A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[CoffeeGrunt]

Fair enough, but you're apparently taking issue with my stance that certain members in this forum are incredibly bigoted against white males (Or males in general). It would therefore be logical to conclude that you are OK with their bigotry because you feel that the target of their malice somehow deserves it.

If thats not the case then I have no problem with you but my statement will then stand as a caveat.

I don't ignore it, but I recognise it as a minority of individual opinions - my issue is with groupthink and systemic discrimination. Let's put it this way, there's plenty of instances of 'lynch mobs' of white males, who attack people of colour, who attack gays, and perpetrate gang rapes and murder of women. They're far more common in some places than others, thankfully, but still a problem.

Now, I can't personally find any instances of gang rapes of women on men, nor that many instances of female serial killers, especially sexually-motivated ones. Not to mention a massive lack of LGBT gang rapes/murders/serial killers. This violence is mostly flowing in one direction.

Now let's take the example of Gamergate, a strong example of MRA presence. There's a minority that I personalty recognise as not being an example of the majority, that are pants-on-head insane, and truly misogynistic. When they collected together, they ended up spewing death threats at people whom they hated, generally ruined their lives with endless phone calls, and were safe in the knowledge that they could damage people's lives severely without ever feeling the grip of justice.

Now name me a feminist movement that has achieved the same results - the power just isn't there. You could collect all the Feminists in this thread together, and it just wouldn't have the same impact. That's the power difference at play. There's a massive difference between a series of people in this thread complaining about men, and a group that actually has an effect against men.

You've made it your personal vendetta to attack people in this thread in order to stand up for men, but ultimately, what difference does this thread make? If left unchecked, Eldargal would not have the Wargaming community under an oppressive Feminist regime, I doubt we'd even have Guardswomen models even if she did achieve this.

A bit like slapping around 3rd world countries to protect your 'freedom.'

[Mr Mystery]

When was the last time a MRA speaker was threatened not just with a personal death threat?

When was the last time an event an MRA speaker was due at was threatened with attack, because of that MRA?

[eldargal]

You've made it your personal vendetta to attack people in this thread in order to stand up for men, but ultimately, what difference does this thread make? If left unchecked, Eldargal would not have the Wargaming community under an oppressive Feminist regime, I doubt we'd even have Guardswomen models even if she did achieve this.

I find your lack of faith disturbing...

There is a Star Wars quote for everything.

If unchecked I would hope the wargaming community would be somewhat more female friendly than it is at the moment (and it isn't terrible compared to a lot of others already), my goal has always only been to educate people and start to change peoples attitudes in my own online social circle. I think it's been quite successful too.

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When was the last time a MRA speaker was threatened not just with a personal death threat?

When was the last time an event an MRA speaker was due at was threatened with attack, because of that MRA?

Even if feminists were to make death threats (which is always uncalled for) you still have a difference in power dynamics at work. Violence against women is extremely common and used to silence and intimidate women, as is the threat of violence. When MRAs threaten women they are tapping into a widespread culture of violence. If feminists were to make death threats against an MRA, while still completely reprehensible and self defeating, there is no such culture of violence against men which sees men routinely intimidated and silenced by it.

[40kGamer]

White Men are highly privileged in this world. As CG said, there is empirical data to support this.


Nobody on this thread is wanting to strip away any rights or perks White Men have. Instead, we want to see that level of privilege extended to all. Give everyone as even a footing as possible.

Right now as a society we're not doing terribly well in that regard. That we have apparenty 'bigoted and racist' things set up to help women over men, or black kids over white kids speaks volume of that inequality.

White Men don't need that leg up. There is no requirement for White Male only college/university scholarships. CG used a very good analogy above of flu jabs. They are prioritised on need, not want. Those who are most at risk not of getting flu, but of suffering further consequences from Flu are prioritised.

Seriously DB - who is holding you back on a cultural level? Please, link us to say, a dozen separate articles explaining how White Men are held back, and disadvantaged.

First of all we should toss out using the “world” as generalizations are never accurate. Are White men tops in China or India where the bulk of the world’s population lives? No sir. In a lot of these locations being white is a big negative. In some it’s a death sentence.

If you’re making the statement that western white men better off in general than people in China/India well sure. Of course everyone is better off. Top of the food chain has nothing to do with being white… or a man for that matter. There is one yardstick on earth for privilege (a word that is so pompous it had to originate in Academia) and in America it’s typically green.

