I'm all tail-lights.

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:09:49 -0500

I don’t care much for the Tumblr way of doing things. I’m “moving” to blogger.

http://stupidrolls.blogspot.com/

I do actually want to post more. With the holidays over, this might happen.

I know my one post tumblr blog will probably make the whole dozen or so people who read it cry big fat salty tears. Carry on, dear friends. Carry on.

aaron

This is why we can't have nice things.

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:46:00 -0500

The completely awesome and completely nerdtastic Anna Kreider, author of Thou Art But A Warrior and Under the Sun has a completely wonderful blog called Go Make Me A Sandwich. Within, you will find critiques of sexism in gaming, mostly of the table top and video game varieties. She also does a great feature where she picks apart terrible artwork of “women” that are anatomically impossible. ZING! Even better, she recently wrote a very awesome and thought provoking article about sexist art in gaming for Pelgrane Press’s See Page XX webzine.

Let me say this about that. I think she’s spot on. Most depictions of women in the gaming culture/industry are pretty poor but what riles me up more is the lash-out of male gamers to this sort of discussion. It’s the same psudo-intellectual denial crock of shit attempt to dismiss and shout down that always happens (especially on the interwebs) when someone from a minority points out something is shitty and offensive and the Internet Tough Guys come out to defend against the ebil < insert minority group here > -nazis because they’re whining about “perceived injustices” AGAIN.

So as a bit of a PSA, let me offer the following fellas:

YOU ARE A MAN. YOU DO NOT GET TO DECIDE WHEN WOMEN ARE OFFENDED BY SEXIST ART. YOU DO NOT GET TO TELL WOMEN THAT THEY SHOULDN’T BE OFFENDED BY SEXIST ART. YOU DO NOT GET TO BE OFFENDED BECAUSE A WOMAN CALLS YOU ON YOUR SHIT FOR SAYING THEY SHOULDN’T BE OFFENDED.

and why?

BECAUSE YOU ARE A MAN AND YOU WILL NEVER BE OFFENDED BY WOMEN BEING PORTRAYED IN A SEXIST WAY THE SAME WAY A WOMAN WILL BE.

Now, notice I never said you can’t understand it. In fact, I think you should try harder to understand why women are offended by this stuff, but at the end of the day, you can’t be offended like they are and by extension, you can’t tell them NOT to be offended.

This concept isn’t hard to get and will make you a better person. I know it made me a better person.

Look, I get it. It’s hard to admit that as a dude (or white, or straight, or whatever else gives you privilege by being part of a majority) there is a lot of shit that doesn’t get tossed at you because of your +5 Shield of Being In The Majority and because of that you don’t see it. I didn’t for a long time. I never considered myself to be bigoted or sexist or anything else like that, but over time I realized that there is a whole side to the problems of inequality that I can NEVER experience. The best I can do is understand why someone is angry at something like sexist art and help make the problem go away so we can all be happy and chuck dice. Or play video games. Or just live in a society where everyone is treated with respect.

And to fully wrap this up, let it be known that I eat my own dog food, to use a cliche that my bosses toss around constantly. I recently realized that I had taken a joke too far with a friend I care deeply about. That caused me to step back and realize that while it was never intended to be hurtful, especially to this person, it was not a nice thing to say and while there was this part of me that said, “it was just a joke, they know I’m not really like this”, it doesn’t matter because there is no way I’d be able to understand how this joke could be hurtful because I’m not in the same exact situation as my friend. It wasn’t because I wanted to be PC. It wasn’t because I’m a self-hating white male, it was because I don’t want to be a shitty human being to anyone, especially not my dear friends.

aaron

EDIT: I clarified a bit to remove some confusing grammar fail.

Roll Stamina + Linguistics

I'm all tail-lights.

This is why we can't have nice things.