So I had the interesting if rare experience of being held up as “one of the good women” that can be used to bash other women. Reader Cola sent my post mocking poor K-Lo because she blamed feminism for the perceived dearth of men who wanted to settle down, get married, have kids, and give up all fun in part of the rat race struggle for suburban lawn perfection to the gaming blog Kotaku, who published it as a counterpart to all the articles they’ve been running from women who latch onto video games as the ultimate symbol of male irresponsibility. The irony, she is delicious, since K-Lo and all those other conservative women who run around trying to blame absolutely everything on feminism are doing so in a direct attempt to curry male favor. This whole link is a mixed blessing. On one hand, the female gamers there seemed to appreciate the sweet relief from woman-bashing posts about how women just don’t understand, man. On the other hand, I’m disturbed that such a stereotype is so routinely believed in, to the point where my post is framed as the exception to the rule.
But what’s really funny is how the stereotype that feminists are scolds completely confused some men who want so bad to write off women’s equality as some sort of de facto drag on their pleasures. Women who whine that men don’t fill some Father-Knows-Best role are hardly feminists, and K-Lo, who suggested that men who refuse to play Ward Cleaver are the direct fault of feminists who don’t entice men with submission, are openly hostile to feminism. This commenter, desperate to believe that it’s feminism that’s the bad guy guilt-tripping him about his video game consumption, just decided that it was me who wrote K-Lo’s whine, so that his worldview that posits that feminists are the hateful scolds wasn’t disturbed. It’s not that feminists don’t get tired of the “man-boy” thing, but it’s not that we don’t want men to be playful. We just expect that they understand that it’s not women’s job to clean up after them, and that they don’t whine if they don’t a devout, submissive woman to fetch their drinks while they play Xbox.
But boy, some of the articles they linked of women decrying men who play video games are a perfect, textbook example of PHMT. (Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.) These women aren’t the befanged, blood-dripping feminists that some maladjusted young men have been taught to hate and fear. In fact, I’d say they’re the opposite—conservative women who are furious at men for not providing the Ward Cleaver image that they have romanticized to justify their conformity to patriarchal expectations. Example #1, drawn from Kotaku and published in the Dallas Morning News:
It’s 1965, and you’re a 26-year-old white guy. You have a factory job, or maybe you work for an insurance broker. Either way, you’re married, probably have been for a few years now; you met your wife in high school, where she was in your sister’s class. You’ve already got one kid, with another on the way. For now, you’re renting an apartment in your parents’ two-family house, but you’re saving up for a three-bedroom ranch house in the next town. Yup, you’re an adult!
Now meet the 21st-century you, also 26. You’ve finished college and work in a cubicle in a large Chicago financial-services firm. You live in an apartment with a few single guy friends. In your spare time, you play basketball with your buddies, download the latest indie songs from iTunes, have some fun with the Xbox 360, take a leisurely shower, massage some product into your hair and face – and then it’s off to bars and parties, where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes. Wife? Kids? House? Are you kidding?
In case there’s any doubt about what comes next, she is not positing that there’s value in these changes to American culture that allow people to have some fun as single people, so that they don’t grow bitter and resentful about the times and lays they’ve missed by marrying young. She’s all about jacking up the divorce rate by convincing people to marry too young, before they’re formed enough to really know what they want. Men, especially, irritate her with their willingness to allow themselves a bout of bachelorhood and even continuing to believe that being partnered doesn’t mean the end of fun. Why is she bitter? Well, she tells you. For the problem with child-men is that they’re not very promising husbands and fathers. They suffer from a proverbial “fear of commitment,” another way of saying that they can’t stand to think of themselves as permanently attached to one woman. Sure, they have girlfriends; many are even willing to move in with them. But cohabiting can be just another Peter Pan delaying tactic. Women tend to see cohabiting as a potential path to marriage; men view it as another place to hang out or, as Barbara Dafoe Whitehead observes in Why There Are No Good Men Left, a way to “get the benefits of a wife without shouldering the reciprocal obligations of a husband.”
