It's a really, really big "if."
Last November during BlizzCon, I wrote a post critiquing the design of some of the female playable characters as compared to the male characters in the newly revealed but not yet released FPS game Overwatch. In it, I addressed the following comment made by Blizzard senior vice president Chris Metzen: Specifically for Overwatch over the … Read more
So you may remember a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about a particularly ridiculous blog post which claimed that the popularity of the GIF of Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke doing a little warm-up dance before competing was due to the fact that men– in general, men– do not love feminists. How did the … Read more
If you only read one thing about it– or, more likely, if you’ve read plenty about it and are either borderline overwhelmed or so overwhelmed that you can hardly see “whelmed” from where you stand– read Natalie Reed’s post from a couple of days ago, “All In.” It’s long, but definitely worth reading in its … Read more
There is no way, I think, to more thoroughly annoy a proponent of free speech than to claim that criticism violates it. It’s hard enough defending free speech sometimes. People don’t see anything wrong with stopping the Westboro Baptists from protesting. Denying the Holocaust? Yeah, go ahead and outlaw that. Hate speech– what, that’s not … Read more
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 … Read more
So, some of the people who took exception (let’s call it that) to Anita Sarkeesian’s “Tropes vs. Women” Kickstarter project— which has now been officially funded, to the final tune of $158, 917– have started a project of their own. It’s going to be another web video series, called “An analysis of male roles and … Read more
Jay Smooth on the whole tropes vs. women thing:
Sexism really is like the devil. If you have any doubts about its existence, you need only mention it and it will come skipping around the corner cheerily asking “You rang?” Well, except that the devil doesn’t exist and sexism does. But apart from that, they are just the same. Anita Sarkeesian does the Feminist … Read more
Rush Limbaugh takes yet another poke at Michelle Obama for being fat. A commenter on Dispatches called Nemo writes This meme on the right that Michelle Obama is overweight is utterly bizarre to me. A glance at her should serve to debunk it. I can’t see another explanation for its persistence than racism — they … Read more
Somebody pointed out in the Pharyngula thread that while “female” can be used as a noun, so can “black,” and it doesn’t sound very good to refer to a black person as simply “a black.” Comedian Lisa Lampanelli refers to “the blacks” on purpose because being offensive is her shtick. I think that using those … Read more