- Seven Other States Are Considering Restricting Bathrooms For Transgender People | FiveThirtyEight
- How One Man Is Hoping To End The U.S. Border Protection Agency’s ‘Culture Of Impunity’ | ThinkProgress
- JHow an internet mapping glitch turned a remote farm into a digital hell | Fusion
- The Most Interesting Opinion The Supreme Court Handed Down This Year | ThinkProgress
Actually about Justice Kagen’s dissent in a case about how to count people for districting purposes, which more-or-less invites someone to sue the government for freezing assets before a trial. - Zucker’s “Therapy” Mourned Almost Exclusively By Cis People
Kenneth Zucker’s clinic being closed down is blamed, again and again, on an unrepresentative handful of trans activists. But virtually every (out) trans person who has spoken about Zucker thinks his treatments were harmful. - The Swedish Number: Sweden is waiting for your call – CNN.com
“To mark the 250th anniversary of Sweden’s abolition of censorship, the Swedish Tourist Association has launched a phone number connecting global callers with random Swedes.” - Transgender women suffer sexual assaults, harassment in immigrant detention, says HRW report.
- Conversations with People Who Aren’t There – R.A. MacAvoy On Writing and Reading
I find the situation – believing an unusual personal quirk to be a universal trait of humans – really interesting. I often wonder about my own thoughts in this regard. - Periods for Pence Is the Best Response to Indiana’s Restrictive Abortion Law HB 1337
- The Perils of Our Split Supreme Court | New Republic
- Mississippi’s New Anti-LGBT Bill Claims That Women Can Be Fired For Wearing Pants | ThinkProgress
It’s like states are competing to see who can pass the most bigoted anti-LGBT laws. - Harvard Law Students, Allow Me to Say Something Controversial: You Might Be Wrong | The Harvard Law Record
Although the specifics of the controversy are, well, specific, I very much agree with the general approach here. I also admire their decision not to publish videos of students unless the people in the video have consented. - Come hear of the hell a Skyrim player endured for his doggy buddy | GamesRadar+
This may be the best video-game story I’ve ever read. - Amanda Marcotte: Outlawing abortion requires punishing the woman.
“That’s because most black market abortions do not involve someone performing the abortion, doctor or otherwise. There are no back alleys or secret clinics. The “abortionist” in the vast majority of these abortions is the woman herself, which she does by swallowing some pills.” - If Tracer’s Pose Was Censorship, Then The Baldur’s Gate Controversy Is, Too – CraveOnline
GamerGate is hypocritical. Not exactly surprising. - I really enjoyed this short Spider-Man comic, although Tumblr being Tumblr I couldn’t figure out the author.
- A set of animated gifs illustrating the relative time it takes each planet to orbit the sun.
- A cartoonist’s worldview | The Guardian. A series of one-page comics by fabulous cartoonists like Kate Beaton, Luke Pearson and Tom Gauld. I was especially tickled by Modern Toss’ comic, but most of these are excellent.
- Should bikes and cars share the same road — and the same rules? – Vox
- Bike share users are mostly rich and white. Here’s why that’s hard to change. – Vox
- Ant, Mario Gully, Erik Larsen And A Case Of Crotch-Tongue – Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movie, TV News
This public argument between a superhero writer and a superhero artist, about the artist deviating from the script to add a corpse licking the heroine’s crotch, is, I feel certain, more entertaining than the actual comic book they were creating.
Recent Comments
Cartoon: The Measure of Intelligence
Cartoon: The Celestial Politics of Trans Bans
Cartoon: Hey did you hear? Biden is old!
Cartoon: "Sex Is Real" Is A Euphemism
Cartoon: Let's Outlaw Being Homeless! That'll Work!
Cartoon: Appealing to Trump Voters by Getting Tough on Immigration!
Cartoon: Free Trade Is For Peasants, Not Cartoonists!
Cartoon: HOMOPHOBIC WOKE PARENTS ARE TURNING GAY KIDS TRANS!
