Surprised not to see...

[Dillon Levenque]

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Qie Niangao wrote:

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[...] I just (as has been mentioned elsewhere) have a very aggressive response to someone saying 'discuss'. Most of us would ask something like, "What do you think about this?". Also, the OP is someone I don't care for (I think that started when he invoked Niemoller* in a thread on the Feed [...]

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Isn't it a universal Internet meme that, at this late date, Niemoller can only be invoked ironically?

 

It didn't seem so in the context given the comments that followed at the time, but you could be right. Irony certainly would have been appropriate.

There have been ample opportunities in this thread for the OP to explain only irony was intended by the 'discuss'.  A non-ironic intent would be consistent with previous commentary (in my personal opinion).

[Canoro Philipp]

hi Sy,

I'll discuss and offer my perspective.

i do believe that there is sexism supported by an industry that have a large social impact, and that is telling their receptors, who usually believe that a group professionals who are regulated by internal rules of ethics coming from being aware of the amplitude of the consequences, would be right in their point of view. if the major players of this industry support sexism, or do nothing to diminish it, they are in part responsible for the development of misogony in the mind of the individual, by supporting it or by not condemning it, meaning that they don't dissaprove it. if a higher authority don't dissaprove it, than the can have a backup for their misogony.

the gaming industry regularly don't define completely a person's perspective of life, but they must take responsability as contributors to help the development of a harmful thought, and they must have internal guidelines to minimize mysogony, taking into acount their social impact.

[LlazarusLlong]

I had my say some time ago about sexism in gaming (girls shouldn't wear pink fluffy headsets if they want to be taken seriously) but when I discovered that authoress Jennifer Egan, the self-publicist instigator of the "Everyday Sexism" movement, was an alumna of my old college I almost returned my degree and asked for my money back.

Almost, because my MA only cost two guineas - at a time when they didn't allow women to study there.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

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Ceka Cianci wrote:

Wow,That's a name i haven't heard in a long time..

Scylla.

I think the last time i seen her was at the first hippystock hehehe

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Yeah, well . . . if you say my name three times, I magically appear in a cloud of acrid and sulpherous smoke. Or potpourri. Something vaguely nauseating, anyway.

I very much doubt (pace Perrie) that Sy was baiting me here, although he might possibly have expected a response from that doppleganger chick who has occasionally posted here in the last year or so, pretending to be a Canadian feminist, but actually managing to be little more than a pale and insipid imitation of me (am I right? Am I right???)

But his post is an interesting, if deliberately inflammatory one, and as I happened to run across it while quietly forum stalking, it's worth a quick response. ("Quick"? Heh. Who am I kidding?)

Unsurprisingly (to the few of you still here who know me), I like Anita Sarkheesian. She's smart, she's articulate, and she has been astonishingly resilient in the face of a horrifying firestorm of threats and criticism. I'm not a gamer, so I can't comment very directly from personal knowledge on her main message, but the vile and violent response to her work from a sizable and very vocal element in the gaming world -- and to women in gaming generally, through Gamergate -- suggests that she's on to something. In other words, the response of those who have threatened and villified her and other feminist critics of gaming culture pretty much provide all the needed proof that that culture does have a problem.

There's not much, I think, that's really new or radically brilliant in what Sarkheesian has said. But she's a very effective gadfly, and, whatever else one might think of her, she's got people talking about misogyny in gaming. And that can only be a good thing.

I'm not sure how relevant Gamergate, or Sarkheesian, are to Second Life. I suspect not much, generally, because this is a world where the content is, of course, user generated. But for that very reason, I find the slightly smug assertions I have occasionally heard that there is no misogyny in Second Life rather amusing. There is a great deal of misogyny here, but it tends to be a direct reflection of RL attitudes, rather than hard-coded into the platform (as it is in GTA, for instance). Given that tech types are such a large percentage of the residents here, I would be interested to know how much of the sexism that one does run across is perpetuated by the "brogrammer" culture (remember that computer science is one of the very few academic disciplines that has seen an actual drop in the percentage of female students over the past few decades, although there has been a slight recent rebound, I think.)

