Skip to content

Posts categoriezed as feminism

How to destroy a woman

How to destroy a woman published on No Comments on How to destroy a woman

Taslima Nasreen has a horrifying post up at No Country for Women on individual cases of women attacked with acid in different countries. It includes a lot of photos, so be forewarned. Each woman had acid thrown in her face, with the result of being disfigured beyond recognition and often losing sight in one or both eyes and even the eyes themselves, resulting in a person who barely looks human any longer. Why does this happen? Nasreen writes:

Men throw acid on us with the intention of injuring and disfiguring us. Men throw acid on our bodies, burn our faces, smash our noses, melt our eyes, and walk away as happy men. Acid attack is common in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Cambodia, and a few other countries. Men throw acid on us because men are angry with us for refusing sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, proposals of marriage, demands for dowry, for attending schools, for not wearing Islamic veils, for not behaving well, for speaking too much, for laughing loudly and for pure fun.

Nasreen’s post is titled “Our men throw acid in our faces, destroy our lives but we never stop loving men.”

The aim, as she says, is to disfigure. You can gravely injure anyone by throwing acid on them, of course, but these attacks specifically for women are to mar her face and make her ugly– beyond ugly; monstrous and frightening. Her primary worth is her beauty, therefore to destroy that is to destroy her. In so doing, you also destroy her family through the burdens of caring for her health, her chances of having gainful employment, her social status since she is now an outcast…you have taken everything from her. Every one of these attacks is motivated by sheer misogyny– a feeling of resentment for women who do not conduct themselves as desired, for refusing to obey, for simply being women. For this, their faces have literally been melted and their entire existence turned to suffering.

A handful of face transplant surgeries have occurred recently, most notably Isabelle Dinoire in France and Charla Nash and Dallas Wiens in the United States. In each of their cases the disfigurement was the result of an accident, and each was lucky enough to live in a country with advanced medical care and the opportunity to radically improve– though not completely fix– his or her appearance and physical functioning. The women who are attacked by acid have no similar opportunity in their countries. They are pariahs not only within their own societies, but in their world.

Nasreen concludes:

We are more abused, harassed, exploited, kidnapped, raped, trafficked, murdered by our lovers, husbands, fathers, brothers, uncles, cousins, friends, or men we know well than by strangers. Whatever happens to us, we never stop loving men.

…Not yet

…Not yet published on No Comments on …Not yet

I often say that offense is a valuable thing– as appealing as it might seem, you really wouldn’t want to be a person who isn’t offended by anything, because that would mean losing your humanity. People who go through life being oversensitive are in a bad state because they’re suffering more than they really should, but people who develop a rock-hard emotional shell and take nothing seriously have trained themselves to be callous and uncaring, which isn’t good either.

Sometimes I re-think that, however. Such as when I see that someone created an interactive game allowing the player to beat up a woman for wanting to make a video series on sexism in video games.

Does it get easier?

Does it get easier? published on No Comments on Does it get easier?

Gaming as Women has an excellent advice post up today. The letter-writer wants to know if it gets easier to be a feminist:

Right now it is very hard to be a feminist when I am constantly told that I shouldn’t be one, that I’m doing it wrong somehow, and that I’m ruining everyone’s fun. I can’t unsee misogyny or the kyriarchy anymore, and now I’m starting to hate myself for seeing problematic things all the time because no one I’m with ever sees it with me or even wants to. I work in the game industry so I’m immersed in sexism on daily basis, but some people aren’t and just simply can’t see why I am the way I am. How can I tell if I’m a bad feminist? Or is this just how it feels constantly? If so…does it ever get better?

Melody, Elin, Vivian, Jess, and Dympha all give very good answers to this, which you should read. Their answers include two important reality checks: 1) that in one sense being a feminist today in the West is far easier than it has been further back in history or elsewhere in the modern world where women have it a lot worse, and 2) we all have our biases and prejudices, which is good to keep in mind when addressing those of other people so that you can avoid shaming the whole person while talking about a particular thing they said or did that displays bias or prejudice. Right on the money with both of those. However I would also point out that the historical/cultural comparison shows how it can be more difficult to be a feminist in a modern Western context, because it’s much easier to see and acknowledge a disparity in how men and women are treated when, say, half of them can’t vote or own property than when half of them tend to be represented primarily as sexual objects. You often have to start by getting a person to agree that gender representation even matters, and head off the assumption that even discussing it means that you don’t care about those poor women in Saudi Arabia who can’t go out of the house without being completely covered and why don’t you care about them anyway? If you’re going to be all fired up about treatment of women, why not focus on that?

Well, we are. We’re capable of caring about more than one thing at a time, you know.

Once that hurdle is cleared– if it’s cleared– you can talk about representation, and face the accusation of wanting to ruin everyone’s fun. Because feminists, as you know, don’t like fun. They enjoy misery and want everyone to be miserable with them, which is why they’re even less funny than women are generally (thanks, Adam Carolla). Actually feminists like to have fun and laugh just as much as anybody, but as feminists they tend to notice when that “fun” is at the expense of women and feel compelled to say something about that. It’s understandable that making bigoted jokes and viewing the sex you’re attracted to as existing mainly for your own purposes is fun, but it’s also unfortunate that it’s fun, because eventually the people who have been made the butt of those jokes and the object of that…objectification are going to speak up. Because they want to have fun too, and that’s getting in the way.