- Older »
Most Recent Open Thread
The most recent open thread can always be found at the top of this page. When older posts have closed comments, please respond to them on the most recent open thread.Alas, a Blogroll
- Election Law Blog
“Turning Point Action official resigns after accusation of election-related fraud”
2 hours ago - Lawyers Guns and Money
Let’s Be Careful Out There…
4 hours ago - The Incidental Economist
- Scott Wood Makes Lists
Your man got gigs
1 week ago - Family Inequality
Nationalism eats your moral brain
2 weeks ago
- Election Law Blog
Alas, A Subscription Service
Archives
Categories
Amp on Twitter
My Tweets
It’s not hypocritical if you understand the complaints. Simply put these are:
1) Deliberately interpreting a game (or part of a game) in a political way where it clearly wasn’t intended to be political is bad. [i.e. the post about tracer’s pose]
2) Deliberately putting in a political message into a game in a crude and ham-fisted manner is bad. It’s a lot worse when it’s expressly intended to be a big fuck-you to a significant portion of the fan base. [i.e. the Baldur’s Gate character]
The common theme is a protest against the politicisation of games. That includes both including or excluding content for political(ly correct) reasons.
Hmm, I’m closer to the vehicular cycling method because I have to be – there’s almost no bike-specific infrastructure on my commute route (which is where I do most of my biking – six miles each way). I’ve like infrastructure where it exists, though I do wonder how, in a segregated model, you solve the intersections problem, and the Vox piece doesn’t address that.
On the other hand, I have never consistently taken the center of the lane. Why not? Because when I take the center of the lane, more drivers yell more shit at me. They honk more at me (and my natural inclinations plus post-traumatic stress give me ridiculous startle reflexes). One time the driver behind me called me misogynistic and homophobic things and threatened to kill me. When I stick to the side of the lane, I am uneasy in the rougher parts of my commute, because drivers do pass way too close, but I’ve learned to manage it and I get less harassment and end up feeling a little more safe on the whole. I’ve long wondered what alternate reality the “take the whole lane” people – not the ones who say that you should be able to, but the ones who say that it’s what you should actually do – are living in.
There’s a very interesting partisan gerrymandering case starting in Wisconsin. Apparently the Supreme Court has previously said that excessive partisan gerrymandering is probably a violation of the 14th amendment, but there has never been a case in which the court has been satisfied with the proposed method of identifying partisan gerrymandering. In a 2006 case (LULAC v Perry), 5 justices suggested that they were open to a method that was based on partisan symmetry, so in 2015 a pair of political scientists developed such a method (partisan efficiency bias: popular description, and academic article), and a group sued Wisconsin for its gerrymandered state house districts. The case is still in its infancy.
I made a map of efficiency bias in congressional delegations (from the numbers in the paper).
The web site I used to make that map, http://www.openheatmap.com is pretty neat. You just upload a spreadsheet (or csv file) with state (or country, or county, or zip code, or city) names and numerical values, and adjust the color settings, and it generates the map. It can also do animations of values changing over time.
Lirael,
Here’s an example of what intersections with protected bikeways are apparently supposed to look like. That design seems really nice, because it incorporates good support for both bike a vehicle and protected bikeways.
I also ride somewhat towards the side of the lane rather than dead center when I take a lane, although I try to stay far enough from the side to stay out of the door zone.
That gerrymandering stuff is very cool. Thanks, Charles. (I’m very surprised by some of the states with moderate-to-severe gerrymandering of their state legislatures.)
Desipis, the claim that GamerGate is hypocritical, in this instance, comes from their opportunistic idea of what is and isn’t “censorship.” I’ll modify your summary of their views (bits added by me in italics):
The inconsistent use of the word “censorship” is, indeed, hypocritical. (Personally, I don’t think either case was “censorship” – but multiple GamerGaters explicitly called what happened with Tracer censorship.)
In addition, your classification of what is or isn’t “political” seems incoherent to me. Why is including a trans character “political”? Why is objecting to the inclusion of a trans character (although they later walked that back and claimed they were just objecting to the “crude and ham-fisted manner” of the inclusion) not political? How is objecting to hamhanded and unrealistic dialog establishing that a character is a trans person not political, while objecting to a hamhanded and out-of-character T&A pose is political?
Ampersand:
It’s not inherently, however one of the main writers has stated they see their writing as political:
Nothing got ‘walked back’. The first thread related to the issue I can find is focused on comments by the writers about their focus on character’s sexuality. That post doesn’t even mention the existence of a trans character.
Consider the comment from the writer, the first thing they mention about the NPC companions in the game is:
It’s quite clear their number one concern is having politically correct diversity and not actually writing a decent game. Now consider at the response in the top rated comment from the KIA thread:
The claim that gamergate was protesting against the inclusion of a trans character is made up crap.
Well it is political, but it’s a political reaction to something that’s already been politicised. The complaint isn’t about something being political, it’s about taking a game from not-politicised to politicised. In one case it was the forum post about tracer’s pose that did it, and in the other case it was the writer’s of the new Baldur’s Gate. Whether it happens on the writers side or the fans side isn’t relevant.
