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| Cats: Not hardcore gamers. |
When the oft-discussed topic of women and video games pops up on most internet forums, the discussion tends to be fairly predictable: Someone will wonder why women prefer Farmville to Halo. Someone else will point out that they are, in fact, a woman, and that they fucking hate Farmville and love to while away their evenings pwning newbs on Halo Reach. And a third someone will point out that the culture of “hardcore” gaming is still overwhelmingly dude-dominated. And so it goes.
On MGTOWforums.com, the central questions about women and gaming aren’t “what do women want, game-wise” or “is there something about certain types of games that repels women, or do they stay away because it gets really tiresome really quickly to have to listen to 14-year-old boys calling them “cunts” on XboxLive?” No, to the MGTOWers the big question is simpler: Why are women allowed to play video games at all?
Or, as MGTOWforums.com regular AC101202 put in a recent discussion:
Why can't men have their own space? ...
Women, back the fuck off. You stole our TV. You stole our movies. You stole our malls. You stole our clothe shops. You stole our supermarkets Meanwhile the gays are stealing our gyms, our theater, our dance, our music. Video-games is all we have left.
Reacting with horror to the very notion of his favorite shoot-em-up games being somehow made more appealing to women, AC1010202 demands equal attention from the makers of “casual games”:
I don't hear this bitch [note: a commenter on CNET] complaining about the lack of inclusiveness of games like bejeweled to men (I've played bejeweled maybe 10 minutes in my life, fun for about that length of time or when you are sitting on the bus). …
Companies like Zynga want to make casual games to target the hundreds of millions of girls on facebook. Fine! … Why not push to make casual games more "male-friendly", you bitch? Farm-ville and City-ville could use some thought. Those games suck. They are clearly designed for the modern day brainless airhead bimbo with too much time on her hands.
Of course it turns out that even the hunk of manly manhood that is AC101202 has played some of those girly little smart-phone games himself. But, he hastens to add, he was totally l33t about it:
The only casual game I've ever sucked dry was Plants Vs. Zombies. And if you aim to finish everything it becomes really hardcore in the survival levels.
AC101202 then sets forth his theories as to why women and hardcore games don’t mix. Some of them are fairly predictable: men like guns, women don’t; women “lack imagination and creativity, and the drive to complete real challenges.”
Others are a bit more peculiar:
1) Women identify with their gender too much. It seems that taking control of a male avatar is a problem for most of them. They cannot identify. I can identify with almost all avatars today. Male, female, adult, child, alien etc...
2) Females have less interesting personalities in real life, and therefore in fiction. There is a reason fiction involves men going through challenges and being transformed by them. In video games the two female archetypes are: the princess and the "you go grrl". Women in real life have less dimension. They aren't interesting. They bitch or they submit. That's it. And I don't care to hear some loud mouthed bitch barking orders at me through an ear piece. It's unpleasant. If I'm in a war simulator I like hearing men talk. They usually have unique personalities, accents, character traits etc... When female characters do this they come off as pretending to be men and it doesn't work.
He ends with an odd, angry paean to the free market:
Bitches like the one above form groups funded by donations to artificially fuck with the market. Men's money today goes overwhelmingly towards good video-games. Let the market decide what women get. Bitch!
And with that final outburst AC101202 confirms that he conforms to every single last negative stereotype of the angry, sexist male gamer – and then some.
You go, boy!
(Also, he's totally wrong about Bejeweled. I have played the fuck out of that shit for hours.)
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*Yes, that was a Bioshock reference.
Wait, I didn't realize that a single person could confirm a stereotype. Does that mean that all the negative stereotypes about women can be confirmed with a single example too?
ReplyDeleteCommenter Nightstorm says that video games are the last refuge of "us men".
ReplyDeleteSounds distinctly like an evolutionary cul de sac to me.
No, to the MGTOWers the big question is simpler: Why are women allowed to play video games at all?
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent question. But really, why are we "bitches" allowed to do anything that doesn't involve sucking dick or making dinner?
I don't see how female characters having different accents and personalities mean they're "pretending to be men," but I'm sure that's just my dumb ladybrain failing me again.
Cold, editing error on my part. Fixed.
ReplyDeleteWomen make up 40% of console gamers (ESA, Nielsan, and other major sources on this present comparable data). Which means that women are a higher percentage of gamers than congresspeople, university professors, CEOs, and many other professions. If video games are the last "bastion of manliness", they have lost that war. Shoot, if we assume that at least part of the male gamers are manginas like David, then "free market" dictates all games be directed towards women. Hear, hear!
ReplyDeleteThanks for fixing it.
ReplyDeleteFWIW I have no problem with women playing video games as long as they express any objections they have to the content of games the mature way by not buying said game instead of demanding that games be censored or banned. The Phoenix Wright cosplay events I attend would also be kind of weird if it was all men and the female characters had to be played by guys in drag.
Hilarious. "God, all these women invading our spaces! We didn't build civilization for them!"
ReplyDeleteWait, supermarkets used to be men only? And women started going there, so men couldn't? The things MRAs teach me! Thanks, MRA dudez!
ReplyDeleteFWIW I have no problem with women playing video games as long as they express any objections they have to the content of games the mature way by not buying said game instead of demanding that games be censored or banned.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't a woman thing. As you probably know, one of the most vocal proponents for video game censorship is (or perhaps was) Jack Thompson.
FWIW I have no problem with women playing video games
ReplyDeletegosh, Cold, that's so magnanimous of you. if only more men could be so open to women doing man things as long as we behave appropriately!
meanwhile, i bet our friend AC101202 has appeared (or will appear!) at Fat, Ugly or Slutty.
There is a difference between censorship and expressing a negative opinion/asking someone not to do something. Censorship involves an authority in power prohibiting something (the FCC, for example), not a consumer complaining on their blog. So, if I complain that GTA is sexist, that is not censorship. If I were to write a letter to the company telling them I was no longer buying their products because of it, that would not be censorship either. Now, trying to pass a law to ban certain games, that would be an attempt to censor. There has, in fact, been scarcely little of that, and basically none from women gamers. I can think of one big issue of intentional censorship by console makers which truly occured. The big console makers in the US used to prohibit games on the US market on their consoles from having queer sexuality or openly queer characters. A number of characters who were queer or trans in the original Japanese games were made cis heteros for the American market. When Sony and Nintendo ban sexism or violence from their game on their systems, you can get back to me on this one, cold.
ReplyDeleteNow, trying to pass a law to ban certain games, that would be an attempt to censor. There has, in fact, been scarcely little of that, and basically none from women gamers.
ReplyDeleteThere was this big brouhaha back in 2009. Some idiot tried selling pirated and badly translated copies of a very dumb Japanese game on Amazon Marketplace, and feminist groups went ballistic. They couldn't even be bothered to do any research and initially claimed that Amazon itself was directly selling the game. Then they pushed for the game to be banned in Japan itself, which caused a Streisand effect and resulted in the online torrent for the game getting thousands of seeders and tens of thousands of downloads.
Granted that Equality Now isn't an organization of female gamers, but there were a lot of female gamers supporting their actions. In fairness, there were also a few who opposed that censorship and even a few who admitted to playing and enjoying the game, but they were the minority.