This is an impossible thing to make people (yes, including women) understand if they can’t manage to switch perspectives a bit. You’re marching right up to people who are enjoying something just the way it is, and demanding that they change it, and they can’t see why. It seems unfair. It seems pushy and entitled. Nobody wants to view themselves as sexist, so they will fight tooth and nail against the mere suggestion that there’s some sexism present in the movie/TV show/video game/comic they’ve been enjoying so much for such a long time. And if you change it to rectify this “bias” you see, that will make it worse. It’s just fine as it is, leave it alone.

I get it.

In the discussion on feminism and sexism in all things geekish, I’ve seen a number of attempts to force empathy on people by getting them to see what it would look like if men in movies/TV/video games/comics were depicted like women are. Male superheroes wearing the costumes of female superheroes and posed all coquettishly, male characters on the covers of science fiction and urban fantasy novels posed and dressed like the female characters, and so on. I’m not sure if it really does any good, aside from providing amusement for many and pointing out with stark clarity that men who are depicted as wanting to look sexy will look ridiculous even if they’re not also dressed revealingly (and all the moreso if they are).

Which, now that I say it, should be helpful since the point being made is that women appear ridiculous if they’re trying to look sexy as a default. If they’re trying to look sexy while fighting demons on a burning countryside, or sneak past guards and break into an enemy’s compound, or bound through the jungle pursued by wild animals, or wage a battle against an aliens species, or just generally trying to save the world. It’s not a Revlon commercial; it’s more like the Army. Portraying women as if they have confused the latter for the former makes them look stupid and inept– they styled their hair, put on makeup, and wore their most revealing bustier and six inch heels to kick a cave troll’s butt in battle. What were they thinking? That doesn’t say “strong woman;” it says “When they said Dungeon, I thought they were talking about a night club.” This does not do women a favor. Sometimes they do want to dress in bustiers and six inch heels, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but making them do so inappropriately is not good. It says that their being sexy is the most important thing about them, all the time. It doesn’t have to be that way.

If you can get to this point and your fellow conversant is still listening, my hat’s off to you. Getting to this point is hard. That’s because of all the hurdles preceding it which have labels like “It’s just a game; get over yourself” and “We like it this way, and there aren’t as many of you” and of course our old friend “Don’t you have something more important to worry about?” That’s what our letter-writer is dealing with, and she has my sympathy.

But the question remains, though– does it get any better? My answer: We’ll have to see, won’t we?

Why, when talking about minorities in gaming, you talk about WoW

Why, when talking about minorities in gaming, you talk about WoW published on No Comments on Why, when talking about minorities in gaming, you talk about WoW

This post is based on a comment I made on an article called “Women in the World of Warcraft: The Bigger Picture” by Will at Skepchick (yep, it’s not just chicks!). There were a lot of reactions to the piece, some of them quite…vehement, but a commenter going by the name of Sawhoof who described herself as a twenty-something lesbian fundamentally rejected Will’s decision to use World of Warcraft specifically as the focus for a discussion on diversity in video games, and it got me thinking. And then writing. I don’t necessarily agree with the criticisms Will makes regarding WoW, but absolutely agree with the decision to make it a focal point when talking about representation of minorities– specifically in this case LGBT people and women– in video games. What I said was…well, here. What follows is a slightly modified version of the comment:

Sawhoof wants to know why Will is bothering to write about WoW when WoW is, as Sawhoof sees it, not a very good game and one that is on its way out. She also says WoW is as “generic as a knights in shining armor game gets.” Sawhoof, as a lesbian who plays video games and WoW specifically, presumably agrees with Will on most of what he’s said here, yet with inexplicable hostility she asks why what he’s saying is relevant. Here’s why it’s relevant:

1. WoW is a living game, a game with an expansion coming out later this year, and one which 10.2 million people all over the world continue to play and enjoy. And they pay $15 a month to do it, making it for them what Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade have described as a “WoW utility” (you pay for the phone, the heat, the water..the WoW). It is the MMORPG that people who don’t even know what an MMORPG is, or what it means, still know about. It is also in my opinion an amazing game and one I continue to enjoy playing, but even if that wasn’t the case it would still be obviously important. If you’re going to talk about how minorities are portrayed in a video game that matters, and you’re just going to talk about one game, there is no better choice.

2. If WoW is really as generic as it gets, that makes it even more important to talk about it because that means that what it presents is at least in some way normative. “Generic” meaning, after all, “representative of a genus.” If a game sets the standard for games of its type, you want the standards it sets to be good!

3. A video game is a fictional place, yes—it can be anything the writers want it to be. That’s why what the writers want it to be matters. Everything they create is on purpose! Nothing has to be other than the way they want it to be, in terms of content. So while there may be elements of the story that make it necessary to present minorities badly or not at all, we can identify the gratuitous instances of such and ask “Why does it have to be this way? And if it doesn’t, why not change it?”

