Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

[Cygnia]

 

E3: The community reacts to Ubisoft's abandoned women assassins

 

[Sociotard]

Regarding the Trinity Syndrome post:

 

1) the lack of female centered stories is a real problem. I agree that more moves should focus on female characters and be driven by their choices.

 

2) when movies are from a male POV, fixing the trinity problem is a lot harder.  For the How to Train Your Dragon sequel, the article complains that it sets up the mom as complex and interesting and competent, then has her son save the day, and drive the story forward with all his choices.

 

But, if the mom moves the story forward, then it is her story, not Hiccup's. Of course, that goes to point one, and it might have still worked. Cars 2 changed the lead character and still (mostly) worked.

 

Consider Star Wars. If you were to try to "fix" that movie, so it passed the bechdel test and had a story driven forward by female choices, and do it just by replacing a male character.

 

The easiest would just be to replace Luke. That goes to point 1 above.  It might have worked as a story, but it would have required a lot more work on the luke-leia-hans love triangle (and A New Hope did have a love triangle) for dramatic tension.

 

Hans would also work. He also has choices that move the plot forward, but again, it would require effort to fix the love triangle.

 

Obi Wan might, but we'd have to replace another character (like the bartender maybe) as well, because Obi Wan never talks to any women. Also, we could really debate how much he moves the plot forward, especially by the rubric in the article.  He motivates Luke.  Yeah, he deactivates the tractor beam and stalls Vader.  He doesn't beat Darth Vader, just stalls him.  I think a good case could be made that his choices do not drive the plot forward any more than the Mom in the dragon movie.

 

Darth Vader might work. I'm not sure how villains work on this rubric.  Do villains have choices that drive plots forward or just provide opposition, enabling the hero's choices to be painful and dramatically interesting?

 

Grand Moff Tarquin, same deal.

 

Artoo does make choices that would affect the plot and would work.  It would only require a few pronoun changes since the name is pretty gender neutral. We could debate whether the beeps and whistles pass a bechdel test.

 

Threepio does make choices that advance the plot, but he also doesn't converse with women. (did he? Now I have to watch the movie again).

 

Uncle Owen would sort of work.  Then Luke would just have been raised by spinster aunts, and that wouldn't require too many changes to the story. However, Owen is a minor obstacle to Luke, and one that Luke doesn't ever even get around to. He does not move the plot forward at all.

 

Chewie barely makes any comments around leia or any other women, and he doesn't make choices that move the plot forward.

 

So, Luke and Hans if we are willing to do major work on a source of dramatic tension, Vader and Tarquin if villains count as making choices that move plots forward, Artoo if we count him as conversing with anything. Obi Wan if we maybe consider him to be making plot critical choices and even then, only if we change some other characters too.

 

The point I'm making is, most stories just have one character that moves the plot forward. We should have more movies in which that character is a woman, but when it isn't, the Bechdel test is  deceptively difficult because it involves dialogue between characters in which the lead is not involved, which is often a sign the dialogue could be cut altogether to make a leaner better story.  Likewise, it is difficult to add other characters who are not love interests who make choices that drive the plot forward, because when you do, it makes the leads story weaker.

[Pattern Ghost]

Hans would also work. He also has choices that move the plot forward, but again, it would require effort to fix the love triangle.

 

 

You can still have a love triangle, just have one with two females and one male. Of course, if you toss one more female in, you get into harem anime territory .

[Sociotard]

Maybe. However, George set up the triangle as a classic "High society girl pursued by both good boy and bad boy." That style was super popular in the 50s when he was getting all his inspiration, and it is as old as Wuthering Heights. (that's just the oldest that popped to mind)

 

Changing it?

 

Luke as girl: A bad boy gets to choose between a strong willed high society dame and a sweet but spunky country girl? Maybe.

 

Hans as girl: A young man fresh to the world gets to choose between a rich girl and a bad girl?  Ooh, that sounds really naughty.

 

I'm not really aware of many stories like that, particularly in the action genre.  Also, we have to acknowledge that it wouldn't really satisfy a lot of the feminist reviewers, since now the story is just another girl as a trophy for the male victor, only now he gets his pick of trophy styles?

[assault]

Luke as girl: A strong willed high society dame gets to choose between a  bad boy and a sweet but spunky country girl?

[薔薇語]

The Bechdel Test was brought up earlier this year by the movie reviewer at the Escapist in this "The Big Picture" video. 

