That's a false dichotomy. And did you realise you are talking about "the feminists" as if they are single monolithic group right after you just finished complaining about how people think gamers are a single monolithic group?
Not all groups are created equal. Some are more homogenous than others. "Feminists" as a group tend to be vocal activist types who wish to change society/organizations according to feminist principles. Whereas gamers are people who play games. One is politically motivated. One is enjoying a hobby/pasttime.
The super-masculine super soldiers are designed to appeal almost exclusively to the power fantasies of teenage boys. Are you honestly trying to tell me you've never heard feminists complain about that? I mean, isn't fear that the nasty feminists will take your boobs and you space marines away exactly what this is all about?
And said audience buys them. What's wrong with that? Do you have a problem with the existence of Fifty Shades or Harry Potter or Hunger Games?
Is it wrong for a chick flick to appeal to chicks over the main girl's relational angst on choosing between Guy A or Guy B?
Where'd this strange notion come from that you get the games you want by trying to change the ones that are popular and selling? People who like shooters don't complain about the existence of StarCraft and its lack of shooter mechanics, nor do RPG players complain about the lack of experience levels and stats in a platformer.
Go support the games that do what you want. Those who try to dictate what people are allowed to like are getting natural blowback.
I'm not saying there aren't radical feminists who are wrong-headed, like Alexander. In every movement there are people who screw up and are generally screwups. But "gamer gate" is a sideshow. The whole thing is a big non-issue, being used by people who don't want to see women in their club. And by concern trolls who don't have anyone's best interests at heart.
Intel, and the many female gamers who support #GamerGate disagree with you on how much this is a non-issue.
Corrupted journalism is not a "non-issue". Imagine if Watergate was never reported because the journalists were friends with Nixon and coordinated to suppress that information. Yet you want to ignore the secret collaboration that has happened?
Honestly, considering the general hostility toward women, I'm surprised they haven't all gotten weapons and gone full Kill Bill on men. I don't think I'd be nearly as sanguine as women have been in the face of the ugliness they endure on a daily basis in the online world.
Fantasizing about murdering people because of what they say. Do go on.
"Gamer" isn't just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use. Gamers are over. That's why they're so mad.
These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They don't have to be yours. There is no 'side' to be on, there is no 'debate' to be had.
This is like complaining that professional food critics have personal relationships with many high profile chefs, it's true but it misses the point. Reviewers who make bad (as in, inaccurate) reviews lose readers, no one wants to waste money on a lemon.
Providing financial support goes far beyond "personal relationship".
(And finally again, there's no evidence, at all that any of the accusations that started this mess are even true. The only thing known for sure is that she had a relationship months in the past with one person who worked at a website which reviewed her game. Jesus H Christ, can we please just let this die already!?)
Don't be stupid. There is plenty of evidence that something shady was going on.
More importantly, we have concrete evidence of a coordinated attempt to deflect blame by attacking gamers. "It's not the crime, it's the coverup". It's the bans, doxxing, censorship, coordinated attacks, and overall hypocrisy of Social "Justice" meting out Injustice.
They started the fight. It won't die until one side loses. Advocating that gamers surrender the issue and ignore the wrongdoing is pro-Injustice and anti-gamers.
We have decided to pull our advertising from [list of sites] because they continue to promote an outdated view of gamers that stigmatizes people.
"Outdated"? What does the dated-ness of the labels have anything to do with it? You're trying to change this to a message about "advancing" some cause or another, when that's the precise problem.
Gaming is for gaming. There's no Higher Cause or Progress to push. Have fun. Enjoy. Build a better game that includes those awesome tropes that you want.
everyone who wants to advance beyond the old stereotypes can get behind.
You're assuming that gamers want to "advance" something. No, not everyone. Speak for yourself.
People are doing the wrong thing on both sides of the fence on this debate. As someone who has followed it for 6 weeks and dealt with excessive censorship in regards to discussing it too, I recommend simply avoiding this one, it's nasty.
The backlash is precisely because avoidance is not available. Why do you think people game? Entertainment - it's an escape from the real world.