4. Sawhoof’s answer to that question is “Capitalism.” That is, that Blizzard has no incentive to portray minorities better because it’s not good for their bottom line. This argument always mystifies me because it assumes that people who play its games are a bunch of bigots and won’t be as happy with a game that doesn’t encourage prejudice! What’s the evidence for this? Sure, lots of video game players are sexist/racist/homophobic etc., but that doesn’t mean that the games they play should cater to these positions, and don’t depress the living hell out of me by suggesting that it’s financially necessary for them to do so.

5. An MMORPG isn’t just a story; it’s a world. It’s right there in the name—World of Warcraft. It’s hard to change the world we live in, but a whole lot easier to change one that was deliberately created, and whose creation is ongoing. So the choices made about what players are allowed and encouraged to do and how their characters are allowed/encouraged to look, as well as how NPCs behave and look, are very important. Some people want to play a radically different character in a game than they are in reality, but a lot of people want at least the option of playing something closer to who they really are. They also want to see characters who don’t exist in reality, but if those fictional characters are going to resemble reality in every way except that they’re homogeneous in a way that reality isn’t, that’s a turn-off. Sure, make people who are humanoid pandas! I’ll play one, because I’m one of those people who never chooses to play a human if other, fictional races are available (my first main was a troll). But if you’re going to have humans, please make them as diverse as actual humans actually are, or have a good reason why you can’t. Otherwise it looks like you don’t like the diverse forms that humans actually come in, and people whose forms aren’t represented tend to be offended by that thought.

Template for my reaction to discussion threads on sexism

Template for my reaction to discussion threads on sexism published on No Comments on Template for my reaction to discussion threads on sexism

Look, a thread about an article addressing sexism in ______. Let’s read the whole thing through.

I see that participants in ______ took their time to read the article, avoided making pointless ad hominem attacks against the real or imagined authors of it, and carefully considered whether the criticisms made reflected the presence of a real bias in ______ which should be addressed and rectified, or whether perhaps they were well-intentioned but mistaken interpretations of _______ which deserve a thoughtful rebuttal rather than effectively saying “You’re complaining about sexism in ______? Well, I’ll give you some sexism to complain about!”

Oh wait…that’s not what happened?

What a surprise.

What’s wrong with “Don’t rape”

What’s wrong with “Don’t rape” published on 3 Comments on What’s wrong with “Don’t rape”

This post is about why I don’t like this sign:

Trigger warning: A detailed discussion of rape and morality to follow.
Maybe you’ve seen it making the rounds on Facebook or Tumblr. It’s popped up for me a few times, and each time I cringe, but don’t comment to explain why because I’m afraid that my comments will be interpreted to suggest that I disagree with it. I don’t, but I need to some room to say what my problem with it is.
First, I get what the sign (and the person holding it, though I have no idea who she is) is trying to say. The ever-present concern with advising women on how to protect themselves from being raped is that you run the risk of treating rape like a natural disaster. Like some act of God (no, I’m not going to delve too deeply into that) that is just going to happen, no matter what we do, but here are some measures you can take to make it less likely to happen to you. Like rape is a thing that happens; it’s not a thing that some people do to other people. That’s a really bad way to portray it, because it removes the agency from the rapists. If you hear someone complaining about blaming the victim, that’s what she’s talking about– all responsibility for a rape belongs on the rapist, and there are a lot of ways, some of them bizarrely well-intentioned, that end up placing at least some of it on the victim instead. She shouldn’t have been out drinking late. She shouldn’t have been so easy with other guys. She shouldn’t have allowed that guy to take her home instead of her boyfriend. He or she shouldn’t have committed a crime and gotten sent to prison– prison rape is a phenomenon that is often celebrated for males and ignored for females, and I’m not sure which is worse. Even for people who are rapists themselves– there were “jokes” flying around on Friday about Jerry Sandusky’s fate in prison after being convicted of child abuse, and also attempts to shame those making the jokes. The shamers understood that if you are willing to excuse rape under any circumstance, even or especially to laugh about it happening to someone who committed it himself, you detract from the seriousness of rape against every victim. You add a little bit of credibility to the claim that any of them deserved it, and that is unacceptable.
That’s clear and simple, or at least it should be. I prefer things to be clear and simple, as most people do. I favor simplicity to the extent that I think if you can’t explain something simply you probably don’t really understand it yourself, which is not a predominant view in academia but it does explain why my dissertation was short. So you’d think I would be a big fan of the sign above, but I can’t be, because this is a case in which ambiguity is really important. Ambiguity should always be cut out of the picture except when you can’t, and I think this is a time when you can’t. Here’s why:
Rapists don’t always know they’re rapists. So telling them “Don’t rape” will not work, because they don’t realize it applies to them.
Yes, really. In order to unpack that I’m going to need to compare rape to murder, but I hope it’s clear in which regards I think they’re similar and in which I think they are different. See, murder is wrongful killing. The dictionary says it’s illegal killing, but you and I both know that murder would still be murder even if it wasn’t against the law. We know what abortion foes are talking about when they call abortion murder, even if we don’t agree with them. We know what PETA means when it says that people who wear fur or eat meat are accessories to murder, even if we do one or both ourselves. Killing, however, is not always wrong and even abortion foes and PETA are aware of that. The same people who oppose abortion are often just fine with soldiers killing each other on the battlefield or being sent to the electric chair after receiving a death sentence, and they generally would not say no to a big juicy steak if you set one in front of them. The same people who refuse the steak, oppose all war, and regard the death penalty as abhorrent likely see nothing wrong with pulling the plug on someone in a persistent and final vegetative state, mentally. Possibly they would also regard it as acceptable to allow a person in constant pain with no solutions to end his or her life, though the war-mongering meat-eating abortion opponent might shriek in protest. Killing is not necessarily wrong.
Sex is also not necessarily wrong– you’re probably not enjoying the fact that I feel compelled to point this out, because sex should never be wrong. But sex with a child is wrong, and sex with an adult unwilling partner is wrong. It’s so wrong that a lot of opponents of both of these things want to claim that it’s not even sex, because it’s not “about” sexual desire. It’s about power, they say. I get why they say that, and I think it goes to the heart of what’s so wrong about sex without consent– it robs the victim of his/her ability to have control over his/her own body. It takes that control away, and places it squarely in the hands of the rapist. It makes the victim’s body simply a tool for the rapist to use, and in doing so the rapist utterly dehumanizes his/her victim. The rapist renders him/her a non-person, and the victim has to live with the fact of having experienced that for the rest of his/her life. Even if the victim can’t comprehend it at the time of the event, he/she will have this knowledge later. That’s why it’s wrong, even if the experience involves no physical damage or overt threat of such. That’s why it’s still rape even if the victim doesn’t emerge bruised and bloody, or was fourteen years old and not six. That’s why consent matters.
I apologize for saying what probably seems blatantly obvious, and you may think I’m insulting your intelligence just now. If that’s the case I really am sorry, but the fact remains that it’s not obvious to everyone. It’s not obvious to people who compare sex between people of the same gender to sex between an adult and a child or an adult and an animal, and it’s not obvious to rapists. Yes, they might get what’s wrong with leaping out of a dark alley and attacking some woman walking by, but that’s not how most rapes happen. Most rapes are called “acquaintance rapes” because they happen between people who know each other. People who have spent time together before, know each other’s names, may have even expressed an interest in dating. I don’t think that the men (usually men) in these situations who force sex on a woman generally think that what they’re doing is rape. They think it’s “rough sex,” or not even that– that the woman who said no, or was unconscious or very drunk at the time, or was underage but seemed like she wanted it, and had had sex before, was either a willing partner or a partner who didn’t need to be willing. And they apparently think this a lot:

