One comment I wanted to make about this the last time this came up...
"Privilege" is a loaded word. It's a word that some people take great offense to, but it's a word that cannot rationally be ignored.
Success can be a pretty fragile phenomenon. I never fully appreciated the benefit of privilege until relatively recently. I was an unfocused teenager who slacked in college, but stumbled onto a good career anyway (so far, fingers crossed). I would like to ascribe it to turning myself around and working hard, but the fact of the matter is that privilege played a huge role. I got to work at a cool startup right out of high school, because I lived in the sort of relatively nice neighborhood where well-connected people launching startups from their basements might live. I never had to worry about credit checks for jobs because my parents had kept me on a small line of credit all through college to build up my history. When I quit my job to go to grad school, I never worried about running short of money just as finals were rolling around--daddy could always front me a couple of hundred to get me through the rest of the month. This is not trust-fund level privilege, just something pretty much any engineer or the like could provide for his (or her) family, but I'm pretty sure without it I would be working some below-median job today.
So... before you decry the article, remember that success, for most people, is at the margins. Think about how you got to where you are, and ask yourself: if people just found me 5% less credible because of my gender, race, etc, would life really have turned out identically?
PS) I was reminded of how uneven things can subtly be a couple of days ago during the SOPA hearings. One of the posts that made it to the front page of reddit was a photo of some woman giving testimony, where the photo had been edited to look like it was an x-ray shot through her shirt. I thought to myself how interesting that was. Not that it was so insanely offensive in and of itself, but rather because I've never seen something like that pop up on the front page when a man says something dumb on TV.
Is there a term for the ridiculous rhetorical tactic of insisting that any attempt to refute one's claims as being illogical is itself only further proof of the claims made? I stopped reading when he said this:
"I will pause now for the traditional arguments from my readers...Got all of that out of your systems? Good.
Because that reaction is exactly what I'm talking about."
Why bother having a discussion with someone who sets up their argument to be that those who disagree with their argument are only proving the point?
I think the author has a good point, although it's tricky to make: You can spend all day making excuses for specific instances of sexism in comics and video games, or you can realize that your ability and need to do that is a sign of a problem.
Lets not be sexist and respond in a fashion that anyone would respond to a male who whines: stop whining, get a life. Either put up or shut up. Can't handle the heat? Stay out of the kitchen. If male centered entertainment bothers you, make your own. Use your money as a vote to influence the industry. I guarantee that the industry likes money.
The arguments that women should be treated with silver gloves are by their very nature sexist.
"mouth-breathing troglodyte" pretty much immediately tells me what way the article is going to go. Which is to demonize male sexuality.
"And that was when I shot him, your honor." another sign of clear bias.
This is like reading straight from a feminist cookbook. Nothing new, nothing that would be worth any deeper thought.
I enjoy what I enjoy. It's not illegal so you may as well shut up. It's not up to you, dear author, to tell me how I should live my life.
There was nothing new in the article. It was the same tired argument that because men like boobs and they consume popular entertainment that contain boobs they are evil. Which makes no sense to me.
Maybe as the author grows up and lives a little he will see through the matrix.
We all have our biases. But it is a different thing entirely to confuse your shallow rationalizations with actual fact.
I have but one quibble, why is treating women like a men automatically not sexist? Your response follows the same line of logic as "gay people have equal right, right to marry the opposite sex"
What a waste of time, this article. There is a great case to be made for treating every human as a person, and not a member of the class, but he did not make this case.
First, the author complains that women get treated only as sexual objects in most games/comics/etc. Ok, that could be. It's not in Halo or Bioshock, the only games I play, but let's look at the data. So then he mentions opposing view - that men get sexualized too, and then instead of addressing that objection calls it sexist and dismisses it. Really? I would expect some stats, not simply "only sexist would say that" kind of reply. He does this repeatedly throughout the article - not addressing an argument, but simply labeling it with an ugly label and moving on. FWIW, the picture of batman he posted looks sexualized to me, as far as I can judge those things.
Then he just goes to make unsubstantiated broad claims. But of course pointing out lack of substance would be sexist, reflexive and defensive of me :)
A few choice quotes: "A man who's strong-willed or aggressive won't be denigrated for it". In my neck of the woods he will. I did, and I saw others going out of line getting a talk.
"...nor are men socialized to 'go along to get along'." Same thing here, I've seen it all the time.
This article is built on a bunch of assumptions and stereotypes which is terribly ironic given the subject matter. Some of it may be true but some of it just very wrong.
Men can expect that their presence at an event won't automatically be assumed to be decorative or secondary to another man.
Not really. Ask the benchwarmers for a high school sports team.
Despite the growing presence of women in comics, as publishers, editors and creators as well as consumers, a preponderance of men will either treat women at conventions as inconveniences, booth bunnies or even potential dates.
I can't comment on comic books but in the books, movies and TV shows I want I've actually found the exact opposite is increasingly true. There's a strong temptation to make the female characters super-human creatures with a PHD and a shotgun. Always a witty comeback. Always the most moral and ethical characters.
Men are also not going to be automatically assigned into a particular niche just based on their gender.
Tell that to some straight guy who happens to like female-centric things. They're going to be assumed to be homosexuals most of the time.
And when they are seen as customers, they're often automatically assumed to be buying one of the designated "girl" properties
Perhaps in the same way a man strolling around certain types of stores popular with females would be seen?
One of these is welcomed into geek culture with open arms, the other has to justify their existence in the first place.
In other news, most comic book artists and writers are male, most readers are male, a big chunk are teens, and males like pretty/nude/curvaceous females, most teen males likes big breasts and many teen females want to have big breasts, and oh yeah, sex sells. And comic books don't exist in a bubble in their own universe. It's part of this larger thing called the human race. Whatever good/bad/natural things exist in the human race will also be present in the comic book industry. Men have been ogling and fantasizing over females for thousands and very likely millions of years. Clue up. Next topic!
