Tested: The Show — Rebecca Watson on Women in Geek Culture
Rebecca Watson, founder of the Skepchick blog, gave this great talk at our live show last month about some of the problems she sees in geek and gaming culture. Rebecca talks about her own love of games and why criticizing the things we love enriches our relationship with those things.
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She did have a point that there are some area’s in life that are dominated by men. Yes, I was the ONLY female in the entire engineering department at my college. But that didn’t make it miserable for me, I wasn’t treated horribly, or looked down on. I was actually treated like one of the guys. Everyone was nice and respectful to me, and would have normal conversations. Then the plus of being the only female was that I got a pretty nice scholarship. So sometimes it works to your advantage to be a female in a male dominated area.
I like this video, especially the part about how we can question the perfectness of the things that we love, while not necessarily losing our love for them. In fact, thinking about Tested, I think that’s a lot of what this site does. Looks at technology / movies / making / geeky stuff, notices and analyzes and compares the flaws, and tries to decide what to still love.
Also, thank you for keeping up the good fight over in the YouTube comments. I see that there are some good, honest discussions going on over there. I know it’s a lot of work to police that mess, and it would be easy for you to close the comments or let the trolls take over. I appreciate your hard work!
This video has generated a predictable result over at the Youtube channel. I am happy to see that Ms. Watson was invited to the Tested show. I wonder how Premium member think about this hot button issue?
Good video and diversity needs to continue. Breaking unhelpful cultural training makes us all better humans.
A great talk – funny and brave.
We should also have more efforts to place men in the humanities, law, the biological sciences, nursing, English, pedagogy, stay-at-home-parents, etc., all dominated by women. But I don’t think she wants to come at it from that angle, since that would show women to be strong and powerful, as opposed to perpetual victims of patriarchy.
This was a funny talk, and got one of the best crowd-responses of the night.
And I like how she echoes Adam’s recent thoughts on being able to see the dark/negative sides to the things you love.
I don’t think you quite understand what feminism is. Everyone is a victim of the patriarchy to some degree. Trying to frame it as women wanting to be seen as victims isn’t helpful. Feminists tend to focus on getting women into male dominated areas of society since women are less privileged. But I guarantee you that if you were to ask most feminists, they would agree with you that men should also be encouraged to seek out whatever interests them without the stigma of being seen as less of a man. By uplifting women you also help men, strict gender roles makes society worse for everyone.
There’s plenty of room in the equal rights movement for men to work towards improving the situation for men in women dominated fields. But unfortunately men’s rights groups are only interested in keeping their privileged status, regardless of how that affects men and society. Toxic-masculinity only hurts males, but there are plenty of people out there happy to reinforce the image of the stereotypical alpha male.
Yes. Two great examples of women in space science is my teacher Emily Lakdawalla and Dr. Nicky Fox, who is the project manager for the NASA RBSP “Van Allen” mission. I hope Mr. Savage interviews them someday soon. Cheers.
http://www.planetary.org/about/staff/emily-lakdawalla.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/rbsp/news/rbsp-launchnews.html
The more I read these sorts of discussions and watch these sorts of videos (on both sides of the issue), the more I think the whole topic of gender politics is one I need to label as “emotional cutting” for myself. I never feel better after having seen discussions of this topic; I never think better of anyone involved. My whole world view just gets soured as the comment threads and videos responses and tweets all follow the same winding, unproductive paths.
Inevitably the worst aspects of both sides of the issue dominate the conversation, helped along by a healthy does of people just trying to stir things up and cause chaos to see that they can. And everything becomes mired in straw-men vs straw-men, wild inflammatory accusations vs name calling and bickering.
At a time when it has never been easier to go out an make a thing (a blog, a youtube channel, an actual game) people instead can’t seem to do ought but spin their wheels about how wrong everyone else is and throw rocks at anyone who does anything of enough significance to garner the attention of others.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I could use a lot less commentary in my life, a lot less complaining, and would rather see what people actually do than what they think.
Quit caring if there are people out there who are wrong. Go out. Do a thing. Make something new.
Awesome to see Rebecca on here. Every new video from the live show makes me more jealous I couldn’t be there.
I live in SF and felt bad about not attending the show. But now I don’t because I didn’t have to sit through a talk by Rebecca Watson.
I’ve commented on numerous tested videos in the past, you are free to check. So I didn’t come here from an “mra” group, that really wasn’t necessary regardless. Civil rights do extend to men as well, so this assumption that “mra” is evil is based on prejudice. Do not come up with premade rationalizations to make it easier to silence people.
Those who have nothing to fear do not fear free speech. History shows us what kind of mindset requires suppression of dissent. And this current atmosphere of silencing people based on reasons which just don’t add up is incredibly disturbing, especially when it comes from the left. There is nothing progressive about not allowing people to air their grievances. The entire principle of our first amendment is based on freedom of speech being one of the most cherished rights anyone can have. There are always “reasons” to silence other people, and there are always “reasons” why its justified. A gay campaigner would have been silenced as immoral just a few decades ago for having his say, so the principle really matters and shouldn’t be infringed upon, especially by people who claim to be progressive.
