Do Gamers Need Sarkeesian's Feminism?

[Nonsensei]

Im getting the feeling you guys are weighing the certain insults more heavily than others. For example the utter disregard of knuckledragger as sexist. That is an insult exclusively directed at men, and the implication is that the man is a typical male: An unevolved idiot who barely knows how to bang rocks together. Its not just that the person is stupid, its that the person is stupid just like most typical men. The sexist element is alive and well, and actually is the whole point of using the term.

I have however heard of men being called a bitch. Nobody calls a woman a faggot, but men get that. Both men and women get called cunts. Almost every insult that you can think of for a woman is also applied to men but the reverse is not true.

The idea that bitch is on the same level as nigger is also an assertion that doesn't sit well with me. To me, if you call someone a bitch then it is a description of that person as having a perpetually nasty or whiny disposition. i.e. "you're being a bitch right now".

Nigger is what slave owners used to call their slaves. To compare the two is over the top imo.

[SilentFutility]

Such as princess peach who is equally just a cartoon and not a "hot woman".

She's a caricature of a pretty girl. Beauty is one of her character traits, and some would argue her only defining trait. I'd recommend finding a better example.

Yes, a cartoon and not an unrealistic female physique that could result in a negative body image for girls who play mario games and see her.
Mario's only defining character trait is being a dumb plumber who hits his head on blocks a lot, but I don't take that as an attack on men. It's a simple 2D side-scroller not a story-driven RPG.

Bitch itself is a sexist insult. It means female dog,wolf, fox. It's not some coincidence that it is also used for women in a derog sense or again for men as subordinate in a derog sense, most men just use the word for defining women in general. So calling me a stupid bitch and calling you a retarded knuckledragger are not the same thing. Knuckledragger just means stupid and with the word retarded it's just repeating the same thing basically. Calling me a stupid bitch means, I am stupid besides being a bitch -besides being female which is already a derog position.

You can find a few examples when you try to create equal insult lines probably. Unfortunately that's not the reality of human culture. Derogatory words or insults or just even simple slang words used against women in daily life are almost always evolved to target their gender. These are also used against het males, lesbians,gay men and transgenders by hetero sexual males with same forms in different meanings. In short any other insult different than some basics like, stupid, liar, hypocritical, loser...etc targets female or others through female gender; for being female. Frankly, if you are not a het male that is the source for insult.

So what you have said doesn't hold any weight in gaming or wider context. If we go back to your first post, any gender modification in an insult, be it just 'bitch' or something else makes a lot of difference. It's so deeply seethed in our culture people don't recognise it for what it is, it's just well it is. Everyone uses it. For example, baronvonrort calling me drunkenhoe when he is butthurt is a good example. I was not the only one he was pissed off or disagrees with him generally, but I am the only one he tried to insult with targeting with gender the same way 3-4 times, because I am a female.

Im getting the feeling you guys are weighing the certain insults more heavily than others. For example the utter disregard of knuckledragger as sexist. That is an insult exclusively directed at men, and the implication is that the man is a typical male: An unevolved idiot who barely knows how to bang rocks together. Its not just that the person is stupid, its that the person is stupid just like most typical men. The sexist element is alive and well, and actually is the whole point of using the term.

Bolded part. So basically it's totally fine to insult me and say offensive things to me in a video game (which it is actually, 0 fucks will be given), because I'm a heterosexual white male and I'm too privileged to deserve the right to feel insulted or something? But a woman being insulted? How awful!

Equality works both ways.

"Bitch" is to women what "nigger" is to blacks, whether most people realize it or not, so... yeah, gonna have to go with Shoe on this one.

Missing the point I was making entirely. At no point did I try to argue that calling a woman a "bitch" is an okay thing to do, in fact I try very hard never to use that word when referring to a woman.

Calling a black person a nigger is a bad thing to do, as is calling a south-asian person a gook, as is calling a white person a cracker, a chinese person a chink etc. etc. etc.

They are different insults, but the effect is the same, they are intended to insult the recipient. I were trying to insult a chinese person you wouldn't call them a nigger...likewise you wouldn't call a black person a chink.

So, to restate my actual point: the problem with online gaming & the internet in general is that people can say what they want with relative anonymity and impunity. This will not be solved by tackling gender issues.