Trying to tar every gamer with "misogyny" is to actively attack the escape of many people and injustly blame them for the actions of others. The guy who tries to launch Kerbals into space is not responsible for the actions of a foul-mouthed teenager on Xbox.
What is an escape for many is becoming some "unsafe space" that needs monitoring and social criticism by self-appointed betters - who have been revealed by this scandal to be corrupt, self-serving hypocrites.
There's no shame in not having time to be a part of this, but the gamers pushing for transparency and accountability deserve your appreciation, because they love your hobby and want to keep it an enjoyable escape. Can't say the same for their opponents.
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.
So you don't know anything about the "gaters" who are complaining, you don't read Gamasutra and thus do not know what the offending activity was, but you know Microsoft is in the wrong. "Because."
May I draw your attention to the headline of this story? "Intel Drops Gamasutra Sponsorship Over Controversial Editorials "
How did ignorant and irrational opinionating get "Interesting"? I hope the mods are just being meta.
... This report is not intended to answer the larger question of whether terrorist organizations have truly adapted their behavior in the wake of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.... It should also be noted that more jihadi social networking forums were online in February 2013 than August 2014.
A scientific consensus is not an opinion poll. Its not person who found something, and then persuaded a bunch of others to agree with him. It has nothing to do with pushing your opinion on others at all.
"Believe this. It's the scientific consensus. You don't want to be anti-science, do you?"
Deciding who the scientists are and why their consensus matters is the important but hidden part of "scientific consensus".
It's an opinion poll because the consensus is the OPINION of all the scientists involved. But how do you weight the opinion of 100, or a 1,000 scientists? Did they actually each spend the same amount of time studying the question and replicating results? Or did they just hear the abstract of a study and say, "yeah, that could work"?
"Scientific consensus" an appeal to an authority instead of presenting the argument. And it's not even a strong authority - who decides and measures what the consensus on an issue is? It's subjective and vague and irreproducible, and thus anti-science.
Don't believe me? Then tell me what is the scientific consensus right now, and what it was 10 years ago. Who measured it? Which experts created the consensus, and how has the membership of that expert group changed over time? Are the experts given equal weight, or is weighted based on experience/expertise/contribution?
Taxation is not theft. The two words describe different circumstances and processes. The outcome may be the same (your stuff is gone), but they are two different words with different meanings.
Taxation doesn't have to be theft, but when the government acts in such a way that people no longer consent to be governed, taxes become theft.
If the government passed a law that allowed your bank to legally take all of your checking/saving/stock accounts and they did so, it may not be "legally" theft, but they'd be thieves all the same.
But you can't. So you are stuck with the distasteful (to you anyway) idea that your welfare depends on having a healthy society to live in. To get that you are going to have to contribute.
Unfortunately, it isn't a healthy society. We have perverse incentives undermining the collective welfare.
That's not a problem of the contributors, but the increasing number of people who do not contribute, yet are willing to yell at the contributors to work harder.
Corporations don't avoid taxes because they're too high, they do it because it's profitable. Corporations compete by competing at the margins, if a competitor in your libertarian paradise goes from a very low tax rate to a slightly lower tax rate then you'll have to follow otherwise you'll be at a competitive disadvantage.
Because there are costs to moving operations around. Less so if the work is technological and done remotely, but there's plenty of work that isn't.
Let's say it's a factory - those months spent finding a new location and moving equipment is time spent not making widgets to sell, as well as the disruption of shutting down and restarting operations. Even if you expand operations to new locations instead of moving, you've added overhead by having more locations to manage and coordinate.
So it *can* be profitable to shop for the lowest tax rate - but the total cost will be considered.
Scientific consensus is an group of scientists agreeing on a proven theory or the proof of a theory.
Political consensus is a group of people ganging together to push their opinions on others.
Is your argument that scientists are not people, or that scientists are incapable of pushing their opinions on others?
Because people push opinions on others, scientists or not. In fact, using evidence to argue for a certain type of philosophy or belief IS "pushing an opinion" - opinions are not bad if they're true, and popularizing true opinions is the entire goal of public education.
In short, your distinction is not, and it is meaningless even if it could be.
