Superheroes & representation (split from questions thread)

[useless]

Look man, you asked for a video about her Hitman comments. I gave you that video since you were incapable of taking 10 seconds of your time to look for it yourself, presumably because you knew it would prove you wrong.

The footage of the game is shown and Anita's comments are heard. She clearly says the game encourages you violate and belittle the women on screen when you are clearly punished for doing anything to the women on screen. You then proceeded to rant about her donations and how much money she gets for some reason. I never mentioned her money. She is a con-artist and a fraud because she lies and manipulates games and people's opinions just to express her own, false view.

A confidence trick (synonyms include confidence scheme, scam and stratagem) is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, in the classical sense of trust. A confidence artist (or con artist) is an individual, operating alone or in concert with others, who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté, or greed.

Sarkeesian has gained idiots' respect with these videos and played off them by being repeatedly and deliberately dishonest. She is a confidence trickster.

Fraud is a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain

Sarkeesian is using false information to spread her false messages around and using it as leverage to get more money through funding websites. She is a fraudster.

Please stop stroking one out over this. You've deconstructed nothing, save your own argument by blatently ignoring the evidence placed in front of you.

I'm pretty sure that's slander, something that unlike your claims, would definitely go to court and she'd win. I actually hope she does go onto sue some of those slandering her.

 

[Kyriakos]

[...]

That's really not what I said. What I'm saying is that Salty Mud appears to regard the existence of one out of fifty protagonists who isn't a straight white male as equivalent to the the other forty-nine who are. That the fact straight white men occasionally encounters stories which ask him to identify with somebody who is not straight, white and male with the fact that people who are not S/W/M are occasionally given the opportunity to identify with somebody who is not a S/W/M. That the fact he plays a game in which he's a woman makes up for the fact that there are another dozen games in which the players takes the role of a burly white dude. Maybe it's privilege, maybe it's just crippling lack of imagination, my point is only that it's a ridiculously biased viewpoint to the point where it borders on self-parody.

Comix (or other entertainment, or even any art) are not meant by default, or by and large, to be representative, nor to allow as many readers/watchers/other to 'identify' with the characters. That is a very one-sided view of any creative phenomenon.
Personally in my writing i never try to second-guess the reader, nor do i try to make someone identify. That would be a suicidal tactic, and in my view always cheapens the work. True, my own art is on the bleaker side of things, but given it is often printed i have to suppose it doesn't matter if one tries to present characters anyone can identify with.

 

[salty mud]

I'm pretty sure that's slander, something that unlike your claims, would definitely go to court and she'd win. I actually hope she does go onto sue some of those slandering her.

a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report: a slander against his good name.

Please point out what is slanderous, i.e. malicious, false and defamatory about what I said.

 

[brennan]

Oh no, im sure it's just a coincidence that MRA's have latched onto Sarkeesian as a hate figure. Totally.

It's not a coincidence that a prominent feminist has come in for criticism from people who are opposed to central tenets of feminist dogma, no.

Also if you could post a link to that video where she mentions/talks about hitman i'd appreciate it. I haven't watched her stuff for some time.

About 21 minutes in.

It's more like they created those characters to be white, because at the time of creation, most heroes in popular media in the U.S. were white, and the creative powers that be likely expected white superheroes in the writers' stories, and not anyone of colour.

The general public was the main reason, not the skin colour of the authors. The social forces in the country dictated what sort of things people were writing about.

That's just an assumption. One I find it incredibly easy to reject in favour of a simpler line of reasoning that does not involve assumptions of ulterior motives: that most major superheroes are white guys because they were created by white guys.

And what warpus says above is certainly true: It's possible the writers actually went so far as to look up the demographics and try presenting an accurate cross-section of the country with their characters ... and were squelched by their editor or publisher. In which case, they'd be the source of the bad/lazy writing.

...and maybe it was martians. I see no point in discussing pure speculation, which is all this is.

Anyway ... is your accusation, then, that TF wants comic authors to go back in time and suddenly make their heroes more diverse? Or is maybe a little bit of the discussion, at least for one of you, about the present?

There's a conflation going on here. That being pragmatic about the reason stables of white, male superheroes were created white and male in decades past and then expressing a distaste for revisionism is inherently racist. It isn't.

If people want more ethinic/religious/sexual/other minority characters then I think it perfectly reasonable to suggest that they need to create new ones rather than wreck their fans' sense of verisimilitude in favour of political correctness. I also think it is poor form of people who take a different view to throw accusations of racism firstly in retrospect at people like Stan Lee across several decades and secondly at anyone who dares contradict them in the present.

And that I can easily believe. It also doesn't contradict the reactions to her being disproportionate, or the depiction of her being quite distorted.

Disproportionate reactions?!?!? On the Internet?!?!?!?!?

