Why ‘Think of the Problems in Africa’ is not always the best phrase for an argument.

The women kidnapped by Boko Haram

First of all, let me stress that I am not encouraging people to ignore problems in Africa – nor the rest of the third world for that matter. I have chosen such a phrase because I’ve been hearing it a lot in recent debates, such as the shambles that was the recent general election.

This is a post about certain phrases which people will use to destroy entire arguments under the illusion that they carry substance and gives them the moral high ground. I want to debunk these phrase and explain why the arguments my peer group and I tend to have are not always suitable for them.

To begin with the ilk of the entitled phrase, this came up earlier on today when I was reading comments relating to Bahar Mustafa (pictured). The Diversity Officer at Goldsmith’s University who called for an anti-racism march which excluded white people and has now used the hashtag #KillAllWhiteMen.

The comments I was reading were anti-feminist and branded feminism in this country as pathetic because the problems we campaign to change are nothing like those faced in Africa and the middle east, etc.

I’ll just add here that no true feminist would call for the killing of men because this is another classic example of some people using social media to confuse the discourse of gender equality with misandry – the hatred of men. I for one think this woman is not in the slightest bit feminist and think her comments about ethnic minorities not being racist are completely ludicrous and think she should be fired from her position because she’s fanning the flames that will burn into another social media farce akin to last year’s pile of crap that was GamerGate. (Here’s what I made of that if you’re interested).

I’ll defend feminism again and say to anyone who thinks we are like Mustafa, clearly needs to read about the campaign for gender equality in much more detail. If feminism is all about hating and killing men, how am I a white, heterosexual cis-male still alive and well after being taught about it by some of the finest feminist scholars of European and International Relations?

Anyway, back to the topic of this phrase.

While I appreciate, thoroughly, someone’s concern for the welfare of people abroad, you are not helping the argument because you are giving off the idea that problems we have at home should be something we ignore, and that they will all go away without direct action or social progression. I do agree that a lot of problems faced in nations like mine are not as big and extreme as those in Africa, they are still problems and need to be addressed. Regardless of mass and the social/economical differences of nations, our problems are still here and can fluctuate into even bigger concerns without us knowing it.

Therefore calling all activists in the UK, USA and the first world idiots who should shut up and do something else is plain ludicrous. Just because we are in a richer society where we are slowly progressing to a better way of life, does not excuse us from being concerned about the things that can harm and pose a threat.

Please think about what you are about to say before you say it.

“I’m Rather Offended By That.”

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard this excellent quote from Stephen Fry – someone whom I admire thoroughly as an entertainer and social justice activist.

Now one thing people do not seem to remember, is that Fry said this in a debate with Christopher Hitchens and Anne Widdicome in a debate about the Catholic Church’s attitude to homosexuality.

What he was attacking was homophobia and the tendency for people who read the Daily Mail and the like to use such a phrase to kill arguments of change. I do agree that such a phrase does not give you the moral high ground – but I do believe that people should have the right to be offended.

I’ve posted here about how I find jokes about rape and domestic violence offensive so I know what offends me. But when you are offended – you need substance.

I will defend people’s freedoms to be offended and use this phrase in the context of arguments, but I must urge you to have substance to back up why you are offended. Just using such a phrase to end someone else’s argument is pathetic because it shows how little an argument you have built up over time.

‘Offended’ is another tool to use in an argument for or against something and it needs the substance to make it work. I feel people got the wrong end of the stick with Stephen’s comment on this phrase and have used it to create a world of ‘everything goes’ where you cannot criticise things. The kind of people I’m talking about here are the likes of Thunderf00t and The Amazing Atheist, etc.

“Have you got kids?”

And now for the worst phrase I think anyone can use to destroy an argument.

Parents seem to think that because they have added to the population, then they are somewhat superior to others when it comes to discussing ideas of change.

Safe sex and sexual liberation and censorship tend to be the places this phrase crops up most often. It was pretty much the rhetoric behind the formation of the Parents Music Resource Centre and the trial of Judas Priest in 1990. Just because Tipper Gore and her lackeys had children somehow gave them the right to use them as weapons to stop people from having fun or making a difference to world.

What angers me the most about people who use such a phrase like this, is they do not think for a second about how their offspring must feel. How do you know your kids even agree with you for that matter? And you are stooping to the lowest of the low because you’re pretty much using your kids as a weapon to win a fight they - more than likely – have nothing to do with.

