Radiowar

i wouldnt be surprised if those bell sounds were a reversed loop, run through some kind of delay/reverb combination. sometimes when i want to create complex sounding "pads" i'll record a loop with bell-like sounds (or any sound with quick attack) then either reverse them or use delay/reverb (or both) to smooth out the sound.

i eagerly await the modded version of this game that will allow me to waveshine with mega man

@djpretzel: i realize by now it feels like our conversation has run its course. if i may get my own last word in: the interpretation of feminist theory as "fighting fire with fire" does not hold up. to use the analogy more accurately, the relationship between the macro-level man and woman is the relationship between fire and wood. it would not be fair - nor useful - for us to look at a piece of wood burning and say, "but wait, fire does not only burn wood." indeed, it will be extinguished once there is nothing left to burn. because what we are talking about, ultimately, are frameworks of privilege. these frameworks manifest themselves in all areas of society, large and small in scale: it is in the way a white drug offender's powder cocaine possession will receive a fraction of the punishment for a black drug offender's crack cocaine possession, or the way society naturalizes heterosexual relationships while demonizing homosexual ones. it is in the way that my sister or my mother might express reservations about walking down a street which i might never give a second thought to. these frameworks are necessarily self-perpetuating because they are inherently imbalanced, and enable one to ignore or deny the experience of another. the reason why a woman might legally be denied her right to contraceptive health-care, or her right to an abortion, might be in part because those kinds of laws are decided by panels comprised mostly, if not wholly, by men. the reason why those panels might lack appropriate representation of women might be in part because women make up roughly 20% of both the united states house of representatives and the senate. and on, and on. it is important to recognize, though, that the immediate, short-term benefits caused by a system dependent on inequality will inevitably amount to a long-term loss. like the aforementioned fire, once one thing is consumed, it carries on to the next. for example, while drug laws in the united states may have their origins in attempts at covert racial control, they have so thoroughly decimated such a large population, and the economic engine they power has become so voracious, that their scope has since expanded; the problem of racial inequality becomes a problem of economic inequality. similarly, while abstract, patriarchal notions of "masculinity" and "femininity" may immediately result in individual women experiencing a lack of equality to individual men (as a result of a system of gender which assigns those notions on the basis of biological difference) it does not preclude the suffering of men who are deemed insufficiently "masculine" in spite of their biology. whether or not we recognize the ways in which inequality targets or trends towards specific subsets of people has no bearing on the fact that the trend exists in the first place. in effect, the argument that it is the theories of society which "categorize" people, rather than the trends and phenomena they observe, is to suggest that inequality will somehow go away on its own if we simply don't talk about it at all. it is, in fact, by observing and articulating inequality that we counter the ignorance or denial which allows that inequality to exist at all.

i gotta say i take issue with you being so casually dismissive towards what im saying. you cant just shrug and say "my opinion" when not only is it a complete shot in the dark, it is simply incorrect. dont you think that by now, if i truly was regurgitating, my purpose would have long ago been served? i didnt post that clip of The House I Live In for nothing. i'll be specific: the part of that clip that was most significant to me, and informs pretty much everything that i have posted here, was when the lincoln historian (his name escapes me) says: "Now, it's important to remember - or to realize - that it isn't that the war on drug users is the same as what happened in other societies, but that both are wars on ordinary people - people who are just like us." if there was ever a statement that i would subscribe to with the kind of "faith"-like fervency as you are implying, it would be that one. i believe that the kind of inequality and oppression that is being spoken of here has its origins in an inability on the part of one to recognize the equivalent humanity in another. everything else i've said here is simply evidence in service of that belief. ---- what you are suggesting is a tautological definition of "dehumanization": that a person is dehumanized by the observation that they are dehumanized. this is essentially the same as the all-too-frequent criticism of cultural theorists that by observing and articulating the existence of gender or race-based inequality, they are reinforcing that inequality - and that argument necessarily suggests the corollary, that "sexism/racism will disappear if we just stop talking about it; i don't see gender/colour". maybe it's not a one-way street, but what you're proposing is a cul-de-sac. No one said that it has? okay, seriously. not only did i acknowledge that you have not said that social progress is complete, i inserted it right into the sentence. maybe you just skipped over it; maybe you are being unnecessarily nitpicky. if that was the end of my post (or even the individual point i was making), maybe it would be justified. but it wasnt. that may be the case if we look at it strictly from the perspective of the passage of laws explicitly dealing with racism/sexism/etc. however - and this is where The House I Live In is relevant once more - there are ways in which our society has codified through law (specifically laws against drugs) what amounts to no less inequality than that which existed in the jim crow era. take, for example, the fact the united states currently jails more black people than it held as slaves prior to the civil war.

sorry, i dont want to make something out of nothing here, and i apologize for misrepresenting you just then - but it seems a little...hypocritical for you to on the one hand continually criticize the "confidence" with which sarkeesian and others make their arguments, and then on the other quite confidently suggest that you have any real insight into the ways my opinions have been formed, without allowing for the possibility that i believe what i believe because it truly resonates with my own experiences.

as an aside, i would like to post an excerpt from the documentary i referenced earlier, the house i live in. the film is specifically concerned with the drug war in the united states, and on a broader level the way in which it intersects racism, classism, and capitalism, but i hope that if you watch this excerpt you might get a clearer understanding of where im coming from in my posts about feminism and dehumanization. if nothing else, i hope this might do a little to assuage djp's concerns that i am simply lifting my posts from some other source directly. http://youtu.be/Wdiz7E6biMM

it was in response to a post of his in which he suggested that it was the observation or "labelling" of the phenomenon itself which was dehumanizing, rather than the process by which it comes to exist in the first place. i dont see any problem with what i said - and i could do without the jab about being "ashamed" of it - other than it could be construed that i was referring to individual men or women instead of the macro-level notions of man-ness or woman-ness (which, in my defense, is why i am careful to always use the word "individual" when i am using the words "men" or "women" in that context). regardless of the merit of that definition when taken out of context, i followed it up with a much more complete definition:

again, the video series is called "tropes vs. women", not "tropes vs. all of humanity" - and i really dont want to go down the road of "why feminism and not humanism" once more (which is not to say that you have been the one to make statements like that, just that it has come up in this thread before). the argument being articulated does say that depictions of violence against women contributes to actual violence against women; the corollary to that argument is that depictions of men committing acts of violence - and especially acts of sexually motivated violence - leads to an increase in acts of violence by men, and not exclusively against women. the reason why sarkeesian is highlighting assaults on women is because representations of violence frequently associate masculine traits to either their justifications or the acts themselves, while associating feminine traits to passivity or being-acted-upon - we dont need to look far to find ways in which this is normalized even through language ("be a man", "grow a pair"; "dont be a pussy", "crying like a girl"). also important, though, is that while the acts of violence these things are said to influence may be indiscriminate w.r.t. gender (though i would question that; the site i linked says explicitly that 1 in 33 men - which is to say adult men - are the victims of sexual violence, whereas the site you linked says simply that 1 in 6 men will have experienced sexual violence by the time they are 18, which is to say before they reach adulthood), narratives of masculinity having dominion over femininity manifest themselves in other ways. consider, for example, the recent anti-abortion law which went before an all-male panel. if that's not a real enough example of men making determinations about women's lives of the sort that sarkeesian is talking about, then i dont know what is. ---- read the part of my post where i addressed the ways in which implied enabling or endorsement through inaction are an equal part of the problem to out-and-out sexism and misogyny. note also that while this does cast a wider net, it does not implicate men as a whole, singular entity. why did you cut out the part of my post where i acknowledged exactly the kind of progress which took place in the 20th century you're referring to? i dont know if you mistakenly passed over it or something, but if not that seems like a cheap thing to do. the reason why i said flatly that "if history is any indication, they don't" is because i do not - and i dont think you do, either - believe that any of that progress has reached something we could call "complete", and that in the scheme of things, 100 years is an incredibly small slice of human history to consider anything within it "permanent". in fact, if the recent debates about women's rights to contraceptive health care are any indication, some of that progress is actively or at risk of being undone. as to how change is brought about, i would refer you back to my post. on an individual level, critical thinking and empathy are essential in any effort to counter these ingrained dehumanizing traditions and institutions. sarkeesian's video, while not explicitly stating such, is in itself such an act, and i believe encourages similar acts by its example. nowhere in either of the posts you quoted do i say that or even suggest it. those posts do not rule out the ways in which women's actions enable - if unwittingly - those same dehumanizing processes, among other permutations. maybe you need to read my posts a little more carefully.

but it has nothing to do with implicating people at all. it absolutely is possible to "blame the group without blaming the individuals" because these groups have no bearing on the inherent humanity of the people who exist within them. as i said earlier, just because gender-based discrimination is the topic of discussion here should not be taken to mean it is in any way independent of other forms of discrimination. these things are all connected. what good is implicating a black man because he's a man when he is the subject of racial discrimination? what good is exonerating a rich woman because she's a woman when she benefits from class-based discrimination? and so on. that said - and im only saying this to be absolutely clear - while implicating the group does not necessarily implicate all individuals within it, that does not make those sexists and misogynists you refer to any less culpable. and - if i can stretch my luck here a little - the implication may at times extend to those who don't explicitly perform sexist or misogynistic acts, yet nonetheless enable or endorse those acts implicitly through conscious inaction, which is no less an act of privilege than those explicit acts. to give you an example of the kind of "endorsement through inaction" im talking about, take the example of a woman who is abducted and raped while walking alone at night. it is quite common in these situations to hear people (usually men) say things like, "she must have been dressed provocatively," or, "she should have known better than to go walking there" (indeed, legal judgments have been handed down saying as much). this is a phenomenon widely referred to as "victim blaming", and it contributes arguably as much to the 1-in-6 statistic as the rapists themselves do. because you may have missed it, i'll repost the passage from ridgeway that i used in response to djp earlier: to your second question: to be honest, i have no idea how these systems change. if human history is indication, they dont. society has breached a lot of new ground in the last 100 years. on an individual level, i think most people would say just try to be a good person. if you see or hear something sexist (or racist), say so. if a woman points out that something you've said or done is harmful to her, hear her out instead of immediately going on the defensive. and hey, if you happen to come across sexism in video games, give it a brief moment of consideration before going on your way. i didnt say that dehumanization was something that men inherently do to women, it's something that patriarchal notions of masculinity (and of course, femininity) do to women (and, just so im covering my bases here, men and children as well). dehumanization is one of the processes by which the power distribution within social structures is upheld: it operates primarily through cultural attitudes or practices (and this includes works of art) which diminish the humanity of one or more groups within that structure for the purpose of fulfilling the wills or desires of the dominant group. as an example: (i use this example because you brought up nazis earlier) the holocaust was the culmination of a sequence of events which were made possible in no small part by the myriad ways (through propaganda, public policy, anti-semetic art works, etc.) european jews (among other underprivileged groups) were dehumanized by the german people. it's an extreme example to be sure, but it's not the only of it's kind, and it's one which should resonate with just about anyone. hang on a second - i didnt say that. im saying the scope of the video has been made clear in its title: "tropes vs women in video games". BUT, if you take issue with her point that: that is something which goes beyond the scope of this video, and something which is satisfied by the study she cites. furthermore, i believe that the kind of information expressed in the study is not really possible to express through video, even if it were within its scope. other than that, i dont have much else to say on this point. though for what it's worth, i do think that sarkeesian's videos may benefit from taking a page from the daily show's editorial pieces, in which the primary sources and documents being referenced are often displayed clearly on-screen while the argument continues in voice-over.

i didnt say she gets a free pass, and i absolutely did not say that sexism is "nebulous and subjective", and sarkeesian did not simply "make claims and walk off", which is why i posted the link to the exact comprehensive study which she cites. thanks for summarizing my 1000+ word posts in such an utterly misleading way, though. help me out here, please. i took pains in my response to native jovian to make it clear that women, men, and children are all capable of being the victims of sexual violence - what is important is recognizing that those acts are overwhelmingly committed by males. it is also important to understand - and i know you're gonna hate this - the ways in which the acts of sexual violence committed by men towards other men are driven by patriarchal rape-cultures, particularly those which exist in prisons.