The big console makers in the US used to prohibit games on the US market on their consoles from having queer sexuality or openly queer characters. A number of characters who were queer or trans in the original Japanese games were made cis heteros for the American market.
If you're referring to Nintendo of America's pre-1995 censorship policies, that applied to sexuality of all sorts, not just homosexuality. As for Sony, I distinctly remember an obviously gay character named Mukki in Final Fantasy 7, and the PlayStation had only been out for 2 years when that game was released.
A number of characters who were queer or trans in the original Japanese games were made cis heteros for the American market.
ReplyDeleteAh, poor Birdo. He couldn't be himself when he came to America. :(
This isn't technically censorship, but I found Bioware's approach to sexuality offensive, but I respect them a lot more now because they actually did something about it. In Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, the PC had two romance options - one always depended on the gender of the PC (the love interest would be the opposite gender), and the other was always a woman. So basically your options were a straight relationship, or a lesbian one. The blatant pandering to the young male demographic is terrible. I mean it would be good to have a lesbian romance option, except that they deliberately left out a gay male option, so clearly they only put the lesbian option in there because their target demographic would find it hot.
That bothered me about BioWare, but in Jade Empire and Dragon Age, they allow for hetero relationships, gay male relationships, and gay female relationships. I was glad they finally addressed the heteronormativity in their games without implying that lesbians only exist to give dudes boners.
gosh, Cold, that's so magnanimous of you. if only more men could be so open to women doing man things as long as we behave appropriately!
ReplyDeleteYes, because asking you to simply not buy titles you don't like instead of petitioning to have them banned/censored/restricted is such a tall order. I ask the same of men, but in my experience male gamers are already extremely anti-censorship and men in general are less likely to try to silence ideas they don't like. The blogosphere alone is ample proof of that.
Speaking as a developer of console game titles, I suspect ACnumber might be horrified by the number of women actually working on action titles. And no, not just in the art discipline but in code and gameplay design.
ReplyDeleteWell I'd have to agree that the petition is a little dumb. Wouldn't it make more sense to petition Gearbox to remove the ass-slapping from the game? Not that I'd expect such a petition to work, but it at least points the finger at the ones responsible instead of asking retailers to police our purchasing choices for us, which is a notion I've long been opposed to.
ReplyDeleteand men in general are less likely to try to silence ideas they don't like
Not that any of the above gets you off the hook for making monumentally disingenuous statements like this.
Cold-I am fairly sure that the reason they fought to get it banned had to do with the fact that it lets the player rape a little girl, her sister and mother repeatedly, force them to get abortions and otherwise do incredibly disgusting violations. Source
ReplyDeleteYou know. most people would say that 2 examples in two years would count as scarcely any.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yeah, what Elizabeth said. Also, the Duke Nukem capture-the-babe-and-slap-her deal is pretty bad. I suspect that putting that in there was partly a publicity stunt on the part of the game makers. Offend women and sell games! Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOffend women and sell games! Wonderful.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Duke Nukem is supposed to be a paragon of masculinity, and unfortunately in our culture that means that if it makes those nagging women scold you, it must be DOUBLY manly!
I mean the defenses of the Captube the Babe tripe are predictable - it's all in fun, it's just a gentle slap on the ass, it's a joke, etc. But they're disingenuous. When you put this in the context of the way that video games so often portray women, it's not a step in the right direction at all. There are already plenty of games where the PC is supposed to escort a female character and protect her. In many cases (not all, but many) she's completely useless and incapable of protecting herself. Resident Evil 4 is a major example. So now, let's just not even bother escorting her! Let's just hoist her over our shoulder and carry her, and if she protests, smack her on the ass to remind her where her value lies!
So yes, it's offensive and sexist. Should it be banned? No. Does it reflect incredibly poorly on Gearbox? Yes.
This actually popped up in the blogosphere the other day - a poster on the BioWare forum was bitching that Dragon Age 2 had neglected the Straight Male Gamer by writing in romances for women and non-heteronormative players. David Gaider, the lead writer for the Dragon Age franchise, actually got on the forum and told the Straight Male Gamer to STFU and that the way to cater to one demographic is not by taking choices away from others.
ReplyDeleteDavid Gaider is my new hero, you can read about it here: http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/
And since when are video games 'men's domain?' When did all the stores selling men's shoes and clothing disappear from the malls? When did men start being prevented from buying groceries? Women are half the population, and sharia law hasn't taken effect yet to sequester us away - we have as much right to enjoy movies and video games as any man does.
If a woman is playing and enjoying Halo or Duke Nukem, that doesn't reduce a man's ability to enjoy the game. And if it does, somehow, the problem is with the man, not the woman. If you don't like CityVille or FarmVille or Bejeweled, just do what I do - don't play them, and block Zynga updates on your Facebook feed. It's not up to a few men to summarily declare that women (or anyone) aren't allowed to have fun with FarmVille. It's not like these games were planned with 'Annoy these guys' in mind.
Also, in Dragon Age: Origins, I thought that Wynne, Shale, Leilianna and Morrigan were way more interesting and well developed than, say, Sten.
I personally happen to despise farmville, so I don't play it. I also don't like video games at all. In fact there are certain games which I find abhorrant (there is one for the wii that has the player strangle people to death and since it's the wii you are actually having to make the strangling movement, that frightens me) I am not however asking for these games to be banned, but I will write to the producers of games like this and express my displeasure with their entire team for coming up with something so awful.
ReplyDelete@cold, the link you give is a signature list asking walmart not to sell certain games, not a petition to change the law. People have a right to ask the businesses at which they shop not to carry certain things. If you do not like the selection at Walmart (which is notorious, btw, for only selling edited music), you should shop elsewhere, under your own logic. Also, if you think Walmart has less social power than change.org, please share your excellent drugs with the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteand another textbook formulaic post from manboobz.
ReplyDeletestep 1
quote mine for hours on MRA forums
step 2
find a few quotes that touch on an issue that easily lends itself to your bland and redundant attempts at anti-misogynist sarcasm.
step 3
saturate your post with enough circle talking "humor" so that the actual issue at hand is never actually addressed, whilst ensuring the mindless drones in your echo chamber of a blog get to co-sign you ad infinitum
the result. you attempt to make fun of those that would imply that men are better suited towards mastering complex highly competitive video games, such as halo reach, without ever actually confronting the reality that the best gamers, the ones with the most ability and talent are and always have been men.
just more patriarchy in action i guess
I like that the guy's complaint #1 is that women "identify with their own gender too much," and his complaint #2 is that he's only comfortable when completely surrounded with players and characters of his own gender, to the point that even hearing a female voice ruins the whole game for him.
ReplyDeleteAlso:
They bitch or they submit.
There it is, the distilled essence of every MRA/MGTOW post ever made. You can shut Manboobz down now.
Bar
ReplyDeleteKeep posting and hopefully you'll get some of that much needed attention. I understand that you are working really hard at being fringe hard-core, hope it pays off for you!
They bitch or they submit.
ReplyDeleteFortunately all it takes to make them stop bitching and start submitting is a gentle slap on the ass. I learn all my life lessons from Duke Nukem.
sure Kave ill keep trying to be "fringe hard core" whatever that stupidity was meant to imply.
