Study on videogame use and sexist attitudes among gamers
April 9, 2015 4:57 PM   Subscribe

A thoughtful TLDR by Gamasutra blogger Wai Yen Tang: The take home message is that the cultivation effects of sexist attitudes from a general use of videogames over a three year period from a German population has not resulted in any appreciable changes in sexist attitudes. ... The authors argued that factors, such as personal experience, peers and family would have a stronger effect on sexist attitude than video game content. Link to study (might not work on mobile)
posted by Sebmojo (36 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Germany sounds pretty cool, then.
posted by koeselitz at 5:31 PM on April 9, 2015


I'm not sure if establishing a causal relationship is as important as encouraging people already in the gaming space to not be terrible.
posted by lumensimus at 5:48 PM on April 9, 2015 [24 favorites]


I still have a very hard time seeing what's at stake in this argument. Why does it matter whether sexist bullshit has a particular statistical impact on the sexism of the population at large? Is that really what anybody is concerned about when they talk about sexism being a bad thing? I've never met a woman who's a gamer who's told me that she's concerned that sexist games are likely to cause a vague, subconscious impact on the people who play the games. I have, on the other hand, met women who are gamers who think sexism in games is stupid bullshit that's insulting and exclusionary.

The question of whether video games make people sexist always seems to me very much like an attempt to argue folks into the Jack Thompson corner, and make it seem as though people who are against sexism in games are coming from the perspective of believing that video games have some insidious, subliminal, vaguely satanic effect on the minds of children.

But - to be blunt: I don't see a sexist game and think, "gosh, what if this causes subliminal increases in the sexism of the gaming population?" I think: "this is some insulting fucking bullshit, and the women who are my friends are taking a hit here, so it has to stop."
posted by koeselitz at 5:55 PM on April 9, 2015 [30 favorites]


koeselitz: "Germany sounds pretty cool, then."

I'm assuming you're implying the same isn't true for other countries? If so, I don't see why that's the case. The study didn't look at if exposure to sexism in video games reinforced sexism in real life, but if it reinforced sexism more than the control, which is "doing something other than playing video games". That "doing something other" is likely to be "surfing the net", "watching tv/movies", maybe for super-retro kids "reading magazines". Some argue that the interactive component of video games makes it have a greater impact than other media, and this study says "apparently, no". It's a bit hard to see why German kids would less susceptible to the influence of interactivity than kids from other countries.

lumensimus: "I'm not sure if establishing a causal relationship is as important as encouraging people already in the gaming space to not be terrible."

I don't think anyone has argued that it's more important. Saying something is not the same as saying it's more important than anything else.
posted by Bugbread at 5:57 PM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


I still have a very hard time seeing what's at stake in this argument.

Some argue that the interactive component of video games makes it have a greater impact than other media, and this study says "apparently, no"

Nice explanation of what is at stake.
posted by So You're Saying These Are Pants? at 5:59 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


Bugbread, your comment just made me imagine the control as "consuming German pornography," and now that's how I just have to read this.
posted by Navelgazer at 6:06 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


koeselitz: "I still have a very hard time seeing what's at stake in this argument."

I can't tell if you're being wilfully obtuse here or what. If you think sexism is bad, and you want it to stop, and there's a factor which may be increasing the amount of sexism, then of course that would be a really important issue. "What's at stake" is people getting death threats, and getting SWATted, and being scared to publish articles except anonymously.

koeselitz: "Why does it matter whether sexist bullshit has a particular statistical impact on the sexism of the population at large? Is that really what anybody is concerned about when they talk about sexism being a bad thing?"

It matters because if something is increasing the amount of sexism in the world, that's a bad thing! That's like saying "why does it matter if neo-nazi propaganda causes increased violence against minorities?" I mean, it should be really goddamn obvious why it matters.
posted by Bugbread at 6:08 PM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


Personally I'm not too surprised with the results, the amount of sexism in video games never really felt outsize compared to the rest of popular culture (or at least American pop culture). It exists of course, but more as a reflection of the culture at large than an outlier.

That said, if you looked at certain video game communities you'd find a different result altogether. I wonder what about video games results in reactionary communities? I'm guessing playing video games is more a symptom of anti-social behavior (if you're holed up on the computer all day, what else are you going to do with all your time?) than the actual cause of that behavior.
posted by ReadEvalPost at 6:12 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Bugbread: “It matters because if something is increasing the amount of sexism in the world, that's a bad thing!”

