Nerds and Male Privilege

[Not_a_sockpuppet]

This thread is now about Kirby's killing spree

[dsheinem]

so I have purposefully stayed out of this thread for a few days to let others speak up after I kept replying after almost every post. I do have some thoughts about recent replies, though:

[ It's sad, but ever since nerd culture became huge, that ideal seems to have been pretty much lost..

yes - thanks for helping to point out that it is about the culture, not just about the games/character designs. As much as it has matured in certain areas, it has regressed in others.

Why is no one talking about how the men are all seen as super serious and buff, as if that's not a sexist trope?

Sure, that is a problem too...But its existence doesn't somehow cancel out or address the problems mentioned in the article, which are specifically problems that women in the culture encounter.

facilitating any kind of fairness or equality in nerd subculture (or any subculture) is entirely dependent on gender norms developed OUTSIDE of that subculture.

Entirely dependent? God, I hope not. There are lots of examples of subcultures throughout history that have had their own rules about how to treat difference, and often those rules run counter to cultural norms. Hell, one of the defining aspects of a counter-culture is that it isn't beholden to society's norms.

If a particular subculture is lacking in men or women, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

This is the point of contention I had with Flake earlier: it is a bad thing if it runs counter to a subculture's purported belief system, which both the article and I have suggested is one professing equality and meritocracy. Flake disagreed, I believe. I guess you do, too.

The sexualization of women is so much bigger than nerds, but to affect any change that large, it has to start from within.

Yes! i am completely with you here. I still think (as I suggested earlier) that you are hoping for an ideal and holding your nose until we get there...

This article to me seemed like a thinly veiled white knight rant.

Not sure what you mean by this. Can you substantiate your claim?

If you were to look at the depiction of women similarly as an ideal, then you'll note that it's not an ideal created for women, it's an ideal of women created for and by men - sexy and submissive....

Excellent point. Instead of sending me your paper, you should condense and synthesize and post the major ideas in the thread for all of us to kick around

When I see articles like this, they seem so one-sided to me. All evidence to counter the points being made are just ignored. I see women in my local comic shops and Gamestops all the time. Some of them work there and they fit in just fine. I used to have a group of guys who talked me into playing the original Halo with them years ago, and one of them had a wife who would join in and she was treated no differently than anyone else.Things are changing. People just don't see it

So because some women "bear a cross" and enter the culture and other women don't seem to mind the misogyny, it somehow excuses all the problems detailed in the article (online gaming problems, women not seen as industry leaders, convention behavior, etc.)?

II think in some areas it's getting harder and harder to break away from the drumbeat of gender binaries, and for younger and younger children to boot. Just in terms of the video game industry, consider that early games like Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. were gender-neutral. The Legend of Zelda was gender-neutral. Sonic the Hedgehog, famously, appealed equally to girls as to boys......I never felt, as a little girl, that I was not allowed to identify with the male characters instead....Nowadays, for me, the fan service in certain games can feel like a slap in the face. When I'm playing Soul Calibur IV, I am constantly reminded that not only am I not the target audience of this game, I was so far from even being considered a potential player as to be totally inconsequential. This can be infuriating, to constantly feel compelled to prove that I exist. The sexism within aesthetic game design is annoying, but what angers me more is what it implies: the developers' real-world sexist belief that girl gamers simply aren’t real, or that they deserve to feel mocked if they are. Being shoehorned into an unwanted category is bad enough, but being actively excluded has the same effect. If I didn't already have a history of loving video games, I honestly don't know if I'd be driven off by such inconsiderate design.

I really appreciate this sentiment given the fact that it is a retro forum, but it is also worth pointing out that the problems of sexism do date back to the early console days, where games were made by, marketed towards, and primarily purchased for males. Having more women in the industry from the get go would have been key, and some of the sexism and corporate culture found in Japan and in the U.S. tech industry is to blame for the ongoing gender problems today...

It's just two sides of the same coin.

It is hard to take this argument seriously at all, as it basically disregards the entire history of difference...

