The new Tropes vs. Women in Gaming video came out...

Which is fair, but why should that be limited to the subjects she is suggesting.

Video game writing is so stale and lazy at the moment that it's just depressing and mostly dull to play most modern AAA title's as single player story experiences. Which is partly why the indie scene has exploded over the last few years with games that really explore what is possible to convey within this medium.

Her arguments could be placed on most modern media of any kind and be just as valid as say just as little.

I'm a white male as well, but that doesn't automatically mean that I have to deny what an advantage that gives me in the world.

Being a woman gives you tons of advantages as well. For example better education and help. "Better laws or advantages", less jailtime and so on. Stop trying the world look like only white males have benefits.

What you are trying to do is tying to make women look weak and special and the moment you do that you will never archive equality. Again men and women in our first world countries are equal but different. We have different advantages and different disadvantages but this does not make one gender superior against the other one.

She's chosen this subject (which was her area of academic study) to highlight, people shouldn't criticize her for not trying to solve everything at once.

I'll agree with you that videogame writing is generally horrible, and I just want the whole industry to grow up a bit. On the other hand, one could imagine a world where there was more gender-balance in games, but they still had horrible writing (one only needs to look at the "Twilight" series to see that fiction aimed at young girls can be just as horrible as fiction aimed at young boys).

Still, it doesn't hurt to try to ask for better things, even if it's not likely to happen.

How old are you? (Full disclosure I'm 30).

So what has this to do with anything? Are you trying to make my opinion invalid because of my age? By the way I am 32

Yeah, but given her chosen subject the targets she has gone after just seems to be misguided. If she wanted to do a serious study into why these things take place, you have to go deeper than simply lazy writing.

Her video's can't really hope to achieve anything becasue they don't actually go after anything that's really related to the problems she's trying to address. Like I said before she should have gone after the people making those decisions on those story beats and why that is, rather than going after lazy writing.. becasue in doing that the only thing you can meaningfully deduce is that, lazy poor writing is both lazy and poor.

The most eye opening and amazing piece about actual sexism in video games was done by Polygon and had little to do with the games and more to do with the people around them, it was a really well written piece and had an amazingly done video to go with it (I can't find the link becasue I can't remember what it was called but its somewhere buried on there site).

Just trying to gauge life experience is all. I find it frustrating to debate things like this without getting an idea of where people are coming from culturally, their life experience, their media diet, and so on.

I know that women are afforded certain perks, like maternity leave, not being drafted, etc, but in my opinion this doesn't quite make up for their disadvantage in wage for equal job types, and the general "old boys" social structures that subtly, but consistently keep Women out of positions of power and influence (I'm talking on average, and giving me a few anecdotes that show otherwise won't cut it).

Do you think she played any of the "Agarest" games yet? She'll have a field day with that series.

As always, this thread is no longer about the videos and has turned into a debate about privilege and men's rights and other useless bullshit that has nothing to do with anything.

1. The "wage gap" myth has been debunked many times over.
2. It's laughable that you state this conspiracy theory as fact and give no evidence of it but then say that, in relation to proving wrong this house of cards argument, "a few anecdotes [...] won't cut it."

Anita is becoming more and more irrelevant as we get these videos, not for all the fedoras in San Francisco could you defend her from the best rebuttals put out by Thunderf00t and KiteTales as two examples. That she has consistently ignored these responses and takes on average half a year to put out these half-an-hour videos kind of destroys her credibility. No, that trolls pick on her for the obvious hypocrisies does not give her credibility, that makes no sense.

There is an amazing quote (which I can't find) from the final season of The Wire where in the news room they are talking about how the schools are failing young children and one of the characters Gus says that he thinks to examine anything in any detail you need alot of context, which is something I wish her video's had.

Thanks for contributing!

My English skills are failing me here, what is she talking about? It sounds like a lots of nonsense that goes in circles. Is she making a points beyond "there is sexism in games which is bad"?

What conspiracy theory? I'm just talking about the phenomenon of business deals and networking happening on golf trips, and that sort of thing. I think a lot of discrimination is unplanned, even unconscious, but that's why people need to be extra aware that it's happening.

Hmm, the wage gap does exist across sections of the general economy where the factor isn't so much what men and women in the exact same job/role is off but getting to that job/role.

If you want an easy to digest way to understand this look at The Jobs With The Biggest (And Smallest) Pay Gaps Between Men and Women. In general, women get paid 80% of men which is gap. I'm not sure why people believe "the pay gap has throughly been debunked" when all you need to do is walk into training or classes and notice how unbalanced some classes are.

