Gender Diversity / Politics in games (was Tropes Vs. Women)

[Shoes]

You can't even neg someone without getting accused of censorship these days. It's PC gone mad.

[NEG]

I do what now?

[jon_cybernet]

This article is a bit of a tangent, but it feels thematically relevant. I hope that current GG supporters eventually follow down a similar path. 

 

https://features.wearemel.com/i-was-a-men-s-rights-activist-55a0d2eb6052#.w993r3tsk

[Synnah]

9 hours ago, Mentazm said:

Negs discourage people from posting views that the majority here don't hold, reinforcing the echo chamber of this thread. Essentially censorship.

 

This is basically the same as saying that if someone verbally disagrees with you it's discouraging you from sharing your opinion, which is in turn censoring you. I mean, you realise that's absurd, right? People disagreeing with you is not affecting your free speech.

[b00dles]

I understand the concern of the echo chamber of the internet and arguably it leads to GG or MGTOW and all that sort of thing because people are agreeing with your crazy views and therefore you're not being open to other ideas but if the problem with this thread is us not listening to other ideas like that utter load of shit in that 'open letter to Rey' on the last page or the general GG theme of get women out of gaming and back in to the kitchen, then well.... echo echo motherfucking echo.

[spork]

Wasnt it mentzam who posted in a thread a couple if years ago saying how he sends abuse and death threats to celebrities in Twitter and that it's fine because it's just words on the internet?

[Mentazm]

Politicians.

[ah]

"Censor" is a poor choice of word but it's not entirely absurd as a grumble - if you have one view on a sensitive issue and the nine other people in the room all disagree with you in strong terms, there's a definite effect there discouraging further attempts at discussion even if the other nine people are umwaveringly welcoming and interested in your view (which isn't always the case here).

 

There's not a lot you can do about that, though. If you hold an unpopular view you can either work tirelessly to promote it carefully, or you can be rude and dismissive, or you can stay quiet. The first option is hard work so I can see why people would equate being in that position to feeling like they can't say what they think. I have views on the EU which are wildly at odds with the general consensus on rllmuk, for example, and I know what it would cost me in time and effort to discuss that here so I choose not to do it. I understand it well enough to know it's nobody's fault that it's harder to share a minority view than a popular one so it doesn't upset me the way it does some other people, and no, it's not censorship, but it is a phenomenon of group conversation which is very different from simply having someone disagree with you.

 

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with presentations of women in videogames, of course.

[b00dles]

Ethics.

[Gorf King]

3 minutes ago, alistarr said:

"Censor" is a poor choice of word but it's not entirely absurd as a grumble - if you have one view on a sensitive issue and the nine other people in the room all disagree with you in strong terms, there's a definite effect there discouraging further attempts at discussion even if the other nine people are umwaveringly welcoming and interested in your view (which isn't always the case here).

 

There's not a lot you can do about that, though. If you hold an unpopular view you can either work tirelessly to promote it carefully, or you can be rude and dismissive, or you can stay quiet. The first option is hard work so I can see why people would equate being in that position to feeling like they can't say what they think. I have views on the EU which are wildly at odds with the general consensus on rllmuk, for example, and I know what it would cost me in time and effort to discuss that here so I choose not to do it. I understand it well enough to know it's nobody's fault that it's harder to share a minority view than a popular one so it doesn't upset me the way it does some other people, and no, it's not censorship, but it is a phenomenon of group conversation which is very different from simply having someone disagree with you.

 

That's all very well, but if Mentazm himself negs people then his complaint about it being akin to censorship - which it isn't anyway - is somewhat undermined by the fact that he is one of the censors.

 

That paradox is a neat summation of the subject (assuming the de facto subject is GG rather than the title of the thread) because, of course, that's exactly what GG also do: they complain about censorship of their views when their views are disagreed with, but simultaneously try to ensure that a view with which they disagree is buried under an avalanche of... well, not negs exactly. More like personal attacks, threats of violence, doxxing, or other devices designed to discourage the writer from expressing those views ever again. So I assume that, like these more advanced techniques, the humble neg is only valid when you're in the minority in a discussion - as GG often are - otherwise it constitutes censorship. Of course, if GG are in the majority in any online space, it's then fine to use them on that occasion, too. So basically the lesson here is that you're fine to neg people - or abuse them at length, or threaten their lives or livelihoods - as long as you're pro-GG. Otherwise that neg isn't an expression of disagreement, it's censorship. Just like complaining about being harassed or oppressed, or bullied, or threatened is only valid if your views accord with those of GG. Otherwise, as Biffo sagely points out, you're probably fucking asking for it, mate. Now stop snivelling about it and get out of my internet you whinging twat, before I give you another slap.

