Feminism/Sexism and Gaming/Geek/Popular culture Catch All

If Enforcing was a paid position, I'd probably have a harder time working it out.

Jonman wrote:

I'm all for tarring and feathering Mike and Jerry if and when they deserve it. This sounds like one of those times.

However, I want to echo momgamer and point out that PAX is so much more than those two guys. Bailing on PAX as a result feels like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. PAX really is a community event. Community is why I go.

That said, I applaud anyone who feels that the right thing to do is stick to their guns and not pony up for PAX. If that's what you feel you gotta do, do it.

I feel like it's a moot point for me. I didn't attend PAX this year because tickets sold out before I could get them, and I might not attend this year, because if they can sell out the convention center, make me think it will be so packed that I won't enjoy it. ECCC this last spring though was still a ton of fun nerd time, and less packed.

KingGorilla wrote:

Can I interest you in the Motor City Comic Con, and my couch?

Will you draw me like one of your French girls?

Spoiler:

I think it's your icon and some of the photoshops I've seen that makes me think that every time I see this post.

Sexting + Sex + Slut Shaming = Looming Catastrophe

Last night, my 11 year old daughter and I were running errands and caught this story on NPR, "Online 'Shaming' A New Level Of Cyberbullying For Girls." We listened silently My own internal horror and anger grew with each passing second of the story.

Another excerpt from that OUTSTANDING blog entry:

We do not want to raise girls who are afraid of their bodies or their sexuality. We do not want to portray boys -- your boys, your sons -- as predators.

But as a woman, as a mom of a girl...I am sorry, but a huge part of my gut, heart and soul thinks maybe I really need to. Because someone's sons, a lot of someone's sons, are predators.

Really though, that whole blog entry is top notch. I just sent a link to it to my closest friend, his daughter just started high school this year and I don't know quite how he's talked with her about any of this kind of stuff and figured this mom's thoughts were so well-put that it was too important to not share.

MISANDRY!

/MRA'd

I agree with the entire blog, except for her comment below about how it would be dumb for the girl to send pictures in the first place. And the fact the author doesn't acknowledge this bothers me a little bit. She is absolutely correct that a boy who shares pictures of a girl who trusted him with them is a horrible, stupid, criminal thing to do to a person. But as parents we need to teach our children to not send crap like that to people, boy or girl. Or maybe I just completely misunderstood her reply to the comment.

If it's the comment I think you're talking about—she's replying to a person who's saying "I'm afraid my boy will get in trouble because a girl does something stupid", and she's saying "if somebody else's daughter does something stupid, your kid should be smart enough to do the right thing".

Unrelated, but a gem:

IMAGE(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VZO6zqW1qqo/TuFXx2ligsI/AAAAAAAAAog/aOrAqw1n6L4/s1600/Sexism+bingo.jpg)

Two parts stuck out to me. One:

I am not trying to raise a Good Girl. I am trying to raise a confident, respectful, self-respecting, and SAFE girl. Sadly, part of her safety involves keeping her safe from boys who are predators.

You may be trying to raise a good son...but are you raising a gentleman?

Those two lines juxtaposed into an also dangerous line of thinking. "I don't have to raise a 'good' girl, but you should raise a gentleman."

“Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.”

This is something that I never actually had a quote for, but constantly remind guys I know about. Whenever someone whines about how "well guys have to deal with unfair stereotypes, tooooo" crap, I always ask them how that's actually impacted their lives. Are they afraid that a woman is going to sexually abuse them and then get congratulated by the media? Sure, it happens but only enough so that we can pass around the "one time" story that we all seem to know by heart. Women can't pass around that one story, they just know too many to pick the one.

Bloo Driver wrote:

Two parts stuck out to me. One:

I am not trying to raise a Good Girl. I am trying to raise a confident, respectful, self-respecting, and SAFE girl. Sadly, part of her safety involves keeping her safe from boys who are predators.

You may be trying to raise a good son...but are you raising a gentleman?

Those two lines juxtaposed into an also dangerous line of thinking. "I don't have to raise a 'good' girl, but you should raise a gentleman."

That's not how I read it. I think she was using "gentleman" as a paraphrasing of the qualities she was trying to instill in her daughter. The use of a gendered word may have muddled it a bit.

Oh my. Sexism bingo and how sadly close to home you are.

Bloo Driver wrote:

Two parts stuck out to me. One:

I am not trying to raise a Good Girl. I am trying to raise a confident, respectful, self-respecting, and SAFE girl. Sadly, part of her safety involves keeping her safe from boys who are predators.

You may be trying to raise a good son...but are you raising a gentleman?

