PixlBit

Pretty much. My issues with FemFreq aren't that the site targets video games, it's that it does so in a bad, often hypocritical way just to further her own agenda. Criticism on females in games, I'm fine with. Hell, in a year with the Tomb Raider reboot, how could I not be?

Yeah. You weren't one of the ones I was targeting. I just didn't comment on your last blog because I didn't have anthing to say lol.

Yeah, I know you wouldn't Blake. You have the balls to call me out when you disagree with me. Even if you're completely wrong like Saints Row The Third.

And Mass Effect...

Well, first of all, I masturbate at least twice that amount in a day, but secondly, the female in the video has to be enjoying it to "get me there," and that's how I know I'm not a sexist.

In seriousness, I know the blogs you're talking about, and frankly, my stance is "white knight" and "feminazi" are both blanket terms that I don't care for, and people are too vague when discussing these things for me to care much or comment in most cases. Unlike me. Clearly.

Watch the video. It's a dude in this one, and he's not talkiing about feminism for most of it, he's talking about geek culture and bullying.

 30 times a day? Ouch!

I did before I commented, "female in the video" was a joking reference to porn viewing, not the escapist link. And I use a very powerful brand of lube, of course. Hopefully, people get that I'm joking. lol

Fair enough. I've never used lube, so maybe that's why my masturbation habits pale in comparison to your mighty efforts.

Back to the issue ... at hand ... I think where the bullying he's talking about really comes in is online. Lack of female characters is unfortunate, but I don't think it's inherently sexist to make male-oriented game like Gears of War, and for people to prefer those games over most others. And as jgusw pointed out last time this got brought up, women will play games like that, too.

Which is where the main problem comes in: harassment of women in online play. Obviously, having never owned a current gen console or done any serious gaming online, I'm not a firsthand witness to it, but there are plenty of horror stories of dismissing female gamers online. There was also a recent twitter trend regarding a "grope gang" at a con a facebook friend linked to in a status of his. It is all apalling.

I forgot where I was going with this. I guess I was just agreeing with the video. Also, if Nintendo released like a DLC or something of the lost Shiek chronicles that filled in what happened in her parts of Ocarina of Time, I'd love to buy it.

 Yeah they will play those kinds of games. But should they always have to? Shouldn't we all have choice in that regard? 

 Harrassment of women online is abhorent. A lot of women pretend to be men online just because of that. I was playing LoL the other day, and when the other team found out the best player on our team was female, they raged and said that she must of cheated, and they all reported her and attempted to get her banned. It was ridiculous. So our team got all of our team to report their team and they all got banned, and she didn't. It was a proud moment for us lol.

I don't know if the women who play those games feel like they "have to," they just enjoy the gameplay, and I'd contend with the fact there's nothing else out there for more "girly girl" gamers, like Animal Crossing, but I think the issue there would lie more with how women are depicted than the style of gameplay, which is just a harmless preference anyone can have.

Good on your LoL group though, that really is shitty of those guys.

Stereotypes are like guns, they have a useful purpose, and can be used very effectivley but in the worng hands someone is going to get hurt. It's pretty obvious that not everyone who wears a 'hoodie' is dealing drugs, not every man who enjoys porn likes 'degrading women' not every politician is in it for the money (well mostly). Stereotypes are born from some element of truth, thats why they exist but they also need an audience and enough exposure to be recongised. When those two things happen, aspects of that 'culture' are picked out and emulated but fundematal differences still apply. Exposure leads to mutations of the original idea/ stereotype, a great example of this can be seen in feminism. When the Suffragettes 'started' the movement they main aim was for more rights in voting, look at feminism now, it covers a wide range of beliefs and ideals. Geek culture is no different, it originally started out as a passion/ obsession for a subject not many people would give a shit about, a craving for information and knowledge on quite often obscure topics. The masterbation factor was a side product, all that time alone and quite often unrelatable social context/ situations meant that some douch put two and two together to make a very round four. There are two types of men in this world.... wankers and liars. It's just a convenient way for people to take the piss out of them. I understand why 'true' geeks are pissed off, all of a sudden 'hot girls and boys' are talking they are geeks themselves like it's cool, but still wouldn't give a 'true geek' the time of day. What these true geeks are saying to the world is...... 'fuck you hypocrits'  

Yeah... still, any girl - regardless of what she looks like - has to prove her geekiness, which is kind of bs. If I say I'm a geek, everyone believes me. Not so with women.