If a survey asks men, for example, if they ever “had sexual intercourse with somone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances,” some of them will say yes, as long as the questions don’t use the “R” word. . . The men in your lives will tell you what they do. As long as the R word doesn’t get attached, rapists do self-report. The guy who says he sees a woman too drunk to know where she is as an opportunity is not joking. He’s telling you how he sees it. The guy who says, “bros before hos”, is asking you to make a pact. The Pact. The social structure that allows the predators to hide in plain sight, to sit at the bar at the same table with everyone, take a target home, rape her, and stay in the same social circle because she can’t or won’t tell anyone, or because nobody does anything if she does. The pact to make excuses, to look for mitigation, to patch things over — to believe that what happens to our friends — what our friends do to our friends — is not (using Whoopi Goldberg’s pathetic apologetics) “rape-rape”.

So the solution, as I see it, is not to say “Don’t rape.” Or rather, not to say just that. You absolutely have to say what rape is and what’s wrong with it as well, because some people really don’t know. And you have to say it often, and guys…you have to say it to your friends. You have to say it so that they don’t have a Pact, and don’t operate under the illusion that they do. It isn’t good enough to simply hate rapists and publicly wish for every horrible thing you can think of (including rape) to happen to them– that’s allowing the most obvious and acknowledged perpetrators of sexual violence to act as scapegoats for the rest, for the “accidental” rapists. It’s actually disturbing rather than touching to see explicit declarations of how much someone would like to punish a convicted rapist, especially a child molester, when they come from men who generally seem to regard women’s sexual consent…loosely. It suggests that their regard is more for women and children’s “innocence” than their autonomy. Hint: rape isn’t bad because it leaves a person tainted. It’s bad because he/she didn’t choose it. Yes, being raped can certainly make a person feel tainted, but that’s an artifact of both his/her control having been taken away and the bizarre, sad cultural construct of sexual purity which says that sex– especially virginity-removing sex– somehow permanently changes a person, usually a woman, into something…lesser. Something worldly, and therefore a little more profane and a little less sacred. Sex is necessary according to this thinking because we can’t make the babies without it (yet), but it lowers a person– especially if they have a lot of it, or enjoy it too much, or have no intention of making babies using it, ever. This is called puritanism, and it’s the friend of pastor and pornographer alike.

But I digress. Point being…we can’t just say “Don’t rape.” We may not be able to stop it altogether, like we’re not going to stop murder, but we can do a lot more toward that end by articulating what it is, why it’s wrong, and not accommodating the thinking that enables it.

