I spent some time thinking about why I was so annoyed by feminist critics last week, and trying to articulate an actual reason, one that would take up less than a paragraph.
But I couldn’t, I kept going into these little fits of colorful elaboration that went on for pages: in other words, doing basically what I was accusing them of doing.
Then today, while waking up and drinking my coffee, I came upon this line in an article:
“. . . intellectuals, whose sense of identity is rooted in the role of social critic.”
And that seemed to solidify my rampant theorizing – call it social criticism if you will. The people I’m complaining about do seem to invest a lot more than the pursuit of truth in the fervency with which they deliver their arguments.
But then again, you could dismiss this entire blog as being more of the same: criticism of multiplayer games, delivered with ponderously arrogant solemnity by me, a hack who never managed to finish a degree and who is far better at entertaining than instructing or analyzing.
And frankly some social criticism is instructive, amusing, helpful. Entertaining, even.
Not to mention the cold hard facts: there is a huge audience for these games, much of that audience is in my demographic, but the corporate types persist in throwing away billions of dollars courting the very type of audience that makes us all grit our teeth while dismissing us as inconsequential. Therefore, assuming that the marketing types would appreciate feedback from female players in my demographic, I’m drowning them in too much information, because I am very much interested in an alternative product. I couldn’t care less about changing the world, eliminating bias or transforming my fellow humans into paragons of political correctness. I’m only concerned with fake realities that are changeable, not with the external reality, which can be stubborn that way.
But yeah, that last paragraph, in a nutshell says “I’m exempt from this sweeping dismissal I just pronounced, because I’m better than these other people like me and here’s a trainload of emotional agitprop explaining why.”
So I’m going to do my best not to go there, while cheerfully admitting that my identity is definitely rooted in my role as “person who makes lots of words appear on the screen really fast.”
But anyway, the article I was criticizing was criticizing a mainstream date movie, which otherwise appears to deal with a timely twist in current affairs, women who are in relationships with men that are less financially together than they are. However, according to the critic, they should have spent a few minutes altering the tone of the movie to be even more saturated in blue state values.
Now maybe I’m biased. Maybe I read the wrong websites or something. Maybe somewhere out there is an avalanche of articles praising the efforts of women or of artists that are sympathetic to us, encouraging us and motivating us and building up communities geared around celebrating artistic depictions of women that exist for a purpose beyond flashing cleavage.
But I see none of that, merely endless criticism, by nameless critics intent on showing us how smart they are by trashing things – especially popular, mainstream things – that fail to depict utopia.
To the point where sometimes it feels as though the more literate a person is, the more they have internalized this view, and the more they invest their own egos in snide deconstructions of not only that which is common and vulgar, but also that which isn’t good enough for trivial reasons.
Sometimes I feel that way, anyhow, when dodging lunch dates with people whom I know are just going to sit there issuing what they think are brilliant nuggets of social criticism that instead play more like venomous snark directed at the people they went to high school with, alongside conspicuous displaying of their own highly sophisticated taste in food or literature or whatever by embracing the latest product marketed toward the “middle class people trying to impress each other” demographic.
Oh yeah, and trashing female celebrities, there’s that too. Male celebrities can run dogfighting rings, plunder their employees’ 401(k)s, be on trial for murdering their girlfriend like Phil Spector, whatever. But let a ditzy 20-something pop star or a vapid heiress or a chubby talk show host have one drink over the limit or a failed relationship or a lapse in speech and it’s a cause celebre.
Search the internet for complaints about any of the women I’ve referred to and you’ll find plenty of slander and hate sites, and a lot of those throw in sex and appearance in a way not often inflicted on male transgressors. Feminists have written about that to some extent, I’ve even referred to it in this blog. Women even get dissected for doing what appears to be the right thing. Both Angelina Jolie and Bono are celebrity busybodies interested in Africa, but one’s a knight and the other is frequently the subject of bristling “who does she think she is!” attacks in those crappy magazines my co-workers leave all over the lunchroom.
So okay, we women are critical, and these days a lot of men are joining with us in solidarity, so we wind up with situations like one I recently read about in the paper, where some minor female politician in a nearby district got called a “whore” in a public meeting for not objecting to building a Walmart. I’d daresay a man faces less criticism in this society for committing mass murder than a woman does for wearing a weird looking pair of shoes.