 It's kind of frustrating that some men view women as a completely different species. They aren't. They're people, they do things a person does, and they come with many different likes, dislikes and character traits. To dismiss them all as one being is kind of ridiculous.

Very true, judging a whole set because of the actions of a few is retarded but, and I hate to admit this, to some degree we all do it. Usually about something that severely pisses us off. I'm about to do it again and speculate that one thing that pisses off many a hardcore geek is that they have the same highly sexed energy as other guys (perhaps even more so as they might be prone to have very active imaginations in lewe of following 'fantasy and imagination games' etc) but have very little success with 'hot' girls or even girls in general. People tend to be the most hostile to what they feel the most frustration with. Of course this doesn't make it right but more often than not it swings around too far. I absolutely agree that feminist issues in gaming should be challenged and discussed but many a guy who is into Hentai or even just gets a chubby from playing RPG's with big boobed women, it's a little niche that they can fall back into and it's the labelling they recieve because of it. So many times I ve heard the insult 'basement virgin' thrown at guys who are geeks and dare stand up for their 'hobby'. Plus thats the true beauty of 'geekiness' you don't have to prove shit to anyone. That's what being a geek is about, a devote love of something that only you and a few others in world care about, if women and men alike feel they have to prove they are geeks, then their not geeks.

I agree with what Movie Bob says 100%! Still, I wish the geek elite would stop using Anita Sarkesian as a martyr. I don't have a beef with her over the fact she is a female critiquing games. I have a problem with the fact she's a college hipster(I know nice people go to college too. I'm not trying to generalize,Blake. lol.) who bought & played games solely to portray them in a mostly negative light. Aka, she didn't grow up with games and she never truly had a genuine love for the hobby in the first place. As such yeah, she comes off as hypocritical and condescending to me. If she was a "self labelled guy feminist" doing those rants I'd still feel the same way. Her gender by itself isn't the cause of my discontent. It's the type of person she is.

 Hey, I dismissed Anita. She's a tool. However, the people in the comment section weren't all arguing about her, they were arguing about feminists in general. Also, Bob only used that image of her because she's the one who has received the most derogatory comments, and she reveived them before she even posted her first video. As soon as she said she wanted to look at games, the internet went nuts without giving her a chance. Now she's blown that chance, it's fine to criticise her. But we shouldn't have reached the point where we can vocally demand that an entire gender not talk about video games.

Many of the comments Anita got we're unnecessary. Sure, I don't like her or agree with her but I'm not going to threaten to rape her or kill her.

However, I think "trolls" are their own clique. Using them to judge the whole geek/gamer continuum is unfair. 

Griefing innocent people was never apart of my personal nerd code. I think once someone devotes their whole life to harassing others they step over that line. Aka, they lose all their credentials regardless of the social grouping they're most strongly affiliated with.

Unfortunately trolls are a big part of online geek culture and therefore have to be judged along with us. I don't like it, but it is true.

Not trying to defend the guy or anything, but if you've seen Moviebob's other videos on Anita, well let's just say it got me to stop watching his gaming videos altogether. It wasn't just him using her as the prime example, the guy has the most blatant example of white knighting her using arguments that contradict themselves and talk down to gamers. It's one of the few times I felt insulted watching an internet video.

 Can you show me the video you are referring to? I've watched every one of his "The Big Picture" videos, and I haven't seen it.

It's not from The Big Picture, it's from his show Overbytes http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2013/03/overbytes-on-tropes-vs-women.html?spref=tw

I'm sorry dude, but he's right. The first episode isn't all that offensive. She doesn't say video games are evil, she just acknowledges a trope and says that it does have negative connotations. It is kind of sexist if you think about it. Also, she does do research, and she says in this video that she played games as a young girl and her passion of games and her passion of womens rights lead to the production of this video, so I don't honestly understand why this video makes you this angry? I don't even know why she makes you this angry. She's making an observation about our medium that I think we should pay attention to, because even if she isn't as well versed as you or I, it gives an indication as to what outsiders think of gaming and how detrimental that is in the overall acceptance of our medium. As far as I can see, there is no issue here. I stopped watching his video at the 6 minute mark and went and watched hers, and I honestly don't see a problem.

Another thing to consider is feminism has intergrated itself into education. For good & for ill, it has a strong pressence at colleges and even high schools.

However,it creates a sort of "beaten over the head with it" annoyance factor sometimes.

Yes, I see females as equals.

