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>'What's ambiguous about "disempowering"?' >disempowering present participle of dis·em·pow·er. Verb. Make (a person or group) less powerful or confident. Do

>'What's ambiguous about "disempowering"?' >disempowering present participle of dis·em·pow·er. Verb. Make (a person or group) less powerful or confident. Do you honestly think that there are less woman in congress because Dinosaur Planet was never released? In today world political power is the most important kind of power, that's why saying "disempowering women" is extremly ambiguos. > But objectification means "denial of autonomy, inertness." That's clearly NOT what it means in the mind of most people. In most people's mind it means "To become/transform into an object", no more no less; even the formal definition I found (different from yours) implies this: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objectification http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/objectification >Where does the presenter say that games where women are not the main focus are necessarily sexist? Quote: "Is not about women at all!"... are you trying to tell me she is not suggesting that is about men? A honest non-biased person would add that men are also NOT the main focus; the relevance of the genders is not given by the players but by outsiders interested in judging those and accommodating those judgement inside their agendas. > The goal of this video was to examine the 'damsel in distress' trope False, as you can see in one of my arguments you didn't respond she makes unrelated proverbial quotations and commentary victimizing women for the lack of their presence in video-games. All the claims are extremly biased; Dinosaur Planet was transformed to a StarFox game because it makes so much business sense but unsurprisingly she didn't mention this _extremely_ obvious fact.

dalke 14y ago
"Do you honestly think that there are less woman in congress because Dinosaur Planet was never released?" That's a specious argument. Do I think Title IX increased the number of women in Congress? No, not really. Do I think Title IX directly addressed an existing practice of discrimination based on sex? Yes, absolutely. It's against the law to fire a woman because she is pregnant. I strongly agree that firing someone on that basis is a form of sexual discrimination. But I don't think there would have been fewer women in Congress if that law hadn't been passed. If laws which directly addressed wide-spread discrimination based on sex don't pass your test then there's no way a single video game would ever pass the same test. "In today world political power is the most important kind of power" I'll assume that your assertion is true. So? There are other types of power. Your argument seems to be that since women don't have equal political power, we should ignore all other sorts of imbalances. Should women be subordinate to their husbands? Should it be okay to prohibit women from school athletic competition? Should women be allowed to drive? To vote? Your view seems to be that we should ignore all of these issues and focus only on getting more women in positions of political power before making any other changes. That's absurd. > objectification means "denial of autonomy, inertness." / That's clearly NOT what it means in the mind of most people I pulled that quote from Wikipedia. It's a shortened version of Nussbaum's seven qualities of objectification, those being: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. Most people think that "theory" means something like speculation. This is quite different than what a scientist or mathematician calls a "theory." When talking about scientific research, should we use the general definition, or the specialized one? When doing media analysis, should we use the terms from that field or create new ones? Since the term from feminist analysis is that of philosophy/ethics, where's it's been in used for over 200 years (eg, Kant's "Lectures on Ethics" says objectification 'involves the lowering of a person, a being with humanity, to the status of an object' http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/ ), and since the use of the term 'objectification' in popular culture arises from this same source, I see no reason to avoid using the correct and appropriate term. > the relevance of the genders is not given by the players but by outsiders Ahh, since you reject the underlying concept that media (books, movies, newspapers, advertisements, video games, etc.) affects the way insiders think and perceive the world, then of course you reject any sort of media analysis as irrelevant. I think you are quite wrong in that viewpoint. I also don't understand your insider/outsider distinction, so if you would, please elaborate. Also, I would appreciate if you could tell me where the quote "Is not about women at all!" comes from, as I don't see it in the transcript nor our earlier discussion. How does it support your hypothesis that the presenter asserts that all video games are sexist? > False, as you can see in one of my arguments you didn't respond she makes unrelated proverbial quotations and commentary victimizing women for the lack of their presence in video-games. The intro starts by saying that the series will explore multiple tropes, then says that this episode is about the damsel in distress trope. I inferred from that that the presentation was examining the damsel in distress trope only, and not the larger set of topics that the series is about. The episode's home page at http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/03/damsel-in-distress-part-1/ http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/03/damsel-in-distress-... says "This video explores how the Damsel in Distress became one of the most widely used gendered cliché in the history of gaming and why the trope has been core to the popularization and development of the medium itself." This concurs with my view that this episode examines