devalues the male perspective and the considerable suffering of men over the course of history. Symptoms include putting undue weight on voting rights etc. while ignoring the things you mentioned or other systemic disadvantages males faced, or dismissing them as the fault of "the patriarchy" (as if that makes them any less acute even if true).

I guess the bottom line is, reasonable people, feminists or not, tend to focus on individual issues (everyone should have equal voting rights, property rights, equal military service laws etc) while not making broad inflammatory statements about who had it better which are entirely subjective and serve no good purpose whatsoever.

People suck at recognizing nuance and complexity in arguments.  That should come as no surprise to anyone.  I agree that the focus should actually be on ensuring equal rights today versus quibbling over the history of various inequities, but unfortunately many people are unwilling to contemplate the notion that there are inequities today are a result of inequality in the recent past.

I also don't think it should be the slightest bit controversial to acknowlege that, while everyone had much tougher lives in the recent past, women as a general group were subjugate to men in several areas of society based purely on the fact that they were born with a vagina instead of a penis.  That's not radical feminism or inflammatory half-truth, it's a matter of historical fact.

My main gripe is the notion that across all time until the 1960s women had been oppressed and exploited by men solely to men's benefit. Society is far more complex than that. Moreover it is an insult to both women and men. The former being helpless and clueless victims, unable to live their lives in autonomy, the latter being oppressive, cruel misogynists until feminism showed them the way.

No one - at least, no one in this thread - is saying that.  Rather, it does a disservice to history to pretend that women and men had it equally unfair throughout history, too.  There are several clear areas where women as a group have had fewer legal rights and protections than men, based purely on gendered stereotypes with no reasonable excuse.

[Grizzly]

I also don't think it should be the slightest bit controversial to acknowlege that, while everyone had much tougher lives in the recent past, women as a general group were subjugate to men in several areas of society based purely on the fact that they were born with a vagina instead of a penis.  That's not radical feminism or inflammatory half-truth, it's a matter of historical fact.

My personal problem with it is (and here we chime in to the whole gender objectification in games again) that "historical accuracy" is used as an excuse for game's poor presentations of female characters (to take one example). People were subjected to stereotypes then, obviously, but there were also subversions back then, too.

[SkycladGuardian]

Not all women. But some. And what's wrong about the MRA?

So, so much.  But that's a different topic.  Suffice to say that MRAs are basically equivalent to radfem in terms of usefulness and ability to actually argue fact or reasonable premises.  Both types of groups suffer from severe myopia.

Hm, I'm not sure with what kind of persons you came in contact, who thought of themselves as being MRAs - idiots can be found everywhere, I guess. But just to give you an opportunity to balance your view I'll drop this link: http://www.avoiceformen.com/are-mens-rights-activists-misogynists/

To return on topic. I agree that most AAA games display women stereotypical and as flat characters,  and I think in many games, men are note much better off (maybe I'm playing the wrong games...)
However, we should keep in mind that flat, stereotypical characters are also a legitimite narrative device. Especially if the writer does not want to spend much time on characterization he or she may resort to a set of stock characters. In games (and in movies) where the story is not much more than a pretense and excuse for explosions and shooting people and stuff, I don't find the lack of deep characters (of both sexes) overly tragic.

[The E]

SkycladGuardian, if you want to prove that MRAs are not misogynist, you should not use A Voice For Men as your example. Unless you are able to explain all this as not really being part of AVFM, which is kinda difficult. The MRA movement on the internet is made up not of people who actually care about furthering men's rights, but of people who believe feminism to be the source of all manner of badness that has happened to them.

[SkycladGuardian]

SkycladGuardian, if you want to prove that MRAs are not misogynist, you should not use A Voice For Men as your example. Unless you are able to explain all this as not really being part of AVFM, which is kinda difficult. The MRA movement on the internet is made up not of people who actually care about furthering men's rights, but of people who believe feminism to be the source of all manner of badness that has happened to them.

Have you actually looked at the link and watched the videos?

And about your link: It is one person, who is obviously upset about the gamergate issue and who has a fondness of overly dramatic prose. I've heard good and valid arguments from both sides of the gamergate (pun intended), and I don't want to judge anybody involved prematurely.
I don't see anything which proves that all men and women from Voice For Men are mysoginists, sorry. 

[Luis Dias]

That webpage argues that MRAs and Gamergate people are villains because they adopt cartoon villains as their own avatars.

No, really. That's the kind of argumentation we are being presented here.

