Tropes vs. Women / #GamerGate Conspiracies

[zircon]

Huh. I can't post in this thread anymore. I don't mean "I don't want to", but I've tried making the same post ~6 times from two different browsers and it just won't go through.

[Bleck]

Male is a sex, not a gender 

 

the terminology specifics regarding gender don't matter because gender isn't real

 

Huh. I can't post in this thread anymore. I don't mean "I don't want to", but I've tried making the same post ~6 times from two different browsers and it just won't go through.

 

maybe somebody's deleting your posts

[djpretzel]

maybe somebody's deleting your posts

 

That'd be odd to start doing NOW, eh? Don't really appreciate the suggestion, either.

 

Andy:

1. Hope you're using Lazarus browser plugin so form data doesn't get lost
2. Try chunking the post? It shouldn't be a security related thing, so no idea why it would be getting lost... do you get an error?

[Bleck]

 

That'd be odd to start doing NOW, eh? Don't really appreciate the suggestion, either.

 

somebody deleted my post saying that somebody was making a slippery slope argument, I wouldn't have been surprised if someone was offended that zircon did essentially the same

[djpretzel]

somebody deleted my post saying that somebody was making a slippery slope argument, I wouldn't have been surprised if someone was offended that zircon did essentially the same

 

Apologies, I only say the post of yours that was deleted that was simply you repeating your "Straw Man Quest" post, verbatim. If you had something more substantive to say that wasn't just repeating the same exact post, go for it. Posts shouldn't be deleted/hidden for logical fallacies alone...

[zircon]

Yep, I do use lazarus so I haven't lost the post. Maybe something with lots of quotes and formatting? In any case, it encourages me to keep the post brief! So here we go.

 

My viewpoint is that there is a really big, black-and-white distinction between prescribing censorship and anything else. Even if the reasoning is in part the same as people that WOULD advocate censorship, I still don't think it's problematic until that line is crossed. It's the difference between:

 

"Alcohol can cause impaired judgment and lead to drunk driving. People can die! Therefore, we encourage you to drink responsibly."

and

"Alcohol can cause impaired judgment and lead to drunk driving. People can die! Therefore, alcohol should be banned."

 

There is such an enormous difference between these two statements. And likewise, there is an equally enormous difference between:
 

"The use of certain tropes about women reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, we encourage game developers to not use these tropes."
and

"The use of certain tropes about women reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, games which use these tropes should be banned."

 

One statement encourages infringement upon rights and freedom. The other does not.

[timaeus222]

I think I've gotten a similar glitch before and emailed you about it, djp.

 

Yep, I do use lazarus so I haven't lost the post. Maybe something with lots of quotes and formatting? In any case, it encourages me to keep the post brief! So here we go.

 

My viewpoint is that there is a really big, black-and-white distinction between prescribing censorship and anything else. Even if the reasoning is in part the same as people that WOULD advocate censorship, I still don't think it's problematic until that line is crossed. It's the difference between:

 

"Alcohol can cause impaired judgment and lead to drunk driving. People can die! Therefore, we encourage you to drink responsibly."

and

"Alcohol can cause impaired judgment and lead to drunk driving. People can die! Therefore, alcohol should be banned."

 

There is such an enormous difference between these two statements. And likewise, there is an equally enormous difference between:
 

"The use of certain tropes about women reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, we encourage game developers to not use these tropes."
and

"The use of certain tropes about women reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, games which use these tropes should be banned."

 

One statement encourages infringement upon rights and freedom. The other does not.

 

I think what djp's hinting at, with the "five steps away from censorship," is more like:

 

"The use of certain tropes about women [potentially] reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, we [disapprove of game developers for using] these tropes."
vs

"The use of certain tropes about women [potentially] reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, games which use these tropes should be banned."

 

What you said is valid---encouraging the removal of something vs. proposing the banning of something are fairly different in intent, but perhaps the comparison is idealistic? Encouraging the removal of something is less aggressive than discouraging the usage of something. Furthermore, there is also the idea that correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation, and the mere usage of certain tropes doesn't necessarily "[reinforce] negative cultural attitudes." It might, though.

[djpretzel]

"The use of certain tropes about women reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, we encourage game developers to not use these tropes."

and

"The use of certain tropes about women reinforces negative cultural attitudes. Therefore, games which use these tropes should be banned."

