Yesterday, Steam fucked up and pulled Hatred from the their Greenlight program. The pussies who made this decision were treated as heroes by the SJW press, as the victim chorus on Twitter celebrated the censorship. I was going to write an editorial about it later this week. I didn’t figure there was a huge rush. It’s not like Steam was going to reverse their decision the very next day. As you can see by the headline, I made a slight miscalculation. Hatred just got restored to Greenlight. The anti-GamerGate morals police just lost yet another battle.
I gotta say, this is pretty cool to see. But it’s still at least a little surprising, given that was taken. Here’s the quote the toady Steam representative gave to the Hatred developers about the original decision to remove the game from Greenlight:
“We wanted you guys to know that based on what we see on Greenlight we would not publish Hatred on Steam. As such we’ll be taking it down.”
One day later, Steam is in full retreat. They’ve also stayed silent on their reasoning. I guess when you offend gamers this fucking badly, it might be better to just silently restore the game. Still, I think they owe us some sort of explanation. I’m not saying anyone has to be fired, or even named. But, we need to know the rationale for this. It was an blatant attack on the mostly deeply held beliefs of our community. While I’m very happy to see they relented, we need answers. I’m hopeful that Steam will offer them within the next few days.
To me, the whole episode just illustrates the power of gamers. As consumers, we rose up, and made our voices heard. This riled up everyone. A lot of voices from outside our movement were pissed about this attack as well. The fact that SJWs, and their accomplices in the agenda media, were cheering this attack on our hobby, says all you need to know about their mentality. These elitists don’t speak for their audience. I’m not even defending all the content in the game. I’m not denouncing it, either. My thoughts on the matter are simple.
I think there should be far fewer barriers on the mainstream games we’re allowed to play, not more. Given the events of the last two days, I would say that most gamers agree. Steam made a huge mistake, and owes us answers. But at least they reversed their disgraceful position quickly. Long story short, the SJW goon squad loses again. GamerGate keeps rolling, and the hits keep coming.
UPDATE: Here’s Steam kingpin Gabe Newell addressing the matter, in a letter to Destructive Creations boss Jaroslaw Zielinski:
“Hi, Jaroslaw,
Yesterday I heard that we were taking Hatred down from Greenlight. Since I wasn’t up to speed, I asked around internally to find out why we had done that. It turns out that it wasn’t a good decision, and we’ll be putting Hatred back up. My apologies to you and your team. Steam is about creating tools for content creators and customers.
Good luck with your game
Gabe”
76 comments
Judging by the trailer, I thought that the game looked too violent and immoral for me to ever play, and I kinda agreed with the SJWs in that aspect. However, it would be wrong of me to judge an entire game off of 2 mins, and I feel like I shouldn’t come out against the game until I’ve seen more of it. I’ll hold my judgement until then.
why should you hold judgement? you know exactly what the game is… an overhead twin stick shooter there are probably thousands of them… it doesnt matter who or what you are killing its just a game
Is it really that much worse than Super Smash TV? Only in the premise I think.
Totally fine and understandable if you wouldn’t want to play the game.
People just shouldn’t ask that those who are interested don’t get to. I happen to like third-person ultra-violent games like Hotline Miami, so I want to see how an isometric one plays.
What is the difference between this and the original Syndicate other than western society becoming a bunch of humorless pussies?
Whilst I wouldn’t say Valve owe us, as such, I do agree that this whole debacle has just thrown the question of valves responsibility for and involvement with moderation and censorship on Steam back into the limelight.
I mean what’s the defense when Gamers complain about broken abandonware now? Should we expect it removed as Hatred was? Or do we take from it that anything can be on Steam? If they’re going to explain themselves for any reason it should be to clear it up to those of us out there who simply don’t know anymore.
The problem you (and most of the rest of us) have with Steam is the fact that Valve plays things extremely close to the chest and virtually never describes its policies in detail. There are no consistent guidelines that anyone outside Valve is aware of regarding what Valve deems acceptable and what Valve deems unacceptable. Such guidelines need to exist or faith in Valve will erode over time as more and more instances of inconsistent behavior crop up.
Hatred is certainly a game I would not play but I would not try to block the game for anyone else who might want to buy it.
Gone Home is a garbage trip-wire-narrative walking simulator that shallowly explores some “touchy” issues (extremely shallowly). I love how cis-hetero-white-males are evil incarnate… but non-normative sex (i.e. kinky sex) is both indirectly and directly harmful to women (I can’t tell you the number of people like gay subculture participants and other subcultures like “furries” who erroneously side with these censors. Victim Culture – they perceive themselves as persecuted and think they have their back, when in fact, they do not.). Hatred is a murder sim without a doubt, but it also appears to be exploring themes of isolation, loneliness, anger, depression and the consequences of society ignorance of suffering. But omg the innocent pixels! It hurts people feels so!
Can someone please explain to me what the fuck “cis” means?
im not 100% but i think it means “correctly identifies sexually” aka normal
lmao
It means “straight”, as opposed to “trans”, which means “opposite”. “Cisgender” or simply “cis” is a definition non-straight people made, because it creates a dualism between “cisgendered” and “transgendered” individuals, meaning it makes them linguistically equal. In other words, deviants were butt-blasted about being defined “not normal”, “deviants” and such, so they made terms for straight and gender-weird people that make them sound the same.
If you accept being called “cisgendered” then you implicitly accept that transgenders are as normal and “natural” as you are. It’s an attempt to modify culture at large by changing the language.