ReplyDeleteas for manboobz...
keep tracking down the "misogyny" you gin up out of thin air. the mens movement is growing day by day, the word feminist is now a dirty word, and even women themselves are shying away from the moniker.
the village idiot futrelle will surely attribute this fact to misogyny, as will the rest of you brainless parakeet mimes. But it is in fact misandry that is fueling the rapid growth and proliferation of the MRM.
the very "misogyny" that fuels and sustains this unoriginal cookie cutter repository, is Dependant on the fact that we (MRA's) are unrestrained by the forces of political correctness unlike futrelle here. does this mean manboobz will be able to scour MRA blogs and find his little dollops of misogyny, sure.
we however do not cower at the censorship that dictates to manboobz exactly what he can and cant say, (yes we saw how you folded like a bitch at the mere accusation of ableism)
the last thing futrelle wants is to be painted with the same brush as the MRA's whos legitimate grievances he so vehemently deflects and avoids with his umm "humor"
feministe to manboobz:
stay in your place little boy, we set the parameters here
manboobz: my apologies i was only paraphrasing, please allow me to save face...lets talk about meesogynee on the spearhead.
lol.. quite interesting to watch futrelle cowtow
People took issue with what he said, and he apologized for it. That's what peeople who aren't assholes do. Or would it have been more appropriately manly of him to tell those who criticized his word choice to fuck off?
ReplyDeleteThe reason you're characterizing the discussion the way you are is because, like pretty much all misogynists, you view every human interaction as a power struggle. Those of us who are less childish than that can respect somebody while still criticizing his or her flaws, and the person criticized can acknowledge those flaws. Trying to act all alpha-wolf about it and sticking stubbornly to what he said the first time would just be puerile.
Oh, please, Bar. Just. Please. "Folded like a bitch"? Do you understand that this reaction is why everyone else thinks MRA members are misandrists *and* misogynists? The members at Feministe were calling out the members of their own feminist community on the offensive, ableist language many of them were using. David acknowledged that one (paraphrased) comment he used was unacceptable. Other posters who had used words like "r#tarded" uncritically apologized for these comments, too. That's what adults do. When you say that this behavior is something that only women or "manginas" do, you're saying something very bad about what you think of men.
ReplyDeleteFolks like Bar think being callous and unapologetic makes them more manly or some crap. In their eyes, to be strong you must make light of the suffering of others, not empathize with them. Compassion is weakness, as is anything they identify as being "feminine". They embrace their own inner weakness and identify it as strength. Pretty pathetic really.
ReplyDeleteCold-I am fairly sure that the reason they fought to get it banned had to do with the fact that it lets the player rape a little girl, her sister and mother repeatedly, force them to get abortions and otherwise do incredibly disgusting violations.
ReplyDeleteI know what the game is about; I'm acquainted with some of the people behind the cracked, poorly translated English release. It's a phenomenally stupid game but it's still just a game and is unable to hurt anyone. Most men deal with media they don't like by simply not buying it, but obviously that's not good enough for feminists.
While the idiotic campaign got the game banned in Japan(the only country where it was ever legally available for sale) it also caused that cracked and badly translated torrent to go from less than 100 seeds to several thousand seeds for several months as tens of thousands of people downloaded and played the game. Membership on the forum run by the release team exploded, and previously apolitical members became MRAs almost overnight. A Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one.
You know. most people would say that 2 examples in two years would count as scarcely any.
ReplyDeleteWell in that case there are scarcely any nuclear disasters. At any rate, it's two more examples than have been provided of men demanding that a game be banned or censored.
Also, the Duke Nukem capture-the-babe-and-slap-her deal is pretty bad. I suspect that putting that in there was partly a publicity stunt on the part of the game makers. Offend women and sell games! Wonderful.
Those of us who have actually played previous Duke Nukem games know that this is part and parcel with the franchise. I don't demand that things which offend me be banned or censored or not stocked at major retailers, and it's not a tall order for others to do the same.
@cold, the link you give is a signature list asking walmart not to sell certain games, not a petition to change the law.
ReplyDeleteIf you actually read the link you would have seen this:
If Mr. Pritchford thinks violence against women will boost his bottom line, let's show him otherwise. Walmart is set to be one of the primary sellers of the Duke Nukem game when it is released on June 14th. Tell this family friendly retailer to refuse to sell the Duke Nukem Forever game until the "babe-slapping mode" is removed.
Notice that the end goal is to get the game censored through the application of financial pressure.
Not that any of the above gets you off the hook for making monumentally disingenuous statements like this.
ReplyDeleteA random sampling of male and female-run blogs will make it pretty clear which gender is more likely to tolerate and rebut dissenting opinions and which one is more likely to delete and ban.
At any rate, it's two more examples than have been provided of men demanding that a game be banned or censored.
ReplyDeleteWell, no it's not. I already mentioned Jack Thompson, who waged an intense war on any video game that violated his sensibilities, demanding that they be banned. He continues to wage those wars even though he's been disbarred and nobody pays attention to him anymore. And he's not, by any appearances, a woman or a feminist.
I think calls for censorship are misguided, but the only time you're likely to notice them is when people organize around a certain issue. And feminists tend to organize around gender a lot more than men. MRAs are too busy circlejerking to accomplish anything, even a simple online petition.
More to the point, because we live in a patriarchy, men are less likely to encounter media that offends them than women are. Most media is geared toward men, after all.
But when men are offended by something, they're about as likely as women to try to censor it. Like I said, calls for censorship that actually gain public notice tend to come from organizations. Look for religious organizations full of men wanting to ban pornography, and you know what you'll find? That they exist.
I remember posting a video once where I complained about token females in games and tv shows. As a little kid I liked a lot of the same things my brother liked, but hated how there was always the token boring female character (April, Arcee, whomever) that I was "supposed to" identify with. Same with video games. Until they figured out that guys like tits in their games and put in a million chicks, it was the Valkyrie or Chun Li or Sonya ... the ONE girl in the game. And in cases like the Valkyrie, she was a pretty shitty character (I ended up switching to the Elf after a while, when I realized even with my 6 or 7-year-old brain that the Valkyrie ... really sucked).
ReplyDeleteSo I was complaining about how I hated being forced to identify with this ONE female character, and how that can still be a problem today. One female or no females at all.
Enter the Clueless Guy.
Clueless Guy thinks he's agreeing with me. "Yeah!" he says sincerely. "It's so sexist of them! I mean, how dare they assume women can't relate to a male character!"
Wtf. I think by now we've all heard the Chicken Little story, about how the character would have been a girl but little boys won't relate to a girl. And so every time one of these darn animation companies puts out a film, the main character is always a boy. Boy boy boy boy boy. With the token female love interest, usually. Because they think a boy won't relate to or be interested in a female character, and yet women and girls are expected to relate to and be interested in male characters.
It's stupid. Miyazaki hasn't made bajillions of dollars off of little boy heroes, and Ryu is way overshadowed by Chun Li in popularity, at least the way I see it. (Granted it's because they want to screw her, but my point is that a girl character can be popular among guys.) Your cocks won't fall off if there are a handful of competent female characters who aren't sex kittens or stereotypes.
God forbid I get to play someone who has the same genitals as I do and who doesn't suck as a character. God forbid you give a little girl a role model in a game so she will be compelled to play something other than Barbie Goes Shopping or Nitzy's Pet Parade.