 

Pfft. Women, eh, lads? Can't live with them, can't threaten to tie them to a bed and rape them in the privacy of your own home without some SJW expressing their disapproval on an internet forum.

[ZOK]

11 hours ago, Mentazm said:

 

Negs discourage people from posting views that the majority here don't hold, reinforcing the echo chamber of this thread. Essentially censorship.

 

How is anyone censoring you? You post complete nonsense in this thread, repeatedly, and as a consequence you get negged heavily for it. The system works.

 

If you asked yourself why people don't give you a slap on the back every time you post more stupid, the system would be working perfectly. But we don't seem to have reached that stage yet.

[Unofficial Who]

On 19/04/2016 at 6:56 PM, RubberJohnny said:

Super weird story someone makes an anti-bullying Kickstarter that wants to make a database of harassers. Basically everyone says this is completely abuseable and a very bad idea, some reach out to the creator, 4chan get a hold of it and attack.

 

Kickstarter founder then goes fill conspiracy Timecube and starts harassing Zoe Quinn and Randi Harper believing them to be behind all the harassment, while being completely ignorant of Gamergate and 4chan, but goaded on by them.

 

 

 

I've only just caught up on this. There's a lot of decent discussions and summaries here http://www.metafilter.com/158768/Anti-Bullying-Activist-Goes-Gamergate

 

For the tl:dr crowd, there are three theories about this Kickstarter being touted.

 

1. The organiser was unaware of Gamergate and after being warned by Zoe Quinn that her Kickstarter might lead to harrassment then experiences said harrassment. After a quick google and some helpful input from GG advocates decides harrassment must be coming from Zoe Quinn.

 

2. The organiser after becoming aware of Crash Override has immediately seen them as competitors to the not-for-profit she's setting up and assumes they are attacking her to knock her out of competition.

 

3. The way out theory that this Kickstarter is some sort of "Not Your Shield" style op crafted to discredit "SJW's.

 

That's the best I can make out, I don't think I want to lose an entire weekend going down this rabbit hole.

[ah]

3 hours ago, Gorf King said:

 

That's all very well, but if Mentazm himself negs people then his complaint about it being akin to censorship - which it isn't anyway - is somewhat undermined by the fact that he is one of the censors.

I feel like I must have completely failed to make my point because this doesn't really read like a reply to the post I thought I had made, sorry! I was saying explicitly that censor is obviously not an accurate description but that I can understand his point about the challenge of engaging in web discussion with a viewpoint at odds with the majority.

 

The thing I'm talking about isn't at all undermined by a Mentazm neg, because the whole point is that the minority view has a dramatically different experience of the discussion and a very much more limited toolset. To put it simply, Mentazm's one neg is not the same tool as the majority view's fifteen negs. Maybe you just don't care about the imbalance in this context and maybe you're right not to do so, I don't know.

 

I'm not for a moment agreeing with the anti-censorship viewpoint and I agree like I said in my first post that crying censorship is inaccurate and doesn't help one's cause. But I would rather try and unpick where that comes from than shout "idiots!" or "sexists!" or "hypocrites!" when to me there's pretty clearly more to it than that - as has been discussed by numerous people here previously.

 

And yes, it is definitely something that other groups do as well. Like I said, I think it's just an innate property of group discussion.

[Gorf King]

1 hour ago, alistarr said:

I feel like I must have completely failed to make my point because this doesn't really read like a reply to the post I thought I had made, sorry! I was saying explicitly that censor is obviously not an accurate description but that I can understand his point about the challenge of engaging in web discussion with a viewpoint at odds with the majority.

 

The thing I'm talking about isn't at all undermined by a Mentazm neg, because the whole point is that the minority view has a dramatically different experience of the discussion and a very much more limited toolset. To put it simply, Mentazm's one neg is not the same tool as the majority view's fifteen negs.

 

It is, though. It's the same tool, from the same toolset. A vote is a vote. If two alternative viewpoints are given to sixteen people to vote on, and fifteen people vote one way and the sixteenth votes another, the result is that the proponent of the voted-down viewpoint might correctly feel that viewpoint has been rejected, and might, in turn, not quite as correctly feel that they personally have somehow been rejected. And they might be right about that particular view not being shared by most others. But that's a conclusion that would be arrived at by aggregate outcome of a voting mechanism, not the tool used to arrive at it. The experience is indeed different, but each individual who voted down one viewpoint as opposed to voting it up is not using a different tool to the minority, they're using exactly the same one. A vote is a vote. Their experience differs from the majority's simply because the result of all those votes exposes their view as an unpopular one.