And on a related note, I really wish "gender" submissions on HN would start getting banned automatically. Because they almost always end up a case of beating a dead horse over and over and over again, especially from the perspective of those who've been around long enough.
ps. The author of the OA needs to wander into the Romance section of a bookstore some time. He'll be shocked, shocked at the level of sexual objectification and stereotyping that goes on there. But in the reverse direction. But since the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's not talked about. It's considered perfectly okay. Quotes from the article like this are common with people who've been programmed with that mindset: "(Obvious disclaimer: I'm a straight white man.)" <-- Oh you poor accidental oppressor you!
most comic book artists and writers are male, most readers are male, a big chunk are teens, and males like pretty/nude/curvaceous females, most teen males likes big breasts and many teen females want to have big breasts
The TV show Mad Men is set in the early 1960s USA, when the same thing could be said of the professional world. "Everyone who works here is men, our clients are men, our customers are men" etc. And yet there was a lot of discrimination and sexism then. And things have changed (in the professional business world) then.
the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's not talked about
I really enjoyed this article. Harris O'Malley seems to actually see the real problem, and expresses it with a hell of a lot more nuance than most other treatments of the subject do.
>> And when you check back on Friday, I'll provide you with some concrete applications on how being cognizant of male privilege will improve your relations with women.
I'm excited about the possibilities of the "practical applications" - there is an awful lot of "identifying the problem" and "raising awareness" (as Helianthus refers to in another comment on this thread), however, not a lot of solutions. Obviously they're not simple, and they're not easy, and they're imperfect, but I'd like to see some other people's ideas about them.
However, I lost all respect for the author after reading some of his responses in the discussion thread.
One post of his in particular caught my eye :
"...And the first thing you did when confronted with this topic was to defend, counter, argue, and resist.
And by doing so, you immediately lost based on the rules set forth by the article..."
The notion that an argument cannot be refuted because of some preemptive ban on counter-arguments is, frankly, ludicrous to the point of being offensive.
This doesn't invalidate the contents of the article, but it effectively ends my interest in reading anything else by this author - including his follow up piece.
I wish authors of these sorts of pieces would focus more on the following two questions:
1. What do you want me to do?
2. What's in it for me?
Paint a picture of your ideal gender politics, and let me know why I'd like it better than the one we've got now. You might get further than you are just by attempting to convince me that people I like are "misogynists".
In some ways the solution falls out of just knowing that it is a problem. If you think about it during your interactions with other people, then you can avoid the harmful things that could be said.
The reality of male privilege is that it's so pervasive in our community (in many communities) that even a little bit of acknowledgment that it might exist, and the males in that communities trying to lessen the harm that it creates can make a huge difference in making it less an issue.
While I agree this is a problem, I think it's as much one of society in general both polarising and demonising. (Context - IT nerd guy, single.)
I've known similarly female-dominated groups where men are automatically regarded as good-for-nothing troglodytes who will lazily eat, drink and watch sports all day with no positive contribution to wider life, while the intelligent, capable, hard-working and long-suffering women get on and do the important things the men simply can't, because they're men. Indeed, this will sometimes be seen openly in popular culture - advertising, sitcoms, soaps etc. I've done quite a lot of voluntary work with children, particularly younger children over the years; in some contexts there is still mild incredulity about the idea that a man can understand and cater well for small children, because that's What Women Do Best.
Sure, we need to watch out for ourselves and try to respect all on their merits, not objectify and stereotype. Equally there's plenty of women who don't fit in with the group I outlined above. But - work to address this problem on all fronts. Fix it when we see it in our behaviour and those of us around us, whether we're the aggressor, the victim or neither.
I don't think this is limited just to video games, comics, and such - a lot of TV and sporting events are full of "beautiful people" often wearing less/tighter things than they ought to be wearing.
How is this different/worse than having cheerleaders on the side of a football field? Or Baywatch?
Not that I'm defending poor or sexist behavior, but singling out "nerds" as being the worst troglodytes out there seems a bit much.
a lot of TV and sporting events are full of "beautiful people" often wearing less/tighter things than they ought to be wearing.
"Ought"? The feminist position is that women should be able to express themselves however they want. And it turns out that given the choice, many women actually do want to wear revealing outfits. Exhibit A: Halloween.
> How is this different/worse than having cheerleaders on the side of a football field? Or Baywatch?
It's not, but (as mentioned in the article) football fans and Baywatch viewers aren't generally holding up their communities as beacons of meritocracy while nerd communities frequently do.
The article makes some interesting points, but permit me to play devil's advocate when it comes to the way women and men are portrayed in geek media. All media, really.
Men: Serious.
Women: Sexy.
Okay, no arguments there. But what does this difference in portrayal of the two sexes really mean? However much some might believe otherwise, humans are hard-wired by evolution to have gender roles. Homo sapiens has been around for roughly a hundred thousand years. Our species evolved from older hunter-gatherer species and has existed for almost its entire history as hunter-gatherers. What little we know about hunter-gatherer societies suggest that they were relatively egalitarian, but with definite gender roles.
Men: expendable risk takers. If half the men in a hunter-gatherer band are wiped out by a mammoth hunt gone wrong, the next generation can still be just as large, only with slightly less genetic diversity. So what makes a mammoth hunter popular with the ladies? Well, he has to look like he's going to be one of the guys who will actually come back. i.e. A badass.
Women: non-expendible reproducers. No matter how many men are around, the number of women who successfully bear children are what defines the reproductive success of a band. If you're a man, you don't want the woman who goes out mammoth hunting with the guys, you want the woman who picks berries (gathering was probably even more vital to a band's survival than hunting!) and who has hips made for making babies.
In this light, what we might really be seeing in geek media is portrayals of both males and females that cater to our perception of desirability to the opposite sex. Powerful, serious, badass men are desirable to women, so they are what we see in comics. The same goes for sexy, fertile, women. Men and women are being portrayed differently because different things set them apart as elite or superior to others of their gender, thanks to our hunter-gatherer wiring.
If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass and woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males. It may simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this is one thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over.
> If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass and woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males. It may simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this is one thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over.
It's not about self-flagellation or who is pandering to who. The article makes a broader point about how the perception of gender roles affect's our collective judgment about women's' contributions in geek society.
