"Mens Rights Activists" Impersonate Domestic Violence Organization online. Hilarity ensues.

This is another aspect of cultural criticism that people get wrong, though to get it wrong in the face of Sarkeesian's long and detailed explanations takes some bone-headedness and willful ignorance.

Sarkeesian isn't interpreting this one game. The idiot's video keeps droning on about how this scene doesn't accurately represent the whole of the game and how the game doesn't turn people into sexists or prostitute killers and so bloody on, all of which are strawmen -- and strawmen which Sarkeesian explicitly names and dismisses to avoid that misunderstanding, by the way. Cultural criticism is about understanding deeper mechanisms of culture by looking at specific examples.

So please try to wrap your head around what I'm about to say, because I know it's difficult to understand when you're trapped in the defensive position of a person facing some imagined attack, which isn't what the debate that Sarkessian wants to engage in is about at all, but which is the figuration in which others insist on responding to her. They are responding to someone they believe wants to fix their games, and that is SO not what she wants.

There is no simple answer to "What's the fix?", and there is no simple fix, nor are we looking for one. If there were a simple fix to the game within the given engine and genre and conventions and technologies, Sarkessian would be wrong. Her criticism would then only apply to one minor scene in one among a hundred games; it would tell us next to nothing about games as culture. She is right only because you can't simply fix the cultural system she's describing by changing one element a little bit.

I have two comparisons for you. Take any English word. Look at its sound. How does its denotative meaning change if you manipulate its sound to rise, fall, wobble, or stay straight? Answer: Not at all. If it were a Chinese word, that would produce four different words, each of which might have a different or no meaning, but not the same as the other words. This is because English isn't a tonal language, and Chinese is. And learning that about both systems of meanings is an interesting fact, and helps us understand both languages.

Now here's what you can't do. You can't ask "What's the fix?" You can't name the one simple "fix" that will give one given English word tonal phonetics. If you could, that would mean that English is a tonal language after all. But you can't, because it isn't. Which is why I didn't even have to name the word; you can do it with any word in the English language, and my description is no more about any one given word, nor does it tell you everything about that one given word's meaning, than Sarkeesian's description is about Hitman specifically, or as a whole.

But things do change, and can be changed, if you're creative enough. People in the 18th century criticised novels for making readers passive. I love novels, but you know what? Those critics weren't wrong. Novels do lock you in into one version of a dialogue, where your focal character and his opposite numbers have no true agency except the one you're presented with. But two things happen. One, people excel in creating deeply immersive explorations of agency in novels anyway -- but they don't do so by one simple fix, but by creating whole new systems of art and meaning. And the second thing that happens is gaming. We now do have an art form that does not make its recipients passive, or at least it doesn't have to. But neither Dickens nor gaming come about by asking for the one simple fix to change one perceived fault in a culture, by tweaking one word in a paragraph somewhere that will make it all better.

You actually have to create stuff, wholecloth, that's about what you want art to be about. And there are games that explore female agency just as Dickens can explore freedom of choice and change through one set sequence of words that does not change and that the reader does not get to choose. Sarkeesian names several examples and explains why she thinks they accomplish this. Have you seen her videos and considered her examples? Do you agree or disagree with what she says about them?

^Wow.

I gave alternatives for action.
FBI.
Self defense.
You may not like those for whatever reason, but they are answers.
They aren't nothing.

You can't know that.

Nope.
The clips I've seen made them look like boring intellectual masturbation.
Sitting through the whole thing seemed like a loathsome prospect.
I'm willing to entertain the notion I may have been wrong.
I'll grit my teeth through them tomorrow.

See, I was going to tell you the same thing. You insisted no one gave you answers, but I did. So I repeated them again.

You can't know that.[/quote]
Neither could she, but considering the threats against her, and the allowance of firearms in the building without question or concern, would you have taken the chance?

Neither could she, but considering the threats against her, and the allowance of firearms in the building without question or concern, would you have taken the chance?[/quote]

I wouldn't have gone to fucking Utah period.

Right. So when you assumed that cheap YouTube videos calling her a liar and worse informed you about her argument, which you claimed to be informed about from page 1, you were basically in the same position as someone who calls games obscene and destructive because Lieberman informed them about games, or who wants to keep comics away from children because Wertham informed them about comics?

This is not a rhetorical question: Why didn't it occur to you earlier that this was a problem?

So measuring both of you by your actions as well as your words,

Diacanu's active interest in discussing games <<<<< Sarkeesian's active interest in discussing games

More videos are out there which contain snippets of previous lectures and interviews she's done, you only need look for them.

What's idiotic is your clear bias.

Have you watched anything she's done? Christ, she says it plain as day - it's her entire thesis for why any of this alleged sexism in video games is a problem.

Probably because they investigated and found that there was no serious threat. The thing she ended up cancelling over was the state law preventing the university from banning legal carry of concealed firearms into the venue.

