Nerds and Male Privilege

[Erik_Twice]

Anyway. I don't mean to quantify things or make this into a competition. I just want to say that I perceive a lot of us as being in the same sort of boat, getting hit by different waves from the same sea.

I really wish more people understood that. Too many people fail to see the great picture here and this is nothing but the great picture.

Women are allowed a lot more freedom to blur gender lines than men are; being a little girl tomboy is at least an accepted occurence, but wrath and hellfire on the boy who lets his mother paint his toenails

I consider this to be one of the biggest failures in the fight against sexism. Instead of teaching people to treat each other as people we are indoctrinating them to accept that a pair of tits can study engineering. And we clap and forget that we still call them a pair of tits and not "a person".

The gay community is a good example of this. The arguments for gay people and bisexual people are exactly the same but they did not get people to understand sexuality, only to accept it so you keep moving in a circle where the same issues are fought over and over and people who accept gays don't accept bisexuals. I'm saddened to say many of the most bigoted people I have seen when it comes to this were homosexuals themselves. Something is not working here.

tl,dr: Understanding > Acceptance

Does it bother any guys here that so many companies depict your sex as beer-swilling deadbeats who can't even boil pasta correctly, with no greater interests than football or the hot woman walking by (especially when a girlfriend/spouse is nearby)?

Yes and no. As with everything else, I think it's important to regard each example one by one . There's nothing wrong with a husband who behaves stereotipically, the wrongness is with it behaving that way because he is a man. Some commercials are obviously this way and others have no gender cues in them, rather, such cues are introduced by the expected audience, often because the creators were bound by the same invalid stereotypes that don't have to be true.

I'm wary of saying it's problematic because it's more common than the inverse, tough, as that's fallacious and lacks objectivity (For you aren't judging the object by analyzing it, but by analyzing other similar objects). Stuff like the Belcher test tries to make simple a very complex issue and that's really, really bad. Morality isn't easy and if someone tells you otherwise they are selling you somethi

[bigjt_2]

I see more and more things like this popping up. I never know whether to treat them like valid arguments that have useful nuggets of thought/suggestion within them or just another fellow nerd rushing to flog themselves. I can say I got really tired of reading the word, "Y'see" and there were parts of the editorial that seemed to take a fairly condescending tone. So if there was some important things to think about in the piece, I probably missed them because those things were doing their best to deflect my attention.

One thing I'll say about this new "we need to change with the times" thinking in nerd culture is that we seem to be the only subculture that wants to do this. My favorite example is sports. I don't see the NFL making football "cuter" so that more women might enjoy it or less shittier and boring so that I might enjoy it. There are women who enjoy watching sports, but they enjoy watching them as they are.

But there's an ever-growing population of nerds that seem to want to shake their fingers at themselves (but only after shaking them at the rest of us first) and demanding we either severely alter or all-out dismantle our identities so that broader culture would find it easier to enter. And following that, I argue that our biggest problem we have as nerds is one we've had all along: confidence. Yeah, there's some things that could probably be changed within our subculture to make it better for everyone, but we have to be careful when arguing what things should be changed and what shouldn't.

I'm damn proud to be a nerd, and prouder to be part of the videogame community. I love us for all our social quirks as well as our advances. And don't think I just state that on a forum, from behind the privacy and safety of my own computer screen. If it were possible for anyone reading this to ask my co-workers, they would tell you that I am constantly calling myself "nerd" and I do not use that term as a negative. It's just a descriptive term stating what I am.

Yeah, there's some things that should probably be seriously weighed in this kotaku op-ed, but some of it also goes over the top. And of all the responses I've read on this thread, I'd have to say Flake's most closely matched my own sentiments and he needed applauded for it.

Dave, I'm going to play devils advocate here and ask a simple question: Are women entitled to a fundamental change in nerd culture so as to accommodate their entry?

Personally, I see something very unfair about that idea.

Oh, and if the guy from kotaku who wrote the column ever reads this (and there's probably not a chance in hell he ever will) -- I would say I'm sorry if my response is one of those "usual" responses you mentioned in your article that you find so tedious and boring. But honestly I could care less if it is.

But thank you, dsheinem, for posting this. Regardless of how I feel about this, I think the subject is a good thing to discuss. Introspective can't hurt.

[Aaendi]

Half way through the article, there is a "douchebag asking girl for sex" joke. How many times does that joke have to be played before people get tired of it. It's not funny being rejected by women, and have society look at you like you are the idiot they saw on television.

[dsheinem]

Here's a first hand account from a female journalist at this year's E3 about the kind of thing I found most troubling/discouraging in that original article from the OP: http://kotaku.com/5919386/so-what-if-im ... -damn-game

^^ This is the kind of thing that really irks me about the game industry/game culture. I know a lot of you had problems/issues with the article in the OP, so maybe this one is better at explaining that the sexism problem is much more systemic and entrenched than simply XBLA assholes and jiggly boobs in DOA.

[Erik_Twice]

I would dare to say that it's surprisingly progressive of E3 to even allow non-candy women in their space. It's a sham of a show where nobody cares about the product they sell.

