Strangely enough, at least here on the SDMB, most of the anti-feminist and MRA vitriol seems to come from posters identified with the political left. I can’t quite explain it.
I think that’s true of the wider internet, really. 4Chan and Reddit are both known for being pretty anti-conservative (bar a contingent of loud libertarians).
That link says nothing like what you claimed it said. You’re lying. The other thing I called you a liar for is the repetition of the lie about DDOSing the FYC website.
Also, what is up with these fools doing all their communication via massive textblock images? How is this an effective form of communication?
When you make a graphic no one can break up the text to reply point-by-point or C&P the text to show how it is made of pure bullshit.
Plus they can be linked to from Facebook as click bait rather than linking to actual relevant and thought out articles and stuff.
Yeah, I hate that too. I can almost excuse it for the IRC log where they were making comments in the margins but the other image was an actual blog/forum posting with links that now you couldn’t click since you were looking at a screenshot. Dumb.
And if you can’t trust an organization that is trying to cover the failure its ill-conceived, poorly organized, and exploitive ‘charity’ event by blaming a woman with a mid-level twitter following who can you trust?
As one of the people on the political left, let me say that MRA is one of the few opinions that someone can have that makes me think they’re fundamentally, irreparably broken. At a very basic level, something is wrong with their brain.
I think there’s a simple reason why a lot of “Men’s Right’s” guys will argue “leftist” position’s. They feel they have been wronged, and they want to paint themselves as victims that have been wronged. If you think about it, and forget Fox News for a second*, that’s not really a conservative viewpoint.
Of course, it’s fucking stupid, but the fact remains is that that they think they are being discriminated against. Again, that’s dumb, but it’s what they think. Because of that they will grasp on other causes of the downtrodden, which let’s face it, are traditionally considered leftist.
*Fox News employs the same bullshit tactic. i.e. trying to convince it’s followers that they are some oppressed minority, when really, they’re not. Probably even better off than most other people.
As to the OP, I’m going to have to quote from Cracked.com. because it sums up my opinion quite nicely.
You can’t be serious. There was nothing exploitative about that. They were asking women to submit ideas for games, which they would then design and publish. The proceeds would go to charity, with the woman behind the idea getting a producer’s cut. I dunno if you understand this, but the “idea” phase of making a video game is the quickest, easiest, and above all most populous phase. Everyone has ideas. I have several ideas for a great game right now. They aren’t going anywhere because I currently lack the technical expertise to make them reality, and because I’m not much of an artist. The whole point of this project is to get ideas from women, so that they can then make the game, turn around, and say “hey, this game was thought up by a woman, and designed by a team made up largely of women”. The idea that it’s exploitive or ill-conceived is ridiculous. It’s not. It’s giving women without a strong background in games development a big opportunity - the kind of opportunity I’d love to have.
What’s more, the harm caused by this “mid-level twitter personality” is pretty clear. Quinn is a noteworthy figure at PAX, which is kind of a big deal in the gaming circuit. Having her and her followers attack your event can be kind of a problem - in this case, it led to one person (of a relatively small team) leaving the project, losing a sponsor, and with it upwards of $10,000. That’s pretty significant, given that the studio’s indiegogo goal wasn’t even 7 times that. Why? Because they thought their policy was transphobic. This was wrong. Patently, obviously wrong. Demanding that someone who refers to themselves as a transsexual has been living as a transsexual and isn’t just a guy who wants to pull a fast one is not unreasonable. It’s a common-sense measure to ensure that a project for women actually is for women. What’s more, they actively reached out to Quinn (if she didn’t matter, do you think they’d do this) asking for her input and offering to work with her to make it more to her liking. This is not how you treat someone who clearly has no effect on your business. They got fucked by Quinn.
Being wrong does not exclude good intentions. She was wrong about their policy being transphobic, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t doing what she did because she was fighting for trans rights. It just means she was woefully misguided in doing so.
“Finally”? This isn’t exactly news. Sarkeesian’s views do not represent all feminists. In fact, a lot of feminists are disappointed by how grounded her analysis is in the works of people like Dworkin - second-wave, sex-negative feminists. Many other people, feminists included, have criticized her work for being overreaching and generally full of shit. (Like her Bayonetta video, where she basically states flat-out that the entire backstory and thus context of the character doesn’t matter, since taken down due to the entirely reasonable critical backlash against it.) There’s stuff like that video I linked. Or this:
http://thelearnedfangirl.com/2013/02/24/im-a-feminist-gamerand-im-over-anita-sarkeesian/
Or this:
“Token woman who agrees with them” indeed.
I dunno about the Wizardchan thing, but the imgur album I and TFYC provided was a bunch of screencaps, because they actually serve as evidence, rather than just plain assertions.
