After yesterdays article about cracked.coms feminist leaning they post this

ToraZalinto · 2013-09-19T16:49:46+00:00

Stopped reading at point number one. (The Last of Us spoilers) To them Ellie became a "weak" character because she broke down. She just went through something traumatic and was in a fit of hysteria. Of course she'd break down at that point. Whether Joel showed up or not. As soon as she stopped hacking at David's face she'd have succumbed to tears. Not because she's female but because she's human.

MechPlasma · 2013-09-19T15:57:30+00:00

Of course they wouldn't rape a woman! They'd just threaten to rape a woman, which makes it hilarious! Because the most horrifying thing that can happen to a woman isn't a real issue, it's just a game, it was a joke, don't take it so serious, and now you understand rape culture.

So which is worse:

Saying rape is worse than murder and every other serious crime and trauma?
Saying rape is only the most horrific thing for women?
Implying portraying anything horrific in the media as anything but horrific is dismissing it as a issues? (again: in a game about rampant murder)
Rape culture?
Thinking Hotline Miami's faux rape scene is a joke?

Outstanding.

Miracle_Fruit · 2013-09-19T15:18:57+00:00

If the (second) best you can come up with to complain about is fucking Army Men: Sarge's Heroes, you know you're really grasping at straws.

Anyways, it's hilarious how an article entirely devoted to claiming misogyny ends itself with a picture making fun of people who complain about misandry.

5th_Law_of_Robotics · 2013-09-19T15:21:17+00:00

I really don't get the hate for unrealistic male fantasies in entertainment catering to men when there are equally unrealistic female fantasies in entertainment catering to women that no one dares criticize.

Edit: actually this obsession kinda makes women seem irrelevant and makes men the center of the universe. In both cases you have men and women flocking to things they enjoy, having fun and not bothering the other. But by focusing on men and their entertainment, demanding it cater to women without making the same demand in reverse you're saying that only what men are interested in matters, women are not even a side-show. They are barely even there. Legitimacy is conferred by men, with women desperate to get in on that since they can't make something legitimate or worthwhile on their own. This obsessive drive to make all men's entertainment inclusive of women is saying that it's up to men to determine if some aspect of society is good and worth having. This is literal patriarchy and it's feminists who are constantly reasserting the supremacy of the male in society and popular culture.

PowerWisdomCourage · 2013-09-19T14:02:07+00:00

Dear god. What a waste of server space. As a lot of people are pointing out, it seems like Sarkeesian wrote it since it's filled with her usual BS and it's clear the writer hasn't played half the games or actually interacted with any of the community.

ZeJazzaFrazz · 2013-09-19T16:59:39+00:00

I love how they use Other M as an example when it's hated by all for it's poor storyline and ruination of Samus' character.

Wiiboy95 · 2013-09-19T16:45:54+00:00

I love the way they bring up hotline miami as an example of sexism in games. Hundreds of men (and they are all men) get murdered in really brutal and sadistic ways in that game. Is that misandry? If it is, no-one cares, but if you so much as hint that the rape of a woman might occur then you might as well be hitler for all the bad press you'll recieve.

KitsUne24 · 2013-09-19T13:14:30+00:00

http://en.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1mmtdh/when_did_crackedcom_become_so_feminist/

link to yesterday's discussion. Cracked used to be one of my favourite daily sites but it's really going downhill

girlwriteswhat · 2013-09-19T17:18:48+00:00

I can't tell which is worse, the fact that the article is just more feminist/rape culture claptrap, or the fact that it it's posted on a humor website and doesn't even try to be funny. It's just angry.

ArchangelleNiggatron · 2013-09-19T15:53:25+00:00

The only good point made was "Other M" and that's because the game as a whole SUCKED.

paralympic_potatoes · 2013-09-19T20:54:29+00:00

"Dead or Alive uses more computer power to model Kasumi's breasts than NASA had for the moon landings. That's actually not a joke." My nintendo 64 has more computing power than the computers used by nasa to get to the moon.

Mr_Rivers · 2013-09-19T17:44:20+00:00

I love the way that many feminists objectify us by saying we act the way we do only because of our testicles.

It's almost like they're shaming us because of our bodies. We should start a 'ball walk' parade where we all dress up as giant pairs of testicles and walk around the streets shouting THESE THINGS DON'T DEFINE US because that would really show them.

geengaween · 2013-09-19T19:28:44+00:00

This is not about equality. This is about complaining for the sake of complaining, something feminists seem to love to do. Video games are a male oriented entertainment form, and despite most feminists not having the slightest interest in games about guns, zombies, cars, and killing, they will still incessantly bitch about it because how dare those men have something fun that is aimed at them. How dare men enjoy something that doesn't specifically cater to women's interests.

It's obvious the author of this clickbait piece of shit article has never played the games in question, because if she had she would know that in The Last Of Us Ellie is not the only female character in the game, and Elizabeth did not "wait" for Booker to come and save her.

