Is #GamerGate misogyny posing as concern for ethics?

[Adam Reynolds]

Colbert brought it up last night, even interviewing Anita Sarkessian, which in a bright spot from all of the stupidity involving this "movement" apparently also happened on several mainstream news channels. She then officially declared him to be a feminist.

As a completely irrelevant side note, Firefox's spell check believes that Sarkessian should be Keynesian.

[Elfdart]

This video kinda sums it up:



And people thought the Hitler videos were a passing fad!

The video makes a great point: Chris Kluwe gave the GamerGaters a pretty good kick in the nuts, yet aside from one whackaloon with a violent criminal record challenging him to a boxing match, none of our heroes has doxxed him (whatever the fuck that means) or attacked him -certainly not with the jizz-palmed fanaticism with which they've attacked Zoe Quinn and the others.

This strikes me as proof positive that we're talking about a bunch of adolescent wankers (of all ages). Who above the maturity level of a middle schooler is supposed to be impressed by a boxing match to settle who's right and who's wrong?

[Block]

Colbert brought it up last night, even interviewing Anita Sarkessian, which in a bright spot from all of the stupidity involving this "movement" apparently also happened on several mainstream news channels. She then officially declared him to be a feminist.

As a completely irrelevant side note, Firefox's spell check believes that Sarkessian should be Keynesian.

She also failed miserably to articulate a coherent point, and used a clip that shows how disingenuous a lot of her arguments are. The rest of that sequence from Dragon Age portrays the lord as an asshole and lets you decide if he lives or dies, something you can do as a character of either sex.

[Terralthra]

Failed to articulate a coherent point? Or failed to articulate a point with which you agree?

[Imperial Overlord]

She also failed miserably to articulate a coherent point, and used a clip that shows how disingenuous a lot of her arguments are. The rest of that sequence from Dragon Age portrays the lord as an asshole and lets you decide if he lives or dies, something you can do as a character of either sex.

Maybe (I haven't seen the clip and can't comment on it), but the fact that instead of considered criticism of her arguments and examples she instead gets threats to rape her and commit mass murder means that there is a metric fuck ton of misogyny involved.

[DaveJB]

I don't think anyone here is disputing that. But she shouldn't be above legitimate criticism, and while her core arguments seem to be largely correct, she doesn't really seem to do that good of job of picking examples that support them. She actually appears to have the opposite problem to Jack Thompson, who took up a position that was complete BS but was actually able to win a few people over by making his arguments sound more reasonable than they really were, even if his little campaign ultimately fizzled out without achieving much of anything.

[Vendetta]

Colbert brought it up last night, even interviewing Anita Sarkessian, which in a bright spot from all of the stupidity involving this "movement" apparently also happened on several mainstream news channels. She then officially declared him to be a feminist.

As a completely irrelevant side note, Firefox's spell check believes that Sarkessian should be Keynesian.

She also failed miserably to articulate a coherent point, and used a clip that shows how disingenuous a lot of her arguments are. The rest of that sequence from Dragon Age portrays the lord as an asshole and lets you decide if he lives or dies, something you can do as a character of either sex.

Maybe you don't understand her point.

In that scene, a female character is captured for the primary reason of providing motivation to the player. NB: this is the City Elf origin, so the player has no connection to the captured character, even though their character is stated as having one.

Given that the player has no connection, there's no organic reason that the events should motivate the player other than the generic "you are motivated by captured women, this is a captured woman, therefore it motivates you to action".

That's exactly the thing that the Damsel in Distress videos are arguing is bad. That the cliche of "rescue the wimmins" is used instead of organic and logical storytelling which motivates the player. It's the writer saying "we can't be arsed to flesh this out, stick in generic hero motivation no. 3 and we'll all go down the pub". It's lazy and bad, even if looked at from a gender neutral position.

[Vendetta]

I don't think anyone here is disputing that. But she shouldn't be above legitimate criticism, and while her core arguments seem to be largely correct, she doesn't really seem to do that good of job of picking examples that support them. She actually appears to have the opposite problem to Jack Thompson, who took up a position that was complete BS but was actually able to win a few people over by making his arguments sound more reasonable than they really were, even if his little campaign ultimately fizzled out without achieving much of anything.

The point she was making on Colbert (and the satirical point he was making by pushing for examples) is that strong individual examples don't matter, that's not the point, the point is how common the trope is, not how egregious any particular example might be. It's the breadth of examples that matter.