And here I’ve just been calling myself “normal”
“Cis-” is the Latin opposite of the prefix “trans-“. Whereas transgender means you do NOT identify as the gender you were physically born as, cisgender means you DO. A transgender individual born as a man will identify as a woman and vice versa. A cisgender individual born as a man will identify as a man and vice versa. It has nothing to do with sexual orientation whatsoever.
The term is perfectly linguistically sound, but it was concocted by SJWs in a blatant attempt to normalize certain behavior. Given that it has not yet been medically established whether transgenderism is truly natural or merely a mental disorder of some sort, it’s a bit too early to introduce such normalization into the popular lexicon.
tl;dr — get the fuck out of my English, social justice whiners.
I think gender is more fluid than binary and people should be free to look/feel/identify however they want.
I also think people should be free to think the whole thing is retarded.
Personally, I think it is likely that some fraction of people don’t fit their own skin well. I think gender reassignments may not be the best solution, but I also think piercings are stupid and tattoos mostly ill conceived and poorly motivated.
When we get into “kin” or that shit, we’re into mental illness territory.
Kink is fine, but some of them take it a step further than kink and are straight up insane.
Gender isn’t “fluid” so much as it is a gradient. There’s a difference. Nobody oscillates on the gradient. It doesn’t happen. Fluidity implies an inherently shifting nature which, as far as we know, scientifically speaking, is not present in gender identification.
Gender as a mental construct is in large part the result of the hormones in which the brain is “cooked” during development. It will range from super-masculine to super-feminine depending on the levels of testosterone and estrogen present. This is why we have tomboys and effeminate men. This is why we have homosexuality and heterosexuality. This is, as far as we know, the reason transsexuality is a thing — a male body cooked itself a female brain, or vice versa. (Nurture also plays into this to some extent, but science has already shown that boys and girls behave very differently at EXTREMELY early ages, long before social and cultural cues educate them on things like “boys’ toys” and “girls’ toys”.)
What we don’t know is whether or not transsexuality is inherently UNHEALTHY (i.e. whether it’s a disorder or merely non-standard). We DO know that transsexuals have an unusually high suicide rate, which could imply some form of mental instability, but we don’t know if that’s true or what causes it if it really is true. It could be due to inherent imbalances, or it could be due to rampant social rejection of that particular state of being. We simply don’t know.
With all that said…
Everyone is free to identify as whatever they wish. I am equally free to point and laugh at someone who is obviously outwardly male when they insist that they are a woman. Society doesn’t give a damn what anyone’s personal identifications are. It never has and likely never will. Conversations do not begin with “before we start, what do you identify as, so I don’t offend you?” (unless of course you’re on Tumblr, but we don’t speak of that particular looney bin). If you are outwardly a woman, you will be referred to as such. If you are outwardly a man, you will be referred to as such. Real-life society operates off the visibly obvious. If anyone takes offense at that, GROW UP. The rest of the world cannot read your mind, and no one on this planet is obligated to protect anyone else’s delicate sensibilities.
“gradient” is much more appropriate indeed, especially when using it to describe individuals.
I still think the term “fluid” is not entirely inappropriate when generalising about the concept of gender as a whole, though I appreciate the ambiguity of meaning and the possibility of misunderstandings.
What gender even means is not rigid. The expression of a person’s sex varies from culture to culture and has changed through time (high heels were once a sign of masculinity, now they are very much a feminine gender signifier)
Hell, even sexuality as we state it as “normal” now is pretty damn modern and Abrahamic. (many ancient cultures did not think of sex in the same terms, with plenty of evidence of “straight” family men taking on male lovers with)
I just think any form of puritanism or desperate judgement of the lives of others is retarded.
Live and let live.
I think we’re likely closer in opinion than not, if we’re arguing semantics 😀 (which is a pleasure btw)
Certainly a worthwhile response, many thanks!
At what age do you consider “EXTREMELY early” and what kinds of behaviour have been observed? Link to research would be appreciated.
Voted you up for explaining it well, then voted you down for your attempt to dictate how and when we can use words to describe things. Has it been medically established that homosexuality is natural? If so, do you think people were wrong to incorporate it into their lexicon, thus normalising it before such a time?
While PLENTY of other animals on the planet exhibit homosexual behavior, I cannot think of a single one that alters it’s gender behavior. Plus, unless you’ve got the cash to just go to Thailand, the U.S. MAKES you go through a mandatory psych eval and waiting period to make sure you just don’t have a psychiatric condition. People who go through sexual reassignment and don’t “get what they were expecting” have this nasty habit of killing themselves. Can’t have tax payers opting out now, can we? So yeah, I refuse to identify as “cis”, and I’m also gay and I only say “LGB” (whatever bisexuals and lesbians are lucky I put them first…), the “T”? I’m sorry, not a sexual orientation. And it also’s sunk some VERY important legislation in the past.
It means “not trans”.
Of course the people screaming “Die Cis Scum!” generally aren’t trans either, but SJWs generally aren’t gay, minorities, or women, so why would they break the pattern this time?
By screaming do you mean typing it on the internet?
Mr. Garrison summed it up – it’s a word that trans people use to describe non-trans people aka “normal” people (nothing wrong with that word btw, normal doesn’t have any negative connotations considering that transgender is a hyper minority… and a lot of them have some pretty profound mental illnesses…). As Mr. Garrison put it, saying “normal” is “highly offensive”… but fuck political correctness.
Maybe we ‘cis’ find ‘cis’ to be offensive? Where is our say in the matter? the word sounds really gross, reminds me of cyst. People who are homosexual get a word that used to mean happy and we get a word that is one sound away from being a painful nasty blemish full of pus that needs to be purged? The pronunciation also means ‘yuck’ in some african countries. Almost like they did a lot of research into how nasty of a word they could give us while also tying to a latin root word.