It is a common tactic of feminists to bleat that they are being disproportionately targeted with threats (by elements of the Patriarchy). Such claims should not be credible to anyone who has spent significant time online - who should be aware that everyone gets abuse regardless of their gender or the issues they cover.

When people writing for a magazine get death threats from hordes of teenage girls for dissing One Direction then people like Anita Sarkeesian should not be allowed to get away with saying that only women and particularly feminists get such abuse, such claims are not remotely credible.

I would highlight the recent case in the UK where the woman campaigning for Jane Austen's picture on the £5 note (a cause I would endorse incidentally) claimed that elements of the patriarchy - men with an agenda to silence women - were harassing her online because they though women should not have a public voice.

Two people went to jail. Neither was an agent of the patriarchy, neither gave a damn about anything other than trolling people. One of them was a woman. (And both apparently had underlying problems of social ineptitude).

Re sexism in computer games... Hm, well in the old days (eg early 90s) games had to be hugely PC. For example an early 1990 game was titled "Crime Does not Pay", and you controlled a mafia family there. They even had to form the title in a way which would protect them from accusations they are promoting crime

Ever play Syndicate? In which you took over the world via extortion, murder and mass brain washing (fun times back in 1993).

Again, she never conned anyone, she was open about her not being a "gamer"

Sarkeesian stated in the first video she made on 'sexism in gaming' that she was a gamer.

 

[useless]

I think if she was a genuine gamer I and many others would have far more time for her criticisms. I think she has her own idealogy (radical feminism) and instead of examining the video game industry rationally; she has already decided what the problem is and has gone out of her way to cherrypick the evidence to prove that. As others have stated in the thread, this is confirmation bias.

Noticing a game portrays women, LGBT people, people of colour, people of religion and atheists isn't "Cherrypicking".

You're using many legal terms. I've not once accused her of commiting a crime. Her only offense is douschbaggery and that is exploiting the good will of donators to massively overfund a project which she already admits only required $6k. She has earned $152k in an immoral fashion.

Fraud IS a legal term. Accusing her of fraud is accusing someone of a crime. Again, I will repeat this Ad Nausea; NO ONE FORCED THE DONATORS TO DONATE. Morals have nothing to do with whether a Kick-Starter is over or under funded.

She has released 5 episodes, with a duration between 20-30 minutes a piece. She has taken two years to do this. If I had donated I would be furious. That is insulting.

But you aren't a donator, so why the hell would you even care? How do you know she hasn't got a raft of videos to follow? It's her right to dictate how fast or how slow she produces the videos and unless you have evidence of her saying she will no longer make videos, your point is moot. Deal with it.

I cannot condone the violent threats she recieved but I think that is part of being a public presence.

Oh no, you just believe she should have her "Comeuppance". Whatever that means.

She doesn't even have the interests of games at heart. She doesn't even like them. She is a threat.

She is only out to promote herself. She has no genuine interests in video games, she just wants to get onto the after dinner talks circuit (or video game equalivent and make big $$$$

Again it doesn't matter if she's a gamer or not. Has no inkling on it, I don't need to a be a goddamn film director to point out the racist ideology espoused in a film such as The Eternal Jew.

Your last comment is pure conjecture. If her ideology, as you said before, is "radical feminism" then why is it of any surprise to you that she... i don't know, focused on how women are portrayed in games? You just contradicted yourself.

And so what if she made or makes money? Critics routinely make large amounts of money.

 

[Kyriakos]

Ever play Syndicate? In which you took over the world via extortion, murder and mass brain washing (fun times back in 1993).

Sarkeesian stated in the first video she made on 'sexism in gaming' that she was a gamer.

Syndicate was a huge hit back then. I didn't play it (i was mostly into strategy or adventures for the Amiga), but it came later than the early/experimental stuff which placed you in a criminal or shadowy role

 

[useless]

a malicious, false, and defamatory statement or report: a slander against his good name.

Please point out what is slanderous, i.e. malicious, false and defamatory about what I said.

The claim that she is a con-artist and a fraud. Both are malicious, false and defamatory.

 

[Traitorfish]

That's just an assumption. One I find it incredibly easy to reject in favour of a simpler line of reasoning that does not involve assumptions of ulterior motives: that most major superheroes are white guys because they were created by white guys.

America c.1950 was super racist, and individual behaviour was shaped by the context of this racism. That isn't an assumption so much as a plain fact, and what it assumes isn't an "ulterior motive" but the self-concious cultural norms of the era.

I mean, I don't what grudge you have against white guys, cannot fathom why you must despise them so absolutely and thoroughly, that you believe them intrinsically incapable of writing characters who are not also white men, or at the very least why they are incapable of hiring somebody who is not so impaired. Me, I'm not an anti-white, anti-male bigot like you, so it makes more sense to consider the role that cultural norms might have played, rather than to just damn all white men in some insane Marxist crusade against freedom.