the damsel in distress trope, and not wider issues of sexism in gaming, even though you say it does. How do you draw your conclusion? Where does the presentation "[victimize] women for the lack of their presence in video-games"? I can't respond to your reference to 'proverbial quotations' because I can't figure out what you are talking about. Can you elaborate? The only one I can see is your statement 'Provincial quote just to focus anger on the game industry. ("Is said that in the game of monarchy woman are not the opposing team, they are the ball.").' What does "provincial quote" mean? The quote, btw, seems to be from Jonathan McIntosh on Twitter as @radicalbytes, 11 Aug 2012. I think it's quite a powerful and descriptive quote, and quite appropriate for its context. It doesn't talk about the games industry, but serves to emphasize how Princess Peach can be viewed as an object in the Mario franchise, as she's passed back and forth between Mario and Bowser. > Dinosaur Planet was transformed to a StarFox game because it makes so much business sense but unsurprisingly she didn't mention this _extremely_ obvious fact No? The logical implication was clear to me. Between 1:50 and 2:12, we learn that Dinosaur Planet was revamped to use the 'damsel in distress' trope. At 12:03: "The trope quickly became the go-to motivational hook for developers as it provided an easy way to tap into adolescent male power fantasies in order to sell more games to young straight boys and men." The obvious implication is that Dinosaur Planet was likely changed in order to sell more games. This sounds very much like saying that it was transformed into a StarFox game for business reasons. Do you not make the same inference? Why not? Moreover, the presenter argues that the reason it makes business sense is because it "[taps] into adolescent male power fantasies", while you fail to describe any alternative reason for why it makes business sense. > "Why is the main character of such violent video-game a woman? Such violent behavior is a thing of men". That means they don't want more presence in video-games, they want presence in very specific videogames where "she" should be undoubtedly good. What the fuck? Violent behavior is a 'thing of man'? Women are only supposed to be 'undoubtedly good'? What kind of world do you want to live in where that should be considered normal? Let me wake up my wife, the ex-soldier who served two tours of duty in Iraq, so she can laugh at you. (On second thought, no. She doesn't like being woken up.) Your view is that gaming companies should produce games that people buy. That's a reasonable first-order solution. However, the market is notoriously amoral. The games market is at a rough equilibrium. Girls will play both "girl games" and "boy games". Boys will mostly only play "boy games." Therefore, the market is bigger for "boy games." That's perfectly obvious. As a result, the original Master Chief model was bulked up because it looked 'too slender', "almost effeminate". His face is never shown because 'Bungie says this helps the gamer fully assume his character'. But surely there's no essential in-game requirement that (cybernetically enhanced, genetically special) Master Chief could not have been a woman. No, these tweaks were made to appeal to the market. The question is, as a culture, should we encourage market partitioning based on sex and gender roles, ignore it, or minimize it, and what are the likely effects of that decision? This is a question of market, not market. And this presentation addresses that question.
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  You are to feminism what Fox News is to news channels; I'm not trying to pull an "Ad hominem" but pointing out that it makes no sense to keep a discussion where one of the sides try to cover up all the mistakes and recognize none by constantly changing the conclusions extrapolated and interpretations of the subject.
  - dalke 14y ago
    Yes, I claim that you made mistakes in your analysis of the presentation, and that you are covering up the mistakes by not addressing my critique. For example, I said that the presenter did not make the argument that 'Because woman are not the main focus, therefore men are, therefore games are sexist'. You have never present the reasoning behind that assertion, and I did not get the same conclusion from the presentation. For example, you said "Dinosaur Planet was transformed to a StarFox game because it makes so much business sense but unsurprisingly she didn't mention this _extremely_ obvious fact.", and I show that while it wasn't explicitly said, it was a simple inferences from two other statements, to wit "the transformation used the damsel-in-distress trope" and "game companies often use the damsel-in-distress trope to make more sales". This does leave the possibility that the change was done for other reasons, but I think it's reasonable to infer that the speaker knows that it makes business sense, but also believes it doesn't make good moral sense. For example, you describe 'objectification' as the dictionary definition of "To become/transform into an object", and argued that the speaker was using "false attribution." I responded by pointing out that the speaker was using the definition as it's used in the philosophy of ethics, with a heritage dating even back to Kant, and that that was the appropriate definition for this presentation. I don't see where the presenter used false attribution. As as for ad hominem, I realize that you do have experience in that matter. The phrase "doing it in a overly-formal tone just to look more serious" is ad hominem, in that it references the presenter's style, rather than the logic. So please, justify your original assertions rather than making new statements. Otherwise I could just as easily say that you used the "overly-formal tone" of naming common logical fallacies "just to look more serious" in your opposition to the contents of the presentation. And where's the fun in me being a parrot?