The free market will keep games manly? Good luck with that. Last I checked, the free market had noticed that some ungodly percentage of WoW players never played into the levels that required things like joining guilds, specifically because of all the manly man trash talk like the kind you see on Fat Ugly or Slutty.* The free market is sad because that's just so many people who aren't getting really hooked on the game.
ReplyDelete*Is it just me, or are the submissions that get posted on FUS kind of mild? I'm sure there are whole new levels of crazy they don't post for whatever reason, although I think they have an explicit "no penis shot" policy.
Cold, once the game is taken off the shelf and the publicity dies down, no one will be playing the game. And what kind of person thinks it is his right to play a game that lets him rape a little kid to the point of adding it to the list of things to be an activist on for the men's movement? How will that type of activism help with a man's chance to get access to his children when he tries to organize something that will allow him to play a game that lets him rape a little girl? Or is associated with such a movement? You think a judge will ignore the fact the father is demanding the right to play that kind of game or do you think the judge will be inclined to order supervised visits or sever parental rights completely?
ReplyDeleteThat game is not a GTA game that had some disturbing things in it but was clearly about adults...it is a game that lets you rape a little girl. Not a game where you rape an adult woman, which would be bad enough but a child. And to become a MRA because women (and not a few men/fathers) wanted to ban it? That means you do not have the sense to see why playing a game where you rape a kid is bad.
Well, no it's not. I already mentioned Jack Thompson, who waged an intense war on any video game that violated his sensibilities, demanding that they be banned.
ReplyDeleteJack Thompson is a man(singular), not men(plural). You can always find nutty individuals doing nutty things, but when a large group of people start doing something it is a much greater cause for concern. I have provided two examples in which a significant number of women worked, as a group, to censor or ban a game, and so far zero examples of men doing this have been presented.
Look for religious organizations full of men wanting to ban pornography, and you know what you'll find? That they exist.
In my experience those organizations are at least 50% female. The vast, vast majority of censorship I have encountered in my life was done by, or at the urging of, women.
Cold, once the game is taken off the shelf and the publicity dies down, no one will be playing the game.
ReplyDeleteOh, so the retro gaming community is just a figment of my imagination? DOSBox is used exclusively for running ancient productivity software? Out-of-print games on Ebay never get any bids?
Seriously, can't you do ANY research before you make a claim like that? Incidentally there's an old Japanese rape game from the early 90s called Isaku which continues to be a healthy torrent and has developed quite a cult following. The object of the game is to save girls from being raped by the school janitor but most players deliberately let it happen so they can watch the rape scenes.
And what kind of person thinks it is his right to play a game that lets him rape a little kid to the point of adding it to the list of things to be an activist on for the men's movement?
Someone who actually read their country's constitution? Btw, I love how you gendered that question, as if not a single female played that game. I know for a fact that several women did play it and at least one woman(bunnygirl) helped with the English release. The voices of the women were done by female voice actors.
How will that type of activism help with a man's chance to get access to his children when he tries to organize something that will allow him to play a game that lets him rape a little girl? Or is associated with such a movement?
People who are not feminists or manginas tend to have this thing called "intelligence". Using that intelligence, they carefully consider whether they should post on a particular board under their real name, or whether they should use an alias. All the members of that particular board are smart enough to post under an alias and are therefore not affected in their real lives.
The ones who became MRAs did so after the banning campaign opened their eyes to the problem of femifascism. Many people don't start to care about political issues until they are directly affected by them, and feminist censorship is no exception.
You think a judge will ignore the fact the father is demanding the right to play that kind of game or do you think the judge will be inclined to order supervised visits or sever parental rights completely?
Any judge who would be prejudiced by someone being in favor of freedom of expression ought to be permanently removed.
That game is not a GTA game that had some disturbing things in it but was clearly about adults...it is a game that lets you rape a little girl. Not a game where you rape an adult woman, which would be bad enough but a child.
So what? Committing virtual auto theft and virtual murder is just fine but a special line has to be drawn at rape? Isn't murder a more serious crime than rape, even rape of an underage victim? You DO realize that it's just pixels, right? That there are no real women getting raped in the game and that nobody was hurt in the production of the game?
And to become a MRA because women (and not a few men/fathers) wanted to ban it? That means you do not have the sense to see why playing a game where you rape a kid is bad.
You clearly don't have the sense to see that just because YOU think something is bad doesn't make it objectively so. I think playing such a game is incredibly stupid but I don't have the arrogance to think that my personal preferences are some kind of objective measure.
The members who turned into MRAs included ones who, like me, considered the game to be incredibly stupid. For them it wasn't the game that was in question; it was for the freedom of expression.
Wow, Cold, I love Phoenix Wright too! Who do you cosplay as? There are lots of female characters but my favourite is Klavier Gavin obviously :D
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about Rapelay. As Cold points out, only animation is involved. I'd just steer clear of someone, male or female, who chooses entertainment where you, the protaganist, rape a little girl. Same as I avoid people who read the Daily Mail.
Anyway, if this guy wants the free market to do it's stuff then he'll have to accept people trying to make games for, er, half of the population. Sorry bud, that's capitalism.
Here's a link to some MRAs complaining about anti-male violence in a computer game. As I understand it, the game allows you to shoot street harassers, so doesn't count as anti-male unless you think "male" and "harasser" are synonymous, a view shared by imaginary feminazis and real MRAs. Still, it shows that men can and do get upset about fictional violence.
ReplyDeletehttp://antimisandry.com/feminist-misandry/hey-baby-latest-misandrist-computer-game-31040.html
I know what the game is about; I'm acquainted with some of the people behind the cracked, poorly translated English release. It's a phenomenally stupid game but it's still just a game and is unable to hurt anyone.
ReplyDeleteLet's see: a rape simulation game is unable to hurt anyone? You are upset that people might have complaints about it and want it removed from sale? This is somehow a demonstration that feminism has gone beyond The Pale?
More revealingly, people on this rape game's forum (including yourself, it seems) have become MRAs as a consequence of the backlash against it?
Do I have that right?
So as I understand it your defence of this piece of child pornography is a defence of freedom of expression. And that somehow this is a backlash against 'femi-fascism' (rather than, say, common decency).
Speaking as a parent and as a games developer, I think you have your priorities wrong, Cold. You may wish to reconsider your position.
You DO realize that it's just pixels, right? That there are no real women getting raped in the game and that nobody was hurt in the production of the game?
ReplyDeleteYou may wish to study those parts of the US and UK laws on child pornography that take a dim view of all forms of child porn, and not just those that involve actual children. You and your like-minded MRA chums might want to agitate to overturn that legislation before you take a stance on those who complain about the game.
I'd be interested to see how much public (and male) support you get for that.
Percy, I'm not sure how common this is for MRAs in general, but I know a few MRAs who do. The antifeminist, on our host's "boob roll" wants to end all anti-pornography laws, including those against child porn. In his view, child pornography (at least the virtual/drawn sort) is something that will keep the freaks and sickos occupied in their basements and keep them from harming any real children.
ReplyDeleteIt's a reasonable argument, I think--as unpalatable as virtual rape games like Rapelay may be, if they can prevent actual women and children from being raped (since the losers who play them will be too busy sitting in front of their computer screen to do any actual harm), I don't see any reason they should be B&. The question is, though, whether or they actually do...