If you have children, I understand that you’d be concerned because they are of upmost importance to you – as was I to my parents. But how can you bring yourself to use your kids as a weapon when you don’t like an argument being made and you cannot think of a reasonable explanation for why you think it’s a bad idea.

Strangely, the 14 word slogan used by a lot of white power groups concerns the protection of children.

Apparently anyone who isn’t white just wants to kill your babies.

So this once again is Dimmu Wulfenhume saying: think before you speak.

My Thoughts On GamerGate, Christina Moff Sommers & Anita Sarkeesian

I hate to do this, but I’m going to have to put a trigger warning here because this post deals with the infamous Anita Sarkeesian, and I am going to be defending her work on several points. So if you’re offended by what I have to say about the Tropes vs Women videos I suggest you get out of here now. 

With that aside lets get down to business.

I’ve been reading up a lot on the GamerGate scandal which is crawling across the internet. As a person with many feminist opinions on the world and popular culture, I’m getting sick and tired of hearing how many threats are sent to women online just because they spoke their minds on things. 

And furthermore, I am a gamer.  I love PC games in particular and have played hundreds of games in the 24 years I’ve been on this planet.

I also hang out with many video game fans, with whom I do not share the same opinions, but are always up for a debate. And yesterday, one of my friends liked this video posted by conservative feminist (two words I don’t think belong in the same sentence) Christina Hoff Sommers.  I gave the video a watch and came away liking several points raised, but have to say I disagree with Sommers’s attack on Sarkeesian and her ilk. 

Here’s the video:

Now what’s wrong with that argument?

1.      ‘Cherry picking’ in other words, they are finding the flaws and pointing out what is wrong with the games. No games are perfect, but these critics are doing what most journalists would do when they review pieces of art. People criticise sexist, racist, homophobic connotations in film, TV and Books every day – the same way as the critics here are talking about the games. And that doesn’t automatically mean the game falls into those categories, it’s always open to commentary.

2.      By passing them all off as ‘hipsters with culture degrees’ really says a lot about you ‘Sommers’. If you’re just going by someone’s appearance then that really shows how deep and researched your findings are. Plus, are you damning cultural studies? Are you saying social sciences like African American Studies or Native American Studies are irrelevant or narrow? Also, not everyone here has a ‘cultures degree’, all you have to do is go to Sarkeesian’s website and see she has a masters degree in Social and Political Thought. (I’ll jump in here as well and mention that I have a degree in political sciences which majored in Gender Studies and Political theory in my final year – and I listen to tons of Heavy Metal and Independent Rock music and have a beard – does that make me a hipster when I criticise you Sommers?)

3.      ‘They all want the male gamer DEAD!?’ Wow Christine. Words do almost fail me here. Let me just compare the criticisms of gaming tropes to the ongoing threats of rape, murder and torture; which even led to someone creating a game where you could beat Sarkeesian up. Nowhere in any of the videos and blog posts do Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn wish death upon anyone. And let me remind you Sommers, that feminism is about gender equality – how do you gain that when you wish hate and death against a particular part of the gender spectrum? Plus, the video does not even mention, that 41% of the US gaming community alone is now female. You’re pretty much saying, ‘gaming belongs to men, it always has and it always should’. Yet you say it’s becoming more inclusive. The latter point of your contradiction there pretty much gives all the more reason to bring feminism to the gaming world. And as you say, the idea of a gamer being a teenage boy in his basement is gone, therefore people of all walks of life now take part in gaming and everything that comes with it. An ideology that brings equal recognition and respect for all now seems all the more relevant – which is what these critics are trying to bring to us. But frankly Sommers, you are a conservative masquerading as a feminist who is populating the political myth that all feminism is anti-men. I would have thought someone of your calibre would know of the many feminist schools of thought and how they differ on topics, the same way as other ideologies, ie: Anarchism, Socialism, Conservatism, Liberalism, etc.

4.      And finally, yes there have been many well planned and thought provoking criticisms of Sarkeesian et al. but dismissing the jaw dropping number of rape threats, which recently reached a level where Sarkeesian was forced out of her home, as natural behaviour; I cannot fathom how you can call yourself a ‘philosopher’. What you’re saying there can easily amount to ‘victim blaming’ and you are enforcing a bigoted and infantile image of the gaming community which does not fit everyone who has picked up a controller in their life. Hell, even the friend who liked this video is no troll – I even recall him telling me how playing Call of Duty online was such a bad experience because of the number of trolls who only use the game as a forum for exchanging insults. What these gender critics are offering are not demonising diatribes against the games covered in their videos/posts etc. but they represent  a school of thought which should be employed to discuss video gaming. As you said Sommers, video games are now a part of society and should be treated as equally as film, TV and literature. I bet you in the fairly near future, you will have video game narratives analysed from as many schools of thought you find in an English Literature degree course.