One more point for Desipis:
Okay, I accept that many GamerGaters would agree with this point. But I’m wondering, do you believe it? This seems to be coming close to “if my intentions were good, then that’s all that matters” territory.
(And I wonder why the credit for lack of political intent goes to the makers of Overwatch, and is withheld from the makers of Baldur’s Gate. Do GamerGaters really think it’s not possible that someone could, without political intentions, clumsily include a trans character? If so, why?)
Thanks Harelquin. My map turns out to be of the state house numbers not the congressional districts (which I guess is what happens when I transcribe a blurry figure at 3 am).
Ampersand – I posted this twice earlier, it might have got caught in a filter? I’ve removed the links from this version to see if it’ll get through.
[It was caught in the spam trap. I restored the version of your post with links. Sorry ’bout that. –Amp]
I just came across this gem from one of the horrible human beings that we are likely to have as a president next year. ” The state that has the highest per-capita number of those guns that end up committing crime in New York come from Vermont.” The audience audibly gasped.
It is a wonderful example of using statistics to manipulate people. Less than one percent of the guns used to commit crimes in New York comes from Vermont. The state does not break top ten in absolute terms, and of course, New York itself is number one, eclipsing Vermont’s ‘contribution’ by more than an order of magnitude.
So the statistic is absolutely true, utterly irrelevant, and has a great potential of influencing people. *golf clap*
The common theme is a protest against the politicisation of games. That includes both including or excluding content for political(ly correct) reasons.
Let’s protest the politicization of games by politicizing games!
Regarding post #12:
Two things strike me about this.
1) Have the members of the Reclaim group truly studied any history other than that presenting various racially-based injustices? If it was not for free speech there would have been no Emancipation, no Civil Rights Movement, etc., etc. – without the ability to invoke a right to free speech they would not be able to do what they’re doing!
2) Juxtapose the call of this writer to Reclaim members and others to consider the causes of the fates of Giordano Bruno and Socrates with Stanford’s overwhelming vote to reject requiring a survey course of Western Civilization. The foundations of the rights that Reclaim and others enjoy here in the United States, the very rights that they are able to take advantage of because of their extension from white men to all residents of the U.S. over our history, are based in Western civilization. Which they are trying to reject, without any fact-based understanding of it. I would not be surprised if the majority of the students walking through Harvard Yard at any given moment could not identify who Socrates was (other than “ancient Greek philosopher”) and have no idea how he died or why.
Harvard ONCE was a great university….
1) Have the members of the Reclaim group truly studied any history other than that presenting various racially-based injustices? If it was not for free speech there would have been no Emancipation, no Civil Rights Movement, etc., etc. – without the ability to invoke a right to free speech they would not be able to do what they’re doing!
This is much less obvious to me than it is to you, on the basis of the fact that both abolitionists and members of the Civil Rights Movement often had their freedom of speech restricted, in violent and even fatal ways. I think you’re conflating the fact that both were able to speak effectively[1] to infer that they were the beneficiaries of free speech, but the one doesn’t follow from the other at all. Effective advocacy on behalf of liberal values can and does happen even when those values aren’t being respected, or else we would have never gotten them in the first place, but this makes this particular approach to vindicating free speech a lot less effective.
I hate to say it, because I think the leftist argument against free speech is ultimately extremely destructive when it starts significantly informing policy[2], but the argument that free speech primarily benefits people with power, and in defense of harming people without power, well, not completely wrong. It’s not wrong historically, and it’s not wrong in contemporary politics or discourse, either. I see a lot of clearly spurious invocations of “free speech” in order to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted; certainly more than I see concern about actual free speech. All this is despite the fact that I go out of the way to read stuff by impassioned and principled free speech advocates.
[1] Though ultimately it wasn’t speech that settled the issue of slavery, you know.
[2] Forget taking it to its logical conclusion, even the occasional, minor wobbles in that direction we see in contemporary liberal democracies tend to be seriously fucked up.
Because I’ll take basically any opportunity to recommend this 10-minute video on practical science misconceptions: you should watch that video! It’s a great commentary about common, everyday things that even science graduates don’t know about the world around us, and also about flaws in science education in general.
It may be true that many kids today don’t know the details of who Socrates is. But is that a sign of a poor education full stop, or an education that’s prioritizing other things? Do you think there were no important blind spots in the education you received?
As a more general comment, not directed at RonF: it strikes me that “education is terrible today” is an interesting inverse of impostor syndrome.
