OF GAMES, REPRESENTATION, AND WOMEN'S CHEEKBONES

Posts

harmonic
It's like toothpicks against a tank
4142
author=Solitayre
You're upset that it's okay for white people to be made fun of.

Transgender people are upset that they can be murdered for being transgender.

That's the difference.


Do I really need to take the 5 seconds it would take to google the multiple, numerous hate crimes (including murders) against whites?

Hate crimes happen to every single demographic. Jeeze louise, the selective ignorance is stunning.
"Non-white" here. Still disagree with most of what you say. Don't complain about strawmans if you're just going to build your own.

Seriously, this has little to nothing to do with "white vs non-white", "feminism vs anti-feminism", "men vs women", "left vs right", or whatever else you want to make this out to be. This is more about Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism (In the broader sense of the word). And harmonic is right about this. You people are out to police other's people's every word, every though, etc. You want to "change culture" because you cannot stand living in a pluralist society where people are free to think and act as they please within the boundaries of the law. And you don't challenge the law because you know your arguments have no legs to stand on.

For example, let's look at the previous line of discussion. I can understand objecting to the use of slurs. But you fool only yourselves if you think this is just about slurs. The word "female" is not a slur, and that too would get you hairs standing on end. Words like "whack" or "homie" are not slurs, yet apparently you cannot use them unless you belong to the right demographic. And that's just the tip of the iceberg... This is what you have to offer us? This is your alternative to the evil status quo? The same status quo that has given so many of us a voice? A status with less options available to exercise that voice? You're out of your mind!

If you want to hold yourselves to such standards, you're more than welcome to. You have my complete respect. Clearly, you're better than us... But you cannot expect this from us. Specially when your idea of winning hearts boil down to blame games and shaming tactics. You'll only be able to prey on people's empathy for so long, you know? Give it time and people will realize how empty your accusations are.
so the whole reason i wrote that big chunk about slurs vs. insults was because some people are prone to acting like all objections to the language people use comes from the same root, and that root usually gets traced back to "don't do this because it hurts feelings". I keep saying that it's not about hurt feelings and every time I involve myself in discussions like this it loops back around like some kind of ouroboros
@BM: well alright i was directly addressed and all

Yeah, I'll agree that you do need more thought than leaving it at "don't insult people". As far as I've noticed, no one has been talking about just insulting people. My most recent posts here have been talking about slurs, which is already going beyond "just" an insult.

I'm basically saying "you, yes you -- the person reading this -- should not use slurs because it reinforces violence and I, the person writing this, want to see less of that violence done to people because of their differences from the assumed state of "normal". And at the moment that's not even directed at you, specifically, but like just so I continue to be crystal clear here.

I'm not worried about any slippery slopes about how discouraging the use of slurs will impact anyone's entertainment. I'm not even talking about law in the U.S./anywhere else. Like I'm not talking about legal anything b/c I've been talking about personal conduct and moral debate, or disagreements about theoretical abstract stuff like "how do we define a slur/violence/other stuff". These are usually the kinds of things people won't budge an inch on if they're already decided.

and of course, how could silly little me challenge the law (which law? U.S. law? international law? the law of the land? who knows) when my arguments don't have a leg to stand on

In the first post I made about this slurs vs insult business, I wanna point out this bit:
author= it me
Casually throwing them around creates an environment where, in the case of calling someone a "tranny", insulting someone based on their gender is A-okay. I think that's a shit-tier environment to be in. It's not somewhere I want to live, work, or mak gam in. Restricting usage of this type of language doesn't actually make people less transphobic or anything. If people wanna be shitlords about it, come hell or high water they will find a way.