 

[salty mud]

The claim that she is a con-artist and a fraud. Both are malicious, false and defamatory.

Are you conveniently ignoring things you don't like to see again?

A confidence trick (synonyms include confidence scheme, scam and stratagem) is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, in the classical sense of trust. A confidence artist (or con artist) is an individual, operating alone or in concert with others, who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté, or greed.

Sarkeesian has gained idiots' respect with these videos and played off them by being repeatedly and deliberately dishonest. She is a confidence trickster.

Fraud is a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain

Sarkeesian is using false information to spread her false messages around and using it as leverage to get more money through funding websites. She is a fraudster.

 

[useless]

A confidence trick (synonyms include confidence scheme, scam and stratagem) is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their confidence, in the classical sense of trust. A confidence artist (or con artist) is an individual, operating alone or in concert with others, who exploits characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté, or greed.

Again, the onus is on the donator. She wasn't dishonest, she said that she wasn't a gamer.

Sarkeesian has gained idiots' respect with these videos and played off them by being repeatedly and deliberately dishonest. She is a confidence trickster.

If this is what constitutes fraud then i am sure the vast majority of political shows, news media etc would be guilty. Again, she didn't convince or force anyone to buy anything. If they didn't want to donate, they wouldn't donate. How hard is that to understand?

Fraud is a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain

There was no deception. She never claimed to be a gamer.

Sarkeesian is using false information to spread her false messages around and using it as leverage to get more money through funding websites. She is a fraudster

[Citation Needed]

 

[cardgame]

Believe it or not, fraud has colloquial meanings too, useless.

English is amazing, isn't it?

I don't care about the money, except to comment that her productivity from that amount is shockingly low, with quality unchanged from before she received it, which seems a bit irregular.

All that aside, her 'gamer' credentials do matter, because forcing change from the outside is hostile, and she is definitely an outsider.

Spoiler :

TL;DR: the real idea here is that rather than being a gamer and journalist and then noticing tropes in games and then going about this so-called project, she's first and foremost a feminist who is looking into a field where she lacks credentials and pulling what she needs from gaming to support her agenda.

 

[brennan]

It only tells us that the demographic distortions weren't concious, and nobody is actually arguing that they are, or at least not that they haven't been recently. (I agree with Warpus that, in the early period, they were probably quite concious indeed.

They didn't do it consciously but simultaneously they did.

a failure to expand that audience beyond 15-40 white males is a failure both artistically and commercially, thus another valid point for criticism. Even in the postwar period, superhero comics weren't rigidly and without exception for boys- that was the original intention behind Wonderwoman, after all, to offer a superhero which 1940s America could tolerate girls reading- while series like X-Men have always made a point of including female characters with the concious intention of inviting female readers.

They didn't introduce non-white-male characters, but simultaneously they deliberately did.

Thirdly, however much water these arguments hold c.1964, we're living a whole and complete half-century later, and they no longer stand. There's no reason why superheroes can't be more representative than there are, and there's no reason why their audience can't be more diverse.

I believe we are agreed here. The preceeding comments about the past do not contradict such a viewpoint.

Of course nobody is "automatically" opposed to change. It would be rhetorical suicide to say "everything must stay the same forever and ever". It's enough to demand that change occurs at a level where it doesn't matter.

..I agree - and I think that the cause for disagreement here is that people have different ideas about where it doesn't matter. Some people can't stomach Thor suddenly being turned into a black dude and Spidey being a hispanic homosexual (probably not real examples but you get the point). Debate then gets derailed by other people accusing them of racism or whatever, when in actual fact what is happening is almost certainly no more than different gut-reactions to ideologically motivated retconning.

 

[Algeroth]

Her being a gamer or not actually doesn't matter, no matter how much you claim it is. Deal with it.

The strange thing is, it was you who bring up the "gamer" issue as it would matter.

 

[salty mud]

Again, the onus is on the donator. She wasn't dishonest, she said that she wasn't a gamer.

She completely lied about the content of the game. She was dishonest regarding the game. You cannot deny this.

If this is what constitutes fraud then i am sure the vast majority of political shows, news media etc would be guilty. Again, she didn't convince or force anyone to buy anything. If they didn't want to donate, they wouldn't donate. How hard is that to understand?

Using lies and untruths to gain money off people is definitely on the "illegal" side of things. "If they didn't want to donate, they wouldn't donate" well... perhaps if they knew the truth, and not her warped lies, they wouldn't donate. You are essentially saying it's perfectly fine for people to lie their way to whatever they want.

There was no deception. She never claimed to be a gamer.

Making up things about a video game is very certainly deception.

[Citation Needed]

Here we go again with the "please spoonfeed me" attitude. You've been provided with enough but choose to ignore it.

