Anita Sarkeesian

[Armchair Partisan]

So... let's talk about this well-known Canadian-Armenian feminist who ironically gained her fame and popularity (in some circles) thanks to her harassers. I've watched the occasional Feminist Frequency episode on Youtube, or read the transcript when I was lazy. The thing is, I get that there are people who hate any sort of progressive movement, including feminism, and thus take part in the forever-ongoing harassment campaign against her, but she also seems to be pretty disliked among less loathsome people. On the other hand, I've almost never met any criticism of Anita that isn't clearly motivated by an anti-feminist crusader mentality, complete with ad hominems and everything, or just ridiculous hyperbole.

So what I really want to ask from a bunch of people who aren't predisposed against feminism: are there any valid criticisms of her work around the Net? Are there any issues any of you have with the content of her videos, and if so, what are they? To me, it doesn't really seem like she says anything revolutionary - she just takes basic feminist theory and applies it to video games - but I am interested in your opinions. I do sometimes take the time to dispel the most common bullshit about Anita on other Internet forums ("her Kickstarter campaign is a scam" and other easy-to-dissect nonsense), and I haven't really ever met anyone who bothered to properly criticize her work itself. On the other hand, I would like to be prepared in case this event happens (though I'm not holding my breath).

tl;dr: Looking for legitimate criticisms of Anita's work, if any exist, or any kind of pro-feminist analysis of it that is of any value to a Marxist.

P.S: There was this latest shitstorm about her and Zoe Quinn wanting to "censor the Internet" at some UN meeting. This sounds like idiotic sensationalism, but does anyone know what this speech was really about? Non-Gamergate sources are pretty vague and I've yet to find a full transcript.

[#FF0000]

I haven't really found any decent criticism of Anita Sarkeesian beyond off-hand criticism for her liberal feminism -- mainly because I haven't looked. But...



P.S: There was this latest shitstorm about her and Zoe Quinn wanting to "censor the Internet" at some UN meeting. This sounds like idiotic sensationalism, but does anyone know what this speech was really about? Non-Gamergate sources are pretty vague and I've yet to find a full transcript.

The presentation itself was just about harassment. A UN committee released a report on online harasssment and "cyberviolence" later that day, which I did read, and which was very, very bad. It basically offered up totally over-reaching or unenforceable solutions to ending online harassment. Apparently even Zoe Quinn (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/im-disappointed-zoe-quinn-speaks-out-on-un-cyberviolence-report) shares my sentiments

[Counterculturalist]

This Youtube user, who is either a feminist or sympathetic to feminism, has a rather extensive series of videos both rebutting anti-feminist lunatics who attack Sarkeesian, and criticizing Sarkeesian's conclusions. I watched some of it a couple of years ago and seem to remember it being reasonable, if a bit obsessive: https://www.youtube.com/user/tooltime9901

I can't help but like Sarkeesian because of the absolute rage she inspires in internet manbabies. On the other hand, I wish she was a bit more insightful. Her videos are generic women's studies 101 stuff. Still, the amount of hatred she brings out in people shows that she's performing a necessary service, however obvious her arguments might seem to us.

[Atsumari]

Anita's videos aren't going exactly that profound or that controversial either. Her stance on games is similar to how Star Wars nerds feel about Ewoks or Jar Jar, hate the characters but love the universe.
However, such conversations are impossible to have when death threats are issued

[Zoop]

The reaction itself is more revealing than her videos. Just look at how hysterical the misogynistic cretins became over, what is essentially, basic feminist criticism. Kind of ironic how the reaction verifies the things she is saying.

[Major K.]

I think the main critique of her out there isn't so much about her low frequency feminist ideas, but more that she takes things out of context, is slanderous, and passive-aggressive.

I just typed in "Sarkeesian critique" into Google and this is the most popular hit I found, which seems to come at it from that same perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI.

That's the funny thing about the internet: criticism of anyone online is typically translated as "he's jealous", "he's the ultimate hater", "he's a misogynst manchild", etc. There are other reasons to criticize a person though. For example: they're an asshole. Or they're a scammer. Or they're a troll.

From the little I've seen of her stuff she seems pretty agenda driven and seems to read misogyny into everything like a rorschach blot. As Steinbeck talked about in his intro to The Sea of Cortez, you generally find what you're looking for (he was talking about 'adventure' though).

It seems very "you're either with me or against me" type of content for the most part. Most people who see it think it's largely well-meaning but oft misleading bullshit, and a bit self-masturbatory, but generally harmless. Then there are people who take it way too seriously, when in reality it's just low-brow entertainment for Slut Walkers and click-bait for people who want to let off steam (either by agreeing with her or disagreeing with her). She's just an outlet for pent up frustration for people stuck in a bad situation that they don't know how to deal with, so they lash out at others, etc.

Major K.

[Armchair Partisan]

I think the main critique of her out there isn't so much about her low frequency feminist ideas, but more that she takes things out of context, is slanderous, and passive-aggressive.

Very well - can you provide a reliable source for that then?


I just typed in "Sarkeesian critique" into Google and this is the most popular hit I found, which seems to come at it from that same perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI.

That's the funny thing about the internet: criticism of anyone online is typically translated as "he's jealous", "he's the ultimate hater", "he's a misogynst manchild", etc.

I was looking for a legitimate criticism, not the first result on Google. Rest assured, Thunderf00t is every one of those things you just mentioned there - along with the likes of TheAmazingAtheist, Sargon of Akkad etc., he seems to be one of that weird group of "atheist anti-feminist Youtube crusaders" that are making gender politics a complete headache. A good way to spot these kinds of people is usually to look at the thumbnails of their videos and see if they have the face of an angry/bossy/haughty/whiny-looking feminist on most videos they make in the topic; Thunderf00t passes this test with flying colors. Seriously, look at this, it's insane (I'm tempted to add a trigger warning for depression-inducing stupidity):

http://i.imgur.com/JkOesOh.png

And as I've mentioned, I'm looking for something from someone sane. (Remember that this guy is supposed to be a scientist.


From the little I've seen of her stuff she seems pretty agenda driven and seems to read misogyny into everything like a rorschach blot. As Steinbeck talked about in his intro to The Sea of Cortez, you generally find what you're looking for (he was talking about 'adventure' though).

I've heard all of that before, but the thing is, I'm looking for more than just assertions without backup here.

Thank you to everyone else for your responses. I'll look into that "Tooltime" guy when I have a few hours to waste.

[Counterculturalist]

Just a quick caveat about Tooltime, after watching a couple of his videos last night to remind myself of what he's all about: dude's pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, so don't expect anything earth-shattering, but at least it's coming from a place of a bit more intelligence than the usual "feminazis and cultural marxists wanna take away muh games, hurr durr make me a sammich" bullshit that passes for criticism of Sarkeesian.

[Major K.]

Very well - can you provide a reliable source for that then?

Yep -- actually, I was pretty much quoting one of the top comments on the video I linked. I'm sure there are people who take it way too seriously on both sides though. We can isolate them and pretend like that's the norm I guess, but that wouldn't be very rational. I doubt most people actually feel that way. People who comment on YouTube videos generally are people who have a strong opinion about what is being shown. And the critique in that video didn't seem wholly unjustified or misogynistic. He just treats her like she's your run of the mill scam artist. His interest in her is probably SEXUAL!!!!



I was looking for a legitimate criticism, not the first result on Google. Rest assured, Thunderf00t is every one of those things you just mentioned there - along with the likes of TheAmazingAtheist, Sargon of Akkad etc., he seems to be one of that weird group of "atheist anti-feminist Youtube crusaders" that are making gender politics a complete headache. A good way to spot these kinds of people is usually to look at the thumbnails of their videos and see if they have the face of an angry/bossy/haughty/whiny-looking feminist on most videos they make in the topic; Thunderf00t passes this test with flying colors. Seriously, look at this, it's insane (I'm tempted to add a trigger warning for depression-inducing stupidity):

http://i.imgur.com/JkOesOh.png

Lol, yeah I don't know anything about the guy. Probably would be a pain to hang out with because he's so image conscious. My point was simply that most people don't take the channel seriously, whatever their mild leanings of opinion towards certain aspects of the content happen to be. He seems like at about the same level as the Anita Sarkeesian, actually. They'd make a nice couple ;)




I've heard all of that before, but the thing is, I'm looking for more than just assertions without backup here.


Just look in the comments section of the most popular video on YouTube critiquing her. I don't see much of what you're saying her critics say at all on there. Maybe 4Chan or something like that is what you're thinking of? I'd bet my hat tha6 about 90% of people you're thinking about are trolls, leaving 10% for the bad eggs who think of the world in black/white terms and are basing their personality and ego on tearing down others to lift themselves up.

Major K.

[ChangeAndChance]

My point was simply that most people don't take the channel seriously, whatever their mild leanings of opinion towards certain aspects of the content happen to be. He seems like at about the same level as the Anita Sarkeesian, actually.

You really have no idea what the fuck is going on with him. He is not some benign YouTuber out for a quick buck. Thunderf00t (aka Phil Mason) is a absolutely toxic bigoted maniacal fuckwad who heads a cult of absolutely mindless drones who agree with everything he says regardless of whether or not it's chock full of fallacies. He's been milking #Gamergate for every last penny its got: that's pretty much where all his Patreon money is coming from, and that's one of the main reasons he keeps making videos against Sarkeesian and directing his legions of idiot fans to harass feminists on twitter and abroad. He has a history of misogyny and rape apology and has gathered a massive subscriber base around his videos supporting antitheism, Islamophobia and antifeminism.

Most recently, he sent them to destroy the life and business of a YouTuber by the name of Laughing Witch (aka Jennifer Keller) after she (along with several other YouTube feminists) sent a letter to his employer (he's a scientific researcher with a position at a Czech university) informing them of his misogynistic and racist views. Her small porcelain tub installation service has since been bombarded with fake and abusive reviews on Yelp and because she was doxxed, she has received massive amounts of personal harassment, online and IRL.

Thunderf00t has ruined people's lives and when the tide turns on him, he plays the victim card: ironic to the max considering he hates "professional victims".

[Major K.]

You really have no idea what the fuck is going on with him. He is not some benign YouTuber out for a quick buck. Thunderf00t (aka Phil Mason) is a absolutely toxic bigoted maniacal fuckwad who heads a cult of absolutely mindless drones who agree with everything he says regardless of whether or not it's chock full of fallacies or not. He's been milking #Gamergate for every last penny its got: that's pretty much where all his Patreon money is coming from, and that's one of the main reasons he keeps making videos against Sarkeesian and directing his legions of idiot fans to harass feminists on twitter and abroad. He has a history of misogyny and rape apology and has gathered a massive subscriber base around his videos supporting antitheism, Islamophobia and antifeminism.

