15 ms·

Nerds and Male Privilege

• elchief 15y ago
  we invented an awesome playground, and girls are mad cuz they can't dominate it
  • danilocampos 15y ago
    I know it's Hacker News, but there's really only one response to this. Rest assured I'd say it to your face: You're an idiot.
• deleted 15y ago
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• burgerbrain 15y ago
  I object to the connections drawn in this article. I am a tech professional which means it is not terribly uncommon to have the nerd/geek label placed upon me, but I have never and will never have anything to do with the comics/videogame culture being described here.
  • drivebyacct2 15y ago
    That doesn't seem to be the important part of the article? I think the title (ought to) imply "Some nerds..." anyway. Some people understand privilege better than others, often due to their own circumstances. Being gay has given me an interesting insight into privileges that span sexuality and gender issues and having a close female friend who tells me about her daily experiences repeatedly shocks me into new realizations of how good I have it as a male, even if not a straight male.
    • burgerbrain 15y ago
      That seems to be the entire focus of the article. A modified headline would have saved me my time. An article about male privilege in the tech industry, which is what I expected seeing as this is HNs, I would have appreciated. This however meant nothing to me.
      • drivebyacct2 15y ago
        I guess I took it as more of a general intro to privilege for the lay-person or 'lay-nerd'. I mean, take the basic concepts of privilege and extend them to almost ANY females-in-tech-industry topic and you'll see it fits. It's just like the thread a few weeks ago about women asking for raises or more competitive pay with a shocking number of HN users saying "it's their own fault for not asking for more", ignoring the research, discussions and psychology behind why women don't ask for raises (they're rejected, shunned in the workplace and often later let go). (For the "record", I agree that there is a potential for a better discussion of male privilege that would be more appropriate for HN that would probably foster a more directed, specific discussion.)
        • burgerbrain 15y ago
          As an outside observer, I'd say that speaking about male privilege from the context of comic book stores is like speaking about racism from the context of 19th century Alabama. It's just so blatant to anybody disconnected from it that it is very hard to make comparisons to other contexts.
          • mechanical_fish 15y ago
            How fortunate for the slaves of 19th-century Alabama that the abolitionists of 19th-century New England did not think this way. Though I'm sure plenty of people tried to convince Frederick Douglass to stop talking about Alabama all the time. It must have made for more than one uncomfortable dinner party. Anyway, back to the point. Yes, this is a particularly blatant example of a male-privilege subculture, used in part for educational purposes. [1] You would prefer to begin a conversation about male privilege by discussing much more subtle examples? So that we can be treated to the usual two hundred pages' worth of denials that the examples are even real? --- [1] Though in gamer and comic culture this is not an abstruse academic exercise. And these are not small subcultures, even if they apparently aren't quite big enough to encompass everyone.
            • burgerbrain 15y ago
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• rachelbythebay 15y ago
  This site still looks blank with Javascript off. How hard is it to provide content in 2011?
  • deleted 15y ago
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  • gvb 15y ago
    If you turn javascript on, the text appears but it is still pretty blank.
  • keeperofdakeys 15y ago
    This site is part of the Gawker network, which recently had a redesign for the entire network of sites. The response from the community was very critical.
  • michaelkscott 15y ago
    I'm assuming you need some soft of an iPad to view the site... maybe I'm wrong
• cyrus_ 15y ago
  We should stop conflating the term 'geek' with the term 'nerd'. I think most people familiar with the cultures in question would agree that there is an increasingly clear difference between the two (although membership in the two is certainly correlated.)
  • LeafStorm 15y ago
    I don't think there's a concrete, universally accepted difference. Pretty much everyone has their own definition of "geek" and "nerd," and how much they overlap, and most of those definitions are mutually incompatible. Also, http://xkcd.com/747/ http://xkcd.com/747/
    • cyrus_ 15y ago
      People can have different, mutually incompatible definitions of the two, that's fine. All I'm saying is that very few people who have any opinion on the subject think the two refer to the same set of values and behaviors.
  • drivebyacct2 15y ago
    Do they have importantly distinct definitions? A quick check via Google implies they're both about "unfashionable or socially inept person" or "foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious" but that's not necessarily how I view either term.
    • burgerbrain 15y ago
      I always figured that "nerd" implied some sort of technical knowledge or scientific mindedness. Hence slashdot being "news for nerds, stuff that matters". Geek then I suppose, would be your standard comic book store customer. Enough people use them interchangeably that it seems there is no longer any meaning. We should probably just jettison both words.
      • thristian 15y ago
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• zdw 15y ago
  I don't think this is limited just to video games, comics, and such - a lot of TV and sporting events are full of "beautiful people" often wearing less/tighter things than they ought to be wearing. How is this different/worse than having cheerleaders on the side of a football field? Or Baywatch? Not that I'm defending poor or sexist behavior, but singling out "nerds" as being the worst troglodytes out there seems a bit much.
  • philwelch 15y ago
    From a sociological perspective, it's different in that gaming and comic fandom are low-status.
  • Anechoic 15y ago
    > How is this different/worse than having cheerleaders on the side of a football field? Or Baywatch? It's not, but (as mentioned in the article) football fans and Baywatch viewers aren't generally holding up their communities as beacons of meritocracy while nerd communities frequently do.
    • steve19 15y ago
      Footballers, cheerleaders and hollywood are held up as a meritocracy.
