MOD NOTE: Please note the following part of the forum rules:
The initial OP posted below covers it well enough: the premise of this thread is that men's issues exist. Don't bother posting if you don't believe there is such a thing.
Here's hoping this isn't considered too redundant. I've noticed that our existing threads about sexism tend to get bogged down in Oppression Olympics or else wildly derailed, so I thought I'd make a thread specifically to talk about discrimination issues that disproportionately affect men.
No Oppression Olympics here, okay? No saying "But that's not important because women suffer X which is worse!" And no discussing these issues purely in terms of how much better women have it. Okay? If the discussion cannot meaningfully proceed without making a comparison to male and female treatment, that's fine, but on the whole I want this thread to be about how men are harmed by society and how we can fix it. Issues like:
- The male-only draft (in countries that have one)
- Circumcision
- Cavalier attitudes toward men's pain and sickness, AKA "Walk it off!"
- The Success Myth, which defines a man's desirability by his material success. Also The Myth of Men Not Being Hot, which denies that men can be sexually attractive as male beings.
- Sexual abuse of men.
- Family law.
- General attitudes that men are dangerous or untrustworthy.
I could go on making the list, but I think you get the idea.
Despite what you might have heard about feminists not caring about men, it's not true. I care about men. Patriarchy sucks for them as much as it sucks for women, in a lot of ways. So I'm putting my keyboard where my mouth is and making a thread for us to all care about men.
Also? If you're male and think of something as a men's issue, by golly that makes it a men's issue fit for inclusion in this thread. I might disagree with you as to the solution, but as a woman I'm not going to tell you you have no right to be concerned about it. No "womansplaining" here.
Edited by nombretomado on Dec 15th 2019 at 5:19:34 AM
@Cardi B: Beau of the Fifth Column is a youtube channel that talks about sexism and toxic masculinity a lot, in very concrete and common-sense ways, with the perspective of someone who is intimately familiar with the ways of thinking common in alleged "Trump Country" areas of the US, and is hilariously effective at methodically tearing it apart.
Recently, here's his reaction to men comparing Cardi B's actions with those of Bill Cosby.
He begins by mockingly turning that on its head by treating the witnesses against Cardi B in the same way that alleged rape victims are treated: with petty suspicion, mistrust, victim blaming, all the tropes lined up - all the more to highlight how sick those lines of argument are to begin with. He points out to these men that such a comparison signals to the women around them that, to them, women are property, something to be stolen, rather than persons, whose will must be respected for its own sake. That this will have consequences on those women's sense of well-being as well as on how they think of the men in question and their relationship with them.
Bringer of Plagues
Anita Sarkeesian recently posted this
on her twitter.
It seems that her harrasment is finally but slowly dying, with more people actually watching her videos. I consider the whole "controversy" regarding Anita Sarkeesian" to be one of the most overblown and stupid things, that happened in the internet. Literally bunch of insecure assholes whining about "genocide of males" and stuff, that Anita never even implied.
Edited by VeryVileVillian on Apr 2nd 2019 at 11:34:19 AM
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I'm kinda disturbed from twitter thread that some people admit they seriously thought she was advocating male genocide O_o; Da fuq.
My love, has dressed me like a clown
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The worst thing is I hated her videos too growing up (though I never harassed her or other feminists), but looking at them now they are literally the most inoffensive you could be while still making the point about how messed up female representation could be.
It makes it obvious in retrospect that the problem was just my own mindset and that I would have never accepted the points being made back then, no matter how they were phrased.
I just hope that it really is dying down and eventually she and other people who have been harassed/threatened can heal and find some peace of mind.
For those of us who can't see Twitter, what does "this" entail?
My love, has dressed me like a clown
But it doesn't change how fucking horrible it all was and in many ways still is.
Stop accepting that this is just the way the internet is & start demanding better.
To be fair, it doesn't seem to imply that it's dying down necessarily so much as some people have been able to move past their petty hate for her and actually engage with her ideas properly. Those same people could have easily been replaced by new harassers doing the same thing now.
Lindsay Ellis replied to her initial tweet and said that broadly it's great if people realize they fucked up and want to help undo that damage, but that she doesn't ever want to hear ex-harassers reaching out to her because she can't forgive them, and that even if many of those people didn't harass Sarkeesian or other feminists by emailing them or whatever, they were probably still part of toxic communities that spread bile and misinformation. I find it hard to blame her; I read an article about her "rise" as a content creator and it mentioned that the harassment she receives from misogynists, neo-nazis and the like has had a horrible effect on her. "There was a lot drinking and crying".
Edited by Draghinazzo on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:06:01 AM
Thanks man.
Would that it were so simple.
The worst that can be said about Sarkeesian's videos is that she kludges the facts surrounding references to specific games and that her overall performance is boring. I watched the entire series expecting a trainwreck and was so thoroughly bored by the videos — and in agreement with some of her basic points — that I was genuinely wondering if I was watching the right stuff. The controversy was a complete mismatch vis-a-vis her content.
My love, has dressed me like a clown
That's a common opinion, actually. At worst, most of the people I've seen have just said her videos are kinda dull, not that anything she says is actually wrong.