Most recently, he sent them to destroy the life and business of a YouTuber by the name of Laughing Witch (aka Jennifer Keller) after she (along with several other YouTube feminists) sent a letter to his employer (he's a scientific researcher with a position at a Czech university) informing them of his misogynistic and racist views. Her small porcelain tub installation service has since been bombarded with fake and abusive reviews on Yelp and because she was doxxed, she has received massive amounts of personal harassment, online and IRL.

Thunderf00t has ruined people's lives and when the tide turns on him, he plays the victim card: ironic to the max considering he hates "professional victims".

Hey, yeah C&C, I have no idea... Not trying to defend the guy. No one involved here seems like an angel though. It's like a bar fight. No ones the hero here. Everyone's just rolling around slingin' mud, from what I've read.

My point was simply that most people don't get a ton of new value from her videos (once again: it's entertainment, not particularly educational, imo), and also that the general consensus seems to be that she makes some good points, sometimes crosses the line of reason, bends the truth for an agenda, has a bit of an unpleasant personality (passive aggressive), and generally is 'meh' in terms of unique insights. But at the end of the day, there are lots of far better and far worse youtube channels out there. It's the internet -- you're going to get flamewars. If you're open to them, they're gonna find you. It's not about the issue in these things -- everyone's just waving their proverbial dicks around like a bunch of howler monkeys. Position based arguments go NOWHERE.

Either you already agree with her, you think she's a twat, or you think she's just another normal person out there making youtube videos. I think most people who've seen her videos are by far in that last category.

I noticed that this thread was pretty one-sided, ignoring the faults of their own hero, and demonizing all other parties as misogynist crazies who have no lives, etc. Not really an accurate picture of the world though -- so hopefully I brought some balance and didn't just piss a bunch of ppl off for trying!

I guess she can be a rallying point for a cause though? Idk. She's not really the kind of feminist hero I'd like to see emerging in 2015. It seems like steps in the wrong direction (pettiness). I'm not commenting in this thread anymore.

K.

[Counterculturalist]

C'mon, man. I highly doubt anybody here idolizes Anita; she doesn't even really share our politics, and like three of us have said right in this thread that her videos are not even that great.

The reason we have nothing good to say about her critics is because they really are that toxic, and represent a gross underbelly of misogyny that has to frantically silence women's voices. You don't see male videogame critics fielding hundreds of thousands of death and rape threats.

[Major K.]

C'mon, man. I highly doubt anybody here idolizes Anita; she doesn't even really share our politics, and like three of us have said right in this thread that her videos are not even that great.

The reason we have nothing good to say about her critics is because they really are that toxic, and represent a gross underbelly of misogyny that has to frantically silence women's voices. You don't see male videogame critics fielding hundreds of thousands of death and rape threats.

I guess I'll comment, seeing as I didn't get an explosion and you seem to be coming at this from a pretty reasonable perspective.

So, I sincerely doubt these people actually want to rape or kill her, or even want to intimidate her because she's threatening patriarchy or what have you. My bet is that these people are almost entirely TROLLS. There are plenty of feminist channels that don't get this kind of response that are much more far out than Sarkeesian. But the trolls know they'll get a reaction from her, that she'll make a big deal out of it, so they prod her. That's what trolls do. Especially with people they think are annoying. I don't think it has much to do with her politics, except that she uses the trolls to justify them. And that rationalization on her part is what I think is feeding the trolls, and has made her channel popular in the first place. Actually, now that I think of it, she needs the trolls. As Zoop said earlier: they made her popular. They keep her relevant. Lol, that's pretty funny.

One of my favorite video game critics (ZeroEmpires) is constantly getting messed with by the people on his live stream (usually well-meaning, but occasionally vitriolic), and has gotten his YouTube channel randomly raided by some New World Order advocates and was forced to take off the like/dislike rating for a number of videos. It's mostly a matter of how you handle the trolls. Do you pat them on the head or ignore them, or do you feed them?

The internet's a crazy place, where things are often not as they seem and there are roaming bands of people who seem like lunatics, but are probably just a bunch of kids looking for a mild ego boost or to piss people off because "Hey! it's the internet!."

I best 99% of the haters, if they met Anita Sarkeesian in real life, would get along mostly fine, but just like with staunch Democrats and Republicans in American, if they got on their black/white, "you're either with us or against us" trip about feminism/MRA/whatever, things would turn into a lot of grrrrs. But not because of any societal things -- it'd be because they're playing a game of black and white.

(As all parents everywhere who have multiple kids have said: "I don't care who started it! Both of you, go to your rooms!")

Be careful, you're making an appeal strikingly similar to those who support cyberbullying laws, though I'm sure, as an anarchist, you think such laws (and probably laws in general, at that ;) ) are completely stupid.

K.

[Counterculturalist]

The thing is, trolling has an ideological character that goes beyond just being a zany goofball trying to rile people up for a good hearty laugh.

If you analyze the content of most internet trolling you'll find seemingly long-discredited expressions of sheer bigotry boiling over. Centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, 19th-century style dissertations on race and genetics, and good old fashioned misogynistic bile combine and see themselves regurgitated as memes that are deployed again and again against the same old targets under the guise of "irony."

Do you think it's a coincidence that one of the most popular anti-Sarkeesian memes depicts her as a caricatured Jew? It's fascism rebranded as irreverent edginess.

I have no interest in drafting laws to stop expression, but that doesn't mean that things that people say - even on the "harmless" internet - shouldn't be subject to analysis and criticism. Why is all "trolling" on the internet of a similar retrograde nature? Why are people who want to troll drawn to old-fashioned bigotry? And most importantly, what are the conditions that are causing this resurgence of bigotry?

[Major K.]

The thing is, trolling has an ideological character that goes beyond just being a zany goofball trying to rile people up for a good hearty laugh.

If you analyze the content of most internet trolling you'll find seemingly long-discredited expressions of sheer bigotry boiling over. Centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, 19th-century style dissertations on race and genetics, and good old fashioned misogynistic bile combine and see themselves regurgitated as memes that are deployed again and again against the same old targets under the guise of "irony."

Do you think it's a coincidence that one of the most popular anti-Sarkeesian memes depicts her as a caricatured Jew? It's fascism rebranded as irreverent edginess.

I have no interest in drafting laws to stop expression, but that doesn't mean that things that people say - even on the "harmless" internet - shouldn't be subject to analysis and criticism. Why is all "trolling" on the internet of a similar retrograde nature? Why are people who want to troll drawn to old-fashioned bigotry? And most importantly, what are the conditions that are causing this resurgence of bigotry?

Yes, and by directly countering the trolls you give credence to their positions. If you ignore bigotry, you don't pass it on either by being staunchly against it or staunchly for it.

I'm thinking of this from a vaguely Hegelian perspective. Bigots create counter-biggots. The more biggoted one group becomes, the group that identifies as their staunch enemy becomes even more biggoted themselves. It's like an arms race.

You don't win the arms race by getting more arms. You win the arms race by coming together and agreeing that the arms race was pretty dumb to begin with, that it was a prisoner's dilemma from its conception, and then wondering what the f*ck all the fuss was about and moving on with your lives.

I think the internet would be a lot better place if people learned to just ignore the trolls, because then their ideologies would not spread either inversely or directly outside the cesspools and dark corners of the internet where they are born. The whole dialogue involved is stupid imo, because all parties really want more or less the same things.

In reality, bigots are generally weak minded, desperate folk struggling with their own self-worth and jumping from low-brow cause to low-brow cause trying to figure out where to base their fragile egos. I think that as living conditions improve and alienation deminishes (in communism), so too will bigotry.

But for now, as I recommended before -- don't feed the trolls (or support people who do).

[Sewer Socialist]

Major K, you seem to have a habit of quoting reactionaries; this is quite similar to when you presented us with the evolutionary psychologist arguments of your "friend", which also resulted in you saying something like "oh, don't worry, it's just trolling."

[Counterculturalist]

People tend to view trolls as either merry pranksters or antisocial schoolyard bullies, but if either was the case, you'd find their ideological content to be largely neutral or random. Instead, it has hardened into a consistent attack on those who lack power.

Trolling - both in form and content - has found its way into more mainstream forms of expression. It's no longer a matter of "ignore them and they'll stop" when you've got presidential candidates who are like living, breathing Youtube comments sections come to life (cough*Trump*cough).

Remember that we were originally talking about videos made in response to Anita Sarkeesian. You create an equivalence between her videos and the responses she gets, like she reaps what she sows, but in what world is media criticism answerable with a bottomless pit of bigotry?

I think the prevalence of trollish arguments in response to feminism and social justice in general is indicative of a broader trend that culminates in presidential candidates leading the polls by acting like garden variety trolls. It's the powerful making sure the powerless keeps their mouth shut, and failure to counter it could lead to some pretty ugly results for any of the groups targeted.

[ChangeAndChance]

Yes, and by directly countering the trolls you give credence to their positions. If you ignore bigotry, you don't pass it on either by being staunchly against it or staunchly for it.

I'm thinking of this from a vaguely Hegelian perspective. Bigots create counter-biggots. The more biggoted one group becomes, the group that identifies as their staunch enemy becomes even more biggoted themselves. It's like an arms race.

You don't win the arms race by getting more arms. You win the arms race by coming together and agreeing that the arms race was pretty dumb to begin with, that it was a prisoner's dilemma from its conception, and then wondering what the f*ck all the fuss was about and moving on with your lives.

I think the internet would be a lot better place if people learned to just ignore the trolls, because then their ideologies would not spread either inversely or directly outside the cesspools and dark corners of the internet where they are born. The whole dialogue involved is stupid imo, because all parties really want more or less the same things.

In reality, bigots are generally weak minded, desperate folk struggling with their own self-worth and jumping from low-brow cause to low-brow cause trying to figure out where to base their fragile egos. I think that as living conditions improve and alienation deminishes (in communism), so too will bigotry.

But for now, as I recommended before -- don't feed the trolls (or support people who do).

This entire post is the "rooted in reality" equivalent of pre-First International utopian socialism. I'm sorry but you have absolutely no grasp of the situation at hand to make judgments or strategy calls. REAL bigots who are out to destroy and/or kill people beause they are stnding up for the oppressed are not playground bullies. Internet misogyny and reactionary bullshit has left the dark corners of the web and crossed into the real world. This shit has real life consequences that you cannot patronize or dismiss.

