Rebuttal to debunking, or vice versa.

[blimix]

Recently, I quoted Anita Sarkeesian in an e-mail. A friend of mine wrote back, saying (in short) that he thought she was full of it, and that I should expose myself to some of the materials that purported to debunk her video series, "Damsel in Distress: Tropes vs. Women in Video Games". I had not sought these out before (though I had gathered that there was controversy), simply in the spirit of "Don't read the comments if you want to keep your faith in humanity." I had figured that those who opposed these well documented and educational feminist videos were simply misogynist creeps who perceived Sarkeesian as attacking their favorite video games. But if my friend, an intelligent and experienced gamer, was on their side, then I'd better see what they had to say.

So I clicked the link he gave me, with an open mind.

It was like walking into a heap of pig manure with an open mouth.

I took notes as I watched, so that I could send my friend a rebuttal of this rebuttal video. Here it is:

[If you want to see the videos in question: "Damsel in Distress" part 1 of 3, and "Feminism versus Facts" part 1 of 3. I haven't watched the subsequent "Feminism versus Facts" videos for reasons that will become clear.]

The first example, Double Dragon Neon, only seems to work because Thunderf00t carefully omitted the actual example used by Sarkeesian. She shows the actual game footage of Marian being "damseled": Being punched, unresisting, in the gut, and thrown over some dude's shoulder and carried away. This was the last one of many examples, after which she says, "The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective or entirely incapable also has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves and the specific games they inhabit."

Thunderf00t leaves out the context and the example. "She describes Double Dragon Neon like this: 'Most recently Double Dragon Neon in 2012 re-introduced new gamers to this repressive crap yet again, this time in full HD.'" He edits out her prior explanation of "this regressive crap," as well as the video clip that exactly demonstrates said crap. This is so that he can make a straw man argument, pretending that she was simply calling Marian weak, which he could then easily rebuff by playing a clip of Marian punching an armored badass in the balls later.

He had nothing to say about the fact that Marian was kidnapped by the Shadow Warriors, becoming the motivation for Jimmy and Billy Lee to fight all the bad guys, and thus making her exactly the example of a "damsel in distress" that Sarkeesian said she was.

He then takes issue with the title: "Do you really think that tropes are specifically adversarial to women?" Hell of a straw man argument there. The title clearly implies that there are tropes which are harmful to women. To pretend that it refers to all tropes, a claim that the series never even approached or implied, is asinine.

Thunderf00t then makes another strange claim: "Feminist Frequency's ability to find patterns that don't exist is rivaled only by her ability to miss the most important and bloody obvious pattern of all: These games were not made to keep feminists happy. These games were not designed to subjugate women. These games were designed to be fun to play, and thereby make a profit for the designer."

There is no evidence whatsoever that Sarkeesian misses this pattern. Certainly, she never argued that the games were designed to be problematic. Using and abusing stereotypes that serve to subjugate women is something that people tend to do unwittingly. Aside from deliberate trolling, sexist comments and writing aren't made for the purpose of being sexist: They simply reveal sexism on the part of the writer. And even unintentional sexism is harmful. Sarkeesian points out that games can be made without the sexism, and still be great games that are fun to play.

On the subject of being fun to play, and thereby making a profit for the designer, I should mention: A (female) gamer friend of mine wrote* last year about Mass Effect, gushing about how great and refreshing and groundbreaking it was that the game featured a strong female character who (for budgetary reasons) wasn't treated differently for being female. Men have the privilege to be able to ignore sexism in games, but it is apparently so thoroughly prevalent that my friend considered its accidental lack to be a new, groundbreaking thing. This suggests to me that maybe the low representation of women among gamers says less about women than it does about the games. Can you imagine how much more money could be made by video game companies if the games didn't routinely alienate female gamers by treating female characters horribly? What I'm getting at (aside from providing an incidental anecdotal datum supporting Sarkeesian's point that sexism is endemic in video games) is that even if Thunderf00t is totally correct on the point that video game companies are not concerned with women's feelings, and only care about making a good game and a bunch of money... Even in that case, they would still benefit from not portraying women so misogynistically in their games: They would attract far more players, and make more money.