Your point about the basis of roles in biology is well taken, but:
1) It's not really clear how it's relevant to the larger point of the article. Batman is surely the epitome of sexual desirability in a man (rich, smart, attractive, crime fighter!) but what about the Joker and the Doctor? Skinny guy with disfigured face and pudgy dude with a neck beard? Those portrayals have nothing to do with sexual desirability. The Joker is supposed to convey manic-scary, and the Doctor precise-scary. Meanwhile, all the female portrayals are sexy-something. Sexy-crazy, sexy-eco terrorist, etc. Indeed, the point you make really reinforces the point in the article: we only portray women in terms of their sexual attractiveness, while we're willing to entertain a full range of human traits in men.
2) You can't say how much of these perceptions is rooted in culture versus biology. We're genetically predisposed to be skeptical of people not from "our clan", and slavery of not-like-kind people has been a feature of human society since antiquity, yet here we are in 2011, with massively different perceptions than even 60 years ago.
Perceptions aren't just abstract subjects of self-flagellation. They matter. Heck, geeks should be all too aware of this. As a born loudmouth, I've noticed countless times where people would take my opinion more seriously over someone who was more socially cautious. My girlfriend and I went through a pretty extensive recruiting process in our field in the last year, and you couldn't pay me to switch places with her. She assiduously avoided mentioning me, because it always lead to people trying to figure out if she was a flight risk, while my mentioning her always made me seem more stable. Even if the difference in perception gives women a few % handicap (though I'd postulate, without evidence, it's a heck of a lot more than that, especially in fields like tech or finance), that's a pretty substantial liability when you factor into account the level of competition.
Remember the example I mentioned earlier with my then-girlfriend in the comic store? Her opinions were deemed mistaken and she was told she didn't "get it"… because she was a girl.
i'm not sure how that had anything to do with being a girl. she was told she didn't get it because she didn't get it. if a male walked into that comic shop looking out of place, picked up a book and said something disparaging outloud, he'd probably get mocked just the same for being a newbie.
my girlfriend is into comics and i'm not. if i went into a store with her and started saying shit about comics, i would completely expect to get called out for it. the only difference is that i wouldn't storm out and never return like the author's girlfriend.
Part of the problem is that the OP is concentrating on a game targeted specifically at guys who can't relate to women.
You can't say that Angry Birds is misogynistic, nor could you say the same of Bubble Bobble, Spy Hunter, Tempest, Centipede, Strider, Tetris, Farmville, and thousands of other video games throughout the ages. One thing Facebook, iPhone and Android have FINALLY brought is "casual" gaming for the masses, by demonstrating a market that nobody could see due to the social stigma of the geeky loser gamer.
The crazy shit only comes with heavy action games, mostly FPS (but even here there are numerous exceptions, such as Left 4 Dead).
But then again you see the same thing in TV and movies; they cater to different audiences, some of whom are offended by things the other audience likes (usually what the other audience finds sexually appealing). But when it comes down to it, it's escapist media. People don't care that it's unlikely, and they most certainly don't assume that it in any way reflects real life, any more than someone playing a FPS is likely to take a gun to work and start shooting up the place.
The comic industry in America on the whole has never grown up beyond male adolescent fantasy. That's unfortunate, as there are much richer possibilities (the Japanese manga industry, for example, caters to so many segments it's mind blowing).
But make no mistake: The American comic industry is not an example of male privilege, or any unconscious attempt at keeping women down; It's a vicious cycle of social stigma against comic READERS, and the resulting lack of market for a wider audience. Maybe someday the "iPhone of comics" will come and save us.
When an article about the problem is published on a gaming site, after it makes the point, it's got a couple of gratuitous chick images stuffed in it, with captions like "Bet you're paying attention to what I have to say now!"... Hmm.
I have always hated "You are male, YOU WILL LIKE THIS CHICK" flavored messages, and this still bothers me. Especially in an article like this.
What a load of crap. Female comic book characters are scantily clad? You don't say. But let me suggest that has not much to do with "privilege" and everything to do with the fact that teenage boys are hard-wired to appreciate this kind of thing. No, it's not a "social construct" or an effort to keep the oppressed in her place.
Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?
Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?
Yes. I think we should drop this discussion as it is bound to turn into a stereotype-fest which is counter-productive. The first step in getting rid of gender discrimination is to not make gender an issue at all.
It takes a great shift to regard people as individual people, not males or females. It requires "shutting out" a lot of cultural programming and maybe even biological reactions. Both for men and women. Most gender-discrimination is not conscious at all.
Arguing about "privilege" doesn't help anyone. How to go about this? On the internet it might be easier by just removing "gender" fields. But in the non-virtual world?
Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?
If you're an attractive man, then you can get gay men (esp. older gay men, especially older, ugly, gay men), to do this. If you want people falling all over you, and doing things, there are ways to do that.
An article referring to females working in technology as "tech totty".
This isn't some obscure insider tech publication, it's the cover for the industry journal for graduate recruitment.
I find it shocking that a mainstream HR journal would use such a term, and I think it's a sign that it's a wider issue than just the geek community. Society as a whole needs to become more accepting of girls in geek culture.
Want to see less sexism in games? Stop buying shallow and commercialized titles and support developers who actually try to express their ideas via the medium. Seriously.
I'm not saying you should switch to a different kind of games and ignore the trends in the rest of them, but I see that a lot of people decrying "sex and violence" in various types of media are also validating the exact same works that are fundamentally based on sex and violence. That doesn't make sense.
I thought there were some interesting things that he missed in his assessment of comic books, presumably because of a specific cultural lens he was looking at.
The commic book male figures he mentioned fell into two types: The deadly serious, strong, sexy Batman and two not particularly sexed supervillains. In other words, while the women are all about sex, for men, only the good guys-- the superheroes-- are. This may still make a case for male privilege but it's not as clear-cut I think as he wants to think.
The second thing is that men tend to stare at boobs. This is not unique to geek culture.