The devs of these games bend over backwards to please the feminists, even including messages like "You do not have to protect Elizabeth, she can take care of herself" - but it's still not enough. It's never enough. It won't even be enough when every video game character is female, because then they will be portrayed in the wrong way. They'll be too pretty, or too butch, or too assertive, or too quiet, or too emotional, or too unemotional.

The sooner everyone stops pandering to these disgusting professional attention seekers, the better. Meanwhile ACTUAL girl gamers are playing the games they enjoy and not playing the games they don't enjoy, like normal fucking people.

Modron · 2013-09-19T21:05:29+00:00

Lara Croft attacks male characters, and all the baddies in the game are male. That could actually be interpreted as misandry... ;)

Incidentally, to address the point in the article about violence against women, feminists would also complain if there were no fighting women/strong women in video games. Can't win.

PeterArching · 2013-09-19T16:21:11+00:00

Tl;DR: Guilty as charged!

tallwheel · 2013-09-20T01:08:47+00:00

I didn't want to protect her, I wanted to smack her and tell her to get her shit together.

That's violence against women though, remember? If you're a male you will have your privileged ass hauled off to jail for this, in case you didn't already know that. (Just a warning.)

TracyMorganFreeman · 2013-09-19T23:46:02+00:00

This article is poorly written, has factual errors, and just generally bad. Seems like someone spent their lunch break "researching" video games and then churned out this article in an hour or two afterwards. I'm skeptical they really played Tomb Raider and Metroid back then given how little detail they gave on the older games but went into great detail for the new ones. Of course my skepticism there might be informed by Anita Sarkeesian's claims about being a gamer(which ended up being mostly BS) as an attempt to lend authority to her critiques.

BioShock Infinite's Elizabeth was born with the ability to tear portals in time and space,

Um no she wasn't. Clearly they haven't played the game or was really not paying attention in the epilogue.

Ellie from The Last of Us is immune to an apocalyptic virus, learns new weapons faster than Neo, and has stabbed more enemies to death than Wolverine. But as soon as the guy turns up, she dissolves into tears and nursing

Because she's um...a kid. They constantly work together throughout the game.

The protagonists, on the other hand, are such anonymous manly men that we're not even going to bother with their names.

Translation: "You know, these also complex male characters? Fuck them, they're just random Joes with beards".

Their only advantages are the magic balls that fix them as the center of any narrative universe

Yeah let's ignore that you play as Ellie at one point and she's the primary reason the plot unfolds as it does. Also, it's significantly harder as Ellie. Badass or not, she's more frail and not as strong, but it's easier to hide as her, just like a 14 year old girl in real life.

And they've already lost their own girl earlier, because why on Earth would a man care about a woman without prior cause?

Or it's to explain how a man who otherwise might not help a stranger that much.

"Oh random girl I just met, sure I'll risk life and limb for this thing I have less vested in than you or most people; What? That's because I lost what drove me? What? This is a new way to motivate me and draw parallels to what I care bout?"

No no no; it must be some kind of indifference towards women, right?

The woman's struggle becomes a stand-in for the man's loss, her entire narrative is just a piece of his, and he scribbles "Daddy makes it all better" all over her ending.

Well she wasn't making it better. Her struggle was you know, not getting easier by her own volition. Hey look working together and having realistic motivations for that and suddenly a coherent and feasible story.

But if the woman can already rip holes in reality and/or enemy sternums, maybe they should have a character dynamic other than "Save me!"

Because she couldn't fully control it at the time? Character development wtf is that, right?

the damsel is the character captured just so the dude can save her.

Or the dude saves her because she was captured...

often in an attempt to reclaim her as some sort of love prize or symbolic victory.

Yep. Men don't care about anyone; they just do it for points and bragging rights!

A character is a damsel if she can be replaced by an inanimate object without any changes to the plot

Characters are disposable if they can replaced by speedbumps without any changes to the plot.

I can do oversimplistic analyses of video games, too.

Except there's more to a story about rescuing something you care about. The audience is probably more likely to care about a person than a golden pipe wrench.

There's nothing wrong with a hero-rescue tale, but it doesn't always have to be boy saves girl

For marketability purposes, if the majority of your audience is straight men, it probably does, or at least isn't inherently problematic.

I mean, there's nothing wrong with rom-coms, but they don't always have to be the man realizing how much of an idiot he's been and figuring out how lucky he is to have this woman in his life.

The fact that her gender surprised so many people at the end of the first Metroid should have started us on the road to fixing these gender problems over 20 years ago.

Begging the question and a non-sequitur for a bonus; fun.

The developers said they wanted the players to care for Lara and protect her. Horseshit. I didn't want to protect her, I wanted to smack her and tell her to get her shit together.

So you disagree with what the developers wanted you to do, so they must be wrong. Of course...