Bingo
joke answer: it’s short for circumCISed
Eh, I thought technically Gone Home was a well designed game. Lots of attention to detail. But the Steam blurb was damned near misleading and there wasn’t near enough meat on the bones. It was like ordering a big bacon cheeseburger and an order of fries, and getting a grilled cheese sandwich and potato chips. Sure, you can eat it, but that’s not what you wanted! Where’s my plot, dammit?
Pretty disappointing in my opinion.
Well, considering that SJWs have repeatedly denied fun as being necessary for games (which is utter horseshit), and Anita was quoted as saying she found it “not fun and emotionally devastating” (this was a good thing to her, because she is a sick fuck), that should give you an indicator of why it got such high praise. Trip-Wire-Narrative Walking Simulators are not games. There is no storytelling, no plot, nada. Just pretty environments (if you get even that) and some schlepy schmutzy shit about feels.
Yeah, that does seem to be the sticking point with SJWs. I’ve seen some of the same sentiments where they’re trying to push a ‘message’ in sci-fi rather than tell the story.
It’s a shame, really. All that technical detail and they waste it on a half-assed visual novel about lesbian love. Hooray.
Hell Yeah!!!
I’m okay without an official explanation seeing as how they reversed a bad decision so quickly. It’s not out of the question to assume that one person made the call to pull the game and the resulting commentary made the higher-ups realize it was the wrong decision.
It’s back on and we without any hesitation or long waiting period to do so. That squares things with me.
There’s space in this hobby for all kinds of games. I don’t have to like every single one of them, but nobody should be funneled into only buying games I like.
That’s my guess too, some small fry asshole decided to get ideological and then got wrecked when a few hundred emails slammed into Gabe’s inbox within the first few hours.
Anyway thanks Ralph I needed some good news.
One random person made the decision and suddenly the fucking VP of marketing at Valve came out to support it?
No, somehow I don’t really think it was one random person that did this.
it is possible the VP of marketing was the random person to decide. Also bear in mind that command structure at Valve makes little to no sense. They pretty much have none outside of the marketing team, and that is strictly limited to marketing. Not even Gabe Newell is allowed to tell Valve what to do.
As an employee in the tippy-top of the tech sector who used to work retail, I can say that horizontal structuring is the best, but it does allow employees to make decisions that aren’t always the greatest. However, it should be noted that horizontally-structured businesses are also very quick to respond to escalations of bad decisions, and in general are much better at resolving problems than vertically-structured businesses.
Gabe most certainly can tell Valve what to do, but the point is that he DOESN’T most of the time. He usually doesn’t need to. That’s the beauty of the horizontal structure.
He has specifically come out and said he can’t force direction and goals. He even said there have been times he really tried to but apparently failed to gt whatever movements he wanted. He however does have no big regrets in the company being horizontal.
I’m betting it was someone acting alone. Then Valve was thinking WTF with all screaming (when we freaked out), found out why and fixed it. Given how consumer centric Steam is, that’s the only thing that I can think of to explain the quick turn around.
Steam realized the hypocrisy of taking down Hatred for “violent content”, when there are hundreds of violent games still on their site. They know that they would either have to take them all down, which would take a huge chunk of their profit margin, or man up and put it back up alongside all the other games full of violent content.
I wonder if these were the actions of a rogue employee. I’m not sure Gabe would permit anything quite so shambolic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/2pk375/gaben_apologizes_to_hatred_developers/
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
Horizontally-structured business. Any employee could have made that decision with little to no pre-approval. It’s possible the VP of Marketing did it himself, but it’s infinitely more likely that someone else in the rank-and-file of Valve made the call and the VP merely communicated the decision, trusting that it had been made appropriately. That’s the sole weakness of the horizontal structure — decisions are not always the best, but they can and will be altered in a flash if displeasure is expressed.
>be polish
>post communist, feelsgood.jpg
>mfw censorship
>lord gaben apologizes
>faith in humanity restored
The timing was terrible . . . after a tiny group of people got GTA5 taken off of Target and Kmart shelves in Australia. Well, a tiny group of non-consumers or marginal consumers had a couple of victories. . . but then a larger group of actual consumers have reacted and flexed their own muscle. Well done, #gamergate
Not sure Hatred is game I wanna play either. But it has the right to be on steam
like any other game. People can buy it if they want or leave it be if they
don’t care about it.
While Hatred didn’t impress me much (looks like someone was trying to out-edgy Postal and Manhunt), considering some of the absolute crap that seems to be spat out of Greenlight… it didn’t look terribly bright for Steam to pull this.
It’s annoying too, because I’ve found some real gems on Greenlight. I like 7 Days to Die. One Finger Death Punch is a GREAT way to blow off stress. Gunpoint’s a clever retro game. It’s not necessary to be edgy to succeed — you just have to be GOOD.
I’d rather just play Manhunt again. Hatred to me looks wayyyyy too repetitive.
I’d love to see the statistics on male SJWs/RadFems to see how many have primarily female role models. And then I’d like to see how many of those had absent/weak/abusive father figures in their lives. My theory is that if you identify as a male and your primary role model isn’t also male, then there is something not-quite-right with your psychology.
A comment like that could have come from the Westboro Baptist Church. You could even drop the first O to help yourself to blend in.
Replying to a 4 month old comment? This conversation ended a while ago. And the critics of Hatred were proven absolutely wrong and utterly defeated and shattered. Now scurry along.