What the... ?

The study says that sexist games do not increase sexism among Germans. What thing do you mean is increasing the amount of sexism in the world here?

The implication of the study which many will seize on is clear: chill out about sexism in gaming, it isn't hurting anyone. My point is that that is clearly false, because the biggest problem with sexism isn't that it might cause sexism to increase statistically through subconscious impact on gamers. The biggest problem with sexism is that sexism is insulting and exclusionary.

We aren't worried that a guy who plays a sexist game will become a patriarchal jerk; so this study, which shows that German guys who play sexist games don't tend to become patriarchal jerks, doesn't assuage our concerns. We're worried that women are directly impacted – that the women who are my friends and who play games are excluded, made to feel as though they aren't part of the culture, made to feel as though they are objects, made to feel as though they are disposable and unimportant.

My point was that the fomenting of future sexism is a secondary impact that is relatively insignificant in the face of the primary impact.

So: if anyone is looking to this study with triumph, as if to say: "see! The crap in video games doesn't matter! I can go back to playing my stupid sexist bullshit, because it's all good!" – then they're wrong. It does matter. Because the central issue here has very little to do with subliminal effects on the male gaming population, except in a secondary way.
posted by koeselitz at 6:20 PM on April 9, 2015 [21 favorites]


Oh god, this.

Yeah, the GooberGabbers have been trying to spam Kotaku with this all day.

Look, the point is not that video games create sexism. The point is that certain video games, and the people who play them, are helping to reenforce the sexism that is already manifestly evident in society.


or what koeselitz just said
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:21 PM on April 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


I don't see a sexist game and think, "gosh, what if this causes subliminal increases in the sexism of the gaming population?" I think: "this is some insulting fucking bullshit, and the women who are my friends are taking a hit here, so it has to stop."

To be honest, I don't have a problem with sexist video games. I like lots of things that are problematic in one way or more, from Shakespeare to Mark Twain to the Beastie Boys. Thing with games - and to a lesser extent, maybe - movies, is that the sexism defines the landscape.

I'd really prefer if something overtly and terribly sexist wasn't the default. They don't have to go away - there really needs to be more variety. An infinite number of games can exist - there is no point after which games can never be made again. So, why do they all have to be so boyzone ?
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 6:27 PM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


We agree, Pogo_Fuzzybutt. You use the word "problematic" – note that the "insulting fucking bullshit" in my formulation is the sexism, not the game itself. I agree that we can like problematic things; but admitting that the things we like are problematic is the same as saying "I like this, but I do wish it didn't have that in it." So – yeah. We agree.
posted by koeselitz at 6:30 PM on April 9, 2015


Bugbread: “‘What's at stake’ is people getting death threats, and getting SWATted, and being scared to publish articles except anonymously.”

Er – I'm sorry, but I want to underline: I really have absolutely no idea where you're coming from on this, Bugbread. I feel like we must agree, and we're just having a misunderstanding as to the implications of what we're saying here.
posted by koeselitz at 6:30 PM on April 9, 2015


ReadEvalPost: "Personally I'm not too surprised with the results, the amount of sexism in video games never really felt outsize compared to the rest of popular culture (or at least American pop culture)."

Yeah, I think the real focus was on the interactivity. Like if watching a movie that is X sexist increases sexist tendencies in the viewer by Y%, the study was trying to determine if playing a video game that is X sexist also increases sexist tendencies in the player by Y%, or if the interactive component causes an increase of (Y+Z)%.

ReadEvalPost: "I'm guessing playing video games is more a symptom of anti-social behavior (if you're holed up on the computer all day, what else are you going to do with all your time?) than the actual cause of that behavior."

I think that the community's influence is huge, too. It's not like back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and video gaming was either done alone, in the same room as friends, or on a server with limited to zero ability to talk with players. Now the huge majority of games have multiplayer with voice chat capabilities so you can engage with a big, vibrant community of sexist racist assholes. And then when you're done playing, you can go onto forums and Twitter and YouTube comments and further engage with them.

koeselitz: "The study says that sexist games do not increase sexism among Germans."

...Yes? We must be talking across each other.

koeselitz: "We aren't worried that a guy who plays a sexist game will become a patriarchal jerk...We're worried that women are directly impacted"

I'm worried about both.

koeselitz: "So: if anyone is looking to this study with triumph"

That's them being assholes. It doesn't make the German researchers assholes for doing the study in the first place.