As for the doxxing, it's been happening to both sides, and it seems it been being done by a third party.

Latest news:

Really, at its heart, this is the issue gamers have with people like Sarkeesian, which is interference in creativity in the game development process. game developers should be free to pursue whatever they think will make a fun game to play, not what SJWs think is acceptable.

The investigation is still ongoing. It hasn't stopped because the threats haven't stopped. Seriously, guys, what is the deal? It's almost like slut shaming, but over video games. I mean, look what happened to Felicia Day just a few days ago. This shit is still going on.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...g-her-address-and-personal-email-9816140.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...ogynist-felicia-day-zoe-quinn-brianna-wu.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/gamergate-death-threats-2014-10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...ale-gamers-why-havent-men-in-tech-spoken-out/
http://www.inquisitr.com/1548436/ga...bt-and-non-white-supporters-are-under-attack/
http://www.newsweek.com/gamergate-about-media-ethics-or-harassing-women-harassment-data-show-279736
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/23/...ws-why-good-gamergate-is-still-hurting-people
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/138165-Video-Game-Sophistry-Harassed-by-GamerGate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto...rd_to_prosecute_the_people_targeting_zoe.html

Here's a blog, and while I'm not a fan of blogs in general, this one has everything sourced, and since it addresses many issues all at once, I'll just link to it and let you read:
http://srhongamergate.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/collection-of-gamergate-misconceptions-lies/

Also, Chris Kluwe had something to say about it: https://twitter.com/ChrisWarcraft/status/525094762500456448

And Newsweek weighs in: http://www.newsweek.com/gamergate-about-media-ethics-or-harassing-women-harassment-data-show-279736

So, where's the "both sides" part of the equation? When I searched for Gamergate men being doxxed, I found nothing but Adam Baldwin's assertions, Breitbart articles, and independent blogs with no sources. Perhaps you can help, please.

Aw, you're even using acronyms like the big boys. Social Justice Warriors? Yeah, it's about ethics in gaming journalism.

Yeah, that's a good point -- the participatory nature of games does make them different. Does a book in which rape is a theme cause the reader to benefit by experiencing or enacting the rape?

And this post wins the thread, and also gets us roughly back to the OP. Mindfulness should include not violently reacting to critics. That is not the same thing as calling for censorship of the games.

Yes, they should. Who has said otherwise? Basement dwelling nerds do not have the right to stalk and threaten somebody who criticizes that content.

How do Sarkeesian's videos interfere in game development, or take away producers' freedom to create the games they want to make?

Honestly, it's as if your brains give out whe you treat this subject. I'll skip pointing out all the obvious stupidity and just fasten on to the main point: We're still missing the source. Where's the video from, and where can we see the whole thing in context?

And for or against what am I biased?

Yes. Have you?

You'd think that such a claim would be followed up by a source in which she says what you say she says. But no, we get two more videos making the claim, with no sources or evidence given.

Neither could she, but considering the threats against her, and the allowance of firearms in the building without question or concern, would you have taken the chance?[/quote]

This I do agree with. Threats of shooting, for any reason, should be a reason for more security at an event.

You should never hit a woman ever.

Why is it okay for womento hit men though?

I read this through last night and seem to remember that being an apparent assumption.

Has Anita Sarkeesian explicitly suggested that any games be banned or censored, or has she merely suggested that players and developers might be a bit more mindful about the sometimes blatantly sexist content in the games they play/create?

Dicky, I don't think anyone here is arguing for censorship.

John, lots of the videos I've seen have claimed virtually all of the doxxing, which has happened on both sides, has come from third parties. I'm not sure how we can blame one side for something totally different people have done.

That's kind of like me saying I saw Tererun speeding after a Land Rover with Texas plates so I am going to give you, John, a ticket for his speeding.

What mburtonk said. The term Barry Malzberg used was "self-censorship." Maybe "stop and think before you put the words on the page" might have been a more PC way of putting it, but that's what he meant. It's one of several reasons I do multiple drafts before I'm satisfied.

Your mischaracterization of DitC says that, as precise as I tried to be, you still didn't entirely get it.

The same could be said about you and horror films.

First, I've had teacher recommend books for being reprehensible and degenerate. Being critical of something doesn't necessarily imply a call for it's prohibition.

Second, King didn't pull "Rage" from the shelves in reaction to anyone's complaints about the book, but because he had personally become increasingly concerned that the work might indeed influence the behavior of unstable individuals, particularly troubled youths who might identify with the main character a tad too much. "The Carneal incident (Heath High School shooting) was enough for me. I asked my publisher to take the damned thing out of print. They concurred."

I think he was wrong for doing it.

If I'm "militant", about anything, it's anti-censorship.
I really don't like it.
Even bleeps on TV irk me.
Even when you self-censor, you're doing it based on some external force, and that force is literally controlling your mind.
That doesn't sit well with me.
When I mentally edit, I have to be damned sure it's for artistic and not political reasons.