"Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons"

[Alzrius]

So apparently the guys running EN World thought that it was important that we have a link to the following article on the front page today:

Misogyny and the Female Body in Dungeons & Dragons

The article starts off by miscontruing its titular point - outlining the "representation problem" in D&D against the backdrop of things like GamerGate, dickwolves, and Anita Sarkeesian, presumably since they're all part of the "gamer subculture" (my words, not the author's), as well as recent articles on how Gen Con is filled with white people and Nazis.

He then moves on to talk about the history of misogyny in D&D, which apparently consists of...two old articles in the early issues of Dragon magazine.

Huh...I thought he'd at least mention the random harlot table.

But yeah, I found it hard to take this article seriously. It wasn't just the presumption that two magazine articles from the 70's are comparable to a comic about wolves made of penises. It wasn't just that one of the sources he cited (Jon Peterson, in his book Playing at the World) takes to the comments to call out the author for citing his work in a misleading fashion - twice!

Rather, what I found most upsetting was the underlying narrative of the article, that "these [misogynyst] attitudes reproduce themselves by way of the community privileging the accuracy of simulation over the ethics of simulation." Or rather, that the medium reinforces and normalizes immorality; that life imitates art, in other words.

This is, to me, at the core of the "social justice warrior" mindset. It's this idea that art, fiction, and media have the power to create and strengthen attitudes among the populace at large. It's an idea that has been at the heart of every moral panic and widespread push for censorship, from Elvis' swinging hips to the idea that D&D leads to the worship of Satan.

Nevermind that we have mountains of evidence - not the least of which is history itself - that this isn't true; that, in fact, art imitates life. That while there are problems with how women are treated in fandom cultures of all sorts, this is a representation - what the statisticians call a "sampling" - of the problems that women face in contemporary culture at all levels. It was just one election cycle ago, just two years, when we had politicians at the highest level talking about "legitimate rape" and radio pundits were spouting off about how women who wanted reproductive health costs to be covered under their health insurance were sluts and whores. Does anyone think that comic books, video games, or RPGs caused those people to have those opinions?

The problem isn't that some pictures are too white or too sexualized or too anything. The problem is in thinking that media has any sort of causal power over people at all (notwithstanding children and the mentally incompetent, both of whom are the way they are through no fault of games).

Life does not imitate art - every time someone says it does, it's this premise that must be debated, deconstructed, and defeated, so that we can stop with the misdirected moral outrage and get back to just playing games.

[Future Villain Band]

This is, to me, at the core of the "social justice warrior" mindset. It's this idea that art, fiction, and media have the power to create and strengthen attitudes among the populace at large. It's an idea that has been at the heart of every moral panic and widespread push for censorship, from Elvis' swinging hips to the idea that D&D leads to the worship of Satan.

I've got a bit of a problem with your general point rather than your specific examples using gaming.

There's a big fat line between moral panics which are not rooted in reality, and which are basically reactionary fears to social change (like Elvis' hips), and the media being used to push problematic images.  You can argue the chicken and the egg argument, but at the end of the day, if you're against racism, then you're probably against Birth of a Nation and Amos & Andy.  You can argue whether they're symptoms of the problem or causes or some degree of both -- I'm inclined to believe the latter -- but at the end of the day, displays of whatever terrible behavior you're against are a problem.

To put it another way, the moral panic about child molestation and Satanic ritual abuse was not rooted in reality, but there's no argument, to my mind, that the media's characterization of those issues led to things like overemphasis of "stranger danger" and widespread concern about Satanism and child abuse.  Some of that was useful, some of it was hysterical and harmful.  

Or, to put it another way, yeah, actually the media has an amazing amount of power over people, and can be a real tool in demonizing this group or that group.  (The Third Reich had board-games about "getting that Jew," after all, and Birth of a Nation arguably helped restart the Klan.)  Whether or not that's really applicable to modern gaming, that's another topic.  I generally feel the creating class in gaming tends to be a little more progressive than people assume, going all the way back to the origins of the hobby, and educated enough to know when things are problematic.

[dragoner]

Nothing like watching catpissman wade in on a subject he knows nothing about: women.

/grabs popcorn

[Future Villain Band]

Nothing like watching catpissman wade in on a subject he knows nothing about: women.

/grabs popcorn

Hey, I made a girl pregnant.  Twice.

[Alzrius]

I've got a bit of a problem with your general point rather than your specific examples using gaming.

There's a big fat line between moral panics which are not rooted in reality, and which are basically reactionary fears to social change (like Elvis' hips), and the media being used to push problematic images.

My suspicion is that you're focusing on my use of the phrase "art, fiction, and media" - specifically the use of the word "media" - in the quotation that you used. My choice of phrasing may have caused some problems there, so I'll try to correct that here.

My use of the word "media" in that context was not meant to refer to the mass media insofar as its ability to facilitate direct communication between people goes (e.g. talk shows, news programs, etc.). Rather, the reason I used "media" after saying "art [and] fiction" was to cover all other forms of communicating an imaginary narrative; simply saying "art" makes people think of portraits and pictures, whereas "fiction" tends to make people think of books, and so I was trying to use a catch-all term for every other instance of someone creating a story that they know not to be true, and presume that others will also know that it's not true.