To quote a woman so its not dismissed out of hand.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
–Evelyn Beatrice Hall
There has been a lot of hate mongering and misreporting on these kinds of issues which has led to the current debacle which includes this speaker, she is part of the problem. The idea that the internet suddenly became “misogynistic” beyond all comprehension simply doesn’t pass the smell test. It insults our intelligence when people claim that suddenly there were misogynists everywhere!!! Far from it, this generation of people is the most progressive and open minded around. But we’ve seen these groups who used to be for progressive values co opted by people who claim to be progressive but in fact undermine every progressive value we hold dear. This is why she gets blow back, its not because she’s a woman, its because she is wrong and people are tired of being smeared with “misogynist” if they dare speak the truth. The mindset of religion has taken over with these people. They label others as evil, as infidels, as heretics, and then all is allowable. They create things like blacklists and blockbots which automatically create ever growing echo chambers against free thought, all under the guise of “protection from harassment”, but the truth is that you get on that blockbot by being a critic. It all points to a mindset which is entirely the antithesis of free thought which she claims to be for but in practice we’ve seen exactly the opposite.
I simply ask you to look at the actual evidence which they do not dare mention. If current events are just “misogynists” running rampant, why do things like Oliver Campbell’s streams exist, go look at some, episode 4 alone has a transsexual, a gay man, a woman, and a black man speaking on the matters we can’t even dare mention anymore because of the climate of fear the media has created. Are they really all misogynists? Or is the picture not what is painted. Go look at queeny’s live stream, its going on right now with the girls of gg. And just look at a few of her previous ones, it says something when even the adult entertainers of GG are more articulate than their critics who are throwing smears at us with wild abandon.
And finally, on this situation with watson. Go check out mykerumedia on youtube, or thunderf00ts playlist on how atheism was attacked by these people. They have made every effort to silence these people, including attacking their twitter accounts. Mykeru is still suspended as we speak. So when you threaten to silence even more people, you are demonstrating the problem which we’ve been dealing with for years now if we include atheism plus. The side that seeks to silence people is generally not the side you want to be on.
Again, this is a misrepresentation of the situation. There are people who are cynically exploiting these kinds of situations to make money. Their concern is never genuine. This tactic of claiming that its just “boys” afraid of women is based on the “real men are/do X” gender role reinforcing catch all tool which changes based on context. It has no purpose other than to confuse an issue. The idea that men are afraid of women isn’t based on any evidence. And its not a valid argument regardless. If a group comes under legitimate attack it doesn’t mean they are afraid, it means they have a grievance. When women are attacked by republicans who want to take their right to choose away from them, does that mean they aren’t women enough to not be afraid of men? Or do they have a legitimate grievance against a group of people who are trying to infringe on their rights.
No gamers are claiming women have no right to game. This idea is based on a constantly and vicious perpetuation of a stereotype by the media. Covered well in this article on the “War on Nerds” http://dailycaller.com/2014/11/13/the-waronnerds-how-far-left-feminists-and-the-media-created-gamergate/
But there is a difference between demanding to change others content and creating your own. Gamergate supported the fine young capitalists game jam for women because they were not trying to tear others down to get their way, they were trying to help women create the games they wanted to play.
No business is threatened by a larger market. Greed always wins out over everything and in a 100 billion dollar industry, if they could even add 25% to that number, we’re talking serious money.
Where there is serious money to be made it will be done. This is why there is a chick-lit market for women, and even a romance novel market, which has no counterpart for men. This is why so many TV shows are now female middle age in the lead role, its simply because the majority of TV viewers are female. Women watch talk shows and men watch golf and NASCAR, disparity does not imply sexism, it just means we’re different. Diversity is only apparently good when it doesn’t involve issues of men and women for some reason these days.
And anyways, female entertainment is about the least diverse entertainment, they don’t even pay lip service to male interest. You only need to look at the show girls, entire cast is women, white women, and that’s fine, its just a problem when its not acknowledged so that men’s interests can be attacked. Sure some men watch girls as its HBO, but one can take it further, just look at 50 shades of grey, male interest drops to near zero on that one, and again, that is fine. Women have entire channels like hallmark and lifetime cranking out TV movie after TV movie just for their interests, where there is interest, there is money, and things will get done.
People are however threatened when the market doesn’t exist and its an issue of irrational politics. Men and women are different, this is the result of millions of years of evolution, we are not the products of a feminist god, but of natural selection which cares not at all about human notions, let alone ones thought up in the past few decades. Men and women make vastly different choices as a whole, and this is borne out in their tastes of entertainment. This is why that the WNBA, forced into being by feminists is still not something women want to watch. And to add even more insult to injury WNBA players are about the least sexualized athletes around, yet women still are not interested. You can’t force someone to “have fun” doing something they aren’t interested in, let alone pay for it. This doesn’t imply sexism or some kind of injustice, its just a biological difference.
And beyond that its a total loss of perspective. How you spend your free time on time on entertainment isn’t a issue of moral justice. We aren’t fighting over who gets to spend the most hours curing cancer. No, this is a misguided fight to equalize gender interest in killing virtual monsters and spending time in virtual worlds, which is fine as a past time, but lets not pretend this is anything more than a personally enriching past time, and sometimes its not even all that enriching, its just a waste of time. If women choose to watch tv instead of play a game, who are we to say that is wrong. The assumption that disparity implies injustice is a non starter. Mother nature is not fair, far more men are on the autism spectrum and that accounts for much of the “geek” interests men have. And its notable that only when such interests become “cool” that female encroachment even begins to become a thing.
