“This one has some fun female characters in it, which is nice for a change.
That sounds awful. But I guess…okay, it’s confusing. I’m READY to have fun reading female characters, but the opportunity isn’t provided as often as I’d like. Does that make sense?
Volume 2 will be the real test for me. It would seem that there’s a much larger story being built here, so it’s truly just the beginning. I’m down for volume two, and it’s my hope that we’ll see some more character stuff and plot. If you like fantasy lit, orc stuff, this is a green light.
So while we’re on the topic, I’ve recently declared myself a feminist. Partially because I like starting phrases with “As a feminist…”. It’s very fun, especially when the connection to feminism is obscure or nonexistent.
As a newly-minted feminist, am I up for using this review space to spout off about some recent feminist issues? You bet!
+Jennifer Lawrence’s Nudie Pics On The Internet+
People have been saying “If you don’t want naked pictures of yourself on the internet, don’t take them.” There’s a truth there, which is that if the pictures weren’t taken, it’d be impossible for the world to see them. However, that’s kind of like saying “If you don’t want your car stolen, don’t buy a car.” Having or creating a thing does open you up to having that thing destroyed or stolen, but having a thing doesn’t imply permission to someone else or make the crime less criminal. Somewhat imprudent use of technology is not the same as consent for someone to steal these pictures.
Not taking nudies is the best way to prevent their leak. But that’s also what the person who steals them says to justify doing so. That they’re punishing a person’s stupidity, and it’s something we as the public say to allow ourselves to look at them. It was dumb of her to take them, so this is the punishment. Which is, obviously, wrong. Because taking nude pictures of yourself is in no way wrong or a crime, so why are we considering ourselves righteous punishers?
I’d put it this way. How would you feel if someone released your entire internet search history from your whole life? Regardless of their motive, it’s out there, and once it’s out there you can’t get it back in the bag.
These pictures are the pie on the windowsill. Yes, it’s a tempting target for some, and you could do more to hide the pie. Why did pies need to cool on a sill anyway? Did people have less counter space and more sill space in classically-designed homes?
Anyway, the pictures were put in a place that’s tempting and they were an easy, desirable mark. But that doesn’t make their theft okay. If I leave a $100 bill on the fridge with a magnet and my roommate steals it, it’s still theft. I could have done more to prevent it, and you can do things wisely to safeguard your personal property. But you’re in no way complicit in the crime just because you didn’t go out of your way to prevent criminal acts.
The closest thing I could conceive of for an argument in favor of picture theft is the idea of the “attractive nuisance”, which is what I hope to be called sometime.
An attractive nuisance. An example is setting a trampoline in your front yard, some uninvited neighborhood kid falls off it and gets hurt, and you still can be liable for that. An unenclosed swimming pool is the same thing. The idea of an attractive nuisance law is that it protects a child who might find the abandoned car in your yard a fun thing to play on and be unable to understand the danger it presents.
So were the pictures okay to steal based on the attractive nuisance idea? Were they a combination of valuable or enticing enough while at the same time too-easily accessible?
No.
Three reasons:
1. The theft was not committed by a child, I assume. This is a person who should have at least some impulse control or an inkling of the risk involved.
2. The pictures were not “unenclosed.” There was a hacking situation involved in getting to them, there were digital fences in place.
3. The case was not one where someone just happened on the pictures. Even if it were, let’s say the person received the pictures by no action of their own in an email straight from Jennifer Lawrence, there’s STILL no justification for their distribution.
Overall, I can’t even see why there’s a debate on whether or not it’s okay to click on them. Well, yes I can. Because people click on them anyway and then immediately regret it because the payoff isn’t worth the cost of being part of a system that makes it worthwhile for someone to steal another person’s personal property. So the only option is to find a way to retroactively justify the click.
You know what’s better than trying to revise history so that the bad thing you did is justified? Don’t do the bad thing in the first place.