* It's a friends-locked post, so I can't link you to it.

Thunderf00t goes on: "And yeah. This does mean that in the case of the original Double Dragon, that if you've only got about seven seconds to explain the plot (Trust me: Seven seconds. I timed it.), then the characters are obviously going to tend to be fairly one-dimensional and the storylines simple."

The number of problems with that one statement is staggering. By saying "the original Double Dragon," he is clearly and deliberately excluding other games (such as Double Dragon Neon) that suffer the exact same problem, implying that the apparent problem is confined to one game. Okay, so how about that "seven seconds to explain the plot" bit? Yeah, it's a pity that Sarkeesian couldn't take the time to explain the entirety of the game's plot... Oh wait, she did. It took seven seconds. Seriously, you and I have both played "Double Dragon" through to the end, right? Did I miss any plot at all that wasn't, "Bad guys punched and kidnapped the girl, and now you have to fight them to rescue her"? Next, what's with all the hedging language? "Tend to be"? "Fairly"? Again, this is complete pretense, presumably for people who haven't actually played the game, that the characters aren't perfectly one-dimensional, and that the storyline isn't perfectly simple. Oh and note my use of the singular "storyline". That was easy enough to get right. Why would he use the plural? I would chalk it up to error, but it is likely that this was a deliberately deceptive implication that the game has multiple storylines; it would be perfectly consistent with the deception throughout the rest of the his statement.

Thunderf00t then takes issue with the fact that Sarkeesian thinks that the damsel trope is problematic at all. He explains that, because people in relationships care for each other, a man going out to rescue his woman is a proper, healthy response to her kidnapping, when compared to doing nothing and expecting her to look after herself.

Personally, I think that calling the police would be an even healthier response, but that's irrelevant, because his statement in no way contradicts anything that she said. (He just pretends that it does.) The problem with the damsel trope isn't about how it portrays mens' reactions to the beating and kidnapping of their loved ones. The problem is the recurring, misogynistic story of the woman getting beaten and kidnapped, all for the purpose of giving the man his motivation to proceed through the story (or endless fight sequences or whatever). Again, Thunderf00t is deliberately misrepresenting Sarkeesian's claims so that he can knock down a straw man. His following rant on "objectification" relies on this misrepresentation, and then takes it farther: He pretends that Sarkeesian thinks that, when a man helps a woman, he is objectifying her. He goes on to mock this: "By your feminist reasoning here, hospitals -- you know, the places where people come to be -- acted on -- are actually objectification centers, where people are turned into merely objects to be acted on. And doctors: They're not medical help providers. They're the biggest objectifiers of all." Again, Sarkeesian never claimed that a man, in rescuing a woman, is objectifying her. She claimed that a story that motivates a man by requiring him to rescue a woman is objectifying her. The story and its writer(s), not the characters, do the objectifying.

Okay, I'm now 7.5 minutes into the video, and this guy hasn't said ONE THING that didn't make his audience stupider for having heard it. I am having some (hopefully understandable) trouble motivating myself to unpause it. But this crap needs to be torn apart, and I would feel remiss if I stopped only 40% of the way through. So, here goes.

The role-reversal that follows is cute and comes near to accidentally making a good point about violence being the only solution in games (a point that Sarkeesian did in fact make), but is flawed. Thunderf00t tries, tongue-in-cheek, to represent the portrayal of men in video games the way Sarkeesian does that of women ("to come up with a similarly bogus conclusion to yours"), expecting that an easy dismissal of the his argument will lead to an easy dismissal of hers. I think I'll need to quote much of it for context here:

"Have you ever noticed how men in games almost always fall into one of a few stereotypes or cliches? We have to remember that this regressive sexism is turning men into one-dimensional, clueless objects, incapable of solving even the simplest of problems, like "cages are locked with keys," without the cerebral intervention and puppeteering from an intellectually manipulative woman? It's simply turning men into barely house-trained, Neanderthal objects for the purpose of doing the dangerous work for a woman. We have to understand that such derogatory stereotypes are detrimental to our society and our cultural ecosystem. But to see, really, how much this regressive crap degrades men, you only have to compare how many ways there are for the princess to die in this game versus the knight. That's right: The whole game is one purpose-built, giant death trap for the man. And whereif [Is that a word?] by some miracle he survives, he wins the honor of being puppeteered as some object by the princess. Or, for that matter, let's compare how many coherent sentences either can offer. The knight's only dialogue in this entire game is screams and muffled screams, as he's killed over and over and over again. Why couldn't he be a thinking hero, who talks to the dragon, and thoughtfully negotiates a mutually agreeable settlement? Why does this game have to dehumanize the man by making his only course of action killing things?"

