I don't know; it seems like we're sorta having part of the conversation here, too.

Twitter will always have a lot of words on everything; doesn't mean we can't still have actual conversations here and elsewhere. Have hope! As this is simmering down a bit, we can leave it behind and have some real discussions. People have done it plenty of times before on a lot tougher topics, and we can do it now.

Just... be cool and talk to folks.

That's exactly the sort of stuff I traditionally associated with feminism. To be honest, I'm more inclined to reclaim that word from anyone who uses it to mean some sort of gender superiority than I am to fully adopt a renaming to something like "social humanist" or whatever.

But really, the ideology is more than just a name. If you're for equality, it doesn't much matter what you call yourself. You can call a spade a zebra, but it's still a spade. That's a saying right? Fuck it, it is now.

Is the problem here really feminism?

There are too many people misusing the term "feminism" for it to be reclaimed. And beyond the moderates, there is no one interested in even acknowledging that everything is not rosy just because you're a white male. That is why Emma Watson's UN speech was so well received, she included everyone, acknowledged the issues on all sides. That is how we progress from this point: We make it a common struggle, we don't focus on the problems of one side and try to force the other side to "yield". That leads to conflict rather than cooperation and without cooperation we will be right here, in this same spot 50 years from now still. That is what vocal feminists do, however, they want to stir up a conflict. Sometimes I think they are more interested in the shitstorm than the results.

Feminism is also too focused on minor issues. "This digital character's shirt was too unbuttoned!". Really? Really? This is what is important?

And that is why we need a new movement, one we can all get behind, one who represents us all equally. The term "feminism" has been tainted beyond repair in my mind. Besides, the word itself implies a focus on women's issues, while what we need is a focus on all issues of equality.

I absolutely agree that, having come to it late, it's impossible to determine what it's actually meant to be as there's so many conflicting stories. Where "sides" are concerned however, people will determine what they think it means and chose to either support it or rally against it. There are definitely people that choose not to engage with it entirely. To analogize, Pro-Gamergate is one city, Anti-Gamergate is a second city and two hurricanes, maybe even one, had destructive effects on both.

@truthtellah: Well, yeah. I was responding to someone who had an issue with the "feminist movement". What problem where are you talking about?

Maybe. Maybe that "new" movement is just "equality". Forget the titles, just state your belief. It's not really that complicated anyways; you don't need to recite an essay anytime you wanna explain your position.

"What are you?"

"Oh, I believe in equality for all."

"Yes, but what are you?"

"...human?"

Just cut out the branding altogether. Unite with that shared ideology.

Yep, leave absolutely no room for potential misinterpretation or hijacking, and when you look at the message some people are putting out, do you see well reasoned arguments with intent to progress, or misconstrued hit-pieces designed to antagonize and push buttons? It's toxic and it's infecting everything.

I think people simply recognized a misguided and ultimately hurtful storm of online noise and said, "Uh, that sucks. Yall should stop supporting that," and many have finally started to go, "Oh, yeah, my bad. Let's leave that behind us." And while some remnants of the storm remain to whip around and primarily hurt random women(like Chloe Sagal today), it's going to fade like all the small pop-ups like this in the past. This one just happened to get a name.

It certainly did leave a mess wherever it has touched, including in many hearts and minds. Like most blusters like this, online and off, we'll just have to pick up the pieces and figure out how to best address the root causes of this latest instance. Those root causes have been struggling over the last few years, as we've slowly been trading a hurtful status quo with blow ups like this. That is still a hopeful course, though, as things overall continue to get better for the many folks who enjoy and care about gaming. So, have hope!

@theht: Certain feminists want to be specifically known as feminists rather than women fighting for equality. Those are usually the more militant feminists.

You mentioned your perception of feminism, and I asked if the problem was actually feminism. Because, could it instead be possible that your perception of feminism is misled or mistaken? If that may be the case, the problem would be less with feminism and more with how a lot of people are influenced to feel about it in our cultures.

And besides that, what does it have to do with the thread? heh. I mean, the very nature of feminism is a pretty big topic for a thread that seemed to at least primarily be about the recent online kerfuffle in gaming.