That's why all the supposed rebuttals that pick apart individual examples fail to address the actual argument, becuase they don't recognise the actual argument and so they raise straw men out of ignorance.

[Civil War Man]

Maybe you don't understand her point.

In that scene, a female character is captured for the primary reason of providing motivation to the player. NB: this is the City Elf origin, so the player has no connection to the captured character, even though their character is stated as having one.

Given that the player has no connection, there's no organic reason that the events should motivate the player other than the generic "you are motivated by captured women, this is a captured woman, therefore it motivates you to action".

That's exactly the thing that the Damsel in Distress videos are arguing is bad. That the cliche of "rescue the wimmins" is used instead of organic and logical storytelling which motivates the player. It's the writer saying "we can't be arsed to flesh this out, stick in generic hero motivation no. 3 and we'll all go down the pub". It's lazy and bad, even if looked at from a gender neutral position.

The City Elf origin is actually a rather interesting example, since as far as I can remember it's the only one that varies considerably depending on the sex of the player character. A male City Elf does get the standard "rescue the womenfolk" motivation, but a female one becomes one of the captured women. But the PC, by virtue of being the PC, is generally not supposed to ever be a damsel in distress, so you end up using the first convenient distraction (one of the male elves breaking into the dungeon, I think) to steal a weapon and go all Kill Bill on the entire castle. It becomes less about rescuing damsels and more about self-preservation.

Does that make it better? I don't know. It's the only origin that specifically uses attempted rape to drive the plot, but Dragon Age is generally dark in tone. It's just that the other origins tend to use violence and betrayal when it needs to inflict something horrible on the player character.

[Purple]

Does that make it better?

It's much better. And I am saying this from a purely narrative standpoint. One situation provides the player with a real tangible incentive to succeed at the mission at hand whilst the other does not.
The difference is basically this:
Female: Your character who is supposed to be your avatar in this, who you have carefully crafted and bonded with has just experienced something horrible and needs to escape and survive.

Male: Your character who is supposed to be your avatar in this, who you have carefully crafted and bonded with has a girl that you newer knew anything about. But yea, he cares for her even though you don't (breaking immersion here) and so you have to do what he would do and save her.

That sort of thing might work for a hardcore roleplayer. But for most other people it just breaks immersion and makes for a meaningless plot.

[Civil War Man]

Does that make it better?

It's much better. And I am saying this from a purely narrative standpoint. One situation provides the player with a real tangible incentive to succeed at the mission at hand whilst the other does not.
The difference is basically this:
Female: Your character who is supposed to be your avatar in this, who you have carefully crafted and bonded with has just experienced something horrible and needs to escape and survive.

Male: Your character who is supposed to be your avatar in this, who you have carefully crafted and bonded with has a girl that you newer knew anything about. But yea, he cares for her even though you don't (breaking immersion here) and so you have to do what he would do and save her.

That sort of thing might work for a hardcore roleplayer. But for most other people it just breaks immersion and makes for a meaningless plot.

I agree that it is better in terms of providing a more compelling narrative, since it gives the player a more personal stake in the conflict. When I wondered if it was better, I was speaking more of its treatment of women. On the one hand, it has a female character (the PC in this instance) refusing to be a damsel in distress and fighting to protect herself and others. On the other hand, there is only the one, a fact made more glaring by the lack of a comparable NPC when the player makes their City Elf male.

It's also made more complicated by also including racial politics in it, since the City Elves are effectively the Tolkienesque fantasy equivalent of black people living in the Jim Crow-era South. There's a similar lack of action on the part of most of the male NPCs, since there's an all-pervading fear that openly resisting the oppressors will bring their wrath down on the community as a whole.

[Lord Revan]

Yeah there's issues with the city elf origin, that style of storyline was imho done better in Dragon Age 2 Spoiler

In the quest where you go out to save your character's mother
not only does it happen later in the game (in late act 2 out of 3 acts) so you got time to bond with character
It's also more natural from character point of view as the person in question is at that point your only family member that hasn't been "lost"
and most imporatantly you fail to save the damsel in distress and the story is more about how you deal with the loss of another family member then about how "the women need saving"

you can of course disagree about this

[SilverDragonRed]

If you use Anita's 'logic', the only DA example brought up that isn't sexist is where you're playing the female City Elf. The other two disempower the woman in question and takes away their personhood. 'Cause merely wanting to defend someone or rescue them 'objectifies' them (except when gender roles are reversed).