No, it just made you wrong, and if you are wrong about the basics, a logical reader will assume you wrong about everything else (unless proven otherwise to a higher standard).
That's the thing with generalizations - they're simplified models with imprecision, not necessarily wrong. And if someone uses a generalization like "all people who use generalizations are irrational and wrong", that tells you something about their own reasoning capability.
If you used the fact that you personally lived outside the US to claim that Americans do not live in America, you are far more wrong than the generalization is.
And you are creating a strawman in which I make a stupid false dichotomy.
"If".
Not all Americans live in America. Is that a generalization?
Yes, in that's a general statement about what all Americans are doing. But to say that it makes "Americans live in America" wrong is not quite right, either.
Wiki claims that American diaspora is estimated at 3~6 million. Out of an American population of 300 mil, that's 1~2%. So "Americans live in America" is 98% true. If you want to say the statement is wrong, it's 2% wrong, 98% right.
If you're going to try to force people to always say "the majority of American live in America" or "98% of Americans live in America" instead of "Americans live in America" every time it comes up, you're being pedantic for the heck of it.
Generalization is necessary to communication. Every topic has a nigh infinite number of details, and the choice of which level to discuss it at is arbitrary.
It's not irrelevant. It points out the inanity of the claim.
My point is that it is justifiable to use generalizations when they are true, or mostly true. I used an inane generalization just to get something that would be 100% correct, or close to it. The existence of manboobs does not change whether or not the statement "Women have boobs" is a generalization.
Cats don't have boobs, though they do have mammaries. Bad generalization of boobs you used there. If you got that one thing wrong, do we need to disqualify 100% of what you say?
Because if we applied the "modern feminists are not rational => generalization => bigot => irrational => IGNORE" chain of logic, apparently yes.
That girl-favoring standards exist outside of college classrooms, such that people don't even bat an eye at phrases that wouldn't be acceptable after a quick search and replace.
And I have personally seen someone wearing at least 3 of those shirts in public.
Wouldn't fly in the community I hung out with, but fair enough. Odd for a guy to be wearing 3 shirts, though.
Doesn't prove the point I was arguing against though - which claimed women are hugely oppressed outside a feminist classroom, which balances out any shenanigans inside the feminist classroom.
Force requires an actual action. If you decide your only choices are to believe, or deny reality, it sounds like you already agree with the opinion, and have some cognitive dissonance because it conflicts with what you expected to believe. Notice how the other party isn't involved in any of that? Those actions are all your own.
I think we're talking about force in different senses. You're talking about the opinion holder forcing someone to agree with him.
I'm talking about the opinion hearer feeling a force to agree with the opinion because it's true (reflects reality). The conflict involved in cognitive dissonance has a type of force exerted by the two competing beliefs.
However, it is unfair to blame that "violence" (cog. dissonance) on the person who shared the opinion; the problem is the original expected belief that contradicted reality, and reality will correct that sooner or later.
Read carefully. What was his experience with feminist professors?
I'm an American who doesn't live in America. I work in IT, I think the average guys boobs are bigger than women's.
So I stated those generalizations. Did that make me irrational and incapable of discussion?
Generalizing is part of abstraction and understanding big picture relationships. That you can nitpick it does not make it wrong. If you used the fact that you personally lived outside the US to claim that Americans do not live in America, you are far more wrong than the generalization is.
And no, the presence of manboobs is irrelevant to the claim that women have boobs.
When the generalization is used as a character assassination, then yes. You post on slashdot, therefore you must be a mysogynist. There is no rationalizing with such a bigot, therefore, there is no rationalizing with you. That's the logic the original poster used, and the responder made fun of. Does it work?
You just used a generalization on slashdotters, therefore you are irrational and should be ignored.
See the point yet? Generalizations are not evil, or remotely indicative of defective thinking.
"Be bigoted against bigots", however, is self-defeating. It's bigotry to exempt certain types of bigots from that treatment - so we find that there is a different principle at play, being against "bigots" is just the marketing.