 

One statement encourages infringement upon rights and freedom. The other does not.

 

I wasn't just talking about rights & freedom, I was talking about criticism vs. advocacy and then also the problem with saying that X art causes Y behavior, i.e. infantilizing the audience for art & turning artists into programmers who are simply feeding deterministic code into the minds of automatons who will do their bidding, without question.

 

You have this tendency to rephrase my arguments in the broadest possible sense, without ever addressing the specifics...

 

SPECIFICALLY, I am opposing rhetoric that attempts to draw direct causal lines between art and behavior. You've ignored that point almost entirely by rewriting it into "reinforces negative cultural attitudes"... all you need to do is add a "potentially" before the "reinforces" and you've arrived at the type of reasonable, relatively unobjectionable language that I wish Anita actually used. The problem is that she doesn't; she instead isolates aspects of games and - with zeal & certitude - maps them onto real-world behaviors. This isn't good. It's bad. It's a flawed argument commonly employed by censors; even if she is not advocating for censorship, she is using the same toolbox. Yes, it's still an important distinction to make - I'm not saying it's the same exact thing, only that it is still bad in & of itself.

[Native Jovian]

Whoof.  Been sort of a hectic week, so I haven't been able to keep up with this thread.  So, apologies for reaching back a few days to reply to posts from a few pages ago.

 

Nothing but fanservice? Can you name for me a game when a character's giant tits were actually important to the story and also wasn't just used as a strawman "message" for or against feminism? The other option is just making sure female characters only have modest-sized breasts which becomes a problem when talking about "diversity" as you call it.

I'm not saying that large breasts has to be a plot point to be legitimate -- I'm just saying that there's a significant difference between "this character has large breasts" and "this character is used for fanservice".  If anyone's complaining about the former instead of the latter, I'd disagree with them.  "Having large breasts" is not a bad thing and should not be treated like it is.  I'm in no way suggesting that characters with large breasts should be avoided.  What I'm saying is that characters used solely for the purpose of fanservice is a bad thing and should be avoided.  Said fanservice characters often have large breasts, true, but it's not the large breasts that are the problem, it's the fact that they're used solely for fanservice.

 

What you social justice warriors fail to understand is that you're so supersensitive to these things that you can't even tell them apart from genuine problems anymore. You think a JRPG not having a strong black character on the roster is the same thing as Apartheid. You think some insecure girl who doesn't like how well-endowed the girls on Dead or Alive are is the same thing as the Salem Witch Trials. You know what gets hurt when there's not enough diversity in an IP? It's not your face from a brick being hurled at it for being different, it's PRIDE. These people get offended because their PRIDE got hurt and get other people, like you, to come along and defend it. It's not even YOUR pride!

Strawman much, dude?  No one's saying that lacking diversity is the same as slavery or that portraying a non-white character with a white actor is as bad as the Holocaust.  We're just not saying that they're okay, either.  Diversity is a good thing.  It should be encouraged.  Generally speaking, that means making an effort to get more non-white and non-male presence in media, since white and/or male people are already pretty well represented.  You can question over how much of an effort is appropriate -- and such discussions are good things! -- but saying "we're not talking about genocide here man, just calm down" isn't a discussion, it's an attempt to prevent discussion by trivializing the subject matter.

 

Let's take you off the liberal hivemind grid and reinforce that art, as a concept, cannot be held responsible for encouraging people to be sexist, racist, etc. any more than it can be held responsible for school and theater shootings among other violence. This precedent has been scientifically proven, thus rendering any concepts that real world values plummet as a result of big, awesome boobies null and void.

The hell it can't.  Art is one of a variety of things that make up culture, and culture absolutely has an effect on people's attitudes.  It's not as simple as "this TV show I watched had some racist attitudes, therefore I now believe that black people are subhuman scum", no, but that doesn't mean that it has no effect whatsoever.

 

He's... not wrong; NativeJovian seemed to give objectification an "out" as not inherently being sexist, but only if that objectification was for characters that weren't JUST window-dressing. Well, either you're okay with mindless sexual objectification or you're not... you need to decouple those issues. Is all pron sexist? Only some? In some ways, as Meteo points out, it's WORSE if a meaningful, well-written character is also inordinately voluptuous... it was a rather meaningless stipulation, in my mind...