+Catcalling+
There was recently an article on Huffington Post where women held up pieces of paper displaying things that men called out to them on the streets. The weirdest was something like “I’d like to take you to PF Chang’s and then PF Your Chang.” Which SOUNDS like an awful thing to say and is, but takes the cake as far as bizarre catcalls. What’s PF’ing? What’s a Chang? I know I’m not hip. But these aren’t words, right? I can’t get sexy by telling someone I’m going to TGI their Friday, which at least sounds sort of like a thing, although I suspect it involves boneless wings more than it does boning down.
Then there was a reaction article where a woman said she takes catcalls as a compliment. Which, I guess, is a matter of perspective.
The problem is, if you’re a catcaller, there’s no way to distinguish between someone who wants to be catcalled and someone who doesn’t. So you just can’t do it and never should have.
But for me, the HuffPo article…well, it was pretty ineffective. Here’s the big problem: The article is titled “These Are Things That Men Say To Women On The Street.”
Allow me to relate a brief and true incident from my own life:
Incident: Urine is thrown in my face as I’m walking down the street with a friend one night. The assailants were unknown males, completely unprovoked.
Okay, now when I tell that story, it’s a bit misleading to say “Men Are Throwing Urine In People’s Faces”. I would say, “Criminals Threw Urine In My Face.”
If the article were titled “These Are Things That Men SAID To Women On The Street” it would be honest. Because seriously, how many times has someone asked to “Ruby” your “Tuesday”?
But that’s Huffington Post and internet news. They make the story more outrageous because then we click on it. And when we click on it, they get money. So rather than tell a story, journalism is driven by what gets the most clicks. Which means it isn’t journalism anymore, it’s click-baiting.
I have to say, I don’t encourage “articles” like this. I think it weakens the overall point and argument about how dumb catcalling is by taking something inflammatory and wrong and making it distorting it to make the story more exciting. Some would argue that what I’m pushing for is a hiding of the truth, but that’s just not true.
Chuck Klosterman, in an interview with Rolling Stone, pointed out a flaw with today’s journalism. He said that we have this idea that journalism should be unbiased, that journalists should be these newsbots, and so we end up arguing back and forth about who is and isn’t biased when the reality is that EVERYONE is biased. His stance is that journalism is created by humans and is inherently biased, and the way to address that issue is to not hide or subvert your bias, but to be upfront about it. If you explain to your readers where you’re coming from and what your bias is, they can be on the lookout for it too.
If HuffPo was honest about its bias, it’s biased towards whatever gets them attention. In this case, they decided to get attention by being outrageous and using atypical examples of a situation where the typical examples are bad and better illustrate the issue of catcalling. But their bias is towards clicks, so they needed examples that got them clicks, not examples that further a discussion or make a good point about something, and they titled the article in such a way that it was designed to fuel the “not all men” discussion and more clicks rather than do anything about catcalling.
This is probably an overanalyzation, but the article ends with the phrase “this is all we have to say in response” and the women tear their written-down catcalls to pieces. As if the catcalls never existed and they’ve now triumphed over them. Which is bullshit power posing.
I want to know what I, as a man, can do to help. I’m not going to haul off and punch a stranger for catcalling you because that’s unreasonable. But if my friend catcalled someone, I would admonish him. And honestly, I’m not friends with people who do shit like that in the first place.
I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think that a news outlet should do better than letting me know I could provide a notebook and a pencil so the catcall could be symbolically ripped.
+Sexism In Video Games+
Video Games are pretty sexist. Overall? I’m prepared to admit that. I mean, I don’t design them, so it’s easy for me to just say that. I don’t think it’s surprising. It’s been a traditionally male pastime for quite a while, and a lot of boys who grew up playing games for boys got interested in it and design games for the boys they were. It’s what they know.
It doesn’t mean it’s right, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t ladies who love video games. It’s just a pretty reasonable A-to-B of how it got this way.
Anita Sarkeesian is at the center of all this currently. She apparently moved out of her home due to some threats that were made on her.