Notice the whole claim of "violence" is predicated on the word "forcing," which in this case is a verb. Notice the complete lack of action though. So just from that we can see it is a false accusation; the only action taken was giving his own opinion. But you lie, and claim he took an action to "force" his opinion on you. But you're not forced to believe every opinion you hear; that is silly, and shows a misunderstanding even over the word opinion. Then you double down on the lie, by claiming the "force" not only exists, but was violent.
If the opinion is in line with reality, there is a sort of "force" involved - one is "forced" to accept the opinion is true, or deny reality itself.
However, if believing the truth causes violence to oneself, there are some important issues that need resolving. I suggest that that is good "violence".
I've played video games since 1990; I do not hate women; My hobby does not hate women; The vast majority of people who play video games do not hate women. Please, Sarkeesian's of the world, turn your attentions to the people who do.
If their intentions are to go after misogynists, you're right that targeting gaming and gamers is off.
But if their intentions are to go after a profitable industry... US game industry has as much revenue as the US movie industry, and more importantly, has a lot of eyeballs.
Yeah, hi that's called "Existing every damn day as a woman" everywhere outside of feminist classes in college.
On a cruise trip with a bunch of friends, one of the girls wore a shirt saying, "Boys suck, throw rocks at them." This was not inside a college classroom.
Do you think that anyone would own a shirt that says, "Girls suck, throw rocks at them", or "Blacks suck, throw rocks at them" and wear it in public with a second thought? Without any confrontation or controversy?
That's how games get released with no female character options, or female NPC's with redonkulous boobs, because the guys making the game just never put in a second to think "how will women, who are a huge factor in life, think about this".
Are those women the intended audience of the game?
If they're not customers buying the product, why does it matter what they think about it?
Slashdot Mirror
That's a false dichotomy. And did you realise you are talking about "the feminists" as if they are single monolithic group right after you just finished complaining about how people think gamers are a single monolithic group?
Not all groups are created equal. Some are more homogenous than others. "Feminists" as a group tend to be vocal activist types who wish to change society/organizations according to feminist principles. Whereas gamers are people who play games. One is politically motivated. One is enjoying a hobby/pasttime.
The super-masculine super soldiers are designed to appeal almost exclusively to the power fantasies of teenage boys. Are you honestly trying to tell me you've never heard feminists complain about that? I mean, isn't fear that the nasty feminists will take your boobs and you space marines away exactly what this is all about?
And said audience buys them. What's wrong with that? Do you have a problem with the existence of Fifty Shades or Harry Potter or Hunger Games?
Is it wrong for a chick flick to appeal to chicks over the main girl's relational angst on choosing between Guy A or Guy B?
Where'd this strange notion come from that you get the games you want by trying to change the ones that are popular and selling? People who like shooters don't complain about the existence of StarCraft and its lack of shooter mechanics, nor do RPG players complain about the lack of experience levels and stats in a platformer.
Go support the games that do what you want. Those who try to dictate what people are allowed to like are getting natural blowback.
I'm not saying there aren't radical feminists who are wrong-headed, like Alexander. In every movement there are people who screw up and are generally screwups. But "gamer gate" is a sideshow. The whole thing is a big non-issue, being used by people who don't want to see women in their club. And by concern trolls who don't have anyone's best interests at heart.
Intel, and the many female gamers who support #GamerGate disagree with you on how much this is a non-issue.
Corrupted journalism is not a "non-issue". Imagine if Watergate was never reported because the journalists were friends with Nixon and coordinated to suppress that information. Yet you want to ignore the secret collaboration that has happened?
Honestly, considering the general hostility toward women, I'm surprised they haven't all gotten weapons and gone full Kill Bill on men. I don't think I'd be nearly as sanguine as women have been in the face of the ugliness they endure on a daily basis in the online world.
Fantasizing about murdering people because of what they say. Do go on.
Enjoy the shitslinging, shitslinger.
And I clearly mentioned that I do read Gamasutra, but haven't in the last little while.
"do not read" is an accurate description of "haven't read in the last little while". Main point is that you don't know what was said.
Here is the offending article. So now you do. https://archive.today/Awcw9
Excerpt:
"Gamer" isn't just a dated demographic label that most people increasingly prefer not to use. Gamers are over. That's why they're so mad.
