The Nerdwriter’s video is primarily about the infamous ShirtGate incident, but the same analysis applies to so many people who smugly post familiar rhetoric regarding the depictions of female characters, declaring themselves right and others wrong often based off nothing more than that declaration.
Innuendo Studios (Ian Danskin) also did an in depth video series about those who are angry at the existence of criticism, specifically about the harassment that Anita Sarkeesian has endured since Tropes vs Women in Video Games took off. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the whole series.
Please feel free to direct Angry Jacks to any of our posts or tags (eg agency, double standards, rhetoric, etc) and to seek help and resources if you’re being harassed. These are all resources we encourage people to share if you find someone posting, tweeting, etc in a misguided manner.
There’s also an interesting TED Talk by James Flynn on one of the reasons you may have trouble talking to people from particular backgrounds. But for now I want to talk about dealing with those who are less confused, less angry and are more smug.
Sadly, plenty of people either just don’t care what’s right and are more interested in maintaining dominance by default than they are about anything that’s ever going to be said. These people are largely the ones who try to seek out and weaponise Angry Jacks, and the ones who manufacture misinformation for their “cause”.
Attempting to engage in meaningful conversation with them, especially in their communities rarely does anything but make them feel that they’ve expanded their platform and hence gotten more “wins”. This is why you often see people like this desperately craving “debates” (winner to be decided by them or their friends, based off what they wanted to be true from the start).
So, if you’ve tagged us in to a conversation and hoped we’d join in – please understand that we haven’t got anything to say that wouldn’t be wasted on that audience. Everything we could say to them has been said, usually many times. This is the Internet after all.
If anything, they will simply interpret a specific response from us as an opportunity to try to hijack our platform and boost their audience, or simply assert that they’re our nemesis and thus instantly important.
Ultimately, that’s what’s feeding their habit – the search for bigger audiences, bigger wins and more validation. If they can’t get that, they take joy in knowing they’re wasting time that could be spent working on problems in a more general, helpful sense (especially if they have nothing else to do).
They won’t be getting a direct answer from us.Though we’re going to continue building commentary, resources and information on all the general issues around today and new ones as they arise and to call out key figures who actually already have high profiles and big influence.
We’re also going to continue to support others who do the same and hope that eventually social media platforms like Tumblr, Twitter, etc will start taking harassment seriously.
The important thing to understand about these people though is, that not only can’t they be persuaded (without having a deep personal change of their own), but they can’t advance or provide anything useful either.
By declaring victory for simply existing and refusing to consider any hypothetical or viewpoint other than their own, they’re inherently limiting their thinking, their contributions and themselves. By not even taking the time to understand before responding, they’re creating a no benefit scenario:
- Nobody can create tools for cultural critique (and rhetoric in response to the critique) if their culture(s) and parts thereof are beyond critique. They also certainly can’t make wonderful creative entries for contests.
- Nobody will come ask for your input to help with costume design if your feedback is unquestioning support of what they did before (or a torrent of abuse over any changes, no matter how minor)
- Nobody can expand their market share and try to make their product more accessible to more people by catering only to a small part of their existing market.
- Nobody can come to you for advice on how to better understand something, or incorporate it into your fiction or look for inspiration if you just support whatever, whenever or just rant about how you hate either a particular person or SJW boogieman in general.
On top of all this, they are incredibly prone to giving their money away to people who either just don’t deliver, or discover there was never anything to deliver. They also tend to find themselves limited to a very small range of supporters and options in terms of projects.
This is what happens when you choose harassment as your primary means of communication and dive deep into the No True Scotsman Fallacy.
So, while we do encourage you to call out people you see spreading harmful misinformation, if their response to that is to smugly reply with claims of victory and nonsense – remember what they’re seeking is equal parts maintaining the status quo and personal validation.
They’re also seeking to antagonize others simply because without some sort of scandal (or more commonly a faux scandal based on misinformation) to expand their audience, their default status is well…
Actually that’s not fair, Abraham Simpson III is far too good a person to be in that crowd. Sorry about that, Abe.
– wincenworks
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Gamer culture has pushed the argument about women’s roles so far to one side that most of them honestly believe the status quo of default objectification and women-as-rewards is the “neutral,” “nonpolitical” starting position.
What we’re reminded of every time someone defends a ridiculous outfit. Doesn’t matter what excuse they bring – it’s always one that supports this notion that it’s all how it should be.
And if it doesn’t look like how it should be, there must be a special reason that people just don’t understand (frequently this reason is so special it cannot be explained, only experienced!)
– wincenworks
And don’t forget: if we don’t like how it’s ‘supposed’ to be, then it should be totally up to us to create more diverse games!
~Ozzie
Bringing this back since we’re still getting people insisting that the only way anyone could possibly see any problem with the eye gouging double standards in video games is if they don’t play/understand/have 100% achievements in the games.
It can’t possibly be that there’s some problems that have been brushed off with excuses or attempts to game criticism for literally decades… that’d mean that we live in an imperfect society!
