OF GAMES, REPRESENTATION, AND WOMEN'S CHEEKBONES

author=Sated
I don't see how telling someone to retire themselves from a thread isn't "dismissive". Serious question: Do you even know what the words you're using mean?

that's not how you phrase a serious question, that's how you phrase a smug pseudointellectual insult. try again, please.

oh, and to Feldschlacht re: the lack of progress, since I missed that earlier: trust me, activists feel that way too. zeitgeist is a powerful thing, especially when the venom you're trying to protect people from is backed by so much capital and social momentum. things are getting better now, at least, than they have been, and progress is a constant process. I'm often not confident that any kind of serious lasting change can be made beyond, like, how we view and contextualize media or whatever... but in their time, the divine right of kings also seemed unbreakable.

Sated, go home. you're doing literally nothing but moving a goalpost around and yelling at people for not engaging 'correctly' with someone whose only purpose here is to end the discussion. why you aren't directing any of that scrutiny at that person himself is a mystery to me, but I think I have a good guess!

you probably already read this, but this is the big thing wrt 'acting not-racist'

tldr, people's actions aren't the focus here as much as it might seem -- it's important to protect people from those blatant behaviours, but the real priority is changing the systems that taught and normalized those actions to begin with.

author=mawk
that's why that thing I mentioned is so important. bigotry is defined not by individual bigoted people but by the societal tendency toward bigotry, the decades and centuries of influence that those attitudes have had on how things are structured and how we view the world.

activism is not just some sisyphean struggle to make everyone Act Nice -- properly practiced, its purpose is to root out and replace systems of oppression so that they can no longer have that terrifying and subtle impact on vulnerable people's lives. ingrained white supremacy, ingrained sexism, ingrained xenophobia -- these and more are all present in our culture and our way of life, and they're not going anywhere until we learn to recognize them.

author=Feldschlacht IV
I feel like people have been doing this exact same thing for decades, except it has led to legions of people who are 'pretending not to be racist but actually still racist' and thus the modern attitude of "Isn't racism over? People aren't calling each other the n words all over the place anymore!"

Pretending not to be racist and buttering up your words isn't going to make you not racist. Maybe for some people, but bigotry is a fundamental thing in people that has to be changed from within, and sure, discussion and awareness is great, but I'm definitely not in support of most societal soft censoring if it's just going to make people think the same racist shit, just not out loud.

I totally get what you guys are saying, but in reality I don't think it works out that way when applied to people en masse.

So what do you suggest should be done instead? How does one change things 'from within'? Can a bigoted mind ever change?

These aren't questions I'd actually expect answers for (because God damn are these issues complex or what) but I think they're worth thinking about, anyway.

Personally, I'd rather take some sort of action against bigotry then no action at all - reason being you never know until you try, right?

author=Max McGee
I have no interest in lodging a complaint with the current administration, dude. I know which way the wind blows. I am talking directly to you. I am telling you that in short, you are a bad person in a position of (obviously quite trivial, but still demonstrable) power. The fact you are in a position of power is not a counterargument to the fact that you're a bad person, nor do your threats or the position you're in to silence, censure, or harm me change my feelings about your conduct one iota. I say this really only because of the 00.000001% (and I'm not sure I put enough zeros after the decimal place) chance that you might actually reflect upon your behavior and realize where you are in error. But I'm not holding my breath. Do whatever you've gotta do and call it whatever you want to pretend it is. After all, you will anyway.

Every time we try to have a conversation on this site about women or minorities or issues of representation in games, a flood of people (usually with you at the forefront) barge into the thread and insist the argument is some tumblr sjw bullshit, that it doesn't matter, they're too thin-skinned, and it's only okay to talk about things if traditional white male sensibilities are put front and center. People get mad, people stop posting, the conversation gets derailed, and eventually it gets locked. And then you wonder 'Huh why don't women want to have this conversation with me I'm just telling it like it is?!"

This happens over and over and over again. Liberty asked you when this thread started to just let the conversation happen without you constantly interrupting and you still couldn't do it. Instead you come in and post things like this:

It's alarmist, sensational, seething with unjustified faux-outrage, and creating an entire mountain range out of an issue that is not even a molehill for the vast, vast, vast overwhelming majority of gamers (and, although I have no data on this, I would still bet money that it's not even an issue for the vast, vast, vast majority of trans gamers). Normal people, straight, gay or whatever, do not give a crap about this shit.

This subject has no bearing on the 'average' gamer and therefore it is invalid and should be discarded? This thread should either be consigned to oblivion or reoriented into terms you find more acceptable?

