@demoskinos: Yea I don't disagree with any of what you said here really. I am just really frustrated. I know what you're saying about Vinny trying to help her - I certainly saw him doing that at other points in time, and my main source of frustration is actually that I disagree here.
To me he came across very dismissive, and putting the burden of proof on a woman to "educate him" is just a thing I see constantly online, and it sucks. Instead he came across as someone who was defensive about a game he really liked, which is really out of character so I might be wrong, but this is what I saw. This then is compounded by the ridiculous tone policing here in the comments. Anyways it's late I'm off to sleep. Will reply later if there's more stuff on this.
@demoskinos: I urge you to consider her position here.
As a junior member of staff, the only female member of staff, she is in her second GOTY discussion after having a terrible time last time out because people were being shitty to her after she apparently said "very good" too many times. Literally she tweeted how she hated the blowback after that.
And so we have the new year, and she is expressing a deeply held opinion about how she, as a woman, felt about the treatment of women, in a room full of dudes, under the spotlight of GOTY number 2, making the actual comment that her career will forever be tainted by this opinion, which is somewhat hyperbolic but not wrong, and what does she get for this? Instead of being supported, she is asked to explain her opinion, multiple times, explain why other people don't agree with her, explain basic concepts like fridging, explaing why they are bad, to HER LITERAL DIRECT MANAGER, multiple times. While everyone in the room - except Jeff, yes you are right - are sitting around silently and waiting for it to play out.
Honestly, after this experience I would probably shrink so fast I would disappear without a trace and no one would ever see me again. Abby is a fucking legend.
@tr0n: The game creates the mythology, they aren't shackled by some unseen limitations. It was a series of decisions that led their interpretations of that mythology to result in a product in which all women, already small in number, are treated like garbage. Of course, that is certainly not a conscious decision. That is, however, a product of a specific culture, and it perpetuates specific stereotypes that are actively harmful. "Nordic mythology" is not an excuse.
@demoskinos: The problem is that her opinions are completely discarded. She has the right to say "I felt that the treatment of women in this game sucked", and she explained fairly well why. That opinion should be taken on board and taken into account, especially given how games and gaming communities treats women in general. This isn't a "debate". You can't reason a person out of these things because it's much deeper than that. Instead Vinny replied, a few times, that he personally did not think so because the mom was "an important character". Like, that's not even an argument? Abby again replied that every woman in this game is dead, wants to die or is Freya. I can't understand how people think that's OK.
This is not the attitude that men should have to this issue - we should be listening and thinking through why we thought it wasn't a problem to begin with. Obviously he didn't care for that if he doesn't even know what fridging is, so he should be self-reflecting not being defensive.
And OF COURSE I fucking love Vinny to death. In this instance though Abby is 100% right.
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