Anyways tested is basically all male, and that is fine. We don’t watch you guys for your looks after all;) As I’ve said before part of the appeal of tested was that it catered to genuine interest while so many mainstream shows had pretty people who had a superficial interest in a subject and as such they provided content with no depth. You only have to look at the youtube video awards that have failed in the past where they invited celebrities which had no real connection with youtube in to cash in on some kind of misguided notion of star power. It all felt fake and they were total disasters, because those people didn’t belong, they were fakes. It matters that I know the tested crew is interested in this stuff whether or not they are being paid to show us the things they do. I’ve seen it all too often that pretty faces are brought in for no other reason than generate appeal for the shallowest reasons, and to fill a quota.
Anyways forgot that I can link things here without disappearing unlike youtube.
Just note the difference in what actually is happening to what is said in the media.
In Oliver Campbells stream a transsexual, a gay man, a woman and a black man discuss the issues of gamergate as proponents. Are they afraid of women?
Oliver Campbell stream #gamergate Threedog’s news radio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8SG7QuxqD4
You will note even the porn actress is extremely articulate, and actually is an engineer by training. Things aren’t quite what the media has been writing, which is exactly the problem gamers are having with this situation.
Girls of #Gamergate 5th hangout!
Queeny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOuObprVWok
#GamerGate Happenings Recap with Socks 16/11
NEET LIFE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRXsR2QYwxk
Honey Badger Radio: Zoe Quinn and Feminist Mean Girls
karen straughan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuFSMi5G3R4
Ok, don’t really want to get in a big fight, because the people here are cool people. That said, I’ve watched my wife’s very successful career in the tech industry, progress over the past 20 years, and all I can really honestly say, is people like Watson are not helping. If anything, I believe they are making things harder for women. My wife grew up in a geek household. Her dad was a computer guy, she and her brother were both raised around computers, and both went on to work in the tech industry.
For the bulk of her career, she has done very well, been “one of the guys” and always been respected for being one of the most technically knowledgeable producers at some very large companies. Yes, in her career she has had a couple sexist managers who refused to promote women, it definitely does happen, but she never had a hard time finding a better job, at a company with better attitudes. Now she works at a development company that handles contracts for some of the largest companies in the world, and has more women than men.
However, in the past few years, the attitude in the industry has changed. More and more she has difficulty working with male developers, because they are uncomfortable around her, and worried they might say the wrong thing. More and more she gets the vague feeling like people want her on their project, not because she does a great job, but so they can say “look, we have a woman, aren’t we progressive!” It is her subjective feeling that gender relations are getting worse, not better, and it is the result of polarizing people like Watson.
Now of course, this is only one person’s experience, and not some unquestionable truth of the industry, but as my wife is always quick to point out, she’s been working in tech since some of the people complaining about this issue were still in grade school.
I think that what Rebecca and the others are doing has to come under the heading, “not helping.” It’s not only gaming, lately every part of the geekosphere seems to be loaded up with unattractive personality endowed women demanding that whatever bow before them and waving the victim card over strawmen. They may think that “punching up” will resolve things, but all that does is make them look like petty bullies. You shouldn’t be punching at all, unlike Rose Evelith of Brooklyn NY who created a femstorm over a shirt worn by a scientist explaining the logistics of landing a probe on comet 900 million klicks from earth. A shirt that the scientist’s female coworkers and friends actually seemed to think was kind of cool. Which was the point of wearing the shirt in the first place. If your goal is to attract young girls into the sciences, NOT HELPING. If your goal is creating a world of mundane grey mush of monocolor, well that’s what they seem shooting for. But that’s going to be an empty place with no adventure, progress or hope.
Hey Will and Norm! Speaking of lady empowerment in male dominated fields reminded me of Dr. Neri Oxman, an architect over at MIT. She spearheads advanced digital fabrication projects, and it would be awesome if you guys visited. As a premium member, I’d love to see more stuff like your NYU visit.
P.S. Some of the people commenting here and over at youtube are a bit out there huh?
I appreciated Rebecca’s talk, and I was delighted that she made an appearance on Tested. It saddens me that she is constantly hounded by an army of harassers online. She doesn’t deserve the treatment she gets, and I greatly admire her tenacity. I would have withdrawn from the internet, as many women have done, if I had to endure what she does.
Rebecca actually did withdraw from the internet for a while after “Elevatorgate”. The threats and harassment from a portion of the atheist community were truly terrible even though she only asked that men not hit on women in elevators, and to actually think about your actions and how they affect women. It was eye opening for me and I’ve been a supporter of her and feminism ever since. I’m glad she’s started being more vocal again this last year or two.
I’m really sad. I was following Tested for more than year now, I had good opinion about everyone, Norm, Will… and of course Adam.
There is no people like Adam in my country, no one publicly speaks for skepticism, and science, and critical thinking, and atheism. So I liked to watch and listen Adam very much.
But now, i just disappointed.
And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, if it would be just Rebecca Watson video, but these comment removing, and those comments about people disagreeing not being a part of community, and blaming negative responses on some attack from people ‘not from this community’.
But even if we forget about comment removing (and this absolutely not a critical thinking and honesty type reaction to negative comments), still, i can’t understand, why? how?
How Adam, and you people, can support such ideas of Rebecca, and such approach? This is not critical thinking, and this is not even being nice to people. It’s just some ideology, to go and judge people for things they never did. And to find problem where there is no problem, instead of fighting real problems.
Ok, she is friend of Adam, but does this mean, that you not supposed to think critically about ideas of your friends, and help promote any of their ideas disregard of how bad they are? Even if they are hateful? Even if they are hypocritical and based on double standards?
In the end, it’s not even about making, or technology, or science, or critical thinking.