This being said, I do think that it is important not to dismiss people's views because of gender. Some of the most talented programmers I have ever met were women. In fact I would take that further and say the most talented programmer I have ever worked with is a woman. I learned a heck of a lot about security audits, programming secure code, and also general algorithms and good software design, development, and engineering practices from her (including her starting IRC dialogs to call me on the carpet for mistakes on my part). To the extent women's views are ignored because of gender that's pretty bad.
But another thing I have heard from women in open source is that one of the most annoying aspects of gender in open source is to be asked over and over "so what do you think we need to do to get women involved in open source?" I have seen plenty of replies of "Do you have ANY idea how annoying it is to be constantly asked that?"
One thing to note is that it only takes one obnoxious person to ruin it for all the other well-informed and well-behaved people in any given room/server, because good behavior, by definition, does not draw attention to itself.
- What she said was stupid and noobish, and he replied bluntly - rudely but not sexistly.
- What happened was misinterpreted as sexist because the interpreter is her boyfriend and jumps to her defense easily.
- The man in the comic book store interpreted her as being mocking and hostile and retorted in a similar fashion, when she didn't mean it that way.
- The man in the comic book store intended his comment to be a mocking imitation of a sexist, thinking he was being witty, but was taken as being literal.
- The shop manager agreed with the complaining customer because he was complaining and not because he was right.
- The man in comic store is normally nice and was temporarily more sexist than he usually is for some dull and specific reason, like he saw a very-near-miss in the carpark by a female driver.
I've had a serious interest in comics/animation for about 45 years. I've had a professional interest for about 30 years.
I can't really comment on video game culture, from a personal point of view; obviously there were no video games when I was growing up. And the only video game that ever held my interest, other than for their graphics technology, was Myst; and it hardly had any people in it at all, objectivized or otherwise.
(I have been doing some work learning Blender the last few weeks. And a lot of the tutorials I've been working through have a definite gamer design aesthetic to them. I swear if I have to work through another youtube video about how to create an inappropriately under-clad-for-the-forrest elf girl, or sullen, post-apocalyptic hooker/warrior, I'm gonna barf...)
American animation has always been stuck at the grade school, pre-puberty level. So its gender problem is less objectification than it is the whole princess thingie.
However, for American comics the primary audience has pretty much always been sexually maturing males. (Historically, with a few notable exceptions, comics aimed at girls were created by men with little insight into what a female audience might like.) So it's not particularly surprising that the successful comic market caters to power fantasies, rebellion, and sexual objectification. And the fact that comics, again in the U.S., have usually been considered a third rate art form, means there's been no real incentive to conceal or domesticate the raw, naked id on display a lot of the time.
Now I actually have no real problem with that. Geeky teenagers who can't get a date, or have gender empathy issues are people too. I can relate. And a little misogyny, and misandry, can be fun at times. (There's nothing particularly uplifting and socially relevant about the Three Stooges either; but I still enjoy the occasional Nyuk and eye poke.) And certainly the over-the-top, operatic story lines would seem to require picaresque, allegorical characters, ripped from the collective psyche.
But, damn, a little variety would sure be appreciated.
If I accidentally wander into a comic book store these days I'm surrounded by little else but 40-60 year old S&M archetypes, minute variations on characters created years before most of the current audience were even born. And with a bipolar range of emotions, angry dominatrix to submissive sex kitten, that would make an anime/manga tsundere blush.
I lost interest in most American mainstream comics around 1975, mainly through boredom. Now there has always been higher quality work floating around. It's there if you look for it. But Sturgeon's Law applies, with the added characteristic that the 90% case is almost indistinguishable and frozen in time; and at adolescence. Sure the technology is getting better; we've got better reproduction and the distribution system is no longer random mafioso magazine distribution. But the literary style and moral compass is provided by Frank Miller, with art direction by Eric Stanton. It's an insular culture, with little cross fertilization with the rest of society, that keeps telling the same story over and over. Now the base story and its archetypes are not without their merits, but it's certainly not the be-all, end-all of the medium. It just seems that way sometimes.
A year or so ago, when the _Scott Pilgrim_ movie out, I really enjoyed it. After seeing it I immediately ran out and bought the graphic novels. I had almost nothing in common with the characters, the music and video game references were largely lost on me, but it was so nice to have something a little different than the dull thudding of the mainstream American comics Ur-legend. It was light, fluffy, with a novel, to me, storyline. And it had engaging characters. I found it very manga-like, both in its visuals and its approach to storytelling.
Which brings us to manga.
I got re-interested in comics around 10 years ago when the Japanese manga and anime started to become easily available. Now everything bad and/or chauvinistic that you can find in U.S. comics, and by extension, game culture, you can find in spades in the Japanese product; and that's what you usually find imported and bought by the U.S. comics companies and distributors. However, if you look at the bigger picture, at the market in Japan, there's much more variety and a generally higher level of literary and visual quality than you find anywhere else in the world for visual media. I'm not really sure why this is. Partly it is because there is much less stigma in their culture directed towards comics; but that doesn't explain the problems with video game culture over here. Over there not only boys read comics, but girls do too. And young adults, and even 40 year old salarymen and OL (office ladies). They have comics aimed at insurance salesmen, golfers, pretty much any kind of genre you can conceive of. The Onion would have a hard time parodying the variety of Japanese manga.
Now Sturgeon's Law still applies, but the absolute numbers are so much greater that the absolute numbers of the good 10% is much higher than over here. And the distribution of non-juvenile, male oriented material is much healthier. The anime and video gaming industries seem to be less so, but they do seem healthier than ours. And don't many of "our" more popular games come from Japan?
One big difference in Japanese comic culture, in addition to its size, is that it is much more of a participative one. Non-professional, fan created comics, or Doujinshi, are a major "craft industry" over there. Comiket, the biggest non-professional sales and marketing convention, routinely has half a million attendees, twice a year, with 30,000+ author circles, or groups, selling their often high quality amateur comics and visual novels. Now admittedly, the "adult oriented" Doujinshi get the most press, and a substantial percentage of the audience, but there's a lot of alternatives for those who want it. One of the alternatives is a form of erotic literature, some quite pornographic, and much of it quite good, created by women and aimed at women. I don't see that kind of thing in large demographic U.S. comics. Other than the Japanese imports, of course…
Maybe the solution to the U.S. game industry's geek image has to do with smaller scale, more diverse, more specialized gaming creation companies. With games aimed at demographics who aren't 14 year old males or those who were once 14 year old males and have never had an easily available and well marketed alternative. I'm not really qualified to speculate intelligently. That market may well exist and I'm just unaware of it.