I found the article very poorly written, with a too emotional tone and several fallacious claims. It looks like the author read a wikipedia page and then wrote the article, without giving it serious thought. The biggest issue I have with the article is the blanket description of "geek culture".

The article isn't poorly written for a gaming website, and I don't at all see your "wikiipedia" inference. Can you clarify? As for the blanket description, it is certainly a specific (geographically situated) part of geek culture he is referencing, and and the author should specify that. That said, the part he is talking about is the part which most Kotaku readers experience.

Treating sexuality, an incredibly complex topic, in two lines using a poorly-understood Batman example makes me lose a lot of respect for the writer. This is why people become accepting of gays but think that bisexuals are "confused", they were not educated, but sold an idea. We can do better than that.

That's not a fair characterization of how the article treats sexuality, nor is it a fair analogy you've extrapolated out...

Anyways, as a whole I have found geek culture to be less sexist and otherwise bigoted that society as a whole. Not only are women less seen as women and more as people but it's also far more welcoming of sexual diversity and race.

I have not found this to be true in my experience.

Yes, allow us to shut off this crucial evolutionary instinct so a woman somewhere doesn't feel creeped out when she gets extra attention at the local Magic The Gathering tournament.
This article isn't worth the electricity it consumes to host.

So if you feel nothing about attitudes towards women should change and that no one should be arguing they should, are you also willing to admit that the current attitude includes lots of sexism? As long as you're cool with that, and willing to admit it, I can respect your argument (as an argument).

In today's world its to hard to say what's sexist and what's not.

The problems the author identified (and I cherry picked from the article a few pages ago) are clear examples of sexist behavior. There's not really much ambiguity to be had...

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Anyway, I'm glad we're having the discussion, as this is a topic that people should be thinking about. Let's keep it going!

[Not_a_sockpuppet]

The article isn't poorly written for a gaming website, and I don't at all see your "wikiipedia" inference. Can you clarify?

I found the quality of the writting both in function and inherent quality of the prose to be quite poor, yes. Perhaps it's good or bad compared to the site but that doesn't make it gooder or worser.

It's a tangent and doesn't really have anything to do with the topic so I think we should just skip it.

(BTW:It's not taken for wikipedia, it just looks like it is because of it's shallow treatment of the topic and lack of nuance. The article as a whole looks like a copy of a copy, an attempt to poorly explain what others have said in a better way and much more than a single page).

Treating sexuality, an incredibly complex topic, in two lines using a poorly-understood Batman example makes me lose a lot of respect for the writer. This is why people become accepting of gays but think that bisexuals are "confused", they were not educated, but sold an idea. We can do better than that.

That's not a fair characterization of how the article treats sexuality, nor is it a fair analogy you've extrapolated out...

I think I'm being more than fair to the writer, perhaps even too much.

The Batman example is quite simple, he never argues or explains the topic, he just claims that the new Batman game is an example of sexism because, according to his reductionist argument based on six pictures, the women are more "sexualized" than the men in the game. Again, it's a reductionist stance that doesn't care about context, function, situation or logic but about a supposed ideal of something that looks (But isn't) equality.

His whole argument for why Batman is sexist is: "The women in this game are sexualized, while men aren't". Terrible and misguided!

Then after stating such thing he writes a long rant about the fandom not wanting to accept the truth and how they often make an argument that is a strawman but which he doesn't really cover. Bad writting and bad reasoning.

Really it's just that, if he really wants to get into the topic he should have taken his time and wrote something more carefully because nobody, not even me, the best writer in the entire universe since Miller kicked the bucket, can (or should) write about privileges and social differences between sexes in just a page, specially when two thirds of it are an anecdote with lots of projecting, calling Arkham City a sexist game without properly arguing why and a long rant about how people are going to complain he is wrong but he actually isn't.

I'm more annoyed by the pretentious writting that by the ideas exposed. I agree with many and find a lot of problems in certain aspects err..."presented" by the article but I just find the logical buildup and clarity so appaling that I can't abide to it. I can't say it's a good article just because I infer what the author wants to or because I agree with some of the conclusions.