Damn right I’m replying to a 4 month old comment. Who made you the comment police? I wasn’t talking about the reactionary game from Poland made controversial because of one man’s goof, I was talking about your assertion that men who have role models who aren’t male have psychological problems based on their relationship with or lack of a father. Do you still stand by that? Most of my role models for example are naturally male, it’s down to the society that preceded me and I have no problem with that. But I do also have many many female role models. Their genders don’t concern me as I judge them for their contributions to society and aspire to be like them male or female.
I posited the idea that SOME men who have clear psychological issues (of course they’re just SPECIAL and I’m being an oppressive shit lord lol) could have those because they lack a male figure to identify with and have a conflicting self image related to only having female role models to emulate – something they can never completely do by virtue of not being female. I made this comment because I happen to know someone (yes this is an anecdote, take it as you will), who grew up with a single, VERY aggressive (physically and verbally) mother who was openly hateful towards men because of her “peace of shit ex-boyfriend who got her pregnant and happened to be a cop”. Whom she worked very hard to keep away from her son out of sheet spite, despite the father and son wanting to have a relationship.
She enrolled him at Christian Brothers Academy and he grew up to be a spoiled, yet obedient lad who think he understands EVERYTHING about the world and wants very much to go to Wesley so he can be yet further immersed in Women’s Issues. He’s also an insufferable cunt and, as he and I are both gay men I feel I can make this point, a mincing, hypersensitive, humorless jackass (just like mommy, save for the mincing part).
Your follow up after you ask that question is a non-sequitur; it has nothing to do with my asking that question. You’re simply making a sideways remark about how most of your role models are “naturally male” (which you claim is because of the society that preceded you… what?) which indicates you view it as natural. Also having female role models (you don’t indicate how many or to what capacity they influence you) is irrelevant since the question is about men having a complete lack of male role models and potentially have a narrative of continual misandry cast around them as a result. And your last sentence suffers from the same disconnected point since, again, you don’t fall into the category of hypothetical males lacking male role models of any description.
It’s nice that you want to talk about this, but you’re doing it wrong.
Preceded, as in “came before”. I’m sure that’s the correct English. Anyway, before I was born there were very few scientists and engineers who weren’t male. This only indicates that their culture wasn’t one that easily allowed women to flourish in those areas. It has nothing to do with nature or what is natural but all to do with society and at what stage it was in regard to gender politics.
I’m not sure what to make of your anecdote as I don’t know their full story. I know all sorts of jackasses, male, female, with different personalities, gentle, aggressive and so on. Some had fathers in their lives, some didn’t, some even lacked mothers and others had two of the same. It’s impossible to know why one person turns out the way they do. I’m not even sure what exactly is wrong with him apart from that you dislike him, that you perceive him as a know it all and that he’s sensitive. However, I do think children could benefit from all sorts of role models in their lives, of all genders and sexualities as well as their parents. Not to make sure they grow up to fit a standard, but to show them how diverse the world is.
I’m not sure what problem you have with my last sentence. How do you know that I don’t fit that category?
Do you really want me to go into the depths of my live and how my female role models influenced me? I could but it might be easier for my to write a book.
-Timmothy
“Anyway, before I was born there were very few scientists and engineers who weren’t male. This only indicates that their culture wasn’t one that easily allowed women to flourish in those areas.” – Timmothy
And you would be DEAD wrong. That’s the correlation of causality fallacy. Also, you didn’t state when you were born, so I have no idea if you’re old or where you’re from or if you’re just making a completely fallacious anecdote (anecdotes being invalid as a form of proof). It’s also a broad generalization about your experience in your culture, which obviously doesn’t apply everywhere. I’m just going to throw out a single example: Marie Curie. Yes, she worked alongside her husband, as an equal, but she was still a scientist. I mean, there’s just so much wrong with the fact that you would hold up your extremely limited, unresearched personal views on the subject as though it somehow made perfectly rational sense. I’m sorry but going forward we’re going to have to mark it that you don’t know how to construct a rational/logical argument. That being said, let’s continue.
This is the problem with feminists and social justice warriors and extremists of ANY persuasion – they’re the new version of the obnoxious “college know-it-all hippie”, and they have zero grasp of actual history because they get force fed nonsense by biased people with an agenda and for some reason they never think to doubt them (oh wait, if they doubt them then they’re accused of being a racist/misogynist/etc, right right). Self-righteousness and sanctimonious pretense is no substitute for an actual grasp of facts.
You make an assertion to counter my proposed theory, but you don’t back up your assertion. You are aware that an assertion is not proof in it’s own right, yes? I stated that I had noticed a trend among certain individuals engaging in certain behaviors with a shared political/social view and mused if that might be a contributing factor. So far all you’ve done is try to shuffle sideways into a “omg xyz group had it soooo bad in the past”, therefore it’s GOT to be the society!
I would just like to point out the very obviously avoided FACT that dates all the way back to the origins of human civilization that women took up a domestic role purely because while pregnant they are vulnerable to a variety of negative potentialities, and that after they give birth, they are the only ones capable of FEEDING the young, which means they will be staying home. And while they’re there, the males will be out hunting/gathering/making a living of some sort, as someone has to put food on the table and gather resources for the broader society. Now take into consideration the lack of birth control, the relatively short lifespan of humans up until only around the last 150 or so years, and the EXTREMELY high infant mortality rate, and you’re going to have a significant trend of women existing in a domestic setting. This obviously carried forward for thousands of years because it WORKED. This is why the “oppressor/oppressed” narrative of Social Justice is so ridiculous and relies on hyperbole and misinformation; because it is fighting against the simple needs of nature and the conveniences of biology. Sorry if that was a little tangential, but I felt the need to provide something of a history lesson to you and my followers.