These obtuse shitslingers, these wailing hyper-consumers, these childish internet-arguers -- they are not my audience. They don't have to be yours. There is no 'side' to be on, there is no 'debate' to be had.
This is like complaining that professional food critics have personal relationships with many high profile chefs, it's true but it misses the point. Reviewers who make bad (as in, inaccurate) reviews lose readers, no one wants to waste money on a lemon.
Providing financial support goes far beyond "personal relationship".
(And finally again, there's no evidence, at all that any of the accusations that started this mess are even true. The only thing known for sure is that she had a relationship months in the past with one person who worked at a website which reviewed her game. Jesus H Christ, can we please just let this die already!?)
Don't be stupid. There is plenty of evidence that something shady was going on.
More importantly, we have concrete evidence of a coordinated attempt to deflect blame by attacking gamers. "It's not the crime, it's the coverup". It's the bans, doxxing, censorship, coordinated attacks, and overall hypocrisy of Social "Justice" meting out Injustice.
They started the fight. It won't die until one side loses. Advocating that gamers surrender the issue and ignore the wrongdoing is pro-Injustice and anti-gamers.
We have decided to pull our advertising from [list of sites] because they continue to promote an outdated view of gamers that stigmatizes people.
"Outdated"? What does the dated-ness of the labels have anything to do with it? You're trying to change this to a message about "advancing" some cause or another, when that's the precise problem.
Gaming is for gaming. There's no Higher Cause or Progress to push. Have fun. Enjoy. Build a better game that includes those awesome tropes that you want.
everyone who wants to advance beyond the old stereotypes can get behind.
You're assuming that gamers want to "advance" something. No, not everyone. Speak for yourself.
The backlash is precisely because avoidance is not available. Why do you think people game? Entertainment - it's an escape from the real world.
Trying to tar every gamer with "misogyny" is to actively attack the escape of many people and injustly blame them for the actions of others. The guy who tries to launch Kerbals into space is not responsible for the actions of a foul-mouthed teenager on Xbox.
What is an escape for many is becoming some "unsafe space" that needs monitoring and social criticism by self-appointed betters - who have been revealed by this scandal to be corrupt, self-serving hypocrites.
There's no shame in not having time to be a part of this, but the gamers pushing for transparency and accountability deserve your appreciation, because they love your hobby and want to keep it an enjoyable escape. Can't say the same for their opponents.
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.
So you don't know anything about the "gaters" who are complaining, you don't read Gamasutra and thus do not know what the offending activity was, but you know Microsoft is in the wrong. "Because."
May I draw your attention to the headline of this story? "Intel Drops Gamasutra Sponsorship Over Controversial Editorials "
How did ignorant and irrational opinionating get "Interesting"? I hope the mods are just being meta.
... This report is not intended to answer the larger question of whether terrorist organizations have truly adapted their behavior in the wake of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks. ... It should also be noted that more jihadi social networking forums were online in February 2013 than August 2014.
A scientific consensus is not an opinion poll. Its not person who found something, and then persuaded a bunch of others to agree with him. It has nothing to do with pushing your opinion on others at all.
"Believe this. It's the scientific consensus. You don't want to be anti-science, do you?"
Deciding who the scientists are and why their consensus matters is the important but hidden part of "scientific consensus".
It's an opinion poll because the consensus is the OPINION of all the scientists involved. But how do you weight the opinion of 100, or a 1,000 scientists? Did they actually each spend the same amount of time studying the question and replicating results? Or did they just hear the abstract of a study and say, "yeah, that could work"?
"Scientific consensus" an appeal to an authority instead of presenting the argument. And it's not even a strong authority - who decides and measures what the consensus on an issue is? It's subjective and vague and irreproducible, and thus anti-science.
Don't believe me? Then tell me what is the scientific consensus right now, and what it was 10 years ago. Who measured it? Which experts created the consensus, and how has the membership of that expert group changed over time? Are the experts given equal weight, or is weighted based on experience/expertise/contribution?
What value do you place on inspiring a generation of kids as they play in a lego-like sandbox?