Seriously - just stop.

[Armchair Partisan]

Hey, yeah C&C, I have no idea... Not trying to defend the guy. No one involved here seems like an angel though. It's like a bar fight. No ones the hero here. Everyone's just rolling around slingin' mud, from what I've read.

It's a pretty classic tactic to discredit the better of two sides in an argument by trying to say things like "both sides are equally bad" and "a pox on both of their houses". It's kind of a variant of concern trolling. I think you should be a bit more careful in this regard and/or more aware of what you are doing, considering you have already admitted to trolling once.


The whole dialogue involved is stupid imo, because all parties really want more or less the same things.

Really? Do you actually think that all parties involved want the equality of the sexes (to simplify the goals of feminism a little)? Next you'll be telling us that capitalists and workers really just want more or less the same things, it's just that refusal to engage in peaceful dialogue has led to a class war and it'd be better if we just stopped.

If you're not actually trolling us again as a self-proclaimed devil's advocate, then you just sound incredibly naive.

[Citizen]

I noticed that this thread was pretty one-sided, ignoring the faults of their own hero, and demonizing all other parties as misogynist crazies who have no lives, etc. Not really an accurate picture of the world though -- so hopefully I brought some balance and didn't just piss a bunch of ppl off for trying!

wtf?



Be careful, you're making an appeal strikingly similar to those who support cyberbullying laws, though I'm sure, as an anarchist, you think such laws (and probably laws in general, at that ;)) are completely stupid.

is this actually how anarchists think because i don't think this is how anarchists think... seriously, i'm no anarchist, but i'm pretty sure anarchism doesn't boil down to "TEAR DOWN THE LAWSSS"



(As all parents everywhere who have multiple kids have said: "I don't care who started it! Both of you, go to your rooms!")

this is a shitty metaphor. i'm pretty sure Sarkeesian defenders don't issue death threats and rape threats and addresses phone numbers personal data and so on -- there's no equivalency with the trolls.

and even if Phil Mason were to get death threats, even if someone found his house and torched it -- fuck him and the reactionaries. there's no equal treatment for friends and enemies. we are not the siblings of fascists.

[Armchair Partisan]

this is a shitty metaphor. i'm pretty sure Sarkeesian defenders don't issue death threats and rape threats and addresses phone numbers personal data and so on

A small handful actually do - although the context is very different and you are right, there is no equivalency. However, comparing a few fanatics from the broadly feminist side of this conflict to the organized hate movement that Phil Mason, Gamergate and the rest of that milieu represent is still just willfully ignorant.

[#FF0000]

From the little I've seen of her stuff she seems pretty agenda driven and seems to read misogyny into everything like a rorschach blot.

"Agenda driven" how? Her whole seems pretty straightforward -- she wanted to make videos about what she sees as sexist motifs and cliches in video games, and got a ridiculous backlash over it. And from what I've seen in the few videos I've watched, I don't think she's too off-the-mark in her observations.

That said, I think there's plenty of room for criticism, but most of the "criticism" I see of her is just that -- criticism of her. I think that's very telling, that some people want to make her out to be some kind of supervillain when all she does, as far as I've ever seen, is post opinions others don't like, which aren't all that radical in themselves anyway.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I've watched a couple of her videos. They seemed to generally make good points, although apparently she misrepresented a couple games that her critics cherry pick to prove that she's an unrepentant man-hating liar who hates video games.

I think the backlash against her is far more significant than the content of her critiques, because it shows the cultural anxieties of many men regarding feminist critiques of their favorite forms of art, entertainment and culture.

[PhoenixAsh]

More to the point:

Do you feel that there can be legitimate criticism that is accepted as legitimate in a combative environment?

In my experience such environments mean that all criticism, legitimate or otherwise, automatically becomes suspect.

Here is the thing:

She has interesting points. She has valid points. And at a minimum her video's are food for thought. BUT they are often also an opinion based on the way the matter is observed....rather than an objective truth.

A lot of her criticism is based on presupposition of the thesis she is going to prove. This means that it becomes evidence because she assumes her central thesis to be universally valid...and that the example...however far fetched or misinformed/based on incorrect information (which happens as well)...automatically transforms to "yet another example because of context/confirmation bias".

For example about view points:

Is the main plot story of Zelda sexist? A woman gets in trouble and is saved by the male protagonist. Sarkeesian thinks it is because the woman is projected as helpless and needing a man to be saved.

I don't. This plot line is not inherrently sexist. There is nothing wrong with such a story in itself. There is nothing wrong with a man saving a woman. This ONLY becomes contextually sexist because that plot line is basically the ONLY plot line games offered for a long long time.
Aside from that...The Princess has a very strong character and often manages to escape on her own and become a strong individual.

This is an entirely different question however from the one Sarkeesian later addresses: Is there sexism in the stories and in the franchise? And yes...yes there is and here she does offer valid and objective evidence. One has only to look at the Peach stand alone where female associated emotions like tantrums and crying become a characature super power for peach. She litterally cries and PMses her way through the story in that game.

As a side note: Sarkeesian did nuance her view about the general plot line later on.

But generally speaking...my initial question stands. Is nuanced criticism possible in a combative situation? Arguing for or against Sarkeesians arguments are always viewed in the light of the threats and personal attacks.

[Invader Zim]

Very well - can you provide a reliable source for that then?


Why don't you just watch her videos and judge for yourself?

I've watched them and they are indeed the usual badly researched and worse argued kind of fare that standard on youtube. Her main methodology is basically to cherry pick a few games (and in a few instances treats them with pretty damning intellectual dishonesty -- the segment on Hitman is fairly infamous at this point), analyse them and then make sweeping and usually inane generalisations about an industry which has produced many tens of thousands of titles over the decades. There is no rigour to them, no sense of serious methodology, and no sense that she has read or grasped any of the serious and sizable literature on the topic.

I've also dipped into her Masters' dissertation, it is pretty banal stuff and the same criticisms apply. Its most damning feature is just how under researched it appears to be. Put bluntly, I expect more extensive reading and scholarly engagement from an undergraduate extended essay (5,000 words) than appears in her 70+ page dissertation. Excluding some basic textbooks there are only about a dozen scholarly items in her reference list. Its not surprising that she doesn't get feminist theory, methodology in the humanities and social science, or gender theory -- she hasn't read any. So, she kind of just meanders into the dissertation half-cocked, watched a few TV shows and did a fairly perfunctory job at deconstructing them without having done the basic prep work, draws some fairly banal and derivative conclusions and then suggests where the industry should go from there. Which is basically the same format as her video series. If I were marking it I would have passed it, but let's just say it won't set the world alight. Bizarrely, however, her videos seem to be doing just that.

[olahsenor]

Male chauvinism is narrow-mindedness and fails to look at all angles of the issue. Just imagine ourselves sexually harassed by a homosexual and he succeeds. You'll look down upon yourselves as filthy, dirty and hateful, the fact that you were molested without having someone to defend you. I was harassed by a homosexual, white racist supervisor. "No he is not going to date you.. You are not white"- homosexual white racist supervisor who is allowed to roam around the city of Toronto. (This is not trolling. I did not mention his name.)

[#FF0000]

But generally speaking...my initial question stands. Is nuanced criticism possible in a combative situation? Arguing for or against Sarkeesians arguments are always viewed in the light of the threats and personal attacks.

Yeah, this is absolutely true. The people who attack her make actual honest discussion of her points almost impossible.

[Comrade Jacob]

Gamers that care about gamergate are the biggest fucking losers I've ever heard of. I knew one of them personally, he was a sad sack of shit.

[Major K.]

More to the point:

Do you feel that there can be legitimate criticism that is accepted as legitimate in a combative environment?


I think the key here is the difference between a principle based argument and a position based one.

If you are arguing with a KKK member and they make a valid claim about black people, you will not acknowledge it openly as valid, because in the context they are using it they are using it to justify why white people are better than black people, and thus are deserving of higher inherent social, political, and economic standing.

However, that doesn't make the criticism itself illegitimate. What is illegitimate are the conclusions they draw from the facts. To counter their position-based argument, you are forced to take up a counter position-based argument. This inevitably leads to a stalemate and removes the possibility of dealing with the issue rationally. It becomes a pissing contest, and can even trap you on the same level as them (e.g. no one believes more in god than an atheist).

If both parties approach a topic from a principle based outlook however, the possibility of compromise and growth exists, and there can be win-win situations.

For example, MRAs and feminist both by and large want to increase explicit political rights and social norms for one sex or the other. However, there is a lot of conflict between the two, because they both think the other one is oppressive and undermining their ability to progress socially; that the more rights under the law (primary form of bourgeois justice) the other group has, the less they themselves will have. Each see the other as reactionary and as a symptom of the ruling ideology (which, from a Marxist perspective on equality and justice, is pretty accurate for the most part from both positions).

http://philosophy.as.nyu.edu/docs/IO/19808/Allen-Wood-Marx-on-Equality.pdf

That leads to a lot of people getting in position based mindsets, where it's a divisive conflict in the proletariat, and any facts that have been used to undermine your preferred group's validity, those facts need to be played down, dismissed, marginalized, and ridiculed.

For people who get stuck thinking like this, the conflict justifies itself. It's like Stalinism, where anyone who could be a dissident, regardless if they actually are one, are subject to being silenced (Gulag anyone?).

There's nothing you can really do about people who're stuck in position based mindsets. They've decided they have the moral high ground, and thus you are at best an idiot, and at worst, a representation of all that they so staunchly oppose, and deserving of the utmost cruelty.

But a lot of people are open to arguing from a principle based mindset, and are open to being convinced one way or another on an issue by issue basis. It requires a higher level of intellectual maturity to not just paint things in black or white terms though (while still reserving the ability to handle with position based people when they encounter them), so usually those people come on much more subtlety and often humorously than position-based propagandists like Sarkeesian.

Major K.

[Invader Zim]

Gamers that care about gamergate are the biggest fucking losers I've ever heard of. I knew one of them personally, he was a sad sack of shit.

The term 'gamer' refers to an 'identity' for individuals who are often socially marginalised. Unsurprisingly, because they identify with that label, and they view it as part of their own identity, the gaming community (or gamers) have been under sustained and bitter attack since games and gaming culture came into existence. The gaming press, which, many years ago now, once stood up for gamers turned against that 'identity', and those who cherish that identity and that part of their lives. That, for them, was a bitter betrayal and is actually what gamergate was about. It turned a rump dispute about fringe online trolling into a major issue and, predictably, once the larger print media players became involved it was swiftly developed into a major moral panic.

