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Intel Drops Gamasutra Sponsorship Over Controversial Editorials
An anonymous reader writes Processor firm Intel has withdrawn its advertising from Gamasutra in response to the site's decision to carry feminist articles. The articles had drawn the ire of the self-described "Gater" movement, a grass-roots campaign to discredit prominent female games journalists. Intel was apparently so inundated with criticism for sponsoring the Gamasutra site that it had no choice but to withdraw support. An Intel spokesperson explained that "We take feedback from our customers very seriously especially as it relates to contextually relevant content and placements" and as such Gamasutra was no longer an appropriate venue for their products."
This is just a spam campaign where people email any email address they can find that's associated with articles they don't like. I got an email to my blog's contact address demanding that I fire my writer (the only writer is me) or else they'd put pressure on my sponsors to pull their advertising (I have no sponsors or advertising). I don't know if this is being sent by scripts or just dumb people, but either way it's not being sent by sentient humans.
If you harass any company long enough, they will drop almost any advertising deal that you want. You just need to be loud and obnoxious enough. We got Glenn Beck off the air by whittling his advertisers down to a couple gold scams.
It's a little unsettling that a group that's supposed to be about "corruption" in the "games media" wants to punish "corrupt" "game journalism" websites by making them even more dependent on their sponsors. But then again, the whole thing about GamerGate was punishing a game developer for the crimes of game development while female, having sex while female, and developing non-games (non-game in that it's not catering towards the very narrow Male 18-24 demographic).
Also, "game journalism" is one of the most ridiculous terms I have ever heard. Nobody who reports on games is doing journalism - not unless they're talking non-stop about the industry's horrible working conditions, pervasive contempt for consumers, or ridiculous levels of developer lockdown. Incidentally, those outfits also tend to be the ones who are proudly feminist.
The complaints should be focused on the absolutely terrible site design of the sites that carried these articles. I found the articles to be unreadable due to their layout and design abuse, so I don't know if I would have found the articles disagreeable for their content.
Captcha: appeases (ha!)
I can relate, in parts. To the anti-feminists, that is.
I'm sick and tired of getting feminism shoved down my throat absolutely everywhere. There's new laws, most companies have policies, our language is being policed for misunderstood "gender-equality" and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I'm in full support of women fighting actual oppression. If you can't vote just because you're female, I'm with you on that. If you can't drive a car because you're a female, I'm with you on that. If your boss tells you that short skirt is the appropriate dresscode, while he insists on long trousers for your male colleagues, I'm with you on that.
But the feminazis who insist that absolutely everything has to be exactly 50/50 male/female, then for all I care you can fuck off and die.
Also, let's be honest, many of the most vocal feminists quite publicly state that their goal is not 50/50, but female dominance.
Women in video games is one of the "soft topics". Yeah, it's ridiculous what armor female characters wear sometimes. But you're blind, deaf and stupid if you think it's a gender thing. Look at the male characters - they are all Schwarzeneggers, too. According to my female friends, I'm quite handsome, but most video game characters beat me hands down in both beauty and body shape. It's the same as in movies and magazines - we get idealized, unnaturally enhanced versions of humans.
Could video games improve their representation of women? Sure, they could. But the subject is by far not as simple and clear-cut as voting rights or such.
And frankly speaking, I play video games to relax and shut down. You could keep your politics out of my entertainment and work on improvements in the real world. You know, the one that matters.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I would argue any movement for restricting one's free speech is a credible threat. The "14yo brat" is free to call anyone he or she wishes a faggot, and you and anyone else is free not to listen. Are you proposing limiting the free speech of someone who's right to exercise that free speech has been fought and won with the blood and lives?
I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.
Amen to this. I know it's a controversial position to take,but women have equality (if not superiority) to males. The only reason women don't run the world is because they choose not to. They choose to have children instead. Fair enough, but you can't have it both ways, ladies. And as for the lack of equality in gaming, IT, tec., women simply have different interests. We hate to admit things are biological these days (seems to upset the PC liberals), but women naturally are drawn to more childcare type positions (nursing, teaching). Big deal. And right now, the law is so stacked against men it's not even funny. Domestic abuse? The woman wins by default. Child support, child custody, alimony? Again, men get screwed big time. All of this is in addition to chivalry by males (paying dinners, etc.) and of course, biologically, women still have mate choice, so they can (and many do) use their bodies to have power over men in morally repulsive ways. And I feel really sorry for young men growing up right now, especially those being raised ny single mothers. They are so feminized, by their parents and the school system, which favors women by punishing men for being active and forces them into a more passive feminized role. Sorry this seems to have turned into a rant, but this really needs to be said, because you almost never hear the opposite point of view (at least not in the mainstream).
misogyny: hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women
This is not a problem. I'll let you think about how a person (man or woman) can develop this feeling. Keep in mind it is a feeling, whether rational, irrational or otherwise it is nothing more than a feeling. .. BUT lets sound the alarms! One group of people doesn't like another. We need to control how they think because they might act. Run for the hills!!