Game, set, match. We women sacrifice our dignity, equality, leisure time, and sense of individuality, and what we get from it is men who won’t play Ward Cleaver! Is Hymowitz thumping The Feminine Mystique at us? Hardly. She’s a scholar at the Manhatten Institute, a hard-right think tank, and most of her work is devoted to singing the same song about how women’s equality is the death of civilization. Her essay is the same thing as K-Lo’s, which is an attempt to use the specter of misbehaving men to guilt trip women out of demanding equality, and also just to generally make people panic about the end of traditional gender roles. Like K-Lo, she’s full of shit.
Kotaku also links a British writer Kate Muir, making the same demands on men to quit playing video games, trying to shame them out of it.
I assumed that, after adolescence, young men put away childish things and played amateur football, got amusingly drunk, instigated punch-ups, watched Big Brother or ineffectually pursued women. Yet here were men holding down serious careers by day, but infantalised by night in a virtual world….
Who knew that the generation who first became addicted to Pac-Man and Super Mario would turn out to be boys who never grew up? Man-teens sitting before their kiddy consoles like huge manatees.
But the games addiction is only a symptom of the extended childhood of the 21st-century hominid. Marriage, families and children are being delayed for as long as possible, replaced by conspiratorial flatmates and microwaved gastropub ready meals. Italian men stay at home with their mother; the British and Americans want to lead a life like an endless episode of Friends.
Perhaps there’s nothing to complain of about this man-teen era, unless you’re a woman with a ticking biological clock, waiting for someone – anyone – to grow up.
She then quotes… Hymowitz! I dare say that this problem of waiting around on man-boys is a direct result of not really taking the feminist call to own your own life seriously, but instead waiting around for some man to define you.
All this blaming of video games makes me think that we’re in the midst of a genuine moral panic here. It really feeds the theory that new technologies become the cipher for moral panics. Like I said in the previous post, there is exactly nothing about video games that makes them any more or less a competitor for someone’s free time than sports. But Hymowitz and Muir wouldn’t dare write their respective columns about addictions to their respective nations’ pastimes of respectively-defined football. In order to argue that male inattentiveness to women’s needs and desires is the fault of feminism, you have to pretend it’s a new thing. (In truth, it’s as old as dirt, and a product of privilege more than anything.) In order to bolster the notion that we’re in a scary new world, the new technologies get blamed. Same with MySpace and teen sex, or the rock and roll records of old.
Gamers? Confused about something that has to do with feminism? So confused they can’t tell the d-pad from the start button? I’m shocked, totally shocked.
I cracked up reading your article. If Barbara Defoe Whitehead so longs for the days of Father Knows Best, then that bitch needs to quit her job, stay at home, bake cookies, shut up and spread her legs and give her job up to some disenfranchised male. I loathe social conservatives.
What some economists and people in general don’t seem to understand is that we live longer. We require more schooling/education to squeak by in the world. Unless you’re a natural entreprenuer, you can rarely make 50K a year without advanced education. Because we live longer, we are allowed more time at youthful pursuits whether it’s gaming or cow tipping. There is no need to marry and settle down before the age of 30. And with today’s divorce rates, NO ONE should be marrying before 30. Recent studies have indicated that people with advanced education and who wait until they are in their late 20’s to early 30’s to marry (if they choose to) have an exponentially greater chance of a successful marriage. Claiming that men are commitment phobic is crap. So are women. And we’re all allowed to be. Why settled down any earlier if you don’t have to? As a late settler myslef, I did what many GenXer’s are doing today. I got an advanced degree, started my career, met a guy, dated for 3 years, shacked up for 3 years, then married, bought a house then at the age of 35 after 7 years of marriage had my first child. I had zero fertility issues as I’m now halfway through my second pregnancy at the ripe ol’ age of 37. I still work fulltime as does my husband and we’re lucky enough that we don’t have to put our kid(s) in daycare or with a relative.
Feminism (or should I say Women) will always be blamed for the destruction of society - they were even blamed for the fall of rome. I think old people and religious nutters should mind their own business and leave the rest of us alone.
Hymowitz’s comparison and diagnoses is especially telling, because she completely ignores any economic reasons for this behavior as well. We have become so conditioned to think of the Ward Cleaver/Donna Reed life as being what marriage is all about. Not just the patriarchal roles, but the suburban, middle-class lifestyle. For a 26 year old man enjoying his bachellorhood, an additional impediment to his seeking marriage is simply that his, and his girlfriend’s, paycheck won’t buy his way into the suburbs. Since marriage and family=suburban life, he figures “Why bother with marriage? I’ll just have a good time until I can afford it.”