The issue of harassment is actually entirely peripheral to the actual issues at the heart of gamergate, and the fact that the discourse revolving around gamergate has been artificially forced into that orbit has served only to embitter the issue. Gamers who care about the issue, and there are a very many of them, do so because of their own 'identity' politics. The fact that they, via a spurious association fallacies have been labelled misogynists, despite many of them being no such thing, clearly has only further entrenched feeling on the issue. What, for many, may once have been a fairly minor swiftly became a point of alienation and division. Now, you may disapprove of, pour scorn upon, or belittle how 'gamers' identify themselves, but it is the way it is and that is how they feel.

[Comrade #138672]

The term 'gamer' refers to an 'identity' for individuals who are often socially marginalised. Unsurprisingly, because they identify with that label, and they view it as part of their own identity, the gaming community (or gamers) have been under sustained and bitter attack since games and gaming culture came into existence. The gaming press, which, many years ago now, once stood up for gamers turned against that 'identity', and those who cherish that identity and that part of their lives. That, for them, was a bitter betrayal and is actually what gamergate was about. It turned a rump dispute about fringe online trolling into a major issue and, predictably, once the larger print media players became involved it was swiftly developed into a major moral panic.

The issue of harassment is actually entirely peripheral to the actual issues at the heart of gamergate, and the fact that the discourse revolving around gamergate has been artificially forced into that orbit has served only to embitter the issue. Gamers who care about the issue, and there are a very many of them, do so because of their own 'identity' politics. The fact that they, via a spurious association fallacies have been labelled misogynists, despite many of them being no such thing, clearly has only further entrenched feeling on the issue. What, for many, may once have been a fairly minor swiftly became a point of alienation and division. Now, you may disapprove of, pour scorn upon, or belittle how 'gamers' identify themselves, but it is the way it is and that is how they feel.Is it actually true that gamers are socially marginalized, though? I would like to know more about this. To me it always seemed that gaming was an expensive hobby. It is not something everyone can afford.

[olahsenor]

Miguel Figueroa, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada and Sam Webb, Chairman of the Communist Party of USA have no histories of sexual harassment. nor sexual assault. Truly holy are thee! "You can know one by his fruits and by the words coming out of his mouth"- ______ . Especially these days when women exhibit their 'flesh' in the streets of New York and Toronto.:grin:

[Comrade #138672]

Miguel Figueroa, Chairman of the Communist Party of Canada and Sam Webb, Chairman of the Communist Party of USA have no histories of sexual harassment. nor sexual assault. Truly holy are thee! "You can know one by his fruits and by the words coming out of his mouth"- ______ . Especially these days when women exhibit their 'flesh' in the streets of New York and Toronto.:grin:What are you talking about?

[olahsenor]

What are you talking about?

That communists practice what they preach. Supreme Court Reports annotated are riddled with cases where bourgoisies and their cohorts are indicted and convicted of sexual harassment and sexual assault.

[Invader Zim]

Is it actually true that gamers are socially marginalized, though? I would like to know more about this. To me it always seemed that gaming was an expensive hobby. It is not something everyone can afford.

Let me google basement dweller (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=basement+dweller) for you.

Part of the problem with large swathes of leftists (like a few of the more stupid brand of posters here) is that they don't know what identity or identity politics actually are, nor do they appriciate dynamics of identity as a concept. For them 'identity' equates specific identities, if you're very lucky that might extend to gay identity or black identity (as opposed to merely class). Any kind of 'otherness' is simply brushed over.

[Comrade #138672]

Let me google basement dweller (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=basement+dweller) for you.What does a stereotype prove?

[Comrade #138672]

Part of the problem with large swathes of leftists (like a few of the more stupid brand of posters here) is that they don't know what identity or identity politics actually are, nor do they appriciate dynamics of identity as a concept. For them 'identity' equates specific identities, if you're very lucky that might extend to gay identity or black identity (as opposed to merely class). Any kind of 'otherness' is simply brushed over.I get that there might be identities that we are overlooking, for whatever reasons. It may be the case that I am doubting whether the gamer identity constitutes a marginalized identity simply because they are marginalized. But I still find that unconvincing. Gamer culture may be more nuanced than what some people make it out to be, but some aspects of gamer culture can be considered quite poisonous (e.g., the focus on men and sexism) and seem to be rooted in certain privileges.

[olahsenor]

I would not wonder if gamer identity is marginalized. They are composed of us Leftists whose pet peeves were the Right wingers. Our enemies since time immemorial. (I would take a bullet for you. If not for a Leftwinger, I should have been out in the streets, homeless).:lol:

[Invader Zim]

What does a stereotype prove?
You've heard of social construction theory, right? Regardless, work it out for yourself.

It'll do you good.

[Invader Zim]

I get that there might be identities that we are overlooking, for whatever reasons. It may be the case that I am doubting whether the gamer identity constitutes a marginalized identity simply because they are marginalized. But I still find that unconvincing. Gamer culture may be more nuanced than what some people make it out to be, but some aspects of gamer culture can be considered quite poisonous (e.g., the focus on men and sexism) and seem to be rooted in certain privileges.
Some aspects of any culture can be deemed poisonous. You could go through the posts on this board or, indeed, any socialist 'orgianisation' and draw the same conslusion if you were to try. The issue is determining if that is representative. But it given that market and demographic research as regards to gaming is in its infancy, and historical data is virtually nill, this becomes difficult. As such stereotypes regarding games are meaningless, which the #notyourshield phenomenon singularly proved (even if we accept the highly dubious claim that it was astroturfed, for which there is actually zero seruous evidence). What we have is a series of idiotic and lazy assumptions made about who plays games, and certain types of games, when the reality is that nobody knows because the research simply hasn't been done. There are some examples of self-selecting studies, which are cited as gospel, but they laughably flawed in terms of methodology. Yet these are cited as gospel.

[#FF0000]

The term 'gamer' refers to an 'identity' for individuals who are often socially marginalised. Unsurprisingly, because they identify with that label, and they view it as part of their own identity, the gaming community (or gamers) have been under sustained and bitter attack since games and gaming culture came into existence.

hahahahaha

Edit for substance: Prove it. I've known a lot of people who call themselves "gamers" and only a few of them were "socially marginalized" in the way I think you mean. When I was growing up, video games were virtually ubiquitous, and people weren't marginalized or made fun of for playing them, even thought I've certainly known people who felt this was the case. The idea that this whole "gamergate" thing came up because of "gamers" responding to "attack" from some outside interlopers (feminists, cultural marxists, mom and dad) is absurd from the get-go because the people who support gamergate are themselves a pretty narrow portion of people who play video games or associate with "gaming culture". What that narrative's doing is setting up this weird and unnecessary Us vs. Them with GamerGate supporters set up as the real "gamers" and everyone else as some kind of outsider who has no right to "video game culture".

It's like applying the most baby-basic, vulgar, essentializing, identitarian understanding of "id politics" to the dumbest possible thing.

[Invader Zim]

hahahahaha

Edit for substance: Prove it. I've known a lot of people who call themselves "gamers" and only a few of them were "socially marginalized" in the way I think you mean. When I was growing up, video games were virtually ubiquitous, and people weren't marginalized or made fun of for playing them, even thought I've certainly known people who felt this was the case. The idea that this whole "gamergate" thing came up because of "gamers" responding to "attack" from some outside interlopers (feminists, cultural marxists, mom and dad) is absurd from the get-go because the people who support gamergate are themselves a pretty narrow portion of people who play video games or associate with "gaming culture". What that narrative's doing is setting up this weird and unnecessary Us vs. Them with GamerGate supporters set up as the real "gamers" and everyone else as some kind of outsider who has no right to "video game culture".

It's like applying the most baby-basic, vulgar, essentializing, identitarian understanding of "id politics" to the dumbest possible thing.

Prove what? That gamers identify with the label and it is, thus, by definition, a facet of their identity and how they identify and see themselves? Or prove that gamers and gaming culture has been under sustained attack for decades?

Either way, I'm not wasting my time explaining the obvious. If you are set on being so obtuse that you refuse to see the former then you will also be too obtuse for any explanation. If you are too lazy to Google (http://www.bing.com/search?q=games+moral+panics&src=IE-SearchBox&FORM=IENTTR&conversationid=)the latter, history of games and games culture, then you will be too lazy to critically engage with any response I provide.

And given that the rest of your post is built on both obtusity and laziness in equal measure, I really can't be bothered. Apparently, because you know a few people who play games you can dismiss an entire culture you know nothing about and pass commentary on what individuals within that culture do and do not experience. This is a load of obtuse, lazy and indeed chauvinistic nonsense unworthy of serious reply.

Amusingly, you have precisely proven my point about the failure of many leftists to appreciate the 'othering' rampant in society beyond the most obvious examples.

[Comrade #138672]

Prove what? That gamers identify with the label and it is, thus, by definition, a facet of their identity and how they identify and see themselves? Or prove that gamers and gaming culture has been under sustained attack for decades? There have been a lot of attacks on gaming culture, sure. But at the same time gaming industry has grown enormous. It has become one of the most profitable industries these days. Can you really say that gaming culture is marginalized these days? Perhaps it has been, but not anymore.

Should we also not distinguish between different gaming cultures, like "arcade gaming culture" and "modern gaming culture"? When I was 4 years old, I got my first NES. In my childhood, I have always been playing games, and wanting to create them myself ("When I grow up, I want to become a game designer!"). However, at some point I completely lost interest, when every game was either a shooter, a sports game or a race game (I hate them all). The more industrialized gaming became, the less I identified myself with gaming culture. I am currently at the point that I do not play any games at all, except for the Super Mario Bros 3 clone I programmed myself. It is a shame, really.

[PhoenixAsh]

This thread litterally sounds like confused liberals explaining society is more equal now because laws and economic position improvement.

Instead of focusing in industry growth perhaps focus on the group and perhaps realize that playing video games =/= gamer

[Comrade #138672]

This thread litterally sounds like confused liberals explaining society is more equal now because laws and economic position improvement.How so?


Instead of focusing in industry growth perhaps focus on the group and perhaps realize that playing video games =/= gamerI do realize that playing video games =/= identifying as a gamer. I was merely saying that the massive growth of the gaming industry shows that the gamer identity is perhaps not so marginalized after all. (And also some personal complaints, but you can ignore that.)