Now in the worldview of the extremely postmodern and politically correct, this criticism has a noble purpose: to illustrate that every individual’s opinion is as valid and deserving as everyone else’s. And also to help make utopia by pointing out ideological flaws in mass media so that it can program us all to be better citizens. There’s a lot at stake. Future of the planet, etc. If we are less than vigilant at pointing out the witches in our community, they’ll blight our crop, and so on.
In my worldview, well, let’s talk briefly about confidence. The ability to take the initiative in interacting with people. The one possessed in spades by the constant flow of youths I encounter in game, entering dramatically into new conversational spaces and proceeding to start arguments, direct all attention toward themselves and boss the women around. The same trait which I don’t see in even my most competitive, driven, ubergamer female friends, most of whom are very selective about things like talking to strangers and PVPing.
Yes, there have been studies showing that the more testosterone you have, the more confident you are. And I’m not quoting them because most of the articles I found were, in my pompous opinion, biased. Google “testosterone confidence” if you’re interested. There was a lot of it that seemed to come from this kind of angle:
"Science Proves Men Are Better: in a series of experiments, people with high testosterone were proved to be much more willing to talk to strangers, thus objectively proving that men are better (so get into the kitchen and make me a sammich, Myrtle)."
And consider that you can just as easily spin it the opposite way.
“Science Proves Estrogen Increases Modesty: With regard to the character flaw we all know as ‘audacity,’ scientists have proven that more men suffer from it than women, and that women, having evolved to use superior social interaction techniques such as ‘modesty,’ are therefore innately better than men (so take your audacious butt out to the garage and change my oil, Charlie).”
In the postmodern world, we’re all identical souls struggling with the bondage of flesh, and evil social constructs like gender, and confidence comes from role models and positive media imagery rather than biochemistry.
But in the world where I live, women get criticized more, and because they don’t have as much confidence and/or audacity as men, they are more likely to take the risk of doing things that can attract a rain of criticism down on their heads.
So, the more snarky social critics slamming things – particularly things that interest their audience – the fewer women making the effort to stand up in public, except for the highly competitive ones and/or the ones who have a social circle dedicated to insulating them from criticism (see Clinton, Hillary).
And thus you wind up with a classic lose-lose scenario. By ostensibly trying to improve art, the critics in effect silence it, because criticism has a disproportionate affect on women, and is therefore used in disproportionate amounts (because it works). Those who market diet schemes, fashions, therapy and other expensive things that require very little to produce are well aware of this fact, hence you probably see more billboards trying to shame women into working out or replacing their wardrobe every three months than similar efforts directed toward men. And the “OMG is you favorite food fattening?” or “OMG is your favorite outfit out of fashion?” line also works on “OMG is your favorite media oppressing you?”
But anyway, there’s my bold venture into social commentary for the day, and moving right along to the subject of games, drama occurred last night.
I might have mentioned this teenage girl who’s in my guild, I’ll call her K. K is dramatic and over the top in the fashion of teenage girls, and interacting with her makes me very grateful that I don’t have one. K directs all attention to herself, constantly asks for favors, over reacts. A classic K exchange
Guildie gets promoted
Guildmembers: grats on your promotion
K: dream stealer!
Recently there was a discussion among the officers as to whether we should promote her too. The majority opinion was that she was too immature. But I actually advocated for her. I said that people play WoW to act out their fantasies, and maybe responsible leadership is one of hers, and of the constructive things you can say about MMOs in general, improving leadership and teamwork skills are up at the top.
So she became an officer.
This was a large factor in the departure of another high level female player, whom I wrote about previously. She went off to a guild where they have much stricter requirements.
Shortly after becoming an officer, K takes up with some guy. I am not clear on whether this is a RL or a virtual romance, but the guy is a creep, in fact I’ll just call him that. She abuses her officer privilege to demand we all help Creep power level. She gets so emotional on the subject she violates the cardinal sin of Cussing In Guild Chat (lightning bolt strikes).