      • Anechoic 15y ago
        I wrote "football fans and Baywatch viewers aren't generally holding up their communities," IOW I was referring to fan/viewers, not the players, cheerleaders & actors/actresses themselves. (and I count myself as a rabid NFL fan)
  • orangecat 15y ago
    a lot of TV and sporting events are full of "beautiful people" often wearing less/tighter things than they ought to be wearing. "Ought"? The feminist position is that women should be able to express themselves however they want. And it turns out that given the choice, many women actually do want to wear revealing outfits. Exhibit A: Halloween.
• Helianthus 15y ago
  Is it problematic that I'm sick of gender on HN? "Raising awareness" doesn't mean much when it essentially provokes the same inconsequential firefights. Can we just agree that men are pigs, women feel entitled, everyone's an asshole, startups need good engineers, and stop it? All this article really shows me is that the girlfriend was correct to avoid going into a comic book store. You cannot control culture you cannot control subcultures you cannot make people think "right." You can be selective about which subcultures you expose you and your friends to and which you'll allow into your home. Waxing eloquent about how we're unaware of male privilege has become preachy.
  • readymade 15y ago
    Step back and look at the big picture, if you will. Nobody can force someone to change their mind about anything. That's entirely up to you. Most readers here are probably pretty damn smart and capable of creating incredibly detailed justifications for believing what they want to believe. So in that narrow sense, you're totally right. But on the other hand, it's pretty curious to think that you can't influence culture with ideas. How did we end up where we are, with a constitutional republic, human and civil rights, and so on? How did we abolish slavery or give women and minorities the right to vote? If you can't change culture with the strength of your arguments, the only answer left is that it just changes on its own, as if by magic. So if you think it's preachy, fine. Don't read about things that piss you off. It's a fine strategy that's worked for far dumber people than you. But try to recognize that without the "inconsequential firefights" there would be no social progress at all. I for one don't really care if it takes 50 years, as long as we don't kid ourselves into thinking that if we can't change everyone's mind with one single blog post there's no point to discussing it. And above all, have a nice day.
    • Helianthus 15y ago
      I think what I'm proposing is that we take local control of our subculture, which Hacker News tends to do overtly on a regular basis by defining moderation; for instance, blatant political slogans are discouraged because they're likely to provoke flamewars. This is exactly the sort of thing that's likely to provoke an unproductive flamewar in my book.
• there 15y ago
  Remember the example I mentioned earlier with my then-girlfriend in the comic store? Her opinions were deemed mistaken and she was told she didn't "get it"… because she was a girl. i'm not sure how that had anything to do with being a girl. she was told she didn't get it because she didn't get it. if a male walked into that comic shop looking out of place, picked up a book and said something disparaging outloud, he'd probably get mocked just the same for being a newbie. my girlfriend is into comics and i'm not. if i went into a store with her and started saying shit about comics, i would completely expect to get called out for it. the only difference is that i wouldn't storm out and never return like the author's girlfriend.
  • sciurus 15y ago
    http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#butbut http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#butbut
    • skore 15y ago
      Not really sure whether that applies. There is a rather combative part of geek culture when it comes to defending either your own or the established view of your immediate peers. In that regard, geeks can indeed be astonishingly egalitarian in their derision of somebody with a perceived inferior viewpoint or understanding of the matter at hand. At that point, really all bets are off and if it is a battle between geeks, it is often a competition for who can be the most emotionless asshole. This piss taking is something that most people would find offensive and it is this area of geekdom that is often perceived as the prime example for the emotional and social inability of geeks, particularly when a non-geek or a very fresh geek gets into such a fight. Put differently - the inability to understand that an argument about viewpoints can have limits that are deeply hurtful to other people when crossed is something that is often lost on geeks. In that regard, it is easy to conclude that the geek in question was simply being sexist. But it is also true that it was just an example for a geek not understanding that he didn't win additional points by venturing into the area of gender. The problem is that the article really doesn't do much to qualify the "because she was a girl" statement. Was that an actual quote? Was it heavily implied? Or did it just fit the narrative closely enough that it would be accepted as another example per default?
• rayiner 15y ago
  One comment I wanted to make about this the last time this came up... "Privilege" is a loaded word. It's a word that some people take great offense to, but it's a word that cannot rationally be ignored. Success can be a pretty fragile phenomenon. I never fully appreciated the benefit of privilege until relatively recently. I was an unfocused teenager who slacked in college, but stumbled onto a good career anyway (so far, fingers crossed). I would like to ascribe it to turning myself around and working hard, but the fact of the matter is that privilege played a huge role. I got to work at a cool startup right out of high school, because I lived in the sort of relatively nice neighborhood where well-connected people launching startups from their basements might live. I never had to worry about credit checks for jobs because my parents had kept me on a small line of credit all through college to build up my history. When I quit my job to go to grad school, I never worried about running short of money just as finals were rolling around--daddy could always front me a couple of hundred to get me through the rest of the month. This is not trust-fund level privilege, just something pretty much any engineer or the like could provide for his (or her) family, but I'm pretty sure without it I would be working some below-median job today. So... before you decry the article, remember that success, for most people, is at the margins. Think about how you got to where you are, and ask yourself: if people just found me 5% less credible because of my gender, race, etc, would life really have turned out identically? PS) I was reminded of how uneven things can subtly be a couple of days ago during the SOPA hearings. One of the posts that made it to the front page of reddit was a photo of some woman giving testimony, where the photo had been edited to look like it was an x-ray shot through her shirt. I thought to myself how interesting that was. Not that it was so insanely offensive in and of itself, but rather because I've never seen something like that pop up on the front page when a man says something dumb on TV.
  • mixmastamyk 15y ago
    Credit checks for jobs?