[#FF0000]

Apparently, because you know a few people who play games you can dismiss an entire culture you know nothing about and pass commentary on what individuals within that culture do and do not experience. This is a load of obtuse, lazy and indeed chauvinistic nonsense unworthy of serious reply.

Amusingly, you have precisely proven my point about the failure of many leftists to appreciate the 'othering' rampant in society beyond the most obvious examples.

Oh wow this is precious. Anti-gamer chauvinism. Jesus.

Either way, you're doing it right now. Somehow, I'm an outsider to "gaming culture", despite playing videogames my entire life, being involved in gaming communities growing up ('video games clubs' in middle and high school, internet forums, conventions), and, uh, working at GameStop as one of my jobs. If I'm not a "gamer" in your definition, then who is? Only people who post on imageboards and whine on twitter?

[Invader Zim]

Oh wow this is precious. Anti-gamer chauvinism. Jesus.

Either way, you're doing it right now. Somehow, I'm an outsider to "gaming culture", despite playing videogames my entire life, being involved in gaming communities growing up ('video games clubs' in middle and high school, internet forums, conventions), and, uh, working at GameStop as one of my jobs. If I'm not a "gamer" in your definition, then who is? Only people who post on imageboards and whine on twitter?

Your chauvinism isn't that you are anti-gamer, but rather that you are arbitrarily willing to accept that some groups of people can develop an identity, be subject to social marginalisation, while denying that of others. It is the privileging of certain cultures and subcultures who have been applied 'other' status within capitalist society and the exclusion of other cultures and subcultures. The fact that you may or may not have worked in a game shop and have played games does not grant you the right to pronounce on the validity of how other people conceive of either themselves or their subculture.



Somehow, I'm an outsider to "gaming culture", despite playing videogames my entire life, being involved in gaming communities growing up ('video games clubs' in middle and high school, internet forums, conventions), and, uh, working at GameStop as one of my jobs. If I'm not a "gamer" in your definition, then who is?

You seemingly deny that it is even a culture (why else place the term in double inverted commas?) and outright reject that members of this culture can legitimately identify themselves via participation in that culture. You deny them the right to legitimately have a sense of belonging. That is chauvinism, and your assertion that such a description is 'precious' as if marginalisation of this culture is somehow illusory or perhaps just small fry, is crass apologism/negationism for and of the stigma levelled at those who do identify as gamers and hold that sense of belonging.

[Comrade Jacob]

When 'gamer' is an identity...that's pretty sad.

[Comrade #138672]

When 'gamer' is an identity...that's pretty sad.I do not care much about that. Everyone has a hobby and may identify themselves with that hobby. For example, if you play a lot of chess, you may identify as a chess player. Nothing wrong with that. Of course there is also the sub-cultural aspect.

The issue is: are gamers marginalized by society? Invader Zim thinks so. Personally, I am not so sure about it.

[Invader Zim]

I do not care much about that. Everyone has a hobby and may identify themselves with that hobby. For example, if you play a lot of chess, you may identify as a chess player. Nothing wrong with that.

The issue is: are gamers marginalized by society? Invader Zim thinks so. Personally, I am not so sure about it.

I don't think it, I know it. Anybody who has taken even a cursary look at moral panics over the last three decades also knows it.

Indeed, so ubiquitous are negative, marginalising stereotypes of gamers -- the two key being: 1. the asocial, basement dwelling, manbaby with no professional or private life outside of virtual worlds and 2: the psychopathic loner, warped by the predatory violence of games who pose a tangiable danger to society because they may replicate the virtual violence of video games in real communities -- that there is a vast literature produced by sociologists and psychologists right through to historians, examining, deconstructing and debunking them.

Make no mistake about it, the entire gamergate saga was just another new manifestation of a long standing trend of media fuelled moral panics aimed not at highlighting some vast social evil but just another new moral panic whipped up into a frenzy in order to sell newspapers and attract mouse clicks.

[#FF0000]

Your chauvinism isn't that you are anti-gamer, but rather that you are arbitrarily willing to accept that some groups of people can develop an identity, be subject to social marginalisation, while denying that of others.

Uh, no. I'm not saying it's not possible for people from a subculture to be marginalized. I'm saying that gamers aren't categorically marginalized. There are certainly people who believe they're marginalized for being gamers, but in my experience, they're usually marginalized for other reasons -- mental illness, poor social skills, not living up to or adhering to standards of masculinity/femininity.

The closest thing to what you're talking about might be the moral panic roused up by the Moral Majority and folks like Jack Thompson in the late 90s, but even then I think it's a stretch.


The fact that you may or may not have worked in a game shop and have played games does not grant you the right to pronounce on the validity of how other people conceive of either themselves or their subculture.The irony is that you were the one making these judgements. You did so implicitly by putting up this narrative that GamerGate is about gamers in general responding to outside attacks by whoever, when in reality, GamerGate represents a subsection of gamers whose target of outrage is primarily other gamers who happen to disagree with them on certain issues or might have certain political ideas.

Hell, you even just did it to me, insisting I'm an outsider to "gaming culture" which, to my chagrin, is hilariously off-the-mark. And you're here pronouncing on the validity of how I conceive of my subculture when I tell you that GamerGate isn't representative of gamers as a whole, and that in all of my years of experience dealing w/ other gamers, that gamers who moan about being stigmatized are very rarely, if ever, actually being stigmatized for being gamers.

[#FF0000]

This dumb tangent aside I'm interested in what you have to say about GamerGate being a moral panic, cuz I think there's a real weird chance we might agree there.

[Comrade #138672]

I don't think it, I know it. Anybody who has taken even a cursary look at moral panics over the last three decades also knows it.

Indeed, so ubiquitous are negative, marginalising stereotypes of gamers -- the two key being: 1. the asocial, basement dwelling, manbaby with no professional or private life outside of virtual worlds and 2: the psychopathic loner, warped by the predatory violence of games who pose a tangiable danger to society because they may replicate the virtual violence of video games in real communities -- that there is a vast literature produced by sociologists and psychologists right through to historians, examining, deconstructing and debunking them.

Make no mistake about it, the entire gamergate saga was just another new manifestation of a long standing trend of media fuelled moral panics aimed not at highlighting some vast social evil but just another new moral panic whipped up into a frenzy in order to sell newspapers and attract mouse clicks.It is probably true that gaming is not taken seriously enough as a "real" hobby. But earlier you compared it to other(?) marginalized identities, such as being black, being gay, etc. Can you really say they are similar? Or, better put, can you really say that gamers are being oppressed? In my view marginalization is closely connected with oppression. Therefore it seems inappropriate to use in this context.

[Invader Zim]

The irony is that you were the one making these judgements. You did so implicitly by putting up this narrative that GamerGate is about gamers in general responding to outside attacks by whoever, when in reality, GamerGate represents a subsection of gamers whose target of outrage is primarily other gamers who happen to disagree with them on certain issues or might have certain political ideas.

No, I wasn't. Quote me.


Hell, you even just did it to me, insisting I'm an outsider to "gaming culture" which, to my chagrin, is hilariously off-the-mark. And you're here pronouncing on the validity of how I conceive of my subculture when I tell you that GamerGate isn't representative of gamers as a whole, and that in all of my years of experience dealing w/ other gamers, that gamers who moan about being stigmatized are very rarely, if ever, actually being stigmatized for being gamers.

So, you have gone from denial that there is even such a thing as a gamer identity to virtually the complete opposite.

And, where did I suggest that I said that gamergate is representative of all gamers or even 'gamers as a whole', if you care to read my post again you will note clear qualifiers like the word 'many'.

[Invader Zim]

It is probably true that gaming is not taken seriously enough as a "real" hobby. But earlier you compared it to other(?) marginalized identities, such as being black, being gay, etc. Can you really say they are similar? Or, can you say that gamers are being oppressed? In my view marginalization is closely connected with oppression. Therefore it seems inappropriate to use in this context.

Actually, I said that gamer identity and gaming culture has been 'othered' and they are the subject of marginalisation. It would be absurd to suggest that these processes when it comes to gaming culture are qualitatively the same as that applied to, say, black communities. If we were to conceive of oppression as a spectrum then that experienced by the gaming culture, on the whole rests at one end and that of black or gay culture at the other.

[Comrade #138672]

Actually, I said that gamer identity and gaming culture has been 'othered' and they are the subject of marginalisation. It would be absurd to suggest that these processes when it comes to gaming culture are qualitatively the same as that applied to, say, black communities. If we were to conceive of oppression as a spectrum then that experienced by the gaming culture, on the whole rests at one end and that of black or gay culture at the other.In that case can you really say it is arbitrary to deny marginalization/othering in one case and not in the other? The reason why you put them on different ends of the same spectrum, could be the same reason someone else chooses to not see it in that light at all. So, to me it seems not so arbitrary.

[#FF0000]

No, I wasn't. Quote me.

Okay.


The term 'gamer' refers to an 'identity' for individuals who are often socially marginalised. Unsurprisingly, because they identify with that label, and they view it as part of their own identity, the gaming community (or gamers) have been under sustained and bitter attack since games and gaming culture came into existence. The gaming press, which, many years ago now, once stood up for gamers turned against that 'identity', and those who cherish that identity and that part of their lives. That, for them, was a bitter betrayal and is actually what gamergate was about. It turned a rump dispute about fringe online trolling into a major issue and, predictably, once the larger print media players became involved it was swiftly developed into a major moral panic.

I also think it's strange that you think it's just a moral panic and that harassment didn't actually happen, or that GamerGate isn't shot through with misogyny and anti-feminism. I mean, MRAs, the internet Alt-Right, are all very visibly involved with Gamergate. What do you make of that?


So, you have gone from denial that there is even such a thing as a gamer identity to virtually the complete opposite.

I never denied it existed. It's just something I can't say with a straight face.


And, where did I suggest that I said that gamergate is representative of all gamers or even 'gamers as a whole', if you care to read my post again you will note clear qualifiers like the word 'many'.

Even saying "many" is a massive overstatement. You're talking about a subsection of people who mainly posted on 4chan, who aren't even welcome there anymore.

[BIXX]

Seriously red its probably not worth it, literally every thread about gamergate and IZ comes in and flashes some misogynist colors, from denying it was misogynist to denying harassment of various feminists etc...

[Invader Zim]

This dumb tangent aside I'm interested in what you have to say about GamerGate being a moral panic, cuz I think there's a real weird chance we might agree there.