Silly conclusions including the word "misandric" follow.

The main problem here is that his argument about "men" is actually just about "the main character," who happens to be a man in most games. "The whole game is one purpose-built, giant death trap for the main character" would be a far more comprehensive, accurate, and meaningful statement. So he's not even making a point (facile or not) about the portrayal of men in games at all. Even outside of that, the comparison fails on multiple counts. We live in a society in which misogyny is a vastly harmful and insidious problem. Supporting negative societal stereotypes through the portrayals of women in games only serves to compound this problem. There is no such widespread societal negativity toward men, so negative portrayals of men in games simply wouldn't have any such fires to feed. They couldn't do the same damage. (This is a point Sarkeesian makes when she points out that the (very rare) "damseling" of men in games doesn't serve to erase, or even balance out, the problem for "damseled" women.) Next, I notice that Thunderf00t throws around some of the same terms that Sarkeesian does, such as "object" and "regressive sexism," presumably to show that since they don't help his argument, they don't help hers. But "regressive sexism" is all about misogyny, and so is perfectly valid to use in her argument, and not in his. His use of "object" is just as egregious. "Neanderthal objects for the purpose of doing the dangerous work"? In the established context, the one doing the work is the subject, not the object. Calling the man an "object" because he's the one performing the work is just blatantly misusing the word in a way that neither person seems to actually endorse. This in no way diminishes Sarkeesian's use of it in describing the passive person who is acted upon.

The "violence is the only solution" thing is of course about the game, not about portrayals of men. If you're playing a beat-em-up game, you'll overcome the dragon by killing it. (And as Sarkeesian mentioned, if the user interface only consists of ways to kill things, you're going to solve every problem by killing something.) People who want thinking heroes should throw out their console, buy a PC, and play adventure games. Sir Graham drove off the dragon by throwing a bucket of water at its mouth.

I think we can safely ignore the drivel about makeup and earrings (the problem with markers of femininity in games is that lazy writers use them in place of a personality for the token female character, which I'm pretty sure isn't happening here)... Until he mentions the "nonexistent, scheming patriarchy". Thunderf00t is clearly suffering from a case of the invisibility of privilege. This guy has never had incentive to open his eyes to the reality of a male-dominated society; it's so much easier and more comfortable to pretend that there is justice in the world. Tackling that issue is the subject for an entirely different letter. Or book. Or a lifetime's oeuvre. I've been known to help with that sort of thing on a personal level, but I have neither the skills nor the tenacity to get through a skull so thick that it will invent an endless succession of fictions rather than deal with an uncomfortable truth. Someone whom he already knows and trusts will have to hit him with a clue-by-four eventually, if he is to ever wake up.

"The market that you serve is telling feminists that they are oppressed." First, feminists aren't oppressed. Women are oppressed. Second, feminists (male and female) already know this. What Sarkeesian is doing is educating open-minded people about a particular aspect of the societal misogyny that fosters the oppression of women: People who are aware that there is a problem, but who are hazy on many of the details. (That will include most feminist men. Unfortunately, even knowing about the invisibility of privilege doesn't really help us to see through it: The best that knowledge can do for us is to help us to suspend our disbelief (i.e., keep an open mind) when women (and any other oppressed people) tell us things that are obvious to them and utterly foreign to us. Then, we can avoid rejecting their experiences just because we don't share them.)