In the glory gays of gaming you could swear and taunt and not have to worry about getting arrested for homophobia, racism, anti-semitism, misogyny etc. None of it is was meant maliciously and it should be considered playful banter. People who feel personally attacked by these taunts need to remove themselves from a voluntary community, find another community where they feel more comfortable, or realize the lack of motivation to actually cause harm - these are usually emotional outbursts caused by stressful situations (like getting pwned).
Let's get on the control how everybody thinks bandwagon. Here's some food for thought: Can you vocalize an opinion without offending anyone? Let's just end all communication now and protect fragile egos from the world.
You shouldn't care. Unfortunately, the people who should care do not. There is a lot of ugly misogyny in games. This is because such a large percentage of gamers are scumbags or young men who engage in the online equivalent of pulling a girl's pigtails because she makes them feel funny in the pants and they don't yet know why.
The problem is that, being online, there are no longer limits. If you're a woman gamer, and you don't respond to certain male gamers they way they want you to, you will get death threats, rape threats and doxxing. And it goes from 0-60 in nothing flat. Playing online games all day has left many of these young men completely without any sort of self-governance of their id. And people end up getting hurt. Sometimes in very real-world ways.
The fact that most games are written and told from an adolescent male point of view does not help. It creates a sort of greasy milieu where it's easy to believe that any behavior toward a woman is acceptable.
Lots of good gaming sites like Gamasutra are looking to include more female voices in coverage of games, because it turns out (much to our surprise) that there are actually women gaming out there and interestingly enough, they don't want to be treated like shit every single goddamn day of their lives. I don't know anything about these "gaters" (and when I google it I get a bunch of misspelled information about Florida college football) and I haven't read Gamasutra in a while (I don't see anything on their current front page that would indicate any striking feminist agenda at work). But I do know that Microsoft would throw a baby off a bridge for a dollar bump in stock price, so whatever the facts are in this story, there's a good chance that Microsoft is in the wrong. Because.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The majority of the gamers who wrote Intel agree with you. In fact, the entire furore over the past month seems to have cemented the idea of "gamer" as a inclusive, universal identity into the collective mind of the gaming community across the web.
However, that was not the argument the Gamasutra and other articles made. The gaming press collectively declared that "Gamers were dead", that gaming as a descriptor was obsolete, that the "identity was dead", or referred only to a obsolete subset of exclusionary, female unfriendly, "selfish", "conservative", "tribalistic", and -- implied by the accompanying stock images -- fat angry unkempt adult males.
Meanwhile, games companies, marketing firms and online game fansites were still actively using the term to refer to everyone who, well, plays games. Even Forbes magazine was shaking its head in disbelief at the game media's attack on its own consumers. People are now asking how much damage recent controversies may have done to the public image of the gaming industry.
A $80 billion dollar industry which had achieved almost universal consumer acceptance and success may have just been torpedoed as a woman-hating "Cathedral of Misogyny" by its own press publications. Intel is cutting its losses before the conflagration spreads to the rest of tech.
May the Maths Be with you!
I read your post all the way through, and you make some very good points. Misandrists are an extreme reaction to misogynists, and reverse discrimination violates the rule most of us learned as kids, that two wrongs don't make a right. People who attack someone based on their gender are idiots, doesn't matter whether they're men or women. But Intel pulling advertising over a bunch of griefers? Of either sex? That's equally idiotic.
Hard-core, bra-burning anti-male feminism was a reaction to the barriers women had to overcome. There's still plenty of sexism, lots of "glass ceilings" and silly assumptions related to competency for various tasks depending on your gender and stuff, but I'd like to think we're making some progress as time goes on.
And not just for women. 20% of all nurses are now men. And let me tell you, when you're ill, really ill, you don't care about the gender of the person helping you.
Since you use the term "bunch of griefers" I will assume that you have never heard of Leigh Alexander. You will be hard pressed to find a more vehement, vitriolic, and chauvinistic person even if you lived 500 years. In fact, here's a shortlist of some of the more interesting things http://theralphretort.com/game...
I especially like where she states (way back in 2010 already) that all core gamers are maladjusted losers looking for maladapted coping via games. It's hard to find a broader brush than that.
If anything, Intel pulling out is not enough.