I think we can both agree that people benefit from a variety of role models. The issue that I had is when people are completely LACKING in one kind, especially when that lack is intentional, or even overly hostile/hateful. Think of it this way: Raise a child to hate black people or jews, and they’re likely going to grow up a rather unpleasant bigot, or at the very least live with that bigotry impressed into their psyche. Now, apply that type of animosity to, say, a gender. Now imagine what that is going to do to a person who is a part of that gender with no positive role models to reference? That’s a recipe for self hate and projection.
The sad thing is a lot of “gender feminists” (which is a particularly frightening group of “theory” activists) push those kinds of attitudes in order to justify their theories about gender being completely separate from sex (it’s not, there’s no evidence supporting that claim and anyone who doesn’t have a bias towards promoting that agenda doesn’t endorse it). The “funny” part is that SJWs and RadFems make this argument all the time about women being taught to view themselves in a negative light, but then hypocritically deny that this happens with males, to such an extent that they refuse to acknowledge it’s possibility because of the “patriarchy” (something that has not EVER been demonstrated to actually exist in the 1st world but is routinely cited as the boogey man). If you’d like to see significant “anti-masculine/male” propaganda, all you need do is google search cute things like “fckh8” and other agendas that specialize in spreading misinformation and “shaming” of men for trivial, hypocritical bullshit (see: manspreading).
I thought we were talking about role models and male figures and what you consider to be maleness? I am not debating about radical feminism and SJW (?) I do have a question; if society doesn’t shape culture, then who does? God? Flying spaghetti monster? Thanks for the lesson but it wasn’t necessary and I’m not sure how I avoided any facts regarding gender roles in society and how they have changed to allow women to pursue careers that were previously seen as typically male. I’ll ignore what you said about me being unable to construct a rational argument because it seems like an attempt to derail. You’re not too coherent yourself and have a tendency to ramble.
Marie Curie is one of my cherished role models. I aspire to have the drive she did, I think already possess the enthusiasm. Marie Curie was devoted to her husband and he her and of course they worked together as equals. However, I’d be interested to know how you feel about the sexism she encountered during her career as you didn’t mention anything about the role of gender politics in your history lesson.
I agree that raising a child to hate something might end up with them hating it. But the man you’re talking about is apparently gay, how does that work? Surely he would have grown to hate his own gender so much he would have repressed this? Either way, this is your commentary on one man’s life based on the fact you disagree with him and are using pseudo-psychological arguments based on the only facts of his live available to you. This is not evidence enough to say that males with female role models are psychologically deficient. It’s as if you are saying they are lesser men because they don’t conform to your vision of maleness. Do you consider your friend to be a lesser man? Does he consider himself a man?
Manspreading, that’s hilarious. I’m an introvert. I like to keep my knees together and keep to myself. I have a friend who likes to spread himself out though. I wonder if he’ll feel oppressed if I tell him he’s man spreading himself on my couch? (that was a joke!) On a bus though, do you think it’s unreasonable to find that behaviour annoying? Is it even an issue?
As for gender and sex, this is a complicated and thus barely explored issue so far so evidence would naturally be lacking. I can only speak for my own knowledge of intersex conditions which definitely raise a lot of questions in the area of biological sex versus psychological gender. Many intersex conditions fall in between the two established norms and its common to “correct” them based on nothing more than outside appearance. How would you determine their gender?
I’m starting to see a flaw in your questions: You are making the assumption that society shapes a culture and not the other way around. Or that they could function with independent aspects. Or that there could be one or more other factors at play. The fact of the matter is that social groups are limited by the number of meaningful relationships that can be maintained by the people in that society. That number has a limit (this number is called the Dunbar Number and is thought to range from 100 to 250, but people seem inclined to meet in the middle at approximately 150) and that limit reflects the point at which people are no longer able to comfortably associate and recognize the social relationships between all members of a group. In order to expand that number, societies have to adopt increasingly strict and, given the fact that the majority of human technological, social and intellectual progress has taken place in the last century and the earliest evidence of human civilization dates back to about 120,000 years ago, repressive guidelines, rules and laws in order to maintain social cohesion, if not harmony.
Social mores and norms change over time, which is why things like appeals to morality or “objective morality” (a common tactic of religion or the sanctimonious of any flavor) are laughably stupid. They change, based on what society can and is willing to handle, based on needs to that society.
Think of it like the standard model used to explain how evolution works to children: If conditions in an environment are favorable, then change isn’t something that is required and thus the gradual accumulation of potentially favorable changes needed for evolution to occur aren’t as likely. Simply put, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
However, as another saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Things like the suffragette movement and “women’s lib” (which also encompassed the broader counter culture/sexual revolution/etc movement) did not occur spontaneously, but as a result of favorable conditions which allowed those issues to become not only worthy of attention, but able to allow resources to be allocated towards them. Fast forward to a more practical example: The events of World War 1 and 2.
You get the iconic “Rosey the Riveter” (who by modern Feminist standards would be considered sexist since Rosey is wearing makeup and is attractive a classical “male” standard of beauty… which is a retarded point to try and make since beauty is based around symmetry as that is the hallmark of healthy genetics and humans, like other symmetrical, social creatures with mating behaviors including, but not limited to, courtship. And frankly sane, emotionally secure people like to identify with beauty and don’t instead find it reinforcing their own self worth issues – sorry, tangent) who urged women to get out and work to support their men who going and dying by the scores on a daily basis. Women did their part and when the men came how, they resumed the jobs that they had left and the women had filled; the status quo of the society resumed what it was before. But women had discovered that many of them enjoyed working outside the home. They didn’t want things to go back to the way it was before the War, and, prior to the great depression there were more than enough jobs to accommodate women entering the work force, because, after all an unmarried woman needed a way to support herself.