almost. the primary concern is that the system is sexist. i dont know how many other ways i can say that regardless of how you feel you are being labeled, the individual is not being implicated, but the class (in the abstract). look at it this way: 1 in 6 women in the U.S. will be a victim of sexual assault in their lifetime. you - a man - may never commit rape in your entire lifetime; that does not change the fact of a broader pattern in which men commit acts of sexual violence against not only women, but other men, and children. this is not specific to american culture, nor is it a new phenomenon. do you really think it is happenstance? the purpose of feminist theories is in part to explain things like sexual violence by analyzing the ways in which cultural attitudes and practices contribute to these patterns. no, im sorry but this just does not apply to what i said. you are twisting the meaning of "dehumanization" - a very real phenomenon - to use it as a weak metaphor. to say that "men represent the oppressor-class in a gender-based hierarchy" is not at all the equivalent of saying that "men are worse than normal people" (your use of the words "normal person" say a lot about the misunderstanding here - there can be no "normal" or "neutral" person). dehumanization is the process by which men come to comprise the oppressor-class and women come to comprise the oppressed-class in the first place, and cannot be used to describe the observation (or "labelling" as you say) of that fact. i cannot address the rest of your post re: dehumanization, because it is apparently written from the perspective that "dehumanization" refers to any action or condition which makes a person feel bad about themselves. let me be clear: the base definition of racism is, as you say, discrimination on the basis of skin colour. for the purpose of analogy, the base definition of rape is forced or otherwise non-consensual sex. but just as any meaningful or practical discussion on rape must take into account the fact that it has been statistically and historically an act perpetrated by men against women (and against other men and children), so too must any meaningful or practical discussion on racism account for the fact that we live in a society where white-ness, as a group, has historically benefited at the expense of coloured-ness. in these situations, discussions on the dictionary definitions of racism, sexism, rape, or whatever the case may be, have very little utility, and it's important to recognize when they are being employed in support of some level-playing-field argument in an attempt to negate or diminish the legitimacy of the inequality being discussed. you are right to say that the segment i referenced does not represent a complete argument. to that all i can say is the same thing that i said to djp, which is that a truly satisfying, all-encompassing analysis exceeds the scope of these videos, and demands a much larger format. which is why, i imagine, sarkeesian included a link to the julia wood study, which provides a much more in-depth look at the arguments presented here, complete with sourced historical, sociological and cultural data/research. i think it is unfair to expect of these videos - or really, any documentary or video-essay like it - to include such information. as a medium, video is not really conducive to such things, and it's why the series is called "tropes vs. women in video games" and not "video games and the normalization of violence against women".

for what it's worth, i am aware that i am probably the picture of a kid who went to college and realized that the world is big. sociology isnt even my field (and it certainly isn't science). that said, i dont know that it has any bearing on the validity of the ideas i'm expressing, my own experiences, or what i know of the experiences of others. you say that i am reciting "dogma" or "mantra" as if i'm constantly referring back to some scripture while periodically looking up at one of those "HANG IN THERE" motivational posters with a graphic that says "MEN = OPPRESSOR, WOMEN = OPPRESSED". i would like to be clear that this is not the case. when i have cited text, ive done so directly and with attribution. i can assure you that the section of my post which you are suggesting is "regurgitation" is entirely by my own hand (obviously informed by the textual and anecdotal material i've come across related to the subject), and comes with the caveat that i am neither a woman nor an expert in the field (and i've already mentioned that i do my best to avoid buzzwords and catchphrases when possible to avoid the perception of regurgitation). if it seems like regurgitation at this point, it may just be because i've written several incarnations of that argument at various points throughout this thread and others. a couple times now you've commented that my posts are "eloquent" - if false or misinformed - and i would hope that my posts do not come across as attempts to appear smarter than i am, or to cloud poor reasoning in complicated syntax. rather, i am attempting to phrase my arguments as clearly as possible, to reduce the amount of confusion or perceived "flippancy" that arises from overuse of the kinds of buzzwords you (rightfully) take issue with. if it seems as though i'm condescending to you, or under the belief that i am "imparting new information" to you, that is absolutely not my intention. i am simply trying to address each point as it is given, and on its own merit. you take issue with my use of the term "self-evident", though i have to say i can't understand why. i believe that to say that video games are art is self-evident is the same as saying that music is art is self-evident. if you disagree with that point, then that is a different discussion. without knowing specifically which quote of zircon's you're referring to, though, i'm at a loss. with regard to the specific quotes you enumerated in the post you linked - this may come as a surprise, but those are actually some of the exact statements that i took issue with and recognized the weaknesses of when i watched the videos. while we would likely disagree on what some of those issues and weaknesses are, we probably both agree that they try to say too much with too little. with that said, i've found other segments of the video to be incredibly dense with detail and well-supported, and while they may not entirely compensate for some of the other shortcomings, the overall analysis and the argument being made are not compromised. and as for the literature you've suggested, i will certainly look into it. …but enough about me. oh! believe me, im not at all suggesting that gender-based inequality is the only form of inequality, or that feminism is the only valid interpretation of social structures - it is simply the focus of the topic at hand. as ive suggested earlier, social constructs do not exist independently of one another, just as people do not inhabit these classes independently of each other (it is, for example, possible for a black man to experience the privilege afforded his man-ness, while simultaneously the disadvantages afforded his black-ness; the same goes for white women, poor hetereosexuals, and on and on). which is way occasionally i've resorted to examples of racism or homophobia in order to explain or contextualize related issues of sexism. i assume here you are referring to wars in which men are the primary casualties through combat. whether or not this "adds up" to "more" or "less" total benefit (and not ignoring that wars harm all people - even outside of combat zones - and in ways that do not necessarily involve their deaths) does nothing to undermine the power structure i'm describing. what you are describing is not precluded by feminist theories of patriarchy, and can be partially attributed to that system which in this particular case disproportionately harms men on a person-to-person level. that said, it is also important to keep in mind the ways in which wartime propaganda utilize notions of "honour", "duty", and "personal sacrifice" ("protecting the motherland" being a particularly notable theme, and the gendering at play here i believe speaks for itself) in order to achieve the goals of nation states - at which point we've arrived at a different topic. as ive suggested previously, there are feminist theories as to the ways in which biology and its processes have led to the totality of phenomena which we might group together as "systems". i don't believe that the two are wholly exclusive, or that they necessarily undermine each other. i also might clarify the term arbitrary: i don't believe that the means by which a social construct is formed and manifested is arbitrary, but that the construct itself is arbitrary. which is to say, it is possible to acknowledge the ways in which humans exhibit biological difference without applying them as the basis of inherently unequal social structures and institutions.