This speech wasn’t about some good passion, something that she likes to do, something positive, it was about negative thing, and promoting other people who support same negative thing.
And all those comments, that wasn’t removed, that judge comments that was removed, they are no better then those that was removed. Negative speech created negative feedback, yet you people think that you are good guys, and all those people are bad guys. In the end it’s all us vs them. In the end it’s no better from those politician, who lie, who twist words, to defend their agenda, ideology.
And in the end, this is just another kind of nationalism, tribalism, instead of race or ethnicity, it’s gender, instead of promoting equality, and be cool, and nice to people disregard of their gender, trying to make people feel somehow guilty for their gender, and for making games, movies, they like, disregard of if their real views about gender equality.
And if someone really want’s some debate, and critical thinking, just one question – so why Tested team have only guys. Is this sign of sexism, is this because of discrimination? Is this make people who work at Tested, a bad people? Should Tested team be changed?
I just don’t know how I can now listen Will saying something about Uber being fascist after this (even more ironic, if he was one who was removing comments)? Or Adam saying something about critical thinking or skepticism.
I can handle when people tell me that i can’t destroy CD in my CD-ROM drive, when I had destroyed CDs in my CD-ROM drive.
Promoting hateful ideology, double standards, hypocrisy, while pretending that you are someone who fights against hateful ideologies, double standards and hypocrisy. Removing comments of people who disagrees with you using some straw-man as excuse, while leaving in place hateful comments that was against those people who was disagreeing, I can’t handle this, I’m sorry. This is thing that i dislike most in this world.
But whatever, I’m just some loser, not even from US, not even part of community. Who cares. You will have enough audience that will agree with you anyway.
That “portion of the atheist community” got many negative comments too, but somehow you don’t think that it was harassment.
You want other people to think about their action, but you don’t want to think about your actions, and how they affect people.
Every time Richard Dawkins posts some criticism on this topic, whitch-hunt starts, by Rebecca Watson kind people, and nobody cares. And they don’t even try to understand him. They want to accuse him of sexism and etc. While in reality, Dawkins is one who on the side of real equality, and who just hates hypocrisy, hates tribalism.
Rebecca with her comments about elevator did same thing, that all those people who posted negative comments on this video did. It’s all same, negative criticism. But somehow, when Rebecca makes her negative speeches, it’s ok, but when people respond with their negative criticism, their comments got removed, and people accused of sexism. Even worse, you people pick comments with offensive language from some real bad people, and mix it together with good criticism, dismissing good criticism as harassment. This is low. This is dishonesty.
There is post and comments on freethought blogs, about some people from that “portion of atheist community”, that are so toxic, so ugly, that if you see such comments about yourself, you will hate those people absolutely and forever, but hey, it’s not about you (and not about your side), it’s about those terrible people, so it’s ok. And it’s not harassment! No reason for those people to withdraw them-self from Internet!
It’s tough to be listen to and be supportive the other side of an argument when they resort to comments about an individual instead of the topic.
Why is it so tough for so many people to accept equality between genders? Why do so many people think of engendered biases because of a tool (a hammer or a piece of software really cares about an individuals gender)? Why is it tough for these others supposedly talking about ethics but can’t seemingly understand the qualities of it (that’s not entirely true, they’ve shown over and over again how bad their own ethics are)?
When it comes to gender I can think of two differences:
1. testicles and sperm production
2. ovaries, eggs and gestating babies
Everything else in life is gender neutral in a naturalistic sense.
There are a lot of unhelpful cultural biases based on bad science implementation, these can be easily fixed once reality is actually taken into account rather than legacy power structures trying to ignore it.
Equal means equal.
Hello Testees,
just stopping in to say a couple things:
Test on,
Magz
Pretty much what I think, thanks for typing it for me.
It’s a sad day when politics got to Tested. I was glad that I can ignore this whole gamergate thing but it seems that it found me here.
I hope this was one of a kind freak incident and it won’t happen again.
I’m a huge fan of FTB so I have a feeling we won’t see eye to eye on much, but I’ll try to stay civil. “A portion of the atheist community got many negative comments too” is a pretty dishonest way of framing it. There is a huge difference between criticizing someone’s ideas and/or actions, and harassment in the form of hate mail, rape and death threats that still continue to this day from the Slymepit and the Dawkins/Shermer fanclubs. Telling someone that what they said was sexist or calling them a misogynist for spewing hateful, vile things, is not harassment.
And it’s funny how people think criticizing Dawkins is a “witch hunt” while at the same time calling his critics professional victims. Dawkins is worth like $100 million and is a model of white, conservative, upper class privilege being willfully blind to how his actions affect other people. He’s had years to learn about feminism and to make amends to the people he’s wronged, but instead he prefers to support known abusers like Shermer and retweet the outright lies of Christina Sommers. We all know he is more than intelligent enough to figure this stuff out, but he refuses to change. So whenever he gets on twitter and says something sexist, he’s going to be called out on it.
Here are my thoughts. When reading them keep in mind I am a college student who only a couple years ago got heavy into video games and technology. From what I have read a lot of these past incidents were before I was interested in the field, so if I sound ignorant, I am not trying to!
1) She does have good points in saying that video game and the technology field are a majority men (for now) and that it is completely stupid that she receives death threats just because she is a female.