    • deleted 15y ago
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    • rayiner 15y ago
• moxiemk1 15y ago
  I really enjoyed this article. Harris O'Malley seems to actually see the real problem, and expresses it with a hell of a lot more nuance than most other treatments of the subject do. >> And when you check back on Friday, I'll provide you with some concrete applications on how being cognizant of male privilege will improve your relations with women. I'm excited about the possibilities of the "practical applications" - there is an awful lot of "identifying the problem" and "raising awareness" (as Helianthus refers to in another comment on this thread), however, not a lot of solutions. Obviously they're not simple, and they're not easy, and they're imperfect, but I'd like to see some other people's ideas about them.
  • cemery 15y ago
    In some ways the solution falls out of just knowing that it is a problem. If you think about it during your interactions with other people, then you can avoid the harmful things that could be said. The reality of male privilege is that it's so pervasive in our community (in many communities) that even a little bit of acknowledgment that it might exist, and the males in that communities trying to lessen the harm that it creates can make a huge difference in making it less an issue.
    • moxiemk1 15y ago
      I wonder how much of this acknowledgement can be done effectively as a group vs. as individuals. It seems like individuals can change their behavior very well this way, which eventually trickles to the community, but I've come to be a bit disheartened on the group side. In a thread not long ago, I made a comment calling out an article (of an article about Steve Jobs, not gender) for expressing a (to me) particularly exasperating form of the "pedestal" side of female-discouragement. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229502 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3229502) If I recall correctly, the score of my comment fluctuated a bit before hitting 10, then going back down to 2. I didn't find any of the responses particularly thoughtful, but clearly it is a contentious issue. A number of recent call-outs by women about conferences seem to indicate that accusations of sexism without 100% proof of sexist don't fly in our community, much as anything without 100% proof tends to fall flat. However, one of the most frustrating parts of sexism (and related problems) is that they are subtle and often subconscious. This discourages me.
• davidhansen 15y ago
  I'm not sure why the author of this article somehow thinks that geeks deny the existence of sexism in geek culture. The reality is that it's widely known and accepted. If the author wants to find something to rail against, he should have chosen the fact that everybody knows, but nobody cares. I'm not going to defend the treatment of women in geek culture, as much of it is indefensible. but it seems that few people bring up one of the most important factors in its existence, one which has nothing at all to do with objectification. It has more to do with envy, anger, and an amazing ability to hold a grudge. Many HN readers are from a younger generation than myself. Many of you grew up always equating geek with "cool", and have no conception of what it would be like to be treated as nearly subhuman for liking computers. Some of us, however, remember the torment, the humiliation, the violence, the scorn and the ostracism of finding science, electronics, and computers fascinating. There was, indeed, such a time. Many nerds who endured poor treatment at the hands of their peers developed deep emotional traumas that, to this day, exist to some extent or another. One of these traumas is borne of the experience of being not merely rejected, but openly mocked by girls during the most critical time in a young man's life when he is supposed to develop his sense of social status and sexuality. Frustration and humiliation is quick to turn to anger, and from anger, a deep rooted misogyny. The result of this kind of upbringing is often a socially stunted man who, despite all his powers of logic and reason, finds it difficult to reason away the anger that he knows shouldn't be there, but is. He witnesses sexism and mistreatment of women around him, but he lacks the empathy required to say or do anything about it. This concludes my armchair psychologist's analysis of one possible dimension of a hypothesis of why many of my generation permits geek culture to allow rampant sexism. Caveats: I have no data or training in psychology to suggest this is at all a significant factor. But I am quite familiar with the phenomenon, and I know several other nerds who experience the same thing. I mention it only because it seems the zeitgeist is that men don't even see the sexism. I posit that many do see it, but it doesn't matter to (a good portion of) them. And that a possible cause of this in geek culture specifically is latent adolescent anger at women.
  • neutronicus 15y ago
    Considering that one thrust of the article seems to be that anyone (particularly anyone female) who despises comic book store patrons is justified in doing so, I think you're on point.
• Shenglong 15y ago
  [warning: slightly offensive] I really would hope, that women in video games are in fact judged by how attractive they are. I certainly wouldn't want an obese woman superhero saving the world, just as I'm sure the gay males and the straight women wouldn't want to see a tub of lard (excuse my language) in a male, who is supposed to epitomize the superhuman virtues that we lack. Yeah, it's shit easy to wave a finger and say "omg u guyz objectify womenz!!!" but honestly, stop for a moment and think about it. This isn't unique to nerd/geek/whatever-you-want-to-call-it culture. This is spread through the ENTIRE western world. Why? We like beauty. We (and I speak as a straight male - feel free to adjust the context to your preference) like the way those subtle curves meld into a girl's hips. And why shouldn't we? The female body is a thing of beauty - it's delicately crafted, given form by years of grooming and attention. You'll be hard pressed, even among the straight-female population (at least the 18-25 age group), to find many people who think likewise about the male body. When I told pg about my idea, he told me to consider how females would react; this is very much the same situation. Try dressing a video game girl up in a trench coat, with green hair, and ugly classes, and ask a girl if that's a character she'd like to play. No, it's not. Who am I to speak? I've been in the gaming industry for a while, and I've probably passed my 10,000 hours of MMO development/management. Give most gaming girls a choice, and they will CHOOSE to dress their characters in slutty--or as they call it, "sexy cute"--clothing. Can you almost see most of their legs? Yes. Should their nipples probably slip out once in a while, if there was a realistic physics engine? Yes. Do they care? No. Just as I would not like to play a male character whose genitals are almost falling out, females would not like to (in general) play female characters who are covered by obstructive and unattractive clothing. Why do my friends adorn themselves in dresses that barely cover their underwear when they go to clubs? I used to think it was because they wanted to attract males, and while that may sometimes be the case, many of them have loyal boyfriends and won't even dance with other guys. Want to know the real reason, why there are so few girls in gaming? Well, I don't know - though here's one (partial) guess: Most "nerds/geeks" are disgusting. I have a terrible sense of smell, and sometimes I'm forced to recoil from my more nerdy peers. If everyone took the time to shower daily, use proper body wash, shampoo (and watch out of dandruff) and condition separately, exfoliate, and shave, I'd bet way more women will enter the gaming phenomenon. Remember - gaming isn't always a solo affair. Much of the time, directly or indirectly, it's a social activity.
