Feminist Pub X: Regulars and new faces welcome, consciousness raising is a possibility.

[CaptChaos]

The old pub now has less than 10 posts to go, so I thought I'd start a new one. The old one can be found here

This is a place for feminist pom pom waving and talking about stuff which might not need a thread for itself.

Fill your boots.

Who was it I saw from here recently saying they used to play Warcraft? Lots of women in it, powerful ones as well as ordinary people, and then the players go and screw it up. The kids casually throwing the word 'rape' around really gets you down rather rapidly.

Ooh this is something I wanted to talk about too. Lots of talk of "gamergate" on Twitter which I gather is some kind of sexism but it seems like it's been a thing too long for me to ask about it now.

So, DD1 started yr4 this week. New teacher, new classroom. The classroom is next to the playground and has large windows so the first task of the day on the whiteboard is always visible.

Today's morning challenge:

"Which of these would you rather be: a sailor, a vet, a teacher or a policeman? Explain your choice."

Waah it's not flippin' hard to write police officer, is it? Or is my DD supposed to write about her imaginary future as a man?!

I'm the sad act who played Warcraft. One of the reasons DH and I stopped playing was the way it has been taken over by misogynistic arseholes who think rape jokes on public chat are 'Oh! So edgy' DS won't be playing it either.

I actually 'met' DH playing Warcraft yes, yes, I know! and have made friends from all over Europe playing it, but it's now been taken over by total tools. What changed? Blizzard made it easier to play, everything about it got more and more simplified so a less.... thoughtful type of person started playing.

#gamergate is just horrible! Anita Sarkeesian is getting a really rough ride because she stuck her head above the parapet and pointed out that women in gaming worlds are treated as nothing, seen as peripheral to the stories and often have to be killed in gruesome ways in order to progress in the environment. I believe there was also a game coded by a guy where you can rape and murder her in inventive ways. It's a master class in male violence and entitlement.

And yet we still see women, so desperate to handmaiden there way into their oppressors good books that they will deny that structural sexism even exists No sir! I don't think you're a misogynistic git, I'll stroke your ego, I'll even kick those women for you!

A woman was beheaded yesterday, she's the third in 6 months in London, and scallops was ignored when she pointed it out and I was told I was being mean to a journalist who said that the other 2 women just weren't dramatic enough to have hit the headlines.

That commune sounds pretty good today. I'd be a lot less ranty there!

I want to know why police officers still have gendered hats.

Yes, DH used to play wow but doesn't any more. I'm annoyed that one of my favourite games ever - the sims - which has been one of the least sexist games ever, has introduced a new feature in the new game where you can hive give your sim a "bro" personality trait. Ie, a "sexist arsehole" trait. I know that's minor but it's just annoying.

I suspect the coalesced realms are at least partly to blame in Warcraft. Before that feature came in, you could hide on a low population realm and not have too many idiots to contend with.

Still on Sims 2 (computer is too decrepit to handle 3) and the only thing that bugs me in terms of gender is: women can't get impregnated by aliens unless you cheat. Which is a fairly minor gripe, in the scheme of things

Nice to see other gamers on the thread! I usually buy indie games these days to avoid violent misogyny.

Why do you want women to be impregnated by aliens in the Sims Stormy

Ugh, yuck to the 'bro' personality. Is this in the new Sims 4?

Related to that, I googled 'bro code' this morning, now I'm going to have to find some reasonable males to quiz about it.

Very at the policeman bit.

Me and my stroppy self would have gone into the classroom and asked them to change that "policeman". Or I'd have pointed it out to DD1 and she would have raised it with her teacher - I'm training her well!

I'm a bit of a gamer, have been playing zoo tycoon on the xbox recently. But I am a big sims fan, but won't be getting the new one until I buy a computer that can run it.

I've been having conversations recently with my 4 year old DD about girls toys and boys toys. There does come a point when I can practically see her eyes glaze over as I continue ranting to myself. Must learn to be more concise! But with a baby boy in the house, there seems to be more counting up of how many boys and girls are in the room.

Back to gaming, me and DH have been playing tomb raider recently, which seems to masquerade as being all equal but really just consists of lots and lots of men trying to shoot her.

Briar it makes the neighborhood more colourful if some people are green, I'd just like the option of having green children with parents of either gender.

Hmm, the new Tomb Raider is sitting in my living room while I finish Bioshock. Not wholly surprised that its about a woman escaping men who are trying to kill her. You could say it was a parody of some of the stuff happening in gaming world at the moment .

I have to confess my favourite ever game is Mario and Donkey Kong Miniland Mayhem. Rated 3+.

Still, it's Mario trying to save some princess ... No getting away from it, is there?

Even though Lara is the protag of Tomb Raider, this new more realistic reboot is troublingly violent towards her. It seems to take some joy in that. I can't bring myself to play it myself.

The 'huyuh' noise Lara makes when she jumps around is very annoying. Do male characters usually have a jump affect like that?

I was discussing this open letter to gamers from game creators asking them to not be such arseholes and also call out arseholes when they see them. I think it's a good idea (though maybe a bit late) but DH was quite pessimistic about it, saying reasonable gamers and nonreasonable ones don't interact much - eg nice online players having chat blocked.

I dunno, It was one or those conversations were I felt like he was being a bit dismissive of the numbers of arseholes and the impact of rape/bomb/murder threats online.

Glad you noticed my comment on that thread was completely ignored Capt. Thought it was just me! Haven't got back to it since as I wasn't that interested in arguing the merits of whether people should have been worried whether it was terrorism or not (terrorism as in those brown people over there type terrorism). And then it got onto mental health and I thought I'm just going to explode. So exited!

I'm a Candy Crush Saga woman. Wean me off it someone. I am wasting hours of productive time on it! I did play Tomb Raider on Playstation 1 for months about 15 yrs ago. Does that count?

My iPad is currently refusing to charge. One pull on the charger lead too many by the kids I suspect . How am I going to manage?

I wouldn't bother scallops, apparently me saying that I couldn't be a journo because I couldn't be so cold and heartless as to be able to decide which woman being beheaded is dramatic enough to be reported on is hilariously funny, cue journo saying she hadn't kicked puppies today or something equally childish. Mentioning the number of women being killed by male violence is also a derail, because this is an isolated incident, by a madman, innit.

Which thread is this?

Gave up on the blacking up one at 'no discrimination in law firms'. Ha ha ha. No overt discrimination as long as you totally clone the male competitive model I would still disagree with, but can see argued. But then there is so much structural discrimination that is neither here nor there.

Funny how you don't tend to get 'mad' women running around beheading men isn't it?

Managed to get my iPad charging to some degree. Seems to just randomly stop charging now . Googled the problem and came across a thread with a bunch of blokes all telling each other that they were categorically wrong and it wasn't charger/cable/port/operating system or whatever the other person had said. No thought that perhaps they all had slightly different root causes of the problem which elicited a similar message or symptom. This is what I have to put up with day in day out at work too.