[The E]

I am not going to discuss this with you in this thread, but please take a close look at what issues AVFM considers to be important in their mission statement, and how many of them are simple reversals of feminist goals. Then consider that this is a community that produces gems such as this, this or this. A community that counts among its leading figures this person, who has no problem facilitating the doxxing of people, who has stated that it would be a really good idea to answer domestic violence with more domestic violence (quote:  "I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles. And then make them clean up the mess.").

Basically, these are not the people you should be looking for as good representatives of men's issues on the net.

Also, Luis, SG? Please do me the courtesy of reading more than a few headlines or the articles on page 1 of that particular link. If you think that Anita Sarkeesian is a bad representative of feminist thinking, then you should also be able to see that the leading figures of the MRA movement are just as bad, if not worse.

[Luis Dias]

Regarding MRAs I'll only say the following, and I think you'll agree with me. I think it's an absolute shame that in the current environment, a movement that attempts to pay attention to men's issues and tries to solve them is an absolute impossibility. It is immediately shut down as a mysoginistic movement and this kind of defamation turns anything that could be taken by moderates and, you know, common sense people that watches some stats and figures and perhaps realises "we could do more for boys and men in general just like many feminist movements have made for girls and women, at least a bit", but anyone who tries to do so is immediately glued with the extreme wings and avoid such movements like the plague.

The incessant platitudes by feminists that they also "support men" regarding their own issues is perhaps good politics but it is useless given how they don't do anything (actual lobbying, actual activism, etc.) to solve said issues (regardless of their constant co-opting them as "examples of patriarchal role problems" and so on).

The main difference between feminists and MRAs is mostly that one is absolutely mainstream (there are thousands of feminist groups everywhere, they have lobbies, they have reached the top of academia, schools have feminist groups everywhere, etc.) while the other is relegated to the margins. The fact that a MRA group will have mysoginists should be no surprise to anyone, the problem is that there is no "moderate" group whatsoever that deals with this problem, so whenever someone like me acts a bit annoyed or angry that these issues are not being even admitted to exist or whatever, somehow the "MRA" tag will eventually come up as an insult. Given all the ideological bullying, I'm really inclined to accept the challenge and take the ****ing tag and own it to be frank. Perhaps if moderates owned it, the more ridiculous mysoginist fringe would turn irrelevant and ignored. IDK, it could also be too much poison and mud for me to even care.

[SkycladGuardian]

I am not going to discuss this with you in this thread, but please take a close look at what issues AVFM considers to be important in their mission statement, and how many of them are simple reversals of feminist goals. Then consider that this is a community that produces gems such as this, this or this. A community that counts among its leading figures this person, who has no problem facilitating the doxxing of people, who has stated that it would be a really good idea to answer domestic violence with more domestic violence (quote:  "I don’t mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they won’t fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles. And then make them clean up the mess.").

Basically, these are not the people you should be looking for as good representatives of men's issues on the net.

So Paul Elam's failures, questionable and, regarding the quote concerning domestic violence (if it is true, you haven't provided a source) also damnable, statements make the statements of people like Warren Farrel, Erin Pizzey, Karen Straughan and Tara Palmatier less true?

[Luis Dias]

I have to say, I've gone to those links and most of them are specious as hell. The first is about how Jessica Valenti was libeled. That's fine I guess, no one should be libeled and if I ever come across anyone who practices these things I'm not even angry, I'll just unfollow them for I have no patience for misinformation. The notion that someone even needs to libel Jessica Valenti to get her to say the stupidest **** is hilarious to me. No, you don't even need to work too much. A lot of what she says is amazingly abhorrent or just plain dumb.

The second is about a debate. I've listened to the first 10 minutes and I'm already disgusted by the challenger to Paul Elam and how he's framed in the whole site. There's no real attempt at generous debate here, just gotcha techniques "oh you thought this was Elliot Rodgers, it was actually Stephan Molyneux AINT I CLEVER", what kind of 12 year old does this ****? I'll listen to the end but I have no hopes of this being even remotely reasonable, just children trying to outplay an angry curmudgeon. Perhaps he'll get annoyed and tell them to get off his lawn?!? Dunno, I mean I liked to watch Dennis when I was young but I've grown up since then, jeeeesh.

The third is disgusting. As if feminists never beg for money. Come the **** on. "Oh he's getting money, he must be baad". Jesus F Christ.

Look, I didn't even know the guy himself! He did appear in some of my queries before, but he never came off as anything remotely interesting so I never listened much to the guy. The criticism towards Molyneux would be fine because the guy is an absolute asshole, but that's an entirely different matter (he's not an asshole for being an MRA, he's an asshole regarding everything, period).



