deactivated-15135

@n1nj4d00m: Except that's not the only game she cites as exemple. That you single out just one of the game she cites and try to explain how she is dishonest where she is not (sure, the words she uses might be a little too strong for what is really happening but the thing is, the game still let you kill the woman) is just nitpicking.

I said it before and I'll say it again. We totally can have problems with feminist criticism, but we should welcome it and try to adress it. Not try to shut the discussion. It's fine that you disagree with Sarkeesian, but be happy that we can finally talk about game critically is the only thing I ask for. Just taking one of the arguments of Sarkeesian and then disregarding her whole discourse as dishonest, even if it has problems, is highly problematic.

@n1nj4d00m said:

This is patently false. With every Tropes vs. Women video, she includes a list a accompanying resources along with a transcript.

@n1nj4d00m said:

How do you know she is purposefully misrepresenting games? What possible reason could she have given you to think she is being deliberately misleading?

@n1nj4d00m: No she's not dishonest. Of course she is divisive, as most critics are (you wouldn't want a critic to state what is already widely accepted). You disagree with her, fine, but she's honest in how she portrays her opinion. Saying that she is automatically dishonest because you disagree with what she says is, well, trying to shut down a discussion.

@n1nj4d00m: Now that we can agree that there is misogyny in videogames, could we then try to break it and see critics like Sarkeesian as constructive? That you think videogames are not as bad as any other medium is totally fine, but since we're fan of them (we're both on a videogame website), it is on our hands to make the medium better or, at the very least, try to not make it worse.

I disagree with a lot of things that Sarkeesian says, by the way, but not the general idea. It is fine to adress her points and say where she's mistaken. At the end of the day, though, videogames do tend to be misogynystic, at least as much as the rest of society, and feminist critics of them should be accepted and discussed, not outright dismissed like Sommer's video does.

@n1nj4d00m: If you want to talk about the discussion at hand why don't you adress @heyguys points like I asked, why did you singled out one of my point from my first post to only adress this one and why do you say things like "I'm not sure why we only take these claims seriously when they are coming from a liberal perspective." and then "Yeah, its hard to take people seriously when they go on twitter tirades against entire groups of people." ? Also, if you consider yourself liberal, why did you use "liberal perspective" as a negative before?

I think different people, and especially different cultures and backgrounds, have different ideas as to what 'sexism' is.

I see games like Dead or Alive 5 and find that the characters are all pretty equal. The girls are attractive, the guys are attractive. There's a 50% male/female ratio in terms of playable characters. I love the sheer quantity of stylish costumes, though it has to be said that the women get something like seven costumes each and the guys only get three or four each. It has really solid fighting mechanics, and is spectacular to watch experts play.

In short, I don't find any of that sexist, except for the fact that guys don't get as many costumes, in which case they're a tiny bias against the male characters but that's fairly understandable given that women's fashions have a wider variety of choice.

However, when I speak to many people online, amongst which are usually guys from America (I'm a girl from England), they think that Dead or Alive is the most sexist and misogynistic game there is. "It's only popular because of the boobs!" "Ugh nobody buys DOA for the gameplay it's just to watch girls jiggle" "I can't believe they still allow that to be sold." "I heard that if you turn the age to 99 the breasts bounce even MORE!" "It's a fetish game so guys can beat up girls, gross."

It's really, really weird to me. It's like the entire game suddenly has zero merit to them, just because they animated the character's full bodies, rather than deliberately not animating certain parts that they find offensive for reasons they can't actually explain. Quite frankly, it's waayyy weirder to me when games have the female characters look like they're carrying a single cement block strapped to their chest under their clothes when the rest of their limbs/bodies are constantly moving.

Outside of the games specifically designed to be sexist (RapeLay is the one that always springs to mind, just for its name, or Duke Nukem 3D which was more tongue-in-cheek), I think it's very easy to show that barely any games at all are "dominated by sexism and misogyny," and even easier to show that video games don't turn people into women-haters given how much support both sides are trying to give support to women.

@n1nj4d00m: In all feminist critic that came before her? If any new feminist critic need to justify that representation of misogyny DOES encourage a culture of misogyny, the discussion would never progress. That's why feminists critics are totally right to not adress this most basic critic of their work: it has already been adressed. Sarkeesian point is only that videogames are part of the culture of misogyny, that's it.

If you need proof that the culture of misogyny is negative all around, I'd suggest reading Laura Mulvey's writing on cinema.

Violence and misogyny are linked, but are not the same thing. Violence as a concious act to hurt someone is completely different that the act of inconciously thinking women are inferior to men. Games don't create violence directly, but you'd have to be completely blind to not realize that games DO make violence banal, as they do for misogyny. That's the point of Sarkeesian and of many "SJWs".