Restricting the use of slurs helps make an environment where trans folks can feel more at ease in. It demonstrates that the people responsible for the space we're participating in at the very least will not allow people to use language with no other purpose than reinforcing violence. (or justifying/excusing violence, I guess, but I wrap that up under the heading of "reinforcing" because it goes back to supporting the idea, in this case, that violence against trans folks is A-okay)

I've pointed out multiple times that simply saying "don't use this word" does not stop people from being shitlords about it. And like, alright, it's simplistic to act like the ONLY THING slurs EVER DO is reinforce violence, but i'm still gonna spotlight that as a pretty fuckin important thing that happens when people use them, this is the main purpose of a slur, and it's something that needs to stop

one of the other things the use of slurs does is make a shitty environment for people who are targeted by them. No, there's technically nothing that stops trans folks (or any other folks but like hey, this thread has p much focused on trans folks) from participating in just about any forum or online space. But personally, I don't feel comfortable being somewhere I know I'm not wanted. Most people don't like that! Shock! Gasp! Sure, you could power through that and grit your teeth and not say anything, but it's bad for you. That's what I did for a few years. It was stressful, it took a toll on me, and just plugging my ears and repeating "STICKS AND STONES" actually did very little. Being in environments like that made the process of gam mak way more stressful and limited a lot of my community participation.

This is in reference to small scale participation in indie game dev forums. It ripples outwards. I keep my gender very private offline b/c I don't want to deal with the harrassment being open about it tends to bring. Even if nothing personally happens to me, I know what can happen to trans folks for being trans, and it terrifies me, often into being silent. This dynamic I'm talking about? This kind of social pressure to sit down, shut up, and keep my Gross Sensitive Feelings and desire to not face rejection all to myself?

That's a form of censorship. It's not a law or a hard and fast rule, it's pressure, and it's pressure I feel much more keenly in hostile environments. Using slurs creates environments like this.

Discouraging the use of slurs, for the umpteenth time, does not stop people from being transphobic or any other flavor of shitty. One of the positive outcomes from discouraging their use is making environments that feel safer for certain groups to participate in. When you have a more diverse input, you get more diverse output. In a creative field like game development, this only comes with benefits. Of course it's going to piss off people who assume that the playing field was level to begin with and that enforcing limits on behavior is favoritism that can only end in extremes.

In order to even have discussions about "how to solve the problems X group faces" (which alright, isn't something that a gam make site like rmn deals in, but hot damn does it come up every now and then), you need people from those groups willing to participate. And like, keeping things topical, if you ask a bunch of random cisgendered folks about how to "help" transgendered folks out without any trans folks around, you will get very different results. Not in a good way.

Especially in places like private internet forums, the vast majority of the time you don't need to worry about any greasy, slipped up slopes. I know, you personally keep talking about insults, but I've never been saying "don't insult people". Everything you worry about won't happen if like, the staff at rmn warn people for using slurs and I don't see anyone saying "don't insult people"

also i try not to let reactionary things like "someone said I couldn't do this so i'm gonna DO IT EVEN MORE" decide what I do 90% of the time. That line of thought is childish and it's embarrassing to see people who should know better engage in it.
harmonic
It's like toothpicks against a tank
4142
author=alterego
Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism


Since you will probably be rebuffed by our local authoritarians, let me pitch in here.

It is authoritarian to censor, shame, and blame. To divide based on demographic group, to turn them against one another. It is authoritarian to try and grab power, if even on a tiny scale (like an online forum) by hiding behind the victims one claims to defend. It is authoritarian to claim automatic moral high ground based on something arbitrary, such as what has been deemed acceptable words.

Why do authoritarians act this way? There is great value in having righteous indignation. It scores them online brownie points. It allows them to assure their own world views. It boosts their egos. Folks with superiority complexes search for opportunities to be righteously indignant. Folks with inferiority complexes search for opportunities to paint themselves victims and show how unfair the world is to them.

It's all a big dance, really. SJWs go crazy about the word "tranny" but only because enough of society recently decided it's a bad word. 5 years ago, no one would have cared, and thus, said SJW would not have cared. It's about what's trendy to care about. The never-ending search for victims to exploit. 2 weeks ago, it was a lion. In about 2 more weeks, there will be another "worst thing ever."
author=harmonic
It's all a big dance, really. SJWs go crazy about the word "tranny" but only because enough of society recently decided it's a bad word. 5 years ago, no one would have cared, and thus, said SJW would not have cared. It's about what's trendy to care about. The never-ending search for victims to exploit. 2 weeks ago, it was a lion. In about 2 more weeks, there will be another "worst thing ever."