[ParaGoomba Slayer]

1.) Always do the exact opposite of what 4chan says. It's pretty much just the population of 4chan's video game board (or people that would fit that demographic) that hates her.

2.) As far as her ideas as they pertain to games themselves, eh. The damsel in distress thing is quite sexist, but I don't think it really matters since all video game stories suck anyways.

Does this mean game devs are going to have to stop programming in breast jiggle physics?  That's a world I don't want to live in.

Metro: Last Light has the best bewbs.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Im getting the feeling you guys are weighing the certain insults more heavily than others. For example the utter disregard of knuckledragger as sexist. That is an insult exclusively directed at men, and the implication is that the man is a typical male: An unevolved idiot who barely knows how to bang rocks together. Its not just that the person is stupid, its that the person is stupid just like most typical men. The sexist element is alive and well, and actually is the whole point of using the term.

Knuckledragger doesn't have the history of oppression behind it, so no, they are no more comparable than "cracker" is to "nigger." Social concepts like sexism and racism are institutions as much as they are turns of phrase. If you don't have the institution and/or history of oppression to back up the terms, the terms can only be used as simple insults.

I have however heard of men being called a bitch. Nobody calls a woman a faggot, but men get that. Both men and women get called cunts. Almost every insult that you can think of for a woman is also applied to men but the reverse is not true.

"Faggot" does not mean to heterosexual men what it means to homosexual men. Similarly, just because you can apply a female-only insult to a man does not mean the man takes it the same way. When you call a man a bitch or a cunt, you're saying that he's just as bad as a misbehaving woman, implying that this is inherently worse in some way. Same goes for calling a straight male a faggot. It takes on a different meaning when it's not directed at its original target, and the situation cannot be compared.

The idea that bitch is on the same level as nigger is also an assertion that doesn't sit well with me. To me, if you call someone a bitch then it is a description of that person as having a perpetually nasty or whiny disposition. i.e. "you're being a bitch right now".

This is perhaps how you interpret it, but that's certainly not what the recipient hears. Anytime you hear the word "bitch" directed at a woman, imagine the person said "nigger" instead. You will find very quickly that they have nearly identical use in a sentence. The sole purpose of directing that term at women is to degrade them for not being a "proper lady," and call back to that history of oppression; the same way "nigger" has the sole purpose of degrading blacks for not being a "proper negro." It's no coincidence that two terms with similar purpose have similar usage. You may not be comfortable with the idea of "bitch" being that bad, but the same argument could have been made for "nigger" as recently as 50 years ago.

[Jason78]

Such as princess peach who is equally just a cartoon and not a "hot woman".

She's a caricature of a pretty girl. Beauty is one of her character traits, and some would argue her only defining trait. I'd recommend finding a better example.

She's no Chell from Portal though is she?

[Jason78]

Bitch itself is a sexist insult. It means female dog,wolf, fox.

Men get called bitches.  Women get called bitches.

It doesn't have that meaning when used in that context.

What does a gamer mean when they say they've made another gamer their bitch?

[Nonsensei]

Knuckledragger doesn't have the history of oppression behind it, so no, they are no more comparable than "cracker" is to "nigger." Social concepts like sexism and racism are institutions as much as they are turns of phrase. If you don't have the institution and/or history of oppression to back up the terms, the terms can only be used as simple insults.

Are you suggesting that men don't have cause to feel as insulted for being called a knuckledragger as women do for being called a bitch? Is the remark less sexist simply because another sexist remark has more history behind it? Never mind that nobody in this conversation has experienced this oppression first hand. There sure is some sexism today, but its nothing like harkening back to the days when women didn't even have the right to decide who they married and shit.

"Once, long before any of us was born, women were as property. Therefore I have more right to be insulted than you, and your sense of being offended is less important than mine."

And just so we are clear, we now live in a world where five women can sit on a national television show and laugh openly at the idea of a man having his penis cut off and thrown in the garbage disposal. Sexism is a two way street now, if ever it wasn't.

"Faggot" does not mean to heterosexual men what it means to homosexual men. Similarly, just because you can apply a female-only insult to a man does not mean the man takes it the same way. When you call a man a bitch or a cunt, you're saying that he's just as bad as a misbehaving woman, implying that this is inherently worse in some way. Same goes for calling a straight male a faggot. It takes on a different meaning when it's not directed at its original target, and the situation cannot be compared.