2) Her speech, which started off humorously and seemed to be going in a good direction, did not come out well. The part that irks me is what others have stated before, she did not talk about building something, she barely mentioned video games, and just went on about saying men dominate the field. The only point in video games she made, other than she rocks at FTL and is playing the new Civ game, is that “shame on you” to the video game industry for always seeming to have a female now and again feel a need to take off their clothing. As stated before the reason for this is because they company wants to make the most money to the largest video game demographic, boys 10-18, who all they want to see are boobs and explosions. Of course, most of the games made like this are not considered good games. If she thinks that it is unfair that many females in games sometimes need to strip down, men can make the same argument about men in video games.
Whenever you see a man in a video game they have washboard abs, perfectly muscular bodies, and women can’t get enough of them. Video games are unfair to both genders. There has yet to be a video game (at least I think) who the male main character is a slightly over-weight average man that happens to know what to do. Nope, always the large muscles and perfect face. So it is not just women, though women are more subjected to unfairness in video games.
3) The biggest problem I have with her speech is that it seems she just going “Men in this field are rude to women”. That is not just this field honey, sadly every business field that may have a majority of men are like that, though it is getting better over the years.
4) Not all men assume the video game world is for men only, the problem is the amount of females who play video games is not high enough yet for game studios to develop female specific games. Game studios are businesses and want to make money, and like I mentioned before, will try to sell their game to the largest (most profitable) demographic.
5)I feel like her speech is out of place here on Tested. Yes women are treated horribly in the technology world, but that is not what people come to Tested to read/hear about. Tested it for people to discuss the latest windows update, why the next smart watch is not good, and whether or not the lasted version of the iPad is worth spending money on. We are hear for reviews, critically thinking about science and technology, and insightful videos on how things are made/done.
Her speech would be great at a social conference or psychological conference about gender inequality, but it does not fit here. I do understand that Adam is her friend, but how she wrote her speech just came off as wrong. It sounded like she was saying I have had death threats, forced to move, and am being subjected to unfair themes in video games because men do this to all women. Sorry that happens, but that happens everywhere to both men and women. I wish both genders could get along everywhere.
I’ve tried to find anything positive from that video, and failed. Which based on the available evidence is not a surprise. As for what positive looks like, here’s my good friend Dr. Michelle Shinn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5j9DoqUi_U&list=PL0D5D24D5D447CD76&index=9
All that was in Rebecca’s video was hate and negativity. While it’s obvious that she has enjoyed playing around in the sewers of advanced liberal thought I don’t think it’s a good thing for anybody.
Disappointed, but not surprised, by many of the comments on this.
I think that what’s happening here is that all these people go through college in the “studies” programs and come out all ready to fight the battles ready to fight against “injustice” and discover there really isn’t any. So they have to delve into the outer fringes of society looking for the most trivial excuses to make their mark. Science Fiction Conventions, gamers, the atheists fine art and other activities that heretofore had been frankly tolerant of the leftist perspective and therefore open to infiltration have suddenly found themselves under attack for the most trivial issues. Unfortunately those fringes are the people who don’t feel comfortable with the straight and normal conformity and get rather upset when you walk into their world, of which they obviously know little or nothing about and start attacking people with feminist rants and Alinskyest tactics. Unfortunately for the SJWs this time the people they are fighting against are smarter than they are and they won’t be able just silence them because most of the communities will find alternative outlets and means of communication.
Everything is political. Politics didn’t “get” to Tested.
Adam is highly political, and has never shied away from talking about his politics on his podcast, or in speeches at Makerfaire, or elsewhere (aside from more or less trying to stay on-topic).
Tested is connected to the Skeptic Community, the Gamer Community, the Maker community, Cosplayers and Con Goers, and many other groups. All of these groups have politics that reflect larger processes in our society. There’s no reason to expect them not to show up here.
Maybe you wanted Tested to be a place where you could escape from those things, or not have your ideas and view of the world be challenged, or whatever motivates your agreement with Zakus.
But it isn’t, and never was, and likely never will be, because the people who run the joint take their influence within the communities they are connected to seriously, and want to use that influence to make what they view as positive changes in that community. And that includes giving airtime to people they agree with, and helping them communicate their message or introduce them to new audiences. Why else do you think the awesome Mz. Watson was invited? Personally, I think it’s rad.
If you think this talk was full of hate and negativity, I think someone must have replaced it between your post and the time I watched it.
I hope most of that was copy pasta. If not I feel a little sad for you that you’ve spent the last couple hours writing up these comments. If you are trying to win an argument through sheer volume of misinformation in your meandering posts then I guess you win, I really can’t be bothered to go through all that. That you’ve uncritically linked to Aurini, Sommers and Thunderf00t is all I really need to see.
Well let’s start off with dinging her boyfriend. Then she casts judgment on what men think about women and games. “Many men assume the games that games are their domain.” How does she know that? Followed by saying that game developers assume that it will be mostly men playing the games. The fact is the game companies aren’t assuming anything, they do something called “market research.” And then base their investment on that research.
Then of course she continues the narrative about Anita Sarkeesian and USU. While neglecting to mention the little fact that it was Anita’s decision to cancel when USU was told there was no credible threat, which having read the not myself, was pretty obvious. Anita, if you are going to write your own threatening notes don’t use Canadian mass killings 20 years ago that most Americans will have never heard of. And don’t send it to all the press outlets to have them print out the full text for everybody to read. I posted the article with the note in it on the facebook page of a Utah SF author I am friends with and he and his well connected fans came to the same conclusion that the note was a false flag. Of course Rebecca can’t admit that because that would ruin the “we are all victims” narrative.