Video games are like porn

Video games are like porn published on 1 Comment on Video games are like porn

Yep, I’m going to make the comparison. But perhaps not how you think. I am not talking about this:

Is the overuse of video games and pervasiveness of online porn causing the demise of guys?
Increasingly, researchers say yes, as young men become hooked on arousal, sacrificing their schoolwork and relationships in the pursuit of getting a tech-based buzz. Every compulsive gambler, alcoholic or drug addict will tell you that they want increasingly more of a game or drink or drug in order to get the same quality of buzz. Video game and porn addictions are different. They are “arousal addictions,” where the attraction is in the novelty, the variety or the surprise factor of the content. Sameness is soon habituated; newness heightens excitement. In traditional drug arousal, conversely, addicts want more of the same cocaine or heroin or favorite food. The consequences could be dramatic: The excessive use of video games and online porn in pursuit of the next thing is creating a generation of risk-averse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment.

I’m talking about this:

As a gamer, I do not play Batman: Arkham City to protect Batman. I don’t play it to admire Batman, to lust over Batman, to root for Batman or to vindicate Batman. I do not, in short, play the game for any reason that depends upon the relationship between me the individual gamer and Batman the character on the screen. I play Batman because, ludicrous though it may be, I GET TO BE THE GODDAMN BATMAN. And the game succeeds at that, because the game WANTS you to be the Goddamn Batman. The way the game feeds you information is specifically designed to minimize any intrusion upon that blessed illusion of identity. Back to the Kotaku article, and the line I want to focus on: “When people play Lara, they don’t really project themselves into the character.” Now, for one thing, I’d love to know where the heck that supposed information comes from. I know plenty of female gamers who DO project themselves into the character. But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that ‘when people play Lara’, what’s really meant is ‘when male gamers play Lara’. It seems to me – and I could be wrong – that the approach here has been to try to capitalize upon the supposed disassociation between male gamers and Lara Croft. Instead of helping the player immerse themselves in the character (as was done with Batman above), the male player is encouraged to see himself as a sort of benevolent deity separate and apart, a guardian spirit who not only guides Lara’s actions for her benefit but protects her from bad guys. If true, if if iffety-if IF, this is a frigging tragedy. And it’s moving in the opposite direction from the one we should be moving in. The game should be doing its utmost, through all the subtle tricks of the games writer’s art, to immerse us in Lara’s character, because Lara Croft kicks arse. Being Lara Croft should feel as exhilarating as being Batman, or Nathan Drake, or any other character whose skin we really get inside. We shouldn’t have our role as The Gamer defined for us as if we were a separate character.Furthermore, forcing male gamers out of Lara Croft’s shoes is encouraging them not to empathise and identify with a female character. That’s a hell of a waste. There are so many stories that could be told from a woman’s point of view, so many narrative doors that could be opened here, and yet we’re told that we have to default to a presumed ‘male protector’ point of view even when the lead character is female? 

To deny that the porn viewer projects him/herself into the corresponding role on the screen is folly. Likewise to deny that the video game player projects him/herself in the same way. Sure, it’s possible to separate yourself from that person whose back you continually watch as they cavort through temples, jungles, military bases, alien deserts, and dystopian city streets, or whose gun barrel you stare down while doing this. But it’s better all around if you really become that character while you’re playing. And if the reason for suddenly pulling up on the reins on that impulse is because the character in question is female, well then… male gamers, take a moment to think about how often we females do that in reverse.

If you’re wonder what the fuss is about Lara Croft, these should help:
Lara Croft and rape stories: breaking down the bitch
Tomb Raider Creators Deny Attempted ‘Rape’ Scene Is An Attempted Rape Scene
Lara Croft Will Be Threatened With Rape In the Next Tomb Raider—But Don’t Worry, Guys, You Can Rescue Her
An Open Letter to the Guys Who Told Me They Want to See Lara Croft Get Raped

I’m going to break the rule of “People who haven’t played a game really should refrain from commenting on the ethics/propriety of things depicted in it and how they’re depicted, no matter how much they know about it otherwise, and even if they’re avid players of all kinds of other games.” I believe that rule is important because Combat for the Atari 2600 involved mass slaughter on a grand scale, even though it was conducted by shooting small squares at larger formations of squares, and you simply can’t literally describe what it’s possible to do in most video games that people of all ages (above, you know, six or so) enjoy without making them sound like exercises in sadism and terrorism. So it’s imperative that the person doing the describing must have a good handle on the context of the event being described, what it looks like, what the mood is, what it’s possible for his/her character to do, what they can earn points/achievements/whatever for doing, even what music is playing…that’s all important. Context is key.

I’m going to break that rule to say that it’s not necessarily a bad thing to depict a female character– your female character– as being threatened with rape in a video game. Though if you’re going to do it, people far old than six should be the ones playing. And I think that it shouldn’t be the occasion for people who would ordinarily be thinking and acting as if they are their character to suddenly disassociate themselves and because that character’s “protector.” Yes, I know I say this in a culture in which there’s no shortage of guys who will refuse to play a female character, flat out. But when that’s the only option; when the choice is either to play a woman or not play at all, well….who knows?

Here’s the trailer, if you’re interested. SFW, no actual rape depicted:

Women who don’t like sexual aggression from strangers are prudish children. Or childish prudes. Or something.

Women who don’t like sexual aggression from strangers are prudish children. Or childish prudes. Or something. published on No Comments on Women who don’t like sexual aggression from strangers are prudish children. Or childish prudes. Or something.

