Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;794597I think what's happened here is that thousands of geeks without any media education received their first exposure to feminist critique through YouTube and they didn't know how to interpret it. So critiques of their favourite games were interpreted as attacks against them personally. If anything, that was Sarkeesian's big mistake; she overestimated the YouTube audience base.

I'd say her big mistake was being mainly full of crap, personally.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;794592I watched most of the video and found her counter-arguments weak. Having watched several of Sarkeesian's videos I'm struggling to see why people are so outraged. Sarkeesian's videos are pretty standard feminist media critique compared to what's studied in film schools etc. - she defines tropes, provides examples and doesn't level any accusations of misogyny against the players themselves.

When I watched someof Sarkeesian's videos I thought the same thing (in fact youu can see my comment to that effect earlier in this thread). Mainly harmless, if a bit ignorant, cultural criticism. I experienced no outrage. Then I saw her appearances on news shows. then I came across soem of her more blatant lies. Then I came across evidence of her deliberate manipulation of commentaries on her videos to create a false narrative. Then....well, at that point she'd lost any sympathy. Yes, I still think those videos are mostly harmless. I also now think that she's a lying misandrist who is using the GG controversy for no reason other than to bolster her own status. The truth is she's a nobody. She has no academic credentials, she's contributed nothing positive to society, she's basically the Paris Hilton of pseudointellectualism.

The best thing to be done in regards to her, like any troll, is to ignore her.

Quote from: Will;794598For what it's worth, I don't think the hardcore gamer culture leads to men being more misogynist/homophobic. I think an acceptance of misogynistic/homophobic game culture shuts out and oppresses women and others.

And thats the ideology I don't share (and neither does any credible scientific research). Which is ostensibly fine, I don't mind other ideologies...Christianity, Social Conservatism, hell, I can even see the optimistic side of Communism... except when people with those ideologies think they have the right or duty or whatever to impose them on others.

Quote from: TristramEvans;794609The best thing to be done in regards to her, like any troll, is to ignore her.

Ideally, yes. The problem, as you noted, is the narrative that she's wielding. By othering gamers, she creates an atmosphere of fear. Like Felicia Day's recent blog post about how she crossed the street to avoid [strike]black men[/strike] gamers.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;794611Ideally, yes. The problem, as you noted, is the narrative that she's wielding. By othering gamers, she creates an atmosphere of fear. Like Felicia Day's recent blog post about how she crossed the street to avoid [strike]black men[/strike] gamers.

I have one piece of advice for Felicia Day - if what she's experienced from nutty fans has bothered her so far, she should get out of acting, NOW.  She hasn't even brushed the surface of crazy fans.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;794597I think what's happened here is that thousands of geeks without any media education received their first exposure to feminist critique through YouTube and they didn't know how to interpret it. So critiques of their favourite games were interpreted as attacks against them personally. If anything, that was Sarkeesian's big mistake; she overestimated the YouTube audience base.

My experience with feminist critique in gaming media has been more along these lines:

Quote from: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/224400/Gamers_dont_have_to_be_your_audience_Gamers_are_over.phpThese obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They don't have to be yours. There is no 'side' to be on, there is no 'debate' to be had.

This was just one spittle-spraying collection of epithets out of many published on August 28th, when gamejournos colluded to shotgun a bunch of smear pieces at gamers.. in the gaming and tech media.  I didn't appreciate this crap on TBP, but that battle was over before I knew it was on.  This time around, instead of wasting time on discourse with grand narrative assholes, a lot of gamers are showing some sense and abandoning the media outlets that use that narrative crap to make money.  We're also letting the advertisers know why we're leaving, and where they can find us (not at Vox, Gawker Media, or Conde Nast sites, that's for sure!).

When the gamejournos dissed me there was a fight; when they tried to front and say it's all about the soggy knees, that's when the trenches started getting dug.  There's a lot more to it than that, there's so many people involved with so many different interests or sets of interests, but as a participant, for me this is a consumer revolt against having crap shoved down my throat in my hobby.