That petition was in response to abuse and harrasement actions that Rebecca and her followers perpetrated against a woman Eliza Sutton. probably because of that video posted above. In which case by Rebecca’s own standards, she should have been banned. Live by the doxxing, die by the doxxing.:
https://www.change.org/p/bay-area-science-festival-remove-rebecca-watson-from-bay-area-science-festival-program
Then she hits on The Foundation Series, movies, and past relationships. Saying that Asimov didn’t create realistic female characters, really? Look the original Foundation stories were written for Astounding magazine in the 1940’s during WW2 where there was a lot of thinking among John W Campbell’s little group that there might not BE a future. At least not one that they would like to live in. Critical thinking requires understanding and it’s apparent that Rebecca lacks that.
She obviously feels that she has to rip everything she touches into little tiny pieces. That’s not critical thinking, that’s lunacy. And she doesn’t seem to understand that all healthy relations are codependent to some extent and that love means being able to understand and forgive the other’s flaws.
The term for slinging a mountain of disinformation in an argument is ‘Gish Gallop’.
We will not agree about the perception of the talk, but many of your statements in response to me (I assume, anyway, since you didn’t actually cite my name) are simply incorrect.
Sarkseenian’s talk was, in fact, canceled after local officials told her that due to Utah’s gun laws, they could not and would not prevent people who were licensed to carry a concealed weapon from bringing said concealed firearms into said talk. Nor did they consider that the threat had no merit; rather it was concluded that the threat was on par with threats Sarkseesian receives on a very regular basis, and felt that they had taken sufficient steps to ensure security.
As regards market research, women make up roughly half of people who buy and play games. Consumers demanding better products from producers is part and parcel of capitalism. The industry chooses to ignore this at their own peril.
Re: Asimov, yeah,he tended to write women very poorly, and incredibly few of his very numerous early stories feature women as well drawn characters, and even more rarely as protagonists. He owned up to this himself, so it’s not like Watson is pulling this out of thin air, and arguing about cultural context or whatever it is that you’re trying to do by talking about the 40s doesn’t change anything.
Lastly, re: the petition to prevent Mz. Watson from doing her thing, and claims that she doxxed someone, well, people can read her own statements on the subject and derive their own conclusions.
Manta, I think the important thing is to communicate, not bully, be tolerant of others even it you disagree with them and above all never stop learning. Frankly I don’t have a dog in the gamer thing. I like strategy games and train simulators. Some people like shooting bunches of zombies. I like keeping 10,000 tons of steel and coal from pushing me off a downgrade in the rain. Or keeping the Stamford local on time into GCT in a howling snowstorm. So the whole mysoginy thing is more or less meaningless to me. On the other hand I Rebecca and her friends across the geekoshphere wreaking havoc and suppressing dissent wherever they are. That bothers me a lot. You can’t have liberty without freedom of thought and, well that’s something the likes of Rebecca can’t seem to tolerate.
Now why would you consider them (“Rebecca and her friends”) to be dissidents? What system they are, in your mind, dissenting to? People can *think* (“freedom of thought) whatever they want. They cannot, however, threaten others with violence and decrease others own freedom because of it. To deny the “boys club” (or if you want, The Patriarchy) mentality of the general power structure dynamic of Western world values is just… ignoring the evidence.
I get the impression that you think that they are making up stories of harassment and that somehow they deserve it because they are “public” figures if they are being targeted. Am I wrong in thinking this is your point of view?
Please list all of the attributes of the “nature” of men and women and then tell me how I’m denying any of those.
Equating attempts to deal with the insane abuse and threats routinely leveled at people (very often women) on the internet with making “enemies lists” is quite frankly ludicrous.
Whatever arguments you may be attempting to present are rather undermined by the fact that you say absurd things like the idea that the “blank slate theory” lead to communism (?!?!), cite the popularity of the WBNA as indicative of anything at all, and seem to think that feminism (which is a hugely diverse movement and political ideology) is founded on the idea that there are no actual differences between male and female, rather than the broad ideas of political, economic, and social equality and autonomy.
And your use of the term Social Justice Warrior as a pejorative doesn’t help your case at all. The fact that you do that and chide other people for ad hominem is rather rich.
Oh, and also your “arguments” about Mz. Watson (several post above) boil down to “she’s asking for it” (she’s a public figure!) and “she’s making it up” (internet misogyny isn’t real!).
Which sound eerily familiar, though I can’t quite place where I’ve heard them before…
Women in scare quotes? Really? Okay dude. You believe strange things, and think people being put on block lists or dealing with the average shitcocking troll is equivalent to people telling you (sometimes in great detail) that they are going to rape you to death and murder your family right after they demonstrate they know where you live.
Of course, you probably don’t believe those threats are real, either.
In the long run, your absurd beliefs won’t matter all that much. You guys are losing, and losing bad, even with people being terrorized out of their homes and sometimes off the internet entirely.
And you can threaten me for calling a spade a spade, anytime you like. Ain’t skeered. I simply stripped the fat off of your statements to expose their core.
Unrelated: For the love of god, lay off with the half-a-dozen-video-embeds-per-comment, would you? They make the page extremely clunky for literally everyone. Link to things all you like, but you don’t need to dump hours of video (that most folks probably are never going to watch) directly into the comments thread.
The only thing you’ve exposed to the core is the reason why so many free thinkers are angry with people like Watson. Since their invasion every discussion devolves into accusations of misogyny.
Thanks for proving it.