oh, likewise. i dont feel like anyone's attacking me at all, if anything things seem to have settled down at this point. to clarify: the artificial divide i was talking about was the unintentional byproduct of certain rhetoric in these debates, in which the "problem" is framed as the kinds of men-vs-women conspiracies that djpretzel mentioned earlier. which is to say, feminism is not the implication of individual men, or even specific groups of men, in the oppression of women; rather it is the implication of a system in which men overwhelmingly benefit, and women disproportionately suffer as a result of a dominant-subordinate distribution of power. the institutions that arise from this paradigm subsist primarily on the ways in which they are able to pattern human lives (ie. the determination of gender roles), resulting in the kind of generational cycles in which individual action - while certainly informed or governed by these patterns - plays a role in perpetuating. if individual men, while not disagreeing with the premise that we live in an unequal society, feel unfairly maligned or beset-upon, it may be worth considering why the social movement which addresses gender-based equality is named feminism in the first place (it is not, as is so often suggested, though not quite to such a degree in this thread, an attempt to reverse the hierarchy of gender by empowering women over men, nor is it an attempt to diminish the very real, if less dire, suffering experienced by individual men). what those men are feeling may be attributable in part to the fact that any attempt to address the systematic inequalities experienced by women must deeply question those aspects of mens' lives which they take for granted, in which they are afforded the privilege of being comfortable, or unaware. the "divide" i was referring to was separate from the phenomenon of Othering, which is related to dominant-subordination. you seem to be suggesting that any labeling at all is "dehumanizing", and thus invalid. dehumanization is the process by which men are able to be distinguished as oppressor-class in the first place, and that dehumanization is necessarily directed towards a subordinate-class, in this case women, as a result of a social and historical context which paints them to be Other - which is to say, outside of the dominant group. the crux of the issue is that the inequalities of our society are enabled by those practices which limit our ability to relate to one another as equally human (understand that i am not promoting "homogeneity" here), and that works of art - especially those involving fiction - are subject to perhaps a heightened level of awareness and criticism in this regard (which is where we get our notion of the inherent value of "three-dimensional characters"). yes! i agree with you 100%, with the addition that we likewise cannot cry "insignificant!" and ignore the big picture. what i meant by the notion of "racism being spoken or acted into existence" was precisely addressing what i believe to be a short-sighted view. when somebody like dawkins argues that it ought to at least be within the capacity of a word like "racism" to address things which harm white people on the basis of race, it ignores the "big picture" fact that racism as it exists on the macro-level is a hierarchy in which "white" represents the dominant class. in that sense, "racism" is only useful as a term if it describes acts, speech, or institutions which reinforce that inequality, which are directed towards that underprivileged Other. arguments are comprised of statements. are we really discussing this? have you ever written or read an essay which did not include "this is so" statements? if the video clips, statistics, or cultural research she cites are not satisfying support and evidence for these statements, it may just be that you disagree with the premises.

maybe we've just been drifting too far into our respective corners. if you are not trying to say that criticisms of art - or more broadly, culture - are without merit when addressing socio-political issues, and i am certainly not intending to say that i believe art criticism is immune to fault or bias in its own right (though i will say that i am largely in agreement with what sarkeesian has presented in her videos, and nothing in her analyses has struck me as egregiously wrong-headed or invalid thus far), then maybe we are not so far from each other as it seems. when it comes to over-interpretation or extrapolation, i would caution that we might be inclined to believe that is the case when we are examining video games, a medium which is not typically subject to any kind of interpretative analysis at all (hell, people still have difficulty coming to an agreement as to whether or not video games are art, something which i believe to be self-evidently the case). if my phrasing was inappropriate earlier, or if you take issue with my use of the terms "reason" and "answer", all i can say is that i meant to use those terms to the extent that it is possible when dealing with subject matter that is inherently intangible and abstract. i dont believe we can - nor should we expect to - hold those ideas to the same rigorous standard or precise metrics as we do discussions of scientific theories or studies, which we might simply have to attribute to the fact that science is science, and art is art. you are right to say my analysis there is incomplete. while i do believe strongly in the connection between the expression of possessiveness in art to the perpetuation of institutions in which the role of women is to be possessed by men, i meant it more by way of example. volumes have been written on the ways in which human ritual and artistic output are connected to the development and perpetuation of their societies, and its quite beyond the scope of this thread and my own limited abilities to provide a fully satisfying and convincing argument in that regard. even a video series like this would, upon completion, represent only a portion of such an argument.

i do not see the contradiction. by saying "one and the same" i meant that the analysis of art is equivalent to analysis of people. that does not limit analysis of a people to the sole analysis of art, and i would argue that an appreciation of the validity of art criticism only enhances our ability to interpret those other aspects of society you've listed. as for the "dissonance" between real life and art, we may often find that it is that dissonance which art criticism is uniquely suited to address, and that dissonance does not have any less significance to our understanding of the human condition than those works which we may find to be "consonant". you asked me how individual utterances relate to broader phenomena. any conceivable explanation necessitates that i "jump scope", and addressing marriage ritual was simply the avenue i chose to relate real-world, quantifiable expressions of a gender hierarchy, in which women are subordinate to the will and desire of men, to those the ways in which that system is perpetuated through smaller, seemingly insignificant gestures in art. you say we have culturally re-contextualized marriage; i would rather say we are in the process of doing so. again, as with our discussion of blackface, you are assuming the existence of a level playing field we have yet to achieve, underestimating the power and pervasiveness of historical context in informing our contemporary values. your unwillingness to take the next step from comprehension and contextualization to discernible action ignores the ways in which individual utterances form into narratives, and how those narratives are among the principle ways in which historical context persists. its an easy trap to fall into, as it is only natural to assume the world of our experience is neutral, has-always-been, and divorced from its history - which, by the way, we are capable of experiencing or relating to through works of art in ways that we cannot from purely forensic research. i dont believe i have said that art creates man, or that it creates the sort of "feedback loop" you mentioned. instead, i would say that videos like this are essential to our understanding of art as not strictly output to the world, but also as input to ourselves.