I wasn't giving objectification an out as not inherently sexist -- it is, the word "objectification" literally means that you're reducing somebody to an object instead of a person, which is inherently bigoted.  I was saying that a female character having large breasts isn't inherently objectifying.  You can certainly objectify someone with large breasts -- and arguably people with large breasts are objectified more often -- but the problem is still the objectification, not the large breasts.

 

Bottom line: Is the work being informatively analyzed on its merits, or is it being opportunistically used for its (perceived) flaws?

This seems to presuppose that a work's cultural impact isn't something that can be considered to its benefit or detriment.  Movies like The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are films that are known for two things: being legitimately revolutionary works in the medium of motion pictures, and being racist as all hell.  Is it unfair to point out both of these things when discussing these movies?  Should we be required to ignore the racism and focus purely on the cinematography?  Is the content of the work somehow less relevant than the technical aspects of it?

 

I'll try once more: When, rhetorically, one makes the claim that X type of art will lead directly to Y type of behavior - with zealous certitude - one is putting more than an aesthetic pressure on artists, one is essentially holding them morally/ethically responsible for the actions of those consuming their art..

I don't think anyone's actually doing that.  Claiming that watching a movie or playing a game made you a bigot is patently absurd.  Insisting that you're not responsible for your own actions, but the artist behind the media you consumed is instead, is equally ridiculous.

 

People criticizing media on cultural grounds aren't saying that that media is responsible for bigotry.  They're saying that that media contributes to a bigoted culture, which doesn't absolve members of that culture of responsibility for their actions, but does contribute to the problem.

[djpretzel]

I wasn't giving objectification an out as not inherently sexist -- it is, the word "objectification" literally means that you're reducing somebody to an object instead of a person, which is inherently bigoted.

 

Wait... what? What the what? WHAT?

 

Why is objectification inherently bigoted? Classical art and sculpture, which during certain eras was much more egalitarian in its focus on both female & male forms, was inherently bigoted? Painting the human form is inherently bigoted? Pornography is inherently bigoted? Uhhhh.... why? Because you said so?

 

Major disconnect; don't see where you're coming from.. at all. Objectification can certainly be paired with bigotry, and potentially exacerbate it, but it is not inherently bigoted... appreciating the pure aesthetics of the human form has been a classical & modern tradition in art for centuries; try not to shit on it...

 

This seems to presuppose that a work's cultural impact isn't something that can be considered to its benefit or detriment.  Movies like The Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will are films that are known for two things: being legitimately revolutionary works in the medium of motion pictures, and being racist as all hell.  Is it unfair to point out both of these things when discussing these movies?  Should we be required to ignore the racism and focus purely on the cinematography?  Is the content of the work somehow less relevant than the technical aspects of it?

 

I think I covered this in detail; I'd request that you re-read what I wrote. I didn't say racism/sexism/etc. could not or should not be pointed out... If that's what you managed to take away from what I wrote, I'm telling you emphatically that you need to read it again. What I expressed was a difference between pointing those things out in the context of analyzing & criticizing the work - focusing on the work - as opposed to writing a three page rant on how racism is bad and wrong, citing a couple scenes, and ignoring the rest of the film. I'm not sure if you read what I wrote, because your response seems to be to an imagined argument: that I somehow stated that racism should never be pointed out when criticizing a work. The phrase "straw man" has been tossed around a lot on this thread, but c'mon... read what I wrote, please.

 

I don't think anyone's actually doing that.  Claiming that watching a movie or playing a game made you a bigot is patently absurd.  Insisting that you're not responsible for your own actions, but the artist behind the media you consumed is instead, is equally ridiculous.

 

People criticizing media on cultural grounds aren't saying that that media is responsible for bigotry.  They're saying that that media contributes to a bigoted culture, which doesn't absolve members of that culture of responsibility for their actions, but does contribute to the problem.

 

We are in complete agreement on the patent absurdity and ridiculousness of the claims, but we seem to disagree on whether anyone's actually making them... from http://feministfrequency.com/2014/06/16/women-as-background-decoration-tropes-vs-women/ we see:

 

In other words, viewing media that frames women as objects or sexual playthings, profoundly impacts how real life women are perceived and treated in the world around us. And that is all without even taking into account how video games allow for the more participatory form of objectification that we’ve been discussing in this episode.