I am reminded: All seagulls want is for everyone to have french fries, you guys.
imagine the outcry if a video game was made that involved nothing but the murder, mutilation and execution of women,, but lets make them the evil people in the game…
That is what happens to 99% of the males depicted in games.. but thats ok.. if equal rights where her/feminists real agenda then the game i outlined should be fully supported by her.
Really good speech and I really hope to see a more inclusive industry.
I kind of get why the problems of including (seemingly) new people into nerd/gaming culture. It is a culture that has often received quite unfounded criticisms and the response has usually been to simply gather tight and shut the people making the accusations out. Everything from video game violence to accusing d&d players of Satan worship has made this our response. This is somewhat of a oversimplification of a complex subject but i think it does affect how we nerds react.
This has led to the sad state that when criticism that actually has merit comes along, it to gets ignored and met with hate. This gets unhealthy as our culture reacts to “outsiders” violently when our culture is growing. Nerd culture have so much to offer to so many and needs to be more inclusive. More women in our culture will help it grow and be better. Everything will benefit from it, not only games.
I can be a pretty traditionally manly guy sometimes, for good and ill, but since I truly believe that women and men have equal value and our differences are taught, not inherited, I am a feminist.
If people realy wanted to play games about drepessed people going to work then don’t you think the game industri whould make them?
The game developers produce the games people buy and nothing more nothing less, i can’t help wonder way Rebecca dont make these games herself or starts a company that produces them.
I doubt it will change anyone’s mind, it never seems to, but let me just try to interject something here. I find it odd that anyone who sees themselves as a skeptic, would discount anyone’s position on anything, just because they don’t like their conclusions. For example, right now I’m slogging my way through a book that is basically a neo-luddite manifesto. It is hard going, because I so fundamentally disagree with practically everything the author has to say, but I think it is important to read his arguments, and think long and hard about them, because the alternative is to lose all perspective to confirmation bias, and only being told what I want to hear.
I think that a very modern disease of social media, is we’ve all become far too enamoured, even dependant, on being able to click a button, and make dissenting views just vanish, at which point we pat ourselves on the back for being the smart ones, and make up stories about how stupid anyone who disagrees with us is. It is dangerous, and does not promote healthy skepticism and discourse. There is no idea mankind has every created, that is so sacrosanct that it deserves to be unchallenged.
Hey, I really liked your talk! It is always encouraging for me to see other people speak about their struggles when they don’t fit in the “box”. I find that it can get quite lonely. I really enjoyed the part when you talked about having a critical eye for the things you love. Yes, peeling back the layers can reveal a lot of dirt, but I also believe that it allows you to build a deeper relationship. Just wanted to say, “I get it.” Also Thanks Tested!! You guys have kept me company many a late night in the lab 🙂
Almost exactly as arguing conspiracy theorists or creationist. Or anyone with one hypocritical political ideology. But fact that you are an FTB fan explains everything.
FTB is exactly same crowd, that like to ban people, and accusing them of sexism, misogyny, racism etc, just because they disagree on that topic. And dismissing criticism as being something from morally bad, vile person, and thus something that should not be considered at all.
Telling someone that they are sexist and misogynistic and that they spewing hateful, vile thing – is not constructive criticism, in cases like this. Because it’s ridiculous claim, not based on real arguments. Those people said nothing obviously and openly sexist or misogynistic, this conclusion about them is just result of people like you twisting their words, and applying this approach where any criticism of action of your side – is always a sexism, misogyny, and even racism.
So, it’s almost same as saying that Rebecca Watson is bigot, and someone who would be first to discriminate people because of their race or gender, according to her vile ideology. But this claim would even more arguments behind, because there is real facts how she and her crowd react to criticism, and that all those speeches have element of hate and disdain to “privileged race and gender”, again, not because those people have done something wrong or even endorsed some discrimination or crime, but just because they are part of that gender or race. And at least Dawkins tried to apologies and explain himself more, while people on Rebecca side, don’t even think that they did anything wrong, and they don’t even want to hear any criticism, again, dismissing everything, mixing good criticism together with real harassments and calling everyone a misogynist.
But saying something like this about Rebecca would get your comment removed, from FTB, from youtube comments, but saying same about Richard Dawkins – is ok.
And what are you excuses, why it’s ok? Ironically, it’s that “Dawkins worth like $100 and he is white, conservative (oh, WTF? i missed this reading first time, conservative? really?), upper class privilege”.
How his worth, race, sex, class, makes it ok, to witch-hunt him and harass him, while it’s not ok to do it against Rebecca, if you are not someone who support idea that people of one class, sex, race have less rights than other?
This Seagull comic posted below is example of this. It’s just based on one big fallacy, and it’s almost an example or racism/nazism. While you probably would think that it’s very witty comic, and it show so nice how people who are against you, Rebecca and FTB crowd are vile and morally ugly, terrible people, you probably would miss that this comics just takes whole, race, gender etc, and blame all those people of this race, gender for crimes of other people of same race and gender.
Look at me, I’m seagull, and everyone know that seagulls are scum, but I don’t want to accept that I’m somehow guilty of crimes of other seagulls (someone should really go and watch first episode of Star Trek TNG), but because of this I’m even bigger scum and vile shit (wait, isn’t it what Rebbecca said in one of her videos, that those liberal males with interest in science, who don’t want to support her, are even worst then rape threats). And all this based on fallacy, lie on the straw-man that those people who who disagree, criticize, and don’t want to support this agenda, are all think that rape, rape threats, discrimination because of race/gender are ok, and that they all stay silent when all these bad things happen. Or that they somehow think that there is no, and never was any discrimination because of gender and inequality.