"I suspect that you know full well that the reason these feminist games don't exist is not because the partriarchy is conspiring against you: It's simply because there's not a market for them." There's our old friend the straw man again: Nobody claimed a partirarchal conspiracy. And feminist games do exist. Mostly from independent publishers, as Sarkeesian mentioned. The reason they're not common, in my opinion, is that sexism is deeply ingrained in the writers and producers, being, as they are, part of a sexist society. I can think of a couple of great, mainstream games with a female hero who isn't abused for being female: "King's Quest IV" and "The Colonel's Bequest". Both written by Roberta Williams. As for whether there's a market for them, "King's Quest IV" sold better than the first three games in the series. A follow-up survey regarding gender found that the "by in large male player base didn't care if they played a male or female character, as long as the game was good, and it fit and felt good to them. The female audience, on the other hand, preferred, by in large, to play a female character. They didn't really like playing male characters." (Source: http://kingsquest.wikia.com/wiki/KQ4_development ) So I'm thinking that not only is Thunderf00t wrong on this point, he has in fact managed to state the polar opposite of the truth.

(Aside: I'm not claiming that Roberta Williams is a perfect feminist game writer. "King's Quest II" is all about rescuing the damsel in distress. (The Tierra/AGDI remake addressed this somewhat by giving Valanice a strong personality, which was nice.) "King's Quest VI" uses the same trope, except that, unusually, it does not serve as Alexander's motivation: Through most of the game, he doesn't even know that Cassima is imprisoned.)

So then Thunderf00t goes on to quote Sarkeesian's thesis paper back at her, except he's actually quoting some other YouTuber criticizing said paper. Both guys gleefully misinterpret her chart (which shows up at 15:03 in the video, in case you want to look at it). The first guy says, "... with women hilariously unable to show confidence or self-control," simply because "confidence" and "self-control" show up in a list of positive traits traditionally seen as male. I haven't yet been exposed to the thesis, but that brief clip in no way implies that Sarkeesian wants female characters to lack these traits. It does, however, imply that she thinks that if they're primarily characterized by these traits, then they are acting as men in their stories, which makes those stories not exactly feminist. This is an interesting idea which could bear a lot more thought and inspection, and whether or not it is correct, suffers no harm from the clumsy illogic of these two jokers. Thunderf00t continues, "Not only that, but in your feminist world, 'strong' is only a favorable attribute for the masculine." Again, only because "strong" shows up in the quadrant of the chart used for positive attributes and male attributes. I doubt that any honest, rational person would interpret that as "'Strong' is only a favorable attribute for the masculine". Which leads to the conclusion that Thunderf00t is being dishonest (which I think I've established), irrational, or both.

He attacks Sarkeesian for referring to the female character from a scrapped game ("Dinosaur Planet") as "strong" in a positive manner, given the idea above from the thesis, that a story featuring a female character characterized as "strong" wouldn't be a feminist story. This is an extremely weak basis for an attack. First, Sarkeesian didn't actually say that this game would have been "feminist". She said it would be "pretty cool". Second, a characterization of "strong" was apparently one indicator of a woman playing a man's role, which in turn was an indicator of a non-feminist work. How the heck would you extend that one datum into a full confirmation that the game is not feminist, without both being very familiar with the game and having, you know, actually read the thesis? I certainly wouldn't presume to do so. In addition, how can we know whether she means "strong" in the same sense at the quoted point in the video and at the quoted point in the thesis? A person could be forceful or resilient, and both of those either physically or emotionally. It can also be a shorthand for merely "not fragile" (either physically or emotionally) in a context (such as sexist games) in which a female character might be expected to be fragile by default. Sure, there's a chance that her use of "strong" in these two contexts displays an inconsistency. There's also a chance that it represents a change of heart, or even a lowering of the bar for her expectations (as time tends to do to most of us). But the vast unknowns here leave open at least a 90% chance of there being other reasons for these usages.

On sexual dimorphism: I have to admit that Sarkeesian caught me off guard with, "The belief that women are somehow a 'naturally weaker gender' is a deeply ingrained socially constructed myth, which of course is completely false..." Note that my belief on the subject would have to include the words "physically weaker on average," which make it a weak statement (so to speak), and which make it specific enough that it might not contradict what she had in mind when she said it. There are, for example, studies which could be summed up as, "white students perform better than black students on average," and yet when you see the actual bell curves of data, they overlap so closely that you realize that you can predict nothing about the relative performance of any two students based on their race. Similarly, there are plenty of women who are physically stronger than I am, and plenty who are physically weaker. When comparing the strength of a randomly selected man and a randomly selected woman, I certainly would not care to place a large wager.