 

Mentazm's use of that same tool as his supposed censors is entirely germane here, because he is playing the same voting game as everyone else who chooses to pos and neg posts. He's simply on the losing end of the vote in this particular instance. Remove the tool and you'd have a similar game, but one which is engaged in purely with words rather than numbers. And I think this is a slightly different game than the numbers one simply because it requires more thought and effort to rebut a position with words than it does to click a button. (You could, if you were terribly world-weary, level the same accusation at a democratic system in which no thought or effort needs to go into the casting of a vote, and the resultant effect on the minorities whose views are voted down as a consequence of the sometimes thoughtless, peer- or media-driven, casting of ballots.) But as much as I understand what it is to hold and express an unpopular or minority opinion and see the consequence of its being rejected by the majority, if I choose to wield that same tools as that majority I have to abide by, or at least take note of, its outcome. So I understand what you're saying, if all that amounts to is that it's more difficult to continue expressing an opinion the more it becomes clear that it is unpopular. It can be a challenge. I agree with that. But I think that's self-evident really.

 

What Mentazm is doing, though, is complaining that the mechanism itself is a form of censorship - which it obviously isn't. But only because he's on the wrong end of the votes or of prevailing opinion. It's a spurious claim and one that GGers make frequently. That's the point I was making, and I think it's worth making in this thread of all threads. As to your own point about minority opinions being something that you often don't wish to express, I can understand that. I often don't bother posting in a thread about, say, a film I think is poor when it's riding on a wave of adulation (though sometimes I'll do it regardless - does it really matter?, is the question you should ask yourself). But it is, as you've said, your choice whether to post or not. As it is mine. If you choose do so and get wordlessly negged to oblivion you might rightly complain that your debaters aren't really debating, aren't really making or addressing points at all - they're simply voting without effort or reasoning on a forum that is supposed to be about discussion. But if you are actually engaged in debate by them, you can't really complain about the outcome. And if you, too, use the neg system you can't really complain about the negs you get either.

 

As far as I can see, Mentazm has been engaged in actual debate in this thread, and as well as being negged he also negs other people. So as well as his likening of the neg system to a form of censorship being ironically mistaken, he's not really shown that the fact that he holds a minority view has put him off expressing it, repeatedly, over the course of many months. Or that no-one here is debating the points raised. In which case I don't really see how the argument you're proposing applies. I think it is 'entirely absurd as a grumble' to complain that others' views are a deterrent to expressing your own when you go on to continually express them so often. The complaint - if it is that your beliefs and values being challenged is off-putting to expressing them - becomes especially absurd if you are also given to sending abuse and threats to politicians online for what, I have to assume, is the beliefs and values they express. It seems more like he's lost an argument and is willing to go to any length - not just the relatively innocuous neg - to put down the winners of that argument. And, let's face it, a lot of the bile directed at feminists is directed thus because they are perceived as 'winners' - i.e. they are succeeding at making life a little fairer for their gender. 

 

Which brings us back to GG again.

[b00dles]

I've thankfully not been on the end of a neg-storm on here (although just posting that, is obviously inviting it ) but I'd like to think that if I was, I'd ask as to why - if there were no written responses as to why I'm wrong or misguided - rather than crying censorship. That to me is the one strange thing about GG, in that people may have built up a set of beliefs in a more echo chamber-y place like MGTOW or reading breitbart or watching akkad /belts and skulls but then when they go out into the general public/ somewhere with more varied views that they then get dissenting views or negs that there's never a question that they might be wrong, it's playing the censorship/ SJW card.

 

Which, rather unsurprisingly, is akin to playing the victim, as GG continually says that all of those women that aren't sleeping with me do in regards to being raped.

 

It's bizarre how much all of the things that GG claim is what the other side is doing is exactly what they do themselves - which is then countered by the 'it's somewhere in the middle/ both sides are as bad as each other' even though all the evidence points to the fact it's only one side that actually does it and if more often that not, it's the accused that have experience those negative things and the accusers don't really know what it's like but claim they do.

[Gorf King]

What exactly does that have to do with Mentazm complaining about being censored on rllmuk, or alistarr declining to post his views in the EU thread because he thinks most people won't agree with him?