5.      And finally, yes Sommers I do agree with you that games do not make people more misogynistic, homophobic or racist. I’ve been defending video games for the best part of my life and the videos and posts covered here will not stop me from gaming. But I think it is unfair to say that gender critics of gaming are expressing the same opinions as your conservative parental advisory comrades have done in the past. What is being covered in the videos are tropes of popular culture. Clichés which make stories boring. Have you even noted that the majority of the games covered by Sarkeesian follow a linear narrative akin to a film, TV show, etc. Video gaming is best summed up as ‘interactive storytelling’, though not all kinds of games are being covered in these videos. I can safely say, that in a lot of games you can pick how the narrative pans out, but because of the logistics of a game, your pathways are limited. This might be why a lot of the games I play fall into the RTS genre, because you can tell as many stories as you like using as much of your imagination because you aren’t always faced with an immediate cast of characters – characters who populate said tropes. Storytelling being bad is what I think the feminist frequency series is talking about more than anything.

 Is there any middle-ground in this GamerGate malarkey?

 While I do like the debate and concern raised by Sarkeesian, I don’t see her as the face of 21^stcentury feminism, nor of feminism on the internet.

I’ve been tracking down as many feminist criticisms of her work and I think the best place to go for this is The Learned Fangirl. It’s a pop culture and video games blog run by Kristin Bezio, a feminist video gamer and academic, who by a long shot offers the best criticisms of the Tropes vs. Women videos. If you want to go somewhere that discusses all this without being trolled by MRAs then try The Learned Fangirl.

One thing I really hate about Sarkeesian’s videos is their tendency to act like a ‘laundry list’ that can sometimes become monotonous in saying ‘this game is bad, this character is awful, etc.’, and I do doubt a lot of the sources used in researching the videos. 

  

How bad is GamerGate proving for Video Game journalism?

What worries me the most about these ‘gamers’ attacking video game critics, is that it will turn away young and enthusiastic people from entering the world of video game journalism – especially young women. 

From my experiences on YouTube, it now appears that the favoured medium of reviewing a game is a Let’s Play video. This is good and I see it as another step on the road to interaction between media and fans which could create a people’s run community that recommends new material. But, if you’re constantly under attack from infantile anti-equality slacktivists who don’t like change, then I’m very angry if this creates a feeling of dread in young online journalists who feel anxious to publish their opinions on a game.

And how do we know such feelings will cross over from the video game world into other worlds of online journalism, like music. As a music journalist, I’ll be very very pissed off if what I’ve just suggested comes into the world of Metal or Punk or any kind of music for that matter.

GamerGate is reinforcing an idea that gamers are whiny little snot-noses with nothing better to do than be as obnoxious as possible. And I will add that I sometimes get that impression from a few of Sarkeesian’s videos. But GamerGate is, above all, the prime example of why we need gender equality on the internet and in the gaming world. And Sommers, a self proclaimed ‘philosopher’ just had to step in the bullshit and feed the trolls with the impression that they are smart.

So why do I watch Sarkeesian’s videos?

Above all other things, I watch the Feminist Frequency videos because they are tackling clichés which amount to bad storytelling. 

I view myself as a learned man and would like to be seen as a representative of his age. And that age is one where tropes such as the Damsel in Distress, The Manic Dream Pixie Girl, The Straw Feminist, Women in Refrigerators and GratuitousViolence and Sex masquerading as satire; are not commonplace.

I feel Sarkeesian is that critic we needed to spark the debate on the portrayal of women in popular culture. And whether or not you agree with her, she has got us all talking about video games in a way that not all of us did before the videos were made.

And I’ll leave it here saying: if you disagree with her on every level, that’s fine. Please make your argument known and use as much information you can to back it up. But resorting to threats of violence, rape, torture, bombing or plain rudeness is completely and utterly bogus. I don’t want the gaming world seen as evil and childish and I bet you don’t either. That is why online harassment is not OK in the slightest and it will never have my support.