Yes, sometimes I like to look at sexy depictions of women

Yes, I like porn but it doesn't mean I see women as lifeless souless objects. Besides, what single male doesn't fall back on pornography of some sort when he's not getting the real thing?

As for Sarkesian? I dunno,man. She just doesn't give off the vibe of "I've been a gamer all my life". Sure, ther's a picture of her with huge stacks of games but I have a feeling she got a lot of them with the kick-starter donation money. Before her "Tropes in games" series she did other youtube videos yet she didn't seem to talk about games much. If anything it seemed like she chose games as her pet project just to further her own soap-box bias agenda. (And for the record, there are females on youtube who disagree with Anita strongly. It's not just basement dwelling dude-bros with chips on their shoulders.)

Most of the "negative tropes" can have positive connotations too. For example, Princess Peach isn't just a helpless damsel. She's so valuable and such a good person Mario & Luigi are willing to risk their lives to save her. See? You can take any of this stuff and apply different angles and points of view to it. It's not that difficult. You don't need a college degree in sociology to have common sense and an objective thought process.

Beyond that, "stay at home mothers" and "women who love to cook" do exist and I bet they feel offended whenever a radical feminist comes along and says they embody a negative stereotype just because they're fulfilling more traditional womanly roles.

Also, what about women who enjoy exotic dancing and enjoy being in pornos? While pro-sex feminists probably wouldn't have a problem with them I get the feeling feminists like Anita would say they're "slaves of the patriarchy" even if they're in fact doing their professions of their own free will.

My problem with the most vocal feminists is they claim to have a solution for everyone when the truth is that's bullshit. Why? Because we're all diverse indviduals.

Frankly I don't even like the term "feminist" because the very word puts femininity above all other things. You can't claim to be for "total equality" when you rally under a word that's sole objective is to benefit only one group of people.

Why can't feminists just call themselves equalists or egalitarians? There would be a lot less confusion.

My issue isn't so much with what he says, but how he says it. It's nothing but him talking down to his audience. I didn't say she ever said games were evil nor did I think she was ever trying to take them away, I thought they were bad for basically trying to get blood from a turnip.

Yeah, the trope exists in early games, but it exists as an extremely simple way to communicate with the player why the character is going through these tasks. And with limited technology, "Get the girl" is about the easiest way to communicate that when story is just an afterthought.

His video, white knighting, acting like the only people who have something against her are idiots immediately thinking she wants to "take away our video games"? Yeah, I've got a problem with that. Frankly, it's just a matter of him not respecting our audience, if he wants to think the videos are good and present an argument for that, so be it. The way I read it at least was another one of Bob's videos where if you don't agree with him, you're an idiot.

Anita really only bothers me on two issues. One is the recent ME which is by far the lesser of two evils and the other is how she flat out ignores much worse issues. The American military has a system where women are extremely likely to be sexually assaulted yet no one is persecuted for this. I had to do a paper on that subject and couldn't even make it through a documentary because they got so bad. If she used her fame to help that, she can says whatever the hell she wants about games.

I agree that feminists have bigger issues to address.  In one of my classes in college, I was told that 1 out of 4 girls are sexually abused.  At the time, I thought that number was too high.  I mean, I didn't know any sexually abused girls.  Well, after speaking to my wife, she knew a lot of girls that were sexually abused.  I was in shock.  Almost half of the girls I knew had experience with some level of sexually abuse and a couple of them were close friends of mine.  That my friend is a cause to fight about.  Fuck videogames. 

Dude. We have bigger issues to address. I have bigger issues to address. I am passionate about video games, so are some feminists. Why aren't they allowed to talk abou the problems in video games when we do it all of the time?

 I don't necessarily agree with all of her points, but she seems so goddamn inoffensive, she doesn't even seem to take a stance half the time. She's just like "This COULD be construed as sexist," and leaves it at that.

 Also, about Bob, he isn't talking about people who disagree with her, as he disagrees with a lot of her points. He's slamming the people who were against her before she even made her first video. He was against the people who violently and aggressively belittled her. And he's fucking right that dickheads like that who aren't willing to give someone a shot or aggressively try to break someone down because they disagree with some points need to be spoken down. They're like Hitler with down syndrome, that's how fucking stupidly dickish they are.