• sapphirecat 15y ago
  When an article about the problem is published on a gaming site, after it makes the point, it's got a couple of gratuitous chick images stuffed in it, with captions like "Bet you're paying attention to what I have to say now!"... Hmm. I have always hated "You are male, YOU WILL LIKE THIS CHICK" flavored messages, and this still bothers me. Especially in an article like this.
• 127 15y ago
  Lets not be sexist and respond in a fashion that anyone would respond to a male who whines: stop whining, get a life. Either put up or shut up. Can't handle the heat? Stay out of the kitchen. If male centered entertainment bothers you, make your own. Use your money as a vote to influence the industry. I guarantee that the industry likes money. The arguments that women should be treated with silver gloves are by their very nature sexist. "mouth-breathing troglodyte" pretty much immediately tells me what way the article is going to go. Which is to demonize male sexuality. "And that was when I shot him, your honor." another sign of clear bias. This is like reading straight from a feminist cookbook. Nothing new, nothing that would be worth any deeper thought. I enjoy what I enjoy. It's not illegal so you may as well shut up. It's not up to you, dear author, to tell me how I should live my life. There was nothing new in the article. It was the same tired argument that because men like boobs and they consume popular entertainment that contain boobs they are evil. Which makes no sense to me. Maybe as the author grows up and lives a little he will see through the matrix. We all have our biases. But it is a different thing entirely to confuse your shallow rationalizations with actual fact.
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  • AllenKids 15y ago
    I have but one quibble, why is treating women like a men automatically not sexist? Your response follows the same line of logic as "gay people have equal right, right to marry the opposite sex" I think there is a blind spot.
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• DenisM 15y ago
  What a waste of time, this article. There is a great case to be made for treating every human as a person, and not a member of the class, but he did not make this case. First, the author complains that women get treated only as sexual objects in most games/comics/etc. Ok, that could be. It's not in Halo or Bioshock, the only games I play, but let's look at the data. So then he mentions opposing view - that men get sexualized too, and then instead of addressing that objection calls it sexist and dismisses it. Really? I would expect some stats, not simply "only sexist would say that" kind of reply. He does this repeatedly throughout the article - not addressing an argument, but simply labeling it with an ugly label and moving on. FWIW, the picture of batman he posted looks sexualized to me, as far as I can judge those things. Then he just goes to make unsubstantiated broad claims. But of course pointing out lack of substance would be sexist, reflexive and defensive of me :) A few choice quotes: "A man who's strong-willed or aggressive won't be denigrated for it". In my neck of the woods he will. I did, and I saw others going out of line getting a talk. "...nor are men socialized to 'go along to get along'." Same thing here, I've seen it all the time.
  • slavak 15y ago
    "It's not in Halo or Bioshock" Not to take sides in this argument, but you might want to reconsider that specific statement: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3449/3698998163_fe844856da.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3449/3698998163_fe844856da.jp... http://gamingsrapture.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/halo.jpg http://gamingsrapture.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/...
• beloch 15y ago
  The article makes some interesting points, but permit me to play devil's advocate when it comes to the way women and men are portrayed in geek media. All media, really. Men: Serious. Women: Sexy. Okay, no arguments there. But what does this difference in portrayal of the two sexes really mean? However much some might believe otherwise, humans are hard-wired by evolution to have gender roles. Homo sapiens has been around for roughly a hundred thousand years. Our species evolved from older hunter-gatherer species and has existed for almost its entire history as hunter-gatherers. What little we know about hunter-gatherer societies suggest that they were relatively egalitarian, but with definite gender roles. Men: expendable risk takers. If half the men in a hunter-gatherer band are wiped out by a mammoth hunt gone wrong, the next generation can still be just as large, only with slightly less genetic diversity. So what makes a mammoth hunter popular with the ladies? Well, he has to look like he's going to be one of the guys who will actually come back. i.e. A badass. Women: non-expendible reproducers. No matter how many men are around, the number of women who successfully bear children are what defines the reproductive success of a band. If you're a man, you don't want the woman who goes out mammoth hunting with the guys, you want the woman who picks berries (gathering was probably even more vital to a band's survival than hunting!) and who has hips made for making babies. In this light, what we might really be seeing in geek media is portrayals of both males and females that cater to our perception of desirability to the opposite sex. Powerful, serious, badass men are desirable to women, so they are what we see in comics. The same goes for sexy, fertile, women. Men and women are being portrayed differently because different things set them apart as elite or superior to others of their gender, thanks to our hunter-gatherer wiring. If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass and woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males. It may simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this is one thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over.
