[PA Comic] Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - The Rules
Geth
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Posts
I said NOT TO, FBI. NOT!
That single word makes this whole thing.
STEAM
Free at last, Free at last!
"a trap door opens. And then, darkness." is how I'm going to explain vaginas to my son.
They sure did it's called Scrabble and they made it back in 1948...
*wooosh*
3DS Friend Code: 1821-8991-4141
PAD ID: 376,540,262
Perhaps it isn't just for girls?
Fun fact: Tetris is based on a board game(kinda)
kingworkscreative.com
kingworkscreative.blogspot.com
It's almost like it's assumed that only women play 'casual games'.
Obviously they were trying to squirrel the jewels away in the pretend butt, and it just wasn't working out.
The game knows if you're playing it right. It's the Jumanji of your vagina.
first time backing a kickstarter
Yeah, that story hit home with me, my favorite color as a kid was purple until it became socially unacceptable for a little boy to like purple. Worrying about assigning particular colors or past times to one gender or the other always grinds my gears as a result.
Kayne, that was the exact story with my little brother. We had purple everything for him because it was his very favorite, and he ate so many grape-flavored things changing his diaper was an interesting experience. But most of the stuff we bought him (hats, shirts, novelty sunglasses, whatever) came from the girls' section of the store, because "purple is for girls." I was sad the day he decided he didn't like purple anymore; I'd hoped maybe our complete non-issue with it at home would carry over, but it didn't make it past the first couple months of kindergarten.
That's one of the reasons I really hate it when people tell me things like "No, girls really do prefer pink and don't like science" or whatever. Just because that's what you witness them choosing at the store or when picking classes doesn't mean that's hardwired biology. It means commercials and societal messages are amazingly insidious.
...
...cooool...
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Like, when advertising for a video game is basically softcore snuff porn where a stoic dude in a nice suit engages in slow motion strangulation of women dressed in sexy stripper nun outfits, the proper response is not to get angry and say 'this is bullshit, this kind of misogynistic stuff hurts video games and it hurts society at large,' not to engage in "the swooning and fainting and so forth about this stuff, the fever, is comical in its preening intensity" but only ever to make "more art" (and "if you start to think that less art is the answer, start over")?
And when the Dragon's Crown artist thinks an acceptable way to portray a woman is in a pose where she's bent over, displaying her ass to the viewer, shoving a pole between that ass, and turning around in an anatomically impossible manner to show off anatomically impossible breasts which she is using to molest a skeleton, and by the way she's got a 'come hither' face and she's wearing revealing clothing, the proper response is not to get angry and say 'this is bullshit, dressing women up like this for video games is sending all sorts of horrific messages about what women ought to be like' because that just amounts to "the latest round of compulsory swaying and fainting, so much like an old timey Tent Revival, complete with its hopping devil and its perpetually put upon holy warriors" but instead to just shut up and live with it, because if you say anything, you're worse than a censor: you're forcing the artist to censor themselves via the sick, twisted form of psychological torture known as 'telling someone not to perpetually draw women like ridiculous sex objects that exist only for men?'
And then, having shut up about these things and refrained from forcing people to censor themselves, having been a good little critic who never says anything bad about anyone but instead just makes 'more art,' you encounter a Bejeweled game made for girls, that is where you draw the line? Instead of staying quiet like a good little person, like you did for the Hitman Sexy Nun Murder video or the Dragon's Crown 'women only look like that in a fucked up sexual fantasy' episode, you pipe up and say something like "do they have information that says only girls like it? Are they saying its for girls because the box is purple? They’re the ones who made it that color!" And then it's okay to suddenly get indignant about this stuff's societal effects, by pointing out things like "my son’s favorite color was pink until boys - and, crucially, girls - told him it couldn’t be"?
Really?
I've been trying to think about why Jerry is so utterly and cluelessly contradictory about this stuff, and I've come up with 4 possibilities. Maybe they're all right, maybe they're all wrong, maybe some are right, whatever. I'm curious what other people think. Here are my hypotheses:
1) Jerry doesn't think that stuff like the Hitman nun video or the Dragon's Crown objectification of women has any tangible effect on society, whereas making "Bejeweled for Girls" and coloring it purple does. I guess I can see why - the link from objectification of women and the fetishization of violence against women to what we see today (girls grow up with body issues, men sexually assault women vastly more than women sexually assault men, etc.) isn't quite as crystal clear as the link between Bejeweled for Girls and Jerry's son hiding the pink shirt. So Jerry might just be ignorant (or skeptical and wrong).
2) Jerry's son is at the age where this stuff is starting to affect him (because a boy at any age who goes for pink or purple will feel the effects of societal gender norms) but his daughter has yet to reach the age where this stuff becomes an issue. She hasn't started to hate her body because when she's in a swimsuit it doesn't look like what the media tells her it should look like. She hasn't started to feel the glances of men who size her up and determine how attractive they find her before (or in lieu of) seeing her as a human being. She hasn't had to choose between showing off her body the way society says she ought to, and getting propositioned and leered at and told she "asked for it wearing that outfit" when she's sexually assaulted, or choosing to cover up and feeling the resentment of men who have been raised on a steady diet of media that tells them that that all women, no matter what their role is, need to dress up prettily for men. So perhaps once Ronia grows up some more, Jerry will realize that he's got a stupid double standard going on here and start railing against all ridiculous sexist media, not just Bejeweled.
3) Jerry doesn't feel like the medium he loves is under attack. The Hitman trailer and Dragon's Crown provoked outcry and, as a member of Penny Arcade, the self-appointed defender of video game culture (see, for instance, Child's Play, a charity that basically exists to rehabilitate gamers in the eyes of the world by showing that we're not the shitty people Jack Thompson said we were), Jerry felt like he had to respond, because in his eyes he's no misogynist for liking video games. Meanwhile, there's no uproar about Bejeweled (Penny Arcade excepted) and Bejeweled is just a casual game, not a pillar of the industry like Hitman or the latest title from an indie dev that Jerry absolutely adores.
4) Jerry thinks harmlessly poking fun at Bejeweled is not the same as leveling criticism at Hitman/Dragon's Crown. The latter rises to the level of forcing people to censor themselves - the former is just harmless ribbing.
I've long hoped that as his daughter grows older, his eyes will be more opened to the problems of women in the games industry and he'll start wanting change more fervently.
There's also the possiblity that he sees the problem more clearly when it's his gender, his son that's being shut out of something (which goes back to my thinking his response will change when he really begins to see just how much is daughter is shut out of).
But fuck you — no, fuck y'all, that's as blunt as it gets"
- Kendrick Lamar, "The Blacker the Berry"
Wait, even better, let's not do that.
I just finished my 300 page essay about the anime i wanted to discuss with him. I spent too much damn time on that powerpoint presentation of the anime women i felt were suitable for marriage... Now i'll never get to make my anime thread!
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Maybe everyone would be happy if the next advertisement Hasbro put out was a power ranger on a motorcycle jumping over an exploding car with the bejeweled board game in hand?
Wii: 4521 1146 5179 1333 Pearl: 3394 4642 8367 HG: 1849 3913 3132
Do you seriously think "Boobs in games are okay" and "People should be allowed to like what they do regardless of gender" are diametrically opposed opinions?