What gets me about notions like this is that they impart a gender spin to what is really a common problem across the sex divide: there are people out there who are total nags who hate to see their partner have fun, people who are only content in their soul if they are pestering their partner to Do Something. They are the domestic versions of the the Life Is Only Meaningful If You’re Miserable Crowd found by the battalion in organized religion.
Look, gentlemen, your partner might be riding your ass not because she hates you gaming but because she hates you being relaxed and happy. Why aren’t you fucking washing dishes or bringing more cash in, loser?
Look, ladies, your partner might be riding your ass not because he hates you gaming but because he hates you being relaxed and happy. Why aren’t you fucking washing dishes or bringing more cash in, lazy bitch?
“O asshole!- In our hours of ease, uncertain, coy, and hard to please”, with apologies to Walter Scott.
I’m glad to see some talk-back on these stereotypes as well. I’m a “real grown-up”, in my forties, married, with a steady job, a doctorate, a preschool-age daughter, a voter, a taxpayer, a mortgage holder…and I play video games. I’ve been playing them since I was 12. Somehow playing video games didn’t get in the way of all of the above-listed “adult” criteria.
And…here’s a little secret.
My wife plays them too. In fact, we play together (MMORPGs of the World of Warcraft variety.) We have a wide circle of friends (both local and national/international) who play also, and a lot of them are married, with steady jobs, children, etc. etc.
And Holly…yes, there’s a large portion of the gaming community which is as clueless as you say, but there’s a lot of us out there struggling to overcome that boys’-club-only mindset.
Someone pointed out in a feministe thread that the 1950s model of getting married straight out of high school is extremely anomalous in both US and European history. The age at first marriage took a huge dive after WWII and is only just starting to get back to its usual level.
Case in point: back in the 1920s, my grandparents married when she was 25 and he was 28. And she wasn’t considered a particularly old bride, either.
Is there any way to change your female character in Mass Effect so that she sounds like Fran Drescher?
That is all very well, Amanda, except that women DO have biological clocks and DO want to have children, which tends to require a man involved in the process.
Or perhaps you are advocating for women to stop having children altogether?
Douglas Adams once said:
Computer games have been around long enough that they should be considered part of the establishment by now. Maybe the backlash is just older journalists (or those with older audiences) trying to scaremonger.
Though, seeker, there are lazy fuckhead slobs of both genders (though I’d say men are more prone to it, and women tend to, as it’s been said on this blog before, loose the game of housework chicken), and woe to the fastidious, or even merely neat, person who shacks up with one, and doesn’t realize that they can simply dump the other person and get their life back.
It’s just that this type of person isn’t new.
I thought since the average gamer is in his or her late 20s/30s now video games would stop being a red-headed step child and be treated like television, music, movies, and any other form of mass entertainment. I guess I’ll have to wait a little bit longer.
Mary, some women DO want kids, some don’t. Some men want kids too, and some don’t. It’s a matter of finding a partner on the same side of the fence as you. Not to mention that some people aren’t heterosexual.
And there’s always adopting. Or artificial insemination.
Also, I’m sorta suspicious about this clock being purely biological.
Hey, I married a young geek, we’re fiscally sound, we have no kids (those two things are related), and we both like to sit around in the evening playing games online (and watching Keith Olbermann).
Women can have fun too!
You know, I’m getting rather tired of hearing about this supposedly new phenomenon of the “man-teen” and its slightly more progressive variant, the “listless lad”. The analyses offered in support of the existence of these categories tend to strike me as very shallow: various social and economic factors are not considered, there’s almost no context, etc.
Full disclosure: perhaps I’m a little oversensitive to this, since I fear being considered one of these “irresponsible” men because I’m well into my 30s, don’t have a “regular” job or a car, I’m “still” single, etc. But that’s what career changes (especially fairly radical ones like I undertook) and graduate school does to one.
Speak for yourself, I’d rather play videogames.
Teasing aside, there are men who want to be dads just like there’s women who want to be moms. If you really want kids don’t be with someone who doesn’t. That goes for both men and women.