[CoffeeGrunt]

I was browsing a thread on a 40K Facebook Group where this image came up:


Only it had a second image underneath with Wargamers replacing the Male section on the right, and a list of GW Citadel paint colours on the spectrum. I found it fairly amusing, gave it a Like, and commented about how people have sat down with my paint tin and asked why the heck I have up to five shades of each colour I use regularly. I came back to it later on, and it turned out a girl had appeared and said, (paraphrased,) "You guys wonder why not an awful lot of girls join this Group, when mocking photos like this about girls get posted pretty often." She then said that there is a closed female-only Wargaming group on Facebook with hundreds of members for precisely this reason.

Cue Anti-Feminists. It's annoying that the picture was taken down, because half a dozen guys appeared to specifically berate this girl and tell her that her opinion was wrong, that no this was not insulting, and that she should stop being so sensitive. She then left the group, somewhat completing the prophecy that the group is subtly anti-female in a way no-one seemed to grasp at specifically. It's not that the people involved hate girls, it's that they disliked a girl who spoke out.

That's why I find it difficult to take Daboarder's MRA stance seriously. That Feminists complaining about things is somehow unfair because men are also affected and thus should receive equal lip service. I've made a female YouTube and Disqus account, and decided to see what it's like to simply post a pro-Feminist opinion, even on something as generally-supported as a TED Talk on the Indian push against its rape epidemic, and found there's a dozen men who leap in to push me to stop posting for every person who steps in to support the opinion, and those were entirely female posters who were then targeted directly in comments until they left.

That's the thing, an MRA can easily rustle up a horde of people to push an opinion through, because the zeitgeist is still in their favour, and you can see it any time an MRA posts here and immediately others join the push. That's an indicator of the power male rights have if nothing else. Similarly, that singular attempt to make it known that hundreds of female Wargamers find the Wargaming community non-inclusive by one girl is immediately made true by a half-dozen men jumping in to push her opinion away from their sight.

You simply can't pretend that the very idea of Feminism hasn't been made to be this disgusting, hateful presence, when it's not. Just like Islam, the media has through no concerted effort, merely a scattered 'groupthink,' managed to make something that is generally positive with a negative minority into something vile and hateful from its foundation through to every member of it. Thus, girls are pushed away from the concept of talking about their rights to begin with. Even among girls I know who are Feminists in all but name - and that doesn't mean they're bra-burning, man-hating zealots as repeated stereotypes try to enforce - still don't like the F word. They think that the lack of girl models in Wargaming that aren't comic book-esque scantily-clad bikini armour is annoying, and the general lack of representation is very sad. My friend's girlfriend has just started a Dark Eldar army that is all-female through bitz trading and selection, after she tried to find a way to make female Space Wolves and the GW store owner in the city all but laughed at her for mentioning it.

That's representation rendered about as clearly as I can think. As a white guy, I can easily dig up a plethora of movies, games, books and TV shows that show people like me excelling in Art, Science, Heroism, Intellect, Morality, anything. I can tap into the Media and feel anything is possible, because look how many idols I have. I can build swathes of white guys like me as a force, for several different factions.

Black guys? Ummm...there's the Salamanders, until they were retconned out of being black-skinned, or rather, made to be comically jet-black. I suppose Guard are open for that sort of thing, but other than them? Very few official GW artwork has black characters, I remember we opened the Grey Knights Codex recently released, and pronounced our amazement that the Librarian on the inner two-page art spread was black. That's about the only officially released representation I can think of other than Jonah Orion. Women of colour? Not a whisper other than the odd piece of Sisters artwork, and were it not for Sisters, women would essentially not exist in the 40K universe at all.

The saddest part is that even outside of GW, it's not much better. I wonder how much less hatred Bronies would be subjected to, were it not considering paedophilic and disgusting for a man to like women's stuff, especially stuff designed for 'little girls,' which is almost always said with a mix of contempt and confusion...

[Mr Mystery]

Well, barring three Chapters (Salamanders, Ravenguard and Blood Angels, whose geneseed mucks about with skin pigmentation and that) Marines can be any ethnicity at all.

It's just they're typically painted caucasian because the painters in 'Eavy Metal are caucasian.

Plus, from a sculpting point of view, it must be kind of hard to do a specifically ethnic sculpt without it veering into the realms of offensive stereotype. The GW bare heads, whilst most commonly seen painted caucasian are actually quite generic, and can be painted any skin tone without look, for example 'blacked up'.

Come to think of it, I can't recall many physical descriptions of Marines which explicitly state 'like all Ultramarines, he was white' or similar.

HH books in particular highlight that post-geneseed implantation, you could still recognise the ethnic origins of a given Marine, if you were familiar with their recruiting world

Male MLP fans do suffer from the all-too-real Brony stereotype of a weirdo sex case. I've seen some of their art, and read some of their stories. Man, some people are just plain old odd in the head.