I don't really get what your problem is with this study having been performed. Smoking kills, right? People should stop smoking. Would you be upset at a study on whether it's the nicotine or the tar that causes cancer? Or would you be upset at a study on whether second-hand smoke is more, less, or equally carcinogenic than first-hand smoke?
posted by Bugbread at 6:31 PM on April 9, 2015


Bugbread: “I don't really get what your problem is with this study having been performed.”

Well, maybe that's the source of our misunderstanding, then. I don't have any problems with this study having been performed. I have problems with (a) the universalization of studies of single cohorts, which is a massive scientific problem in sociology; and (b) the already-broad usage of this study (not in this thread, but elsewhere) as a cudgel to beat those who are against sexism in games into submission by loudly insisting: "see! Sexism in games has no deleterious effects! It isn't a problem, so shut up about it already!"

I know, I know – like you said, that's them being assholes. But while I don't have any problems with the original researchers, and I wish them the very best, I am not likely ever to meet them, where as those people being assholes are a problem to me and my friends every single day.

So perhaps you'll understand why I'm more eager to point out to the assholes why they don't get to take this study and run with it in the way that they have.
posted by koeselitz at 6:36 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


I'm probably the world's worst feminist. I find Family Guy funny and if someone at work was making a Family Guy joke I'd laugh, not try to get them fired. I don't really love having my characters in MMORPGs hardly dressed, but it doesn't bother me enough to get all upset over it. Sure I want things like equal salaries, job security during maternity leaves etc. But yeah, I laugh when SNL does a parody about sexism. I really don't envy my husband's job, he's a video game writer so he REALLY has to keep up with this stuff.
posted by Hazelsmrf at 6:37 PM on April 9, 2015


These are the prompts used to measure sexism:
The man should be responsible for all major decisions made in a family.

In a group of male and female members, a man should take on the leadership.

Even if both partners work, the woman should be responsible for taking care of the household.

Responses are agreement on scale from 1 (disagree) to 5 (agree).

These don't seem incredibly relatable to common sexist tropes in games.

It would be interesting to see a set of prompts that were more closely related to the concerns that have been expressed about games.

This study seems to indicate that games aren't encouraging regression to the attitudes of an earlier generation, but it doesn't provide any insight into composition of the new attitudes that people are forming.
posted by ethansr at 6:43 PM on April 9, 2015 [13 favorites]


Bugbread: “I don't really get what your problem is with this study having been performed.”

Actually, rereading this thread, I think I was totally unclear in the first sentence of my second comment, which probably led to the misunderstanding:

me: “I still have a very hard time seeing what's at stake in this argument.”

I can see how you read "this argument" and thought I meant "the subject matter of the study." But I didn't. What I actually meant was the ongoing (apparently interminable) argument that GamerGate has been throwing in the faces of all comers for months now: the argument that video games really don't cause sexism at all, and therefore is not a huge problem, Anita et al should just shut up, &c.
posted by koeselitz at 6:46 PM on April 9, 2015


(And I guess I should say: sorry for being unclear, Bugbread.)
posted by koeselitz at 6:47 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Okay, I haven't sprung for the 51$ to view the full study, but if I understand the Gamasutra summary, they've really just found no correlation between frequency of game playing and agreeing with these three statements (only in German, presumably) :
  1. “The man should be responsible for all major decisions made in a family”
  2. “In a group of male and female members, a man should take on the leadership”
  3. “Even if both partners work, the woman should be responsible for taking care of the household”.
I could come up with a whole rainbow spectrum of sexist beliefs that aren't really encompassed by those. Does a woman owe her date a little something if he pays for her meal? If she was dressed provocatively? Is a girl geek probably a fake geek?

Plus, you can easily see someone for example saying they disagree with #2 but still subconsciously preferring when a man takes leadership. (It's not that they have anything against women in position of authority, it's just that coincidentally they think Bob is better qualified than Susan, Joe is better qualified than Mary, etc.)
posted by RobotHero at 6:58 PM on April 9, 2015 [8 favorites]


Yeah, I don't mind that the study was done (though it doesn't seem very good), but it's been rather misrepresented in the way it's popping up in various places. Whether videogames "cause" sexism is not actually a big concern for a lot of us whose interests overlap with games and feminism; that games are sexist on multiple levels (representation in-game, gender ratios in development, the totally ugly and toxic cultures, online harassment, etc.) are much bigger concerns. Gamer culture has huge and obvious issues with criticism, and loves a good false dichotomy. The way this is getting pointed to in lots of places is more or less, "Look! See? Videogames don't cause sexism, so there's no point in worrying about it anymore!" when what it's saying is more that sexism in games kind of blends into the broader cultural sexism that informs it.