  • rayiner 15y ago
    > If this interpretation is correct, then media that portrays men as badass and woman as sexy isn't necessarily showing evidence of pandering to males. It may simply be reflecting evolutionary gender roles. It may be that this is one thing males should stop all the self-flagellation over. It's not about self-flagellation or who is pandering to who. The article makes a broader point about how the perception of gender roles affect's our collective judgment about women's' contributions in geek society. Your point about the basis of roles in biology is well taken, but: 1) It's not really clear how it's relevant to the larger point of the article. Batman is surely the epitome of sexual desirability in a man (rich, smart, attractive, crime fighter!) but what about the Joker and the Doctor? Skinny guy with disfigured face and pudgy dude with a neck beard? Those portrayals have nothing to do with sexual desirability. The Joker is supposed to convey manic-scary, and the Doctor precise-scary. Meanwhile, all the female portrayals are sexy-something. Sexy-crazy, sexy-eco terrorist, etc. Indeed, the point you make really reinforces the point in the article: we only portray women in terms of their sexual attractiveness, while we're willing to entertain a full range of human traits in men. 2) You can't say how much of these perceptions is rooted in culture versus biology. We're genetically predisposed to be skeptical of people not from "our clan", and slavery of not-like-kind people has been a feature of human society since antiquity, yet here we are in 2011, with massively different perceptions than even 60 years ago. Perceptions aren't just abstract subjects of self-flagellation. They matter. Heck, geeks should be all too aware of this. As a born loudmouth, I've noticed countless times where people would take my opinion more seriously over someone who was more socially cautious. My girlfriend and I went through a pretty extensive recruiting process in our field in the last year, and you couldn't pay me to switch places with her. She assiduously avoided mentioning me, because it always lead to people trying to figure out if she was a flight risk, while my mentioning her always made me seem more stable. Even if the difference in perception gives women a few % handicap (though I'd postulate, without evidence, it's a heck of a lot more than that, especially in fields like tech or finance), that's a pretty substantial liability when you factor into account the level of competition.
• jsz0 15y ago
  This article is built on a bunch of assumptions and stereotypes which is terribly ironic given the subject matter. Some of it may be true but some of it just very wrong. Men can expect that their presence at an event won't automatically be assumed to be decorative or secondary to another man. Not really. Ask the benchwarmers for a high school sports team. Despite the growing presence of women in comics, as publishers, editors and creators as well as consumers, a preponderance of men will either treat women at conventions as inconveniences, booth bunnies or even potential dates. I can't comment on comic books but in the books, movies and TV shows I want I've actually found the exact opposite is increasingly true. There's a strong temptation to make the female characters super-human creatures with a PHD and a shotgun. Always a witty comeback. Always the most moral and ethical characters. Men are also not going to be automatically assigned into a particular niche just based on their gender. Tell that to some straight guy who happens to like female-centric things. They're going to be assumed to be homosexuals most of the time. And when they are seen as customers, they're often automatically assumed to be buying one of the designated "girl" properties Perhaps in the same way a man strolling around certain types of stores popular with females would be seen? One of these is welcomed into geek culture with open arms, the other has to justify their existence in the first place. Says who? makes women feel unwelcome in fandom Tell that to all the rapid female Twilight fans.
• armandososa 15y ago
  Please just Google images for "romance novels".
  • fforw 15y ago
    .. or look at the way men are often presented in chick flicks. Rich, handsome, without any own personality whatsoever apart from magically mirroring what the female character needs at that point.
• ryanwaggoner 15y ago
  Is there a term for the ridiculous rhetorical tactic of insisting that any attempt to refute one's claims as being illogical is itself only further proof of the claims made? I stopped reading when he said this: "I will pause now for the traditional arguments from my readers...Got all of that out of your systems? Good. Because that reaction is exactly what I'm talking about." Why bother having a discussion with someone who sets up their argument to be that those who disagree with their argument are only proving the point?
  • neutronicus 15y ago
    Yes. Kafkatrap. http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122
  • sciurus 15y ago
    I think the author has a good point, although it's tricky to make: You can spend all day making excuses for specific instances of sexism in comics and video games, or you can realize that your ability and need to do that is a sign of a problem.
    • Locke1689 15y ago
      You seem to be spending a lot of time making specific excuses to why you don't need to listen to an opposing argument. Perhaps you should realize that your inability to listen to logical arguments is a sign of a problem.
      • jdp23 15y ago
        Or, perhaps you should realize that the "logical" arguments are not actually logical and have been repeatedly refuted.
        • prodigal_erik 15y ago
          If you're trying to win over rational people, and refutations are out there to be had, they need to be included. Anyone who thinks "everyone says this argument has the same glaring flaws, and that illustrates how awesome the argument is!" is at risk of reaching conspiracy-theory levels of crazy.
• firefoxman1 15y ago
  Anyone remember Perfect Dark? There was a female protagonist that could kick some ass.
  • orangecat 15y ago
    Yeah, but she was attractive and therefore a tool of the patriarchy, or something.
  • revdinosaur 15y ago
    Or Metroid! The reveal of Samus's identity at the end of that game was a little bit gender-bendy for me as a young man.
• vectorpush 15y ago
  Sexism isn't exclusive to nerds, and nerd hostility is about more than females. This is the golden age of the geek, his once scorned subculture has been universally vindicated across all domains. In TV, movies, music, fashion, gaming, and of course business, being a geek is now the in thing. The geek's meteoric rise into the mainstream has caught the culture off guard. Suddenly, everyone wants to be seen reading comics, playing games, and tinkering with computers, and now the once ostracized "true scottsman" nerd must account for the burgeoning interest of the general public in "his" world.
• tsotha 15y ago
  What a load of crap. Female comic book characters are scantily clad? You don't say. But let me suggest that has not much to do with "privilege" and everything to do with the fact that teenage boys are hard-wired to appreciate this kind of thing. No, it's not a "social construct" or an effort to keep the oppressed in her place. Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention?