Gamergate is a media driven moral panic, because however you want to frame it, it was initially nothing more than a storm in a teacup. And by frame it, I mean it is (usually) presented as either a misogynistic attacks by male video game players reacting violently against the changing gender dynamics within their subculture or a reaction against a hostile and corrupt games journalism scene. In my view it is actually neither, both and a great deal more; a large number of long-standing competing grievances of varying legitimacy which coalesced into a 'perfect storm' in a teacup that nobody outside of the subculture was interested in. However, when picked up by the games media it was presented in a predictably formulaic narrative, dangerous, basement dwelling man baby misogynists threatening and harassing women en mass.

The reality was, of course, significantly more complex, but the games media reaction was to look at squalid behaviour of trolls and project it across the entire hashtag and all using it regardless of what their actual behaviour was, why they elected to adopt the hashtag, or the agenda they were actually perusing. This was as much to stifle some legitimate criticism of the perfunctory journalists standards of what was once a peripheral niche trade media into the media voice of the largest entertainment industry on earth and whose standards had not yet caught up with their new position as it was because controversy sells. Of course, the fact that the deplorable harassment was very much two-way (as it remains) was met with near complete silence, an inconvenient caveat to be neatly side-stepped.

Once the major national and international media giants became involved it was then swiftly catalysed into a full-blown moral panic. Gamers were dangerous misogynists and the entire medium was suspect; did games make people into violent dangerous women haters or simply attract them? This culminated with the infamous and egregious Law and Order episode which presented gamers as terrorists -- a premise so absurd that even the media giants who had actually poured the majority of the petrol on the fire lambasted as ridiculous.

The long and the short of it was that a controversy which would have flared dimly before extinguishing itself within a matter of weeks if not days was picked up by the media, which then recast and repackaged the entire thing into the most simplistic and sensational narrative possible (gamers are evil) and used it to fill column inches and news slots, and sell copy for months and months.

[Invader Zim]

Seriously red its probably not worth it, literally every thread about gamergate and IZ comes in and flashes some misogynist colors, from denying it was misogynist to denying harassment of various feminists etc...

And in literally every thread you turn up and make these charges all of which we both know aren't true. Now, both of us also know that this reply is fairly pointless, because you are an intellectually dishonest and intellectually cowardly brand troll (and let's not mistake this, you are a troll, you have proven time and time again to have no idea what you are talking about in any leftist theoretical context and this also explains why very few of your posts comprise more than a couple of sentences), whose purpose on this board is merely to snipe, I.E. enter a thread, launch a one-line volley of flame against another person, then promptly head for the hills never to return. Normally, I would just ignore you, because you are a sad and miserable member (in every sence of the word) with nothing to contribute, but the charge of misogyny is too much. Back up this allegation or retract it.

Oh, and fuck you.

[#FF0000]

Looks like we sort of agree on the "moral panic" angle actually -- aside from how you dismiss the misogyny and anti-feminism. There were a lot of reasons GamerGate sparked up, yeah, but to deny or ignore that it started as a bizarre sexist witchhunt that turned out to be false is missing a huge part of the picture. Ditto with the sustained anti-feminism that has always been present in it. I don't understand why you ignore that.

[Invader Zim]

Okay.



In your defence, that is indeed a poorly worded sentence. However, I should have thought that rest of the post which clearly adds a layer of nuance should have disabused you of the notion you are labouring under.


I also think it's strange that you think it's just a moral panic and that harassment didn't actually happen,

Well, as I don't think that and have never said that there was no harassment, this is a moot point. You seem to be under the impression that because gamergate is a media driven moral panic, that I am denying that there was harassment. Well, let clarify the point for you, and categorically so, I don't think that. At all.


or that GamerGate isn't shot through with misogyny and anti-feminism.

Sure. It is. But you 1. You seem to be viewing gamergate as a homogenous political movement. It isn't. 2. You also seem not to be viewing the phenomenon by the sum of its part, but by one proportionally small part.


I mean, MRAs, the internet Alt-Right, are all very visibly involved with Gamergate. What do you make of that?

I make of it that you're engaging in a guilt-by-association fallacy, and tarring the entire phenomenon and all those involved in some way with the same brush without consideration that it may actually be more complex than the media narrative suggests.


I never denied it existed. It's just something I can't say with a straight face.

How charitable of you.


Even saying "many" is a massive overstatement. You're talking about a subsection of people who mainly posted on 4chan, who aren't even welcome there anymore.

Yet there is no evidence for this claim, and, in fact, given the considerable volume of traffic and commentary from individuals clearly not 4chan denizens to be appended with the gamergate hashtag this assumption is so unlikely as to be farcical.

[#FF0000]

Sure. It is. But you 1. You seem to be viewing gamergate as a homogenous political movement. It isn't. 2. You also seem not to be viewing the phenomenon by the sum of its part, but by one proportionally small part.


I make of it that you're engaging in a guilt-by-association fallacy, and tarring the entire phenomenon and all those involved in some way with the same brush without consideration that it may actually be more complex than the media narrative suggests.


You can identify dominant political tendencies within a movement like this, and I'm not talking about a proportionally small part of it, though, and it isn't guilty-by-association. The alt-right and anti-feminist contingent is so prominent that it seems to me absurd that you could say it isn't a major part of it. Breitbart contributors and prominent youtube anti-feminists are the most visible faces of GamerGate. You can go to KotakuInAction or any GamerGate blog and you see constant talk about feminists, "cultural marxists" and "SJWS". This aspect of the issue is so prominent that I can't fathom how one could ignore it.


Yet there is no evidence for this claim, and, in fact, given the considerable volume of traffic and commentary from individuals clearly not 4chan denizens to be appended with the gamergate hashtag this assumption is so unlikely as to be farcical.

The evidence is that this was all over 4chan until the topic was banned from there. Like, this was a constant thing even before it was called "Gamergate" and brought to twitter.

[Invader Zim]

Looks like we sort of agree on the "moral panic" angle actually -- aside from how you dismiss the misogyny and anti-feminism. There were a lot of reasons GamerGate sparked up, yeah, but to deny or ignore that it started as a bizarre sexist witchhunt that turned out to be false is missing a huge part of the picture. Ditto with the sustained anti-feminism that has always been present in it. I don't understand why you ignore that.

I do not dismiss "the misogyny and anti-feminism", rather my interest is in to try to contextualise, critically analyse it and locate it within the broader spectrum of discourse gamergate advocates produced. In other words, I'm interested in understanding what gamergate was actually about, why it became the phenomenon that it is, and what it meant. That includes trying to understand what gamergate meant to the people who used and opposed the hashtag on their own terms. Part of understanding is empathy, avoiding generalisation and attempting not to rush to judgement. It is easy just to look at the very worst (and most widely reported) aspects of gamergate, but that doesn't actually get us anywhere.

[Invader Zim]

Right. I want to kind of re-start this discussion. I've read back through my posts, and I was being a dick to you and for no reason. In my defence, I've been having a rather bad day and have been taking it out (a bit) on you, but that is no excuse. But, if you can get past my earlier deplorable behaviour I think we can have a good discussion. So, if you'll forgive that I have a few points I think we can profitably discuss.

I should make it clear that I've been thinking about and have been interested in gamergate for some time. Not just out of curiosity, but also from a professional perspective. I'm a history researcher by vocation, and I'm thinking (very) strongly about doing a book-length project on the cultural history of 'core-gaming' 'culture' (of which I was certainly a member for many years until about 5-6 years ago). So, having a thoughtful people to bounce some idea against is always good.


You can identify dominant political tendencies within a movement like this, and I'm not talking about a proportionally small part of it, though, and it isn't guilty-by-association. The alt-right and anti-feminist contingent is so prominent that it seems to me absurd that you could say it isn't a major part of it. Breitbart contributors and prominent youtube anti-feminists are the most visible faces of GamerGate. You can go to KotakuInAction or any GamerGate blog and you see constant talk about feminists, "cultural marxists" and "SJWS". This aspect of the issue is so prominent that I can't fathom how one could ignore it.



The evidence is that this was all over 4chan until the topic was banned from there. Like, this was a constant thing even before it was called "Gamergate" and brought to twitter.

I think, before we discuss the specifics of your reply, we need to think about basic questions: What is a 'movement' and does gamergate constitute as one? This is actually a subject I've discussed in some length with colleagues in game studies, and they, like you, often conceive gamergate as being a movement. However, some of the more perceptive recent studies of gamergate have reached the same view that I have -- that it is not a movement according to any coherent definition of the term. Movements have leaders, specific agenda, organisational apparatus, etc. etc. Gamergate, aside from some threads on 4chan, later 8chan, and reddit, had none of that. Nor were a great many of the users of the hashtag explicitly or implicitly associated with 4chan. Moreover, the scale of the hashtag's use is strongly suggestive of spontaneity. In other words, huge numbers of people, for their own reasons, elected to associate themselves with the hashtag and utilise it for their own reasons which are usually opaque.

Thus the hypothesis that this hashtag gained popularity based on orchestration and machination from trolls on 4/8chan strikes me as unsustainable. And, of course, you are right that much of the discourse, with the caveat that it depends on where you choose to look for it, is steeped in misogynistic and anti-feminist language. It is interesting that you brought it up, but 'prominent youtubers' actually are a diverse bunch. Though individuals like 'Thunderf00t' and 'The Amazing Atheist' have framed arguments for gamergate (loosely defined, I would also include rebuttals to Anita Sarkeesian's videos in this sample), others, of rather more significant prominence, have absolutely not. For instance, the 'premier' youtube games 'critic', John Bain (aka totalbiscuit) does not frame his support for gamergate in misogynistic or anti-feminist terms, and his videos on the topic collectively dwarf, in terms of views and 'likes', those of Thundef00t. Meanwhile, there are countless other videos discussing this issue which offer pro-gamergate narratives which are neither explicitly sexist or anti-feminist.

The second point we must consider is what 'feminism' is understood to be. We on revleft tend to occupy a particular corner of the broad church not merely of feminism as a whole but third wave feminism. A close reading of the language of even rather reactionary gamergate supporters on youtube, not least thunderf00t, is not suggestive of outright misogyny (though I'm open to being disproved on this point) or even outright opposition to feminism. What we find is a rejection to specific forms (often our) feminist approach. However, the core essentials of liberal feminism are certainly there. What Thunderf00t attacks is not the feminism of Rowbotham but the feminism of Butler. However, being uninitiated in the finer points of feminist theory, he associates all feminism with its recent manifestations. Don't get me wrong, I do think he is a terrible human being, and that his opposition to third-wave feminism is deplorable, but his views, and those of the wider public indeed, need to be understood in terms of what they are. Thus, I don't think that framing anti-feminism as an indicator of misogyny is a useful paradigm here.

