thread: 2006-04-10 : A problem for feminists/pro-feminists
On 2006-04-11, John Kim wrote:
OK, here's my two cents on the debate:
There's a subtext here that feminism is about not offending people. Which is just bizarre to me, because in my experience feminism pisses a whole lot of people off. Fundamentally, it's about jarring people out of their comfortable gender stereotypes, and they don't like that.
And you know, when I look at people's reactions to Dogs in the Vineyard or even Kill Puppies For Satan, I don't see many people offended—judging by the threads on RPGnet or such. Vincent may get a clueless email or two, but most people just don't care. The recent games people have gotten up in arms about are games like Blue Rose and Wraeththu. Guess why?
This makes LP go "Blue Rose"
is wonderful fun to trash talk, actually. One of these days, I've gotta write about why and how I would've done it differently.
This makes Judd go "I'll bite."
Why?
This makes BR go "Cause Vincent is doing his thing over in the long tail, and Blue Rose hit boys in 'mainstream' mode?"
Do your thing out over there where you're all freaks anyway and people will freak a lot less. Make a major game from a major publisher marketed towards the womenz and the gayz and you'll flip people out like gangbusters. Doesn't even matter if the game isn't really all that strongly angled, just the fact that you tried to do it will push buttons.
This makes JRC go "Disliking Wraeththu isn't about being sexist or homophobic."
Actually, the reason I dislike Wraeththu is specifically because I see it as one of the most vilely homophobic games around. It's possible for me to look at Blue Rose and say to myself *shrug* "not my thing." When I look at Wraeththu though, I see a story about how 'The Gays' are raping non-gays to death (acid-jism = AIDS scare?) and kidnapping and 'converting' non gays to their cause. It's like every single anti-gay scare story rolled up in one. THAT, I have trouble with.