To summarize Movie Bob on this: The bechdel test tells you nothing of value about any given movie. As mentioned above, Star Wars: A New Hope does not pass the test. Yet I would like to think that most of us can agree that it was a great movie. Indeed, passing or failing the test is unrelated to any given movie's quality. Thus using it as a measure on individual films is rather out of place. Conversely, movies that do a lot more for female characters and display them in positive and well rounded ways does not even begin to guarantee a pass rating on the Bechdel test. My favorite movie of last year was Pacific Rim. The female lead was great: the actress and the role. She was as well rounded and thought out as her male counterparts. But despite that, Pacific Rim most certainly does not pass the test.

That said, the fact that so few movies do pass IS a point of interest. When taken on a whole it is worth noting that so few movies pass because it serves as possible evidence towards the bias of the stories that are put out by Hollywood. But is that actually news to anyone? I would imagine not, and thus linking so strongly to the test is just like beating a dead horse: pointless. 

 

La Rose. 

[SKJAM!]

It's a litmus test, is all.  It's meaningful in aggregate, mostly.  However, it's interesting when a story veers to avoid passing.

 

A case in point--Looking for Group, the webcomic.  For most of the early run, there was only one plot-relevant female character, who was the protagonist's more or less love interest.  Then the group hires a ship, which just so happens to have a woman as the captain.  The two women are about to meet--next strip is the next day, in which we are informed that the two women took an instant dislike to each other for no reason that the men can fathom, and the punchline is essentially "wimmen is kuh-razy!"

 

In fairness, about fifteen strips later, the women did exchange words in passing, and not about a man as such--the ship was being attacked and they discussed tactics.  (And much later, more women with plot relevant roles were added to the cast, you can do that in a long-form story.)

 

It does get suspicious when time after time, there's a perfectly valid logical reason the movie wouldn't pass, but we have to keep making those reasons up.

[Cygnia]

 

Editor's blog: I am sexist

Let's talk about how, why and what I'm doing about it.

[Cancer]

Are the two links in the above post supposed to point to the same article?

[Cygnia]

Yeah.

[Sociotard]

[Cancer]

This on-line improv question made my 17-year-old daughter frown

 

Though she admitted that my response was OK.

[Cygnia]

http://gailsimone.tumblr.com/post/89757011645/a-message-to-aspiring-female-creators-in-comics

[Cygnia]

No-one Is Coming To Take Away Your Sh***y Toys

 

To summarise: Rami made a tiny blip of a post about boob physics in The Witcher 3 being referred to internally as "eye candy" and then some a*****e made a concerted effort to complain about political correctness, denied that there's any structural privilege in being a straight white man in America, and then made the bold claim that racism (and presumably sexism, ageism, et al) only persists because of people who keep bringing it up and calling others out on it - this fascinating notion that we live in a post-prejudice age, soiled only by the whining of people of colour, women, homosexuals, etc, who cling to the 'victimhood' of ages past, who for some reason believe documented history and observable systems of causality are to blame for their disadvantaged social/economic/political position. Yes, our ancestors forged global empires on the flagellated backs of slaves! Yes, womens rights over their own bodily integrity have been violated by male-dominated political institutions throughout history! I agree, all of that stuff was terrible! But that was YESTERDAY! Didn't you get the memo?! Starting TODAY we're all equal! Other than in an ongoing series of freak, one-off incidents which I don't think we should read anything into. Now, let's never mention this again and just continue as normal until trickle-down economics has evened everything out.

[Cygnia]

From today's Cracked...

 

4 Bad Excuses for Awful Stereotypes in Recent Pop Culture

[Enforcer84]

Not Gaming, College.

From a Satirical program. 

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/z2b627/the-fault-in-our-schools

[Cygnia]

*facepalm to Finland*

 

Hearthstone tournament explains why women aren't allowed to play [updated]

[Enforcer84]

oh Internet Sports. How dumb you are. 

[薔薇語]

As a point of clarification the StarCraft tournaments are not segregated. Men and women play openly against each other in every international league I know of.

 

La Rose

[Cygnia]

 

UPDATE: ‘Men only’ eSports rule overturned after Blizzard & Finnish league step in

 

[Cygnia]

“Internet Famous”: Visibility As Violence On Social Media

 

 

We consider visibility to be desirable.

 

It is highly lucrative, much sought after. And yes, it is a huge asset in the careers and companies of many cishet white men. Visibility gets them jobs, raises, venture capital, customers, community support... chances at more visibility in a bountiful cycle of pageviews and cash, money and power. With visibility is supposed to come admiration, respect, access, affluence - and for most of such men, it delivers.

 

Yet for the rest of us, with visibility comes harassment, stalking, threats, loss of career opportunity and mobility, constant public humiliation, emotional and sometimes physical violence.