E: I've listened to 35 minutes of that. I can't take it anymore. Somebody shoot Matt Binder in the face. I can't believe his stupidity, his smugness, his condescension, it's downright disgusting. If this is the kind of **** that should make me appalled at Paul Elam I'm really disappointed, The_E. No, really, if you actually want to "like" AVfM then this is the kind of "debate" (lol) you should make. This Binder is a complete fool, absolutely ignoring Paul's points, simply declaring he can't take him seriously, misrepresenting him, accusing him of making "random examples" after he had been given actual statistics (about men in jail, about suicide rates, about depression rates, etc., etc.), it's like every word coming out of that guy is sheer vomit. I can't watch anything coming from that moron again.

[MP-Ryan]

Regarding MRAs I'll only say the following, and I think you'll agree with me. I think it's an absolute shame that in the current environment, a movement that attempts to pay attention to men's issues and tries to solve them is an absolute impossibility. It is immediately shut down as a mysoginistic movement and this kind of defamation turns anything that could be taken by moderates and, you know, common sense people that watches some stats and figures and perhaps realises "we could do more for boys and men in general just like many feminist movements have made for girls and women, at least a bit", but anyone who tries to do so is immediately glued with the extreme wings and avoid such movements like the plague.

#HeForShe

No, seriously, have a look.  It's a UN-backed initiative.

The fundamental problem I have with MRAs is that they almost universally espouse views that are not pro-equality, but counter-feminism.  I, too, think feminism in some of it's most vocal forms has done gender equality a disservice by ignoring gender issues that affect men as irrelevant or inconsequential as compared to those that affect women... but the way to counter that is not to claim that feminism generally expects special treatment of women or advocate for policies that are more beneficial to men than women.  MRAs are not about equality, they're about opposition to the perceived ills of feminism and a focus on men's specific issues.  They eaxcerbate the problems of gende rinequality (in much the same way as militant/radical feminists do) instead of approaching solutions.

The solution to gender inequality in all its forms is a concerted, holistic approach.  Both broad swaths of feminism and MRAs in general miss that point spectacularly.

By the way, while it's unrelated to gender objectification in games except in the broadest sense, we've veered away from that some on this page so I'd like everyone to take 12 minutes and watch this:

[SkycladGuardian]

Oh sorry I had to quit the video around the 8 minute mark. HeForShe indeed, my ass. I'm baffled by the entitlement Watson displays. She speaks about men's issues, only to divert the desired solution of them to the benefit of women. "When these issues of men are solved, then things get better for women."  Yes, HeForShe. Man's well-being has no value in itself, only if it serves women, is it desireable.
Watson speaks about male genderroles only to use one for her agenda: Men's worth is defined by what they do for others, not by the individual human beings they are.

E: For a more elaborate reply to Watson's speech: http://eldritchedain.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/an-open-letter-to-emma-watson/

[MP-Ryan]

Oh sorry I had to quit the video around the 8 minute mark. HeForShe indeed, my ass. I'm baffled by the entitlement Watson displays. She speaks about men's issues, only to divert the desired solution of them to the benefit of women. "When these issues of men are solved, then things get better for women."  Yes, HeForShe. Man's well-being has no value in itself, only if it serves women, is it desireable.
Watson speaks about male genderroles only to use one for her agenda: Men's worth is defined by what they do for others, not by the individual human beings they are.

If that's what you think she's saying, you need to quit reading MRA crap right now and actually listen to the words coming out of her mouth.  I'm not surprised at your response, since it's common to anti-feminists and currently being spewed all over social media, but it's factually incorrect.

What Watson says - accurately - is that by addressing issues facing one gender, you also address the issues confronting another, because gender equality is inexorably linked, as are the causes of it.

[SkycladGuardian]

I still don't grasp what is so horrible about recjecting modern feminisim. It's an ideology like any other and last time I checked I am not required by law to support any ideology.

[Luis Dias]

I really don't see the point of another movement that is based around the notion that men should liberate women from the oppression that perhaps Emma Watson is the perfect symbol of?!?!

It's like there's no winning with all of this. Now we don't merely have to listen and accept everything feminists say, we must work for them too. Well either that, or just the plain continuation of plain old feminism. It's not as if there aren't lots of PZ Myers and Matt Binders in the world already, so where is this going towards? What is the novelty here? ... Is this about the developing nations? Not clear.

The sleazyness might be not intentional but it *is* there. The idea is "gender equality is also about men", but the point remains: what is to be solved is about her. It's "He for She", not "all of us for each other". The assymetry is there, and I don't like it. Kinda reminds me of Chris Rock old joke about marriage:

(especially from 1:00, although he's always amazing).