so are you just talking out your ass here or do you want to actually talk about the history of the word "tranny"? I mean I can tell you want to complain about SJWs but i am not going to complain about SJWs

b/c yeah, its only within the past 2ish decades that there's been vocal pushes against using it, and many have come to regard it as a slur

there are still trans folks who use it in reference to their own identity, there are trans folks who wish to reclaim it for everyday use, and there's a lot more nuance to the discussion of that particular word... things I've already been saying, for the record, y'know, that when it comes to "who can say which words" it's less about specific words and more about how they're used

this is a very, very long post on someone's personal blog, aimed at a trans audience, not a cisgendered one. Still, I find it to be a very topical history (I mean plenty of folks have written about the history of various slurs) and I think it's somewhat accessible although a lot of the terminology or debates referenced will be unfamilliar to people who don't keep tract of trans activism/social activism in general at least a lil bit. even if I don't 100% agree w/everything here, Serano raises some great points!

I mean on the history of the word itself, a very succint summary:
= Julia Serano
the word “tranny” has a number of parallels with the word “gay”: both began as in-community self-referential labels, which then garnered negative meanings when the mainstream public discovered them and began using them in derogatory ways, thus forcing members of these communities to have to reclaim the very words that they themselves originally forwarded.


but what i find really relevant here:

Those who oppose the purging of the word “tranny” will often trot out the trope of “word policing.” It is an easy way to demonize those who detest the word as being “too authoritarian,” just as accusations of “political correctness” dismiss the same people as being “too sensitive.” Such accusations deny the reality that words have meanings and can be used to wield power over people. But at the same time, power can also be wielded via attempts to eradicate words that others have long used as part of their identity, activism, and/or culture. I believe that it is incumbent upon us as activists to consider the negative effects that eliminating such words can have on those marginalized individuals.


"it is incumbent upon us as activists to consider the negative effects that eliminating such words can have on those marginalized individuals."

"on those marginalized individuals"

The negative effects of taking a stance against certain words is not focused around cis folks, in the case of "tranny".

My purpose in listing these various meanings is not imply that “tranny” is a special magical fairy-dust word that can mean anything to any person, and therefore all people are entitled to freely use it however they wish. The word does have a history as a slur (albeit only over the last few decades), and some trans people have experienced the word in association with sexual harassment and/or transphobic violence. People should be aware of this history, and if they choose to use the word, they should be responsible for their decision to do so. At the same time, we should all be cognizant of the complex history of the word, and (I would argue) we should judge people primarily according to their intent and the context in which they use it.


just for clairty: acceptable intents/contexts do not include "it was just a joke" and the only person who 100% reliably knows the "intent" of something is the person who did/said the thing in the first place

anyways it's a long read and I've just cherry-picked really small bits I think are ESPECIALLY relevant to current discussion, i encourage anyone seriously interested to actually take a look at the full post
Cheekbone doesn't matter, but hipbone does
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
author=harmonic
author=alterego
Authoritarianism vs Libertarianism
Since you will probably be rebuffed by our local authoritarians, let me pitch in here.

It is authoritarian to censor, shame, and blame. To divide based on demographic group, to turn them against one another. It is authoritarian to try and grab power, if even on a tiny scale (like an online forum) by hiding behind the victims one claims to defend. It is authoritarian to claim automatic moral high ground based on something arbitrary, such as what has been deemed acceptable words.

Why do authoritarians act this way? There is great value in having righteous indignation. It scores them online brownie points. It allows them to assure their own world views. It boosts their egos. Folks with superiority complexes search for opportunities to be righteously indignant. Folks with inferiority complexes search for opportunities to paint themselves victims and show how unfair the world is to them.


You ignore thousands of years of context when you say things like this. None of this is new.

It's pretty ridiculous to act like you're being oppressed somehow when you barge into a thread (seemingly ignorant of the actual discussion, based on your first post) and claim you're being oppressed because you're asked not to be disrespectful. Guess what, there are rules everywhere that say you can't be disrespectful. Every workplace, every school, every public gathering place tends to have these rules. RMN does too. If you tried to claim you couldn't be bothered to follow these rules in a school or workplace, I don't suspect you first Amendment rights will save you. Trying to act like your civil liberties are being violated by not being able to call people names if you feel like it doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny.