You're trying with all your might to define these terms so that you can create a roadmap (authored by you) of what insult means what to who, all for the purpose of creating a "level of offense" pecking order in which you presumably get to tell people how offended they have the right to be based on their demographic. Unfortunately for you, there are LITERALLY people out there who use the word faggot without meaning homosexual. There are literally people who use the word bitch without suggesting a comparison of the person to a female dog. The terms have been so thoroughly used over the decades that they no longer mean what they used to. And when someone like you comes out and becomes insulted at the original meaning from like 20, 40, 100 years ago you just come off as having an agenda.

This is perhaps how you interpret it, but that's certainly not what the recipient hears.

You don't get to determine with 'certainty' what the recipient hears. That's not up to you. You don't know everyone, you don't know everything, and you cannot read minds.

Anytime you hear the word "bitch" directed at a woman, imagine the person said "nigger" instead.

No I don't think I will. What a fallacy that would be.

You will find very quickly that they have nearly identical use in a sentence.

Yes, along with asshole. Or does the word asshole also have a storied history of oppression that I'm not aware of?

The sole purpose of directing that term at women is to degrade them for not being a "proper lady," and call back to that history of oppression; the same way "nigger" has the sole purpose of degrading blacks for not being a "proper negro." It's no coincidence that two terms with similar purpose have similar usage. You may not be comfortable with the idea of "bitch" being that bad, but the same argument could have been made for "nigger" as recently as 50 years ago.

I reject the purpose you assign to using the word bitch and substitute my own. It may have meant that 50 years ago, but I live in the here and now and so do you. For my whole life these terms have been innocuous. Yes, even the word nigger. The offense value of a word tends to be degraded when everyone uses it on everyone. Black people calling each other a nigger 500 times a day kind of makes a white guy scratch his head over why he gets fired for saying it once. Especially when the white guy has never been a slave owner, and the black guy was never a slave.

In the end the most important part of determining intent when using an insulting word is not the history of the word, but the situation and the tone. If you ignore the situation and the tone when someone uses a word on you and instead decide to think of all the oppression that the word used to represent a century ago you are either unbalanced, or seeking to hold yourself offended.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Are you suggesting that men don't have cause to feel as insulted for being called a knuckledragger as women do for being called a bitch?

No, I'm outright stating it.

Not even gonna bother with the rest of your post. It's just more nonsense like that sentence.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Well, you are talking about two guys who seem to think insults and oppression are the same thing. It's only natural that a flow of pure, unadulterated stupidity would flow forth.

And yes, Nonsensei, that is why I disregarded most of your post. When you figure out that insults and oppression are, in fact, not the same thing, this discussion can progress.

[Jason78]

I'm afraid you'll see the exact same attitude in different forms in every similar thread. I haven't experienced anything different yet. (For example if you point out something about how society or authorities handle female rape, you'll get things like 'So men are not raped?, Do you know how bad it is?' As if the one gender issue you bring up declares the other nonexistent or 'not as bad as' the first one stated.

So it's not about mistaking one thing with another. I don't think there are more than one issue for them here. It's about having an underdeveloped perspective of things and not being able to see them from wide enough angle as the way they are connected to other things; shaping each other and being shaped by each other.

You spend a disproportionate amount of time drawing attention to cases where you portray women as victims.

[Jason78]

Will you please read the page, Jason? This one.

I read it.  Did you?  Gamers trash talk.  And some people will see sexism where ever they look, because it's the only thing they are looking for.

[Nonsensei]

I have never thought people would be so clueless about the role of verbal culture, something as organic as language and direct symptom of a general culture to the point to claim that words like 'bitch' or 'nigger' has no meaning in the society they live, because there is no slavery anymore and sexism doesn't exist. Because a woman can laugh to a man having his penis cut off, there is no discrimination against the female gender.

I never said that. In fact I clearly said:

There sure is some sexism today...sexism is a two way street now, if ever it wasn't.