This is a point I’ve been trying to drive home to a LOT of people for MONTHS: Societies and social groups don’t engage in specific behaviors to specifically screw with people (hold on, we’ll get to Jim Crow in a second) within a system that functions satisfactorily for the majority in power (which need not be a numerical majority), emphasis being on “functions satisfactorily.” On the topic of things like Jim Crow and the perpetual racism of the Southern United States which is the eternal shame of everyone who isn’t a massive douche bag, that is the result of imposing rapid society change on a group of people who were directly benefiting from the previous system and felt completely taken advantage of in the new system. Now, from the perspective of basic human rights, that’s fucking stupid, but when you zoom backwards in the time and view the landscape through the lens of the “landed southern aristocracy” that were the plantation owners who wielded the vast majority of social, political and financial capital, they were absolutely and totally put out by the end of slavery and the dismantling of their way of life.
Complex issues have to be given the necessary attention they are due, and unfortunately thanks to things like historian’s bias and overzealous, self righteous crusaders, unpleasant, yet crucial events like those that took place in the socio-cultural fabric of the Southern United States, are routinely overlooked, trivialized and even obfuscated.
A society is the social connections between people living together in a community. A culture is comprised of traits which embody values in that society and which are viewed to be most valuable in perpetuating stability – those two words are very important. Culture is identified by the products it creates and is reflective of people or groups attitudes and values. A society will establish the roles, rules and norms that have been collectively deemed by it’s members, over time, as the best way of continuing a cohesive existence. One does not directly control the other; which is a common, and entirely false, claim that so-called “culture critics” like Anita Sarkeesian (well, really it’s Jonathan McIntosh) routinely attempt to sell people on. Your culture can reflect aspects of your society, but it will change over time and it will also be diversely distributed depending on which group you are engaging with. Your society is infinitely slower to change because it is built on things that historically work and require a tremendous amount of planning and execution to successful alter.
On the note of gender politics, I will acknowledge that my specialty is cultural history, and I am not as nuanced in the details of these events without referencing secondary and source materials. I will say this on the subject; anyone who is new to a field, especially when it is considered socially “proper” to be in the home and raising children, would understandably be viewed as an upstart. The question needed even be if she were capable, but if it were even necessary. Now, such a question is abhorrent and unthinkable, by TODAY’S standards. But this is where you have to stop focusing on gender politics and on sociology and try and behave like a dutiful historian and put yourself in the shoes and mindset of the people in the past.
Curie was had the burden to prove that she belonged in a world that was traditionally only the domain of men. It was not incumbent on them to break with tradition or the established norms which had worked for so long. I very much doubt, nay, I’d be completely certain that what she experienced was not even remotely comparable to what we think of as sexism in modern terms. I know, that must sound horrifically “conservative,” but, firstly let me assure that I am anything but a “conservative,” however what many people who are so eager to identify as “liberal” have forgotten is that you cannot simply just start tearing up things that have worked for a very long time without absolutely being certain that it not only is worth it, but that it won’t cause more harm than good. This is why the judicial activities of the Supreme Court and lower courts can take so long and seem so arcane – they are weighing the very fate of the system; as the system that Western Civilization revolves around is the Law, and that Law must be enforceable as well as able to maintain a definable status quo.
All that said, gender politics belongs in gender studies, and not in history. It is not the duty of anyone, save the dead, to judge the actions of the distant past. We only can document the past and attempt to learn from our mistakes, as they will always be the most obvious.
Why would you assume that a male, growing up to hate his gender, would repress his homosexuality? Homosexuality is, stereotypically, associated with femininity, simply by the association of the heterosexual female/male relationship and the more “feminine” male/male relationship. Now, don’t get me wrong, we’re at the point now in history where it’s plainly obvious that sexual orientation isn’t a choice (bisexuals being the luckiest of all I suppose), but I still fail to see why you would think someone would repress their sexual orientation for that reason. If anything is going to cause repression it’s expectations of “proper” masculinity and to fit into a hetero-normative world; if testimonies from hundreds of gay men about reasons for being closeted for as long as they were count for anything. I know I didn’t come out myself because my father had expressed some very unflattering attitudes about homosexuals and about what the model for masculinity was. It didn’t help I was Catholic either, but fortunately I figured out religion was bullshit around the age of 16 and determined that everyone making claims and only relying on their “absolute morality” as the only proof they needed were equally full of bullshit.
Oh, and he’s not my friend. He was the son of an acquaintance of whom I am none too fond because of her hostile attitudes. He was simply a long term betting exercise on how he’d “likely” turn out. And as for a my “vision of maleness”, plainly put, overtly effete behavior when utilized as a form of social peacockery (spend some time around the gay community; you’d be surprised how many of our fairy princesses become terribly butch when the circumstances arise) or when “taking back” what is essentially a stereotype because one builds ones identity and behaviors around perceived stereotypes for a group, is exceptionally annoying, if not in some instances out right offensive. It’s not unlike that quaint little fraction of black culture that finds some reason to celebrate being “ratchet” or a “thot” or any other stereotype.
And yes, some people really are just the real McCoy when it comes to stereotypical behavior, but as stereotypes are NEVER a good thing, I see no reason to pretend otherwise simply because some poor bastard lacks the self awareness to realize they are the thing that the bigoted use to smear everyone else.