Which, duh.
posted by byanyothername at 7:00 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


koeselitz: "What I actually meant was the ongoing (apparently interminable) argument that GamerGate has been throwing in the faces of all comers for months now: the argument that video games really don't cause sexism at all, and therefore is not a huge problem, Anita et al should just shut up, &c."

Ah, okay, I totally didn't realize that's what you were talking about. Bewilderment dissolved! Thanks for the clarification.
posted by Bugbread at 7:14 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


I haven't read the full study (just the abstract and the Gamasutra article), but it feels like one implication is that if we want to account for the sexism that (unfortunately) characterizes gaming as a practice, then we can't just look to the fact that it's manipulating images on a screen using a controller. "Gaming" is an incredibly broad category of practice, and can account for any number of things, which have a nearly infinite number of conceptions to the individuals engaging with them.

Games are cultural products, and they are created within an ecosystem with a number of inputs and outputs. To understand gaming we have to move beyond games as isolated texts where we treat the player as some abstracted blank without context. All sorts of people play games, and they enter into the practice with a wide variety of motivations, goals, and opinions. To a certain extent, it almost feels like the article is getting at the idea of 'well, of course games don't cause sexism, why would they?' I believe this is supported in the Gamastura summary,

The authors argued that factors, such as personal experience, peers and family would have a stronger effect on sexist attitude than video game content. Speaking of peers, IMO this can extend to peers in your videogame social network.
The research and theoretical work out there posits a different conclusion about the seemingly inherent sexism of game culture. Largely, the idea that games are economic systems, and exist to make money. The cultural capital of gaming is still heavily invested in stereotypically masculine fantasies. A feedback loop exists: the sorts of people brought into gaming are the sorts of people who develop the interest and talent to make games professionally and then their fantasies and perspectives are what tend to be reproduced when they enter into the top level positions and create games that cater to the fantasies and perspectives that they see as being desired by their assumed-male audience. So, a natural question is how you break this loop, and related to that, why are people so militantly against any efforts towards change?
posted by codacorolla at 7:14 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I totally condemn suggest these researchers spend a week playing Dota 2, LoL, or any other currently popular MOBA, and then come back and re-examine their framework for evaluating sexist attitudes in gaming (along with a whole lot of other shit).
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:50 PM on April 9, 2015


Yeah, I totally condemn suggest these researchers spend a week playing Dota 2, LoL, or any other currently popular MOBA, and then come back and re-examine their framework for evaluating sexist attitudes in gaming (along with a whole lot of other shit).

To be entirely fair, while there's a lot said about toxic attitude in MOBAs in general, I've played about 300 hours of Blizzard's latest MOBA and there was not a single sexist or racist comment made by anyone in that entire 300 hours. You should however expect to be called a noob now and then (see unlike sex or race, skill in the game generally matters) and the correct response is the "mute" button rather than responding (being dragged down to their level and all).

You'll just have to take my word for it as I didn't leave my video recorder running the entire time.

The funniest conversation I was witness to was with a 36 year old mom arguing with an 8 year old boy saying he couldn't possibly be only 8 because he has more emotional maturity than her 10 year old daughter.

Also, how she makes her 6 year old daughter do fishing for her in WoW to gain raiding materials and how much her daughter loves fishing. I told her it was against child labour laws.
posted by xdvesper at 9:03 PM on April 9, 2015 [4 favorites]


TheWhiteSkull: "Yeah, I totally condemn suggest these researchers spend a week playing Dota 2, LoL, or any other currently popular MOBA, and then come back and re-examine their framework for evaluating sexist attitudes in gaming (along with a whole lot of other shit)."

Which part of the framework (and what other shit) do you think needs re-examination?
posted by Bugbread at 9:52 PM on April 9, 2015


Weird to see the comments here just being a bunch of dudes alternating between misunderstanding (at least based on the Gamasutra write up) and forcefully restating the same things that Tang says to begin with.