Take a Venn diagram: there is the circle of stuff you know, and the circle of stuff other people know, with an intersection where there’s stuff you both know; impostor syndrome is often being aware of the part of the other-people’s-knowledge circle outside the overlap with your own, but unaware of the part of the stuff-you-know circle that is outside the overlap with the person you’re comparing to. Kids-these-days is the other way: you notice the stuff you know that other people don’t, and ignore the stuff they know that you don’t (or, rather, the stuff they know that you didn’t know when you were their age). Or, you notice the stuff they know that you don’t, but decide it’s worthless.
Conor Friedersdorf had a pair of articles the other week about ethnic studies classes and why people did or didn’t take them, especially if they were outside the ethnic group in question. I didn’t have time to email him before his reader response column went live, but I didn’t see my response echoed in the ones he cited. The basic answer is: when I was 18 years old, I didn’t understand that there was anything I could learn from those classes. I was wrong, and I wish I’d taken one, as it might have removed my head from my posterior on a few issues earlier.
For those who are curious after reading Harlequin’s comment (as I was):
Why Didn’t You Take a Black Studies Course in College? – The Atlantic
And
Perspectives on Black Studies – The Atlantic
Ah, sorry! Thanks for posting the links.
I was going to add a clarifying point that I don’t think there are no problems with the modern US educational system, either broadly or in specifics–just that I often see a lot of focus on things I don’t personally find that problematic combined with an ignorance of other real problems. But “other people don’t care about the right stuff” is a common refrain, of course. :)
Ampersand (quoting me):
I think the way ever more of our culture is being dragged into the left-right red-blue tribal conflict is a rather toxic social trend.
I tend to be a “balance in all things” kind of guy (theoretically, I don’t actually succeed in being that all the time) so I think the answer is ‘both’.
A lot of learning is about figuring out where you should go and a lot of learning is about understanding the grounding for how you got this far. A recurring danger in modern times is a failure to appreciate how the current rules/thoughts/ideas that you want to finesse form the structure that you’re operating from. You see this all the time with free speech. Even in the most restrictive of them (say the UK or Germany) we still live in countries that have very free speech. For most people who have grown up in one of those countries there is a huge background assumption that speaking your mind may not always be wise, but that it is almost always legal.
So in countries with a very strong free speech ethos, it is easy to see the hurts of free speech while assuming (if you see them at all) that the benefits are always there anyway and don’t need to be seriously protected.
That doesn’t mean that things can’t be better. But it means that you can’t protect the balance if you don’t even see that there are things to be balanced.
This is interestingly a failing shared by both progressives and libertarians: they see the hurt in front of them, but are often unwilling to grapple with what happens to the other side of the balance if they change things the way they want, because they either deny or fail to notice that anything important is being balanced against.
Desipis:
1) Point well taken on the “walk back” question.
2) But that in no way changes that it’s hypocritical of many GamerGaters to say that if some players criticize part of Overwatch and the makers of Overwatch make a change, that’s censorship, but a similar situation (albeit involving far more vicious criticism) of Baldur’s Gate from GGs isn’t censorship. Which is what my comment in the OP was about, and what the post I linked to was about.
3) Some criticism I’ve seen of Baldur’s Gate is transphobic. For example, in the KiA thread you linked to, someone links to a YouTube video named “Tranny Abuse” showing the trans character in Baldur’s Gate being murdered. There’s nothing wrong with a trans NPC being killable for XP like other NPCs, that’s just part of the genre. But it’s gross to upload a video focusing on that one kill and calling it “Tranny Abuse,” just as it would be to do the same thing with a Jewish character and call it “Kike Abuse,” or with a gay character and call it “faggot abuse.” I didn’t read all of the comments on that thread, but the majority of the comments I saw were from folks with GG-like views who apparently see nothing wrong with the video.
4) That GamerGaters venerate people like Milo Yiannopoulos and Voox Daay (misspelled deliberately to keep off his ego-surfing) suggests that they are totally accepting of transphobes leading their movement. It also shows that they don’t object to those who drag culture “into the left-right red-blue tribal conflict” in toxic ways, when those people are right-wingers.
5) Nit-pick: Amber Scott didn’t say “There’s also four new companions, one of whom is gay, one of whom is bisexual” – those are the article-writer’s words.
* * *
As I understand your argument, you’re saying it’s “toxic” for someone to say that a character’s pose is out-of-character T&A. Even when said in a forum set up by the game developers for feedback and criticism.