Third: What are the primary ports of discourse here and do they actually matter? Let's unpack this a little. If there is no movement, and as I noted above, I don't think that there is, then there is no one (or even few) focal points for dissemination of 'ideology' and 'party line'. Is, as you and I did above, looking at prominent youtubers actually useful in understanding gamergate or measuring opinion? Or threads on reddit or KotakuInAction? How representative are these? Looking at these sources, and they are indeed sources and extrapolating, strikes me as the same as looking at Revleft and applying the same. While there is a diversity of view evident here, it is hardly representative of the radical left as a whole. Would it be fair if our posts, on tiny sub-sub-sub-sub-community, were extrapolated as the opinion of the revolutionary left. I don't think so. So, are threads on KotakuInAction actually a measure of anything? Remember we are talking about many tens of thousands (to offer a conservative benchmark) of individuals here. Are a few forums an indicator of mass opinion?

This may have been a bit tl/dr, and I again apologise for being rather hostility earlier, but I hope I haven't prejudiced you against a reply.

[BIXX]

And in literally every thread you turn up and make these charges all of which we both know aren't true. Now, both of us also know that this reply is fairly pointless, because you are an intellectually dishonest and intellectually cowardly brand troll (and let's not mistake this, you are a troll, you have proven time and time again to have no idea what you are talking about in any leftist theoretical context and this also explains why very few of your posts comprise more than a couple of sentences), whose purpose on this board is merely to snipe, I.E. enter a thread, launch a one-line volley of flame against another person, then promptly head for the hills never to return. Normally, I would just ignore you, because you are a sad and miserable member (in every sence of the word) with nothing to contribute, but the charge of misogyny is too much. Back up this allegation or retract it.

Oh, and fuck you.

I post one liners because revleft frankly isn't worth the effort seeing as no one here will put forth the effort to try to listen. And once again, as I say literally every time someone accuses me of being a troll, take it up with the mods.

But seriously denying the obvious misogyny of gamergate pretty obviously marks you as a misogynist, I don't really need more proof than that.

[olahsenor]

http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p523/jrosenthal2/12045544_1620186478233354_3366552412246180659_o_zp sbua8hliq.jpg (http://s1154.photobucket.com/user/jrosenthal2/media/12045544_1620186478233354_3366552412246180659_o_zp sbua8hliq.jpg.html)


This is living proof of a man with uncontrollable libido (which is normal for men) who has no history of sexual harassment nor rape like our very own Miguel Figueroa, which are common characteristics of bourgeoisie since time immemorial. Chauvinism is a bourgeoisie trait.

[Counterculturalist]

http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p523/jrosenthal2/12045544_1620186478233354_3366552412246180659_o_zp sbua8hliq.jpg (http://s1154.photobucket.com/user/jrosenthal2/media/12045544_1620186478233354_3366552412246180659_o_zp sbua8hliq.jpg.html)


This is living proof of a man with uncontrollable libido (which is normal for men) who has no history of sexual harassment nor rape like our very own Miguel Figueroa, which are common characteristics of bourgeoisie since time immemorial. Chauvinism is a bourgeoisie trait.

Post of the year?

[Zoop]

Post of the year?

Best post to ever grace revleft?

[Invader Zim]

I post one liners because revleft frankly isn't worth the effort seeing as no one here will put forth the effort to try to listen. And once again, as I say literally every time someone accuses me of being a troll, take it up with the mods.

But seriously denying the obvious misogyny of gamergate pretty obviously marks you as a misogynist, I don't really need more proof than that.
QED. You trivialize misogyny to score points on the internet. You are a sad, pitiable human being and I feel sorry for you.

[#FF0000]

I think, before we discuss the specifics of your reply, we need to think about basic questions: What is a 'movement' and does gamergate constitute as one? This is actually a subject I've discussed in some length with colleagues in game studies, and they, like you, often conceive gamergate as being a movement. However, some of the more perceptive recent studies of gamergate have reached the same view that I have -- that it is not a movement according to any coherent definition of the term. Movements have leaders, specific agenda, organisational apparatus, etc. etc.

Well, I don't think political movements are always so organized. Occupy was a "leaderless" movement, with no specific agenda or formal organization, but one could still develop a general understanding of the politics involved. Gamergate, on the other hand, has a little more organization to it than is immediately visible, I think, with most of the organizing having happened in IRC channels where there were a small number of de-facto "leaders".

What it comes down to though is this -- if you go to virtually any gamergate affiliated blog or website, more often than not, you see similar talking points coming up -- complaints about SJWs, feminists, and less often, cultural marxists, etc.

Of course this isn't everyone, and there isn't any one central GamerGate hub, but the gamergate board on 8chan and KotakuInAction are themselves about the closest you can get to such a thing, and you see it wall-to-wall. It's a constant refrain on twitter. It's so prominent that I don't think an honest assessment of gamergate can be made without noting it.

Sort of a quick reply here since I'm really just procrastinating right now but this pretty much sums up my main concerns here. I also think your "gamergate isn't a movement" point is interesting but I don't know if I agree. What would you call it, if not a movement?

[BIXX]

QED. You trivialize misogyny to score points on the internet. You are a sad, pitiable human being and I feel sorry for you.

I'm not the one deflecting to avoid talking about how I'm a misogynist

[Invader Zim]

I'm not the one deflecting to avoid talking about how I'm a misogynist

Deflect what? You haven't provided any evidence to support your assertion. Until you make one, I have no case to answer. It's just you being a dishonest little shit.

Yet the irony is that by making such absurd claims, with no merit to them, just to score points and slap down people on the internet, shows full well that you don't give a damn about misogyny at all. For you, its just a rhetorical weapon. The actual belittling of women, the violence directed against them, their objectification, doesn't matter to you at all -- at least they are not sufficiently to give you pause for thought or a little compunction regarding trivialising such behaviour in a game of one-up-manship on the internet.

[BIXX]

All of that is pretty obviously false- seeing as this isn't just to gain points on the internet but to remove misogyny from a place I frequent that claims go be against it. According to you anyone who points out your misogyny over the net must be just looking for points cause how could anyone possibly suspect you of misogyny, obviously they're just making it up. You're pathetic. If you can't handle people pointing out you're a misogynist when you demonstrate that you are then perhaps you should stop taking misogynistic positions.

[Quail]

http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/p523/jrosenthal2/12045544_1620186478233354_3366552412246180659_o_zp sbua8hliq.jpg (http://s1154.photobucket.com/user/jrosenthal2/media/12045544_1620186478233354_3366552412246180659_o_zp sbua8hliq.jpg.html)


This is living proof of a man with uncontrollable libido (which is normal for men) who has no history of sexual harassment nor rape like our very own Miguel Figueroa, which are common characteristics of bourgeoisie since time immemorial. Chauvinism is a bourgeoisie trait.

I don't know what the hell this post is, but I've left it there because it amused me.

HOWEVER... Please stay on topic. No more content-free posts please.

[BIXX]

To add to what I've already said IZ, given my posting history am I really the kind of person who posted to get points on the internet?

[Art Vandelay]

To add to what I've already said IZ, given my posting history am I really the kind of person who posted to get points on the internet?

I'm not sure, but what is pretty clear, is that if you were actually that concerned about eliminating misogynistic posters from the forum, you would substantiate your claim and highlight examples of IZ's misogyny, so that administrative action could be taken against him. I've seen you make this accusation a couple times now and yet you've never provided any evidence, if my memory serves correct, but rather simply regurgitated your claim over and over.

Now, I don't know if IZ is a misogynist or has made questionable statements, I don't follow his posts all that much. If he has, by all means, you should demonstrate it, as misogyny has no place on revleft. If you are unable or unwilling to do so, then you should absolutely stop with the accusation, as it is of a serious nature.

[Invader Zim]

To add to what I've already said IZ, given my posting history am I really the kind of person who posted to get points on the internet?

Yes. That is all you ever seem to do.


If you can't handle people pointing out you're a misogynist when you demonstrate that you are then perhaps you should stop taking misogynistic positions.

Fine, I'll give you yet another chance to support your claim -- how is stating that gamergate was more complex than the monolithic media depiction, which you have entirely and uncritically accepted, 'misogynistic'?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Insofar as "gamers" are marginalized, I think it's from a perceived failure to live up to gender roles, or the fact that gender roles are only realized by proxy (i.e by characters in the game). Male gamers are viewed as overly effeminate and female gamers are excessively masculine. They aren't working, serving in the army, doing sports, or any of the other activities which our culture validates. They aren't even consuming! However, these stereotypes seem increasingly outdated as more people play video and computer games. We live in a day where sports fans and high rolling professionals have X-Boxes, WoW characters, or even a candy crush addiction. For whatever reason though, the sense that gamers are victimized by this stereotype persists. Of course, to some degree there are negative stereotypes of all subcultures. Sexism and misogyny also persist in many subcultures, too - whether or not they are worse in gaming cannot be shown by one example of online "Activism".

That said, there's nothing intrinsically "oppressed" to being a person who plays or enjoys video games. I think many people were offended that the things they enjoy were coming up for critique, and some lacked the intellectual maturity to consider feminist criticism seriously.


Post of the year?

I lolllled

[PhoenixAsh]

The flight of people playing games is a relatively recent one that started only a few years ago...mostly with the advent of facebook games and smart phones. And while there is some increase of acceptance of playing games there is also still an enormous backlash against people who do so openly from society.

It is also important to note that there is a huge qualified difference between playing a fb game or angry birds and playing PC games and owning a gaming console. As well as a huge difference between people playing games and being a gamer.

And it is not so hard to find literature, studies and news about just how gamers are a marginalised subgroup and have always been under attack.

The fact that this even needs explaining and is downright diminished is frankly astounding but is, frankly, not at all surprising given the fact that this marginalisation has become normalised truth.

You don't have to go that far back either. Just a fee months ago every media outlet once again reinforced the age old stereotype of gamers reinforced by government officials, psychologists and the education system:

- loners
- anti social
- sociopathic tendencies
- not normal
- prone to violence
- psychological problems
- basement dwellers
- sick
- can't distinguish between fantasy and reality
- unhealthy people
- angry at the world fo no reason
- mentally limited

And they did so in the standard sweeping generalisations
And we are not even talking about the superfluous amount of attention the fact that some high school shooter played video games gets....as if that is relevant.