Those two lines juxtaposed into an also dangerous line of thinking. "I don't have to raise a 'good' girl, but you should raise a gentleman."

The Good Girl concept, as shown by her capitalization, now has a lot more modern baggage than just meaning well-behaved, in this context.

ruhk wrote:
Bloo Driver wrote:

Two parts stuck out to me. One:

I am not trying to raise a Good Girl. I am trying to raise a confident, respectful, self-respecting, and SAFE girl. Sadly, part of her safety involves keeping her safe from boys who are predators.

You may be trying to raise a good son...but are you raising a gentleman?

Those two lines juxtaposed into an also dangerous line of thinking. "I don't have to raise a 'good' girl, but you should raise a gentleman."

That's not how I read it. I think she was using "gentleman" as a paraphrasing of the qualities she was trying to instill in her daughter. The use of a gendered word may have muddled it a bit.

That's precisely how I read it too. I'm familiar with the Good Girl concept as Clover pointed it out, and some of the baggage that goes with it. In context, I don't feel that the blogger was making a case for a double-standard. Quite the opposite.

I guess in that case, the juxtaposition just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see what she's trying to compare and contrast, really. Is it "we shouldn't be concerned with good children, but respectful ones"?

Here. Let me try to translate for you:

We shouldn't be concerned with perpetuating the stereotype that girls must be pure, gentle, pretend to be happy all the time even when they're not, perfectly obedient, and planning on becoming housewives. Instead, we should be concerned with making sure our children act like civilized human beings.

Contrast "Good Girl" with "Boys Will Be Boys". Compare "gentleman" with "self-assured woman".

If you go by the stereotypes, boys are expected to do crap like share sexted pictures and get girls into bed because that's just what boys do, while girls are expected to be protected from the very idea of sex and never even think about it so that they don't turn into sluts. It serves nobody to allow boys to get away with these things, nor does it serve anyone to let girls grow up to believe that they should always put their own needs behind those of others.

The most depressing thing in the article was:

And then the story ended and after a moment of silence my daughter said, "Those girls are so stupid, why did they do that?"

And I died inside because as a society, as parents, we have FAILED.

Despite trying so hard to help build perspective, she and I and our society still blame the women.

Her daughter has already internalized the idea that it's always the girl's fault. That these sorts of things don't happen to "Good Girls". But of course it's only to be expected of boys, those lovable scamps.

Hypatian wrote:

Here. Let me try to translate for you:

We shouldn't be concerned with perpetuating the stereotype that girls must be pure, gentle, pretend to be happy all the time even when they're not, perfectly obedient, and planning on becoming housewives. Instead, we should be concerned with making sure our children act like civilized human beings.

Contrast "Good Girl" with "Boys Will Be Boys". Compare "gentleman" with "self-assured woman".

If you go by the stereotypes, boys are expected to do crap like share sexted pictures and get girls into bed because that's just what boys do, while girls are expected to be protected from the very idea of sex and never even think about it so that they don't turn into sluts. It serves nobody to allow boys to get away with these things, nor does it serve anyone to let girls grow up to believe that they should always put their own needs behind those of others.

The most depressing thing in the article was:

And then the story ended and after a moment of silence my daughter said, "Those girls are so stupid, why did they do that?"

And I died inside because as a society, as parents, we have FAILED.

Despite trying so hard to help build perspective, she and I and our society still blame the women.

Her daughter has already internalized the idea that it's always the girl's fault. That these sorts of things don't happen to "Good Girls". But of course it's only to be expected of boys, those lovable scamps.

Yup, and that we must be ever vigilant against doing stupid things that might possibly be used against us later, because OF COURSE a dude will probably share them. Because that's the kind of stupid sh*t guys do, without thought for consequenses, and WE need to be the ones constantly on guard about possible consequences. Men are at best thoughtless, and at worst predatory, and not to be trusted in either case. Men are the gas, women are the brakes.

Ugh, so many things I want to write but it's all just an amorphous blob of anecdote, commiseration, and resignation.

/headdesk

In a cultural context where one gender is programmed to play the role of predator vis a vis the other, one short-term solution involves teaching as many of the predator-playing gender as possible to be gentle while teaching as many of the prey-playing gender as possible to be wary.

Well, we've been halfway there for a couple millennia now.

Edit: waitaminit, isn't teaching the prey to be wary redundant? How is that an improvement? That's how prey avoids being eaten in the first place- it's a natural evolutionary response.

Answer: stop domesticating the wimmins.

Well, humanity's primary MO is more about teaching the prey to be stupid and delicious. (I'm hoping this has nothing to do with the metaphor currently under discussion. But yum, delicious pig meat.)