[Rev]

Mentazm posts the most consistent bollocks of any other rllmuk member. It doesn't matter what the subject is, he can be wrong about it. It's an amazing skill.

[Opinionated Ham Scarecrow]

His poor eccie addled brain

[Rev]

21 minutes ago, Gizamaluke said:

His poor eccie addled brain

 

True. I think it probably started from a relatively bad position too, mind.

[Gorf King]

13 minutes ago, geekette said:

I agree with the general thrust of your point, and I agree with you completely that Mentazm is a hypocrite, his premise was idiotic, and that the minor feedback loop of neg/pos votes cannot possibly be considered censorship. However, it is a legitimate thing to notice that the way like-minded people cluster together and can seem to dogpile on any dissenter means that it becomes harder to challenge the consensus opinion, or conversely, for the group to convert anyone who does not already share their views. My other point was only about how being in the minority can also reflect having lower power or status from which to express opinions, and that being acceptable to the majority doesn't necessarily mean being right (and likewise behaving like a dick doesn't mean there isn't a grain of truth in your grievance).

 

Well of course like-minded people group together. And obviously it's harder to get a dissenting view accepted by a consensus that an assenting one - that's the nature, they very definition, of consensus. That has little to do with the example you cite though, because it's often the minority who oppress, or indeed can enslave, the majority. Though clearly that's less frequent than straightforward manipulation, be it economic, cultural, or ideological. Ask any government, corporation CEO, or media owner. They've been doing it for centuries. Accepting that is one step to understanding why GGers rail about the 'power' of minority groups - they wrongly perceive the power wielded in media by 'minority' commentators as disproportionate to the issues they comment upon or to those whose views they might represent. Because they don't understand that all media commentary is made by a minority. Because almost all real power is wielded by a minority. Because a tiny minority of the world owns almost everything. Everything else is illusory. GGers, along with many, are labouring under the delusion that the modern democracies of the West offer anything but a fine-tuning of relative privilege for 95% of the populace, and like to set up each group against the others in a perpetual phoney war that prevents the masses from recognising their overwhelming commonality - that they're all being dicked over by those who actually wield power.

 

Which is why alistarr shouldn't at all be concerned by expressing his opinion in the EU thread. Because the whole spectrum of opinion in there is so slender that it makes fuck all difference which end you gravitate towards. Taking part in the vote at all automatically puts you into the majority, which is slap bang in the centre ground of a stage-managed power play between two groups within an equally powerful minority bloc that represents the neoliberal elite. The actual parameters of disagreement are so slight as to be almost meaningless - which is why you get such radically different politico-cultural entities as Bozza Trampbasher Johnson and Dave Pigfucker Cameroon on opposing sides. There's barely a debate at all - just an excuse for the occasional idiot to express some racist sentiment and expose their ignorance to the world in a worthy cause, and the other side dressing up their own desire for profit in the soft 'tut tut' of overly-concerned-but-essentialy-comfortable middle class disapproval.

 

Which is just how the actual minority wants it. And why Mentazm is such a fucking berk for thinking that tweeting abuse to politicians does anything but give them a warm glow a further platform for desecrating his - and more importantly, anyone's with something of actual value to say - beloved free speech. Played like a fiddle, most people. Played like a fucking fiddle by the only minority that actually means anything.

[Gorf King]

7 hours ago, geekette said:

Or, with an example topical to the thread, the harassment received by GG is less of an issue (even if equivalent in content and quantity) than the harassment doled out by GG, because of the relative power of the different populations - A rape and death threat is less threatening to someone without a history of being assaulted or threatened.

 

I didn't respond to this earlier as you must have edited it in later, but I think I should say that I find this view dangerous, even if founded on solid ground. If you think about it, I think you might too.

 

If anyone received the same level of, let's say, rape and death threats as someone else of lesser power, or with a history of having received such threats, they should be taken just as seriously. Before you respond, let me add that I am well aware of how words or actions are taken differently by people with different backgrounds, and different statuses, and different histories - and even a different understanding of language. I know that the same action affects someone vulnerable to that action more than it does someone less vulnerable to it. This much is painfully obvious. But to say it is 'less of an issue' is a very foolish thing to say. Because I suspect that many of the GG community who have engaged in sending these threats might themselves have suffered bullying, or abuse, outside of their online communities. They, I suspect, certainly see themselves as underdogs and victims of a culture and a society that they feel has them at a disadvantage. They might even see themselves as a minority, pilloried as basement-dwelling sweaty geeks and unloved and unwanted by that vast, unknowable majority of womankind, the kind that gets its spokespersons to do successful Web documentaries and attend UN conferences; whereas their own, vanishing, realm stretches barely from one side of a 4k monitor to the other and seems to grow smaller by the day.