There are a lot of intelligent arguments for and against the things Sarkeesian says in her YouTube videos. I am not prepared to make one of those. I’m just prepared to say that she’s talking about an entertainment medium using an entertainment medium, and she’s not very entertaining. She’s like a textbook. We’ve seen books that are entertaining and informative, and books are powerful tools for culture criticism, but a textbook, while it has important, relevant, and profound things to say, is sometimes too boring to even get through. Which is too bad, because it’s precisely the people who probably need to hear some of Sarkeesian’s ideas that will never hear them due to the fact that the information is dry and lengthy.
Now let me back up for a second. Does that in any way justify threatening her life? Fuck no.
The question becomes, How does gamer culture change? Because gamer culture wants to change, or at least wants GAMES to change. They want games to be serious art, but that means you can’t respond to a Sarkeesian by saying, Hey, why are you critiquing something that’s just fun?
For starters, I think this will happen naturally. It’s slow, and it sucks, but it’s true.
This is how I feel about politics too. It’s hard to understand why laws about something like gay marriage are so hotly debated and contested until you look up the average age of a U.S. Senator. Any guesses? 63. Not only that, but less than 10% is under age 40. Now, it’s not the age that really matters. It’s the idea of a generation long past its prime being in the power position and expressing the attitudes of a time that’s over.
Today’s kids are growing up in a different culture, and I genuinely think this will change gaming for the better. When I was a kid, we played a game called “Smear the Queer”, and this was a name that caused no alarm amongst recess monitors. That’s not as true today as it once was. As today’s kids become tomorrow’s game designers, I’m hopeful they’ll be open-minded.
Waiting isn’t enough, obviously. So what can we do today?
Look, my advice is about as valuable as that of the oldest senator, who celebrates breaking his own old-age government employee record every year by wiping his incontinent ass with pro-choice literature(probably. Probably this happens). But if you’re asking me, I think the best thing you can do is go after players who choose to make the gaming environment unfriendly. If you end up in a Modern Warfare match and a player is calling everyone “faggots,” feel free to let that player know you’re coming after him, and I’d encourage you to try and rally other players as well. I’d encourage you to pursue this player in-game and to be willing to cost yourself achievements or resources in-game to just make the round a little worse for this player. Maybe you won’t be effective, but maybe if this person is punished in a language he understands, if he’s punished in-game, maybe that person will reconsider this behavior.
I suppose you could do other stuff too, but honestly, you can write the most beautiful and deep blog post that really expresses the issues, but the kind of person who calls you “faggot” in an online MW match isn’t going to read it.
+Who Is And Is Not A Feminist?+
This is an issue close to my own heart. I have a problem with the term feminist. I’m told a lot of things about the feminist word. What a feminist is and isn’t.
The problem, as I see it, is that feminism is a good idea. Equal rights for everybody? Seems reasonable.
A feminist, unfortunately, is a person. Each person brings his or her own baggage to a cause and a word, and then things get all screwed up. An idea is pure, but a person is not.
I look at some people who call themselves feminists, and I don’t disagree that they are feminists, but I feel like, “I’m nothing like this person, and we have some strong fundamental disagreements.”
So for me, I guess rather than calling myself a feminist, I’ll have to say that I’m a believer in feminism. The term is just a bit confusing for me. It’s like a group tagging project. Is this something that only happens in library school? Where you take a thing and then create a longterm tag cloud as a group? And what you see, if the object tagged is a picture of a vase, is a lot of the same sorts of logical tags, and a lot of tags that, while true, are not really useful for the purposes of tagging this item, and then you’ve got your tags that just make no goddamn sense whatsoever.
Feminist is the same thing. It’s a word that’s been tagged so many times, so many ways, and by so many people that it kind of means everything, which means it kind of means nothing.
“As a former feminist who is still a believer in feminism” is still a pretty good phrase to start a statement that ends with “I think we should eat Wendy’s.””