"The study says that sexist games do not increase sexism among Germans. What thing do you mean is increasing the amount of sexism in the world here? "

The study (abstract) doesn't say that sexist games do not increase sexism among Germans, it says that it doesn't increase it more than the control of general media exposure. But it does say that it's not correlated with the number of hours spent gaming or with what genres people prefer. It doesn't say that specific games or instances of sexism don't have more or less of an effect. I don't know enough about German culture to say how reliable those proxy questions are for sexist attitudes, but similar questions for racial resentment are pretty robust in America.

I'm just hoping that by getting back onto what this does say, and hopefully someone who's actually read the paper will chime in, will get us off of retreads of a bunch of arguments we've already had that are largely unrelated to the actual content of the link.
posted by klangklangston at 10:18 PM on April 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I totally condemn suggest these researchers spend a week playing Dota 2, LoL, or any other currently popular MOBA, and then come back and re-examine their framework for evaluating sexist attitudes in gaming (along with a whole lot of other shit).

Or they could spend a week in the locker room of the average male-dominated team sport, or a frat, or a fantasy sports league, or a male-dominated workplace, or just around any gaggle of teenage boys or twentysomething young men. Even pursuits and groupings of people that like to think of themselves as progressive or artistic or whatever are often just as gross and sexist, if not worse, because for example theatre and arts dudes like to think that they're immune to that kind of behavior by virtue of what amounts to rank classism.

Games aren't the source problem. They're not any worse than other form of popular culture.

The shitheads in LoL and DotA aren't assholes because they play LoL and DotA, any more than the fact that there are lots of sexist assholes in academia means that academia causes sexism.
posted by The Master and Margarita Mix at 10:45 PM on April 9, 2015 [6 favorites]


I really don't think the content of games is more sexist than other forms of media in most cases. It's the culture around gaming that seems to be notably sexist. Not that this would be irrelevant to a study like this, though they frame it in terms of content. I do think the set of questions they ask is surprisingly narrow.
posted by atoxyl at 11:36 PM on April 9, 2015


If sexist games aren't increasing actual sexist behavior, and no people are non-consentingly involved—then sexist games aren't much different from 50 SoG. Unless you're proposing we go all Fahrenheit 451 on some video games, the best you can do is choose for yourself which books or games you care to support.
posted by five fresh fish at 11:40 PM on April 9, 2015


Certainly compared to other cultures visibility on the internet could create an exaggerated impression of sexism in gaming culture. But those questions just... it's like the polls that gameragators bandied about that showed they are mostly "liberal." The answer to a question of principle, based on a slightly old-fashioned take on sexism, may not tell you that much about how a man will actually interact with women. Like if you asked a bunch of Marxist dudes about gender roles would you really be able to get more than a modest prediction of their behavior from that?
posted by atoxyl at 11:43 PM on April 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Unless you're proposing we go all Fahrenheit 451 on some video games, the best you can do is choose for yourself which books or games you care to support.

And by being vocal about what you do and don't support, and why. And, from the creative angle, putting more thought into the games one creates, especially by listening to the segment of the audience who says "hey, this is sexist and gross, you should do better than that". People can choose to make sexist games, novels that hold up an abusive relationship as an example of something sexy, and so forth, and they can and should absolutely be criticized for making that choice. Freedom of speech is freedom from censorship, never freedom from censure.

(And of course, if people who say things like "hey, maybe people should write more books that don't paint abuse as a sexy thing" are met with threats and violence, there is something seriously wrong with our culture that needs examining.)
posted by NMcCoy at 11:58 PM on April 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


I was of the impression that they didn't want academics studying video games?

Science is not a weapon you can selectively wield. It is a slow, complicated thing. That's something everyone can always keep in mind. I appreciate the authors for publishing even though it seems like their hypothesis was disproven.
posted by halifix at 12:43 AM on April 10, 2015


If sexist games aren't increasing actual sexist behavior, and no people are non-consentingly involved—then sexist games aren't much different from 50 SoG. Unless you're proposing we go all Fahrenheit 451 on some video games, the best you can do is choose for yourself which books or games you care to support.