[Cygnia]

No permission needed: behind the scenes of an all-girl game development camp

 

The main library at Northern Illinois University is empty. The college students have mostly gone home for the summer. Card catalogs have been powered down and thousands of books wait, collecting dust. The only movement is out the window. There in the long, flat distance you can see the endless cornfields of Dekalb, Illinois waving in the breeze.

 

But as you clear the stacks on the third floor you can begin to hear signs of life. They get louder as you draw near. In a converted storage space, at the end of a bank of cubicles, a tiny room is exploding with voices.

 

Inside a group of young women are learning to make their own games.

 

Ranging in age from 10 to 15, they are here for the University’s third annual Girls Video Game Camp.

 

And today, their last day, they have a very special guest Skyping in.

 

"You don’t need permission to make games," Brenda Romero says from her home in California. It feels like a well practiced rant. Before she finishes it the famous designer, herself a 30-year games industry veteran and the designers of the Wizardy series, stops short.

 

"I guess I don’t need to tell you this. You’re already here. You’re already doing it."

 

And the nine young women all sit just a little bit taller.

A tiny bit of progress at least...

[Cygnia]

Attack of the purse snatchers: gender and bag policies in U.S. comic book stores

 

Of course, not all women carry purses. Still, mainstream women’s fashion makes it difficult for someone dressed in women’s clothing to keep the necessary accoutrements of daily life (such as wallets, cell phones, keys, glasses, bus tokens, subway pass cards, and so on) on her person without the aid of some sort of purse or briefcase. It’s one thing for a man to surrender a backpack or laptop case; he’s more than likely got his keys and wallet and cell phone in the pockets of his pants or jacket. It’s another thing entirely for a woman to give up her purse or shoulder bag, which – to add insult to injury – generally isn’t even large to put a comic book in without folding it, which would defeat the purpose of going through the trouble of stealing it in the first place. There are only three other situations I can think of in which an individual is asked to surrender her wallet and cell phone to a complete stranger: airport security checkpoints, courthouse security checkpoints, and prison. The last time I checked, no one perceived any of these situations as particularly pleasant.

 

Aside from the false equivalence between the purses (and other personal articles) carried by women and those carried by men, another troubling aspect of bag confiscation policies has to do with the extreme discomfort they can engender. As the recent Daily Show segment The Fault in Our Schools aptly illustrates, many young women learn to go about “their whole day navigating an obstacle course of sexual menace” and other threats, especially in spaces they perceive to be occupied primarily by men. One of the best self-defense tactics is being able to make a quick exit, and it’s always good to be able to call (or pretend to call) someone or to brandish pepper spray if that doesn’t work. I would like to assume that comic book stores are not prime locations for assault, sexual or otherwise, but it’s still nice to be able to leave an uncomfortable environment without having to ask for your bag, often from the people who have made you feel uncomfortable in the first place by pointedly ignoring you or making snide and judgmental comments about your presence.

 

By taking a woman’s bag, a comic book store is essentially taking away her freedom to escape from harassment, as well as her sense of security. On top of this, she has just given her wallet and cell phone – and her sense of identity and agency along with them – to someone who has demonstrated distrust and antagonism by asking for them. How could she possibly feel completely comfortable browsing or engaging with the staff and other patrons?

[Sociotard]

I dunno.  They're people.  All stores have shrink, and it is very frustrating. Every time you go over the bills and see how tight things are and you think about the people that just walked off with merchandise you have to pay for . . . ooh it grates. 

 

The comment complains that honest people have to hand over their bags to someone who has demonstrated distrust and antagonism, but humanity has demonstrated to these store owners that humanity deserves distrust and antagonism.

 

The complaint that women might want a hasty exit seems valid, and it's a point I hadn't considered.

 

So it's a balance.  Do I feel for the store owner who gets shoplifted every month and who sees all the empty storefronts near him that just didn't make it . . . or do I feel for the women who have to deal with sexist or threatening language?

[Enforcer84]

No I'm not seeing that one at all. I believe they make women's clothing with pockets and they make Men's clothing without so the same I can't get escape harassment argument could apply there. 

 

If the bag in question is big enough to swipe a book in I can see bookstores not thrilled with the idea of you carrying it around. Take your keys and wallets out of the bag and carry it.  If you're hovering around the collectors item minis expect to be watched. I've not seen any statistics that conclude women are any less likely to be shoplifters. 

 

I will draw a line and join with the author if we're talking a purse that can hold no more than wallet, keys, and a few small items. But if your handbag is as big as a backpack you set it behind the counter.