Now....this was in 2015...even with games becoming "more acceptable"

We still have an enormous amount of people who do not want to say whether or not they play games, whether or not they play often and how often they play...and when people do talk about it...They are apologeticly saying "on occasion". They do so because of the negative social connotations and consequences still automatically linked to gaming.

[Rudolf]

And they did so in the standard sweeping generalisations
And we are not even talking about the superfluous amount of attention the fact that some high school shooter played video games gets....as if that is relevant.

I thought you were talking about Marilyn Manson fans for a second there :p




This talk of gamers being marginalised makes me cringe and i say that as someone who could so easily be described as a hardcore gamer.


Tbh, i think what's going on is people are missing the wood for the trees. Is it really that gamers are marginalised or is it that games are focussed on because it's an incredibly common past-time for young people? Go back a little bit in time and this thread would be a discussion of being marginalised for being a black sabbath fan.

I'm confident in the following prediction: in 20 years no one would take any of this talk of gamers being marginalised seriously and instead it will be something else that has captured the attention, imagination and passion of young people.

Pointing to gamers being thought of as loners, basement dwellers etc etc is focussing on surface appearances that are a result of how gaming came to be (i.e. 'the nerds'). Likewise in the past young people were thought of as satan worshippers because of the christian imagery in metal. What remains the same though is utilising things young people like in order to demonise young people.

[Invader Zim]

I thought you were talking about Marilyn Manson fans for a second there :p




This talk of gamers being marginalised makes me cringe and i say that as someone who could so easily be described as a hardcore gamer.


Tbh, i think what's going on is people are missing the wood for the trees. Is it really that gamers are marginalised or is it that games are focussed on because it's an incredibly common past-time for young people? Go back a little bit in time and this thread would be a discussion of being marginalised for being a black sabbath fan.

I'm confident in the following prediction: in 20 years no one would take any of this talk of gamers being marginalised seriously and instead it will be something else that has captured the attention, imagination and passion of young people.

Pointing to gamers being thought of as loners, basement dwellers etc etc is focussing on surface appearances that are a result of how gaming came to be (i.e. 'the nerds'). Likewise in the past young people were thought of as satan worshippers because of the christian imagery in metal. What remains the same though is utilising things young people like in order to demonise young people.

This is all probably true, nobody is saying that cultural marginalisation is not ephemeral or that it is permanent.

[Shinyos]

I'm confident in the following prediction: in 20 years no one would take any of this talk of gamers being marginalised seriously and instead it will be something else that has captured the attention, imagination and passion of young people.


Like mass unemployment and extreme austerity?

The stereotype of gamers being anti social is simply that, a stereotype. I don't really think it is a fair analysis to say that all gamers are not marginalized in some form, however. A generalization of a specific medium doesn't serve as a detailed analysis and it completely misses the point of an accurate, detailed explanation.

[Rudolf]

Like mass unemployment and extreme austerity?

The stereotype of gamers being anti social is simply that, a stereotype. I don't really think it is a fair analysis to say that all gamers are not marginalized in some form, however. A generalization of a specific medium doesn't serve as a detailed analysis and it completely misses the point of an accurate, detailed explanation.


No i mean in the future the marginalisation of young people won't reference video games it will reference the future interests of young people whatever they may be and then, like now, it will be a mistake to regard this as the marginalisation of an interest over the marginalisation of young people.



Moving back to gamergate it seems pretty apparant to me that it's about marginalisation within gaming communities specifically the marginalisation of female gamers. After spending years of trying to make gaming communities more inclusive it kind of saddens me when revolutionaries take the voices of the dominant at face value.

[Sewer Socialist]

You know, I've been a "gamer" for a really long time and nothing bad has ever happened to me for it. I've been assaulted, had countless slurs hurled at me many other times, threatened, severely injured, but always for other reasons; yet, never anything more than a lighthearted joke at my expense for gaming. In fact, gaming with other people pretty much only has a positive effect on my life.

Of course, I could just be one of the lucky few, privileged to live in the gaming-friendly west coast USA, unaware of what happens in other parts of the world. How specifically are gamers oppressed? Unfavorable stereotypes? Is that all?

[#FF0000]

The real question is whether or not Gamers constitute a nation according to Stalin's On The National Question

[BIXX]

I thought you were talking about Marilyn Manson fans for a second there :p




This talk of gamers being marginalised makes me cringe and i say that as someone who could so easily be described as a hardcore gamer.


Tbh, i think what's going on is people are missing the wood for the trees. Is it really that gamers are marginalised or is it that games are focussed on because it's an incredibly common past-time for young people? Go back a little bit in time and this thread would be a discussion of being marginalised for being a black sabbath fan.

I'm confident in the following prediction: in 20 years no one would take any of this talk of gamers being marginalised seriously and instead it will be something else that has captured the attention, imagination and passion of young people.

Pointing to gamers being thought of as loners, basement dwellers etc etc is focussing on surface appearances that are a result of how gaming came to be (i.e. 'the nerds'). Likewise in the past young people were thought of as satan worshippers because of the christian imagery in metal. What remains the same though is utilising things young people like in order to demonise young people.

This is a damn good point. I'm not entirely sure yet if I agree butni think its heading in a direction I can agree with.

[Comrade #138672]

The real question is whether or not Gamers constitute a nation according to Stalin's On The National Question
Stalin's best work.

[Ricemilk]

The thing is, I get that there are people who hate any sort of progressive movement, including feminism, and thus take part in the forever-ongoing harassment campaign against her, but she also seems to be pretty disliked among less loathsome people. On the other hand, I've almost never met any criticism of Anita that isn't clearly motivated by an anti-feminist crusader mentality, complete with ad hominems and everything, or just ridiculous hyperbole.Hi. I think I can provide a counterexample that is representative of my well-liked mutuals on twitter, for example. Anita has a subtle radfem influence that's stronger than any apparent impulse toward liberation that isn't centered on the patriarchy as the root of all oppression. I respect her right to be a radfem but she has described sex workers in demeaning ways that were too close to SWERF language for comfort - I want to say the salient example from her GTA-related material was referring to them as "prostituted", which rather nastily implies that anyone speaking out in favor of their freedom to pursue sex work is a covert agent of patriarchy or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. I can't remember the specifics except of how she reacted to the criticism being presented to her in all gentleness and recognition of her siege-like position: deafening silence. Personally I have had neutral or supportive tweets mentioning her get favorited by her (the term would be "liked" now), at the same time as she was ignoring my own version of the critique in fairly unassuming terms. Basically she's got bad opinions and hides them, which isn't great but is no argument against feminism or feminist media analysis generally. I've enjoyed and learned a lot from her work, myself. I was a fan back when she focused on movies, but I don't think I was the intended audience for the video game series.


P.S: There was this latest shitstorm about her and Zoe Quinn wanting to "censor the Internet" at some UN meeting. This sounds like idiotic sensationalism, but does anyone know what this speech was really about? Non-Gamergate sources are pretty vague and I've yet to find a full transcript.
Count on abusers and apologists to characterize any anti-bullying or anti-stalking measure as censorious, fascistic or whatever. I haven't read the full text myself but gathered that there was nothing especially extreme or new, more of the same left-liberal values and tactics. I feel similarly about Sarkeesian and Quinn in that they have both made valid criticisms of movements where they have non-zero moral authority, they both are worthy of protection by whatever means they desire, and they both are worthy of defense against bad and abusive internet opinions/people... but I have a distaste for their FBI-friendly tactics, can't really take either one in large doses on a personal level, and am glad to keep my political distance now that I've more than said my piece on GG.

Whatever they're advocating, no doubt it is less censorious than the main Democrat line on internet content. To place Quinn or Sarkeesian at the level of global political influence or for that matter isolation required to characterize them as the major salient threat to free speech today requires, i think, a sort of double delusion of grandeur: "I (the vidya reactionary) am an important influence on a major historical moment and movement, so therefore whoever seems most menacing to me must possess incredible power and unsurpassed evil intent."

[Rudolf]

This is a damn good point. I'm not entirely sure yet if I agree butni think its heading in a direction I can agree with.

That's high praise imo.

Yeah i feel something's missing from it. It could do with more research and thought behind it but i'd have to contend with my natural laziness and im no expert on the marginalisation of young people so then that's more work lol.




Hi. I think I can provide a counterexample that is representative of my well-liked mutuals on twitter, for example. Anita has a subtle radfem influence that's stronger than any apparent impulse toward liberation that isn't centered on the patriarchy as the root of all oppression. I respect her right to be a radfem but she has described sex workers in demeaning ways that were too close to SWERF language for comfort - I want to say the salient example from her GTA-related material was referring to them as "prostituted", which rather nastily implies that anyone speaking out in favor of their freedom to pursue sex work is a covert agent of patriarchy or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. I can't remember the specifics except of how she reacted to the criticism being presented to her in all gentleness and recognition of her siege-like position: deafening silence. Personally I have had neutral or supportive tweets mentioning her get favorited by her (the term would be "liked" now), at the same time as she was ignoring my own version of the critique in fairly unassuming terms. Basically she's got bad opinions and hides them, which isn't great but is no argument against feminism or feminist media analysis generally. I've enjoyed and learned a lot from her work, myself. I was a fan back when she focused on movies, but I don't think I was the intended audience for the video game series.

Yeah, that's definitely where a legit critique of Sarkeesian must start.

[Rugged Collectivist]

Upon reading this thread I went back and watched some of her videos again (it's been a while since I saw them last) and after watching a few of them I can confirm that they're awful.

First off, they're boring. She has a somewhat monotone voice (which wouldn't be such an issue if she actually had anything worthwhile to say) and the production values and presentation leave a lot to be desired. It's nowhere near the worst I've seen on YouTube but it's nowhere near the best either. This is inexcusable when you consider how much money she's raised for this project. She's obviously phoning it in, and if it's this obvious that she doesn't care, why should I?

The content isn't much better. Ironically she's deeply misogynistic. Any female character that doesn't conform to her subjective ideal is labelled a sexist stereotype created by men.

She occasionally manages to make a good point, but they're too few and far between to redeem her. She's not nearly as bad as people make her out to be but she's still really bad. The relative awfulness of her critics is no excuse to give her a pass.

[Minty Fresh]

So what I really want to ask from a bunch of people who aren't predisposed against feminism: are there any valid criticisms of her work around the Net?

Not really. There's nothing really "revolutionary" or anything in her videos, but there's nothing really objectionable to them either. Not all that much to say about her show.