i believe that analysis of society through art and analysis of society "through its people" are one and the same. art is the expression of the people, the document of the human experience. it is also uniquely capable of a kind of expression and interpretation that is not possible exclusively through scientific thought, which is why i say that the two practices are, at the very least, two halves of a complete picture. why not? if we can recognize something as harmful, do we not have some responsibility to disavow it? more on this below... allow me to expand on the connection, then. if we examine the traditions of marriage, for example, across any number of human civilizations, we'll find that up until very recently these ceremonies were largely concerned with the acquisition of property and capital, of which the men were the owners and managers, and which the women were intended to signify. to use a specific example, i'll quote niyi awofeso's analysis of the symbolism of the ring in marriage ritual: the idea of marriage as an expression of romantic love is a fairly recent development in this context. yet are we not troubled by the ways in which our contemporary language of romantic love relies so heavily on practices which explicitly render women as property to be exchanged by men? wedding rings are but one example; the criticism extends to the kinds of language and symbolism employed in popular song (the language of love as possession, to use my previous example), along with all other mediums of art. it is our responsibility, therefore, to question these practices, and if we find that they are harmful, or inadvertently communicating something that we do not intend, it is our responsibility to disavow them. and again, this recognition and disavowal does not dismiss wholesale the validity of romantic love, or union between two people.

(i apologize for the double post, but i was unable to fit both responses into a single post. ive also had to reduce the quotes somewhat, but that does not mean that this is only a partial response.) i personally try to avoid using those kinds of buzzwords/phrases if i can, simply because in an effort to express a complicated idea quickly, they often draw these kinds of criticisms. by definition, the kind of thing that might be described as "male power fantasy" cannot be experienced by women, because it necessarily relies on the subordination of women (ie. powerlessness). to address your other points, hopefully this quote from cecilia ridgeway will suffice: i was not - and i dont believe that the metaphor does, either - attempting to ignore the history of humanity as interaction between both real men and women. what the metaphor attempts to convey is that in the broad sense of man-ness and woman-ness, patriarchy is a system in which woman-ness is subservient to the will and desire of man-ness. it seems that our miscommunication stems from attempts to apply macro-level analyses to micro-level phenomena, and vice versa. again it seems that we are actually talking about different things. the nature of the inequality i am talking about is the unequal distribution of power within the social structure of gender - a structure which, at the macro level, has less to do with describing biological fact than it does establishing hierarchies based on sexual difference - of which unequal ratios of men to women in particular vocations is a consequence. im not trying to say that ALL of these individual unequal ratios necessarily stem from this inequality, but that gender is a system with the unique ability to propagate these inequalities, among many others. fair enough. i dont think, however, that there are many social theorists who would accept the notion that gender biases are arbitrary either, especially not feminists (there are those who would argue that gender-based hierarchy developed quite naturally and systematically from the basis of the sex-act itself, the purest expression of sexual difference). i may have gotten a little careless with my phrasing and used the word "offensive" where i should have been saying "harmful", either because i overlooked it, or was addressing somebody who had used the word. i think the subjectivity and individual-experience-ness of "offensive" is precisely what limits its usefulness when discussing socially prescribed racial hierarchy. "harmful" is the word i would use because it does not rely on people noticing it or "feeling offended by it", and more importantly it does not ascribe full responsibility for broad, social phenomena, but acknowledges that it is a necessary participant. in this case, we are talking about the ways in which slavery was upheld by a cultural narrative which said on one hand that black people were wild, impossible to civilize, and dangerous, and on the other that it was by mediation of whiteness that they could be made docile and servile (hence, blackface). whether or not blackface (or any racist practice) might become "acceptable" in the future, we do not know. what we do know is that we do not occupy that world now, and attempts to diminish the significance of blackface by putting it on equal footing with "whiteface" are, at this point, putting the cart before the horse, a kind of willing-into-existence an equality which our society has yet to truly achieve. i do apologize for misunderstanding you, and thanks for clarifying. i dont agree, though, that sociologists and cultural critics, in their interpretation of art, are attempting to "read minds", any more than audiences who experience a work are trying to "read minds" when they experience enjoyment or affirmation. interpretation is, as you say, necessary to understanding the human condition, yet it seems as though you are also trying to say that the interpretation of a work is less valid or flexible than its expression (which is what i meant by "art as a vehicle for real-world meaning", where "meaning" refers both to expression and interpretation equally). what is the domain of the cultural critic if not the interpretation of the objects of culture as they relate to real-world social phenomena? and where better to derive the values of a society than its expression through art? even if "direct study" "makes more sense", why would we be content with half-resolutions to such deeply complex phenomena? i am not trying to say that there is a one-to-one relationship between explicit endorsement of domestic violence in art (if such a thing exists) and direct subsequent action by those who experience the work. what we are talking about here are not one-to-one relationships of that kind. what is possible, however, is that a work of popular music, for example, might unintentionally reinforce or affirm a negative value - let's say women as the sexual property of men - through poor expression of a positive or otherwise innocuous value - let's say romantic love. as sarkeesian states at the beginning of her videos, it is possible to appreciate the positive value (love) while recognizing and disavowing the negative (possessiveness). i assume you are referring to the ESA study which determined that women comprise nearly half of the game purchasing and playing audience. one thing ive always wondered from that study, and have been unable to find an answer for, is whether that statistic is not lumping smartphone and web-based gaming (ie. "casual") with console or PC gaming (ie. "hardcore"). the reason i would say that is important to consider is not only because the "hardcore gamer" has a much more significant presence in what we might consider "gamer culture", but also that the ubiquity of smart phones among all demographics, as well as readily available and affordable mobile games, might result in a definition of "gamer" which is simply too broad for the purposes of this sort of discussion. regardless, it still has no bearing on the fact that the gender disparity within the gaming industry is still very much a reality. i dont want to be seen to dismiss escapism as invalid outright, but, as i said earlier, we have to be aware of when escapist works exploit a status quo in which a dominant group is only able to experience a work as escapism because it either affirms the comfort of their lived reality, or because it diminishes or dismisses the underprivileged group's lack of the same.