It’s that “rock and roll” music that’s destroying the American family! That Elvis Presley with his swiveling hips, and his slicked-back hair! And that jungle music, with all that rhythm and those loud guitars…It’s an affront to American values! When we were your age, we listened to nice, tasteful music like Glenn Miller. Isn’t Glenn Miller good enough for young people anymore?
…oh sorry, wrong decade’s stupid pointless rant from older folks who can’t understand anyone younger than they are…
You’ve got it all wrong, MikeEss. The trouble is that swing music! It’s just so…sexual. And the dances those kids do, who knows what it could lead to?
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That is all very well, Amanda, except that women DO have biological clocks and DO want to have children, which tends to require a man involved in the process.
Or perhaps you are advocating for women to stop having children altogether?
Or we could have children with men who don’t want them, thereby ensuring years of frustration and neglect followed by an unpleasant divorce! It’s the pro-family way, I guess.
“That is all very well, Amanda, except that women DO have biological clocks and DO want to have children, which tends to require a man involved in the process.
Or perhaps you are advocating for women to stop having children altogether?”
Are you suggesting that one needs a husband to have and raise kids? Because, oh boy is that no true.
Mnemosyne is right - and Stephanie Coontz is my go-to reference: the 1950’s WERE anomalous. Prior to that era, we had what John Hajnal called the “Western European Marriage Pattern:” Both women and men married in their mid-20’s or later, and a sizable percentage - as much as 25% - never married at all. This, mind you, was long before the X-box or the Wii were invented.
College-educated people, who marry in their mid-20s or later, have a very LOW rate of divorce. Steven P. Martin documents a “divorce divide:” the edjamacated late-marryers who divorce at very low rates and the early-marryers with high-school degrees or less who get divorced in droves. Having sufficient “human capital” seems to prevent divorce.
What often happened with the young married factory worker in the Hymowitz scenario: He would be about 40 when no-fault divorce was legalized. Bitter and resentful for having sacrificed his youth on the altar of marriage and family, he up and deserts his family, files for divorce, and refuses to pay child support. His wife turns into a “displaced homemaker” desperately trying to find a job to support her family, with no education and no marketable skills. His kids detest him for deserting his family and become estranged from him.
OTOH, if men and women are allowed to have fun in their twenties before settling down, the chances of a horrific, family-destroying midlife crisis are so much less. You get your ya-yas out while you’re young and resilient, experience the joys of getting drunk on peppermint schnapps and decide it’s vastly overrated, go through a phase of playing games all weekend until you’re bored - and you don’t wake up at forty convinced you missed out on some mythical youthful fun and will do anything to experience it before you die.
Mary, for the woman who wants to have a child well, she can either pick out a man who will be the donor (anonymous or someone she knows) and have the child herself. No real need for a man there. It does not require a man at all. It just requires something he makes. There’s a big difference.
Your implication that ALL women DO want to have children is, frankly, bullshit. Amanda doesn’t want kids. Plenty of other women don’t want kids. Hell I’m not sure if I want them. Maybe babysit some every once in a while, but I don’t know if I’m the mothering type. I’m not keen on being treated as a walking womb who is just fulfilling her (apparently very well-hidden) desires of bringing a parasite to term.
“Or perhaps you are advocating for women to stop having children altogether?”
Uh … was that a joke?? Please someone tell me that was a joke. People can’t really be that dumb, I hope.
No, Mary Tracy9, as rowmyboat pointed out some women want to have children. Some don’t. I’ll thank you not to presume to speak for me or the rest of the sex/gender.
In addition, a man may be involved at no, one, or every step of the conception/gestation/parenting process. Through the wonders of technology, women can become pregnant of their own volition, without having to shackle themselves to an unsuitable partner in order to do so. It takes a bit of money and a tolerance for some medical procedures, is all. And that newfangled financial independence actually enables some women to consider both the costs of insemination and the costs of solo parenting, should they decide that they wish to become parents, but find themselves lacking any marriageable male acquaintances. Even without artificial insemination, as far as I’m aware, the only part of conception for which a male is actually necessary is the introduction of sperm to a receptive ovum. No need for a wedding ring.