I don’t like Psychology Today, part 2:

So Elyse of Skepchick wrote a blog post a couple of weeks ago describing an incident that followed a talk on vaccination she gave at Skepticamp in Ohio. You can read the entire thing here, but to put it briefly, a couple she didn’t know aside from a friend request on Facebook approached her after the talk and handed her a card. A business card-like card, which the male half of the couple gave her before the two of them proceeded to vacate the premises. After they’d gone, Elyse turned the card over, noticed a nude picture of the couple on the other side of it along with an invitation to hook up with them and contact information for such, and realized that she had been propositioned for a threesome by strangers out of nowhere while doing her job.

Yeah.

As you might expect, this was a disconcerting experience for Elyse, and in that post she carefully walks through the details of why that is, and why this is not the kind of thing you should do at a conference. Considering that sexual conduct at skepticism conferences is such a big topic right now, I was happy that she did that and didn’t just post an account of what happened accompanied by a scan of the card, saying “See? See this? This is the kind of thing we’re talking about! Don’t do it!” Nope, she articulated what made her feel uncomfortable and why. And she did it, I would note, without any mention of whether it constitutes “harassment.”

Unlike Dr. Marty Klein, who wrote about this incident– yes, I think it’s fair to say that it’s this incident he was writing about– as apparently heard third or fourth hand via a drunken discussion with someone who skimmed the post a couple of weeks ago and might or might not have already decided that Elyse is a hysterical female bent on destroying a conference over a slight, because that is how Klein portrays things. I say I think it’s fair to say he was writing about this incident and not a “composite,” as he claims, for a few reasons. First because the description is quite detailed, and the details of time and place and person align to Elyse’s experience– as she says, “Now, to be fair, he doesn’t name me, so it could be another particular blogger in her mid-30s who was handed a swingers card at a conference. I’m sure there are hundreds of us around.” Second and third because the caveat that the description was a “composite” was apparently added after the fact, and I know for certain that some important wording was changed which made the description align more closely to Elyse’s actual experience, and there’s no reason to do this if it wasn’t intended to describe her in the first place.

That important wording? Klein’s article originally said that the entirely hypothetical couple had “gotten friendly with” the woman prior to handing her the invitation-to-a-threesome card. Now it says they simply “approached” her. More accurate, yes, and it makes Klein’s depiction of her reaction seem much less justified. It also was apparently edited in the Psychology Today article without any acknowledgement of such, after Elyse noticed it and said something. Here’s what she said:

Klein starts off with one tiny change in the details of my experience, one tiny change that alters the entire context of the situation. In Klein’s version of my story, “John” and “Mary” have reason to believe I might be interested in joining them to socialize our genitals. Now, if by “gotten friendly” he means “accepted Facebook friend request” and “stood in front of a room while the couple was present and delivered a talk about how everyone needs to get Tdap”, then yes, I concede, we “got friendly”. But I doubt that’s what he meant. What I think he means is that I was asking for it.I’m not the one with the PhD in psychology, but I’m fairly certain that if this couple thought that my statement that most children catch pertussis from unvaccinated adults was me secretly dropping subliminal messages that I’d like to get tight and shiny under the stairs with them, then the problem with this interaction does not begin or end with me.

“Tight and shiny under the sheets.” I like that.

Anyway, the gist of Klein’s article is he basically to portrays this “woman” as prudish, uptight, and vindictive, and the details he changed in the story to make it differ from Elyse’s actual experience are all in service of that end. Of course it would still be inappropriate to hand a card bearing a sexual proposition to someone who is prudish, uptight, and vindictive, but it makes her less sympathetic and her feelings of discomfort less easy to empathize with.

Klein makes great effort to argue that “the woman” was not harassed; she received unwanted sexual attention. Elyse points out that she was never talking about the legal definition of sexual harassment; she was talking about what made her feel uncomfortable at a conference and why.

Klein suggests that “the woman” could learn a lesson from history when other bearers of two X chromosomes had it much worse off. Elyse points out that just because things were worse then doesn’t mean they’re dandy now. The aggravating thing about this gambit is that someone tries to pull it every single time the topic comes up– “What are you complaining about? Women had/have it worse at time X/place Y!”– and the absurd thing is that this same argument applies just as well to absolutely anything someone is complaining about, unless of course they happen to be complaining about the worst thing that happened, anywhere, ever. I guess people who are burning in Hell are the only ones who can legitimately complain.

Klein says that “the woman” responded to the incident by trashing the conference at which it happened and discouraging other women from attending it in the future. Elyse points out that this is simply bollocks. As are a lot of other things in his article, but you really should go ahead and read Elyse’s full reply for more on that.

Klein’s profile on Psychology Today reads:

Marty Klein has been a certified sex therapist and licensed marriage and family therapist in Palo Alto, California for 30 years, working with men, women, and couples on issues of anger, guilt, shame, and power, as well as orgasm, erection, fantasies, desire, S-&-M, pornography, and sexual orientation. Klein has written seven books and over 200 articles on sexuality. He is frequently quoted by the popular press, most recently in The New York Times and on ABC-TV’s 20/20, Nightline, and Penn & Teller. He is outspoken about many popular and clinical ideas about sexuality, decrying psychology’s gender stereotypes, sex-negativity, and what he calls “the Oprah-ization of therapy.” He is one of America’s best-known voices opposing the dangerous concept of “sex addiction.” 