I think using E3 as an example of gaming as a whole is quite a jump. E3 is a poor copy of the Grammys but with even less games in it. E3 is a cultural abomination, really.

[dsheinem]

I would dare to say that it's surprisingly progressive of E3 to even allow non-candy women in their space. It's a sham of a show where nobody cares about the product they sell.

I think using E3 as an example of gaming as a whole is quite a jump. E3 is a poor copy of the Grammys but with even less games in it. E3 is a cultural abomination, really.

Criticism of E3 is fair, but a red herring. Your opinion of that event doesn't invalidate her experience of sexist treatment by people in the industry who are paid to create and promote games.

[Erik_Twice]

Criticism of E3 is fair, but a red herring. Your opinion of that event doesn't invalidate her experience of sexist treatment by people in the industry who are paid to create and promote games.

Hey there, nobody in any way, shape or form has claimed that the E3 being a shithole "invalidates her experience of sexist treatment".

What I disagree is that the sexism or overall stupidity of E3 is representative of the game industry as a whole, the games themselves or the people who make and play those games. It reflects some issues and currents but the understanding of those require a quite in-depth analysis of the issue at hand that are more nuanced that it seems.

[Flake]

Here's a first hand account from a female journalist at this year's E3 about the kind of thing I found most troubling/discouraging in that original article from the OP: http://kotaku.com/5919386/so-what-if-im ... -damn-game

I think you found this article and were very excited to point at it and say 'aha!'. The idea of 'guided experiences' is something that ALL games journalists have to deal with come this time of the year. I remember this time last year, Jim Sterling of Destructoid was bitching about how often demos would be delivered to their office with a book telling the reviewers what to do while they played. As in step-by-step 'go to this platform, jump this high, get this power up now' instructions.

A big part of this is wanting to control the perception that a powerful voice (in this case, a member of the gaming journalism community) is going to have of your product to hedge your bet against negative coverage. The PR person likely knows what bugs and situations to avoid in this build.

I don't blame them. Bugs showing up in an E3 build of a game usually become the emphasis of the preview when it hits the Internet. Even Zelda: Skyward Sword got a huge amount of crap because the wiimote Miyamoto was using was having trouble communicating with the Wii because of the amount of interference from a bajillion wireless devices all running in the same room. If a game like Zelda does not get the benefit of the doubt when bugs surface at E3, what is a smaller game to hope for?

She also does not mention insisting on playing or confronting these PR people for their preconceived notions. The truth is that women, as serious gamers, are a new phenomenon. I welcome their arrival and hope that their demographic creates demand that in turn creates new and interesting products for all of us to enjoy...but it's still a new thing to have large numbers of women who are serious about playing video games. Change does not happen overnight and to expect every PR guy to have gotten the note is stupid and lazy.

Now, while you may say 'why should she have to stand up for herself?' I will say 'Because if it matters, truly matters to her, she would'. You see a sob story, I see a story of a person who did not bother to do anything but sob.

[dsheinem]

I think you found this article and were very excited to point at it and say 'aha!'. The idea of 'guided experiences' is something that ALL games journalists have to deal with come this time of the year.

That's not her point - her point was that she was being given guidance on the same games where her male counterparts were not - and that the guidance was about looking at bunnies, how to use WASD, and the like instead of focusing on the unique game mechanics. She also got the question "But you don't actually play, right?" I never got that question there, and I am guessing most other men don't either.

I don't know about an "aha!" moment, but when I read it I thought it illustrated a problem that some people didn't catch or choose to see from the earlier article. So I posted it.

Change does not happen overnight and to expect every PR guy to have gotten the note is stupid and lazy.

Now, while you may say 'why should she have to stand up for herself?' I will say 'Yes. Because if it matters, truly matters to her, she would'. You see a sob story, I see a story of a person who did not bother to do anything but sob.

I think writing that article is an example of standing up for herself. I also think that change comes slowly, not overnight - but if a few PR guys read this essay before the next time they encounter a feamle games journalist, that's a few more that might not make immediate, sexist assumptions. That's progress.

[Flake]

Writing an article and hoping that a PR guy who offended you will stumble upon it is absolutely the worst method to instigate change that I have ever heard of. I am going to go with Occam's Razor on this one and say it was a cleverly written attempt to get some traffic - nothing more and nothing less.

When I have done something wrong or treated someone poorly without meaning to, the odds of my behavior being corrected are highest when that person stops and says 'hey, I need to point out the following'. I am going to assume these PR guys are the same. That would not have made a very interesting article, though.

Yes, she does make a point of saying 'other guys were not guided' but in an article about personal experience, I tend to dismiss anecdotal, blanket statements. Do we know that no other guys were guided? Do we know if there were other women who were not guided? I'll take what the author says about her own experience as fact and the rest simply under advisement.

Again, I refer you to my earlier criticism of this type of stance. Women, as an emerging demographic in gaming, have every right and reason to demand to be treated equally but they sure as hell should not EXPECT it. Not yet, at least. Behavior does not change just because someone wants it to - change has to be caused.