The point of conversations like this is to raise awareness. Even a small place like an internet forum is a start for people to start conversations reminding people that transgender people are people too and it's not very funny to use them as the butt of jokes and dehumanize them. Yes, part of that means people need to change their their thinking and how they talk about and think about transpeople. I don't find there anything particularly strange about this. No, it's not easy. Change never is. But it always happens eventually. I guess History is just a liberal conspiracy, made up of people desperate to get their feelings hurt so they can blog about it?
iddalai
RPG Maker 2k/2k3 for life, baby!!
1194
author=PentagonBuddy
guess what! it's hard to make your own games and do your own shit in an environment that is hostile to your presence, openly or otherwise.

author=Corfaisus
What do you suppose is the reason behind this? If the door is open to everyone, don't you think we'd see a little more diversity?


The door isn't shut all the way through, change has been happening in some AAA games.
But you don't need to start with AAA games, you can make Indie games, that door is wide open.
Anything else is an excuse.

author=Corfaisus
Why not? Are gay people like some other kind of species or something?


Just like men and women think differently, so do gay people.
That we should all have equal rights doesn't mean we are all the same, embrace difference.
I can't just create a straight character, change their romantic interest to the same sex and be done with it, there's much more to it than that.

Funny, I find this:

author=PentagonBuddy
straight white male cis dudes


Offensive. Give it some years, it will become a racial slur.
I think this comic is generally appropriate whenever people start spinning up sensationalist hyperbole about how expecting people to treat others with some basic decency is ~actually fascist censorship~ or whatever.

like, I am a simple nonbinary fool; I could think up no greater argument in the favour of basic respect and awareness than the fact that the people who've blown into this thread to oppose it have invariably done so with imaginary nightmare scenarios and screeds including unironic use of the term 'social justice gestapo'.

and just to make sure none of you mistake me here, I'm just about done with the people in this topic throwing around imaginary what-if scenarios to equivocate forms of abuse that are literally killing people. you expect me to take this garbage for page upon page and still pretend that you're arguing in good faith?

'well, what if in the far-off future straight white cis dudes are the oppressed ones? why aren't we talking about that instead?????' disgusting. if the hill that you choose to die on is your 'right' to call people like me a tr*nny without being criticized or asked to stop (because that's censorship), then do it somewhere else. this is nominally a topic about representation, not a stage production of Pagliacci.
but if straight white cis dudes are oppressed, who will be left to white knight?
BizarreMonkey
I'll never change. "Me" is better than your opinion, dummy!
1625
author=Mysticphoenix
Cheekbone doesn't matter, but hipbone does
oooh~ babeh!

@Penta: Oh, sorry I didn't mean to imply that you were about censoring me or anything, I was just transcribing the worst case scenario.

also i try not to let reactionary things like "someone said I couldn't do this so i'm gonna DO IT EVEN MORE" decide what I do 90% of the time. That line of thought is childish and it's embarrassing to see people who should know better engage in it.
I've been rebellious pretty much all my life, it's just what I do. Call it childish, it probably is. It's my way of handling things.

That said I save it for extreme cases.

author=iddalai
author=Corfaisus
Why not? Are gay people like some other kind of species or something?
Just like men and women think differently, so do gay people.
That we should all have equal rights doesn't mean we are all the same, embrace difference.
I can't just create a straight character, change their romantic interest to the same sex and be done with it, there's much more to it than that.
This was something I never considered, but it is pretty wise.

Now I wouldn't say they are a different species, we're all human, and we're all different.

I'm not normal okay? MY DAMNED USER NAME IS SYNONYMOUS WITH ODD PRIMATE!!!

But as I said on a Feel Good thread somewhere, Normal is a buzzword, and the more that people understand this, the more we bridge the gap towards human equality. We don't need more labels, we need to rethink the definition of normal, and rethink it into redundancy.
harmonic
It's like toothpicks against a tank
4142
author=Solitayre
It's pretty ridiculous to act like you're being oppressed somehow when you barge into a thread (seemingly ignorant of the actual discussion, based on your first post) and claim you're being oppressed because you're asked not to be disrespectful.