  • wladimir 15y ago
    Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention? Yes. I think we should drop this discussion as it is bound to turn into a stereotype-fest which is counter-productive. The first step in getting rid of gender discrimination is to not make gender an issue at all. It takes a great shift to regard people as individual people, not males or females. It requires "shutting out" a lot of cultural programming and maybe even biological reactions. Both for men and women. Most gender-discrimination is not conscious at all. Arguing about "privilege" doesn't help anyone. How to go about this? On the internet it might be easier by just removing "gender" fields. But in the non-virtual world?
  • rmc 15y ago
    Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention? If you're an attractive man, then you can get gay men (esp. older gay men, especially older, ugly, gay men), to do this. If you want people falling all over you, and doing things, there are ways to do that.
    • tsotha 15y ago
      Well, you see I specified "opposite sex".
      • rmc 15y ago
        What you meant (i presume) is "i want people who I want to sleep with to fall over themselves to please me". What women actually get lots of time is "people I don't really want to sleep with, but want to sleep with me, falling over themselves to try to please me". As such I think the analogy of 'ugly gay guy hitting on straight guy' is apt, and similar to what a lot of women face.
• gambler 15y ago
  Want to see less sexism in games? Stop buying shallow and commercialized titles and support developers who actually try to express their ideas via the medium. Seriously. I'm not saying you should switch to a different kind of games and ignore the trends in the rest of them, but I see that a lot of people decrying "sex and violence" in various types of media are also validating the exact same works that are fundamentally based on sex and violence. That doesn't make sense.
  • rmc 15y ago
    Yes vote with your wallet. "Money lets you effect the change you want to see in the world". But that doesn't mean you aren't allowed to give out about sexist stuff when you see it.
• commieneko 15y ago
  I've had a serious interest in comics/animation for about 45 years. I've had a professional interest for about 30 years. I can't really comment on video game culture, from a personal point of view; obviously there were no video games when I was growing up. And the only video game that ever held my interest, other than for their graphics technology, was Myst; and it hardly had any people in it at all, objectivized or otherwise. (I have been doing some work learning Blender the last few weeks. And a lot of the tutorials I've been working through have a definite gamer design aesthetic to them. I swear if I have to work through another youtube video about how to create an inappropriately under-clad-for-the-forrest elf girl, or sullen, post-apocalyptic hooker/warrior, I'm gonna barf...) American animation has always been stuck at the grade school, pre-puberty level. So its gender problem is less objectification than it is the whole princess thingie. However, for American comics the primary audience has pretty much always been sexually maturing males. (Historically, with a few notable exceptions, comics aimed at girls were created by men with little insight into what a female audience might like.) So it's not particularly surprising that the successful comic market caters to power fantasies, rebellion, and sexual objectification. And the fact that comics, again in the U.S., have usually been considered a third rate art form, means there's been no real incentive to conceal or domesticate the raw, naked id on display a lot of the time. Now I actually have no real problem with that. Geeky teenagers who can't get a date, or have gender empathy issues are people too. I can relate. And a little misogyny, and misandry, can be fun at times. (There's nothing particularly uplifting and socially relevant about the Three Stooges either; but I still enjoy the occasional Nyuk and eye poke.) And certainly the over-the-top, operatic story lines would seem to require picaresque, allegorical characters, ripped from the collective psyche. But, damn, a little variety would sure be appreciated. If I accidentally wander into a comic book store these days I'm surrounded by little else but 40-60 year old S&M archetypes, minute variations on characters created years before most of the current audience were even born. And with a bipolar range of emotions, angry dominatrix to submissive sex kitten, that would make an anime/manga tsundere blush. I lost interest in most American mainstream comics around 1975, mainly through boredom. Now there has always been higher quality work floating around. It's there if you look for it. But Sturgeon's Law applies, with the added characteristic that the 90% case is almost indistinguishable and frozen in time; and at adolescence. Sure the technology is getting better; we've got better reproduction and the distribution system is no longer random mafioso magazine distribution. But the literary style and moral compass is provided by Frank Miller, with art direction by Eric Stanton. It's an insular culture, with little cross fertilization with the rest of society, that keeps telling the same story over and over. Now the base story and its archetypes are not without their merits, but it's certainly not the be-all, end-all of the medium. It just seems that way sometimes. A year or so ago, when the _Scott Pilgrim_ movie out, I really enjoyed it. After seeing it I immediately ran out and bought the graphic novels. I had almost nothing in common with the characters, the music and video game references were largely lost on me, but it was so nice to have something a little different than the dull thudding of the mainstream American comics Ur-legend. It was light, fluffy, with a novel, to me, storyline. And it had engaging characters. I found it very manga-like, both in its visuals and its approach to storytelling. Which brings us to manga. I got re-interested in comics around 10 years ago when the Japanese manga and anime started to become easily available. Now everything bad and/or chauvinistic that you can find in U.S. comics, and by extension, game culture, you can find in spades in the Japanese product; and that's what you usually find imported and bought by the U.S. comics companies and distributors. However, if you look at the bigger picture, at the market in Japan, there's much more variety and a generally higher level of literary and visual quality than you find anywhere else in the world for visual media. I'm not really sure why this is. Partly it is because there is much less stigma in their culture directed towards comics; but that doesn't explain the problems with video game culture over here. Over there not only boys read comics, but girls do too. And young adults, and even 40 year old salarymen and OL (office ladies). They have comics aimed at insurance salesmen, golfers, pretty much any kind of genre you can conceive of. The Onion would have a hard time parodying the variety of Japanese manga. Now Sturgeon's Law still applies, but the absolute numbers are so much greater that the absolute numbers of the good 10% is much higher than over here. And the distribution of non-juvenile, male oriented material is much healthier. The anime and video gaming industries seem to be less so, but they do seem healthier than ours. And don't many of "our" more popular games come from Japan? One big difference in Japanese comic culture, in addition to its size, is that it is much more of a participative one. Non-professional, fan created comics, or Doujinshi, are a major "craft industry" over there. Comiket, the biggest non-professional sales and marketing convention, routinely has half a million attendees, twice a year, with 30,000+ author circles, or groups, selling their often high quality amateur comics and visual novels. Now admittedly, the "adult oriented" Doujinshi get the most press, and a substantial percentage of the audience, but there's a lot of alternatives for those who want it. One of the alternatives is a form of erotic literature, some quite pornographic, and much of it quite good, created by women and aimed at women. I don't see that kind of thing in large demographic U.S. comics. Other than the Japanese imports, of course… Maybe the solution to the U.S. game industry's geek image has to do with smaller scale, more diverse, more specialized gaming creation companies. With games aimed at demographics who aren't 14 year old males or those who were once 14 year old males and have never had an easily available and well marketed alternative. I'm not really qualified to speculate intelligently. That market may well exist and I'm just unaware of it. If it does exist, I may be interested.