[Psychosplodge]

I think thats been posted on here before, possibly by me maybe by one of the bols lesbian mafia, but I don't remember anyone finding it objectionable? maybe its the type of people posting?
Never seen the citadal substitution before though.

[Mr Mystery]

In the words of Columbo, before I go and actually do some work today - just one more thing....

Compare the counter posts aimed at the ladies in this thread, to those aimed at mine.

Responses to me are nowhere near as in depth or forensic.

[40kGamer]

I was browsing a thread on a 40K Facebook Group where this image came up:


Only it had a second image underneath with Wargamers replacing the Male section on the right, and a list of GW Citadel paint colours on the spectrum. I found it fairly amusing, gave it a Like, and commented about how people have sat down with my paint tin and asked why the heck I have up to five shades of each colour I use regularly. I came back to it later on, and it turned out a girl had appeared and said, (paraphrased,) "You guys wonder why not an awful lot of girls join this Group, when mocking photos like this about girls get posted pretty often." She then said that there is a closed female-only Wargaming group on Facebook with hundreds of members for precisely this reason.

Cue Anti-Feminists. It's annoying that the picture was taken down, because half a dozen guys appeared to specifically berate this girl and tell her that her opinion was wrong, that no this was not insulting, and that she should stop being so sensitive. She then left the group, somewhat completing the prophecy that the group is subtly anti-female in a way no-one seemed to grasp at specifically. It's not that the people involved hate girls, it's that they disliked a girl who spoke out. ...

Like you I instantly found the picture amusing at first glance but honestly I thought it was insulting toward men. It suggests that guys lack the creativity or knowledge of colour theory to do more than make broad generalizations. It’s interesting that this lady found it insulting at the same time for completely different reasons.

You simply can't pretend that the very idea of Feminism hasn't been made to be this disgusting, hateful presence, when it's not. Just like Islam, the media has through no concerted effort, merely a scattered 'groupthink,' managed to make something that is generally positive with a negative minority into something vile and hateful from its foundation through to every member of it.

Naturally Feminist’s have been demonized. Anyone who wants anything different from the status quo receives the same treatment.

They think that the lack of girl models in Wargaming that aren't comic book-esque scantily-clad bikini armour is annoying, and the general lack of representation is very sad. My friend's girlfriend has just started a Dark Eldar army that is all-female through bitz trading and selection, after she tried to find a way to make female Space Wolves and the GW store owner in the city all but laughed at her for mentioning it.

This store owner = idiot. The whole point of our hobby is to do whatever we want. The more outlandish and unique the better. The negative side of or hobby is a steady flow of criticism. The best defense – a devil may care attitude. A fully female marine chapter would be awesome… of course I find every unique marine chapter awesome from the Asian themed ones to the Angry marines. The way people express themselves is ace.

That's representation rendered about as clearly as I can think. As a white guy, I can easily dig up a plethora of movies, games, books and TV shows that show people like me excelling in Art, Science, Heroism, Intellect, Morality, anything. I can tap into the Media and feel anything is possible, because look how many idols I have. I can build swathes of white guys like me as a force, for several different factions.

Black guys? Ummm...there's the Salamanders, until they were retconned out of being black-skinned, or rather, made to be comically jet-black. I suppose Guard are open for that sort of thing, but other than them? Very few official GW artwork has black characters, I remember we opened the Grey Knights Codex recently released, and pronounced our amazement that the Librarian on the inner two-page art spread was black. That's about the only officially released representation I can think of other than Jonah Orion. Women of colour? Not a whisper other than the odd piece of Sisters artwork, and were it not for Sisters, women would essentially not exist in the 40K universe at all.

I have never understood the lack of diversity in wargaming models… it is genuinely disturbing. I still think these decisions are driven by money. The manufacturers don’t think there is a market with black, Asian or females so they stick with the ‘oh so boring’ white male figures. Thus creating a self fulfilling prophecy. I’m still pissed at GW for ditching the Native American backstory with the Deathwing. Love it or hate it you can’t argue that it was at least different. Damn game is so whitewashed it gets downright bland.

- - - Updated - - -

In the words of Columbo, before I go and actually do some work today - just one more thing....

Compare the counter posts aimed at the ladies in this thread, to those aimed at mine.

Responses to me are nowhere near as in depth or forensic.

What's that Mystery...

[Mr Mystery]

As mentioned above - to make any given model recognisably ethinc is really really hard to get right, because at the scales we're looking at, physical traits have to be exaggerated - and when you exaggerate physical racial traits, you can turn out with something incredibly racist.