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Author Topic: Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'  (Read 309334 times)

Loud Whispers

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2145 on: June 12, 2013, 05:45:07 pm »

I am not sure exactly what you are saying with this. I don't think you are just flatly denying the examples I posted with no explanation, because that would be silly.
Could you repost them? I've missed them, sorry.

If you are talking about every type of abuse including murder and assault, I would say that it is a mistake to treat every form of abusive behavior as a homogenous thing, as there are clearly differing types of abuse with very different social workings (such as gang violence vs insults).
Was being specific about the title. Namely, video games.

If you are saying that there is a higher total number of men who are harassed on the internet, that would need evidence and be aside from the point anyway, as it is the effect per person that matters for fairness concerns rather than the total number of people effected. That is why the rights of minorities matter despite being, well, minorities.
You'll have a hard time arguing against the same abuse being treated unequally in an equal society.

So... what argument were you making there that wasn't comparing feminists to dramatically oppressed groups and people in Africa with the conclusion that "The furore of feminists just doesn't stand up to comparison with genocides."?
Yup. Although I did, it was not what the argument hinged itself on.

EveryZig

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2146 on: June 12, 2013, 07:01:05 pm »

Could you repost them? I've missed them, sorry.
I kind of had them in my post immediately preceding the one you responded to, but here you go:
An article from a male blogger, discussing in detail how the hate mail he gets is significantly less extreme the hate mail received by female bloggers he knows, even if their bogs are about entirely uncontroversial things such as food.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2011/08/31/the-sort-of-crap-i-dont-get/

An article about the harassment that female bloggers experience. Particularly of note is a quoted section from a blogger who had written under varying pseudonyms and recieved an escalating amount of harassment when using a female pseudonym.
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/helen-lewis-hasteley/2011/11/rape-threats-abuse-sex-female

You'll have a hard time arguing against the same abuse being treated unequally in an equal society.
The entire point of my statement was that 'the same abuse' is measured per person, not as a population sum. For example, there are (from a quick wikipediaing) more total white prisoners in the U.S. then prisoners, but since there are several times as many white people in the U.S. then Hispanic people the prison rate per person is still greater for Hispanics. It is technically true to say that more white people are in prison in the U.S. than Hispanic people, but from an equality standpoint what actually matters is the chance that a random individual who is Hispanic is more likely to be in prison than a random individual who is white. (I don't want to get into a discussion of prisons here; I am just trying to make an example of the distinction between total people effected and effect per capita.)
By this distinction, establishing that there is more total abuse of men on the internet (which you have not as far as I have seen) does not demonstrate that women do not get more internet abuse per person, as I would guess that people who openly identify as female online are a minority relative to people who do not (via either identifying as male or not specifying their gender).

So... what argument were you making there that wasn't comparing feminists to dramatically oppressed groups and people in Africa with the conclusion that "The furore of feminists just doesn't stand up to comparison with genocides."?
Yup. Although I did, it was not what the argument hinged itself on.
That was a question, and not a yes/no one or even a multiple choice question. I asked what other argument you were making there, not if you were making another argument. The argument that I read you making involved literally calling the topic less important by comparing it to the plight of a less fortunate person in Africa (where Tunisia is located). That is the argument that I was objecting to earlier.
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Loud Whispers

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2147 on: June 13, 2013, 09:46:31 am »

The entire point of my statement was that 'the same abuse' is measured per person, not as a population sum. For example, there are (from a quick wikipediaing) more total white prisoners in the U.S. then prisoners, but since there are several times as many white people in the U.S. then Hispanic people the prison rate per person is still greater for Hispanics. It is technically true to say that more white people are in prison in the U.S. than Hispanic people, but from an equality standpoint what actually matters is the chance that a random individual who is Hispanic is more likely to be in prison than a random individual who is white.
Except you'd be talking in probabilities and not in realities, that more people who are white are in prison.

That was a question, and not a yes/no one or even a multiple choice question. I asked what other argument you were making there, not if you were making another argument. The argument that I read you making involved literally calling the topic less important by comparing it to the plight of a less fortunate person in Africa (where Tunisia is located). That is the argument that I was objecting to earlier.
The argument I was objecting to was that feminist women have it the absolute worst.
I gave an example where such was the case, I gave an example where such was not the case.
One was plight, the other was not.