[Ziggy Stardust]

She also failed miserably to articulate a coherent point, and used a clip that shows how disingenuous a lot of her arguments are. The rest of that sequence from Dragon Age portrays the lord as an asshole and lets you decide if he lives or dies, something you can do as a character of either sex.

You clearly didn't even watch the interview at all, so no reason to pollute the thread with your blithering idiocy. Not only did she very clearly explain her point, but she didn't even show a fucking clip. The Dragon Age clip was one Colbert played as part of a montage during his monologue before the interview; there is no reason to believe Sarkeesian had anything to do with choosing that clip as opposed to one of Colbert's producers/writers. Hell, Sarkeesian even specifically said in the interview she doesn't want to focus on attacking specific games because she thinks it's more worthwhile to look at trends in the industry as a whole. And even IF Sarkeesian did choose that clip, the fact that the point of that clip sailed so clearly over your head shows how you are part of the problem here. The clip showed a women being treated as a generic damsel in distress as a plot device, and you in your infinite wisdom look at it and the first thing that comes to your mind is to talk about the male character in the scene and how he is portrayed.

[Block]

She also failed miserably to articulate a coherent point, and used a clip that shows how disingenuous a lot of her arguments are. The rest of that sequence from Dragon Age portrays the lord as an asshole and lets you decide if he lives or dies, something you can do as a character of either sex.

You clearly didn't even watch the interview at all, so no reason to pollute the thread with your blithering idiocy. Not only did she very clearly explain her point, but she didn't even show a fucking clip. The Dragon Age clip was one Colbert played as part of a montage during his monologue before the interview; there is no reason to believe Sarkeesian had anything to do with choosing that clip as opposed to one of Colbert's producers/writers. Hell, Sarkeesian even specifically said in the interview she doesn't want to focus on attacking specific games because she thinks it's more worthwhile to look at trends in the industry as a whole. And even IF Sarkeesian did choose that clip, the fact that the point of that clip sailed so clearly over your head shows how you are part of the problem here. The clip showed a women being treated as a generic damsel in distress as a plot device, and you in your infinite wisdom look at it and the first thing that comes to your mind is to talk about the male character in the scene and how he is portrayed.

Oh yay ad hominem. The clip showed a guy saying basically take what you want because they're not people. Her attempt at a point is that stuff like that encourages repression of women, ignoring that this is the villain saying it, not the PC. The PC, male or female, actively fights against the guy shown in the clip, completely undermining the point she is attempting to make.

[Terralthra]

If you use Anita's 'logic', the only DA example brought up that isn't sexist is where you're playing the female City Elf. The other two disempower the woman in question and takes away their personhood. 'Cause merely wanting to defend someone or rescue them 'objectifies' them (except when gender roles are reversed).

Defending a family member of the PC with whom one has developed a bond over a significant period of the game is different than defending a random woman both you and the PC have just met. I can't believe I need to actually point that out.

[Vendetta]

Oh yay ad hominem. The clip showed a guy saying basically take what you want because they're not people. Her attempt at a point is that stuff like that encourages repression of women, ignoring that this is the villain saying it, not the PC. The PC, male or female, actively fights against the guy shown in the clip, completely undermining the point she is attempting to make.

The context of that scene has been explained to you, you are focusing on the wrong detail. That scene leads into a mission where women are held hostage and the player is expected to be motivated to rescue them simply because women are being held hostage.

This is not about who said what, it's about actual game design, how designers communicate objectives and motivations to the player.

[TheFeniX]

People like Anita and Quinn don't exactly need to be giving examples of the sexism in video games to make their point. The amount of vitriol they get, as women, for just having an opinion at all shows how fucked up the market is. While you could claim a lot of this is coming from a few malcontents with thousands of sock-puppets (no matter how crazy that idea is), it doesn't change the fact that people in general react with extreme hostility toward women with opinions they don't agree with. But even that isn't special for the Internet. What is special is the attacks even so-called normal people will direct specifically at their gender.

Hepler dealt with this almost a decade ago. But more so than that, just general comments, both on the Interwebs and real life, show women take a whole heap of abuse directed specifically at their gender when they dare to have an opinion. Even minorities don't deal with this level of vitriol because that shit will not play in the real world when it's that blatant. Meanwhile, attacking women who defend birth control as sluts who can't keep their legs closed doesn't get you immediately booted from public life. Video Games are for a lot of people some new frontier where they haven't relegated routine sexism to background noise. The amount of sexism surprises them for some reason when it pervades a lot of other industries and general society.