dalke 14y ago

"Do you honestly think that there are less woman in congress because Dinosaur Planet was never released?" That's a specious argument. Do I think Title IX increased the number of women in Congress? No, not really. Do I think Title IX directly addressed an existing practice of discrimination based on sex? Yes, absolutely. It's against the law to fire a woman because she is pregnant. I strongly agree that firing someone on that basis is a form of sexual discrimination. But I don't think there would have been fewer women in Congress if that law hadn't been passed. If laws which directly addressed wide-spread discrimination based on sex don't pass your test then there's no way a single video game would ever pass the same test. "In today world political power is the most important kind of power" I'll assume that your assertion is true. So? There are other types of power. Your argument seems to be that since women don't have equal political power, we should ignore all other sorts of imbalances. Should women be subordinate to their husbands? Should it be okay to prohibit women from school athletic competition? Should women be allowed to drive? To vote? Your view seems to be that we should ignore all of these issues and focus only on getting more women in positions of political power before making any other changes. That's absurd. > objectification means "denial of autonomy, inertness." / That's clearly NOT what it means in the mind of most people I pulled that quote from Wikipedia. It's a shortened version of Nussbaum's seven qualities of objectification, those being: instrumentality, denial of autonomy, inertness, fungibility, violability, ownership, and denial of subjectivity. Most people think that "theory" means something like speculation. This is quite different than what a scientist or mathematician calls a "theory." When talking about scientific research, should we use the general definition, or the specialized one? When doing media analysis, should we use the terms from that field or create new ones? Since the term from feminist analysis is that of philosophy/ethics, where's it's been in used for over 200 years (eg, Kant's "Lectures on Ethics" says objectification 'involves the lowering of a person, a being with humanity, to the status of an object' http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-objectification/ ), and since the use of the term 'objectification' in popular culture arises from this same source, I see no reason to avoid using the correct and appropriate term. > the relevance of the genders is not given by the players but by outsiders Ahh, since you reject the underlying concept that media (books, movies, newspapers, advertisements, video games, etc.) affects the way insiders think and perceive the world, then of course you reject any sort of media analysis as irrelevant. I think you are quite wrong in that viewpoint. I also don't understand your insider/outsider distinction, so if you would, please elaborate. Also, I would appreciate if you could tell me where the quote "Is not about women at all!" comes from, as I don't see it in the transcript nor our earlier discussion. How does it support your hypothesis that the presenter asserts that all video games are sexist? > False, as you can see in one of my arguments you didn't respond she makes unrelated proverbial quotations and commentary victimizing women for the lack of their presence in video-games. The intro starts by saying that the series will explore multiple tropes, then says that this episode is about the damsel in distress trope. I inferred from that that the presentation was examining the damsel in distress trope only, and not the larger set of topics that the series is about. The episode's home page at http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/03/damsel-in-distress-part-1/ http://www.feministfrequency.com/2013/03/damsel-in-distress-... says "This video explores how the Damsel in Distress became one of the most widely used gendered cliché in the history of gaming and why the trope has been core to the popularization and development of the medium itself." This concurs with my view that this episode examines the damsel in distress trope, and not wider issues of sexism in gaming, even though you say it does. How do you draw your conclusion? Where does the presentation "[victimize] women for the lack of their presence in video-games"? I can't respond to your reference to 'proverbial quotations' because I can't figure out what you are talking about. Can you elaborate? The only one I can see is your statement 'Provincial quote just to focus anger on the game industry. ("Is said that in the game of monarchy woman are not the opposing team, they are the ball.").' What does "provincial quote" mean? The quote, btw, seems to be from Jonathan McIntosh on Twitter as @radicalbytes, 11 Aug 2012. I think it's quite a powerful and descriptive quote, and quite appropriate for its context. It doesn't talk about the games industry, but serves to emphasize how Princess Peach can be viewed as an object in the Mario franchise, as she's