I wish people wouldn't confuse "I saw one article / video that disagreed with X" with "X has been thoroughly debunked". People are way too quick to see something they agree with and assume that it's true.

Including this video series :P

And I wish people would stop confusing equality of opportunity with opportunity of results, that is where the disparity comes from. Guess why women aren't in those classes or high-paying jobs? Because more choose to go into, for example, nursing or childcare. This is what studies have proven, it's not "one article / video."

Patriarchy is also a conspiracy theory; 'the world is run by misogynistic men.' Replace the last two words with whites, jews, capitalists, communists. It's the same shit.

I'm not entirely sure what there is to even 'debunk' with respect to anita's videos. They are just simple statements of "Here is a harmful trope. Here are some games that use this trope" She doesn't even seem to argue that the games using these tropes are terrible and the people who play them are terrible. Its just "These trending portrayals of women are harmful, maybe we should avoid using them in the future."

Stand strong against the tyranny of the uterus!!!

@lively walked into that one.

I'm glad to see more people are actually investigating the various claims that we all take to be true through repetition (wage gap, politics) and changing their minds due to facts. That's healthy. I believed in all the usual feminist things until I actually did some research. I heard the 16% inclusion in Congress and assumed it was those awful men. And then I did more research and went, 'oh women are only 15% of candidates' and 'women are 57% of the electorate' and 'women vote for women in drastically higher numbers than men vote for men'. (These numbers are American, of course)

It actually makes me wonder how the Republicans plan on ever winning again. Women lean Democratic (IIRC to a 56-44 ratio), and women make up a 57-43 ratio of voters. Good news for liberals.

I am still flabbergasted how this non-issue for 20+ years is now suddenly the end of mankind as we know it. Fucking bizarre.

Okay, this was stupid. I'm all for equal rights and stuff, but this is just so stupid. It's not a gaming trope or anything, it's basic human mentality. The man is generally physically superior, and has always had the role of protector in a family.

20 years ago it was an issue but you probably didn't hear about it the technology was so expensive and the talent pool was so small it didn't matter if you were man, woman, child, vegetable, mineral where if you had a pulse and knew how to start Alias you were hired.

This whole "discussion" could really be resolved very easily if people just realized that gender-roles make some people happy and others unhappy. Having gender-roles is just as bad as not having gender-roles. It's just a fact of life, there is no perfect solution.

Thats clearly what i was doing. I mean its not like you could have read the rest of my damn post before over reacting.....

Thats clearly what i was doing. I mean its not like you could have read the rest of my damn post before over reacting.....

@legion_:

There are different ways to define 'strength' and 'protection' dude.

I can't believe we got 5 whole pages in without someone screaming about privilege and the dreaded BOY'S CLUB ILLUMINATI RULING THE WOOOORRRLLDDDD!

We should really try for 6 next time.

@atomic_dumpling: the answer is money. From 1975 to 2004, video games were nerd games for nerds who couldn't kiss girls because eww nerds and their nerd games. Even women who were nerds and played games were social pariahs. But all those nerds stayed with games into their adult years, and their white collar full time jobs, and suddenly it's a 'mature industry', it's now socially acceptable to play games, and now we have to do something to 'get women into games'. If they remained the embarrassing pastime of losers, no one would care, but they developed market cache, being a programmer or developer is now a prestige career... And that's how it works. The 'job equality' push is not for actual equality or freedoms, it's for prestige positions. When you hear talk of more women in the military, don't think they're talking about grunts or soldiers; they're talking about generals and officers.

Consider if you were a 'gamer girl' in 1993; you were not cool. No one would ever say you were cool. If you were cool and you played games you kept it a bigger secret than herpes. The only people who would call you cool are the other nerds who no one thinks is cool. Compare to 2013. If you're a 'gamer girl', you get a webcam and a twitch channel and start making money. Gamer girls are the darling of both nerd and mainstream media. Gamer guys... eh, still seen as juvenile 'boys' who haven't 'grown up' and become 'real men'... but gamer girls? Put that shit on ET.

@jayzilla: Are you offering some same gender heavy petting? I'll buy.

Oh my god, how dare she make another slightly annoying video that offers some decent points but appear to lack any serious depth and is too one sided for me to take seriously.

Also I don't mind her, but damn her face annoys me for some reason... It might be the eyebrows I think.

sent ;)

....

Spoilers...