Yeah, it was a bit "seen this before" and "you're not using the best examples".
Like, the examples given for the Damsel in Distress video were hardly current. IIRC they were Mario and Double Dragon Neon, i.e. a Japanese game from the 80s, and a Western-made faithful reboot of a Japanese game from the 80s. Her criticisms of the trope are all on-point, but I'm sure she could have found better, more current examples.
A procrastination in of itself
Yeah my understanding has always been that’s she’s just one of many rather poor video game journalists who doesn’t actually understand games, both the hype and hatred of her seemed to have nothing to do with her actual work. The hatred was just misogynists loosing their shit at a women for daring to poorly criticise games, while the reaction to that was just the media trying to protect one of their own after an onslaught of hatred and bigotry.
Edited by Silasw on Apr 2nd 2019 at 1:20:59 PM
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Yeah, I definitely agree there was nothing particularly wrong about her videos. Like, I remember one of my reactions being "You are making it sound like that Hitman, Dishonored and Deux Ex are games about killing women/prostitutes when they are just some of the random NP Cs in the game" even though I got the point of videos and didn't really disagree with them, the examples she used felt kinda "off" which felt disappointing to me. I do remember feeling horrified she was getting harassed over the videos.
Either way, Lindsay Ellis' and Leon Thomas' tweets made me think about apologies and such a lot. Like I still can't say if I would want to have people who bullied by at school apologize to me or not if I somehow met them again. Like, if someone grows up and realizes they were asshole (though if you ask me, they shouldn't have been an asshole in first place :P), people ARE taught that they should apologize to their misdeeds, but... Yeah, I feel mixed as well
Edited by SpookyMask on Apr 2nd 2019 at 4:30:22 PM
TIL Aromantics had a flag too
There's some merit to discussing older classic examples of gaming since they were sort of precursors for what would follow them. Much like how there's merit to discussing the tropes of old movies from decades ago and how they continue to influence the media of today and tomorrow.
And there's merit to the notion that the Hitman games at least are kind of sexist, especially given the increase in fanservice in the newer games. Seriously, why did Diana have a shower scene in Absolution?
Edited by M84 on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:31:06 PM
My love, has dressed me like a clown
Ellis spoke on that point specifically by saying that an apology is more appropriate if you actually knew the person. For the most part these people are total strangers to them.
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^Hmm, that is true. If I think it that way, I don't really want random internet assholes to just come to apologize to me over something I don't even want to remember :p
^^Hey, I do agree on that. Even on Dishonored has the "non lethal option to take care of female assassination target is to help her stalker kidnap her" which is just freaky. What I was disappointed by was the specific examples she used (e.g. being able to kill women in games where you are able to kill every random civilian regardless of gender) since she had habit of framing the examples in manner that felt "this is what you do in this game" kind of generalization.
Edited by SpookyMask on Apr 2nd 2019 at 4:34:50 PM
My love, has dressed me like a clown
That's more or less what someone said word for word in the comment chain. "It's great that people can change, but I'm not interested in reliving my pain just so you can have a redemption arc."
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^Wasn't that Leon Thomas? I think he said something similar at least(it started with something like asking Jesus for forgiveness instead)
My love, has dressed me like a clown
Yeah, it was him.
TIL Aromantics had a flag too
There's one character from Common Sense Of A Dukes Daughter, Dorsen, who goes through Character Development from Never My Fault to My God, What Have I Done? to Must Make Amends to The Atoner. Basically, he goes from not acknowledging he wronged the protagonist to realizing his wrongdoing and deciding to apologize to her to realizing that he doesn't have the right to force his guilt upon her. So he goes on a journey of self-improvement instead.
Edited by M84 on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:38:08 PM
x7 Oh, I'm not saying never discuss older games. But both examples she used came from essentially the same place and time and the trope is still present in later games of those two franchises because it's almost a legacy mechanic at that point.
She could have used Devil May Cry 4 as a more recent example, Asura's Wrath, Fire Emblem Awakening, Liara's intro in Mass Effect and so on, to give a better cross-section of examples to back up her case.
TIL Aromantics had a flag too
Oh boy, if she had called out the sexism in a Devil May Cry game, she'd have gotten so many more death threats. The DMC fanbase can be kind of batshit. And I say this as a DMC fan.
Edited by M84 on Apr 2nd 2019 at 9:42:35 PM
Maaaaaaybe. But I think a lot of the DMC fanbase would agree with the notion that Kyrie is a bland non-character who exists only for Nero to rescue. But you're right in that a bunch would have taken offense at someone calling their demon-slaying game sexist.
And 5 is arguably more so.
TIL Aromantics had a flag too
Yeah, reducing the two main Action Girls in the series to Distressed Damsels and Fanservice in that game...not the best idea.
I mean, they were always kinda fanservice. And 4 far more blatant on that front. But seriously, making them completely impotent damsels to be rescued who accomplish nothing after getting Worfed in the prologue is one of the main complaints I have with that game. And I don't have many complaints about that game.
Edited by GoldenKaos on Apr 2nd 2019 at 2:55:40 PM
In the mind of most, it just doesn't exist.
Hence why a underage student being raped being raped by a female teacher is considered "lucky".