 

Compounding the problem is the widespread belief that, despite all the evidence, exposure to media has no real world impact. While it may be comforting to think we all have a personal force field protecting us from outside influences, this is simply not the case. Scholars sometimes refer to this type of denial as the “third person effect”, which is the tendency for people to believe that they are personally immune to media’s effects even if others may be influenced or manipulated. Paradoxically and somewhat ironically, those who most strongly believe that media is just harmless entertainment are also the ones most likely to uncritically internalize harmful media messages.

 

She's CLEARLY invoking the shoddily-researched, inconclusive, uncited BOOGEYMAN of the corrupting power of art & media, here... see it for what it is, please???

 

Andy, you too...

 

Andy used the word "fearmongering" earlier... to me, THIS is fearmongering.

[Cash]

She's CLEARLY invoking the shoddily-researched, inconclusive, uncited BOOGEYMAN of the corrupting power of art & media, here... see it for what it is, please???

 

Andy, you too...

 

Andy used the word "fearmongering" earlier... to me, THIS is fearmongering.

 

She linked (on the page you linked) to quite a few studies that back up her arguments, that suggests to me that Anita didn't just get on camera and start ranting without any evidence. Maybe the research she linked isn't reliable, but that seems difficult to determine without actually reading those studies.

 

This wasn't "Anita Sarkeesian decrees", but rather research, which was cited, shows. She's not just making shit up. Believe or not, people have actually researched what she is talking about.

 

I'm not saying one way or another whether her argument is sound or not, only that research exits to support it. I am in agreement that art does not cause people to act a certain way. However, in my mind, the idea that art has zero impact on society is as equally absurd as saying video games cause people to carry out certain behavoirs.

 

By the way, I would say "profoundly impacts" and "caused by" are two different things. Claiming games and other media influence/reinforce already existing attitudes in a society is not the same thing as claiming that these media cause certain behavoirs.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Wait... what? What the what? WHAT?

 

Why is objectification inherently bigoted? Classical art and sculpture, which during certain eras was much more egalitarian in its focus on both female & male forms, was inherently bigoted? Painting the human form is inherently bigoted? Pornography is inherently bigoted? Uhhhh.... why? Because you said so?

 

Major disconnect; don't see where you're coming from.. at all. Objectification can certainly be paired with bigotry, and potentially exacerbate it, but it is not inherently bigoted... appreciating the pure aesthetics of the human form has been a classical & modern tradition in art for centuries; try not to shit on it...

 

Several of those societies considered the male form to be the epitome of human beauty. Hence, the great number of sculptures and paintings you're talking about. Now, the female form is considered, at least in western societies, to be the "standard" I guess you could say of human beauty. As an obvious result of this, you have so much display of it and that's apparently "sexist" and "objectifying", which I'm not disputing that it sometimes could be, but it's so insane now that people lose their shit over ads like this...though the company only received ONE complaint directly if you read up on it. They did receive bomb threats and feminists on Twitter proudly showing off their vandalism of the tube ads though. 

 

I can't help but wonder what the reaction would be if modern society ever switched back to holding the male form up as being most beautiful again. Like, what if everywhere you turned, statue of David style figures and poses were everywhere you looked. I'd bet my last dollar the groups that are outraged by our obsession with the female form would be outraged by women not being included enough. 

[Native Jovian]

Wait... what? What the what? WHAT?

 

Why is objectification inherently bigoted? Classical art and sculpture, which during certain eras was much more egalitarian in its focus on both female & male forms, was inherently bigoted? Painting the human form is inherently bigoted? Pornography is inherently bigoted? Uhhhh.... why? Because you said so?

 

Major disconnect; don't see where you're coming from.. at all. Objectification can certainly be paired with bigotry, and potentially exacerbate it, but it is not inherently bigoted... appreciating the pure aesthetics of the human form has been a classical & modern tradition in art for centuries; try not to shit on it...

You're taking the term "objectification" way too literally.  Painting a picture or carving a sculpture of someone is not objectification.  Yes, you're creating an object that depicts that person, but you're not reducing that person to an object.