– wincenworks
Gamer culture has pushed the argument about women’s roles so far to one side that most of them honestly believe the status quo of default objectification and women-as-rewards is the “neutral,” “nonpolitical” starting position.
What we’re reminded of every time someone defends a ridiculous outfit. Doesn’t matter what excuse they bring – it’s always one that supports this notion that it’s all how it should be.
And if it doesn’t look like how it should be, there must be a special reason that people just don’t understand (frequently this reason is so special it cannot be explained, only experienced!)
– wincenworks
And don’t forget: if we don’t like how it’s ‘supposed’ to be, then it should be totally up to us to create more diverse games!
~Ozzie
Bringing this back since we’re still getting people insisting that the only way anyone could possibly see any problem with the eye gouging double standards in video games is if they don’t play/understand/have 100% achievements in the games.
It can’t possibly be that there’s some problems that have been brushed off with excuses or attempts to game criticism for literally decades… that’d mean that we live in an imperfect society!
– wincenworks
6 Ridiculous Excuses Game Designers Gave For Sexist Costumes
6 Ridiculous Excuses Game Designers Gave For Sexist Costumes
Video games feature more scantily-clad women than a ladies’ gym changing room, and worse excuses than a cameraman hiding there in the corner.
A similar piece to another Cracked list we shared before. If lists some of the characters we featured before on the blog, like Quiet, Cortana or Ivy.
~Ozzie
There is one important criticism I want to address with this article, specifically the handling of spot #1. Bayonetta. That is, even if you find an example where you think it’s better or avoids the hazards of the others – do not take it upon yourself to give it an official “not sexist” stamp. Seriously.
While it’s true that Bayonetta is a rarity in that she gets a role and attitude normally reserved for male characters, there’s still plenty of problems with her character concept and the principles behind the design. That and it’s not a coincidence that it was the female character who was to be defined by being “sexy” instead of “cool”.
Their confession that they wanted her to be sexy doesn’t make their explanation that somehow she doesn’t wear clothes because she can make clothes out of hair except when she’s launching her most powerful attacks (ie the time when you really don’t want to be exposed).
There’s always a temptation to believe that things we enjoy and that seem to be flawless and that because we know a thing means that we can declare it to be “not problematic” because we know something others don’t – but that’s really just another line of bullshit.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that Dante’s “cool” factor comes from him being the son of the greatest hero in history, and so badass he can take down monsters of unimaginable power. Hence the confidence boost and the willingness to focus on style over efficiency.
With Bayonetta the only reason for her being defined by sexiness… is they wanted to cram more “sex appeal” (targeting cishet men as always) into it while also wanted to be taken seriously as a Devil May Cry type action game because as long as we say it’s sexy, it can’t be sexist right? Glossing over her exposure is not one of the things that makes moves like this awesome:
Whether you like the game or not, that’s all kinds of bullshit and the games don’t deserve a free pass because because the creator admits the blatantly obvious (while still adding layers of bullshit so as to claim “creativity”).
– wincenworks
6 Ridiculous Excuses Game Designers Gave For Sexist Costumes
6 Ridiculous Excuses Game Designers Gave For Sexist Costumes
Video games feature more scantily-clad women than a ladies’ gym changing room, and worse excuses than a cameraman hiding there in the corner.
A similar piece to another Cracked list we shared before. If lists some of the characters we featured before on the blog, like Quiet, Cortana or Ivy.
~Ozzie
There is one important criticism I want to address with this article, specifically the handling of spot #1. Bayonetta. That is, even if you find an example where you think it’s better or avoids the hazards of the others – do not take it upon yourself to give it an official “not sexist” stamp. Seriously.
While it’s true that Bayonetta is a rarity in that she gets a role and attitude normally reserved for male characters, there’s still plenty of problems with her character concept and the principles behind the design. That and it’s not a coincidence that it was the female character who was to be defined by being “sexy” instead of “cool”.
Their confession that they wanted her to be sexy doesn’t make their explanation that somehow she doesn’t wear clothes because she can make clothes out of hair except when she’s launching her most powerful attacks (ie the time when you really don’t want to be exposed).
There’s always a temptation to believe that things we enjoy and that seem to be flawless and that because we know a thing means that we can declare it to be “not problematic” because we know something others don’t – but that’s really just another line of bullshit.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that Dante’s “cool” factor comes from him being the son of the greatest hero in history, and so badass he can take down monsters of unimaginable power. Hence the confidence boost and the willingness to focus on style over efficiency.
With Bayonetta the only reason for her being defined by sexiness… is they wanted to cram more “sex appeal” (targeting cishet men as always) into it while also wanted to be taken seriously as a Devil May Cry type action game because as long as we say it’s sexy, it can’t be sexist right? Glossing over her exposure is not one of the things that makes moves like this awesome:
Whether you like the game or not, that’s all kinds of bullshit and the games don’t deserve a free pass because because the creator admits the blatantly obvious (while still adding layers of bullshit so as to claim “creativity”).
– wincenworks