 

I think they probably subscribe to the view that they are the minority whose threats are less threatening - and less of an issue - because they come from the oppressed and go to the powerful, and that the criticism they get back stings all the more - and is more of an issue than their threats - because it is delivered by a boot that's on the foot of their oppressor. Because they misunderstand the world and its media in the way I described above. In short, that's the excuse they make for themselves, the reasoning you just posted right there. Hell, I've seen them employ exactly this justification myself. And I assume when a bloke posts abuse and death threats to politicians he's employing that same reasoning, too.

 

I don't think I can really agree with it because of the doors it opens to exactly the kind of shit most of this thread has been condemning. 

[Gorf King]

Perception is everything when it comes to feeling threatened. People don't do risk assessment or refer to statistical measures of vulnerability when responding emotionally to what they see as threats to themselves. I think you are being overly simplistic in your analysis of the issue in the context of what you said earlier, because what makes people react emotionally, even irrationally, to what they see as attacks on their emotional or physical security isn't so easily gauged, or even measured by the likelihood of the threat being transformed into action. GG has some seriously fucked up people at its core, and I believe many might well be genuinely vulnerable in ways that your generalised account doesn't take into consideration. (As well as being compete tosspots; the two aren't mutually exclusive.) What I'm suggesting to you is that in the context of a debate about the abuse and threats some of them dole out, it's unproductive and indeed dangerous to grade materially identical behaviour in such as way as to justify it more when the perpetrator is 'a minority'. There are some obvious places you can get to if you travel down that road, and none of them is likely to improve either the quality of debate on issues of equality of social justice. They're more likely to inflame those problems.

 

And besides that, on a general point of principle, I don't think I want to associate with any belief system that says that abuse and threatening behaviour is somehow more acceptable coming from a party whose beliefs I generally agree with than it is from a party whose beliefs I do not. There's something inherently corrupt about that position. It has a whiff of the fanatical about it, and whether you think it or not, that's quite an off-putting thing to have. You won't win many arguments if you make people feel that way, and that's what I believe taking such a position would do. It's counterproductive to what I have to assume are your greater aims in this debate; a debate in which, as I've said, perception is everything.

[Fugitive]

I've tried to, but I can't get exercised about this GG/SJW nonsense. Isn't it all just lunatic fringes at the extreme ends of an argument providing car crash 'entertainment' for the vast majority of the more-or-less balanced middle ground who are legitimately wondering why on earth some of the people depicted below have chosen to fight death-dealing robots in their underwear?

 

 

 

[Wroth]

It isnt just that, no. But thanks for telling everyone how little you know/care about it all.

[Harsin]

Hey, get this, what if, WHAT IF, both sides are as bad as each other and the right stance is to be some where in the middle?  Did I just blow your mind? Let me tell you about a little show called South Park...

[Shoes]

This is on track to be the worst page yet.

[JohnC]

Nothing says entertainment like innocent families having their home raided by SWAT teams, getting masses of abuse (not just online) and losing jobs. Laugh a minute in Fugitives world. 

[Shoes]

Even ignoring that, having women in underwear is just funny! Ha, people wanting women to be treated with respect!  Crazy.

 

 There aren't sides, apart from nutbags on Twitter. No-one here is 'on a side'. Except Jez. 

[Benny]

My sides.

 

It's like the last 508 pages never happened.

[Fugitive]

24 minutes ago, JohnC said:

Nothing says entertainment like innocent families having their home raided by SWAT teams, getting masses of abuse (not just online) and losing jobs. Laugh a minute in Fugitives world. 

 

Please, enough of the drama. Your words show you are truly invested in the 'entertainment' afforded by the lunatic fringes. It should go without saying that nobody who could be called moderately sane advocates the extreme nature of the actions you listed above to make your 'point'  in the juvenile manner you chose, but it's been so long since I've been in an internet argument I forgot to pepper my post with caveats and disclaimers.

 

All I really wanted to say was the ongoing soap opera provided by the lunatic fringes of the GG/SJW debate has become more important than the fact that forthcoming games such as Nier Automata even now feature female characters clad in the manner shown in the image I linked. That reasonable people, such as the person you probably are with Rllmuk drama removed, are becoming more invested in the fallout of Anita Sarkeesian's observations than the observations themselves.

 

Maybe I should have just said that instead?