The path is more important than conclusions or (gasp!) the solutions.

[Gamerforlife]

People see what they want to see

I see women everyday who are a part of the culture and seem to enjoy it and are treated with respect and equality by male peers every day.

I listen to podcasts about comic books, video game, sci fi, etc. that regularly feature females every single week. There's no misogyny, no condescension, no overuse of sexual innuendo(unless the female herself seems comfortable with it and is doing it herself as well).

I see women who have strong positions within the nerd/geek culture as well. Gail Simone receives an enthusiastic response from the audience whenever she's at a DC comic book convention or panel. Jane Espenson is one of the most respected and beloved tv writers out there. Felicia Day is a nerd icon with her series The Guild and her open love of video games. Then you have the tons of beloved and respected actresses in genre tv and movies. Gina Torres, Eliza Dushku, Alysson Hannigan, Morena Baccarin, Lucy Lawless, Evangeline Lilly, Julie Benz, Sarah Michelle Geller, Amy Acker, Yvonne Strahovsky, Maggie Q(who I think is the first Asian American women to star in a hit drama series), etc,etc,etc. You look at very popular geek culture blogs run by people like Whitney Matheson with her Pop Candy blog over on usatoday's website.

This article just seems very out of touch with a large part of our culture where these problems don't actually exist at all. Perhaps it really all just depends on what part of the country one lives in

I'm just so tired of hearing about how women are so horribly treated in geek/nerd culture, when there have clearly been large strides made over the years that a lot of people seem oblivious to. I'd had conversations with women in comic book shops and video game stores who were perfectly happy, enthused about the hobby and not getting weird looks or weird reactions from any guys around

and again, I hate that Batman example. In that game, we have Vicki Vale portrayed as a strong, intelligent women trying to expose corruption in Gotham through her tv reporting. She is in no way portrayed as a sex object either. The cops in the game consist of males, females and different races. They are portrayed equally within the game with no sexual or racial stereotypes. Talia is a powerful, intelligent female who controls a league of assassins and is portrayed as a character easily as dangerous as any of the male characters and her female ninjas seemingly take down Batman at one point and threaten him. Oracle is portrayed within both Batman games as the brilliant genius that she is. Batman would be unable to succeed in either game without her. The article conveniently ignores the existence of any of these characters in the game and focuses on three characters that have always been traditionally very comfortable in exploiting their sexuality to manipulate or defeat men

[Key-Glyph]

I just wanted to jump in briefly and say that your last post was great, Gamerforlife.

[Hobie-wan]

Late to reading the party. Lots of good points here. Just wanted to pipe up and remind people that River Raid was designed by a woman and Centipede was co-designed by one.

[Not_a_sockpuppet]

Late to reading the party. Lots of good points here. Just wanted to pipe up and remind people that River Raid was designed by a woman and Centipede was co-designed by one.

Oh, I thought Centipede was done by only one person instead of two! Love gaming trivia =p

Themoreyouknow.gif

[ExedExes]

Late to reading the party. Lots of good points here. Just wanted to pipe up and remind people that River Raid was designed by a woman and Centipede was co-designed by one.

And they are both legendary, genre-defying titles.

I recently found out a woman also made the 2600 titles Dodge Em, Spider Man, Warlords, and the prototype of Tempest on the Atari 2600 too!

[pepharytheworm]

Late to reading the party. Lots of good points here. Just wanted to pipe up and remind people that River Raid was designed by a woman and Centipede was co-designed by one.

Why does it have to be mentioned that certain games were made by women? Games should be appreciated as a game not by what sex made them.

[Gamerforlife]

I just wanted to jump in briefly and say that your last post was great, Gamerforlife.

Thanks

I like presenting a more positive view of the issue because it seems like so many people never do and that's a shame, because there are plenty of women doing quite well in our so called nerd culture and seem quite happy