Rolan7

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2148 on: June 13, 2013, 11:46:01 am »

Amounts per capita are just as "real" as absolute amounts, and are actually useful when identifying discrimination.

I didn't say feminist women have it the absolute worst.  You said that they have absolutely no more harassment than anyone else on the internet, and I objected to that.

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EveryZig

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2149 on: June 13, 2013, 12:00:12 pm »

Except you'd be talking in probabilities and not in realities, that more people who are white are in prison.
...Probability is a thing that exists you know. And you don't seem to be understanding a basic property of equality. Equality is about how things effect individuals.
For example, in 2010 the richest 1% of people in America had around 35% of the net worth. It would be a technically true statement to say that rich people have about half as much total money as people who are not extremely rich, but it would also be a thoroughly deceptive statement when discussing equality, as an average extremely rich person is still astronomically more wealthy than an average person who is not extremely rich.

One was plight, the other was not.
You are still making that argument, and it is still a worthless argument to say that a bad thing is excused by a worse thing somewhere else. If someone gets beat up in the street by thugs and complains about it, your response should not be "What the hell is this guy whinging about? I've heard of people who ended up in the morgue and here he is griping about some bruises and a missing tooth or two!"

[links]
Your objection to the image you posted seems to be to the gender version of "Affirmative action is racism against white people! It's whites who are really oppressed around here!"
Your link basically makes the argument that geeks were bullied when they were growing up so they therefore have free license to be bullies themselves as much as they want and it is bullying to call them out when they do. (Also note that there is a difference between posting videos on your own youtube channel and sending hate mail or harassing comments to their blog. One is doing things on your own space, the other is doing things on their space.)
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Vector

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2150 on: June 13, 2013, 12:41:16 pm »

. . . The really irritating thing about all this, for me, is that we persistently assume female nerds just don't exist.

I mean.  Sheesh.
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kaijyuu

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2151 on: June 13, 2013, 01:26:27 pm »

. . . The really irritating thing about all this, for me, is that we persistently assume female nerds just don't exist.

I mean.  Sheesh.
You're a figment of our imaginations, Vector.
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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2152 on: June 13, 2013, 03:14:46 pm »

. . . The really irritating thing about all this, for me, is that we persistently assume female nerds just don't exist.

This is actually kinda the root of the entire problem.

Neonivek

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2153 on: June 13, 2013, 05:00:48 pm »

. . . The really irritating thing about all this, for me, is that we persistently assume female nerds just don't exist.

I mean.  Sheesh.

No one does that Vector.
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Vector

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2154 on: June 13, 2013, 05:03:31 pm »

Screw you too, Neonivek ;D
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Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2155 on: June 13, 2013, 06:20:46 pm »

http://mr-cappadocia.tumblr.com/post/51654909375/your-response-to-eyeliner-and-algebra-didnt-really[/spoiler]
So I'm calling bullshit on this one.
Quote
The same group of people that have mocked, ridiculed, shamed, harassed, and often just tormented them… for about the past 20+ years.

See here is the thing, most games aren't marketed to the geeks and nerds that copped this abuse. I mean one of the issues we can bring up is that the cover to Bioshock Infinite was audience tested... On what were describes as 'frat boys', that is to say the CoD playing douchers now so legendary in gamer culture.
You don't market your games to nerds unless you are Bethesda, and if you are Bethesda then what happened buddy? Nerds play pirated retro games on their emulators, obscure indie games with shitty graphics and minecraft (And that used to be an obscure indie game with shitty graphics). Ok I realize this is a generalization, but generalizations is what marketing is all about.

On that note, if anybody follows Jim Sterling I think he has a pretty good read on the games industry right now.
Basically the developers don't understand how business works. They see the occasional game become hugely popular and want to emulate that success, and they do so by attempting to copy as many aspects of the good game as possible while throwing more money at it. Because greater investment equals a linear return on investment, right?
Point is you get these games with a huge budget that need to sell millions just to break even, and it never happens. CEOs are in regular rotation (Who even saw that coming? Not Square Enix!) because there huge bulking games can't sell to an impossibly large market, especially when the games themselves are just pale reproductions of something we already have.
Publishers response to this? Games must appeal to as many people as possible within their proven markets. Loyal niche groups and unproven markets are bad, while the same proven mass appeal is good! It isn't but that is just what they think. I'm sure publishers don't think women are less deserving of enjoying a good game, they just look on their spreadsheet and see a male majority for the kind of game they are making and assume it will always be that way (And it will as long as they keep making the games they are making) and don't want to risk anything that might unbalance this very specific formula.

