"Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons"

[S'mon]

As a free speech advocate, I think that this is utterly misguided, stupid, and harmful.

First of all, it is utterly obvious that media does influence peoples beliefs. Celebrities like Elvis, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, and others have had enormous influence over people's beliefs. Fiction has influence - even if it seems fluffy, like television comedies like Ellen or Amos & Andy; or popular movies like Rambo. Even fantasy fiction has influence - like Gulliver's Travels, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, The Handmaid's Tale, and others.

Speech should be free precisely because it has influence, not because it is of no consequence. If your argument for free speech is that the speech has no influence over people's beliefs, then you are harming the cause of free speech.

EDITED TO ADD: That said, I also disagree with the linked article about misogyny on a bunch of points.

I always enjoy reading jhkim's insightful & intelligent posts. Possibly the coolest* Australian Lefty I know.

*Leaving aside my more Liberally inclined Australian former D&D players, many of whom are truly awesome people.

[dragoner]

Speech should be free precisely because it has influence, not because it is of no consequence. If your argument for free speech is that the speech has no influence over people's beliefs, then you are harming the cause of free speech.

As much as I support free speech, at the same time, I don't think it is as historically important as one might think. I don't see celebrities having as much import either, not in the final sense, more as just a distraction. A lot of what people believe in is illusory, and when it doesn't match reality, they adjust reality to their beliefs.

[Future Villain Band]

Remember, we're talking about gaming here.  I think an apt argument is, "Does the game material or the way the game is played shape someone's belief about how the real world is/works?"

I don't know that Lafloka's article about women in D&D is going to change somebody's views about women in the real world.  In the same way, I know an enormous amount about Central Asia and the Middle East, but I don't know that Labyrinth: The War on Terror's rules are going to change my basic assumptions about the nature of the conflicts over there and their history.  

Now, if I'm against women being objectified, do I have a right to object to buxom women in chainmail lingerie on my books, or let that affect my buying decisions?  Sure.  But that's a different issue than the matter of whether or not crappy rules or marginalia do anything but embarrass the author.  I mean, Central Casting's screed against homosexuality, IIRC, didn't make me homophobic, it just made me roll my eyes.

[dragoner]

Remember, we're talking about gaming here.  I think an apt argument is, "Does the game material or the way the game is played shape someone's belief about how the real world is/works?"

More likely it is just a vehicle for other people to express their views. For example, because DnD doesn't mention the Holocaust, does it mean it is a bastion for deniers, or was designed by deniers? No, I don't think so.

The best thing about all these arguments is that it is like getting yelled at for something you didn't do, isn't it great?

[Justin Alexander]

I have a pretty simple standard: Anyone trying to invoke the original "dickwolves" strip as an example of "rape culture" has immediately disqualified themselves from commenting on feminism.

So the linked article is pretty much DOA for me.

[Alzrius]

The most striking thing to me about Gamergate are the gamers looking up from their consoles, looking about them at the corpse-littered wasteland that was our culture, and seeing that they are literally the last Men standing - that practically no one else even tried to fight back.

That's going to make a great tag-line for when someone makes a pro-GamerGate movie:

[epic voice]"He put down his controller...and picked up a cause."[/epic voice]

As a free speech advocate, I think that this is utterly misguided, stupid, and harmful.

I pretty much echo that sentiment back at you, verbatim.

First of all, it is utterly obvious that media does influence peoples beliefs. Celebrities like Elvis, The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, and others have had enormous influence over people's beliefs. Fiction has influence - even if it seems fluffy, like television comedies like Ellen or Amos & Andy; or popular movies like Rambo. Even fantasy fiction has influence - like Gulliver's Travels, Animal Farm, Atlas Shrugged, The Handmaid's Tale, and others.

Media only influences people insofar as it's a vehicle for widening the degree (and, I suppose, increasing the volume) to which a dialogue can take place. In other words, it's simply expanding the natural capabilities for speech that people already have.

Saying that fiction has influence over people's attitudes and beliefs (without them realizing it), on the other hand, is horribly disingenuous. The best argument that can be made in that regard is that there needs to be greater refinement over what "influence" is understood to mean here: Certainly, someone can take inspiration (or personal offense) at some piece of fiction, but that's a conscious reaction to it that's no different than the mechanisms that people have for anything else that they interact with - throughout the course of human history, people have found inspiration, or disgust, at everything. Suggesting that fiction has the power to subconsciously shape attitudes and beliefs is something else again, and is (in my opinion) massively overstated, if it exists at all (insofar as mentally competent adults are concerned, at least).

Speech should be free precisely because it has influence, not because it is of no consequence. If your argument for free speech is that the speech has no influence over people's beliefs, then you are harming the cause of free speech.