@carousel said:

@brodehouse said:

@atomic_dumpling: the answer is money. From 1975 to 2004, video games were nerd games for nerds who couldn't kiss girls because eww nerds and their nerd games. Even women who were nerds and played games were social pariahs. But all those nerds stayed with games into their adult years, and their white collar full time jobs, and suddenly it's a 'mature industry', it's now socially acceptable to play games, and now we have to do something to 'get women into games'. If they remained the embarrassing pastime of losers, no one would care, but they developed market cache, being a programmer or developer is now a prestige career... And that's how it works. The 'job equality' push is not for actual equality or freedoms, it's for prestige positions. When you hear talk of more women in the military, don't think they're talking about grunts or soldiers; they're talking about generals and officers.

Consider if you were a 'gamer girl' in 1993; you were not cool. No one would ever say you were cool. If you were cool and you played games you kept it a bigger secret than herpes. The only people who would call you cool are the other nerds who no one thinks is cool. Compare to 2013. If you're a 'gamer girl', you get a webcam and a twitch channel and start making money. Gamer girls are the darling of both nerd and mainstream media. Gamer guys... eh, still seen as juvenile 'boys' who haven't 'grown up' and become 'real men'... but gamer girls? Put that shit on ET.

sent ;)

I'm going to assume you realise how ironic that image is, considering it's blatantly sexist.

@jumbs: What's irony?

Again wrong: In Germany for example Women have the advantage in terms of getting a job. For example if a man and woman with the same qualifications apply for a job he needs to chose the woman. And this is a decision by law. Another myth about education would be woman have disadvantages in terms of education.

In fact woman have several help eduacation and government sponsored help programs for woman while they do not offer this for boys or men. The result is that women actually have a huge advantage in terms of education and are more likely to visit universities than men do. STEM fields are mostly now occupied by woman.

And for the wage cap maybe you should watch this: I even timed it for you.

If you have time watch it all. Women are not being oppressed in first world countries anymore. Stop believing this myth.

Lost all interest the moment she tried to push the darkness 'damsel' as a posession

She really has no clue

Sure, but my point is that there is nothing wrong in creating a story where a man saves a woman. In fact, that kind of intimate and personal story is what appeals the most to me. I'd rather have more of those stories than another "save the world" story.

forgive me for jumping in- but if we're talking globally, you're just flat wrong. most of the world's illiterate are women. and if you care to contest that, you should probably be in touch with http://www.ungei.org/index.php and the secretary general. apparently their worldwide initiative to combat the issue is misinformed.

That is so false that I don't even know where to begin. Like in many european countries, Germany operates on a quote system. That means that there has to be a balance between genders in a workplace. So your example would only apply if the workplace in question had a inbalance, and were below the quote. It's only fair, and it has to be that way, or else men would be favored for obvious reasons, for instance they don't need maternity leave.

So it is okay to keep unfair things in place even because the world is unfair to others as well. I hope some of you realize what a poor support for an argument that is.

I've got this sweet magazine you guys might want to check out.

I figure it'll be right up your alley.

She started off saying some valid facts, then goes on twisting everything to suit her agenda. I felt like I was watching a feminist version of Fox News by the end of the video. This video reminded me why I cant stand certain feminists. What she did with these videos will do NOTHING but anger people like me and stir up other feminist activists. If she really wanted to try to make a difference, than she should advocate more young women getting involved in computer programming/engineering and getting a job in the industry. In my nineteen years of existence, I have never encountered a women in the flesh who was also a hardcore gamer. In order for the industry to change, the demographics have to change.

I find this female perspective much more interesting that what Sarkeesian has on the subject:

http://www.youtube.com/user/KiteTales

This is her response to the first video that Anita Sarkeesian made on the subject (tropes vs women). Furthermore she doesnt need to start a kickstarter in order to make a pretty good video on the subject.

Also unlike Sarkeesian she doesnt need to be visible on screen every second of its duration.

No I am not talking globally. I am talking about countries like the US or Germany for example. You know first world countries. There is no denying that a lot of women are being oppressed in their countries but this is not for what these "feminists" are fighting for anymore. Even though these woman really need help.

As for the quote thing yes every country in the EU has this but this doesn't hinder the fact that women have an advantage because of this quote. AGain if this quote is not met in this certain place he has to chose a women despite the men having more experience or even a better background. And I am sorry but this is wrong. Or do we have for example a menquote for jobs with mostly women in it? NO we don't.

At least in the US, women make up a major of the single parent house holds but make less money. I'm not entirely sure how the system is giving them advantages let alone justifies ignoring this topic.