• AndyKelley 15y ago
  One thing to note is that it only takes one obnoxious person to ruin it for all the other well-informed and well-behaved people in any given room/server, because good behavior, by definition, does not draw attention to itself.
  • jodrellblank 15y ago
    We don't know he was even an obnoxious person (see also, the Actor-Observer bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor%E2%80%93observer_bias ), we only have her boyfriend's third party account of the interaction. Other options: - What she said was stupid and noobish, and he replied bluntly - rudely but not sexistly. - What happened was misinterpreted as sexist because the interpreter is her boyfriend and jumps to her defense easily. - The man in the comic book store interpreted her as being mocking and hostile and retorted in a similar fashion, when she didn't mean it that way. - The man in the comic book store intended his comment to be a mocking imitation of a sexist, thinking he was being witty, but was taken as being literal. - The shop manager agreed with the complaining customer because he was complaining and not because he was right. - The man in comic store is normally nice and was temporarily more sexist than he usually is for some dull and specific reason, like he saw a very-near-miss in the carpark by a female driver.
    • AndyKelley 15y ago
      I think your comment is much stronger if you take out the last one.
• dym 15y ago
  TL;DR version: http://xkcd.com/385/ http://xkcd.com/385/
• mkramlich 15y ago
  In other news, most comic book artists and writers are male, most readers are male, a big chunk are teens, and males like pretty/nude/curvaceous females, most teen males likes big breasts and many teen females want to have big breasts, and oh yeah, sex sells. And comic books don't exist in a bubble in their own universe. It's part of this larger thing called the human race. Whatever good/bad/natural things exist in the human race will also be present in the comic book industry. Men have been ogling and fantasizing over females for thousands and very likely millions of years. Clue up. Next topic! And on a related note, I really wish "gender" submissions on HN would start getting banned automatically. Because they almost always end up a case of beating a dead horse over and over and over again, especially from the perspective of those who've been around long enough. ps. The author of the OA needs to wander into the Romance section of a bookstore some time. He'll be shocked, shocked at the level of sexual objectification and stereotyping that goes on there. But in the reverse direction. But since the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's not talked about. It's considered perfectly okay. Quotes from the article like this are common with people who've been programmed with that mindset: "(Obvious disclaimer: I'm a straight white man.)" <-- Oh you poor accidental oppressor you!
  • rmc 15y ago
    most comic book artists and writers are male, most readers are male, a big chunk are teens, and males like pretty/nude/curvaceous females, most teen males likes big breasts and many teen females want to have big breasts The TV show Mad Men is set in the early 1960s USA, when the same thing could be said of the professional world. "Everyone who works here is men, our clients are men, our customers are men" etc. And yet there was a lot of discrimination and sexism then. And things have changed (in the professional business world) then. the college/PC/lesbian/feminist litmob doesn't care about that, then it's not talked about Sure they do. Here's a series of blog posts about how twilight has terrible characters. http://skepchick.org/2011/11/twilight-breaking-wind/ http://skepchick.org/2011/11/twilight-breaking-wind/
• einhverfr 15y ago
  I thought there were some interesting things that he missed in his assessment of comic books, presumably because of a specific cultural lens he was looking at. The commic book male figures he mentioned fell into two types: The deadly serious, strong, sexy Batman and two not particularly sexed supervillains. In other words, while the women are all about sex, for men, only the good guys-- the superheroes-- are. This may still make a case for male privilege but it's not as clear-cut I think as he wants to think. The second thing is that men tend to stare at boobs. This is not unique to geek culture. This being said, I do think that it is important not to dismiss people's views because of gender. Some of the most talented programmers I have ever met were women. In fact I would take that further and say the most talented programmer I have ever worked with is a woman. I learned a heck of a lot about security audits, programming secure code, and also general algorithms and good software design, development, and engineering practices from her (including her starting IRC dialogs to call me on the carpet for mistakes on my part). To the extent women's views are ignored because of gender that's pretty bad. But another thing I have heard from women in open source is that one of the most annoying aspects of gender in open source is to be asked over and over "so what do you think we need to do to get women involved in open source?" I have seen plenty of replies of "Do you have ANY idea how annoying it is to be constantly asked that?"