Taxation is not theft. The two words describe different circumstances and processes. The outcome may be the same (your stuff is gone), but they are two different words with different meanings.
Taxation doesn't have to be theft, but when the government acts in such a way that people no longer consent to be governed, taxes become theft.
If the government passed a law that allowed your bank to legally take all of your checking/saving/stock accounts and they did so, it may not be "legally" theft, but they'd be thieves all the same.
But you can't. So you are stuck with the distasteful (to you anyway) idea that your welfare depends on having a healthy society to live in. To get that you are going to have to contribute.
Unfortunately, it isn't a healthy society. We have perverse incentives undermining the collective welfare.
That's not a problem of the contributors, but the increasing number of people who do not contribute, yet are willing to yell at the contributors to work harder.
Corporations don't avoid taxes because they're too high, they do it because it's profitable. Corporations compete by competing at the margins, if a competitor in your libertarian paradise goes from a very low tax rate to a slightly lower tax rate then you'll have to follow otherwise you'll be at a competitive disadvantage.
Because there are costs to moving operations around. Less so if the work is technological and done remotely, but there's plenty of work that isn't.
Let's say it's a factory - those months spent finding a new location and moving equipment is time spent not making widgets to sell, as well as the disruption of shutting down and restarting operations. Even if you expand operations to new locations instead of moving, you've added overhead by having more locations to manage and coordinate.
So it *can* be profitable to shop for the lowest tax rate - but the total cost will be considered.
Scientific consensus is an group of scientists agreeing on a proven theory or the proof of a theory.
Political consensus is a group of people ganging together to push their opinions on others.
Is your argument that scientists are not people, or that scientists are incapable of pushing their opinions on others?
Because people push opinions on others, scientists or not. In fact, using evidence to argue for a certain type of philosophy or belief IS "pushing an opinion" - opinions are not bad if they're true, and popularizing true opinions is the entire goal of public education.
In short, your distinction is not, and it is meaningless even if it could be.
No, it just made you wrong, and if you are wrong about the basics, a logical reader will assume you wrong about everything else (unless proven otherwise to a higher standard).
That's the thing with generalizations - they're simplified models with imprecision, not necessarily wrong. And if someone uses a generalization like "all people who use generalizations are irrational and wrong", that tells you something about their own reasoning capability.
If you used the fact that you personally lived outside the US to claim that Americans do not live in America, you are far more wrong than the generalization is.
And you are creating a strawman in which I make a stupid false dichotomy.
"If".
Not all Americans live in America. Is that a generalization?
Yes, in that's a general statement about what all Americans are doing. But to say that it makes "Americans live in America" wrong is not quite right, either.
Wiki claims that American diaspora is estimated at 3~6 million. Out of an American population of 300 mil, that's 1~2%. So "Americans live in America" is 98% true. If you want to say the statement is wrong, it's 2% wrong, 98% right.
If you're going to try to force people to always say "the majority of American live in America" or "98% of Americans live in America" instead of "Americans live in America" every time it comes up, you're being pedantic for the heck of it.
Generalization is necessary to communication. Every topic has a nigh infinite number of details, and the choice of which level to discuss it at is arbitrary.
It's not irrelevant. It points out the inanity of the claim.
My point is that it is justifiable to use generalizations when they are true, or mostly true. I used an inane generalization just to get something that would be 100% correct, or close to it. The existence of manboobs does not change whether or not the statement "Women have boobs" is a generalization.
Cats don't have boobs, though they do have mammaries. Bad generalization of boobs you used there. If you got that one thing wrong, do we need to disqualify 100% of what you say?
Because if we applied the "modern feminists are not rational => generalization => bigot => irrational => IGNORE" chain of logic, apparently yes.
No, not oppressed.
That girl-favoring standards exist outside of college classrooms, such that people don't even bat an eye at phrases that wouldn't be acceptable after a quick search and replace.
And I have personally seen someone wearing at least 3 of those shirts in public.
Wouldn't fly in the community I hung out with, but fair enough. Odd for a guy to be wearing 3 shirts, though.