 

What objectification means is that you're considering people as things that you can use to fulfill your desires (or threaten them) rather than as people with thoughts and feelings of their own.  If you treat women as "a thing I can have sex with" and nothing more, then you're objectifying women.  If you treat black people as "a thing that might rob me" and nothing more, then you're objectifying black people.  If you treat Muslims as "a thing that might target me with a terrorist attack" and nothing more, then you're objectifying Muslims.  All of that is bigoted.

 

Granted, not all objectification is inherently bigoted.  If you buy something from a store and treat the cashier as nothing but "a thing that allows me to complete my purchase", then you're objectifying the cashier.  (This is the phenomenon that allows people to treat service industry workers like complete shit and not feel bad about it.)  That sort of objectification isn't bigoted (because it's not based on their gender, race, religion, etc), but it's still a pretty dick move.  But that's completely outside the context of the conversation we've been having, so I didn't think it was worth making that distinction.  Maybe I was wrong.

 

In any case, defining objectification as depicting people in works of art is pretty laughably off base.

 

I think I covered this in detail; I'd request that you re-read what I wrote. I didn't say racism/sexism/etc. could not or should not be pointed out... If that's what you managed to take away from what I wrote, I'm telling you emphatically that you need to read it again. What I expressed was a difference between pointing those things out in the context of analyzing & criticizing the work - focusing on the work - as opposed to writing a three page rant on how racism is bad and wrong, citing a couple scenes, and ignoring the rest of the film. I'm not sure if you read what I wrote, because your response seems to be to an imagined argument: that I somehow stated that racism should never be pointed out when criticizing a work. The phrase "straw man" has been tossed around a lot on this thread, but c'mon... read what I wrote, please.

Going back and rereading the posts you've made over the last few pages of this thread, I see nothing to indicate that you welcome criticism of a cultural nature.  Maybe I'm misinterpreting you, or maybe what you wrote wasn't as clear as you think.  Either way, if we can agree that "hey, you know, this game is actually really bigoted in a lot of ways, which is to its detriment" is a valid criticism that one can make, then we don't actually have any disagreement on this point.

 

We are in complete agreement on the patent absurdity and ridiculousness of the claims, but we seem to disagree on whether anyone's actually making them... from http://feministfrequency.com/2014/06/16/women-as-background-decoration-tropes-vs-women/ we see:

 

 

She's CLEARLY invoking the shoddily-researched, inconclusive, uncited BOOGEYMAN of the corrupting power of art & media, here... see it for what it is, please???

 

Andy, you too...

 

Andy used the word "fearmongering" earlier... to me, THIS is fearmongering.

She's not saying "playing a sexist game will make you a sexist", she's saying that sexist media contributes to sexist culture, and sexist culture contributes to sexist attitudes.  I find it somewhat amusing that you include the paragraph addressed directly at the argument you're making (that people are not affected by the media they consume) but make no argument to refute it, you simply seem to take it on faith that it's ridiculous and dismiss it without actually analyzing it.

 

The mistake you're making is the difference between a direct, immediate causal effect and a contribution to a larger, more general attitude.  She's not saying "if you play sexist games, they will make you sexist".  She's saying "sexist games contribute to sexist culture, which contributes to sexist attitudes".  If you're a dedicated supporter of gender equality, then playing a sexist game isn't going to suddenly make you into a misogynist.  But if you're constantly bombarded from all sides with the message that "women are things that hang around so that The Hero can prove his manliness and have sex with them", you don't think that that's going to affect your attitudes, if only unconsciously?  How do you think people learn cultural attitudes?  From the culture around them.  And if that culture is telling them that women are sex objects, then, well, people are going to absorb that attitude.

 

Again: that doesn't mean that people mindlessly believe whatever they see on TV/in movies/from games/etc.  But it contributes to the problem.  The best way to stop it from doing that is to get those games/movies/TV shows/etc to stop sending that message.  That's what Sarkeesian is arguing for.

[Nabeel Ansari]

This thread is just a bunch of people yelling at each other and not reading each other's posts

[djpretzel]

In any case, defining objectification as depicting people in works of art is pretty laughably off base.

 

Then what the hell are you even talking about, or is Anita even talking about? How is she NOT talking about depicting people (females) in works of art (video games)?? Are you laughing at her as well, and at yourself, or did I miss something?

 

Plenty of problems with almost everything else you wrote, but tell me how that definition is "laughably off-base" when it's EXACTLY how we got here in the first place... let's just stick to this one, single, laughable point and see if you can explain yourself.