I mean sort of. So here are some ways a sexist game could cause "harm"

1)It could make people more sexist
2)It could make people already subjected to sexism feel more oppressed
3)It could push women out of gaming spaces

This study has evidence against 1, but not really against 2 or 3. I think one idea one should hopefully get from Sarkeesian's videos is that it's not so much that these sexist tropes exist, it's that they're so frequent. There's only so many brothels needed in games, you know? I like the idea of the push for more variety in games and less focus on hoary and tired tropes being akin to changing the mood music, the feel of games. I'd love if the most popular games were just a bit more thoughtful so that one of the most well known representatives of gaming, GTA5, didn't treat women like harpies all the time.

As to what we should do about it? Yes, commercial action is another thing, but talking about it, suggesting alternatives, promoting new and exciting writers/developers is another way. And is kind of what is already going on.
posted by Cannon Fodder at 1:39 AM on April 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


five fresh fish: "If sexist games aren't increasing actual sexist behavior, and no people are non-consentingly involved—then sexist games aren't much different from 50 SoG. Unless you're proposing we go all Fahrenheit 451 on some video games, the best you can do is choose for yourself which books or games you care to support."

As I tried to say above - this is a bit like saying 'if homophobic slurs don't make other people homophobic, then they aren't really causing any damage.' But they clearly are. We don't dislike homophobic slurs because we're afraid they might make homophobes more homophobic. We dislike them because they're slurs, and slurs are offensive and insulting in themselves.

In the same way, the problem with sexist video games isn't that they might potentially make sexists more sexist. They problem with sexist video games is that sexism is bad - that it actively and directly insults and excludes women.

And we should keep that in mind. I think that, in a patriarchal society, because of he subtle propaganda we're subject to, it's always tempting to see everything in terms of the impact it has on the dominant group; in this case, it's tempting to see sexism as a problem mostly because of the impact it has on sexists. But that's not how it works. Misogyny isn't a problem because of how it affects men. Misogyny is a problem because of what it does directly to women.

(Also: I think everybody knows we aren't going to actually burn sexist video games. This is all about whether we should or should not support them, and whether we should point out that the sexism in them in the first place. Thankfully Metafilter is generally a haven from such things, but there are a lot of people in the world today who take the first sentence of your comment - saying that sexist games are just a matter of preference, a fair enough point, even though I disagree with it - and then run with it until they're telling us that it's actually a form of censorship to say 'I think this particular game is sexist,' that it's destroying people's lives, that it's a big secretive SJW conspiracy, etc. Clearly - I hope - that's not how freedom works. So, yeah. I don't think the thing to be concerned about is that people are going to burn things.)
posted by koeselitz at 7:32 AM on April 10, 2015 [7 favorites]


Also: I think everybody knows we aren't going to actually burn sexist video games. This is all about whether we should or should not support them, and whether we should point out that the sexism in them in the first place.

Well, that's the thing: no one but gators and their fellow travelers are proposing this. The troglodytes pushing this narrative in gaming (and comics, and SFF, and so forth) are trying to paint themselves as victims, and the best way to do that is to act like their freedoms are being taken away from them. It wasn't ever about what they like causing sexism/racism/etc, it's that the culture has so much of it embedded already. So Anita Sarkeesian isn't walking around with a full security detail because she wants to censor games, it's because she's a woman that pointed that fact out. Randi Harper wasn't SWATed because she wants to silence anyone, it's because she's a woman that rightly believes that freedom of speech doesn't mean you have to be forced to listen to what others say, up to and including slurs and rape/death threats. Brianna Wu isn't dealing with law enforcement every day of her life because she thinks games make you sexist, it's because she's a woman that spoke up about how sexist the industry itself is (and also because many people think she's a man masquerading as a woman to garner sympathy and/or because they believe women actually have it easier).

It's obvious is about the sexist/racist/etc elements that were already present, and who are afraid that they won't be able to enjoy that with the zeal that they currently are. These are people who afraid they're losing "their" toys, their objects, their fantasies. More developers and artists and writers are moving outside of these brats' shitty little comfort zones, and they can't deal with that. Those few developers and artists and writers that claim that they have to be on watch for censorship or oppression or whatever are really just afraid that they'll have to move forward and try new things. They're no longer able to depend on the old standards to make their works more engaging, or to reach wider audiences, and they want to make it Someone Else's Problem. Of course, every once in a while the façade slips, and you get people complaining about trading sexual favors for reviews, or black Captain America and female Thor not representing "real" fans, or how a book with swordplay on the front is actually about how dragons are the good guys.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:32 AM on April 10, 2015


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