One seemingly-good source for GG info is gamergate.me, I don't know who runs it but seems more or less legit.  Reasonable collection of posts on the events, some good perspectives not all of them happy.

Another source for GG related information is  http://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/wiki/index

It's a big infodump of links to substantiations of the claims of blacklisting, undisclosed relationships, collusion to censor discourse across multiple supposedly-independent media outlets, etc etc etc.  There's also a lot of opinion pieces about the course of events from the GG side.

If you've followed Will's posts in this thread, you'll notice the last few pages he's been deliberately evading and overlooking the fact that a dozen different competing gaming news outlets issued nearly the exact same article and were shown to have discussed GG amongst themselves and how "they" should respond to it.

Was their response to address the journalism aspect honestly, showing the falsehood of any improper attacks against them and agreeing to be more open in biases?  Nope.  Instead they first attempted to stealth ban dissenting opinions on Reddit and 4chan and when that was outed as well decided to wage full war under the Misogyny flag by declaring gamers dead.  If anyone thinks Sarkeesian is upset by GG, they are a fool.  This is exactly what she and others wanted, a media spectacle with a narrative they can control to shift the Overton Window so that Gaming=Misogyny enters on the fringe of mainstream thought instead of tinfoil hat talk from the Feminist Left.  The rabid maniacs will do what they always do on the internet; nice, popular people like Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton will be offended and believe the worst, and overall the image of Gaming will be tarnished.

Mission Accomplished.

As this a good thing Will can get behind, he'll do anything here to obfuscate that point and ignore the collusion aspect of the story.

Quote from: James Gillen;794577An excellent point that some may not have considered.

jg

Twilight has been much criticised for its passive heroine, the (D&D) gamer women I know really hate it. Obviously gamer women like butt-kicking action heroines or else they wouldn't be playing D&D. I told them that Twilight was 'fantasy for women who don't like fantasy' - my view is that those 'normal' women have as much a right to enjoyable entertainment as anyone else.

Quote from: CRKrueger;794616If anyone thinks Sarkeesian is upset by GG, they are a fool.  This is exactly what she and others wanted, a media spectacle with a narrative they can control to shift the Overton Window so that Gaming=Misogyny enters on the fringe of mainstream thought instead of tinfoil hat talk from the Feminist Left.  The rabid maniacs will do what they always do on the internet; nice, popular people like Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton will be offended and believe the worst, and overall the image of Gaming will be tarnished.

Good analysis, although I think the SJW-dominated media were/are genuinely angered by the pushback, which they are not used to seeing. I definitely agree that the SJW counter attack is primarily aimed at the "nice, popular people like Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton" (and Joss Whedon) - people with left-liberal views who can easily be manipulated by the SJW just as the SJW & their forebears have been doing at least since the 1960s. Cultural Marxism is all about 'controlling the narrative' through 'liberating tolerance' - which means suppression of counter-narratives. They have a problem with the Internet because it allows counter-narratives to spring up and spread outside of their control. But "nice, popular people" still rely on the 'commanding heights' of the trusted mainstream media for  their opinions. As long as you control the mainstream media you can control their views, within the acceptable range of opinion - the Overton window - and the window can be moved over time in your preferred direction.

Quote from: S'mon;794618Good analysis, although I think the SJW-dominated media were/are genuinely angered by the pushback, which they are not used to seeing. I definitely agree that the SJW counter attack is primarily aimed at the "nice, popular people like Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton" (and Joss Whedon) - people with left-liberal views who can easily be manipulated by the SJW just as the SJW & their forebears have been doing at least since the 1960s. Cultural Marxism is all about 'controlling the narrative' through 'liberating tolerance' - which means suppression of counter-narratives. They have a problem with the Internet because it allows counter-narratives to spring up and spread outside of their control. But "nice, popular people" still rely on the 'commanding heights' of the trusted mainstream media for  their opinions. As long as you control the mainstream media you can control their views, within the acceptable range of opinion - the Overton window - and the window can be moved over time in your preferred direction.