As for Sy's other point about the forum . . . well, I'll confess to finding this place a bit boring these days. I'm not sure if that is because of moderation or not. Certainly, there was a time when just about thread I posted was being pulled by incredibly overzealous moderators, but that lasted only a shortish time, and it's not really why I stopped posting here, nor am I sure that it is why the community here has changed.

Because, that's what's happened. It was never really about individual posters here: it was always about community, and the larger social dynamics. And on the old GD forum, and in the earlier days of these forums, it was an exciting place, and a really vibrant community. But it was also frequently extremely toxic, and not always very accepting of newcomers.

The community here now seems, from what i've seen of it, to be a nice and very well-functioning one. That's a good thing, surely? And if I find it a little boring, that's surely a reflection upon me, rather than upon the group that set the tone here now.

If the people now here like it the way it is -- and they must, because they have made it this way -- then who am I, or anyone else to tell them that they are wrong, and should change it?

Right. Time to step back into my sulphurous cloud. :-)

(PS. Maybe Sy thought that I actually *was* Anita Sarkheesian? Cuz she's a Canadian feminist too, after all. Ok, half-Canadian. And ten years younger than me. And waaaaaaaay more effective. But still . . .)

 

[LlazarusLlong]

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Scylla Rhiadra wrote

 Maybe Sy thought that I actually *was* Anita Sarkheesian?

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I doubt that Sy confused you with another self-serving sufferer of victim syndrome, if only because Sarkheesian has no sense of humour.

Even if your own was principally demonstrated by using a male alt.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

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LlazarusLlong wrote:

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Scylla Rhiadra wrote

 Maybe Sy thought that I actually *was* Anita Sarkheesian?

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I doubt that Sy confused you with another self-serving sufferer of victim syndrome, if only because Sarkheesian has no sense of humour.

Even if your own was principally demonstrated by using a male alt.

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Yes, Pep was a creation of pure comic genius, even if I do say so myself. ;-)

I'm curious about your accusation(s) of being self-serving. You mean, as opposed to the utterly selfless game company CEOs and designers who have devoted their lives to doing Good Works gratis for the benefit of gamers everywhere?

Sarkheesian is a blogger, media journalist, and polemicist. And like anyone who works in those fields, she wants to be read, discussed, and paid attention to. So, yes, of course she's self-serving, if by that you mean that she is probably happy to see her public profile raised, and her ideas discussed broadly and publicly.

If by "self-serving," you mean that she's raking in millions . . . I very much doubt it. And it would take a very special kind of cynicism, of a type with which I will not accuse you, to imagine that she deliberately provoked vile and often frightening responses from the more misogynist elements of the gaming community merely to capitalize on them. Let's not forget, too, that Sarkheesian's fame -- or notoriety -- is almost certainly solely the result of those attacks. If sexist gamers see her as a dangerous monster, she is one of their own making. And in this particular case, I'm definitely rooting for Frankenstein's creation.

Have I been self-serving? Well, sure. In the same way as Sarkheesian, but with very much more modest goals.

As for "victim syndrome," that's BS. I wouldn't be a feminist if I thought women were merely victims. 

(I feel I should end with a joke here, to undercut your claims that I can only be funny posing as a male, but . . . well, you know. Feminists != humour. Right?)

[Dillon Levenque]

/me waves. Nice opener ;-). Regarding humor (or humour, if you must) the old guy must have missed the 'Colbert Report' episode.

[LlazarusLlong]

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Scylla Rhiadra wrote:

 

 If sexist gamers see her as a dangerous monster, she is one of her own making.

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FIFY!

[LlazarusLlong]

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Scylla Rhiadra wrote:

 Feminists != humour. Right?)

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If you say so.

Viewed slightly differently, I did once win a bottle of champagne from The Sunday Times because they claimed that there were no jokes about lesbians or economists, so I offered them enough that they ran them in their Business Section for a couple of weeks.

In the third week they printed a letter pointing out that the competition was flawed, and should have been based on the premise that there were no good jokes . . .

(I used an alt for the latter letter.)

[LlazarusLlong]

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Scylla Rhiadra wrote:

 

 And it would take a very special kind of cynicism to imagine that she deliberately provoked vile and often frightening responses from the more misogynist elements of the gaming community merely to capitalize on them.

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Naive much?

Both yourself and her.

And anybody reading who might agree with you

(I edited out the phrase in your post that made neither grammatical nor logical sense.)