I'll grant that mass media has power insofar as it allows direct communication - and, as a consequence of that, the proliferation of ideas - to rapidly spread. That, however, is different from arguing that fantasies of any sort, even when displayed via the media, have the power to create and shape people's ideals and beliefs.

[dragoner]

Hey, I made a girl pregnant.  Twice.

Wait, you're catpissman? GET HIM! /throws popcorn

[Future Villain Band]

My suspicion is that you're focusing on my use of the phrase "art, fiction, and media" - specifically the use of the word "media" - in the quotation that you used. My choice of phrasing may have caused some problems there, so I'll try to correct that here.

My use of the word "media" in that context was not meant to refer to the mass media insofar as its ability to facilitate direct communication between people goes (e.g. talk shows, news programs, etc.). Rather, the reason I used "media" after saying "art [and] fiction" was to cover all other forms of communicating an imaginary narrative; simply saying "art" makes people think of portraits and pictures, whereas "fiction" tends to make people think of books, and so I was trying to use a catch-all term for every other instance of someone creating a story that they know not to be true, and presume that others will also know that it's not true.

I'll grant that mass media has power insofar as it allows direct communication - and, as a consequence of that, the proliferation of ideas - to rapidly spread. That, however, is different from arguing that fantasies of any sort, even when displayed via the media, have the power to create and shape people's ideals and beliefs.

Let me see if I get this, and really, I'm not trying to be obtuse -- you're saying that in general, gaming and fantasy fiction and the like generally don't shape people's ideals and beliefs, and so the things like the Dragon articles the essay you linked to talks about didn't actually change anybody's beliefs, so they might be wrong but not necessarily dangerous?

I think I can agree with that, if that's what you're saying.

[Future Villain Band]

Wait, you're catpissman? GET HIM! /throws popcorn

I thought you were taking a shot at me, sorry.  I don't think I smell like catpee, I think I smell like Old Spice body wash and the hopeless despair that comes from working in the legal field.  But despair and shattered dreams might smell like catpee, I don't know.

[Alzrius]

Let me see if I get this, and really, I'm not trying to be obtuse -- you're saying that in general, gaming and fantasy fiction and the like generally don't shape people's ideals and beliefs, and so the things like the Dragon articles the essay you linked to talks about didn't actually change anybody's beliefs, so they might be wrong but not necessarily dangerous?

That does about sum it up, yes.

I think I can agree with that, if that's what you're saying.

I suspected that I'd find like minds here. Of course, the author of that article - and, I think, most SJWs - would probably disagree.

[dragoner]

I'll grant that mass media has power insofar as it allows direct communication - and, as a consequence of that, the proliferation of ideas - to rapidly spread. That, however, is different from arguing that fantasies of any sort, even when displayed via the media, have the power to create and shape people's ideals and beliefs.

You can read, in plenty of books such as Herzl's Der Judenstaat or any real history book, that the roots of the collection of the Jews, Homosexuals, Communists, etc.; all began long before, and that the western democracies, were indifferent to what happened while those states under occupation, helped (Grossman accuses as much in his A Writer at War, similar to Elie Wiesel). Mass media mirrors popular feelings more than it leads them, for the most part, it is merely confirmation bias.

[Doom]

I thought you were taking a shot at me, sorry.  I don't think I smell like catpee, I think I smell like Old Spice body wash and the hopeless despair that comes from working in the legal field.  But despair and shattered dreams might smell like catpee, I don't know.

It was my guess, too.

[dragoner]

It was my guess, too.

Generally it is bad form to quote the first post on the third post.

[S'mon]

This is, to me, at the core of the "social justice warrior" mindset. It's this idea that art, fiction, and media have the power to create and strengthen attitudes among the populace at large.

Yeah, that is the whole point of Cultural Marxism, the SJW ideology: he who controls the culture, controls the minds of the people. Personally I tend to think there is a fair bit of truth in this - as Orwell said, if you can control the discourse you can make certain thoughts either literally unthinkable (there is no way to even frame that thought within the normal frames of reference), or cause thinking that thought to be viscerally repulsive - hence "I just vomited in my mouth a little", the mantra of the true SJW. Libertarians, including Libertarian Marxists , don't like to think that humans are so easily manipulable, and there certainly is some evidence to the contrary - including the current Gamergate pushback against the SJW game 'journalists' - but overall I fear that you can indeed fool most of the people, most of the time.

(warning: possible slight hyperbole coming...)
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.

[S'mon]

Well, this is why I don't go to ENW any more. While RPGnet was always a cesspit, seeing what ENW has become is just painful. It's even more painful that some of this comes from Tallarn, a former player of mine (3e D&D, ca 2001-2003); someone I've known IRL, and like (hi Tallarn!).  

[jhkim]

This is, to me, at the core of the "social justice warrior" mindset. It's this idea that art, fiction, and media have the power to create and strengthen attitudes among the populace at large. It's an idea that has been at the heart of every moral panic and widespread push for censorship, from Elvis' swinging hips to the idea that D&D leads to the worship of Satan.

Nevermind that we have mountains of evidence - not the least of which is history itself - that this isn't true; that, in fact, art imitates life.

Life does not imitate art - every time someone says it does, it's this premise that must be debated, deconstructed, and defeated, so that we can stop with the misdirected moral outrage and get back to just playing games.

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.