I’m not saying that all women want to parent without having a man involved. I’m not saying that all women can afford artificial insemination. I’m not saying that solo-parenting (or co-parenting with a non-genetically related co-parent) is the best option for everyone. But for the woman who wants to have kids but doesn’t want to get married, options do exist.
My biological clock appears to be broken, as well. And I’m very happy with my wonderful husband who shares my total lack of interest in children and near-obsessive interest in WoW, politics, and my career.
But i’m sure someday that white picket fence will whallop me upside the head. (snicker) Any day now.
I wonder what the establishment would do if computer games managed to displace watching football/basketball as the #1 at-home recreational time waster? The infrastructure required to watch the Super Bowl is a vast unidirectional broadcast network that is conveniently the same equipment necessary for propaganda; the infrastructure necessary to play WoW is a largely peer-to-peer Internet that also supports blogs, forums, and means of political dissent.
Some of those late 20 something guys are in graduate school trying to get a better job so they can actually afford a decent house in a safe neighborhood. I refuse to be scolded for not procreating in my 20’s when for most of that period I was earning less than 50% of AMI, and I’m sure that’s true for most men also. Plus, when you are married, pursuing that graduate degree can be more challenging because YOU HAVE MADE A COMMITMENT. Studying 24/7 does not go over so well with the non-student spouse, and honestly, I don’t know how my law school classmates who were married made it. Sensing this might be true, non-crazy people often wait until all that is over with to tie the knot. Oh, and perhaps the same people game sometimes.
“The trouble is that swing music!”
I just realized you are SO right! The last good wholesome music was those good American military marches by John Philip Sousa. Ahhh, those were the days…
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Seriously, why is it that every new piece of popular technology, every new form of entertainment, every new clothing/hair fashion, new jargon, new entertainer, etc., causes so much controversy among some group of anally-corncobbed self designated cultural arbiters?
Can’t anybody just chill out any more?…
where you meet, and often bed, girls of widely varied hues and sizes.
This part reveals way more than the author likely intended.
I am one of those women who wanted kids and did it myself. (And just to be clear, I am not saying that every woman wants kids or should want kids or should do what I did, which was donor insemination.)
I can’t tell you how many people told me that my kids (twin boys) need a father. And now that I’ve had them and I’m single and in the throws of preschool-dom. This is what I’ve discovered: It’s not that they need a father in the “man of the house” sense. It is that we, as a family, need an extra pair of hands. Doesn’t have to be a man’s hands. I find single momhood next to impossible to truly do by yourself. You need others to help or you will go nutty. But, I think their are a world of options there. If not extended family then single mothers cohabitating and helping each other out or foster grandparent types or whatnot.
I hear this “you need a man to have children” or “you can go have children all by yourself” a lot. And the truth is inbetween, I think. You don’t need a man, but you do need someone. YMMV, of course.
That said, I am ultimately happy with my choice to parent “alone.” It is terribly hard work, but if I was doing all of this terribly hard work while their father was watching football or xbox or whatever and not pulling his share? That would be more than I could take.
MikeEss, no sooner did people start listening to those marches by that upstart Sousa, than they were two-stepping all over the place! Right out in the streets! Men and women, dancing in each other’s arms, wildly, and without having ever learned those steps in a reputable school of dance, without having been properly introduced.
Dancing in the streets! That was the downfall of the ballroom, the drawing room, and all propriety, right there!
Watch out, Amanda… once you start to deal with the hooting dickholes that make up the fanboi troll contingency, it’s very hard to shake them off.
Also, my biological clock has been blinking 12:00 since it arrived from the manufacturer.
MikeEss: My theory is that the declining market (passive entertainment, movies, television, etc. media) sees the rising market (interactive media, the internet, video games) rightfully as a threat, and is attempting to stymie its growth through a propoganda campaign of misinformation and fear. Internets = pedophiles, and Video games = murderous psychopaths.
Dancing, zingerella? DANCING? Why, those young whippersnappers should be crouching by the single lit candle God allows them and doing nothing but reading the Bible!
Dancing? SINFUL!
I think you are all missing the big picture here.
Here’s a great article that explains why being an eternal teenager might not be all that cool.
Sample:
I think you are all missing the big picture here.