This is a conflation of the difference between dialogue and fiction, which is (rather ironically) damaging to the cause of free speech, since it presents two very different things as being essentially the same. If you confuse discussion and debate with telling stories, then you're not helping the situation.

I have a pretty simple standard: Anyone trying to invoke the original "dickwolves" strip as an example of "rape culture" has immediately disqualified themselves from commenting on feminism.

So the linked article is pretty much DOA for me.

The dickwolves article that the linked article refers to trots out the tired - and highly insincere - argument that the problem wasn't the original dickwolves strip, but rather the second strip that mocked the people who were offended by it. *derisive snort*

[Bren]

Although not as condescending as Lakofka's treatise on women, Crabaugh reveals in his writing an essentialism that reads bodies as purely biological entities. By this, I mean to say that – for Crabaugh– knowledge of the body could be and was apparently ascertained through strictly "scientific" measures. Michel Foucault calls such a reduction of bodies to numbers a mode of informatic power, primarily used to manage and control bodies in the modern state.

What academic drivel. What in all the hells would bodies be other than "biological entities"?
:banghead:

[Gronan of Simmerya]

Holy shit.  And academics wonder why people lose respect for academia sometimes.

[S'mon]

I have a pretty simple standard: Anyone trying to invoke the original "dickwolves" strip as an example of "rape culture" has immediately disqualified themselves from commenting on feminism.

So the linked article is pretty much DOA for me.

The strip was an example of the American cultural norm that homosexual rape is funny. I'd agree that, being a joke about male slaves homosexually raped by the monsters, it makes no sense as an example of a supposed heterosexual 'rape culture' (which culture does not exist in mainstream US society, AFAICT - there is some such 'rape culture' in African-American gangsta rap, but most Feminists won't ever say that for fear of being called racist).

[S'mon]

That's going to make a great tag-line for when someone makes a pro-GamerGate movie:

[epic voice]"He put down his controller...and picked up a cause."[/epic voice]

"Sons of Playstation! Of Xbox! My brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of Men fails, when we forsake our Guilds and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of SJWs and shattered joysticks when the Age of Men comes crashing down, but it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men of the Console!"

[jhkim]

Media only influences people insofar as it's a vehicle for widening the degree (and, I suppose, increasing the volume) to which a dialogue can take place. In other words, it's simply expanding the natural capabilities for speech that people already have.

Saying that fiction has influence over people's attitudes and beliefs (without them realizing it), on the other hand, is horribly disingenuous. The best argument that can be made in that regard is that there needs to be greater refinement over what "influence" is understood to mean here: Certainly, someone can take inspiration (or personal offense) at some piece of fiction, but that's a conscious reaction to it that's no different than the mechanisms that people have for anything else that they interact with - throughout the course of human history, people have found inspiration, or disgust, at everything. Suggesting that fiction has the power to subconsciously shape attitudes and beliefs is something else again, and is (in my opinion) massively overstated, if it exists at all (insofar as mentally competent adults are concerned, at least).

The influence of media has been thoroughly tested in the world of advertising. Advertisers frequently manipulate fictional details of their message - like what a spokesperson looks like, lighting, music, etc. - and furthermore do careful studies about how effective these are on the market.  They generally find that both children and adults are influenced by fictional details that have nothing to do with the factual qualities of the product.

It might be nice to live in a world where people are perfectly rational and never influenced by irrational things like the appearance or tone of voice of a spokesperson. However, I am pretty convinced that people are not purely rational, and are influenced by these irrelevant fictional details.

It is possible to overstate the influence of these things, but I think the influence exists.

[jhkim]

Having now read the linked article, I think the fundamental problem is the premise that these two obscure early Dragon articles are relevant to judging the hobby as a whole today.

*If* these two were recent articles that a significant number of players were reading and using, then there might be something to this. However, nearly all of the points about the articles are completely different from how gamers today (or even most gamers back then) handle things.

[Gronan of Simmerya]

The other problem is that the author assumes that we read Conan and Fafhrd and the Mouser stories because they are sexist, not that we read them because they are entertaining stories.

I thought about posting this over there but realized that I don't want to get any of that shit on me.

[David Johansen]

The road to and from culture and media is a narrow two lane stretch and collisions are commonplace.

Removing the ability to discuss sexism and rape will not prevent rape, indeed it will probably make it easier to cover up as it did in the past.

That we read Howard or Lieber shows that those stories still have value.  If they did not, we'd forget them.  They are part of the greater conversation whether we are aware of it or not.

To say the female superhero is more sexualized than the male is an artifact of our time.  Sixty years ago comics were being banned because they sexualized men.  They haven't stopped.

[Iosue]

Having now read the linked article, I think the fundamental problem is the premise that these two obscure early Dragon articles are relevant to judging the hobby as a whole today.

Two obscure early Dragon articles that were widely disparaged and ultimately repudiated in their day.