Sorry, just can't let Cold's claim that men don't try to get video games "banned/censored/restricted" slide.
ReplyDeleteHere are some groups which have enacted -- not just advocated, enacted -- bans or restrictions on violent videogames in the last decade:
The government of the state of California.
The Army and Airforce Exchange Service.
Somalian Islamic extremists.
The British Board of Film Classification.
The Venezuelan national parliament.
None of these bodies are female-dominated, none of them were responding specifically to misogynist games, and none of them were acting on the basis of feminist pressure.
And each of them actually imposed a ban through government mechanisms, rather than exerting market pressure to influence companies' decision-making.
thevagrantsvoice, the argument you're presenting seems to come from the idea that men (or at least, certain men) are programmed to rape, that they will rape whether we like it or not, so the only thing we can do about it is give them virtual people to rape rather than real ones.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that at all. And the arguments saying that playing video games depicting these certain acts of violence will prevent people from being violent in real life, it's almost like saying that watching anime or reading manga will keep you from writing fanfiction about the series you watch or read. Sure, during that time you are watching or reading, you're not writing fanfiction, but if you want to write fanfiction about it, you'll write fanfiction about it.
Cold-
ReplyDeleteYou are totally not getting what censorship is and isn't.
A game comes out. The Government bans it and makes it illegal to sell the game. This is censorship. Note: not all censorship is unconstitutional. The First Amendment call for free speech has limits. Examples of censorship include the Pentagon Papers case. Government gets an injunction saying that newspapers can't release info from the leaked Pentagon Papers because of national security.
Now, compare it to your example. A game comes out. Individuals join together to utilize their free speech rights to get other people to not sell the game. They say they'll boycott stores that sell the game. They say they will not be friends with people who buy it. Whatever. The point is that it is private people behind it, not the government. This is not censorship.
THIS IS NOT CENSORSHIP.
It is actually the point of having free speech. In our country we keep the government from getting involved in these things not because we think that people have a right to go around talking shit. It's because we believe that in the marketplace of ideas the best ideas will win out as the bad ones are shouted down. This is actually the point. Read The Federalist 10 for an example of how this is supposed to work.
Censoship: Government is behind the banning.
Not Censorship: Individuals are behind it.
People getting together and starting petitions and boycotts are democracy and free speech in action.
This article on Vaginaphobia: The Fear of Women in Gaming on the escapist seems apt
ReplyDelete". . .[T]his fantasy of being under constant siege by a multitude of external feminizing forces is really an unconscious defense that is employed to keep out of mind something even more disturbing - an identification with women."
Amnesia, that may be true. Like I said in my comment, while Antifeminist and folks like him may believe porn and CP reduce the incidences of these bad things IRL, I'm not actually sure they really do, I'd have to do some more research before coming to a conclusion (for instance, is there a correlation between porn use and rape in a given population? If so, whether it's positive or negative, is there research proving a causative relationship?), but I'm just saying the argument isn't unreasonable in and of itself, and some MRAs have made it.
ReplyDeleteI'm just saying the argument isn't unreasonable in and of itself, and some MRAs have made it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, you will understand there is considerable public opposition to the normalising of child pornography in any form, and that opposition straddles the gender divide. It is not gender specific. I also think you will find it hard to convince many people, men and women, left and right, of the reasonableness of that argument.
Percyprune makes a good point. However, I want to point out that porn and violence is often oversimplified. It is a feedback loop, not a one way causation. People who are violent are more likely to seek out violent media, and violenct media only tends to increase violence wherein such violence is somewhat related to existing cultural norms. Someone who has problematic ideas about rape is more likely to be encouraged by rape porn, whereas someone who does not have these problematic ideas already probably will not be. "is there a correlation between porn use and rape in a given population" Yes. Increased porn use is positively correlated with increased sexual violence perpetration in men in the US. Those results hold fairly consistant study to study, though it is not a neat bell curve. At the lower use end, the curve is very slow, at the higher use end, it is extremely steep. While correlation does not prove causation, it is hard to make the argument that porn use reduces violence.
ReplyDeletePercy,
ReplyDeleteTrue enough. I was just pointing out that in reference to your statement "you and your MRA chums should agitate for to overturn that legislation," some have. Still, as you said, it's likely they face an uphill battle. Now, I *definitely* don't have a personal stake in that debate, child porn grosses me the hell out. However, if what DarkSideCat mentioned is true, perhaps porn use does have negative externalities IRL. However, I would have to look at the studies myself to verify and see for myself before coming to a conclusion. I can do that myself, though, so please don't feel obligated to if you're busy ATM or whatever. In any case, thanks for your responses.
Censoship: Government is behind the banning.
ReplyDeleteNot Censorship: Individuals are behind it.
Wow, I never thought I would see this argument made outside of an Objectivist board. One of their favorite tactics is to censor opposing views and then claim that it's not censorship because they are not the government, while completely ignoring the fact that language is a social convention and the conventional understanding of the word "censorship" is not restricted to the government. If it were, then there would be a separate word used to describe the act of a private individual or group suppressing information or expression.
Cold just cannot bring himself to say that portraying the rape of a kid in a game is bad, as long as it's a female child being raped. But what he calls censorship----having his unique views of those bitches 'censored' OMG-----that gets him pissed.
ReplyDeleteUNITED STATES v. WHORLEY kills your argument Cold on it being a mere factor of free speech that a family judge cannot consider when determining if he or she should ban a parent from being around their kid when they play such a game.
ReplyDeleteAnd by being around their kid-I mean in general not just when they are playing that on their computer.
ReplyDeleteLet's see: a rape simulation game is unable to hurt anyone? You are upset that people might have complaints about it and want it removed from sale? This is somehow a demonstration that feminism has gone beyond The Pale?
ReplyDeleteThat's right, it's unable to hurt anyone. If you play a flight sim and use it re-enact 9/11, how many real people die? Hint: it's the same as the number of real people who get raped in a rape sim. I have no interest in playing such a game but I have the foresight to realize that banning it sets the stage for games that I do want to play to eventually get banned as well. I also take a dim view of censorship as a matter of principle.
Feminism went "beyond The Pale" a long time ago; a feminist group imposing themselves on another culture over a stupid computer game is but one example of their intolerance and moral absolutism.
More revealingly, people on this rape game's forum (including yourself, it seems) have become MRAs as a consequence of the backlash against it?
I became an MRA long before this incident. The forum in question isn't dedicated to that one game; it is home to a release team responsible for many games. The cultural imperialism of Equality Now resulted in an explosion of anti-feminist threads and a massive anti-feminist awakening among other members, many of whom shared my view of that game being incredibly stupid. Some even felt it was downright offensive but were still far more offended by Equality Now's campaign.
I realize that moral absolutists have a hard time comprehending a "live and let live" mindset but that is the mindset that predominates in some communities.
So as I understand it your defence of this piece of child pornography is a defence of freedom of expression.
Is calling a game "incredibly stupid" a defense now? You have it backwards; my defense of freedom of expression happens to cover things that I find incredibly stupid or even downright offensive as long as no actual person is harmed. Fictional cartoon characters are not actual people. I am vehemently opposed to any pornography that was not produced entirely by consenting adults, but I have seen no evidence that any of the animators, programmers, or voice actors fell short of that description. In fact, as far as I can tell none of the fictional characters in that game have an official age and all three rape victims are old enough to get pregnant.