I’d say that for the most part, what happened on that forum thread was the opposite of “toxic.” The developers had a forum intended for feedback and criticism of beta releases; a player used it to give them a bit of feedback and criticism; the developers considered the question and decided what to do themselves. In the several pages of the thread I read, people were mostly polite (someone with gamergate-like views did make ad hom attacks on the original poster, but as gaming-related discussions go these were mild comments); no one attacked the developers personally, no one suggested economic pressure to enforce their views on the developers. The OP went out of her way to praise the game’s developers, and responded sensibly to feedback, clarifying her position.
Unless all dissent from GamerGate ideology, or any criticism of games at all, is by definition “toxic,” then what happened on that forum is actually a model for what political disagreement should look like.
What’s “toxic” is responding to dissent with threats, with personal attacks, with bigoted slurs like “tranny,” with doxing, with going after people’s employment, and with dogpiling. What’s “toxic” is the actions of people like Voox Daay and Milo, who demonize people they disagree with and encourage their thousands of fans to do the same. (Yes, there are people on the left who do all this too). But just expressing criticism of a game – even if (gasp!) that criticism comes from a perspective GamerGate loathes – is not toxic.
[Edited to make my views clearer, in the first several minutes after initial posting.]
I see the two cases as absolutely similar, and in both my intuition is to say everything is “working as designed”. Games are an art, and artists have always had to please their customers. Alexandre Dumas used to get in trouble for being too sympathetic to ‘the monsters across the Channel’, when the political winds would blow in a particular way, and it was happening to artists much earlier, and of course, it is still happening today.
Anyone who thinks that authors have only recently started putting their politics in their creations is an ignorant moron. The problem is that some art forms, like games, are relatively new, and are just starting to upset too many. Well, while I was writing that, I remembered games from the 80s which actually had a political message, and which I am sure upset some people. But they were written by Western White males of Libertarian leanings, and my twenty year old self wasn’t offended.
Today, I disagree a with a lot more of the politics that seep into games. Mostly it just makes me stop playing the game, if it is blatant enough. I do not go on to complain, because (1) I have more money for games than free time and (2) I believe that more games is better, period, even if they are written by right wing religious extremists, racist militarists, or androphobic feminists.
So in both cases, customers complained, and the authors stuck their tails between their legs, and complied. Neither of the two ‘infractions’ would have bothered me five years ago (at the time, a trans woman was already part of my closest circle of friends and I did not have a daughter)
Today, I welcome the first change, namely getting rid of the butt shot, and I can understand where those who triggered the second change are coming from, despite wishing the authors had not caved in. I still welcome the mechanism. I like the fact that the authors can be influenced this way. Eventually, some studios will be patronized only by self-selected customers, and some games will become super-bland as not to offend anyone.
I see no problem with that. I already avoid games that do not match my biases, and will continue to do so. The sooner everyone, authors or customers, understands that any form of art reflects the author’s beliefs, the sooner people will calm down and simply start avoiding the games of authors they do not like.
So, no I do not think anyone should be able to censor a game, except for the authors (and that includes those who worked on it, those who financed it, and those who distribute it) But I also think that customers have the right to pressure their suppliers. Some will bend, others will resist. Eventually, everyone will understand that you cannot please everyone, no matter how lucrative that would be.
Pesho – I agree with you. Although I think that some of the specific responses were wrong, the general approach of “audience gives feedback and then authors take that into account, or not, as they choose” seems to me like a good one.
In these two cases, I’m not sure it’s fair to say “the authors stuck their tails between their legs and complied.” The Badur’s Gate people have responded by saying, yes, that trans character’s dialog was too hamhanded, so they’re expanding the character into being a much larger (and thus, presumably, more nuanced) character. (They also removed a single line which made gentle fun of Gamergate). In the case of Overwatch, the creators changed the post to a more energetic and silly pose, which is more in character – but they based the new pose on a famous 1950s pin-up painting.
In both cases, it seems to me that the changes will actually be improvements to the game.
In both cases, it seems to me that the changes will actually be improvements to the game.
Is it just me, or do people often seem to (implicitly) assume that changes made in a work in response to criticism make the work somehow illegitimate or less authentic than its state prior to the change?
Pillsy, I don’t think it’s just you. Once, years ago, my mother told me before I submitted a story to a school journal not to let them “destroy my vision” of the story by editing it. I didn’t have much luck explaining to her that I was excited by the idea of an editor going over the story, because that process would, by and large, make the story better. She wouldn’t step away from the theory that the artistic merit of the story relied on its staying as close to its original form as possible.