The solution is to spread the eggs into many baskets, so to speak. Instead of a big game for everybody, some games just need to focus on what they do well (Dark souls is often shown as the ideal example of this, it was a commercial success despite selling less than many failures) and sell what they need to make their profit. I'm not saying that this will magically cause all games to be more successful, but it will mean publishers can have some of their games make a loss and still have a good year. Once publishers have the room to make a bit of loss on a game, they can start to take some perceived risks. They can give the green light to games they think might fail, but it isn't costing them too much and it is worth the chance to open up in a new demographic.

Until that happens... Enjoy your Final Fantasy XIV.

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2156 on: June 17, 2013, 07:20:03 pm »

So I don't know if this is something new, or it was common knowledge and I was out of the loop, but apparently this isn't the first Tropes Vs Women series Anita has made. She has another, older series under the same name, except applied to all media (Focus seems to be on movies). So far I have just watched the first one, but something very important came up in the first minute.

Now a lot earlier Palsch was arguing that a trope was a trope because of over use. Therefor Anita arguing against these tropes was trying to point out that their over use was causing harm.

Quote
A trope is a common pattern in a story or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys
information to the audience. A trope becomes a cliche when it’s overused. Sadly, some of these tropes often perpetuate offensive stereotypes.
Those are Anitas words herself.
It isn't cliches vs women, it is tropes vs women. The problem she has isn't with the over use of a plot device, it is with the plot device itself. "These tropes often perpetuate offensive stereotypes" implying it is the simple plot device that is offensive, rather than a mandate for their appearance or even their over use. If she was ok with these tropes existing but didn't like the fact that they dominate media, it would be cliches vs women.
She actually wants for no women to ever be kidnapped because it is 'disempowering', rather than just reduce the reliance of games doing this.

penguinofhonor

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Re: Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2157 on: June 17, 2013, 07:30:20 pm »

Or maybe the threshold for being a cliche and the threshold for being harmful to women are different?
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Max White

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2158 on: June 17, 2013, 07:34:45 pm »

Then why not address that? She says the tropes are harmful, but she doesn't at any point try to say how common they actually are. Maybe she actually thinks that are harmful regardless of how common they are. Maybe we should judge the series off its contents rather than the problem is tries to address.

I'm making a critic on her videos, not trying to prove or disprove if there is a problem of sexism within games. If she makes a bad video series, that doesn't mean there isn't a problem, but it does mean I will point out the flaws in her video series.

Rolan7

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Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games'
« Reply #2159 on: June 17, 2013, 07:45:50 pm »

So I don't know if this is something new, or it was common knowledge and I was out of the loop, but apparently this isn't the first Tropes Vs Women series Anita has made. She has another, older series under the same name, except applied to all media (Focus seems to be on movies). So far I have just watched the first one, but something very important came up in the first minute.

Yeah, I think that's the series I mistook for "Tropes vs Women in Video Games", a stupid mistake on my part...

Now a lot earlier Palsch was arguing that a trope was a trope because of over use. Therefor Anita arguing against these tropes was trying to point out that their over use was causing harm.

Quote
A trope is a common pattern in a story or a recognizable attribute in a character that conveys
information to the audience. A trope becomes a cliche when it’s overused. Sadly, some of these tropes often perpetuate offensive stereotypes.
Those are Anitas words herself.
It isn't cliches vs women, it is tropes vs women. The problem she has isn't with the over use of a plot device, it is with the plot device itself. "These tropes often perpetuate offensive stereotypes" implying it is the simple plot device that is offensive, rather than a mandate for their appearance or even their over use. If she was ok with these tropes existing but didn't like the fact that they dominate media, it would be cliches vs women.
She actually wants for no women to ever be kidnapped because it is 'disempowering', rather than just reduce the reliance of games doing this.

A cliche can still be a trope.  There are lots of cliches on tvtropes, which I will graciously not link to (:

I think she says quite a few times that it's okay for these things to happen quite a bit, as long as they don't happen overwhelmingly.  Using the word "trope" instead of "cliche" doesn't change that position.  Even if she's using the word incorrectly, it's a technical error.
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