This was in regards to the assertion by Hijiri that knuckledragger is less offensive than bitch because women have a history of oppression. I was trying to show that while true, in here here and now we live in a society where five women can laugh on national TV about a man having his dick cut off and get a bunch of publicity while five men laughing on national TV about female genital mutilation would get fired and are never seen again in the public eye.

I find it deeply tiresome that Hijiri spent part of a post trying to tie the concept of historical oppression to these insults in order to 'value' them and then decided to disregard my post, saying I need to learn the difference between oppression and insults.

Knuckledragger doesn't have the history of oppression behind it, so no, they are no more comparable than "cracker" is to "nigger." Social concepts like sexism and racism are institutions as much as they are turns of phrase. If you don't have the institution and/or history of oppression to back up the terms, the terms can only be used as simple insults.

The sole purpose of directing that term at women is to degrade them for not being a "proper lady," and call back to that history of oppression; the same way "nigger" has the sole purpose of degrading blacks for not being a "proper negro." It's no coincidence that two terms with similar purpose have similar usage. You may not be comfortable with the idea of "bitch" being that bad, but the same argument could have been made for "nigger" as recently as 50 years ago.

When you figure out that insults and oppression are, in fact, not the same thing, this discussion can progress.

To me it feels like another case of "I'm so obviously right I don't even need to respond, or even be consistent in my own argument" that seems to be a common fallback for various members of these forums. By telling me to "learn the difference" you have contradicted your own previous argument. Either history is significant or it isn't. I never tried to equate oppression to insults, I was just playing by the rules you yourself set.

As to this gem.

No, I'm outright stating it.

Asserting that one person has less right to feel insulted than another is revolting on your part. Your justifications are weak, if not laughable. It seems very clear that you don't give a shit about men's offense because you are too busy worrying about what offends women and why. I guess you might be one of those people who think sexism is something that can only be directed against vagina possessors, or at the very least only really matters when directed against vagina possessors.. The very act of asserting that men shouldn't be insulted as much as women are by a sexist comment is itself sexist.

As a side note, I am continually struck by the amount of time I have to spend clarifying my earlier posts, even though I felt I was very clear. Its almost as if people responding are intentionally drawing conclusions about my position that are not evident in the body of the text i write...

[the_antithesis]

Are you suggesting that men don't have cause to feel as insulted for being called a knuckledragger as women do for being called a bitch?

No, I'm outright stating it.

I'm afraid you don't get to dictate how insulted someone feels.

[Hijiri Byakuren]

Are you suggesting that men don't have cause to feel as insulted for being called a knuckledragger as women do for being called a bitch?

No, I'm outright stating it.

I'm afraid you don't get to dictate how insulted someone feels.

Fortunately I am only relaying information, not dictating it.

[SilentFutility]

I even doubt if you really know what you disagree with here, SF. Do you think females are NOT discriminated or NOT treated negatively in a male dominated ground because of their gender? Make an argument. Stop writing against 'drunkenshoe', write against what you disagree so we could have some conversation.

I have, and I even restated it, but I'll do it again and even refer it back to the title just so it is even clearer.

Gamers do not need Sarkeesian's feminism, because people being insulted in video games is not a product of inequality nor oppression, it is a product of gamers being able to do and say things online with relative anonymity and impunity compared to in the real world. If something is done to change that, then the problem of gamers being insulted online will be dealt with, male and female alike.

Equality works both ways.

Yes, but do you really understand what does that statement mean? Because it is not just a handy comeback line to blurt at the end of every post in every gender thread where a female issue is raised.

I understand it perfectly. I'm claiming that if someone calls someone something on call of duty that it isn't a feminist issue just because sometimes the recipient is a female, and breaking down the oppressive patriarchy won't stop anyone calling anyone anything on the internet.

Well, you are talking about two guys who seem to think insults and oppression are the same thing.

They aren't. So regarding the topic of the thread, no, gamers do not need Sarkeesian's feminism because someone calling you a bad name on the internet is not oppression.

Will you please read the page, Jason? This one.

I read it.  Did you?  Gamers trash talk.  And some people will see sexism where ever they look, because it's the only thing they are looking for.

This.

Sexism is not the problem. The problem is that people can mostly say what they want on the internet with no repercussions. Create repercussions, hey, presto! Problem gone. Talk about how bad female gamers have it on youtube hey, presto! Oh wait, nothing's changed.