Misguided or not guided at all, I completely agree.

@anund: I still think there's utility in the word feminism due to structural and institutional problems that urgently need to be addressed that face women today, especially if you think of it as an international movement. If it helps clarify some people prefer to use the term "egalitarian feminist". I've always been of the position that prejudice is a double edged sword, even when it doesn't cut equally, so everyone should have an interest in making the world more fair.

If you believe the word isn't the best to convey your views though that's fine, if you tell people you believe in equality I'm sure they'll know what you mean.

Influenced to feel about it? I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at here. Feminism is fundamentally about equality. I'm not sure why you think that understanding was misled or is mistaken. I didn't extract my understanding of feminism from the perception of it in our culture.

It's relevant on my end in so far as I was responding to someone who brought it up. If I had to guess, I'd say they brought it up because the OP made mention of "female supremacists".

The very word "Feminism" implies that it is fighting in favour of one sex. There are those Feminist that uphold the traditional sense of the word, that's fighting for equality, but there are those that are taking it beyond that. There are plenty of women on the internet that are now ex-Feminists, either distancing themselves from it or even becoming anti-Feminist as they're no longer comfortable with the direction it is heading. Some say it's seeking to obtain privileges, some say it's looking to established females as the superior sex.

If you really want to get into it, I'm referring to the prevailing problems which feminism has set out to unravel. In particular being institutional and pervasive sexism in a patriarchal society. The insidious nature and unfortunate impact of long-standing prejudice built into the world around us. It's the historical legacy and larger culture which influences us from the day we are born. It's why sexism is still such a detrimental force across the world today, and internalized sexism even influences women raised to buy into sexist ideology.

Large symbols of that prejudice have been torn down in various countries over the years, particularly with women's suffrage and other civil rights, but such progress hasn't meant a sweeping institutional change relieving the world of such enduring prejudice. Outside of how oppressed women still are in much of the world, there remain significant problems and challenges for women in even relatively progressive countries like the United States or Canada and regions like Europe. Problems born of centuries and even millennia of inequality sadly can't be undone in just a few years. And it is that daunting challenge which requires a forceful effort.

None of us are free from the influences of such prejudice, as @spacekatgal mentioned on GB yesterday, and awareness of influences and flaws in ourselves helps us to potentially rise above them for the sake of ourselves and those around us. So, when I refer to the potential that the problem may be many people being influenced against feminism instead of the problem really being feminism, that's the wider influence I am talking about.

It's a rather large and expansive legacy with unfortunate remnants within all of us regardless of great progress in the past, and it's worth considering when reflecting on a topic such as this.

The cool thing about this is you will get the support of easily 90% of people. At least in the western world. You will not find many who would disagree with the basic notion of equality between the sexes. Then feminism can remain and fight its battle against the representation of Princess Peach in video games without bogging down the real issues.

Yep, it would be fantastic if we could throw away the terms and labels of the past, to universally unite men and women across the world to fight for each others right to be equal, instead of 2 bickering sides fighting for themselves.

@korlic:

The problem is that no one can protect or help or shelter some random, unverified Twitter account owner who has a threat against them against some other random, unverified Twitter account. Which police do we call for them? In a lot of cases it isn't even clear which country they are in. On the other hand, real people have had their real world addresses and personal details and it is all independently verifiable. Even celebrities who have been hounded by the paparazzi don't even cross these lines. To suggest these situations are equivalent is not close. Yes it is abuse and harassment on the internet is something no one should take but a line was so thoroughly crossed and abandoned when real world information and real world threats were made to attack people at specific real world times and places that make arguing claims of equivalency weak.

This is a lot of the reason why Twitter can be poisonous and I wish Twitter would pull the plug on badly behaving unverified accounts more rapidly than they've been doing it. But just like anything else on the internet as long as they aren't dumping real world information for others to act on then anyone is free to ignore it and spend their time doing something else.

Good post. And well done for having a the courage to call out both sides.

There are assholes at both ends of this issue, just because one side also has criminals doesn't mean you should throw your lot in with the other.