There's a lot of diversity in North American comics, just not in their sales. All the diversity gets shoved into the back corner of the store, where only those already "in the know" would dare venture. Check out Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and their decades-long output of original, reprint and translated material, on about as many different subjects as you can name.
I object to the connections drawn in this article. I am a tech professional which means it is not terribly uncommon to have the nerd/geek label placed upon me, but I have never and will never have anything to do with the comics/videogame culture being described here.
That doesn't seem to be the important part of the article? I think the title (ought to) imply "Some nerds..." anyway. Some people understand privilege better than others, often due to their own circumstances. Being gay has given me an interesting insight into privileges that span sexuality and gender issues and having a close female friend who tells me about her daily experiences repeatedly shocks me into new realizations of how good I have it as a male, even if not a straight male.
[+] [-] rayiner|14 years ago|reply
"Privilege" is a loaded word. It's a word that some people take great offense to, but it's a word that cannot rationally be ignored.
Success can be a pretty fragile phenomenon. I never fully appreciated the benefit of privilege until relatively recently. I was an unfocused teenager who slacked in college, but stumbled onto a good career anyway (so far, fingers crossed). I would like to ascribe it to turning myself around and working hard, but the fact of the matter is that privilege played a huge role. I got to work at a cool startup right out of high school, because I lived in the sort of relatively nice neighborhood where well-connected people launching startups from their basements might live. I never had to worry about credit checks for jobs because my parents had kept me on a small line of credit all through college to build up my history. When I quit my job to go to grad school, I never worried about running short of money just as finals were rolling around--daddy could always front me a couple of hundred to get me through the rest of the month. This is not trust-fund level privilege, just something pretty much any engineer or the like could provide for his (or her) family, but I'm pretty sure without it I would be working some below-median job today.
So... before you decry the article, remember that success, for most people, is at the margins. Think about how you got to where you are, and ask yourself: if people just found me 5% less credible because of my gender, race, etc, would life really have turned out identically?
PS) I was reminded of how uneven things can subtly be a couple of days ago during the SOPA hearings. One of the posts that made it to the front page of reddit was a photo of some woman giving testimony, where the photo had been edited to look like it was an x-ray shot through her shirt. I thought to myself how interesting that was. Not that it was so insanely offensive in and of itself, but rather because I've never seen something like that pop up on the front page when a man says something dumb on TV.
[+] [-] ryanwaggoner|14 years ago|reply
"I will pause now for the traditional arguments from my readers...Got all of that out of your systems? Good.
Because that reaction is exactly what I'm talking about."
Why bother having a discussion with someone who sets up their argument to be that those who disagree with their argument are only proving the point?
[+] [-] neutronicus|14 years ago|reply
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122
[+] [-] sciurus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 127|14 years ago|reply
The arguments that women should be treated with silver gloves are by their very nature sexist.
"mouth-breathing troglodyte" pretty much immediately tells me what way the article is going to go. Which is to demonize male sexuality.
"And that was when I shot him, your honor." another sign of clear bias.
This is like reading straight from a feminist cookbook. Nothing new, nothing that would be worth any deeper thought.
I enjoy what I enjoy. It's not illegal so you may as well shut up. It's not up to you, dear author, to tell me how I should live my life.
There was nothing new in the article. It was the same tired argument that because men like boobs and they consume popular entertainment that contain boobs they are evil. Which makes no sense to me.
Maybe as the author grows up and lives a little he will see through the matrix.
We all have our biases. But it is a different thing entirely to confuse your shallow rationalizations with actual fact.
[+] [-] AllenKids|14 years ago|reply
I think there is a blind spot.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DenisM|14 years ago|reply
First, the author complains that women get treated only as sexual objects in most games/comics/etc. Ok, that could be. It's not in Halo or Bioshock, the only games I play, but let's look at the data. So then he mentions opposing view - that men get sexualized too, and then instead of addressing that objection calls it sexist and dismisses it. Really? I would expect some stats, not simply "only sexist would say that" kind of reply. He does this repeatedly throughout the article - not addressing an argument, but simply labeling it with an ugly label and moving on. FWIW, the picture of batman he posted looks sexualized to me, as far as I can judge those things.
Then he just goes to make unsubstantiated broad claims. But of course pointing out lack of substance would be sexist, reflexive and defensive of me :)
A few choice quotes: "A man who's strong-willed or aggressive won't be denigrated for it". In my neck of the woods he will. I did, and I saw others going out of line getting a talk.
"...nor are men socialized to 'go along to get along'." Same thing here, I've seen it all the time.
[+] [-] slavak|14 years ago|reply
Not to take sides in this argument, but you might want to reconsider that specific statement: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3449/3698998163_fe844856da.jp... http://gamingsrapture.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/...
[+] [-] jsz0|14 years ago|reply
Men can expect that their presence at an event won't automatically be assumed to be decorative or secondary to another man.
Not really. Ask the benchwarmers for a high school sports team.
Despite the growing presence of women in comics, as publishers, editors and creators as well as consumers, a preponderance of men will either treat women at conventions as inconveniences, booth bunnies or even potential dates.
I can't comment on comic books but in the books, movies and TV shows I want I've actually found the exact opposite is increasingly true. There's a strong temptation to make the female characters super-human creatures with a PHD and a shotgun. Always a witty comeback. Always the most moral and ethical characters.
Men are also not going to be automatically assigned into a particular niche just based on their gender.
Tell that to some straight guy who happens to like female-centric things. They're going to be assumed to be homosexuals most of the time.
And when they are seen as customers, they're often automatically assumed to be buying one of the designated "girl" properties
Perhaps in the same way a man strolling around certain types of stores popular with females would be seen?
One of these is welcomed into geek culture with open arms, the other has to justify their existence in the first place.