I want you to say, right here and now, that Anita Sarkeesian did not lie about Hitman: Absolution and her comments were completely fair and reasonable. You are already saying this basically but in longer, more convoluted terminology.

 

[brennan]

I mean, I don't what grudge you have against white guys, cannot fathom why you must despise them so absolutely and thoroughly, that you believe them intrinsically incapable of writing characters who are not also white men

Preposterous strawman anyone?

 

[brennan]

Again, the onus is on the donator. She wasn't dishonest, she said that she wasn't a gamer.

Anita Sarkeesian's Kickstarter page.

As a gamer

 

[Traitorfish]

I don't care about the money, except to comment that her productivity from that amount is shockingly low, with quality unchanged from before she received it, which seems a bit irregular.

All that aside, her 'gamer' credentials do matter, because forcing change from the outside is hostile, and she is definitely an outsider.

*snip*

TL;DR: the real idea here is that rather than being a gamer and journalist and then noticing tropes in games and then going about this so-called project, she's first and foremost a feminist who is looking into a field where she lacks credentials and pulling what she needs from gaming to support her agenda.

Yeah, I've got to agree, there are legitimate criticisms to be made of Sarkeesian and her project. I don't know if I agree with everything in the screencap, or at least not that it's a full account, but they aren't unreasonable criticisms. Even if your sympathise with her project, and I'd probably say that I do she has handled it poorly. The problem seems to be that the issue has become a proxy for Tumblr Feminists vs. Reddit Neckbeards, so the actual details become secondary to what the case says about you and your identity.

 

[useless]

She completely lied about the content of the game. She was dishonest regarding the game. You cannot deny this.
...

Making up things about a video game is very certainly deception.

I can and will. See the end for a more detailed answer.

Using lies and untruths to gain money off people is definitely on the "illegal" side of things. "If they didn't want to donate, they wouldn't donate" well... perhaps if they knew the truth, and not her warped lies, they wouldn't donate. You are essentially saying it's perfectly fine for people to lie their way to whatever they want.

Again, the onus is on the donator to do research on what they are donating to. She was clear about her not being a gamer.

Here we go again with the "please spoonfeed me" attitude. You've been provided with enough but choose to ignore it.

You linked a single video and made claims with no evidence to back them up.

I want you to say, right here and now, that Anita Sarkeesian did not lie about Hitman: Absolution and her comments were completely fair and reasonable. You are already saying this basically but in longer, more convoluted terminology.

Just watched the part that brennan mentioned.

My thoughts:

She says that "Players are then invited to explore and exploit these situations during their play through". That doesn't mean she's literally saying that is the intended objective, merely that is it possible and that the fact that you can drag around corpses/bodies may give people thrills.

No where does she literally state "In hitman you kill females and can put their bodies in boxes or drag them around" she says that you CAN.

Earlier Brennan said this:

[It] has been pointed out that it Hitman you are actively discouraged from killing innocent bystanders (which loses you a lotn of points), that there were no 'let's plays' on YouTube that showed such behaviour (because it would be stupid and distasteful) and that most likely the only person to have played it this way was Sarkeesian herself - in order to get the footage she needed.

She also notes that this doesn't result in a "Fail state" or a "game over" that in comparison to those, the consequence of losing points is quite trivial.

So in summary; Anita Sarkeesian did not lie about Hitman: Absolution and her comments were completely fair and reasonable in the context of analyzing and criticizing the game and how it portrays and deals with women.

 

[useless]

Anita Sarkeesian's Kickstarter page.

And this is a problem how? "Gamer" is a term that one applies to them self. There is no "bar" to be reached to claim to be a gamer, both incredibly dedicated and casual players of games are gamers.

How do you know she hasn't played games in the past? Or that as she played them she didn't enjoy them, in-spite of the messages they portrayed about women? You make alot of assumptions with no evidence.

You don't even have to enjoy games to be considered a gamer, there are numerous people who make a point or have a hobby of Lets Playing terrible games because of exactly that. Are they not gamers? I'm pretty sure if Sarkeesian is playing games, she can confidently describe herself as such.

Also you missed this:

I love playing video games but I’m regularly disappointed in the limited and limiting ways women are represented. This video project will explore, analyze and deconstruct some of the most common tropes and stereotypes of female characters in games. The series will highlight the larger recurring patterns and conventions used within the gaming industry rather than just focusing on the worst offenders. I’m going to need your help to make it happen!

Also let's not forget to mention that what "gamer" can mean depends on the context. I am not a "gamer" when i talk about it being my lifestyle. It is a hobby, but when it comes to playing games, i can assert that i am.

 

[brennan]

Oh yeah, if you just ignore the fact that it is behaviour that nobody actually displays and that you are actively discouraged from taking such actions, then it's fair criticism.

Need a bigger

And this is a problem how?

Anyone else hear the goalposts screeching as they get dragged across the park?