im not saying that the people themselves are incapable of being harmed (as djp rightly pointed out with the article about men who are the victims of domestic violence, and that it goes unreported or is not taken seriously because of patriarchal notions of masculinity). im also certainly not trying to say that men have it coming, that it is necessary to hurt men in order to achieve some twisted kind of equality. what im saying is that the imbalance that currently exists in our society is made possible by a social structure in which the dominant gender is man, and the subordinate woman; in which the dominant race is white, and the subordinate coloured; in which the dominant sexuality is heterosexuality, and the subordinate homosexual; and so on, and so on. somewhat related: richard dawkins recently got into a very similar debate on twitter about the usefulness of "racism" as a term if it does not equally apply to white people. as you can imagine, it attracted quite a bit of attention from those who would argue that there is a danger in promoting the validity of racism against white people, or "reverse racism", because that notion is and has frequently been used to undermine actual, honest-to-god racism against minorities, and even the ways in which racism does harm white people (which i think we can agree are decidedly less). furthermore, its a conversation which misunderstands that racism as a social structure is defined by a hierarchical distribution of power, and not something which is acted or spoken into existence on a case-to-case basis. also i should point out that i have not said, nor do i believe, that christians (or any religious organization) represent a dominant or privileged group in the same way as those which ive mentioned (nor that the relationship between religious and anti-religious groups constitutes the same dominant-subordinate hierarchy). what is unique about religion is that while it may be used as a sort of propagandistic tool to uphold the status quo, it is also simultaneously, and quite frequently a means of support or unification for underprivileged groups. for example, for all the ways organized religion might have been used to justify racial segregation and anti-miscegenation, we must also acknowledge the ways in which it empowered the civil rights movement. yes, i am saying that it would not and is not "offensive" for a minority to use whiteface, and that this is evidence of the fact that the playing field is not level. it simply does not carry the same social or historical connotations, nor could its use ever be regarded as an act of reinforcing racial superiority on the same level as blackface. i dont want to get too deep into a discussion about what the motivations behind ramifications of blackface performances were; the point is that whether or not there is anything inherently racist about black shoe polish on a man's face is absolutely not the discussion we are having. these are actions that are heavy with the weight of centuries of oppression against a particular group, and they played a distinct, necessary role in the persistence of that oppression. she doesnt "simply assume it" at all, she makes that same argument quite explicitly in the section from 21:30-23:10 (roughly). if you cant agree that supplying evidence and then drawing a conclusion based on that evidence constitutes and Argument, then...what would you call what we're doing right now?

if you are suggesting that she is "othering" men with those kinds of statements, i'd have to disagree. the process by which a group of people are made other is by definition a one-way street: the "other" can only be interpreted as such when held in comparison to the group or ideology whose perspective is naturalized as dominant. in these kinds of discussions we have to recognize that we are not dealing with a level playing field (which is why the "reverse pachelbel test" (im assuming this is referring to the bechdel test) that the derrit proposed is nonsensical: it conveniently ignores centuries of historical and social context. you might as well ask why it isnt offensive for black entertainers - or any minority - to perform in "whiteface"). when sarkeesian uses the phrase "crude, unsophisticated male power fantasies", she is setting up her argument towards the end of the video that the "damseled" women are, in fact, so insignificant and removed from their humanity that they do not truly represent even a partial expression of woman-hood: the women are merely stand-ins for patriarchal responsibilities, totems to be reclaimed by men in a quest to reassert threatened masculinity. more concisely, as sarkeesian quoted in the first video: "in the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team; they are the ball." when i said that the idea of a "conspiracy" created an artificial divide between men and women, i meant that it only served to reinforce the dominant-subordinate relationship inherent to the gender binary, as well as the sense that individual, specific men were being implicated in the oppression of individual, specific women, as opposed to the larger, more abstract sense of man-ness (and woman-ness) which is being critiqued. i would argue that you've answered your own question: the reason we aren't asking that question is because "things aren't equal." to acknowledge inequality, then in the same breath leapfrog it in an attempt to negate the role of social construct, or to suggest that inequality operates like a see-saw, as some equally distributed quantity, fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the inequality we are dealing with. im not sure that i said we cannot or should not study these things, and if i did it certainly would not be because i was afraid of upsetting someone, or that it tested my personal comfort (i would hope that my willingness to engage these videos on their own merit are at least an indication of that much ). what i meant was, let's say hypothetically that the studies are correct, and that while women are no less likely to possess "average" intelligence than men, based on their genetic predisposition, men are more likely to occupy the "fringe" areas (idiots & geniuses) while women are more likely to occupy somewhere in the middle. that does not change the fact that the results do not wholly explain the kinds of disparities between men and women that exist outside of areas of exceptional achievement (the 4:1 ratio in computer science programs, for example), nor does it excuse the fact that the studies by their very nature exclude the kind of historical and social context necessary to provide anything approaching a complete picture. furthermore, where i would stress caution - and this might be where you get the sense that im suggesting we abandon the field of study entirely - is that science as rhetorical device is not wholly impartial, or devoid of social and historical context (or to put it another way, science does not exist in a vacuum). the idea that the "hard sciences" of mathematics trump the "soft sciences" of history and sociology is one which has been perversely adapted to reinforcing gender-based hierarchy, and moreover it is not exclusive to issues of sexism. (maybe its just because i recently saw django unchained, but im reminded of the old theories of phrenology, a pseudo-science which through contemporary eyes is almost immediately recognized as an attempt to couch racism in pure, neutral logic and rationality - the cornerstone of civilized society and the domain of rich white men). why so? can we agree that blackface (for example) is unilaterally harmful? if so, certainly it is within the realm of possibility that these tropes might be as well, or at the very least that they feed into larger, harmful phenomena in a negative (if unintentional) way. im sorry but i just cant get on board with that. as somebody for whom creativity and art are inseparable from my lived experience (and i have to say, im surprised to hear another artist say that they dont see art as a vehicle for real-world meaning in any area, let alone domestic violence), it seems self-evident to me that the existence of physical biology, evolutionary psychology, and the like do not constitute a whole picture as to make art trivial or meaningless. i believe the kinds of art we profess to enjoy say a great deal about who we are, and that video games are not exempt no matter how trivial some might believe its subject matter might be to the overall gameplay experience (similar to the ways in which bad films are often excused by audiences as "escapism", a way to deflect any suggestion that the films may have some broader socio-political meaning or consequence, unaware that the only reason they are able to experience those films as "escape" is because they affirm the values of a society in which they are able to reside comfortably, unquestioning). the correlation may not be one-to-one, but it certainly is not zero. if the data seems lacking when compared to those -ologies you mentioned, perhaps we ought to apply a different metric. i think we are mostly in agreement here. a lot of art works do a poor job of representing a true portrait of the human experience when they resort to the "quick and easy" mentioned in the thread earlier. i believe that a work is only successful to the extent that it resonates as authentic to the experiences of its audience. if video games have a poor track record of appealing to women in this way thus far (and as you say it is likely that women are not the only underprivileged group to have this experience), i would say that it has more to do with the relative immaturity of the medium than some inherent limitation. and if video games have such an excellent track record of appealing to men (ie. dominant/privileged groups) thus far (especially when it is at the expense of those underprivileged groups), i would say that is justification alone for this kind of criticism.