The point is, Quinn criticized them, and that’s absolutely valid. SHe’s allowed to criticize them. She’s allowed to think their work is exploitative. She’s allowed to find their policies transphobic. Disagreeing with someone’s approach isn’t “fucking” them, it’s “disagreeing with” them. You, and they, are mischaracterizing what she did.
Look at the Cracked article for an excellent example of how to use screencaps as evidence. You write your text, and then reference the screencaps for evidence.
This is very similar to what I teach my third graders. You tell what happened in the book (or post a screencap), and then you tell the conclusions you drew based on what happened. Leaving out either part makes your efforts worthless.
Some folks felt otherwise, obviously. Others have noted on this thread that even without the exploitive portion there were far more than a few issues with the original concept and it imploded. Now they are trying to blame her for what were their own shortcomings.
No, just no. Quinn is a nobody. I attend PAX East every year and there’s so much to do that no Z-tier designer could pull attention away from everything else going on to become a “noteworthy figure.” I looked up her picture just now (I had no idea what she looked like before all this) and I probably passed her in the hallways a few time. But you pass everyone in the hallways at PAX East. 31,000 Twitter followers is nothing to sneeze at, but it’s hardly the far-reaching mob that some people believe it is.
Precisely. Gamer politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small. 
Let’s imagine for a moment that, say, a prominent film critic wrote a critique of a movie that was wrong. Not just in terms of opinion, but factually wrong. Like, say, they looked at Toy Story and decided that it was a mindless marketing campaign to big capital interests via product placement, because it included toys like Barbie and Mr. Potato-head. And let’s say that as a result, Toy Story loses a lot of backing and a large amount of box office. Pixar would totally be within their rights to cry foul. The criticism was wrong. Not in terms of opinion, in terms of fact. when you’re criticizing something, you have an obligation to get it right. Negative consequences as a result of unfair criticism are at least to some degree a culpable matter. You know, libel and whatnot. There was probably no intent, but the result was that Quinn’s unfair, inaccurate criticism hurt them quite a lot. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with claiming that she screwed them over - especially after the numerous attempts at clarification led to nothing.
Which they did. I gave you that link because you read the article they discussed it in and missed it. They provided the context and explained it, and then you asked for evidence. The evidence was right in the article and you apparently missed it, so I gave it to you directly. Re-read the article it’s taken from and you’ll find the same link, and the context discussed. Granted, it’s not as well-done as the Cracked article, but that was a composed comedy article and this was an interview, which has less space for stylistic embellishment. They still did a pretty good job of it nonetheless.
I haven’t seen those critiques. What I have seen is the accusation of them being “transphobic” was a big deal. And of course it is - their whole schtick is promoting inclusiveness. But it was not actually real. It was BS. As for critique of the form, well, I haven’t seen them. What I have seen has been pretty awfully BS, but if you’ve got something better, I’m open to seeing it. But so far all I’ve seen has been pretty universally crap.
Well, a “nobody” led to these guys getting DDOS’d (or slashdotted, if you prefer), their indiegogo getting hacked, and them losing a sponsor to the tune of $10k. The point is that Zoe Quinn is not some innocent little nobody. When she talks, people listen. And they listened in this case.
She is a nobody. But she does have a lot of Twitter followers. The two are not mutually exclusive. If someone that small can slashdot your site (it’s also known as getting farked after Fark.com), you have a terrible host. Full stop.
Except nothing she said was factually wrong, because her criticisms were matters of opinion. Whether they’re exploitative and whether they’re transphobic aren’t matters of fact.
THAT IS NOT HOW YOU DO EVIDENCE.
Evidence would be something like this:
“Zoe Quinn organized a DDOS of our website. Here’s a screencap showing her organizing it.”
What they did is something like this:
“Zoe Quinn organized a DDOS of our website. Here’s a huge set of screencaps of things, one of which can vaguely be interpreted as an admission of organizing the DDOS, if you don’t understand what a joke is.”
I didn’t miss it before; I looked at it and dismissed it as a bunch of disorganized gibberish with some innuendo thrown in.
“If you prefer”? Dude, they’re TOTALLY DIFFERENT. Calling it a DDOS is a LIE. She is in no way responsible for hacking of their site, unless you have evidence to the contrary: all she did was criticize them. As for the loss of the sponsor, unless she threatened to kill the sponsor’s puppy unless the sponsor dropped out, she played by the rules. She made a criticism; the sponsor found her criticism persuasive; the sponsor backed out. That is the way it’s supposed to work, ferchrissakes. Other sponsors presumably did not find her criticisms persuasive and didn’t back out.
It boils down to your blaming her for being more persuasive to more people than you are. That’s not her fault, that’s yours.
It’s a multi-billion dollar industry, and we both know something that big can survive something this fucking stupid.
Because this issue is very, very stupid.
But how relevant are gamers to the gaming industry?