Manspreading is not an issue, in so much as the powers that be in every facet of American life should have told these social media jackasses to fuck off and walk and/or get a car. I invite you to research Sweden, a country where it is now going to be illegal to criticize politicians for their actions, or lack their of on social policies – the focus there having to do with immigration, rape (interestingly enough a lot of middle eastern immigrants commit said rapes and then are literally apologized for, claiming they lack the adequate “privilege” from their cultural background to know it’s wrong, because apparently insane is in fashion in Sweden) and feminism. Oh, and their flag is also apparently racist. I mention all this because this is where this insanity sprung from, and routinely continues to flow. Never mind the fact that women routinely will put their hand bag on the seat adjacent to them, taking up a second seat, yet, if you sit down next to a man who is allowing his testicles a modicum of comfort, they will almost always (we’re talking 99,999,999 out of 1 million here) adjust their legs if you make contact with them or it becomes immediately obvious that personal space is being invaded.
Of course this tumblr princess fueled insanity also fails to take into consideration that people on a crowed public transport who frequently use it have long evolved beyond the kind of social squeamishness the rest of the more sheltered population might feel around the crush of humanity. One of my favorite pictures in the Manspreading campaign was some poor bastard on an almost EMPTY subway car who had his legs up and was clearly resting, being lambasted for his “insensitivity”, meanwhile the woman who posted it had an oversize hand bag and 3 shopping bags. My second favorite was a woman with 4 children of differing, but close age, taking up a bench of 3 seats, with the full expectation that a man would get up, not only for her, but obviously for her children. But women are always victims and they never get any kind of special treatment or consideration from evil men who just want to take up all the room and force the poor, poor tumblr princess onto the floor. -_- The sad thing, this is so stupid it borders on insane, but it was all over social media and the NYC transportation authority WASTED tax payer money on a campaign to get these people to shut the hell up through appeasement. Honestly, if Hitler and Nazi Germany taught the West anything it’s that you do NOT appease people.
I’m glad that we agree that evidence is lacking. I’d hope you’d also agree that until we have not only a better idea of how the brain works, but of how things like identity etc (I invite you to look up the “purple penguins” insanity that some “gender feminist consultants” inflicted on a school) work, that we not start experimenting on children, namely because what you seem to get from that sort of thing is hypersensitive, pearl clutching, hand wringing permanent children with a massive entitlement complex despite being almost criminally mediocre.
I will say but one thing on the subject of biological sex versus gender, and this is THE bone of contention with the gay community and the very small transgender community who has come along for the ride: I do not care which bathroom you want to use, however, so long as you a) cannot successfully pass for the gender your desire to be and b) possess the genitalia of the opposite gender, the restroom you should be using is the one that aligns with your equipment. Why? Because you are causing a great many people concern for their personal safety in a space that is both intimate and evokes feelings of vulnerability. People always hear about some poor pre-op, pre-hormone trans-woman who was being “bullied” about wanting to use the ladies room (and they never interview the women who were being made to feel uncomfortable because as cis-hetero’s their feelings are irrelevant), but I’ll give you an anecdote of what it’s like if a woman comes into the men’s room because their line is backed up. Men are socially engineered to be polite around women, which includes bodily noises and an increased self awareness to smells. If you can’t pass as a man, then you’re going to make every man in there very uncomfortable (this is, of course, saying nothing on the subject of the fact that no matter what you do to your body you’ll never get change you XX or XY chromosome pairing. That being said, finish your transition and I’ll use whatever pronoun you like and have no quarrel with you using the bathroom you best feels works with your gender.
That’s the really weird bit though. If you’re born female, but feel male, and you use the ladies room and it makes you all anxious, but no one KNOWS that “on the inside” you’re male… then what are you anxious embarrassed about? The handful of times I’ve had to breakdown and use the ladies toilet in cases of emergency I was just embarrassed to in a space designated specifically for women. It was “taboo,” hence the anxiety.
Oh, and please don’t forget that gender dysphoria is a real psychiatric condition and that people who are beginning transition from one gender to the other are SUPPOSED to undergo psychiatric counseling and observation (although it’s easy enough to find a doctor who will just sign off because they share the same ideology. Or you can just fly to Thailand if you have the money). There’s a lot we don’t understand about transgender issues, not necessarily gender itself as all people must be reviewed on a case by case basis. And then there are the enormous number of special snowflakes who say and do things for attention and the legitimately crazy people who claim to be things like a wolf or a dragon or a fig tree. It’s a big bag of confusion with a lot of balls labeled “mentally ill” tossed in there and it’s one of those reasons the gay community will be supportive, but at a distance with these sorts of things.
And I’ll wrap it up by saying simply that – if you’re born male, and you identify male, then great, same thing for the female/female pairing. If you’re transgender, then, also great, have fun. Just make sure it’s what you want before you get anything cut off. However, the notions of “intersex” or “gender neutral” lol, no. That’s like “asexuals” (who by their own website recognize lack of a sex drive is likely the sign of a medical condition) claiming it’s an orientation (just like atheism is apparently a religion according to religious people – that’s sarcasm btw) and wanting to march in the gay pride parade. To be fair though if they could talk the Irish into letting us march in their parade we might be more accommodating… The reason I mention all this? Until there’s some actual evidence, and not just the protestations of people who are, for all intents and purposes, seemingly disturbed, then it’s simply not going to be taken seriously. There definitely are two genders/sexes simply based on the fact that it comes in two flavors – XX and XY. I’m sure people can have a “conflicting” gender identity in a similar fashion as someone having a “conflicting” sexual orientation; nature certain didn’t intend for non-reproductive sexual pairings in a species that reproduces sexually. It just so happens that none of those things have any kind of objective value attached to them, as far as “right and wrong/good and bad” goes. The only people who are still picking fights their would be the religious. Oh, and people don’t get to make up words/redefine words, which is something that commonly happens in these situations. Phew, that took a long ass time to write.