I think that idea is widespread, perhaps among people who aren’t themselves artists and don’t realize how helpful critique is to the artistic process.
And to be fair, sometimes editors do make demands which result in the work being made worse. Editors often have an instinct to play things safe and to push a work towards the bland and expected. Which is a problem, because authors may not feel that they can refuse changes suggested or demanded by editors.
But editors also can improve work a lot. Authors can wind up being very grateful for the changes suggested by an editor. Both happen.
I think a similar thing can happen with fan critiques, except that in most circumstances the author has no obligation at all to go along with fan suggestions, so in the end responsibility for any changes made is on the author.
Related: A blog post about how feminist criticism affects the writer of Marvel’s “Black Panther” comic book: The Feminists Of Wakanda – The Atlantic
Ampersand:
The full title of the video is “Baldur’s Gate Misogyny: Tranny Abuse”. My interpretation is that it’s satirising Sarkeesian style analysis by implying that having a killable trans character makes the game the problem.
I do not agree that GamerGaters venerate the later. In fact most threads I’ve seen indicate a strong dislike of the guy by the majority, although he and his supporters are tolerated under the idea that one ideological group shouldn’t be able to exclude another as long as there is a shared understanding about ethical reporting and/or free speech.
Milo gets a lot of support because he consistently attacks those oppose GamerGate in very entertaining and public way. That doesn’t mean that the same level of support applies to his other ideological view points.
Fair point.
A comment saying the pose is out of character is fine. A comment saying the pose makes the character a “sex symbol” and implying this is bad thing because he wants his daughter to grow up alongside the characters is the problem. The idea that a girl can’t follow a female characters that are even remotely sexual without it being harmful is clearly a political one. Female characters shouldn’t need to be split into either sexy or chaste to suite a political viewpoint.
That doesn’t even get into the fact that the pose wasn’t even particularly sexual to begin with. Male characters also used the pose. Read my description I made in a reddit comment:
Seeing the pose as so sexual it makes the character into a sex symbol strongly suggests a hypersensitivity to female sexuality, which along with the language being used is an indication of political motives.
The “toxicity” comes from trying to take a piece of popular media that has a fan base with a diverse set of political views and modify it in such a way as to try to force one particular political viewpoint onto all of them. This will inevitably turn that piece of media into a battleground for each side of the political divide to fight over it for control. I think it is a rather toxic to constantly be focusing on the things that divide people rather than just letting things of common enjoyment be a vehicle to enjoy things that unite people.
I would agree with this, but note that the new Tracer pose isn’t exactly less sexual that the old one (although it is more fun and energetic so it does fit with the character better).
I don’t really know anything about video games, so I won’t comment on the broader controversy, but I did want to comment on this:
It’s weird to have this conversation without the word “objectification,” because it’s relevant to exactly this point. The pose in question isn’t perceived by some people as sexual because the character is feeling sexual interest or attraction; it’s perceived as sexual because it causes feelings of sexual interest or attraction in the people who view it who are attracted to that kind of body. It has nothing to do with the character’s sexuality–it’s all about the viewer’s sexuality.
Healthy models of sexuality are fine. Objectification and the broader category of sexualization are actively detrimental to the health and well-being of young women: a good summary of the research is here (click on “executive summary” and scroll down to “Consequences of the sexualization of girls”).
One can still debate whether the pose in question is sexualized, of course. Again, I don’t play video games and I’m not familiar with their visual language so I’m not going to come down on one side or another. But once you think it is, objecting to it has nothing to do with demonizing sexuality or demanding chaste characters.
This seems to be saying that it’s okay to use an anti-trans slur and promote images of killing a hated trans character outside the game context, so long as it’s “satire.” I disagree. It’s completely possible to do a satire of Sarkeesian’s views without using an anti-trans slur and producing an image of a much-hated trans character being murdered for forty thousand gamergaters to chortle at. This isn’t satire; it’s using satire as an excuse for trans hatred.
No, it doesn’t. It does mean, however, that his views are acceptable to gamergaters. (Relevant.)
Also, is gamergate about ethics in journalism or not? Milo is an extremely unethical journalist – even to the point of having his work ghosted by unpaid interns. Also, the “unethical” behavior Gamergaters object to – journalists and reviewers injecting their politics into their articles – is, to put it mildly, all over Milo’s writing. (Or the writing that interns write but Milo takes credit for, anyhow). How can anyone take GamerGate’s ethics seriously when Gamergate itself clearly doesn’t?