Says who?
makes women feel unwelcome in fandom
Tell that to all the rapid female Twilight fans.
[+] [-] mkramlich|14 years ago|reply
And on a related note, I really wish "gender" submissions on HN would start getting banned automatically. Because they almost always end up a case of beating a dead horse over and over and over again, especially from the perspective of those who've been around long enough.
ps. The author of the OA needs to wander into the Romance section of a bookstore some time. He'll be shocked, shocked at the level of sexual objectification and stereotyping that goes on there. But in the reverse direction. But since the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's not talked about. It's considered perfectly okay. Quotes from the article like this are common with people who've been programmed with that mindset: "(Obvious disclaimer: I'm a straight white man.)" <-- Oh you poor accidental oppressor you!
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
The TV show Mad Men is set in the early 1960s USA, when the same thing could be said of the professional world. "Everyone who works here is men, our clients are men, our customers are men" etc. And yet there was a lot of discrimination and sexism then. And things have changed (in the professional business world) then.
the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's not talked about
Sure they do. Here's a series of blog posts about how twilight has terrible characters. http://skepchick.org/2011/11/twilight-breaking-wind/
[+] [-] moxiemk1|14 years ago|reply
>> And when you check back on Friday, I'll provide you with some concrete applications on how being cognizant of male privilege will improve your relations with women.
I'm excited about the possibilities of the "practical applications" - there is an awful lot of "identifying the problem" and "raising awareness" (as Helianthus refers to in another comment on this thread), however, not a lot of solutions. Obviously they're not simple, and they're not easy, and they're imperfect, but I'd like to see some other people's ideas about them.
[+] [-] doktrin|14 years ago|reply
However, I lost all respect for the author after reading some of his responses in the discussion thread.
One post of his in particular caught my eye :
"...And the first thing you did when confronted with this topic was to defend, counter, argue, and resist.
And by doing so, you immediately lost based on the rules set forth by the article..."
The notion that an argument cannot be refuted because of some preemptive ban on counter-arguments is, frankly, ludicrous to the point of being offensive.
This doesn't invalidate the contents of the article, but it effectively ends my interest in reading anything else by this author - including his follow up piece.
[+] [-] neutronicus|14 years ago|reply
1. What do you want me to do?
2. What's in it for me?
Paint a picture of your ideal gender politics, and let me know why I'd like it better than the one we've got now. You might get further than you are just by attempting to convince me that people I like are "misogynists".
[+] [-] cemery|14 years ago|reply
The reality of male privilege is that it's so pervasive in our community (in many communities) that even a little bit of acknowledgment that it might exist, and the males in that communities trying to lessen the harm that it creates can make a huge difference in making it less an issue.
[+] [-] eftpotrm|14 years ago|reply
I've known similarly female-dominated groups where men are automatically regarded as good-for-nothing troglodytes who will lazily eat, drink and watch sports all day with no positive contribution to wider life, while the intelligent, capable, hard-working and long-suffering women get on and do the important things the men simply can't, because they're men. Indeed, this will sometimes be seen openly in popular culture - advertising, sitcoms, soaps etc. I've done quite a lot of voluntary work with children, particularly younger children over the years; in some contexts there is still mild incredulity about the idea that a man can understand and cater well for small children, because that's What Women Do Best.
Sure, we need to watch out for ourselves and try to respect all on their merits, not objectify and stereotype. Equally there's plenty of women who don't fit in with the group I outlined above. But - work to address this problem on all fronts. Fix it when we see it in our behaviour and those of us around us, whether we're the aggressor, the victim or neither.
[+] [-] zdw|14 years ago|reply
How is this different/worse than having cheerleaders on the side of a football field? Or Baywatch?
Not that I'm defending poor or sexist behavior, but singling out "nerds" as being the worst troglodytes out there seems a bit much.
[+] [-] orangecat|14 years ago|reply
"Ought"? The feminist position is that women should be able to express themselves however they want. And it turns out that given the choice, many women actually do want to wear revealing outfits. Exhibit A: Halloween.
[+] [-] philwelch|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Anechoic|14 years ago|reply
It's not, but (as mentioned in the article) football fans and Baywatch viewers aren't generally holding up their communities as beacons of meritocracy while nerd communities frequently do.
[+] [-] beloch|14 years ago|reply
Men: Serious. Women: Sexy.
Okay, no arguments there. But what does this difference in portrayal of the two sexes really mean? However much some might believe otherwise, humans are hard-wired by evolution to have gender roles. Homo sapiens has been around for roughly a hundred thousand years. Our species evolved from older hunter-gatherer species and has existed for almost its entire history as hunter-gatherers. What little we know about hunter-gatherer societies suggest that they were relatively egalitarian, but with definite gender roles.
Men: expendable risk takers. If half the men in a hunter-gatherer band are wiped out by a mammoth hunt gone wrong, the next generation can still be just as large, only with slightly less genetic diversity. So what makes a mammoth hunter popular with the ladies? Well, he has to look like he's going to be one of the guys who will actually come back. i.e. A badass.
Women: non-expendible reproducers. No matter how many men are around, the number of women who successfully bear children are what defines the reproductive success of a band. If you're a man, you don't want the woman who goes out mammoth hunting with the guys, you want the woman who picks berries (gathering was probably even more vital to a band's survival than hunting!) and who has hips made for making babies.
In this light, what we might really be seeing in geek media is portrayals of both males and females that cater to our perception of desirability to the opposite sex. Powerful, serious, badass men are desirable to women, so they are what we see in comics. The same goes for sexy, fertile, women. Men and women are being portrayed differently because different things set them apart as elite or superior to others of their gender, thanks to our hunter-gatherer wiring.
If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass and woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males. It may simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this is one thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over.
[+] [-] rayiner|14 years ago|reply
It's not about self-flagellation or who is pandering to who. The article makes a broader point about how the perception of gender roles affect's our collective judgment about women's' contributions in geek society.
