pepharytheworm wrote:There is no reason to say you are a "good guy" and "not all men" are like that. You are showing them by condemning the behaviors.
Yes there is reason to say that not all men are like this or that. The way the twitter notallmen started was in response to women on twitter specifically saying all men are like Elliott Rodgers. The funny thing about it is that men that tried to be supportive were verbally attacked.
Just like there are men saying stupid stuff on the internet all the time, there are women who say things just as stupid.
This isn't only men making death threats either. There was a twelve year old the other day on twitter that made a comment about a comedian making a rape joke. He said something along the lines of comedians are supposed to push boundaries and that nothing should be off limits for them if they think it will get a laugh. He ended up receiving death threats, people found his real address and harassed him. A twelve year old kid.
Every position is capable of reaching an extreme where it's no longer rational. No issue worth discussing is completely black and white or there would be nothing to discuss.
People on all sides of an argument are going to suffer threats and name calling and all sorts of childish nonsense as others attempt to dehumanize their opposition in their own minds. Society is locked in an eternal puberty, always changing and growing for better or worse, thrashing and rebelling back and forth while we can only hope the end result is progress.
Call the radical fringes of both sides on their bullshit, but don't get caught up the useless hostility that shuts down discussion instead of promoting it.
Its just a matter of what can you do? You try and support someone, and you get treated poorly because you aren't part of that group. (I don't know how many times I've gotten the "you're a man and you don't understand" argument.) What do you do then? Sit back and take it? Try and explain yourself? Neither work. The only real options become to leave it alone or try and make it understood you are on their side. Then tell you that saying you aren't like that doesn't help the argument, and you get thrown out by them again.
And fighting it on the internet won't change anything- there is no risk to anyone besides emotional damage, and most of the people arguing against the women in the game industry or those for changing female portrayals in games don't get emotionally hurt. That's the problem here. I can death threat xXA55A551nXx all day, and he won't care, because he's shielded by a screen name, unknown. The problem with death threats and the like is that these people can find or have the ability to get access to personal information on those they are threatening, making it that much more easy to undermine them and make them feel unsafe.
Really, the developers and personalities of the gaming industry really have to be the ones doing something about it. They need to make the strong female characters, they need to freely hire more women, they need to help protect their own people in the industry. If they do the right things to piss these assholes off, they will either leave the gaming community or be forced to accept it. That's all that can be done.
Now that I've watched a bit- one of the examples she uses, the "Ava in Peril" mission from Red Dead Redemption, isn't a good one considering what it was based on. Now, I don't think it was confirmed by developers, but its supposedly based on Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy. (I hope thats the right book, I don't have any with me up at college.) Its essentially a similar storyline, though with a lot of the emotions and drama cut out for better gameplay. That's pretty much the only point I've seen so far that I'd argue with.
Just when I was thinking the pointless shitstorm surrounding these videos was over, it raises its ugly head again. Rape and death threats made towards Sarkeesian and her family got so bad they have forced her to move house for the time being.
On the video itself, I thought the points made here were much stronger and truer than Part 1, which I thought lent a bit too heavily on picking certain instances out of context and being a bit too canny with its editing. This video shows a much more singular and thorough thesis with the bits on Assassin's Creed 2 and Watch Dogs being particularly effective. Personally I've always found the use of courtesans in AC games problematic as they are essentially a power-up to be bought and then used up.
I do hope companies like Ubisoft and Rockstar are at least paying some consideration towards this series and the wider discussion it has generated when it comes to making future titles. I'm not saying we need an all female GTA cast or anything, but thinking twice about using sexual assault and gendered insults in throwaway scenes would be a start.
They used those types of scenes Sload for characterization, not necessarily to support these actions or viewpoints. Those kinds of behaviors are exhibited by people and they try to capture that in these characters that they try to paint moral ambiguity on.
Last edited by Jmustang1968 on Thu Aug 28, 2014 12:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Sload Soap wrote:Rape and death threats made towards Sarkeesian and her family got so bad they have forced her to move house for the time being.
These cowardly bigots prove Ms. Sarkeesian's points as well as anything in her videos. I hope that they are caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law (both civilly and criminally). I am also glad that Ms. Sarkeesian is not allowing the threats to deter her from her objectives.
Jmustang1968 wrote:They used those types of scenes Sload for characterization, not necessarily to support thise actions or viewpoints. Those kinds of behaviors are exhibited by people and they try to capture that in these characters that they try to paint moral ambiguity on.
I see this as a problem of interpretation. GTA is a satirical take on US culture that shows us our glaring flaws, particularly our problems with race, gender, sexuality, and our treatment of the lower class, but that seems to be forgotten quite often by the people who play it or discuss it.
Yes, there are issues in games, but GTA is an extension of the Americana stereotype taken to the extreme.
Jmustang1968 wrote:They used those types of scenes Sload for characterization, not necessarily to support thise actions or viewpoints. Those kinds of behaviors are exhibited by people and they try to capture that in these characters that they try to paint moral ambiguity on.
I see this as a problem of interpretation. GTA is a satirical take on US culture that shows us our glaring flaws, particularly our problems with race, gender, sexuality, and our treatment of the lower class, but that seems to be forgotten quite often by the people who play it or discuss it.
Yes, there are issues in games, but GTA is an extension of the Americana stereotype taken to the extreme.
I think the problem is, in part, that we're a culture that doesn't generally appreciate or understand satire and thus many people DO take it at face value…especially THE KIDS.