Regarding Voox Daay, there are plenty of people who identify with GamerGate who love Voox – virtually all his followers are vocally pro-Gamergate, for example.
But a question for you: In the last couple of weeks, a feminist (or at least, feminist sympathetic) group came out with a proposal to build a list that anyone could add to of online abusers, called SocialAutopsy. Many feminists in that area – including Zoe Quinn, Randi Lee Harper and Izzy Galvez – publicly called out SocialAutopsy, as did others, and their Kickstarter was suspended. At more or less the same time, Voox Daay and his followers started the SJWList. Did any prominent GamerGaters call out the SJWList, that you saw? (I don’t know the answer, I’m curious.)
I don’t think this is what he was saying (I read it more as saying that he didn’t think every female character should be forced into the sultry “sexy” mode, without regard for if that’s in character), but that’s besides my point. My point is, Gamergate considers anyone having any views that they disagree with to be – to use your word – “toxic.” Even when the view is well within mainstream discourse; even when the view is expressed politely, in an appropriate forum that the game creators set up; it’s disgusting and “toxic” for anyone to ever disagree with Gamergate’s narrow ideology.
But when Gamergate sets up a worldview that divides all views into “our views” and “toxic views,” it makes reasonable disagreement impossible.
I don’t think this is accurate. Let’s look at three “over the shoulder” poses from the game. For those who don’t know, the one on the left is the one that all the controversy was about.
So in fact, the male characters aren’t in the same pose, not if you look at the poses in any detail. For example (and contrary to what you said), the male characters’ hips are close to level, a big contrast to Tracer’s very extreme hip angle – a kind of hip angle that you’d virtually never see outside the context of pin-up modeling.
I think Tracer’s pose comes off as objectification for three reasons: Costume, pose, and that her pose seems out of character. There’s a Anita Sarkeesian video called “strategic butt coverings” which is relevant here; she points out that game designers often put men in costumes designed to make sure that their butts are covered, and women in costumes meant to emphasize their butts. In Tracer’s case, she’s wearing pants that are essentially body paint. Combined with the flirty pin-up pose and the straps around her butt, it all adds up to an image that some viewers object to.
Changing the pose was good because this pose does (as far as I can tell) seem a bit out of character. But I wish the original poster had also asked them to give the character realistic pants rather than body paint; that would have made a bigger difference.
That said, although I can certainly see what the poster who objected to this pose was talking about, I also think that within the context of the genre, this is a pretty mild example of objectification. But that makes sense. The poster wasn’t saying that no female characters should ever be objectified; he was saying that he didn’t think ALL female characters should be.
(Also, what Harlequin said.) :-p
Harlequinn:
While this might be true, you seem to be missing the point that I’m making. The game is a piece of entertainment, not something intended to be of moral or psychological guidance to children. Arguments about objectification are as irrelevant as arguments claiming the characters should wear crosses and pray to God lest young children playing the game turn away from their Christian upbringing. The underlying point is that people shouldn’t try to force their moral code into the entertainment of others.
>How an internet mapping glitch turned a random Kansas farm into a digital hell
This whole affair is pretty baffling. Why would the people who made the IP location software have it return a legitimate-looking value when it fails to find a location? That’s astoundingly bad software design, unless the API documentation said very clearly that 38.0000,-97.0000 indicated an error. (In that case, the onus is on the people using the API for failing to RTFM. Again, astoundingly bad software design.)
Even if I accept that pieces of entertainment have no real-world effect on psychology, I’m pretty sure many of the gamers objecting to the pose are saying that it hurts their ability to be entertained by the game, and that they would be *more* entertained with a less sexualized pose.
(cw rape) I don’t remember which open thread we were discussing it on now, but that article about Marie, the rape victim who was charged by police with a false report and whose rapist went on to be a serial rapist in other states, is one of a series of articles whose authors just won a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.
I’m glad to hear that – I thought that story was extremely well done (and also horrific).
In other Pulitzer Prize news: To no one’s surprise, Hamilton won a Pulitzer for Drama.
Ampersand:
I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
It’s not so much the views that are acceptable, but rather that people’s other views generally aren’t a criteria for their acceptability within the gamergate community.
From what I’ve read you should check the date on that article.
There might be “plenty of people”, but I haven’t seen them have much influence on the wider movement.
Here’s the top six comments from the only KIA thread I could find on the subject:
(which it does do)
The submitter (who I assume is a VD fan) seems persistent, but doesn’t get much support from other commenters.