And that somehow this is a backlash against 'femi-fascism' (rather than, say, common decency).
Common decency is to not concern yourself over what other people do in the privacy of their own homes as long as they aren't harming anyone else. There is nothing decent about banning a game that harms nobody. It's also a futile effort; the Internet regards censorship as damage and routes around it. You might as well try to boil the ocean, freeze the sun, or prove the existence of absolute moral facts.
Speaking as a parent and as a games developer, I think you have your priorities wrong, Cold. You may wish to reconsider your position.
Just because my priorities aren't what you want them to be doesn't mean they are wrong. You may want to reconsider your implied premise that you are some kind of moral authority.
UNITED STATES v. WHORLEY kills your argument Cold on it being a mere factor of free speech that a family judge cannot consider when determining if he or she should ban a parent from being around their kid when they play such a game.
ReplyDeleteWork on your reading comprehension.
While correlation does not prove causation, it is hard to make the argument that porn use reduces violence.
ReplyDeleteIt's even harder to make the argument that it increases violence, since if that were true Japan would have one of the highest rates of violent crime and sex crime in the world instead of one of the lowest.
Cold just cannot bring himself to say that portraying the rape of a kid in a game is bad, as long as it's a female child being raped. But what he calls censorship----having his unique views of those bitches 'censored' OMG-----that gets him pissed.
ReplyDeleteLOL Ginmar, I was wondering when you would find your way here. Yeah unlike you I'm not a moral absolutist and realize that it's up to individuals to make their own decisions about what is good and bad, and yes I realize you still find that to be mind-boggling. I see you haven't quit with the strawman arguments either.
Here are some groups which have enacted -- not just advocated, enacted -- bans or restrictions on violent videogames in the last decade:
ReplyDeleteThe government of the state of California.
The Army and Airforce Exchange Service.
Somalian Islamic extremists.
The British Board of Film Classification.
The Venezuelan national parliament.
An government elected by voters who are at least 50% female is not "male-dominated". I'll accept that Islamic extremeists are probably male-dominated but that's obviously outside the implied scope of my assertion.
Here's a link to some MRAs complaining about anti-male violence in a computer game.
ReplyDeleteAgain, reading comprehension. Those MRAs didn't say anything about organizing a campaign to ban the game.
You may wish to study those parts of the US and UK laws on child pornography that take a dim view of all forms of child porn, and not just those that involve actual
ReplyDeletechildren.
Anyone who defines child porn, for legal purposes, as meaning anything other than porn whose production involves the exploitation of real, flesh-and-blood children has an ulterior motive.
You and your like-minded MRA chums might want to agitate to overturn that legislation before you take a stance on those who complain about the game.
The game was only ever legally available for sale in Japan, where such legislation does not exist. Japanese people demonstrate higher intelligence and the ability to
understand the difference between a real, flesh-and-blood child and a cartoon.
I'd be interested to see how much public (and male) support you get for that.
What is this, the intersection of feminism and conservative populism?
"It's even harder to make the argument that it increases violence, since if that were true Japan would have one of the highest rates of violent crime and sex crime in the world instead of one of the lowest."
ReplyDeleteLaughing out loud at this. Someone needs a reality check.
Rape is one of the most under reported crimes there is, especially in Japan where the victim will be blamed and shamed for speaking out and causing a fuss. This has only recently started to change and, surprise surprise, reported rape cases have spiked since 2000. Ignoring rape, it's still common knowledge that Japan is not the place to go if you don't want to get molested on the subway. They have to have female only cars to prevent these molestations for Christ's sake. I'd call that a serious cultural problem.
@Cold, did you notice that my argument was not that porn increases violence per se, but that porn can reinforce and exacerbate already existing social and individual problems with violence? The evidence does not really support either of these propositions "increased porn causes decreased violence rates" or "increased porn use causes increased violence rates" is true in an absolute sense. There are a lot of third variables here. The same piece of porn can carry different meaning and encourage different behaviors in different cultures. A porn that implies the victim is a tease has less reinforcing value in a culture that does not hold that this is an acceptable/excusable rape than in one that does. This issue is not as simple as porn does/does not increase violence.
ReplyDeleteRape is one of the most under reported crimes there is, especially in Japan where the victim will be blamed and shamed for speaking out and causing a fuss.
ReplyDeleteFalsely claiming to have been raped is one of the most under-reported crimes there is. I have as much evidence of this as you do of the claim above.
Ignoring rape, it's still common knowledge that Japan is not the place to go if you don't want to get molested on the subway.
It's common knowledge that Japan is not the place to go if you don't want to get falsely accused of molesting someone on the subway.
@Cold, did you notice that my argument was not that porn increases violence per se, but that porn can reinforce and exacerbate already existing social and individual problems with violence?
ReplyDeleteYes, that's why I spoke of the argument in and of itself instead of attributing it to you.
Wow, Cold, I love Phoenix Wright too! Who do you cosplay as? There are lots of female characters but my favourite is Klavier Gavin obviously :D
ReplyDeleteI've done Dick Gumshoe(incredibly easy to cosplay), Miles Edgeworth(the most expensive cosplay I have ever done), and Klavier's older brother Kristoph(relatively easy but required me to wear a blonde wig). The funniest comment I got was, when cosplaying as Gumshoe, "I know you're just trying to stay in character but could you please zip up your fly?"
I'd just steer clear of someone, male or female, who chooses entertainment where you, the protaganist, rape a little girl. Same as I avoid people who read the Daily Mail.
I have my concerns about anyone who seriously enjoys a game like that, but it seems to me that most people who played it did so for the trainwreck effect(you just can't help but look). Rape is a VERY common theme in Japanese media and the only thing unique about Rapelay is that the rapist is the protagonist instead of the antagonist. I think it coincides with the tendency of Japanese horror movies and games to focus more on psychological elements rather than a splatterfest. As one Japanese girl I used to date said, "This isn't scary, just gross."
I think Japanese rape porn is, to a large extent, just an overlap between the genres of pornography and horror. Such an overlap is largely unknown in the west, so westerners tend to get shocked by it and freak out at something they don't understand. Many people have a very hard time comprehending other cultures.
Not sure why I'm bothering, since my last post prompted Cold to declare that acts undertaken by male-dominated governments aren't examples of acts undertaken by groups of men, but what the hell.
ReplyDeleteWe actually DO have a pretty good idea of how much rape is underreported, in the US at least, thanks to the National Crime Victims Survey conducted by the Department of Justice. And yes, those stats show that rape is less likely to be reported than other violent crimes, although the gap has narrowed in recent years.
I declared that I don't consider those governments to be male-dominated due to the fact that at least half of the voters are women.
ReplyDeletePeople can lie on surveys and falsely claim to have been raped, which I asserted to be one of the most under-reported crimes. Your use of a survey as evidence depends on my assertion being false, but I believe it to be true based on a plethora of documented cases of false rape claims as well as countless more anecdotal reports of it.
Cold, your pretentious yet ignorant statements about Japan are piling up to a painful degree. For starters, Japan pretty much invented splatterfest horror. Second, intersecting porn and horror is "largely unknown in the west"? You're an idiot. Have you seen Hostel? Are you familiar with the phrase "torture porn"? I've made only light forays into horror subculture, but your experience appears to encompass watching Ringu and then deciding you're suddenly an expert on horror and Japan.