"Rape culture" is the normalization of sexual violence against women, treating it like something that just happens and blaming or shaming the victims

Only women can be raped, remember.

You see it in the news: If you can replace "rape" with "rain" and the story still works, that's rape culture.

That...is one of the stupidest things I have read in some time.

When a story focuses on anything the victim was doing (look for words like "party girl") instead of how the rapist was raping, that's rape culture.

Because there's so much evidence in every rape case, right? They had video evidence, a dossier, and a full interrogation of the assailant but just decided to ignore all that, right? "The media trying to report they do have is rape culture". Morons.

In video games, this normalization reduces rape to a special effect to shock the player, motivate the hero, establish the villain, or even make a joke, with no more thought given to the victim than to an empty bullet casing

The irony of all of the men being gunned down in video games seems lost on this person.

It's something that only happens to women, a subtle punishment just for daring to be women

They said, with no basis whatsoever.

She's often stuck with communications, the combat equivalent of being a secretary, or as a medic there to nurse the big brave boys better when they have boo-boos.

You mean like women in the military today? To be clear I'm not saying women are incapable, but they are greatly overrepresented as medics/nurses and administration.

your stubbly Y chromosome

Someone is jelly.

We all know that the threats in video games are imaginary. The real world is far less flammable and isn't being invaded by aliens, and the deadly ninja is almost extinct.

The only exception is sexism. Which is far worse in the real world, especially in the video game industry.

"So games aren't real so we shouldn't read too much into them, except that parts I don't like."

Real women face death threats for saying that virtual women shouldn't be abused so much

Yes but they weren't real death threats. Random trolls on the internet are not would be assailants. They aren't real ninjas hiding in the bushes waiting for their time to strike.

So where do you go from being bombarded with all of this frightening and uncomfortable information? For starters, you share it! Spread it around like wildfire to anyone who claims to care about games as a medium of artistic expression and fun.

Yes don't vet it or anything, spread it because they elicited weird feelings you don't fully comprehend.

Next, you listen! Anytime you find yourself wanting to argue against a woman's narrative of sexism in the industry, or how she reads another character, listen. Chances are she knows what she's talking about!

Feelings over verifiable facts; of course!

Real people are not cutscenes: You can't just mash the controller to skip them and get back to being the undisputed male center of the universe.

Finally, you allow people to criticize games and gender in narratives and allow the discussion to continue within game spaces without derailing the conversation. This is the best way we can learn from each other and improve the future of gaming. If someone is trying to prevent a discussion of a problem, they are that problem.

So the part about giving assent to experiences and not having them criticized is...?

Undisputed, yet they wrote an entire article about women and how to make it about women.

JesusSaidSo · 2013-09-19T17:39:31+00:00

If someone is trying to prevent a discussion of a problem, they are that problem.

Really, feminists? So what happened at UofT then?

Tu_stultus_est · 2013-09-20T08:33:56+00:00

No mention of Far Cry 3? The main character (a man) is drugged and raped by a woman. A secondary character is raped on a daily basis until you save him.

Apparently the game is about white colonialism.... :-/

2013-09-19T23:51:05+00:00

"Rape culture" is the normalization of sexual violence against women, treating it like something that just happens and blaming or shaming the victims.

But prison rape? That's hilarious. Blaming men for domestic violence and only funding agencies that help women and demonize men? That's fine. Nothing can ever hurt men, we live in a patriarchy!

ThePigmanAgain · 2013-09-20T02:42:17+00:00

Cracked -- it's Jezebel for nerds.

xXCptCoolXx · 2013-09-19T17:38:11+00:00

I don't know what these people want. They claim to want to combat "rape culture" but demonize anyone including it in a game where it is portrayed as bad because... demonstrating rape is bad will make it more socially acceptable? Wuh? The whole idea behind their "rape culture" is that they believe violence against women/rape is taught to be accepted so one would expect them to like it when a developer includes it in a game and shows how bad and not normalized it is. I mean really, if rape was really normalized then how could (as the article claims) they use it as a tool to shock/horrify players?

Also, do they expect game creators to pretend that rape is not a thing and never include rape in any game ever for any reason? Like, is rape the one thing that happens in real life that games should never be allowed to portray? That makes absolutely no sense.

sixtysixpixistix · 2013-09-19T20:08:14+00:00

I have a brilliant simple suggestion for all of the whining srs gamers out there. How about we let the free market decide what games should be? Whew time for a smoke break. Now watch this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=heIH9vfwKBM

Title	After yesterdays article about cracked.coms feminist leaning they post this
Author	KitsUne24
Upvotes	82
Comments	81
Date	September 19, 2013 1:09 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1mpi12/after_yesterdays_article_about_crackedcoms/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/after-yesterdays-article-about-crackedcoms.1163469 https://theredarchive.com/post/1163469

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