Society has to get over it's love/hate relationship with women. I don't think video games is where that's going to happen, especially with the condition of the market.

GamerGate has other issues. Namely that a woman supposedly trading sex for a review (it turning out to be untrue is just icing on the cake) for a small indie game is fucking peanuts compared to the smokecreen AAA developers put out to consumers in both advertising and reviews in order to keep potential buyers from learning the truth until after they've make millions by pushing pre-orders. The industry being so front-loaded and with little consumer protection laws: truthful advertising and reviews are even more important than something like Dodge telling me a Magnum will get me laid.

For years, the Internet died down so fast on blatant lies and borderline illegal activity from publishers and reviewers, but the idea that a woman might have used her vagina for a purpose they don't agree with starts a fire?

[Terralthra]

People like Anita and Quinn don't exactly need to be giving examples of the sexism in video games to make their point.

Lewis' Law, from journalist Helen Lewis, sums this up: "[T]he comments on any article about feminism justify feminism."

Mind you, Lewis is anti-intersectional and not particularly cognizant of issues facing trans persons, PoC, etc., but that doesn't mean everything she's said is worthless.

[Lord Revan]

If you use Anita's 'logic', the only DA example brought up that isn't sexist is where you're playing the female City Elf. The other two disempower the woman in question and takes away their personhood. 'Cause merely wanting to defend someone or rescue them 'objectifies' them (except when gender roles are reversed).

Defending a family member of the PC with whom one has developed a bond over a significant period of the game is different than defending a random woman both you and the PC have just met. I can't believe I need to actually point that out.

Also in case of Leandra Hawke it's less about having to save because she's a woman and more due the fact she's the only real family you got left at that point for reasons I don't want spoil here.

Also Leandra Hawke has a major role in the game besides being captured, while the bride of the male city elf (yes I know she has a name but don't care enough to look it up) has no other role then "to be someone the hero saves"

[DaveJB]

People like Anita and Quinn don't exactly need to be giving examples of the sexism in video games to make their point. The amount of vitriol they get, as women, for just having an opinion at all shows how fucked up the market is.

That's really two separate issues, though - the treatment of female gamers and developers by their male peers, and the depiction of female characters in games. Both have plenty of evidence for them, but they're not directly interchangeable issues, especially since I'd wager that most developers (at least since George Broussard torpedoed his career) aren't so much knuckle-dragging misogynists as just lazy and prone to falling back on stock characterizations and scenarios, whereas the male gamers who mistreat their female counterparts are pure shitstains.

For years, the Internet died down so fast on blatant lies and borderline illegal activity from publishers and reviewers, but the idea that a woman might have used her vagina for a purpose they don't agree with starts a fire?

The only thing that can be even vaguely said in mitigation is that the (supposed) situation with Quinn was, to the best of my knowledge, the first time something like this had ever come to light, whereas the other problems with gaming journalism have been going on since the NES was the newest and hottest thing in town. But yeah, the fact that the backlash was aimed at her rather than her boyfriend or his editors speaks volumes as to the mindset of these people.

[SilverDragonRed]

If you use Anita's 'logic', the only DA example brought up that isn't sexist is where you're playing the female City Elf. The other two disempower the woman in question and takes away their personhood. 'Cause merely wanting to defend someone or rescue them 'objectifies' them (except when gender roles are reversed).

Defending a family member of the PC with whom one has developed a bond over a significant period of the game is different than defending a random woman both you and the PC have just met. I can't believe I need to actually point that out.

Also in case of Leandra Hawke it's less about having to save because she's a woman and more due the fact she's the only real family you got left at that point for reasons I don't want spoil here.

Also Leandra Hawke has a major role in the game besides being captured, while the bride of the male city elf (yes I know she has a name but don't care enough to look it up) has no other role then "to be someone the hero saves"

Glad we can agree that those are two very different scenarios with different circumstances surrounding them. But, ya'll include something that Anita's arguments routinely ignore or discard: context. Her arguments are that whenever a woman is turned into a DiD (regardless of context) and doesn't rescue herself, then it is sexist.

If you go by Anita's research bible TvTropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... ssedDamsel) then you see that the gender of the distressed person and the rescuer(s) doesn't matter. The trope is not sexist in and of itself, but Anita is forcing it to be sexist.