And it’s not true. You want just paint people all black, and call them vile and terrible.
In reality all those people just feel bad, because of Rebecca tone, because of signs of tribalism, because of her negativity to those who don’t really deserve it, because of moralizing tone that crosses line from reasonable criticism into PC-thoughtcrime-police. And because she, and other people like she is, like to invade into some community, and spread negativity, paranoia, distract people from their passion, and their goal.
People want to fight against religion, against charlatans, and pseudoscience – BAM! Now you will have everyone talks about feminism (while it’s not even an issue in atheism community, most people are already for equality, yes you still can criticize community over this topic, but not with so much, disproportional negativity).
People want to play games and have fun – BAM! Now we will have someone saying that all you are bad people because you play games full of sexism (while lying and misrepresenting popular games, that are really doesn’t have any sexist message in them, other then just mirroring modern culture).
You want watch video about making, and technology – BAM! Here are bad jokes and some accusations of sexism, without any evidence that it’s really sexism.
But ok, you want to talk about how it’s ok to challenge communities, with such thing, hey, how about challenges in response? You don’t want to be positive, and you want talk politics, you want talk seriously? Let’s talk. But you don’t, you people just want negative comments disappear, and everyone agreeing with you. And discussing about how all those people who disagreeing with you are vile, and terrible. And ironically, thinking that it’s we are ones who don’t want to be challenged.
And if at least it all would be for good cause, if it would be for real equality, if it wold be against real facts of discrimination, and not just talking about potential thought-crimes, before they happened. And blaming wrong people (oh look, there is no girls in Tested team, must be because of internalized sexism! no? then why you talk about this here? how about go and promote positively science and technology among girls in schools and universities, instead of ridiculing community, that probably has less discrimination, then any other community exist).
In the end, where is difference between conspiracy nut, repeating that “you all sheeple, believing in goverment”, and you repeating about people being “model of white, conservative, upper class privilege” and and ending any criticism with accusation of people being sexist and misogynist. Just another ideology, another dogma, based on some crazy paranoia, and exaggeration of reality, seeing “patriarchy” everywhere. And because of this it’s probably pointless discussion, now I only interested if Adam Savage is one who support all this too, with same level of conviction as you are, and if he really support such moderation of comments, with silly excuses about MRA, and such rhetoric. But I already lost respect to some people here, and to that person, who was removing comments on YouTube.
rabble rabble rabble
She didn’t make that example up out of thin air: http://www.depressionquest.com/
It doesn’t do that at all, actually. It’s an illustration of classically defensive in-group behavior; someone criticizes a member of a group to another member, who is alternately ambivalent to the misbehavior pointed out or takes that criticism to be a sweeping condemnation of all members of their group, and thus becomes defensive. While never acknowledging that a member of their group has done something wrong.
So the fact that you think it does the thing highlighted is actually a lovely illustration of the entire point of the comic.
ETA: As is most of the rest of your post, actually. Especially the BAM parts.
Then i realy don’t understand the problem?? Then anywone how wants to play this game can play it and anyone who want to slaughter aliens can do that.
I starting to think that the problem is choise, i dont think Rebecca likes it when the chose different from preferences.
So what member of what group made something wrong? And where is evidence, that someone among Tested followers made something wrong, and that they don’t want’s to acknowledge it? Most important, where is your connection between that thing that was done wrong, and this group, that you think that you need to address people of this group about this, and not people in general?
Is gender is some group that you choose to belong, or not, and is it some group with some accepted doctrine?
Is gaming, making and atheist community is group that has some doctrine in which it say, that you must be sexist if you want to join?
If not, then how group is relevant to all this at all. If not only you want to say, that group is somehow bad or inherently sexist.
Only point is here is to explain why people don’t want to acknowledge something, because they defend other people just because they are part of group but this is no relevant, this is demagogy, and you didn’t demonstrated fact that someone from this group did something bad, and you didn’t demonstrated fact that other people don’t want to acknowledge this.
Both atheists, skeptic, gaming, making community doesn’t have any ideology that somehow support sexism or racism, so what is reason for anyone to not acknowledged something bad if it’s really happened?
Where is your demonstration that there is reason for “in-group defensive” behavior?
In this way you only use rhetoric and demagogy to prove that you are right, only using fact that people don’t want to agree with you. Oh, you disagree with me – this is must be your in-group defensive behavior, and you don’t want to be challenged! This means that I’m right and you wrong.
No it’s not. Fact that people disagree with you, doesn’t prove that you are right.
Many people who criticize Rebecca Watson, is not people who don’t want to acknowledge something bad inside community or outside community, it’s people who disagree with Rebecca Watson, because they consider her interpretation of different things incorrect, not based on critical thinking, and facts, because they consider it as exaggeration, inventing problem where problem doesn’t exist (and this doesn’t mean that problem doesn’t exist at all).
“What a greedy jew. No I’m not racist, it’s you defensive in-group behavior, because you are jew! This is just proves my point. You don’t want to be challenged”.
FYI–This is probably my favourite forum post of the year. I know I’m guilty. I think it applies to a vast majority of internet discourse.
Well said!
It’s true, I have been guilty of it myself, which is exactly why I’m trying to make the conscious effort to challenge myself more often.
im still in denial that you guys actually let this person on your show… shes horrible.
I want to see more women in geek culture. It enriches us all.
Great speech.