| RolStoppable said: There's only your first paragraph I have something to say on, because the rest I agree with. ResetEra has a thread where intolerant users are allowed to have an echo chamber and are able to call for bans of users in other threads for commonly nothing more than having a less extreme view on any given topic that has something to do with the portrayal of female characters in video games. These women and men aren't fighting for the rights of real people, but to uphold their entitlement that every game developer should cater to their interests as well as everyone else being supposed to endorse these same views. That's why I am comparing it to incels, because they too have extreme views where anything less than theirs is considered an offense and must be slammed down and clamped down. The point is that the spectrum is so broad that condemning these ResetEra folks isn't mutually exclusive with condemning sexual harassment and cover ups/prohibiting to discuss said topic. The majority of people, be it online or offline, are not on either one of the extreme sides of the spectrum, so for the majority it's highly problematic when any place has extremists dictate what can or cannot be discussed, and how it has to be discussed in case it's not entirely taboo. Both ResetEra and NeoGAF are infested with trash people, but said trash is composed of the opposite sides of the spectrum. Or in other words, if anyone says that ResetEra has trash people in reference to political views, that's not an immediate reason to conclude that said person supports the views of the other side of the spectrum. Being against the more extreme forms of feminism doesn't mean that one condones sexual harassment of women, just like being against far-right nutjobs doesn't mean that one is in favor of large scale or even limitless immigration, to name a couple of examples. |
Glad we're largely in agreement! As to the other stuff...
First of all, the comparison of forum bans to a movement that commonly advocates things like "state girlfriend programs" and has on a number of occasions conducted mass shootings and car attacks is still an absolutely terrible one, but I'll forgive it. 
That in the first place.
As to my feelings about addressing female representation in this medium, I'm of two minds on the subject:
On the one hand, I think it does matter. Before Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series came out, I'd largely lost interest in gaming and wasn't even really keeping up anymore hardly. I probably...no actually I'll say certainly....wouldn't still be a gamer at all today if something didn't give because I'm telling you gaming culture as a whole was absolutely toxic and misogynistic by definition a decade ago and it had been getting noticeably worse over the preceding decade. The climate that yielded such outcomes was one where female-fronted games practically didn't exist and virtually all of them that did were like Bayonetta and Heavenly Sword and Lollipop Chainsaw and Barbie horseback riding games and well you get the picture, and wherein traditional damsel-in-distress were being "spiced up" with scenarios where you had to attack the damsel instead of rescuing her to keep things fresh and edgy and apparently no one could think of any other ways and it was all getting to be a little too impossible to ignore for me. Something had to give, at least for the sake of my psyche. And then along came this miraculous web video series that just said everything (well almost everything anyway) and well let's just say that I was there for Anita Sarkeesian. (Back then anyway, for that series. Not nearly as much nowadays, but that's another story.) Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I couldn't help but notice overlap between the time span of that series (2013-17) and a period wherein female game characters started becoming more numerous, more diverse in every way, more often playable, and generally less sexualized and also wherein frankly the gaming community matured a little (albeit with some growing pains...like Gamergate). And so today we find ourselves having moved from a situation where, over the 7th console generation, male-fronted games outnumbered female-fronted ones by a margin of 14 to 1 (https://web.archive.org/web/20130321064024/http://www.penny-arcade.com/report/article/games-with-female-heroes-dont-sell-because-publishers-dont-support-them) to a situation wherein the ratio in games announced in 2020 was almost equal and women today sometimes even actually make games and everything. The difference between a decade ago and today in female representation in gaming is night and day, seriously. Well, it's made a difference for me anyway, just in terms of like, ya know, feeling valued. All this on the one hand.
On the other hand, do I feel that people should be banned from forums simply for like disputing a claim of sexist elements in a game? No. I just said a bunch of good stuff about Anita Sarkeesian, but that doesn't mean I just reflexively agree with all her takes, even on this subject. She's argued for example that Mad Max: Fury Road and Wonder Woman are not feminist films because violence and mini-skirts and such. No. No, I'm gonna disagree with those sorts of frivolous, contrarian arguments, as do most feminists and most women in general who are familiar with these movies frankly, because I feel like they fail to see the forest for the trees, and I think that that actually exemplifies why people should be allowed to dispute these matters.
Anyway, your main point about the range of opinion though is well-taken and fair enough. I'm just elaborating on the other stuff because I can't fall asleep right now. Thankfully tomorrow's not a work day anyway, so it shouldn't come back to bite me in the ass.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 14 February 2021