Lord Revan, I'm glad you brought up that info about Leandra's character because Anita herself says that the extra development that the distressed character gets just makes their eventual disempowerment all the more frustrating.

**********************************************************************************************************
My personal opinion on the two scenes is that they're both contrived. The City Elf opening didn't need to start in such a cartoonish manner where the only context to it is "Vaughn's an asshole...and a racist." Maybe it was done to show how elves are treated in the human lands, but it could have been something else. Maybe some other way that makes you question why the Saturday morning cartoon villian Vaughn is a moron for openly breaking Fereldan laws against slavery. The other is contrived for a lack of a cause-and-effect relationship between the kidnapping and the quest before.

[TheFeniX]

That's really two separate issues, though - the treatment of female gamers and developers by their male peers, and the depiction of female characters in games. Both have plenty of evidence for them, but they're not directly interchangeable issues, especially since I'd wager that most developers (at least since George Broussard torpedoed his career) aren't so much knuckle-dragging misogynists as just lazy and prone to falling back on stock characterizations and scenarios, whereas the male gamers who mistreat their female counterparts are pure shitstains.

I don't have much to argue with you here.

The only thing that can be even vaguely said in mitigation is that the (supposed) situation with Quinn was, to the best of my knowledge, the first time something like this had ever come to light, whereas the other problems with gaming journalism have been going on since the NES was the newest and hottest thing in town. But yeah, the fact that the backlash was aimed at her rather than her boyfriend or his editors speaks volumes as to the mindset of these people.

Yea, widespread corruption was relegated to background noise. It's there, just deal with it. But this isn't Blizzard hosting a bigoted Horde band for Blizzcon, in which they dodged any real repercussions anyway. This is "hey, this chick might have banged some guy to review her game, that's the real problem with video games right now." No, the real problem is the kind of idiot who thinks that's a major problem is the one buying all the games. Actual game developers are too busy pandering to him in the laziest way possible to maximize profits and minimize costs.

The problem with the counter view-point is that they think they can shame developers and publishers into creating more female centered games in the "core" area. When said core games are dominated by men. Even when said men pull out all the stops to show just how retarded they are, it doesn't matter because they're a sure bet to continue lining publisher pockets.

So, your single-player stories are going to continue to pander mostly towards men. On the flip-side, there's almost no hope for women to avoid being shouted down due to the emphasis these days on matchmaking vs dedicated servers. And since the console model is gated behind a paywall, there's even less incentive to ban dipshits.

[Lord Revan]

there's foreshadowing for the kiddnapping his DA2 and honestly I'm using my own logic here, after all what's more sexist a female character whose only role in the story is to be "someone the (male) hero saves" or someone who plays a major role and gets capture for reasons that don't involve the chracter's gender in anyway.

key here isn't that it's woman in a position of distress but how it's handled that's sexist and lets be perfectly honest here while alot (would dare even to say most) cases the Damsel in distress story element is used in such a way that it's sexist.

what we should be asking ourselves is not "is there a female in distress in this story" but rather "what role do female characters play is this story" and "if a female character is put in distress will they act according to previous charecteristics or do change to be nothing but passive trophies for the hero", after all you can be strong without being a asskicking badass and isn't it sexist to say to girls that the only way they can be "strong" is by being badass fighters and everything else makes them weaklings worthy only of comtempt?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Oh yay ad hominem.

Do you even know what an ad hominem is, or did you just not read past the first sentence of my post?

The clip showed a guy saying basically take what you want because they're not people. Her attempt at a point is that stuff like that encourages repression of women, ignoring that this is the villain saying it, not the PC. The PC, male or female, actively fights against the guy shown in the clip, completely undermining the point she is attempting to make.

THAT WASN'T THE POINT SHE WAS ATTEMPTING TO MAKE. As has now been explained to you at least 3 times in this thread, including the post you just responded to. Yes, the PC, male or female, actively fights against the guy shown in the clip ... which is the entire fucking point, because we are talking about how female NPCs in video games are used to drive forward the plot by being "damsels in distress". Do you honestly think that Sarkeesian, or anybody else in this thread, thought that the guy in the clip was the hero of the game?

Also I notice that you completely ignored the part about how Sarkeesian didn't even choose that fucking clip in the first place. Or the part about how cherry-picking at individual video games isn't even the point of her argument, as she is more interested in the broader paradigm of gender portrayal in video games. Are you being deliberately dishonest or do you just honestly not understand what everyone is talking about, here?