Your point about the basis of roles in biology is well taken, but:
1) It's not really clear how it's relevant to the larger point of the article. Batman is surely the epitome of sexual desirability in a man (rich, smart, attractive, crime fighter!) but what about the Joker and the Doctor? Skinny guy with disfigured face and pudgy dude with a neck beard? Those portrayals have nothing to do with sexual desirability. The Joker is supposed to convey manic-scary, and the Doctor precise-scary. Meanwhile, all the female portrayals are sexy-something. Sexy-crazy, sexy-eco terrorist, etc. Indeed, the point you make really reinforces the point in the article: we only portray women in terms of their sexual attractiveness, while we're willing to entertain a full range of human traits in men.
2) You can't say how much of these perceptions is rooted in culture versus biology. We're genetically predisposed to be skeptical of people not from "our clan", and slavery of not-like-kind people has been a feature of human society since antiquity, yet here we are in 2011, with massively different perceptions than even 60 years ago.
Perceptions aren't just abstract subjects of self-flagellation. They matter. Heck, geeks should be all too aware of this. As a born loudmouth, I've noticed countless times where people would take my opinion more seriously over someone who was more socially cautious. My girlfriend and I went through a pretty extensive recruiting process in our field in the last year, and you couldn't pay me to switch places with her. She assiduously avoided mentioning me, because it always lead to people trying to figure out if she was a flight risk, while my mentioning her always made me seem more stable. Even if the difference in perception gives women a few % handicap (though I'd postulate, without evidence, it's a heck of a lot more than that, especially in fields like tech or finance), that's a pretty substantial liability when you factor into account the level of competition.
[+] [-] azakai|14 years ago|reply
This is heavily debated in academic circles, with strong arguments either way. Please don't assume it is a scientific fact.
[+] [-] AndyKelley|14 years ago|reply
I think.
[+] [-] there|14 years ago|reply
i'm not sure how that had anything to do with being a girl. she was told she didn't get it because she didn't get it. if a male walked into that comic shop looking out of place, picked up a book and said something disparaging outloud, he'd probably get mocked just the same for being a newbie.
my girlfriend is into comics and i'm not. if i went into a store with her and started saying shit about comics, i would completely expect to get called out for it. the only difference is that i wouldn't storm out and never return like the author's girlfriend.
[+] [-] sciurus|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|14 years ago|reply
You can't say that Angry Birds is misogynistic, nor could you say the same of Bubble Bobble, Spy Hunter, Tempest, Centipede, Strider, Tetris, Farmville, and thousands of other video games throughout the ages. One thing Facebook, iPhone and Android have FINALLY brought is "casual" gaming for the masses, by demonstrating a market that nobody could see due to the social stigma of the geeky loser gamer.
The crazy shit only comes with heavy action games, mostly FPS (but even here there are numerous exceptions, such as Left 4 Dead).
But then again you see the same thing in TV and movies; they cater to different audiences, some of whom are offended by things the other audience likes (usually what the other audience finds sexually appealing). But when it comes down to it, it's escapist media. People don't care that it's unlikely, and they most certainly don't assume that it in any way reflects real life, any more than someone playing a FPS is likely to take a gun to work and start shooting up the place.
The comic industry in America on the whole has never grown up beyond male adolescent fantasy. That's unfortunate, as there are much richer possibilities (the Japanese manga industry, for example, caters to so many segments it's mind blowing).
But make no mistake: The American comic industry is not an example of male privilege, or any unconscious attempt at keeping women down; It's a vicious cycle of social stigma against comic READERS, and the resulting lack of market for a wider audience. Maybe someday the "iPhone of comics" will come and save us.
[+] [-] sapphirecat|14 years ago|reply
I have always hated "You are male, YOU WILL LIKE THIS CHICK" flavored messages, and this still bothers me. Especially in an article like this.
[+] [-] tsotha|14 years ago|reply
Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
Yes. I think we should drop this discussion as it is bound to turn into a stereotype-fest which is counter-productive. The first step in getting rid of gender discrimination is to not make gender an issue at all.
It takes a great shift to regard people as individual people, not males or females. It requires "shutting out" a lot of cultural programming and maybe even biological reactions. Both for men and women. Most gender-discrimination is not conscious at all.
Arguing about "privilege" doesn't help anyone. How to go about this? On the internet it might be easier by just removing "gender" fields. But in the non-virtual world?
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
If you're an attractive man, then you can get gay men (esp. older gay men, especially older, ugly, gay men), to do this. If you want people falling all over you, and doing things, there are ways to do that.
[+] [-] ig1|14 years ago|reply
http://twitpic.com/7to6eb
An article referring to females working in technology as "tech totty".
This isn't some obscure insider tech publication, it's the cover for the industry journal for graduate recruitment.
I find it shocking that a mainstream HR journal would use such a term, and I think it's a sign that it's a wider issue than just the geek community. Society as a whole needs to become more accepting of girls in geek culture.
[+] [-] gambler|14 years ago|reply
I'm not saying you should switch to a different kind of games and ignore the trends in the rest of them, but I see that a lot of people decrying "sex and violence" in various types of media are also validating the exact same works that are fundamentally based on sex and violence. That doesn't make sense.
[+] [-] rmc|14 years ago|reply
But that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to give out about sexist stuff when you see it.
[+] [-] einhverfr|14 years ago|reply
The commic book male figures he mentioned fell into two types: The deadly serious, strong, sexy Batman and two not particularly sexed supervillains. In other words, while the women are all about sex, for men, only the good guys-- the superheroes-- are. This may still make a case for male privilege but it's not as clear-cut I think as he wants to think.
The second thing is that men tend to stare at boobs. This is not unique to geek culture.
This being said, I do think that it is important not to dismiss people's views because of gender. Some of the most talented programmers I have ever met were women. In fact I would take that further and say the most talented programmer I have ever worked with is a woman. I learned a heck of a lot about security audits, programming secure code, and also general algorithms and good software design, development, and engineering practices from her (including her starting IRC dialogs to call me on the carpet for mistakes on my part). To the extent women's views are ignored because of gender that's pretty bad.