Doesn't prove the point I was arguing against though - which claimed women are hugely oppressed outside a feminist classroom, which balances out any shenanigans inside the feminist classroom.
Force requires an actual action. If you decide your only choices are to believe, or deny reality, it sounds like you already agree with the opinion, and have some cognitive dissonance because it conflicts with what you expected to believe. Notice how the other party isn't involved in any of that? Those actions are all your own.
I think we're talking about force in different senses. You're talking about the opinion holder forcing someone to agree with him.
I'm talking about the opinion hearer feeling a force to agree with the opinion because it's true (reflects reality). The conflict involved in cognitive dissonance has a type of force exerted by the two competing beliefs.
However, it is unfair to blame that "violence" (cog. dissonance) on the person who shared the opinion; the problem is the original expected belief that contradicted reality, and reality will correct that sooner or later.
You found that someone is willing to sell those T-shirts on the Internet. Okay.
Now where did you see a guy wearing those shirts in a public setting? Did he trigger any controversy? The girl I mentioned did not.
No, because he posted none.
Read carefully. What was his experience with feminist professors?
I'm an American who doesn't live in America. I work in IT, I think the average guys boobs are bigger than women's.
So I stated those generalizations. Did that make me irrational and incapable of discussion?
Generalizing is part of abstraction and understanding big picture relationships. That you can nitpick it does not make it wrong. If you used the fact that you personally lived outside the US to claim that Americans do not live in America, you are far more wrong than the generalization is.
And no, the presence of manboobs is irrelevant to the claim that women have boobs.
When the generalization is used as a character assassination, then yes. You post on slashdot, therefore you must be a mysogynist. There is no rationalizing with such a bigot, therefore, there is no rationalizing with you. That's the logic the original poster used, and the responder made fun of. Does it work?
You just used a generalization on slashdotters, therefore you are irrational and should be ignored.
See the point yet? Generalizations are not evil, or remotely indicative of defective thinking.
"Be bigoted against bigots", however, is self-defeating. It's bigotry to exempt certain types of bigots from that treatment - so we find that there is a different principle at play, being against "bigots" is just the marketing.
If it were *only* an issue of bad writing and not of sexism, you'd expect as many "save the prince" games as "save the princess" games.
Why would you expect as many "save the prince" games as "save the princess"?
Do you think girls dream about swooping in and saving their romantic love interest from danger, demonstrating their strength in body and character?
Do you think men and women are physical equals?
Notice the whole claim of "violence" is predicated on the word "forcing," which in this case is a verb. Notice the complete lack of action though. So just from that we can see it is a false accusation; the only action taken was giving his own opinion. But you lie, and claim he took an action to "force" his opinion on you. But you're not forced to believe every opinion you hear; that is silly, and shows a misunderstanding even over the word opinion. Then you double down on the lie, by claiming the "force" not only exists, but was violent.
If the opinion is in line with reality, there is a sort of "force" involved - one is "forced" to accept the opinion is true, or deny reality itself.
However, if believing the truth causes violence to oneself, there are some important issues that need resolving. I suggest that that is good "violence".
I've played video games since 1990; I do not hate women; My hobby does not hate women; The vast majority of people who play video games do not hate women. Please, Sarkeesian's of the world, turn your attentions to the people who do.
If their intentions are to go after misogynists, you're right that targeting gaming and gamers is off.
But if their intentions are to go after a profitable industry ... US game industry has as much revenue as the US movie industry, and more importantly, has a lot of eyeballs.
Yeah, hi that's called "Existing every damn day as a woman" everywhere outside of feminist classes in college.
On a cruise trip with a bunch of friends, one of the girls wore a shirt saying, "Boys suck, throw rocks at them." This was not inside a college classroom.
Do you think that anyone would own a shirt that says, "Girls suck, throw rocks at them", or "Blacks suck, throw rocks at them" and wear it in public with a second thought? Without any confrontation or controversy?
That's how games get released with no female character options, or female NPC's with redonkulous boobs, because the guys making the game just never put in a second to think "how will women, who are a huge factor in life, think about this".
Are those women the intended audience of the game?
If they're not customers buying the product, why does it matter what they think about it?