• ig1 15y ago
  The other day I was shocked to see this: http://twitpic.com/7to6eb http://twitpic.com/7to6eb An article referring to females working in technology as "tech totty". This isn't some obscure insider tech publication, it's the cover for the industry journal for graduate recruitment. I find it shocking that a mainstream HR journal would use such a term, and I think it's a sign that it's a wider issue than just the geek community. Society as a whole needs to become more accepting of girls in geek culture.
• Tichy 15y ago
  Author writes "A man isn't expected to be a representative of his sex in all things; if he fails at a job, it's not going to be extrapolated that all men are unfit for that job", yet he seems to draw an awful lot of conclusions from some random guy in a comic store coming on to his girl-friend.
• eftpotrm 15y ago
  While I agree this is a problem, I think it's as much one of society in general both polarising and demonising. (Context - IT nerd guy, single.) I've known similarly female-dominated groups where men are automatically regarded as good-for-nothing troglodytes who will lazily eat, drink and watch sports all day with no positive contribution to wider life, while the intelligent, capable, hard-working and long-suffering women get on and do the important things the men simply can't, because they're men. Indeed, this will sometimes be seen openly in popular culture - advertising, sitcoms, soaps etc. I've done quite a lot of voluntary work with children, particularly younger children over the years; in some contexts there is still mild incredulity about the idea that a man can understand and cater well for small children, because that's What Women Do Best. Sure, we need to watch out for ourselves and try to respect all on their merits, not objectify and stereotype. Equally there's plenty of women who don't fit in with the group I outlined above. But - work to address this problem on all fronts. Fix it when we see it in our behaviour and those of us around us, whether we're the aggressor, the victim or neither.
• cafard 15y ago
  Comic-book culture seems to me very tangentially related to nerdism, computing, what have you. Al Capp was drawing remarkably endowed women in "Li'l Abner" a decade before ENIAC appeared. I doubt he was the first cartoonist to do so, as he very definitely wasn't the last.
• culebron 15y ago
  I agree with the commenter who points out that the culture is not dominant, and if it's that bad, it won't have much acceptance. And all who care of the sexism in IT, geek culture, etc., should turn themselves to the core problem. Use the Japanese method: ask 5 questions "why?" Why are geeks so sexist? They see women first of all as a sexual object. Why they do this? Because this is what they want. They are sexually hungry young men. Why are they sexually hungry? They don't have much dating and sex. I admit that some guys are ok in this area and just misbehave. Why do they have issues? Because they're geeks, and geeks are uncool, not sexually attractive. Now, start curing this issue, not telling them to behave. If a person is depressed, up to having no appetite, it's a common complaint from the relatives that the sick person is mistreating them, doesn't want to talk, closes the door, etc. Do you think a depression can be solved by telling that person to behave? Or by telling "life goes on", "birds are tweeting, ha ha"? No. It still doesn't make that person's needs met. Yet when it comes to social phoenomena, the treatment that is zealously promoted is to treat the outcomes, not the source. So, I suggest to the IT industry managers: start making your nerds' needs met. I don't know how. Hire a prostitute? May be valid in some special cases. Make a dating event? Maybe. Hire a psychologist? Can be useful. Make a party with a most-women company? Maybe. Basically, I think it's worth trying to let them have more dating and learn some social skills. (This all has to be in a very delicate way, of course.) But stop teaching people how to live. If you don't like how they behave, fire them, don't try to become a father who dislikes his son but keeps living together. (This is exactly what the article says: I hate this, but I stay!) Solve the real issue, make their needs met.
  • wpietri 15y ago
    The point of the five whys is to elicit insight and fact, not stuff you just make up. It turns out that guys who get laid are also often sexist, so your theory is bunk. There are also plenty of guys who don't get laid who aren't assholes to women. When you got to the notion that IT managers should create a culture of respect for women by hiring prostitutes for their most sexist male employees, you should have realized that you had approximately no idea what you were talking about.
    • culebron 15y ago
• kstenerud 15y ago
  Part of the problem is that the OP is concentrating on a game targeted specifically at guys who can't relate to women. You can't say that Angry Birds is misogynistic, nor could you say the same of Bubble Bobble, Spy Hunter, Tempest, Centipede, Strider, Tetris, Farmville, and thousands of other video games throughout the ages. One thing Facebook, iPhone and Android have FINALLY brought is "casual" gaming for the masses, by demonstrating a market that nobody could see due to the social stigma of the geeky loser gamer. The crazy shit only comes with heavy action games, mostly FPS (but even here there are numerous exceptions, such as Left 4 Dead). But then again you see the same thing in TV and movies; they cater to different audiences, some of whom are offended by things the other audience likes (usually what the other audience finds sexually appealing). But when it comes down to it, it's escapist media. People don't care that it's unlikely, and they most certainly don't assume that it in any way reflects real life, any more than someone playing a FPS is likely to take a gun to work and start shooting up the place. The comic industry in America on the whole has never grown up beyond male adolescent fantasy. That's unfortunate, as there are much richer possibilities (the Japanese manga industry, for example, caters to so many segments it's mind blowing). But make no mistake: The American comic industry is not an example of male privilege, or any unconscious attempt at keeping women down; It's a vicious cycle of social stigma against comic READERS, and the resulting lack of market for a wider audience. Maybe someday the "iPhone of comics" will come and save us.
• wpietri 15y ago
  Hi! It turns out that discussions about privilege are not entirely novel. If you would like to avoid making an argument that is a) missing the point, and b) common enough to be listed in a catalog, start here: http://derailingfordummies.com/ http://derailingfordummies.com/ Arguments of that form are already all over this thread, so you can also use this as a bingo card.