“Penn & Teller” actually refers to Penn and Teller’s HBO show Bullshit (if we’re really not repressed, let’s go ahead and say the word), on which Klein appeared in an episode on discussing pornography. As a supportive talking head, he quite rightly pointed out that there is no evidence that watching porn disposes people to sexual violence. Great. Promoting sexual happiness and decrying gender stereotypes and sex-negativity? Great. Making women out to be nun-like ice statues if they register disapproval about being sexually propositioned by strangers? Not so great.

I’ve written before about how women have this peculiar thing about them– they like to feel safe. Imagine that. They’re no less sexual than men; it’s just that women who are openly sexual face a double whammy of danger. They face the real, physical danger of someone attacking them (and the attack being dismissed because hey, she was asking for it), but they also face the social danger of being stigmatized as dirty, stupid, or generally worth less than women who are chaste and modest. It is, of course, possible for women to be overly aggressive with their sexuality– as was the case with the female half of this couple that propositioned Elyse– but if they object to other people being overly aggressive with their sexuality, the problem is not with the woman objecting.

There’s a sort of “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” aspect to that. You can browbeat a woman into being sexual when she doesn’t want to, but it will be feeding on her insecurity rather than an authentic enjoyment of such on her part. On the other hand if she is authentically being sexual for her own sake, there is always someone waiting around to call her a slut for it. You would think that as a sex therapist Klein would know all of this, but instead he has opted for browbeating, and on extremely specious grounds no less. Propositioning a woman you don’t know in an entirely non-sexual context does not make her feel safe. Don’t do it. It’s really that easy. That was the message of Elyse’s original post, which bypassed Klein entirely– assuming he ever actually read the thing, which is in doubt.

ETA: While I was writing this a number of edits to Klein’s article have come to light, and are noted at the bottom of Elyse’s reply.

ETA 2: Six words from Klein’s article are now sticking in my craw: “A couple at last year’s conference.” As mentioned at the beginning of this post, Elyse blogged about her experience a couple of weeks ago. I believe it happened not long before that. This seems like an important discrepancy, and casts some doubt on whether it was really her story that he was focusing on. It would not surprise me in the least to find that there are multiple pairs of swinging couples who proposition people via “business” cards, at conferences and any other social occasion. It’s possible that Klein never did actually read–or hear of– Elyse’s account. In which case, I apologize for accusations to the contrary. However, I think all other points still stand.

ETA 3: And one point that stands which I didn’t really mention is the false equivalence regarding “unwanted attention.” No, not all unwanted attention is created equal. If a sexual proposition from strangers merely counts as “unwanted attention” in the same manner as a visit from Mormon missionaries, then I suppose cat calls fall into that group as well. So a request to buy Girl Scout cookies when you’re in a hurry is exactly the same as some guy in a car yelling that he wants to wear your vagina as a hat. No, I fundamentally reject that. Sexually propositioning someone out of nowhere is not a sign of openness and freedom; it’s a signal that you are not concerned with that person’s feelings of safety and might possibly be deranged. It’s also quite commonly, I might note, a means of insulting them. Not all unwanted attention is equal, and I hate to sound like a broken record but it’s hard to imagine someone other than a straight male suggesting it is.

“You don’t think you can beat her without a cheat code.”

“You don’t think you can beat her without a cheat code.” published on No Comments on “You don’t think you can beat her without a cheat code.”

Jay Smooth on the whole tropes vs. women thing:

Sexist trolls, meet Streisand Effect

Sexist trolls, meet Streisand Effect published on No Comments on Sexist trolls, meet Streisand Effect
Not the kind of video game troll
I’m talking about

It’s now nearly the end of the funding period for Anita Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter project “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” and it has raised more than $100,000 over its initial goal. I don’t want to detract from the validity of the idea itself or her ability to present it, but can’t help but guess that a big chunk of that is from people who are sympathetic to the harassment she’s had to deal with. Misogynistic trolls have in this case performed a Westboro Baptist Church-like function in drawing attention to something they hate through sheer petulant anger, and managing to help it flourish in the process. You’re probably familiar with the WBC, but maybe not the fact that a lot of their protests (which they announce in advance) have been the occasion for fund-raising for gay rights groups that would not have otherwise received that money. In the same way, Sarkeesian’s project has received far more attention than it probably otherwise would have due to the douchebaggery of its opponents. That’s great for the project itself, which has become significantly more ambitious in light of the ballooning donations, but it has also elicited some interesting reflections from feminist observers.

Becky Chambers at The Mary Sue:

The comment I have seen repeated most often in conjunction with these stories is something I have wondered myself: What can we do about this? That’s a difficult question, and though I don’t have the faintest idea of what to do about the internet at large, I believe the climate within the gaming community, at least, could slowly be improved through the joint efforts of both developers and gamers. Developers, you are free to tell whatever stories and portray whatever characters you want. You have no fight from me there. But when you create a character, think about the message you are sending. Think about the example you are setting for your fanbase. Think about hatefests like the ones detailed here, and consider how your work might be encouraging them. Take, for example, the uproar against the Hitman trailer. Rob Fahey at GamesIndustry expertly tackled this one last week in an article entitled “Can’t We Discuss This Like Adults?” 