Bloo Driver wrote:

I guess in that case, the juxtaposition just doesn't make any sense to me. I don't see what she's trying to compare and contrast, really. Is it "we shouldn't be concerned with good children, but respectful ones"?

I read the blog earlier today and I've been trying to pinpoint what it is about the post that I find problematic. I think, to me, it feels a bit like she's bragging about how great her parenting skills are, and is disdainful of other parents who don't raise "gentlemen."

I've said many times that adults and specifically parents control the environments of young children and can greatly influence how they perceive the world, but at a certain point parental influence starts to wane and is largely replaced by peers and adults outside of the home (coaches, teachers, etc). The people in the NPR story are teenagers; I feel like it's presumptuous to conclude that the original perpetrator in the story was simply a victim of poor parenting.

I mean, I was a teenage boy, and I basically didn't talk to my parents at all when I was that age. Maybe they failed at parenting earlier, and that led me to be such a sh*tty teenager, I don't know. But the way the blogger so matter-of-factly claims it's a parenting problem rubs me wrong, when from my own experience so much of a teenager's world is focused on peer groups and school instead, which is an environment dominated by entirely different people.

clover wrote:

Well, we've been halfway there for a couple millennia now.

Edit: waitaminit, isn't teaching the prey to be wary redundant? How is that an improvement? That's how prey avoids being eaten in the first place- it's a natural evolutionary response.

I was merely reformulating the method outlined by that quote from a few posts back:

I am not trying to raise a Good Girl. I am trying to raise a confident, respectful, self-respecting, and SAFE girl. Sadly, part of her safety involves keeping her safe from boys who are predators.
You may be trying to raise a good son...but are you raising a gentleman?

If you buy the idea that there are 'Good Girls' who are more susceptible to these sorts of attacks and "SAFE girls" who are less so, then I suppose we might conclude that no, teaching the prey to be wary isn't redundant. I personally am not sure I accept either of those premises, though, OR that the aforementioned method of raising boys/girls would be effective.

(Didn't we have a very similar discussion in some other thread involving LarryC and, if I may paraphrase for the sake of this metaphor, the argument that teaching the predators to be less predatory and the prey to be harder to catch is perhaps just reinforcing the troublesome predator/prey paradigm in the first place?)

Hypatian wrote:

Here. Let me try to translate for you:

We shouldn't be concerned with perpetuating the stereotype that girls must be pure, gentle, pretend to be happy all the time even when they're not, perfectly obedient, and planning on becoming housewives. Instead, we should be concerned with making sure our children act like civilized human beings.

Contrast "Good Girl" with "Boys Will Be Boys". Compare "gentleman" with "self-assured woman".

If you go by the stereotypes, boys are expected to do crap like share sexted pictures and get girls into bed because that's just what boys do, while girls are expected to be protected from the very idea of sex and never even think about it so that they don't turn into sluts. It serves nobody to allow boys to get away with these things, nor does it serve anyone to let girls grow up to believe that they should always put their own needs behind those of others.

Sure, and that's nothing I didn't already understand. But I guess that just seems to have little to do with that particular part of the post. Not that it really matters, and I'm not really trying to argue - I just wanted to (for my sake on this board) mention I already get everything you said.

clover wrote:

Answer: stop domesticating the wimmins.

But how will we control them?

On the question of whether it's better to remind people not to be asshats or to remind people (who, in fact, already have been told this repeatedly since they learned how to walk) to be extra careful:

'Don't Be That Guy' ad campaign cuts Vancouver sex assaults by 10 per cent in 2011

Overheard at work: "When I took my (four-year-old) son to Hooter's last night..."

*tears up humanity membership card*

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

Overheard at work: "When I took my (four-year-old) son to Hooter's last night..."

*tears up humanity membership card*

That much loud music could really mess up a kid's hearing.

Demosthenes wrote:
H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

Overheard at work: "When I took my (four-year-old) son to Hooter's last night..."

*tears up humanity membership card*

That much loud music could really mess up a kid's hearing.

More to the point, they might think that those orange shorts have ever been acceptable clothing since the 70's.

Jonman wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

Overheard at work: "When I took my (four-year-old) son to Hooter's last night..."

*tears up humanity membership card*

That much loud music could really mess up a kid's hearing.

More to the point, they might think that those orange shorts have ever been acceptable clothing since the 70's.

My wife has a story about a high school boyfriend's mother taking them and the boyfriend's twin out to Hooters.. when she was 15. It was apparently an incredibly awkward meal for her and the boyfriend, creepy for the mother, and.. eye-opening to the twin.