if i can address my use of the term "maybe": my intent was to illustrate the ways in which any attempt to explain away or "solve" any one of the issues being raised here will quickly and invariably branch off into other areas; "maybe" was simply meant as an indication of choosing one of those branches to follow. as to the point about some conspiracy on the part of men to intentionally suppress women...it's not how i would frame the discussion, to say the least. if nothing else, it has the unfortunate side effect of creating an artificial divide between men and women, feeding into an "us vs. them" mentality. i would argue that it does even greater damage than that, by contributing to deeply ingrained processes of dehumanization and othering...but more on that below. i am certainly not qualified to speak to any theories of genetics, brian chemistry, etc., regarding a person's aptitude or behaviour, so im gonna tread lightly. i will say, however, that for all the controls used in the study pinker cites to ensure that there is no difference in quality or access to education, or for however accurate the cognitive profiles they provide may be (though as spelke suggests, what differences exist are not enough to justify the staggering disparity between men and women in the fields of mathematics and sciences), the reality is that we do not live in a world of all-things-being-equal. maybe it's just because ive recently been rewatching The House I Live In, eugene jarecki's documentary on the drug war in america, but i think it is impossible to deny the role that "social construction" plays in the ways individuals navigate through society. i dont want to get too far off track, but for the purposes of analogy, if we were to look a study of demographics of drug dealers, we would find that the majority of the people who end up in the drug trade in america are poor and black. i don't think anybody would deny that there exist biological differences between black bodies and white bodies, but i similarly do not think that anybody would try to suggest that those biological differences are of any significant consequence, or that they somehow translate into black people being more naturally inclined towards drug trafficking than white people. im sure we are all aware of the pervasive, nasty rhetoric in america which suggests that the reason minorities find themselves in such situations is because they are somehow different, that they lack the same capacity for self-responsibility, work ethic, or intelligence as "successful" (ie., white) people. it's an unbelievably cynical view in a society where the social forces that are keeping the underprivileged down are the same as those propping the privileged up. i wanna be clear that im not suggesting that any of the things being discussed here or in the debate you linked are the equivalent of being a member of the KKK. what im trying to say is that sexism, racism, homophobia, and any other form of discrimination based on biological or sexual difference, thrive on discourses of otherness. that is, it is the inability of group-of-people A to relate to group-of-people B as equally human which allows them to establish and perpetuate a system based on a dominant-subordinate relationship between the two. it's this process of identification, ostracism, and dehumanization which creates an environment in which women are overwhelmingly the victims of sexual or otherwise gender-based violence at the hands of men....but more on that below. hang on - i did not say that sarkeesian said that the tropes were unimaginative, but that developers were unimaginative. i was addressing nj's point that the tone of the video is accusatory, or that it is intended to call out specific individuals - gamers or developers - and shame or ridicule them. i was attempting to address a frequent response to individual points being raised in the video (to use your example of the damsel as paternalistic), namely the "well, i don't see [x] as paternalistic, therefore..." argument. it's an argument which says a lot more about the person expressing it than the topic at hand, specifically that they feel that they are being accused of taking pleasure from (or having any hand in at all) things which are harmful or cruel to others, when the expressed goal of this series (and other works like it) is to reveal those aspects of art we may have overlooked because we take them for granted, or because they are especially subtle. we may be talking about different levels of dehumanization here. i agree that it is the goal of fiction - or more broadly, art - to capture the human experience, and that life is sometimes cruel. war is a good example, but one perhaps more relevant to the discussion at hand would be rape, an act which is primarily (though not exclusively) committed by men towards women, and which necessarily dehumanizes through the use of a person's body as a vehicle for sexual gratification. the act itself is reprehensible; an account of the act not necessarily so. when a sociologist and cultural critic like sarkeesian is confronted with a statistic that says one in four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime, or that four women are killed by current/former partners every day, they are likely to pursue answers or reasons in the objects of culture. the "damsel in distress" trope is of particular interest in this regard, because it is one in which the humanity of a female character is exchanged for her symbolic woman-ness. these characters are frequently rendered as lacking any of the agency or capacity for self-realization that we would expect of a person, and instead they are relegated to the role of plot device. i dont want to rehash the points made in the video; my point is not that women should never be depicted being captured, incapacitated, killed, or rescued by men, but that there are ways of portraying these realities that do not come at the expense of their humanity. ----- we may simply disagree on this point. if you're referring to what i would think of as the "evidence-gathering" segment of the video, i would simply mark that up to being thorough. there is also a rhetorical element: the effect of the sheer volume of offending clips being played in sequence (she even repeats the same phrases when describing these scenes several times), similar to the kind of video-based rhetorical devices used on shows like the daily show. once these segments are through, she does make arguments as to how they relate to her thesis and the broader cultural context (though you are right that they comprise a significantly smaller chunk of the running time). what i was attempting to convey was that trying to find solutions to problems like this are like navigating a sort of hedge maze, where a tangible end goal only becomes increasingly obscured or complicated the further you travel through it. not only that, but i still maintain that suggesting her own alternative plotlines, or creating public policy, etc., fall outside the scope of this video series. these videos are microscopic analyses of an incredibly specific medium, the value of which is in part attributed to the fact that the medium is frequently overlooked for being "childish" or otherwise inconsequential. well, i would argue that pointing out the problem and having it be recognized as valid is easier said than done. that said, it's still early in the series. for all we know she may have an episode towards the end dedicated to an analysis of some more optimistic trends in video games which successfully counter the status quo (if the teaser for part 3 is any indication).