Let’s be absolutely clear that it’s [sexualized violence] which is the issue. It’s not the fact that there are nuns in the game who then turn out to be sexy nun assassins in suspender belts. You want sexy nun assassins in your game trailer? Be my guest. It looks ridiculous, and I don’t see them getting much assassinating done while wearing those heels, but if you think your target audience is the demographic slice of people who get turned on by poorly CG rendered assassins in habits and stiletto heels, go for it. Nor is the issue the fact that Agent 47 commits violent acts against women. He’s a hitman, assassins are attacking him, he kills them. That’s not the problem.The problem is the interaction between those two things. The thought process of the creators of this trailer is naked for the world to see. Gamers like sexy women. Let’s have sexy women, and let’s make them sexy nuns because that’s edgy. You know what else is edgy? Having the dark anti-hero kill women, rather than the usual faceless male soldiers and thugs. That’ll get headlines. Let’s do that.
…The imagery is deliberately powerfully sexual. It’s also deliberately powerfully violent. Square Enix intended both of those things to be present in the imagery. I don’t think (wishful, perhaps) that they quite intended their interaction to be so horrific. In a society where 1 in 4 women will experience domestic violence, Square Enix just released a video of violence against women presented as sexy and fetishised. That’s the issue. 

A few days after that article was posted, Hitman developer IO Interactive apologized for the trailer, tellingly stating that they were “surprised” by the negative reaction, because all they had intended was “to make something cool.” So, developers, consider your audience, and consider the social climate you’re wading into. Make your mark, but do so wisely. Remember the lessons of Spider-Man: With great power comes great responsibility. You can ignore that, if you want. That’s your right. Only you can decide where the line between censorship and consideration lies. It’s a hard question, but it’s one that you need to ask yourselves with every game you make.

Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress:

But the whole incident is a reminder of how deeply some men are invested not simply in the structures that provide them tangible advantages, but in the conventions that let them wallow in culture that indulges their worst, stupidest impulses. And if folks are willing to fight this hard against someone doing criticism of culture, there are others who will do worse to preserve the laws that give them privilege in the world. Culture in this area, as in so many others, is a canary in a coal mine. And women who complain about online harassment aren’t being oversensitive: they’re trying to stop an ugly cycle before it spirals out of control. Both psychologically and substantively, it’s key to our ability to do our work. 

Jessica Coen at Jezebel:

We received a tip about this story last week and, to be honest, I shrugged. We didn’t cover it. My job involves reading hundreds of emails and thousands of headlines every day and, ultimately, making a call on whether or not I should assign the story to one of the site’s writers. I usually make that call pretty quickly, for reasons having to do with gut instincts and knowing that if I don’t make a decision about something right away, it could be ages before I get to it again. So, yeah, I didn’t even blink. And now, upon further reflection, that reaction makes me feel a little queasy. Not because Jezebel potentially missed a good story (though that concern is always there, even in my sleep), and not because I decided not to assign coverage. Rather, I’m queasy because of why I shrugged: I read about Anita Sarkeesian and my immediate reaction was, “This crap happens every damn day. Nothing new here. Nothing to see. Move along.” Ugh. 

Anjin Anhut at How Not To Suck At Game Design:

Misogyny in games is everywhere and almost as old as popular games are. I love games, I work in games, I play games, games are awesome, powerful and wonderful. But the way the games industry and community treats roughly 50% of the human population is a giant festering ugly tumor, right in our favorite cultures’s face. Considering the damage misogyny in games does to pop culture and to society at large (games are a large cultural force now), I find myself always flabbergasted at the consorted and massive efforts from gamers to keep things as disgusting as they are, whenever someone speaks up against it. Instead of joining forces with people, who care enough to make games better for all of us and, yes, help women get a better standing in society, gamers get defensive. They play the victim, rationalize, become offensive and even resort to hostile attacks and vandalism. This is not helping. It is generating additional damage to our culture, in fact. Whatever the aspect of games, the community or themselves it is, they get so protective about… they are completely poisoning and deforming it, by their own misguided actions defending misogyny in games. 

Alex at the border house:

It’s nice that the number of backers doubled once news of the harassment campaign started getting around. But the video game community needs to do more. It’s well past time for the video game community to own up to and condemn the fact that there is a subset of us dedicated to organized mob harassment of people who criticize games in any way, but particularly when it comes to social issues like misogyny, racism, and homophobia. It’s time to stop rolling our eyes about how awful gamers and nerds are. We are gamers and nerds, and this is our community. If you know someone who is involved in this sort of thing, tell them that it’s not cool. Condemn this sort of behavior on forums, on Twitter, wherever you have a voice. If you don’t feel safe doing those things, then don’t (safety is most important), but if you can, speak up. This is a perfect way for allies who want to do more to do so. Let harassers know they are the ones who aren’t welcome in video games, not the people who make thoughtful criticism out of love for the medium. Games don’t belong to them, and the community has no need for people who harass and try to silence criticism.