The a key attribute of the character is speed, hence why the legs are a focus of the visual design. Look at the height of tracer’s shoulder’s compared to the other two character, then compare the height of their hips. It’s all part of a cohesive character design.
Candace Owens, the woman behind SocialAutopsy, certainly has some interesting opinions about Quinn.
desipis, I said I wasn’t talking about your comment more broadly, and I wasn’t. I was just talking about the way you were mischaracterizing your opponents’ position along the way by suggesting the objection was rooted in some kind of moralistic anti-sex animus. You don’t have to agree with their objection or anything, but I thought it was worth pointing out the way you were conflating sexuality and objectification. There’s probably not much more to say about that, really.
As a more general point: the status quo is not necessarily apolitical, and people who wade into an issue that is sometimes politicized are not necessarily political themselves. I’m also curious about what you mean when you say the objection is political, and why you consider it bad. (That is, political as opposed to what? Sincere? Objective? Something else?)
I know when I’m running, I like a super-wedgie! :)
@desipis:
Candace Owens, the woman behind SocialAutopsy, certainly has some interesting opinions about Quinn.
The really interesting thing about her post is not her opinions of Quinn, but her admission that she had never previously encountered the word “dox”. It suggests to me that she had not done basic due diligence prior to launching her Kickstarter, which is consistent with absolutely everything else I’ve seen about it.
@desipis:
The underlying point is that people shouldn’t try to force their moral code into the entertainment of others.
Your objection seems to be rooted in the unsupported (and likely unsupportable) claim that the people who complained about Tracer’s pose are interfering in other people’s entertainment, rather than, you know, speaking as something they themselves might enjoy. I don’t see anything particularly strange or wrong in pushing for entertainment that doesn’t go out of its way to alienate you as a consumer–and you don’t either, given your take on Beamdog and their Baldur’s Gate expansion.
Desipis – Thanks for the info on how SJWlist was received. That’s nice to see.
I thought of that (although the news dropped March 31, not April 1), as did many other people – but the people involved have consistently denied it was a joke. (AFAIK). Do you have a direct link to Milo or to Buzzfeed saying it was all an April’s Fool’s gag?
I agree that Tracer’s long legs are part of her design. That in no way required her to be designed so she looked like she was wearing bodypaint on her rear end instead of pants. “The character should look long-legged and speedy” and “the character shouldn’t be wearing only body paint on her ass” are not mutually exclusive creative choices.
Look, if you render a character (male or female) to have a costume in which their ass is basically naked, then that changes how many viewers experience the character – especially if you frame her ass in straps and give her flirty poses. That’s reality. And it might be good, or it might not be, depending on the purpose of the game and the character. But denying that a body-paint design has an impact on how some viewers look at the character, and is more sexualized than other choices the creators could have made, is just silly.
Finally, your implication that everyone who has criticized the Tracer design is a non-player is unfair. GGers may believe that only people who share Gamergate’s anti-feminist ideology play games, but reality isn’t that simplistic. (And no, I’m not a gamer, putting aside the year of my life spent playing Doom. :-p Neither is Christina Hoff Sommers.)
@Merzbot (33):
I think the issue is that it didn’t fail to find a location—but the location it found was no more specific than “the United States”. So it returns the latitude and longitude of (the center of) the United States.
pillsy:
You do realise that “dox” is a term used by a fairly narrow section of society right?
Except the player that was complaining could easily ignore that pose and not see their character do it in game by not unlocking the pose. It was completely within their power to avoid the content they had a problem with. Their comment was about stopping other people from enjoying that content.
Ampersand:
This was Milo’s response.
Edit:
I’m not sure where I implied that.
The really interesting thing about her post is not her opinions of Quinn, but her admission that she had never previously encountered the word “dox”.
Didn’t you watch the video before you read the post?
The video in which she was talking about what happens in a nanosecond? The video where she compares the number of everyday internet activities to that of villeeeeehnous attacks? The one in which the Kickstarting collective comes quite close to pasting a flashing “Newbies!” over their group picture?
I am surprised that she knew what Kickstarter was… she clearly has no idea about much else that has to do with physics, the Internet, or common sense.
There’s a longish but interesting article about SocialAutopsy and Quinn on New York magazine. (I didn’t read the post linked above so it may be something of a retread.)
@Harlequin:
It really reinforces my perception that this is an example of someone diving into something (via a Kickstarter, no less) without doing basic due diligence. Sure, “dox” may be primarily used by members of some Internet subcultures, but those subcultures are pretty relevant to the issue of “cyberbullying”.