[Native Jovian]

She is talking about the depictions of women in art, but that's not what objectification means.  You realize that objectification is a well-defined term with a well-defined meaning in the context of the issues we're discussing, right?

 

Here's Wikipedia's take on it (and on sexual objectification specifically, which more what Sarkeesian is on about, usually).  The tldr version is... what I already said in my previous post.  A person is being objectified if they are treated as a thing instead of a person.  Treating women as a something to have sex with is objectification (and leads to the term "sex object", which also gets used a lot in these kinds of conversations).  You're ignoring their existence as a human being -- their emotions, their motivations, their fears, etc -- and focusing purely on the utility they provide you.  You don't care about them, you only care about what they provide you, whether it's something attractive to look at or something to have sex with or whatever.

 

I'm honestly surprised that you haven't heard it before.  It's not a particularly obscure or complex concept.

[Anorax]

I think it has less to do with the action of portraying women in games in and of itself (i.e. the inclusion of the female sex/female gender/whatever have you in video games and related media) and more to do with the implementation of portraying women in games.

 

If Female-Character X is portrayed as some fuck toy and little more than that in Game X, then it can potentially perpetuate sexist culture, although the effect would be more profound if almost all the female characters in Game X were portrayed similarly.  If it's just one character that is objectified in-game out of myriad characters (the rest of which are not objectified), then the problem potentially still exists, but to a much lesser degree? Sorry, I'm just adding in a quick thought; I'll need to sit down and do a little info digging later.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

This thread is just a bunch of people yelling at each other and not reading each other's posts

 

Such is any political argument on the internet.

[Native Jovian]

I think it has less to do with the action of portraying women in games in and of itself (i.e. the inclusion of the female sex/female gender/whatever have you in video games and related media) and more to do with the implementation of portraying women in games.

 

If Female-Character X is portrayed as some fuck toy and little more than that in Game X, then it can potentially perpetuate sexist culture, although the effect would be more profound if almost all the female characters in Game X were portrayed similarly.  If it's just one character that is objectified in-game out of myriad characters (the rest of which are not objectified), then the problem potentially still exists, but to a much lesser degree? Sorry, I'm just adding in a quick thought; I'll need to sit down and do a little info digging later.

That's pretty much exactly it.

[timaeus222]

By the way, I would say "profoundly impacts" and "caused by" are two different things. Claiming games and other media influence/reinforce already existing attitudes in a society is not the same thing as claiming that these media cause certain behavoirs.

 

Also this:

 

While it may be comforting to think we all have a personal force field protecting us from outside influences, this is simply not the case. Scholars sometimes refer to this type of denial as the “third person effect”, which is the tendency for people to believe that they are personally immune to media’s effects even if others may be influenced or manipulated. Paradoxically and somewhat ironically, those who most strongly believe that media is just harmless entertainment are also the ones most likely to uncritically internalize harmful media messages.

 

This strongly suggests that she thinks that a belief in a "personal [protective] force field" against the "media's effects" is futile denial, because it apparently "is simply not the case" that we have one, which coincides with her belief of the so-called profound impact. But not a "direct causal line".

 

---

 

And uh...

 

I wasn't giving objectification an out as not inherently sexist -- it is, the word "objectification" literally means that you're reducing somebody to an object instead of a person, which is inherently bigoted.

and then...

 

Granted, not all objectification is inherently bigoted.

oops? \'~'/

[djpretzel]

I think it has less to do with the action of portraying women in games in and of itself (i.e. the inclusion of the female sex/female gender/whatever have you in video games and related media) and more to do with the implementation of portraying women in games.

 

If Female-Character X is portrayed as some fuck toy and little more than that in Game X, then it can potentially perpetuate sexist culture, although the effect would be more profound if almost all the female characters in Game X were portrayed similarly.  If it's just one character that is objectified in-game out of myriad characters (the rest of which are not objectified), then the problem potentially still exists, but to a much lesser degree? Sorry, I'm just adding in a quick thought; I'll need to sit down and do a little info digging later.

 

Since NativeJovian said that the above was "pretty much exactly it," I just have to say.... what? Sexual objectification is sexual objectification... it's not rocket science, I *am* familiar with the concept, and the above does nothing to expound on the concept or explain why "depicting people in works of art" would be incompatible with the concept, or "laughably off-base"...