@extomar I'm not exactly sure which situations you're referring to. Any threat of taking someone's life is a cause for concern, sure the presence of specific time and location of an individual does warrant a higher level of concern but at this point we're really just picking between the greater or lesser of two extreme evils. Neither of which are welcome.

With the exception of formal rhetorical criticism like Anita is giving, I agree with you in general. However, there are specific commentators who are great at speaking about this even in their reviews. Danielle over at Polygon is one such example. She has a different perspective from most, and it's been a delight to read her writings and hear her on Idle Thumbs. In general, yes, but there are specific good people to follow if you're interested in reading further on feminism or critical discussions. Another good one is Patricia over at Polygon.

I've spoken a great deal on the website I assist with in regard to Yuko's point about the 'value' of females to gaming, and yes, that's exactly what you are imply here, 'that most people buying games and paying most companies' bills are men.' not only is that factually incorrect, but it is a dismissal by irrelevance. Income does not matter to the discussions, which is why your discussion is poisoned from the start. Especially saying something like this, "Fact is, you're not going to find a lot of ladies who spend enough time (or, more importantly, money) on games to make a dent in traditional "Men first" thinking."

That point can be directly contested by letting developers themselves speak about this. Here's an example from the best game of the year last year. I'm going to quote one of my fellows from another site:

"Neil Druckmann, writer of The Last Of Us, gave a talk about the development of the game's script. It actually started out as something misogynist. The infection in the game only affected women, so you'd basically spend the whole time killing female zombies in brutal ways.

In the speech he directly brings up Anita Sarkeesian's series and the impact it had on him. The end result is that the central character of the story became Ellie, a well-realized teenaged girl and not the middle-aged white male that the game is ostensibly about. He outright says that on TLOU he had a "secret agenda" to make "the coolest non-sexualized female video game protagonist".

Aside from being great from a representational standpoint, this also resulted in maybe the best ending from ANY medium from last year. Giving us something other than a male protagonist with women as window dressing gave us a much better story.

Aside from being the logical and good thing to do, diversity in characters and representation leads to more variety and more interesting stories.

Link to relevant part. Massive spoilers because its a post-mortem: http://youtu.be/Le6qIz7MjSk?t=30m50s

The really good stuff is at 37:30, but the whole thing is worth watching."

Yes but who do we call to protect some anonymous poster on an unverified account? What is the strategy we should use? Saying "we should take it all seriously" is a noble goal but reality is neither you or I can save them.

I can help with people harassing Zoe Quinn. There are any number of electronic and real world things I can do to lend a hand. Neither you nor I can help @MasterChief210029 because only a handful of people know who that or where they are to help them. At best I can tell that "guy" to block them.

@extomar: Yep, there's nothing you or I can do, defending or trying to deter people from such behavior seems futile, and it's probably best that the individual on the receiving end of it to block harrassment and abuse and report threats to the police.

I always thought twitter was invented as a vehicle to tell people that pumpkin spice lattes were really delicious or that I was taking a poop.

My main takeaway at this point is this: I've never paid attention to sites like Kotaku and Polygon, and will continue to not do so. I don't think Anita Sarkeesian is a very good academic, but if her doing her thing gets more critical discourse going about games, I'm all for it. As for everything else, corruption et al., gaming press and to a large extent reviews are useless. If you are buying games day one and end up disappointed, that's your fault. Treat it like any other product, do your research, and keep gaming. The end.

@yukoasho: Agreed, Twitter is mostly garbage, but I'd encourage you to actually take a look at some of Anita Sarkeesian's videos if you haven't already. She goes out of her way to say it's still okay to enjoy the games she criticizes and that she's not damning them. I believe her point is that the depiction of women in games could use some improving, period. I find it hard to take umbrage with that. I don't think she's suggesting that sexuality has no place in games or that gamers haven't decried flagrant examples of poor treatment of women in games.

I would also like to add that why are we suddenly upset over Gamer Gate? It's painfully obvious that the gaming media is very buddy-buddy with the development side of things and they obviously have to be since it's up to the publisher which publications get access to the new product. Gaming media is very dependent on the good will of the publishers and developers, much more so than other types of media. It's not even just about early access to games and so on, it's about ad money as well. And that is not even counting the personal ties between journalists and developers.