Who's actually being silenced here, Max? You worry that can't say 'tranny' on an internet forum. Transgender people worry that people will tell them they shouldn't exist. You accuse me of censorship, but the whole point of this thread is to ensure that voices aren't being stamped out.

there's not a lot there to jump on your throat for, Zeig. I'd say that I want a bit more than that, but there's certainly room for disagreement here. I understand if you're not comfortable putting yourself out here at the moment, though, and that's fine -- I promise, though, that if that changes I'll give you a fair shake. my problem is never with people who disagree with me -- time and time again, the thing in these threads that gets me riled is people coming in to argue in bad faith. while I can't claim to know you as well as I know some people, I believe that you are an honest person, and that's basically all I ask for.

I don't think this is about what WetMattos 'wants', though -- this thread is more of an ongoing dialogue on the subject of ongoing representation. it's certainly not a list of demands, at least! like with many things, issues of representation and audience perception are an ongoing process, and I don't think that there's a singular list of things that would mark the whole problem as 'solved'. (though there are a couple very good places to start -- communities taking a stand against transphobia and sexism so people affected by it don't feel alone, developers branching out to other demographics so it's not a sea of boob-plate, etc.)

Solitayre, thank you. it's incredibly frustrating seeing people act as though 'well NORMAL people don't care about this!' is a statement that deserves respect and engagement.

hush. it's better now than it's been for a long time, and we have your absence partly to thank.

yeah, that's the difficulty with this sort of topic -- some people find it more useful to have high-level discussions that require a great deal of prior knowledge and past experience, but that leaves the subject very tough to manage for people who are interested, but don't already have a heavy foundation to work from.

the question of 'what would you like to see more of?' is a good one to start from, though! I'm not clever enough to field it in an interesting way right now, but I'll try to come back to it fresh tomorrow.

I agree that Max antagonizing Solitayre like that was uncalled for, but that's to be expected when he has been pre-emptively called out from the start. It's only natural that he'll get (more) defensive that way. His first contributions to this thread were on-topic and satisfactorily addressed the questions from the OP. Just because his opinions were not the ones the OP wanted to hear, it doesn't mean it's Ok to threaten him with administrative action. He has been banned before. He knows where the line is (I hope xD). But unless you mean to push him towards that line, it's probably best to get off his case, until he actually crosses said line all by himself.... Just my two cent.

On this ongoing mess. On one hand I will agree that those who don't understand some of the terms being used here, should "educate" themselves, if they want to be part of this discussion. I think it's Ok to first ask the OP to use more "entry-level" language. But once it has been established that that's not something the OP wants to bother with, then it's on you. It's your responsibility to understand what you're arguing against, at least at some basic level. C'mon people, you're only proving their point if you can't even do that... And while we're at it. You should also understand that using expressions such as "grow some testicles" or whatever, is not going to win you any arguments in a thread like this. It may seem unfair, but you have to realize it's counterproductive to use language like that while in their "home turf" so to speak.

On the other hand... I don't know. I think that side could use being a little more understanding as well. I mean, this whole kerfuffle is nothing but a big display of miscommunication. It's just an ideological divide (But of course, you would disagree to that). Is the fact that we understand words and concepts in different ways, and that's bound to affect how we express our ideas. For example, when we say: "Most people don't care about that" We don't mean to say that your opinions don't matter, or that our experiences invalidate yours. We're just letting you know that your experiences shouldn't invalidate ours either, and that you should be more accommodating towards us.

Why do I think it is YOU who should be more accommodating, and not the other way around? Well, just look at the exchange the OP had with Liberty some pages back: "This and only this is what proper representations is, and anything short of it will have dire consequences!" Not even Liberty's stance (which is more "moderate" than some of ours) was good enough for the OP. This is how inflexible your beliefs are. And it is understandable that you feel this way when you hold the idea that this has the potential of causing harm to people. But you should also understand, that for us this does not come across as just critique, this a very serious accusation. One very hard to shoulder, in fact. Do you think we really don't care if we cause harm to others? That's the last thing we want! So it's only natural people will reject that.

And here's the kicker. This side is just as "diverse" as that side. Our lived experiences are similar to yours, and yet, we draw different conclusions on the same issues. And I know you don't like to be reminded of this, and you'll probably have a few labels flying my way because of it, but it's the truth. And Ftr no one is denying bigotry is still a problem, no one is saying "systems of oppression" are not a thing. Usually the point of contention is: "what role does media play in all of this". This is the one thing that concerns us all here as developers... You claim this role is significant because you seem to think people are just empty vessels that media fills with all kinds of biases that leads them to treat others poorly. We, however, are more fond of the idea that people are more capable of telling right from wrong that you give them credit for, and are 100% free to make their own choices, even if we don't agree 100% with said choices. That's what "freedom" means to us.

But anyway. This is getting too long, and I feel like I've said enough... I think rmn has failed to have this discussion over the past three years because it wants it to be a very one-sided discussion. There should be a discussion, no doubt about that. But there should be a mutual understanding of each others point of view, to at least learn where we have a common ground, and when it's best to keep a safe distance from each other, if that's what things must come down to. But at the end of the day we all deserve a spot at the table.