But another thing I have heard from women in open source is that one of the most annoying aspects of gender in open source is to be asked over and over "so what do you think we need to do to get women involved in open source?" I have seen plenty of replies of "Do you have ANY idea how annoying it is to be constantly asked that?"
[+] [-] AndyKelley|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jodrellblank|14 years ago|reply
Other options:
- What she said was stupid and noobish, and he replied bluntly - rudely but not sexistly.
- What happened was misinterpreted as sexist because the interpreter is her boyfriend and jumps to her defense easily.
- The man in the comic book store interpreted her as being mocking and hostile and retorted in a similar fashion, when she didn't mean it that way.
- The man in the comic book store intended his comment to be a mocking imitation of a sexist, thinking he was being witty, but was taken as being literal.
- The shop manager agreed with the complaining customer because he was complaining and not because he was right.
- The man in comic store is normally nice and was temporarily more sexist than he usually is for some dull and specific reason, like he saw a very-near-miss in the carpark by a female driver.
[+] [-] commieneko|14 years ago|reply
I can't really comment on video game culture, from a personal point of view; obviously there were no video games when I was growing up. And the only video game that ever held my interest, other than for their graphics technology, was Myst; and it hardly had any people in it at all, objectivized or otherwise.
(I have been doing some work learning Blender the last few weeks. And a lot of the tutorials I've been working through have a definite gamer design aesthetic to them. I swear if I have to work through another youtube video about how to create an inappropriately under-clad-for-the-forrest elf girl, or sullen, post-apocalyptic hooker/warrior, I'm gonna barf...)
American animation has always been stuck at the grade school, pre-puberty level. So its gender problem is less objectification than it is the whole princess thingie.
However, for American comics the primary audience has pretty much always been sexually maturing males. (Historically, with a few notable exceptions, comics aimed at girls were created by men with little insight into what a female audience might like.) So it's not particularly surprising that the successful comic market caters to power fantasies, rebellion, and sexual objectification. And the fact that comics, again in the U.S., have usually been considered a third rate art form, means there's been no real incentive to conceal or domesticate the raw, naked id on display a lot of the time.
Now I actually have no real problem with that. Geeky teenagers who can't get a date, or have gender empathy issues are people too. I can relate. And a little misogyny, and misandry, can be fun at times. (There's nothing particularly uplifting and socially relevant about the Three Stooges either; but I still enjoy the occasional Nyuk and eye poke.) And certainly the over-the-top, operatic story lines would seem to require picaresque, allegorical characters, ripped from the collective psyche.
But, damn, a little variety would sure be appreciated.
If I accidentally wander into a comic book store these days I'm surrounded by little else but 40-60 year old S&M archetypes, minute variations on characters created years before most of the current audience were even born. And with a bipolar range of emotions, angry dominatrix to submissive sex kitten, that would make an anime/manga tsundere blush.
I lost interest in most American mainstream comics around 1975, mainly through boredom. Now there has always been higher quality work floating around. It's there if you look for it. But Sturgeon's Law applies, with the added characteristic that the 90% case is almost indistinguishable and frozen in time; and at adolescence. Sure the technology is getting better; we've got better reproduction and the distribution system is no longer random mafioso magazine distribution. But the literary style and moral compass is provided by Frank Miller, with art direction by Eric Stanton. It's an insular culture, with little cross fertilization with the rest of society, that keeps telling the same story over and over. Now the base story and its archetypes are not without their merits, but it's certainly not the be-all, end-all of the medium. It just seems that way sometimes.
A year or so ago, when the _Scott Pilgrim_ movie out, I really enjoyed it. After seeing it I immediately ran out and bought the graphic novels. I had almost nothing in common with the characters, the music and video game references were largely lost on me, but it was so nice to have something a little different than the dull thudding of the mainstream American comics Ur-legend. It was light, fluffy, with a novel, to me, storyline. And it had engaging characters. I found it very manga-like, both in its visuals and its approach to storytelling.
Which brings us to manga.
I got re-interested in comics around 10 years ago when the Japanese manga and anime started to become easily available. Now everything bad and/or chauvinistic that you can find in U.S. comics, and by extension, game culture, you can find in spades in the Japanese product; and that's what you usually find imported and bought by the U.S. comics companies and distributors. However, if you look at the bigger picture, at the market in Japan, there's much more variety and a generally higher level of literary and visual quality than you find anywhere else in the world for visual media. I'm not really sure why this is. Partly it is because there is much less stigma in their culture directed towards comics; but that doesn't explain the problems with video game culture over here. Over there not only boys read comics, but girls do too. And young adults, and even 40 year old salarymen and OL (office ladies). They have comics aimed at insurance salesmen, golfers, pretty much any kind of genre you can conceive of. The Onion would have a hard time parodying the variety of Japanese manga.
Now Sturgeon's Law still applies, but the absolute numbers are so much greater that the absolute numbers of the good 10% is much higher than over here. And the distribution of non-juvenile, male oriented material is much healthier. The anime and video gaming industries seem to be less so, but they do seem healthier than ours. And don't many of "our" more popular games come from Japan?
One big difference in Japanese comic culture, in addition to its size, is that it is much more of a participative one. Non-professional, fan created comics, or Doujinshi, are a major "craft industry" over there. Comiket, the biggest non-professional sales and marketing convention, routinely has half a million attendees, twice a year, with 30,000+ author circles, or groups, selling their often high quality amateur comics and visual novels. Now admittedly, the "adult oriented" Doujinshi get the most press, and a substantial percentage of the audience, but there's a lot of alternatives for those who want it. One of the alternatives is a form of erotic literature, some quite pornographic, and much of it quite good, created by women and aimed at women. I don't see that kind of thing in large demographic U.S. comics. Other than the Japanese imports, of course…
Maybe the solution to the U.S. game industry's geek image has to do with smaller scale, more diverse, more specialized gaming creation companies. With games aimed at demographics who aren't 14 year old males or those who were once 14 year old males and have never had an easily available and well marketed alternative. I'm not really qualified to speculate intelligently. That market may well exist and I'm just unaware of it.
If it does exist, I may be interested.
[+] [-] angus77|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] burgerbrain|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drivebyacct2|14 years ago|reply