Does this mean everyone is corrupt. No. But of course there will be some influence there. This really isn't news and should be obvious to anyone, or so I thought. It's not like it matters anyway, who actually buys games based on reviews these days?

"Militant feminists" aren't the ones issuing death threats, this whole angle is a farce. Stop victim blaming smh

You wouldn't say the moderate stance on ISIS is "hey both sides should cool off a bit" but that's what yall are doing here. Let's not pretend both sides have been aggressive in equal parts and that both sides deserve equal time. That's not the moderate stance, that's the stance the person on the wrong side of history takes thinking they're being reasonable.

@loiosh: I'll give Danielle's work a look, thanks for the tip.

I'm not sure you know what victim blaming is, I see no people suggesting any victims of harassment are to blame for their being harassed.

The word gamer is complete bullshit, even for reasons that have nothing to do with sexism.

There's no equivalent for people who watch movies or listen to music, because those people don't try to brand themselves as part of a cult, as a lot of people who play video-games apparently want to do - probably due to the fact that it's still a sub-culture industry when compared to the two other aforementioned ones.

And whoever is defending the usage of that stupid word is only making sure that video-game culture will remain that way.

@yukoasho: I just wanted to let you know that not only do I agree with everything you said here, but you also worded it in a way that is not overly aggressive. Those are two things I can't say often in these kinds of discussions. That is all I came here to say.

@truthtellah: Hey Truthtellah, do you not think alot of the problems we are facing here comes from 2 very different schools of thought?

For example since this whole gamergate thing kicked off I have been introduced to alot of new believes and ideology's, privallage, patriarchy, cultural appropriation.... so on.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment of some of these viewpoints (Im not going to argue against that Women tend to have it harder then Men) I generally do not agree with alot of these points on a fundemental level or at least with how they are currently being put across. Because of this we are at such vastly different viewpoints that it can be hard to talk it out so to speak as there is little of common.

It reminds me of a theory I once heard (cannot remember who said it) that said if a giraffe could speak English that I still could not have a conversation with it as our points of reference would be so far apart.

Lasty let me just say whilst as I have said I do find myself disagreeing with some of your posts I have very much been impressed by the thought put into them.

Hopefully this is readable, its been a long day :)

@carryboy

Pushing into the harder spots is really worthwhile. I don't mean arguing, I mean looking at the things that piss you off and asking, "Why is this pissing me off so much?"

I would love a place to talk about feminism (et al) with some of you guys who aren't resistant to the idea. Might start a thread just for that purpose.

I won't argue whether or not the term "gamer" is something worth preserving, I'm not sure, but your point that people do not incorporate enjoyment of other forms of media into their identity is wrong. People call themselves film buffs, readers, and a whole host of other things to indicate their appreciation or time spent with a form of media that is higher than the general population.

@snail: I get your general sentiment and while I agree, I feel that it is a little untrue. People label themselves because it is what they resonate with. It is not up to me, you or anyone to tell them "fuck you, stop labeling yourselves", even though I agree that "gamer" is a real lazy thing to label yourself as. I mean people who really care about food call themselves "Foodie" and funnily enough, a food columnist recently did an article about how people should stop labeling themselves as "foodie" (I mean it is kind of stupid imo). Can you guess what the reaction to that article is? Well the first few comments told him to go die in a fire. Trying to take away an identity from people IS an insult, actually that is what an insult truly is.

So in a way I am not surprise by how GG happen and I hope it does not continue any longer but I am surprise that people who call themselves "academics" (see the irony) did not see this coming.

@bargainben: Please do not associate me with ISIS.

What's changed? It's exactly that, cause and reaction.

@ragnarok7038 said:

Same. Honestly, the way people talk about those sites you'd think they hired goons to point guns at peoples heads and force them to scroll through every article posted.

I don't read much video game "analysis" type writing, not because I'm opposed to it or think it's far left propaganda, but just because most of it isn't very good. I find it pretty easy to avoid, namely by not seeking it out. It really is strange how the people who are best informed about what's big over at Kotaku right now are people who really hate Kotaku.