 

I give up; no offense, but it's not worth my time... talk in circles all you want.

[Native Jovian]

 

And uh...

 

and then...

oops? \'~'/

Maybe try reading the entire paragraph instead of cherrypicking quotes?

 

Granted, not all objectification is inherently bigoted.  If you buy something from a store and treat the cashier as nothing but "a thing that allows me to complete my purchase", then you're objectifying the cashier.  (This is the phenomenon that allows people to treat service industry workers like complete shit and not feel bad about it.)  That sort of objectification isn't bigoted (because it's not based on their gender, race, religion, etc), but it's still a pretty dick move.  But that's completely outside the context of the conversation we've been having, so I didn't think it was worth making that distinction.  Maybe I was wrong.

 

 

 

Since NativeJovian said that the above was "pretty much exactly it," I just have to say.... what? Sexual objectification is sexual objectification... it's not rocket science, I *am* familiar with the concept, and the above does nothing to expound on the concept or explain why "depicting people in works of art" would be incompatible with the concept, or "laughably off-base"...

 

I give up; no offense, but it's not worth my time. Talk in circles all you want.

 

"Depicting people in works of art" is completely tangential to objectification.  You can objectify people in real life, with art not entering into the equation at all.  You can depict people in works of art without it being objectifying.  You can also objectify people by depicting them a certain way in works of art.  The issue with objectification is how you treat people, not the medium with which you do so.

 

My response to Anorax was about the general point that people like Sarkeesian are trying to make, not the specific subject of objectification.

 

I said that objectifying people (with the context being objectifying people because of their race, gender, etc) was inherently bigoted.  Your response was to express shock that I thought depicting people in art was bigoted.  The implication is that you think that the definition of objectification is "depicting people in art".  This is wrong.  Completely, utterly, absolutely wrong.  That's not what objectification means.  That's why I called your criticism laughably off-base.  Was I wrong?  Is that not what you think objectification means?  I've tried to explain what it does mean -- the way people like Sarkeesian use the term.  Maybe I haven't done a great job, but I've at least tried to explain where I'm coming from.  If you don't understand what I've said, or disagree with my assessment, then that's one thing.  But I don't see how what we've been doing can be called "talking in circles".

[Anorax]

Well, shit. I was just making an off-the-cuff statement, with little to no super-deep-thinking involved.

 

DJP, if you would like me to clarify over PM, I'd be glad to have a discussion, but as it seems, things get off-base ridiculously fast, and we've all seen how easy it is to derail ourselves when everyone's shouting and only reading their own personal tl;dr version.

 

I think what I was trying to say is that, ultimately, if the objectification occurs less often within a game, it could potentially be problematic, but certainly less so than instances where it runs rampant throughout the art subject.

[timaeus222]

Maybe try reading the entire paragraph instead of cherrypicking quotes?

 

The first quote, since it shows you had defined the word objectification in a certain way, without further specification as to what kind at the time, it accidentally implied all objectification. The second quote honed in on what you meant NOT to say. That's all I'm saying. I'm not accusing you of contradicting yourself, but of not covering all your bases when you could have. But obviously I wasn't putting that down in a serious way (the "\'~'/").

[djpretzel]

I said that objectifying people (with the context being objectifying people because of their race, gender, etc) was inherently bigoted.  Your response was to express shock that I thought depicting people in art was bigoted.  The implication is that you think that the definition of objectification is "depicting people in art". 

 

That is absolutely NOT the implication; your logic is faulty. Read this quote of yours back to yourself; the implication was only that I think that depictions of people in art CAN be objectified, and that such objectification is not inherently bigoted. Deriving anything else from my statement was just blind extrapolation on your part.

 

Again, you know, maybe it's me... maybe I need to work on writing more clearly. I don't tend to have this problem too often, though, where someone repeatedly misinterprets and misunderstands my words. That's why I asked you to read them over again. I appreciate you explaining what you thought the implication was, but I don't even understand how you got from point A to point B... I wasn't defining the entire concept, nor did I claim to be. I look at this quote from you and I'm just kinda nonplussed as to how you connected those dots. I don't find this "implication" to be a reasonable interpretation of what I wrote. It seems we simply can't communicate, which probably means we shouldn't.