It's on full display here.

-Use of the word "Barge" as though I don't belong here, or have malicious intent by posting, check.
-Attempt to reframe me as a hypocritical villain by saying that I'm "claiming to be oppressed", check.
-Attempt to make my arguments sound small and petty by claiming I am speaking about my own personal oppression (rather than society at large), check.
-Reframe my actions into deliberately "being disrespectful", check.
-Playing on society' acceptance that straight white cismales are the oppressor class by painting any objection to that narrative as ridiculous, check. It's a lazy, easy way of getting online brownie points by saying "LOL WHITE GUYS"

If I had actually called someone "tranny", that'd be one thing. But the word was literally part of a list of what "someone" might say. You keep using that word context, but I'm not sure you know what it means.

I don't claim to be personally oppressed. I'm speaking about society at large. But, you knew that already. See above for why you said that.

It also fits the narrative that you completely ignore the massive derail that Slash's focus on that word caused. He ignored my entire post because "tranny" is now supposedly a taboo word, akin to n-word or something. And then you made a statement about how transsexuals can be murdered, which implies that I basically don't care if transsexuals are murdered. It's seriously on full display here for anyone to see. Basically a Fox/CNN/MSNBC-style hit piece. You should give me dark, brooding theme music for whenever I post to complete the theme.
sorry, kentona; under my heavily-censored communist regime all cis people will be sent to work in the gender mines
Zeigfried_McBacon
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
3820
Is that like code for the surgery table or something? XD
author=mawk
I think this comic is generally appropriate whenever people start spinning up sensationalist hyperbole about how expecting people to treat others with some basic decency is ~actually fascist censorship~ or whatever.

A rebuttal: http://wondermark.com/c1149/
slash
APATHY IS FOR COWARDS
4158
author=harmonic
It also fits the narrative that you completely ignore the massive derail that Slash's focus on that word caused.

In some sort of double-irony german suplex, this is harmonic's third post about how I derailed the topic. And yea, it is akin to other slurs, because that's how history affects words.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, discussing that particular slur isn't derailing at all, considering that this topic was originally about discussing diversity and especially gender diversity in games. Welp!
author=mawk
sorry, kentona; under my heavily-censored communist regime all cis people will be sent to work in the gender mines


Is that the plot to Cis Faction? :P
author=kentona
author=mawk
I think this comic is generally appropriate whenever people start spinning up sensationalist hyperbole about how expecting people to treat others with some basic decency is ~actually fascist censorship~ or whatever.
A rebuttal: http://wondermark.com/c1149/

I don't think I've preached a doctrine of eternal unforgiveness for past ignorance (which would be ridiculous of me to do anyway, considering who I am), but if I had then this would be an excellent rebuttal. also, that's a very cute frog.

author=Zeigfried_McBacon
Is that like code for the surgery table or something? XD

it would be pretty crass if that was my meaning! I say 'gender mines' to lampoon two things:

first, the way that cis people often deride nonbinary trans people for their gender and pronouns, acting as though they're demanding way too many 'labels' (see: how certain people always bring up otherkin in these discussions when they're not even tangentially related, in order to vent their rancor at 'made-up genders' with a touch of deniability)

second, the very idea that vulnerable groups such as trans people and racial minorities could even approach the level of harm and oppression that's currently visited upon them. even if me and my secret cabal decided that we wanted to deny cis people the basic facts of their existence, make their identity into a mean-spirited joke, make it legal in 49 US states to murder them if the murderer 'panicked', and so on... we hardly have the structural power (and the time) to put that kind of deeply-ingrained prejudice into motion.

the fantasies that people have about 'political correctness' creating a situation where the oppressor is treated just as cruelly as he currently treats the oppressed are just that: fantasies, used to justify weak objections to the tune of 'well isn't asking people not to use your identity as a cruel + dehumanizing insult taking it a little too far'.
harmonic
It's like toothpicks against a tank
4142
author=mawk
sorry, kentona; under my heavily-censored communist regime all cis people will be sent to work in the gender mines


In the interest of jocularity and good vibes, I have to admit that I lost my shit when I read "gender mines."