Then last night, Creep is in guildchat. As I try to pay very little attention to K and her drama, I wasn’t aware this was her new knight in shining armor. We’re making Bugs Bunny jokes, and the conversation comes around to pets, since more than one of us have pet rabbits.
He is bragging about his mean dogs, and how he trains them to be mean. Myself and another officer tell him to chill on the animal cruelty anecdotes. If you'll recall, my Code of Conduct has a note that we don't want to hear about our members' illegal activities in guildchat. But he keeps going, doesn't apologize, boasting, telling about how he fed his dogs a live rabbit.
So I told him to remember me someday when he’s in court because his abused dogs bit somebody’s kid, and kick him out of the guild.
I get several whispers of “thank you!” including one from a female guildie that reported he’d been a condescending macho order-dispensing ass on some occasion where K used her officer superpowers to demand she go help Creep through some dungeon.
Later on, as expected, K logs in, goes ballistic, starts ordering me into chat, takes it out in public, the whole 15 year old teenage girl thing. I was probably that bad at that age, wince. The other officers circulate a vote of no confidence, to remove her from our ranks. (And also, according to her, the rabbit in question was a roadkill that he fed to his dogs -- but for some reason, in guildchat he felt compelled to say it was live; that sums up his character right there.)
Now I talked about this a little bit afterwards, with Rose. I think this has happened to nearly every female I know. A female friend takes up with some loser. The loser then tries to dominate her social circle and alienates them. The friend is then stuck in this position where here peers are on her case for annoying them with the loser and her new boyfriend (who no doubt has been building up her ego in the fashion characteristic of people who want to get you to do something against your interests) is demanding that she pick sides.
I’ve been in that scenario myself.
A lot of the time it happens when you take some kind of risk and your confidence is shaky, and suddenly there’s somebody there telling you you’re the most awesome human ever.
K wanted authority, she got it, then she felt over her head and here comes Creep to help her feel strong.
Except we all know that Creep’s not exactly an altruist. Ask his dogs. He’s not there to help and support K, he wants to benefit from the association. To him, running into a female in a power position who can give him freebies is a little like running into a male on the enemy side with their PVP flag on. A unique in-game challenge, a player-content quest.
Am I being a sexist sow? Not hardly, it happens to men all the time too. One of my gamer friends referred to it disgustedly as “waving their vaginas around” as in “ooh, I’m just an airheaded yet cute girl, can one of you big strong gamer men ignore your friens and pay attention to me and come walk me through this scary dungeon?”
It seems a little crass to use that metaphor on a teenager though. And as a jaded old broad, I want to keep K in our group just because she is an unsophisticated yet forward and headstrong teenage girl, and unfortunate things often happen to them in our male dominated virtual reality where the manipulative male gold diggers outnumber the female ones.
We had a noob the other day confess to being a 12 year old girl, by the way, playing a male toon. I was impressed with that and sent her 10 gold worth of free stuff. Sometimes I feel very protective and encouraging with regard to younger girl gamers. I want to help them to pinnacles of uberness so as to decrease that “girls can’t game” stigma, and to unleash my boundless stores of agro upon creeps and pedophiles and weirdos who try to impede their progress.
So it looks as though K is going to lose her position of authority, and I wonder if she’ll end up leaving the guild over it. I hope not.
And that, as a long winded metaphor, is how I feel about feminism, and about all these cultural critics. Like Creep, they latch on to those in their community who are standing up to the difficult task of helping to shape it, and deliberately undermine their confidence while benefiting themselves, and boasting about how their own vision is more utopian than that of those actually advancing any visions (or that your ill treated dogs are more aggressive than a normal person’s dogs).
And I could go further, about post-enlightenment ideas that the universe rotates around the individual ego rather than a mutually defined sun, and wander around dispensing my half-baked notions re philosophy and psychology and anthropology and other forms of holy social critique, each with their own special attacks and defense bonuses, but actually I’m going to log into the game and face the music if the guildleader is there, and to see if we can’t find a way to keep this horrible teenager within our safe and nurturing fold and possibly even help teach her how to be an authority figure, like she asked us to, rather than punt her into the arms of some Creep that I’m envisioning with a greasy mullet and arms covered with badly executed jailhouse tattoos and a case of malt liquor under his arm.
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