ReplyDeleteI don't know... I have an X-box 360 and a Wii in my room and play tons of games on my DS. I have first person shooters, "casual" games (including Plants V.S. Zombies, which I have beat), and RPGs. I'm a gamer. I'm a woman. I'm a feminist. And YES! One thing that bothers me is that I can't be a woman in lots of games, another issues is that I can't be a fat woman in most games (I am a fat woman and would like to be represented as one in the games I play). I get into games more when I feel like my character looks like me. It's just more fun. I don't play to be someone else, I play to be me doing these crazy things that I can't do in real life.
ReplyDeleteWhatever. Guys, there is no such thing as "a place of [your] own" for anyone. Get over it.
Cold, your pretentious yet ignorant statements about Japan are piling up to a painful degree.
ReplyDeleteI actually lived there for a good length of time, have you?
For starters, Japan pretty much invented splatterfest horror.
Source?
Second, intersecting porn and horror is "largely unknown in the west"? You're an idiot. Have you seen Hostel? Are you familiar with the phrase "torture porn"?
I've seen Hostel and noticed no sexualized torture in it. A girl gets her eyeball removed with a drill bit you're the idiot if you think that's sexual. All examples of torture porn I have encountered were of the Japanese "guro" variety.
I've made only light forays into horror subculture, but your experience appears to encompass watching Ringu and then deciding you're suddenly an expert on horror and Japan.
I made no claim of expertise but I have seen dozens of horror movies, both Japanese and western.
Cold: Care to explain why you think tens of thousands of people would lie on an anonymous government survey and claim they'd been raped when they hadn't? Before you answer, bear in mind that rape rates under the NCVS have dropped by about 80% in the last four decades, so whatever explanation you come up with has to explain a vastly higher rate of false rape reporting on anonymous government surveys in the 1970s and 1980s than exists today.
ReplyDeleteI'll wait.
Most people get suspicious when "anonymous" and "government" are used in the same sentence. If they previously lied about being raped, they will feel compelled to maintain that lie on the survey even if the government claims that it is "anonymous".
ReplyDeleteAs for the drop, there are several factors that could account for it. One obvious factor is the fact that DNA evidence came into use in the 90s and made it substantially more difficult to falsely accuse a man of rape. Whereas prior to this technology a woman could arbitrarily accuse any man who didn't have an alibi, this technology made it necessary to actually have consensual sex and then lie about it being consensual. On top of this, DNA evidence also made it more difficult for real rapists to get away with their crime. It's not rocket science to consider how this would affect the report rate for rape.
Another factor is the general decline in violent crime of all types from the 90s onward, which would include real rapes.
Yet another factor to be considered is the reduction in sample size and thus statistical accuracy of the survey over the years as reported by the National Research Council.
Cold.
ReplyDeleteThe survey was anonymous. How can a woman falsely accuse a man of rape when neither of them are named.
Perfect example of the logic of a mra.
Perfect example of the reading comprehension of a feminist.
ReplyDeleteHold on, Cold. The evidence of the NCVS is that most rapes aren't reported to the police. You're talking about people lying about having been raped when they HAVE reported those (supposedly non-existent) rapes to police.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the NCVS, about 40% of rapes are reported to police. Even if your theory holds true, that means that the 60% of people who report rapes to NCVS that they never reported to police have no motivation to lie. Which in turn means that if EVERYONE who reports a rape to the police is lying, there are still 1.5 unreported real rapes to every false-and-reported rape claim.
Finally, your suggestion that the decline reflects a decline in actual real violent crime indicates that you consider the vast majority of the rapes reported to the NCVS in the 1970s and 1980s -- when, again, rape rates were much higher, and reporting much lower -- were real rapes.
None of this, in short, makes any sense. None of it supports your larger thesis. But thanks for making the effort.
PS: If the NCVS is less statistically valid now than it was in the past, that means that earlier decades' high rape rates should be taken as more reliable than today's low ones. Once again your argument contradicts your larger thesis.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's funny----so many MRAs like Cold whine about the moral absolute of raping a kid---well, a female kid, which they don't find troubling at all. Bitch probably had it coming, and indulging the fantasies of misogynists is totally not harmful at all.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering how the MRA contingent would manage to make this about false rape reports.
ReplyDeleteAgain.
Is it possible to have a discussion about ANY TOPIC without it being derailed?
LVVS,
ReplyDeletenope because the MRA's only care about their supposed pet issues when it gives them something to take the attention away from the real issue at hand. Which in this case is the fact that video game companies, just like most of the computer based world is highly sexist.
Yes Ginmar, that fictional cartoon girl of indeterminate age(but at least old enough to conceive) totally had it coming, just like that fictional goomba that was brutally stomped to death by a fictional overweight Italian-American plumber. Are you an FCCRA(Fictional Cartoon Character Rights Activist)?
ReplyDeleteAccording to the NCVS, about 40% of rapes are reported to police. Even if your theory holds true, that means that the 60% of people who report rapes to NCVS that they never reported to police have no motivation to lie.
ReplyDeleteThey have a possible motivation to lie; a higher number of rapes reported on the survey may be politically beneficial for them, especially for any gender feminists who were surveyed.
Finally, your suggestion that the decline reflects a decline in actual real violent crime indicates that you consider the vast majority of the rapes reported to the NCVS in the 1970s and 1980s -- when, again, rape rates were much higher, and reporting much lower -- were real rapes.
Again with the reading comprehension; I listed that as one of three POSSIBLE factors. I think SOME of the reported rapes were real rapes, and that means that if the number of real rapes declines, that affects the total number of rapes reported(real and fabricated rapes combined).
If the NCVS is less statistically valid now than it was in the past, that means that earlier decades' high rape rates should be taken as more reliable than today's low ones.
No, it means that the surveys from earlier decades should be taken as more representative FOR THOSE EARLIER DECADES. How would a survey from 1981 tell you anything about the rate of reported crime in 2011?
I was wondering how the MRA contingent would manage to make this about false rape reports.
ReplyDeleteIf you actually read from the top down you would see that I wasn't MRAs who pushed the derailment.
nope because the MRA's only care about their supposed pet issues when it gives them something to take the attention away from the real issue at hand. Which in this case is the fact that video game companies, just like most of the computer based world is highly sexist.
I thought the real issue at hand was sexist comments by game players and the idea, which I supported with some actual evidence, that women's groups ARE, in fact, doing things to artificially fuck with the market.
Hey, if you think the existing video game and computer companies are sexist then why not start your own? Don't you know how companies come into existence? They come into existence because people organize them.
@ Cold:
ReplyDeleteNow who's got poor reading comprehension? I said 'MRA contingent', not 'Cold' had derailed this topic.
And I don't know about any of the other posters on this thread, but I'm studying digital entertainment technology so I can make the kind of games that I want to play.
Oh, that was supposed to say "it wasn't MRAs", not "I wasn't MRAs" which makes no grammatical sense. Either I made a typo or I wrote that sentence from the point of view of the kind of person who would make a typo.
ReplyDeleteAnyway good for you for taking it upon yourself to learn how to make games. A few good men have been kind enough to create sites like Newgrounds that provide that will provide you with free, uncensored hosting and (mostly)constructive criticism from a vibrant community of men and women with a "live and let live" mentality.