Given that the statement is open to interpretation, I think it would behoove someone to, rather than attack, ask her (or someone else who shares that idea; I imagine her inbox is inundated with trolls) exactly what she meant by it. And then, if it turns out that she meant something surprising, to ask and/or search for data to back it up. And then, if the meaning was surprising and the data was nonexistent, one might well challenge the idea.

Oddly, while this statement of hers was probably the easiest one to attack, Thunderf00t still messes it up. Rather than criticize her statement, he attacks a result of a study mentioned on Wikipedia (basically stating that human sexual dimorphism in upper body strength is increased by societal pressure on males to enhance upper body muscles*) because the name of the book (footnoted as the source) that describes the study includes the word "feminist". Seriously? That makes it unsound? One properly attacks a bad study on the basis of its methods, not the name of a book that mentioned it. He then pretends to refute the results by quoting the Wikipedia summaries of two other studies showing men to be stronger than women... Only they don't actually contradict the first one (which doesn't claim that there is no natural dimorphism).

* He falsely claims that this is the same as her statement: "...Where someone seems to be suggesting exactly that."

... And he wraps it up with speculation about disabled comments and an insult, neither of which is worth addressing.

Well, I made it through the whole thing. 19.5 minutes of that video, plus lots of replaying to transcribe bits and make sure I got his arguments right, plus keeping everything in mind long enough to write this whole response, has quite put me off my appetite. Dinner will have to wait a while.

My friend's response was brief and disappointing.

I'd like to know what my other friends, especially my gamer friends and female friends, and most especially my female gamer friends, have to say on the subject. Should I pay any further attention to the "controversy" over these videos? Is there any rational debate out there that I should check out? Is there something that I have gotten very wrong (or very right)?

I'm making this post public in case it is needed. Abuse and/or trolling will be unceremoniously deleted.

Comments

[botia]

I'm sorry you had to be exposed to all that. Reason and logic are not going to be useful here; they don't utilize or understand it. Everything is about justifying their extreme hatred of women (and hatred of their own desire to be with women) with these dudes. They'll tell you you're "white-knighting" and a "beta" (meanwhile being extremely angry and jealous that you are very happily partnered).

They're poisoned and bitter, and the best you can do is just be an example of a non-dickhead.

[feuervogel]

Out of curiosity, is this the same person who blocked me and several others on facebook and who told me that if he ever sees me in person again, he will pretend we have never met? Because we called him out on BS misogyny in a discussion of unwinona's post about Bike Guy?

If so, honestly? Cut him out of your life and stop trying to mend the errors of his ways.

[blimix]

Not the same person. However, if the incident that you refer to is the one (which I did not follow fully, as I don't keep up well on Facebook) in which "mansplaining" and "tone argument" came up in the same breath... That was my abusive ex-friend. He's already out of my life.

The guy who sent me that link? Lots of fun, mostly a decent person, treats people well enough... But he's attached to the thought that he's perfectly rational even when he's not, which makes debate rather difficult. (That statement is also true of my ex-friend. The difference is that this current friend, like most sane people, doesn't become enraged when people tell him that he's wrong.)

[feuervogel]

I believe this was the same incident, about a year, year and a half ago. He blocked me, tiurin, neesh, and the Larch, iirc.I'm sorry he was abusive to you in person; it's very strange to learn things like that about someone you have generally positive memories of, albeit 15-year-old ones because you rarely interacted after you moved away. (Though his admission that he had a crush on me the day I left makes a lot more sense in hindsight. It had a tinge of "you should have picked me!" to it. Nice Guy (tm).)

Oh, the Perfectly Rational sort. Yes, I'm familiar with that type. They're the most frustrating to discuss anything with, because they usually believe that because they can remain perfectly calm while discussing [something that's 100% theoretical to them but represents your lived experience] and you get ~emotional~, that means they're superior and their utterly dispassionate argument "wins."

