CRYSTALGATE'S PROFILE

author=DarklordKeinor
So because you've followed several videogames during development, and issues did not arise on the topic, there exists no LGBT criticism?

I said it's very rare and that still seems to be the case, especially in light of the "witch hunt" comment. Someone making an article on the web is not an issue for the developer. A lot of people giving the developer flak is.

Here are several examples that exist.

I could not open the first link. The second link seems justified to me, if you have a large quantity of relationships, one can wonder where the same sex relationships are. The Dragon Crown link seemed to have mostly with sexism and very little with LGBT to do.

"The idea that Lara – like Samus from Metroid – should have an origin story in which she is weak in order to explain her strength is difficult to swallow. Male characters are generally permitted to be strong without needing a back story in which they are broken – why should female characters be different? Why do we need to protect Lara through an awful ordeal for her strength to make sense?"

First of all, this argument conveniently ignores multiple instances of female characters being powerful without a justification.

Second, there does exist movies and games in which male characters go from being weak to badasses. Fight Club? The original Evil Dead movie? Star Wars?

I'm only really accustomed to Metroid and Star Wars, so I'll cover that.

Luke did indeed go from wimp to badass, but he never went trough anything even remotely close to Samus' freak out in front of Ridley. I can not accept those examples as equal or even near equal.

I can unfortunately not comment on Lara Croft.

Back to your point, Crystalgate, it is debatable how to correctly implement a female character. There are obvious examples that don't work, such as Duke Nukem Forever sexploitative nature. Once again though, people will debate over anything, no matter how much forethought the designers put into their games.

I can not recall a game where the designers actually put a lot of forethought into the implementation of female characters getting a lot of flak. Heck, if you even need to put a lot of forethought into it as opposed to it coming naturally when you write, then there is to some extent already a problem.

author=Max McGee

Notice how I said that the part with the gay characters is flat out wrong, but for the part with the female characters instead made a "the more people complain, the more there usually is to complain about" statement. There will always be someone who complains no matter what you do. However, how many it is who complain differs. There is a difference between there being occasional people who complain about sexism spread out among the vast number of gaming boards and the complaints existing in most boards who discusses the game in question.

The "everything is sexist" excuse works if you only have a very few complaints, but not so much if there seems to be no end of them. In the case of Daniel Vavra, chance is he is one of those who should not make that excuse.

author=Max McGee
Then feminism will need to always be synonymous with misandry if it can't exclude the subset of "man-hating feminists" from the set of "feminists".

That's not how things work. A group doesn't have to either exclude or be synonymous with something. Whether or not you are a man hater is simple irrelevant to whether or not you're a feminist.

And that will perpetually be a problem for feminism, and if feminism TRULY can't dissociate itself from misandry, it will create things like #GamerGate which are more of a backlash against FEMINISM than they are a misogynistic crusade against women. And by that I mean largely a backlash against (real or perceived) MISANDRY.

You're right in that there will always be people who associate feminists with the extreme versions of them. However, asking feminists to "truely"
disassociate itself with misandry is as reasonable as asking a religion to "truely" disassociate itself with their extremists or for that matter, any movement period, to do the same. You can say you don't support X, but it's other people who decide whether or not they associate you with X.

I agree that GamerGate is a backlash against feminism, but I do not think it has anything to do with there being extremists among the feminists. They are against feminism period.

author=Max McGee
The false equivalence is that GamerGate taken broadly doesn't have the same relationship to women as racists do to minorities. GamerGate taken broadly has the same relationship to radfems and SJWs as racists do to minorities.

It is total bullshit to say everyone involved with GamerGate hates women. That is true only of a minority. Many people in GamerGate in fact ARE women. (In the same way that the fact that not everyone involved in feminism is a psycho feminazi does not absolve feminism of its problematic elements, this fact does not absolve #GamerGate of its problematic elements.)

Here's the original text I quoted:

author=Max McGee
The key understanding I wish you could internalize and reflect upon is that radical feminists and social justice warriors are contributing noticeably to the toxification of the culture not just for women, but for everyone. Feminism is not blameless in the creation of this toxic culture in gaming. GamerGate is--not claims to be, but actually is--a reactionary backlash against radical feminist ideologues as much as it is anything else.

Since that was what I quoted, anyone you didn't include when you wrote GamerGate should by extension not be considered included when I did it either. So, we are only referring to those who are part of the reactionary backlash.

I have not claimed that everyone in GamerGate hates women. That women are part of it is also 100% irrelevant. Women being part of something doesn't mean it's not anti-feminist or what have you.

author=Max McGee

Claiming that GameGate is a reactionary backlash against radical feminists sounds about as plausible as claiming that racists threatening people working against racism is a reactionary backlash against radical anti-racists.

This is a false equivalency. By the way, I really hope you don't think my describing #GG as a "reactionary backlash" is the same as describing it as "good" or "okay". Reactionary backlashes are not good things.

I'm not seeing the false equivalence.

I don't think you see a reactionary backlash as a good thing, but I do not believe GamerGate is a reaction to radical feminism.