I am quite aware of Newgrounds.
ReplyDeleteAnd I am just one person, who has decided that this is my priority for a career. It's no less legitimate to be a lawyer, tax accountant, mail courier, teacher, politician or independent contractor who also enjoys playing video games and would like to see a wider demographic served by AAA titles. I'd also like to see subsidized organic food and a reduction in the use of corn sugar in most processed food, but I'm not becoming a farmer for that.
Meanwhile the gays are stealing our gyms, our theater, our dance, our music. Video-games is all we have left.
ReplyDeleteSo, wait, he's complaining that gay men are involved in the theater? As if this is some sort of recent development? I'm fairly certain that at least one or two of the ancient Greek dramatists were gay. Next thing you know, he'll be complaining that African-Americans stole his jazz and blues music.
Wow, coming into this thread after the fact is like a roller-coaster. It's like I'm going up the hill, finding myself unexpectedly siding with cold -yeah, that is a good point, yeah what's done by consenting adults without harming anyone else shouldn't be anyone else's business, up up up to the top...
ReplyDeleteAnd then he brings up false rape and WHOA suddenly I'm not going up anymore, I'm going downhill at a breakneck pace, as fast away from Cold's arguments as I can possibly go!
It's a helluva ride, I'll tell you that!
Cold, all your explanations for why the rape rate has dropped refer only to rapes reported to police.
ReplyDeleteSince most rapes catalogued in the NCVS aren't reported, and since reporting rates are actually rising, what we're left with is a greater decline in unreported rapes than reported rapes.
If we start from the premises that [1] the vast majority of reported rapes are legitimate, [2] many women are raped and never report it, and [3] women are more willing to report rapes to the police than they were in the past, we would expect to find exactly this pattern. The data fits my theory, in other words.
Your theory of rape, on the other hand, can't account for this huge decline in unreported rapes. At all.
Cold: 'The vast, vast majority of censorship I have encountered in my life was done by, or at the urging of, women.'
ReplyDeleteThis is probably because so much offensive material in games (tv shows, movies, etcetera) is offensive to women.
Sexual content in most "offensive" situations is specifically male-gratifying and objectifies women, if it's not downright hostile to women.
If there were a prison game where one of the goals is to rape a guy who was falsely convicted of rape just on the word of one lying woman, I believe you'd object to that.
Sam,
ReplyDeleteNotice that I only brought that up in response to pourquoi's inane argument that Japan's low rate of sex crime is an illusion because there are tons of rapes in Japan going unreported. Absolutely no proof of this was presented, so I decided that two could play at that game and pushed the other way. Only in an Orwellian 1984 world could we actually know how many rapes happen, how many go unreported, and now many false reports there are.
Jupiter9,
ReplyDeleteI'd object to it and I certainly wouldn't buy it, but I also wouldn't push to have it banned. Modern media is full of material offensive to men including treating the rape of men, especially in prison, as a huge joke. I have yet to hear of any petition by men to censor or ban a tv show, movie, or game for treating prison rape as a joke.
Cold, there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.standyourground.com/boyc.php
You may not have heard of it, because MRAs are idiots when it comes to organizing anything (beyond riling people up to harass people they don't like), but this is indeed a call to boycott about a zillion companies due to supposed "male bashing" in ads.
Cold's being a moron, yet again. Let's see, a hugely patriarchal, conservative society which places a disproportionate amount of importance on the concept of saving face? Oh, hell, yes, I'd LOVE to report rapes there!
ReplyDeleteThey have a possible motivation to lie; a higher number of rapes reported on the survey may be politically beneficial for them, especially for any gender feminists who were surveyed.
Those wily feminazis, plotting to falsely ensnare men by....reporting in complete anonymity, which prevents prosecution. Note how Coldie is convinced that women must lie in large amounts to some machiavellian purpose. And yet he thinks video games which depict the rape of women and girls are okay.
Only in an Orwellian 1984 world could we actually know how many rapes happen, how many go unreported, and now many false reports there are.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a bit of an overstatement. I don't think there's a compelling reason to throw our all the research that's been done on under-reporting of rape. "Women are probably lying" really doesn't count as a compelling reason.
For your response, Cold, let's assume you've already insulted my intelligence and my reading comprehension, and that you've already called me "vapid," so that you can move right on to telling me why I'm wrong. Because I'm helpful like that.
If we start from the premises that [1] the vast majority of reported rapes are legitimate, [2] many women are raped and never report it, and [3] women are more willing to report rapes to the police than they were in the past, we would expect to find exactly this pattern.
ReplyDeleteSo far, I've never encountered an MRA who was willing to accept 1 or 2. 3 is generally taken as gospel, with all the blamed place on feminism.
"throw out all the research," I mean.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I'm saying, Captain. I'm saying that my premises, as a group, fit the evidence we have. Cold's premises don't.
ReplyDeleteCold's argument is a sort of radical skepticism. "We can't know anything about the incidence of rape, so I'm free to make up whatever I want." But we've got data, stretching across decades, from multiple sources using multiple methodologies. Whatever theories we put forward have to account for that data somehow.
Agreed, student. "Dem bitches was probably lying" isn't really a valid critique, in the absence of compelling evidence to support such a contention.
ReplyDeleteThose wily feminazis, plotting to falsely ensnare men by....reporting in complete anonymity, which prevents prosecution.
ReplyDeleteLearn to read, idiot! The motivation for an anonymous false report is to inflate the numbers for political gain, not to ensnare any specific man.
That's what I'm saying, Captain. I'm saying that my premises, as a group, fit the evidence we have. Cold's premises don't.
ReplyDeleteAn anonymous survey isn't "evidence"; it's testimony from witnesses on whom no credibility assessment has been performed.
old's argument is a sort of radical skepticism. "We can't know anything about the incidence of rape, so I'm free to make up whatever I want."
No, radical skepticism would be if you had time-stamped video of a rape taken straight from a security camera and I said "Well we can't know for sure that the camera wasn't hacked and that this isn't just something that was staged earlier. Having doubts about the testimony of random people isn't radical skepticism, it's just skepticism.
But we've got data, stretching across decades, from multiple sources using multiple methodologies. Whatever theories we put forward have to account for that data somehow.
You have only pointed to one source, with a methodology that has come under criticism from the National Research Council, and which offers nothing but the testimony of random, anonymous people.
Cold, there's this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.standyourground.com/boyc.php
You may not have heard of it, because MRAs are idiots when it comes to organizing anything (beyond riling people up to harass people they don't like), but this is indeed a call to boycott about a zillion companies due to supposed "male bashing" in ads.
I'm quite familiar with Stand Your Ground. It is a list of business to not patronize; not an effort to shut down those businesses. Not doing business with companies that have male-bashing ads is the same as not buying media which has male-bashing content.
I was going you the compliment---which I won't do again---that even a froth-spitting loser like you wouldn't be so paranoid to assume that women lie for shits and giggles. Or political gain.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there's some interesting research out there about abusers---rapists, woman-bashers, etc.,etc.,----believe that most other men are liars. And so one can extrapoloate that liars believe others lie.
No cites? Oh right, a lack of cites is only a concern for you when it's someone other than you failing to provide them.
ReplyDelete