[blimix]

That's what I get for not creepy-stalking people on-line. I had no idea that that argument had devolved so far. It's very sad, and I wish he hadn't cost himself all that social support. More than that probably should not be said in a public post.

[feuervogel]

Feel free to PM or email me if you want to discuss further out of the public eye.

[beth_leonard]

TLDR; I need some way to remember to come back to it at a later time when I have time to read it all. I'll follow this posts so hopefully comments of others over time will remind me to come back to it.

I watched the original video, but haven't looked at any of the comments for similar reasons. I'm a female gamer, I've played hardcore lose-120-hours-of-work-per-death PvP games 70 hrs a week for over a year of my life. I never had a problem with being female, but I'm weird that way. There was only one other true female on the server and she quit after a while.

I could see Anita Sarkeesian's points in her videos, but the fact that they never bothered me (in ways that I've noticed, there may be subtle changes to myself based on the messages I'm receiving from video games) doesn't mean that they didn't bother or scare away anyone else.

I loved the section in the original video where she says, "Or like game NNN, where they murder his wife and kidnap his daughter." x 20.

--Beth

[beth_leonard]

Ok. Ick. I made it through minute 5 of the video (why does he repeat himself / her so often?) and read all of your essay. In summary, I think you've got it right. I'm not the best judge however because I have a non-nuanced education in this matter. It's the kind of conversation I generally don't tend to bother having with people because it's uncomfortable to everyone and usually not productive.

Later... Just had a long, uncomfortable conversation with a friend about this. We came to the consensus, "Some cultures are better than others. She's trying to change a culture, presumably for the better but change has risk and unintended consequences."

Maybe I'll tell my grandkids, "Once upon at time, video games were largely all about men beating people up. Aren't we glad there are so many more plot-lines now?"

I think it was you who sent me the Brosie the riveter URL:
http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/50432219744/special-guest-edition-the-hawkeye-initiative-irl

I try to take home the points at the end of that one -- most men aren't actually jerks, they just don't know what it's like.

I think that's part of what scares so many boy scout leaders about admitting gay adults into the organization, luckily the winds of change are changing, but every comment I see is, "What happens in the tent with gay & straight youth together? or with gay and straight adults together?" Men fear being objectified. It doesn't happen to them. They aren't used to it. The Girl Scouts solved the problem (of mixed-gender-preferences-in-the-same-tent) decades ago. I think the men will hopefully eventually get there, but it takes time, even generations.

I don't want men or women to be objectified.

--Beth

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

My thought still stands that the response to Anita Sarkeesian is pretty good proof of why her work, and similar, is needed.

[kirin]

As someone who spends some time hanging out in (ostensibly) video-game oriented communities, I've also been operating under the assumption that most rebuttals to her material are so much defensive BS (and worse), and I've not come across anything to change my mind on that. Not that I've gone digging.

[light-in-motion.livejournal.com]

I can suggest some criteria for helping you decide whether to continue paying attention to the debate. How invested are you in this community? Do you post your opinions publicly? Do you want to or feel you should? If you're heavily invested, and/or post *publicly or intend to, then, yeah, keep following the controversy. Otherwise, pay as much attention as you think warranted to ensure you keep an open mind.

I can't answer the other two questions; you're my only source of info about this.

*ETA: More publicly than this.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

I'm not at all invested in most on-line gaming communities, nor do I care that "someone is wrong on the Internet". I have only two reasons to pay attention to the debate: To find out if I'm wrong, and to put this critique out where it's visible, so that somebody can link to it as a response if their friend links to the hater's video.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

Thunderfoot, aka Paul Mason, has a ginormous chip on his shoulder about anything remotely to do with feminism because he got kicked off an atheist blog network a couple years back for, basically, being an asshat. So I wouldn't take anything he says seriously.

[cos]

What was your friend's brief and disappointing response?

[blimix.livejournal.com]

He indicated that he disagreed greatly with many of the things I said, but was no more specific than that, and then said that it was not worth getting into an argument over. I did not press him on it.