Not sure if you're addressing me or James but I said it wasn't that she focuses on video games, it's that she flat out ignores real issues. She makes videos about real issues and I won't even care about the ME2 thing because that will do too much good. I just don't agree on Bob either. Whatever his intention it just felt like another video to piss people off by him. Yeah some deserve it but I never felt like he respected his fan base. Just what I got out of it in part due to him doing stuff like that a lot

 You know if I made videos, they'd be very cynical and against people, even fans of my stuff? Doesn't mean I don't like them or am trying to bring them down, but when they do stupid shit, it needs to be addressed.

I guess, it's just kind of the way Bob does that annoys me. I'm not sure what it is but Yahtzee, Sterling, and others just pulled it off in ways where Bob didn't. This wasn't the first time one of his videos annoyed me that much.

Is it just that he's condescending? That's understandable. He does try to make himself better than everyone else, whereas someone like Yahtzee talks down to everyone but he's also extremely self loathing and just hates everyone. I like it, but I understand why people wouldn't.

That's probably it. I used to love Bob's videos but ever since his Metroid Other M videos he hasn't been the same

I guess it was THAT bad

Honestly, sorry if I come as a bit agresive, but i'm pretty much tired of the whole feminisim in gaming as fast as the issues with the Xbone and their first policies.

On another note, i'm just going to mention that the Escapist community is like a combination of people that like and hate everything. It's varied to say the least. Sorry if I didn't bring anything informative.

Sorry if you come off as aggressive? There was nothing in that could even remotely be perceived as aggressive. If you're over this issue, that's fine man. Still watch the video though. It's not about feminism for the most part, it's about the acceptance of geekdom into popular culture, and how we as a group that started out being persecuted have turned into persecuters. It's really interesting and well thought out stuff.

I'm with Alex-C25.  I already said what I had to say on this subject.  I truely don't believe gamers hate women.  I think it's an online bullying problem and many of these bullies aren't gamers.  Yeah, women aren't exactly "equal" to men in gaming, but then what is?  Women in games are growing without this crusade and will continue to grow.  Should I complain about the lack of black characters in gaming and the online bullies that feel the need to call me a "nigga" every change they can and demand the geek culture cater to more black people?  Or should the gaming industry cater to more gay people and stop calling them "faggots" and "homos"?  What about Indians?  Where are they in gaming?  It's all political nonsense.  There is nothing under the sun that can cater to everyone.  Forcing people to change just pisses them off more.  You can't rid the world of assholes.  They are everywhere.  The best that can happen is for the assholes to grow up and become better human beings down the road. 

I will state this again, if feminist gamers have a problem, they can do themselves a favor and make their own games.  There is no excuse.  People make their own games all the time.  If the "cause" means that much, then it's worth working towards.  Forget mainstream acceptance.  Most started from the bottom.  If the excuse is you won't start because the mainstream won't accept it, then you only fail yourself. 

 No, not every time. Just like we shouldn't point the finger everytime because context is plays a huge part in determining what is offensive and what isn't. I probably make more sexist jokes per day than some people do in their lifetime, but those are jokes said around people I know who know I don't mean what I say. If I said those jokes to someone I've never met, then there'd be a problem. 

 Feminists should absolutely make games, and some already do. Have you heard of a game called Mainichi? It's a free game created by an ex-gaming journalist woman who also happens to be a feminist, although it's not really about feminism. You play as a transgender black woman, and you make choices and see how your day pans out, dealing with everything from the mundane things like whether to brush your teeth and risk being late, through to how you deal with being bullied and whatnot. It's a cool game :)

I never heard of that game.  I'll check it out.  Maybe someone should do a review on it. 

Already wrote a little bit about it here. http://plus10damage.com/blog/2013/3/21/nine-free-indie-games-you-should-play-immediately Not much, just a paragraph, because it's a top 9 list lol.

Yeah it takes a while for him to get to the point (halfway) but i understand he just wanted to paint a picture, and it's Big (I couldn't resist). Fandom seems to only be exclusionary online, i suspect the most of the people doing it are haven't the balls.

Except in the competetive fighting scenem i've seen it once a few times myself when we emulate the hate visited on us there's a deep problem or we've just forgotten what we want to be. 

Escapist is alright, I like the content well enough Jimquizition being my fav (don't know where to put the big picture to Zero Punctuation though) the community like... i'd descibe it as an egg timer on it's side being shacken side to side. 

 I'd go: Zero Punctuation, Big Picture, Escape to the Movies, Jimquisition, and then the rest, but that's just me.

 Yeah it is just online, but online is where most geeks spend their time. It's a big part of our subculture that should not be ignored.