@notlikelytocare said:

This is pretty much exactly what an undercover ISIS operative would say. Got my eye on you pal.

Agree with most of the op,and yeah, this part is particularly crazy. I've seen Patrick repeat this stat a couple times too, and it just seems like a disservice to their cause to pretend that a huge percentage of women already play video games. I've referenced this chart a couple times as it's recent proof that the 50% stuff is clearly not true:

So knowing this and then seeing a bunch of articles coming out saying that the white male isn't important anymore or whatever it's just like, "Who do you even think you're writing to on this video game website?" It seems like all these sites repeatedly criticizing their main audience has finally pissed a ton of people off. It sucks that some of those people are crazy enough to give death threats and stuff, though, obviously.

@heyguys said:

Well, I mean the government is restricted from doing more than just arresting you by the right to the freedom of speech guaranteed in the 1st amendment but otherwise this is totally correct.

I think I can succinctly summarize the OPs thoughts, mostly, with my own and that's that I have no problem with feminist, structuralist, or critical theory based evaluations of games, they're media they should be analyzed, my problem is that the gaming press is really bad at it. The gaming press is seldom, if not always unqualified to pursue these critiques, they exercise zero rigor, they're ignorant of the history of these movements, and, well, they're lazy and trying to roll a bunch of competing interests into one review.

This post nails it.

We need a few criticial theorists to take an interest in writing about video games.

It also doesn't help that most folks replying to something like Anita Sarkeesian's really poor feminist critiques of games seem even less equipped to respond to her than she is in applying these critiques.

In short, fuck twitter indeed.

Also, I'm happy the 'white knight' and 'SJW' stuff was removed, as you make some good arguments but unironically using stupid terms like that only threatens to undermine it all.

When I told someone that I wasn't a feminist, she asked me if I believed in equal pay for women. I answered in the affirmative. She said, "See, that makes you a feminist."

My response was, "No, that makes me a humanist."

@voysa_reezun: no, that makes you an Egalitarian.

No, it doesn't. Why can't people who say this spend a couple seconds looking up what humanism is?

Well, to indulge you, I looked it up and grabbed the dictionary definition from Merriam-Webster. I cropped out the parts of the definition that weren't relevant to leave the ones that were:

a person having a strong interest in or concern for human welfare,values, and dignity.

a person who follows a form ofscientific or philosophical humanism.

It always helps to know what you're talking about before you correct someone, I've found.

(If you want to talk about the different types of humanism OR the different definitions related to the use of that word, that's fine, but you are wrong.)

This is a super important point that needs to be talked about more, though it's not just a problem with the people writing the articles. Pop-Sociology has become an epidemic on the internet. People think they are educated enough to speak as an authority on a critical theory after reading a Wikipedia article and a few forum posts, ignorant of the fact that people spend years studying and reading and researching these topics, and those years of training are begin supplanted by watching a few YouTube videos. It's destroying these fields and causing real damage to the content creation process and to content creators.

Likewise, many people are so inexperienced with these types of specific criticisms that they loose their minds when they see them. A common criticism of Sarkeesian's videos is that they are fairly basic in terms of Feminist critique, but for a lot of people this is their first exposure to academic Feminism and they don't know what it is or how to handle it.

Also, Twitter is the worst and people should stop using it.

@voysa_reezun: Neither of those definitions really describe someone who believes in equal pay for women. I'm sure many (most?) humanists do believe in equal pay but that isn't what makes them humanists.

Incorrect. Work is tied directly to human dignity as part of a number of ethical concerns. In fact, I'm pretty sure Pope Francis just made a statement on the connection. What do you think is the impetus behind something like Labor Day or May Day?

Furthermore, multiple forms of "philosophical humanism" are concerned with ensuring basic human opportunity for everyone, which being able to support oneself falls under, and which having the opportunity to full self-actualization also falls under, and addressing equal pay for women addresses both of those things.

Certainly, nowhere did I mean to imply that believing in equal pay for women is the sole-defining characteristic of a humanist, but I thought that there was no sole-defining characteristic was obvious.

Has the term evolved from its typically-used definition back in the days of the Romantics? Yes. Welcome to the nature of language.