I’m loving seeing #FullMcIntosh having a fit online again. Jim Sterling says “they don’t want to take your games away” yet every action shows that if they could, McIntosh and Sarkeesian would absolutely ban anything they don’t like. Willful ignorance ’cause he wants the cash flow the SJW army provide when they’re rabid and foaming at the mouth about something.
Good to hear that Gabe Newell still works like a normal gamer after Lombardi pulled his dick move.
Jim Sterling is a cuckold and a shit bag. He just wants to make the same kind of money Anita did by being a whiny, opinionated prick that makes arguments based off appeals to emotion and weasel words, rather than facts and sound logic. And Gabe Newell is a businessman and knows where his bread is buttered.
Fuck answers, I want a head on a pike, preferably one with brightly dyed hair and a mouth that vomits forth SJW rhetoric and babbles about first world problems.
I giggled so hard when I read the bit in the Guardian where they sobbed that now that Hatred has been reinstated it will likely (it’s currently No. 1) get published/sold on Steam. BECAUSE DOING WHAT THE CONSUMER BASE WANTS IS SOMEHOW WRONG.
Free. Fucking. Speech. If you live in some ass backwards, socially repressive shit hole, tough fucking luck! Here in the first world, we respect that shit and if you don’t like it, we’d be more than happy to leverage a massively inflated army budget to explain why you are mistake. ^_^
These damn fools and their crying about appealing to “base human traits”… we’re animals, our “base traits” are irrelevant – this transhumanist “rise above” crap is beyond inane. That and all these damn fools who honestly believe that media influences culture instead of being an obvious PRODUCT of culture. Oh, and the whole reality != fantasy matter. Stupid, they’re all just SO stupid.
But we continue to win, so I welcome their continued renditions of Picket’s Charge.
It is not even about free speech, it is capitalism. The market(us, the people who actually play games) want this game, the developers got the capital together and provided it, and now we are going to buy it. Anti gamergate people, morphed into anti games we don’t approve of, and now it appears they are just against anything gamers might enjoy. When I look at their posts online the commenters are mostly people who freely admit they do not play games and are in it for political brownie points. I hope this game makes millions, I am sure going to buy it.
They’re god damn bullies. They need to get the fuck out of our hobby.
Brianna Wu was just tweeting about how far america has fallen because of the CIA torture report and all of her toady followers stepped in line and parroted her disdain for the country that shelters and protects them. Just a bunch of worthless fuckwits.
These people don’t even comprehend the slightest bit why torture is wrong. They’re just “GOMPs” – good open-minded people. They want to be seen to be doing the “right progressive” thing because in their pathetic, weak minds it’s popular. American didn’t have very far to fall with the CIA’s actions. They’ve done shady shit in the past, they do it now and they’ll do it in the future. That’s what they do. That’s what a lack of transparency in an agency that is supposed to be secretive that had a government leadership (bush and cheney) that were respectively stupid and evil, will get you. Torture is, and always will be, ineffective because you can never be certain if the person is just telling you lies to make the pain stop. I’m sure there are real “I need the codes to defuse the bomb, hand me those pliers” moments, but they are bound to be very, very rare.
Or it could just be that they do comprehend why torture is wrong and are simply bemoaning it like you or I might? What would make you think otherwise?
They really do believe that they are better than the unwashed masses that do not swallow and regurgitate their dogma from cradle to grave. How any sentient being could be so unaware of their hypocrisy and stupidity is simply beyond explanation.
Confirmation Bias taught by a culture that is drenched in religion. If there were no religion to teach people that everything exists to reinforce their world view, and that they are PROBABLY FUCKING WRONG due to their inherent IGNORANCE, they’d be more likely to be a bit more critical in what they think and how they get their information/who they trust.
Based Newell
I’m gonna buy Hatred just to cheese off the whiners
Half a cheer for Gaben!
“I don’t like this, so NOBODY ELSE can enjoy it either.”
Yeah, that’s justice.
Greenlight, as a system, allows consumers to vote on whether they want to give a given game a CHANCE at success in Valve’s store. There should be no such thing as pulling proposals from Greenlight merely because they don’t align with the ideology of one or more groups (majority or not). Games should get onto Steam on their merit, and should then be voted on with the wallets of the consumers on the same basis.
Valve, step up to the plate and provide some clear-cut guidelines on what you deem “out of bounds” for your storefront. Stop playing around and get serious.
Always found the backlash against this game interesting: why is the content of this game more offensive than, say, Grand Theft Auto or Payday? In what world is murdering police officers because they’re getting in the way of you violently robbing and looting stores, taking civilians hostage then violently beating or killing them, and doing a shooting spree more ‘morally acceptable’? Because they’re getting in your way? Because they ‘deserve it’? ‘Self defense’? Because the protagonists are ‘badasses’?
What Hatred is doing is taking the exact same thing that players are able to do in a host of other games, and removing the thin veneer of moral acceptability that players use to justify their actions. The main character is motivated by nothing more than his hate for humanity. He has no higher goal beyond killing as many people as he can, and absolutely nothing he does could be considered justified in any sane or rational way. There’s nothing for the player to duck behind so that they can convince themselves that it’s ‘okay’ for them to be doing what they’re doing.
Really, thank god that games like Hatred exist, because these are the types of games that really challenge the medium. Not non-game hipster waste like Gone Home and Depression Quest. THIS is the kind of game that gets people to ask real questions about themselves.
My girlfriend was so happy she had to stuff a 2nd tampon in her vadge.
Vadge? Is that a kind of car, kinda like a Vulvo?
The game looks absolutely pointless and terrible, but if it’s very existence pisses off the liberals than god bless the people who made it. We need more things that piss off the liberals, let them know that they are not liked and that they are completely powerless.