if thats what you take from these videos, then i hate to put it this way, but that is just your problem. this video opens with the disclaimer: "please keep in mind that it's both possible, and even necessary, to simultaneously enjoy a piece of media while also being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects" (i believe the first video had a similar opening, and its also in the description of both). not to mention that in earlier videos, she professes a love for the same video games she is critiquing. experiencing a video game, or any piece of art, is not an all-or-nothing proposition. to put her statement another way: it is possible to criticize those aspects of a game which are negative without nullifying those which are positive, and vice versa. i would argue that these videos are "solutions" - or at the very least, one small part of a much larger, multi-faceted approach to "fixing" sexism. that is, these videos, as with the rest of the feminist frequency material, are concerned with a close-reading of popular culture as it relates to issues of gender. they are a kind of action in and of themselves, acts of critical thought and empathy, the absence of which generally enable the proliferation of these kinds of harmful narratives and representations to begin with. sarkeesian frequently reminds us that "video games do not exist in a vacuum". this is an important point that i think people are passing over when they feel that they are owed answers or solutions, or that the thing they love is being attacked and that they should be ashamed for loving it. representations of women in video games are a fragment, a single strand in a hugely complex web of relationships between people and social structures. what would a solution even look like? i'll take a single problem: portrayals of women in video games frequently rely on diminishing their humanity. lets say a cause of the problem is a lack of women as authors of these works. a possible solution there may be a concerted effort to hire more women as programmers and game designers. now we run into another problem: computer science is a field statistically dominated by men at a 4:1 ratio. why such a disparity, when men and women have access to the same schools? are they somehow being denied the same level of access to technology? maybe the reason is cultural, that engineering or computer science related activities are gendered male, and that children are aware of their gender roles at a very young age. who is responsible for that...? my point is that it doesnt take long to trace the causality of an apparently simple issue before arriving at an overwhelming and vast array of factors touching on every stage of a person's development across multiple institutions in our society. these social institutions thrive on cyclical patterns, and they are all inexorably tied to one another. which brings me back to the point that these issues do not exist in a vacuum, and that any "solution" to sexism, if it existed, would necessarily address other issues of institutionalized inequality, including racism, classism, etc. from this perspective, proposing a sort of one-size-fits-all solution is quite beyond the scope of the series, which is intended as a microscopic analysis of a specific element of popular culture. sarkeesian acknowledges as much in the video. another interesting thought: i remember reading - either in this thread or somewhere else, i cant remember where - that the reason guns are such a common mechanic in video games is because their very nature allows for a wide range of interactions within a given environment. similarly, it is suggested in this video that the reason for plots in which the player has to kill the damsel in order to move on are likely the result of the FPS paradigm in which a player's only way of engaging the environment is to attack it. at no point in the video does sarkeesian accuse video game developers who are guilty of this trope as anything more than unimaginative. towards the end of the video sarkeesian provides three examples of games which tapped into that same emotional reservoir based on death and loss, doing so without relying on the dehumanization of anybody, let alone women.

i'd imagine a lot of research of that kind is regarded as inconclusive or subject to doubt (see: any study on the correlation between video game and real world violence). my interpretation of these kinds of analyses is less concerned with proving an objective, definitive connection between the consumption of a particular media and the thoughts that go through the minds of the people consuming them, and more with the nature of pleasure and identification in art. that is, if an artistic product's success is tied to its ability to resonate as truthful or authentic to its consumers, then what kind of truths do art forms like video games reflect? and, if upon investigations like this video series we are troubled by what we see, what does it say about the very real issues of violence and oppression of women in society, and the way they are enabled by both those who perpetrate those actions, as well as those who have the privilege to deny or ignore them? to be fair, the statistics regarding real-world violence against women, along with other relevant cultural research and media criticism are cited on the blog post for the episode.

the argument that she is not proposing enough "solutions" is a red herring, a fundamental misunderstanding of both her stated goal and of the issues being raised. we're not talking about fixing a pothole or something; there is no cut-and-dry "solution" to centuries of cultural and sociological development. furthermore, i would argue that those who say she is being redundant (in only the second video in this series), or that she is raising more questions than answers, are perhaps missing the point of documentaries or video-based essays like this. these videos clearly state their thesis, provide thoroughly sourced research, cogent analysis relating to the larger context of the series, and conclusions as to how the video relates to her overall goal as a media critic, namely the ways in which oppressive societal structures find perpetuation through art. say what you will about her slow output, or the apparent discrepancy between the quality of these videos and the funding received, but you cannot say that she has produced an incomplete argument. if it seems like she is "beating a drum", perhaps that is less an indictment of her inability to come up with exciting and interesting ways to describe the dehumanization of women, and more revealing of society's short-term memory when it comes to these issues, in both real-world instances and the objects of culture. i think it's interesting that, according to this analysis, the "damsel in distress" trope was only able to persist by evolving, and that evolution was necessarily a violent one: the player goes from saving the helpless woman, to saving a murdered woman, to murdering the woman themselves. it is a reflection of the hierarchical nature of gender which not only subordinates women to men, but enables both the casual disregard of their actions and speech, while empowering men to determine the fates of women through violent action, metaphorical and literal.

submitted something...i think. its on my soundcloud regardless ~ this was a lot of fun !!