I am making this exact point to the regulars at the GamersGate YT channel, the women at Honey Badger Radio, and in the comments for Sargon of Akkad (so far) as they are good for pro-GG discussion and commentary.

Let's see if they notice in the weeks to come.

Quote from: CRKrueger;794616As this a good thing Will can get behind, he'll do anything here to obfuscate that point and ignore the collusion aspect of the story.

I must admit that, although I've tried to avoid it, the last couple of days his posts have started to sound a lot like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons in my head...

Quote from: Werekoala;794627I must admit that, although I've tried to avoid it, the last couple of days his posts have started to sound a lot like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons in my head...

I'm half convinced he's Movie Bob. Never seen them in the same room, after all.

Quote from: Haffrung;794535That's the issue I have inclusivity in entertainment. It fails to recognize that different things appeal to different people and the tradeoffs creators face in choosing who to aim their product at. Twilight would have been much more appealing to males if it had less romance and more fighting. But I don't recall anyone chastizing Stephanie Meyers for not being inclusive enough. And I see no reason to believe she would have had a more popular series on her hands if she made it more appealing to males, because any changes with that aim would probably have alienated a portion of the female audience.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;794536This, folks, is why I call this entire thing an insurgency- because here is the act of imperialist invasion that started this whole mess (and, if remedied, would end it just as fast): trespassing into space already owned and occupied, and then barking orders as if they owned the place, when they are not wanted and don't have a right to be there.

And the rest of that post? Spot-fucking-on.

*I can understand anger at hypocritical, holier than thou, moralistic posers, but I think the inclusiveness demonstrated in the new D&D core books is a good thing. I don't want to assume anything, but your comment could easily be seized on by the turds to say: "see? They ALL don't want women, LGBT and minorities in their hobby!"

I'm not pointing fingers, but asking you to clarify if you're for or against making these spaces more diverse.

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;794592. One of the AEI woman's counter-arguments in particular ("by far the most violence in games occurs against men") demonstrates a complete failure to comprehend what feminist media critique is actually about..

Are people meant to interpret this critique of her counter arguments as a version of the dismissive phrase "What about the menz???"

Quote from: Herr Arnulfe;794597I think what's happened here is that thousands of geeks without any media education received their first exposure to feminist critique through YouTube and they didn't know how to interpret it. So critiques of their favourite games were interpreted as attacks against them personally. If anything, that was Sarkeesian's big mistake; she overestimated the YouTube audience base.

My problem, and the problem others have mentioned, is that Sarkeesian has taken a number of things out of their proper context to present as evidence of woman hating. If feminist critique requires it to ignore a context because it involves men being subject to the same things being criticized, then I think it's very flawed as an analytical tool.*

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;794631Are people meant to interpret this critique of her counter arguments as a version of the dismissive phrase "What about the menz???"

I watched Sarkeesian's video on violence vs. women in games, and IIRC her two main points were:

- violence vs. women is more often sexualized than violence vs. men
- proportionate to their depiction as strong characters, women are more often helpless victims of violence than men are

I'm not a huge videogamer, but I've played enough that these claims seemed reasonable and didn't trigger my BS-meter. I don't recall Sarkeesian claiming that violence vs. women was more widespread than violence vs. men, quantitatively-speaking. The AEI woman's counter-argument is akin to protesting the "male gaze" concept in feminist film theory by pointing out that many films have female protagonists (i.e. total failure to grasp the point).

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;794631My problem, and the problem others have mentioned, is that Sarkeesian has taken a number of things out of their proper context to present as evidence of woman hating. If feminist critique requires it to ignore a context because it involves men being subject to the same things being criticized, then I think it's very flawed as an analytical tool.*

As I said before, I haven't followed the fallout. I don't do Twitter. I did watch a few of the (very angry) rebuttals to Sarkeesian's videos because they appear in the "related videos" sidebar on YouTube. Those, plus the 4chan connection, convinced me that following Gamergate would be a waste of time and would probably make me stupider.