passed back and forth between Mario and Bowser. > Dinosaur Planet was transformed to a StarFox game because it makes so much business sense but unsurprisingly she didn't mention this _extremely_ obvious fact No? The logical implication was clear to me. Between 1:50 and 2:12, we learn that Dinosaur Planet was revamped to use the 'damsel in distress' trope. At 12:03: "The trope quickly became the go-to motivational hook for developers as it provided an easy way to tap into adolescent male power fantasies in order to sell more games to young straight boys and men." The obvious implication is that Dinosaur Planet was likely changed in order to sell more games. This sounds very much like saying that it was transformed into a StarFox game for business reasons. Do you not make the same inference? Why not? Moreover, the presenter argues that the reason it makes business sense is because it "[taps] into adolescent male power fantasies", while you fail to describe any alternative reason for why it makes business sense. > "Why is the main character of such violent video-game a woman? Such violent behavior is a thing of men". That means they don't want more presence in video-games, they want presence in very specific videogames where "she" should be undoubtedly good. What the fuck? Violent behavior is a 'thing of man'? Women are only supposed to be 'undoubtedly good'? What kind of world do you want to live in where that should be considered normal? Let me wake up my wife, the ex-soldier who served two tours of duty in Iraq, so she can laugh at you. (On second thought, no. She doesn't like being woken up.) Your view is that gaming companies should produce games that people buy. That's a reasonable first-order solution. However, the market is notoriously amoral. The games market is at a rough equilibrium. Girls will play both "girl games" and "boy games". Boys will mostly only play "boy games." Therefore, the market is bigger for "boy games." That's perfectly obvious. As a result, the original Master Chief model was bulked up because it looked 'too slender', "almost effeminate". His face is never shown because 'Bungie says this helps the gamer fully assume his character'. But surely there's no essential in-game requirement that (cybernetically enhanced, genetically special) Master Chief could not have been a woman. No, these tweaks were made to appeal to the market. The question is, as a culture, should we encourage market partitioning based on sex and gender roles, ignore it, or minimize it, and what are the likely effects of that decision? This is a question of market, not market. And this presentation addresses that question.

jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
You are to feminism what Fox News is to news channels; I'm not trying to pull an "Ad hominem" but pointing out that it makes no sense to keep a discussion where one of the sides try to cover up all the mistakes and recognize none by constantly changing the conclusions extrapolated and interpretations of the subject.
- dalke 14y ago
  Yes, I claim that you made mistakes in your analysis of the presentation, and that you are covering up the mistakes by not addressing my critique. For example, I said that the presenter did not make the argument that 'Because woman are not the main focus, therefore men are, therefore games are sexist'. You have never present the reasoning behind that assertion, and I did not get the same conclusion from the presentation. For example, you said "Dinosaur Planet was transformed to a StarFox game because it makes so much business sense but unsurprisingly she didn't mention this _extremely_ obvious fact.", and I show that while it wasn't explicitly said, it was a simple inferences from two other statements, to wit "the transformation used the damsel-in-distress trope" and "game companies often use the damsel-in-distress trope to make more sales". This does leave the possibility that the change was done for other reasons, but I think it's reasonable to infer that the speaker knows that it makes business sense, but also believes it doesn't make good moral sense. For example, you describe 'objectification' as the dictionary definition of "To become/transform into an object", and argued that the speaker was using "false attribution." I responded by pointing out that the speaker was using the definition as it's used in the philosophy of ethics, with a heritage dating even back to Kant, and that that was the appropriate definition for this presentation. I don't see where the presenter used false attribution. As as for ad hominem, I realize that you do have experience in that matter. The phrase "doing it in a overly-formal tone just to look more serious" is ad hominem, in that it references the presenter's style, rather than the logic. So please, justify your original assertions rather than making new statements. Otherwise I could just as easily say that you used the "overly-formal tone" of naming common logical fallacies "just to look more serious" in your opposition to the contents of the presentation. And where's the fun in me being a parrot?