Here’s a great article that explains why being an eternal teenager might not be all that cool.
Sample:
I know an entire cohort of “boomerang kids,” and I’m in my early 30s (still). These are people who moved out of their parents’ homes, went to university, got completely shafted by the job market, and wound up moving back home at least once. (With me, it was twice, but I plead serious illness the second time — I was sick for six months, and there was no way I could have supported myself through that, even on welfare, since at least where I live, welfare is more exhausting than working full-time.)
I’d say there are definitely economic reasons for the phenomenon. A good computer game is a lot of cheap entertainment, especially if you play it for hours at a time for months or maybe years on end like my roommate does. My boyfriend’s about the same way.
I must confess, I might be one of those humourless scolds, ‘cause it drives me nuts when the two of them are sitting around and I’m doing chores, but I definitely also have less mess tolerance than they do — I didn’t grow up with someone picking up after me past about the age of five, so I understand at a gut level that if I don’t do it, it doesn’t get done, and I’m enough of an adult to realise that sometimes, you just have to do chores. Big whoop. That’s not to say that I think everyone should be working their ass off all the time, but christ, if the cat hair is piling up in the corners, take five minutes and sweep the fucking floor before you sit down for another marathon gaming session, ok? (BF retorts: But some people don’t care about the mess, and I say, Yeah, because they don’t have to. This is why women lose games of Housework Chicken.) I hate to say it, but I do think it’s kind of juvenile to sit around playing games while the squalor builds up around you, especially if you happen to have a resident Cleaning Fairy.
And I’m not your mother, because I’m also another one of these women who does not want kids. My uterus is not zoned residential, industrial, or commercial, thank you.
Mighty Ponygirl, you’re probably right about a lot of it.
The part I’m still working on is why there’s usually some strong religious angle to a lot of these situations.
I think a lot of it is just opposing change for no other reason than change=bad!!!
Which kind of circles back to the thread(s) on Obama or Clinton vs. The Old White Republican Man. Both Obama and Clinton represent A Wild And Radical Change In The Way Things Should Be!!!
That’s why I’m afraid of a Rethug win - too many people who are just not able to accept something different…
tannenburg, I’ll have you know that dancing is a biblically sanctioned activity (see Psalm 150). Your god-fearing, Biblically-commanded young men and women are downright instructed to dance in praise of god.
But not the two-step, I tell ya. Two-stepping is just inappropriate. They should be doing something decorous and appropriate, such as the minuet.
Mighty Ponygirl, I’m with you on that.
I think you are all missing the big picture here.
Here’s a great article that explains why being an eternal teenager might not be all that cool.
Sample:
This is weird. I cannot comment anymore. I don’t believe Amanda could have banned me, right? Me, a radical feminist? Definitely not without at least taking the trouble of checking out my RADICAL FEMINIST BLOG. I mean, what could my sin possibly be? Disagree with her? Be too radical?
Surely Amanda is better than that.
Mary, if you can’t comment any more, how is it that I’m reading and replying to your comment?
I hate these constant assumptoins that everyone in some group is the same, ESPECIALLY when it comes to age and marriage/fertility, and gaming. As a 23 year old feminist with fertility problems married to a very responsible gamer and game programmer, I think I must be some kind of freak.
Mythologically and historically, game playing was a highly respected activity. Why it’s such a problem when it’s on a screen and not a board, I don’t know.
And in my experience with all kinds of gamers, they’re never as obsessed as sports fans. I’ve never seen a house painted to look like a Mario mushroom, never seen a wedding with a World of Warcraft theme, but there’s a Green Bay Packer’s house in my town and far too many sport team themed weddings. Why is the one respected and not the other? Oh yeah; age of the average participant.
rowmyboat - ‘Cuz I’m cheating.
At any rate, THIS is what I wanted to say. (It’s from a really good article ie: not from me)
Maybe the “some women DO want children” thing was meant more to point out that some of us — including many men — would actually like to have steady relationships. Not everyone is really doing the constant casual hookup thing. Many of us do want to parent in our late twenties or early thirties and would like to have a partner to do that with us. Some of us would just like to have the partner, without the children. It’s not shameful or crazy to want any of that.
That said, I’m 26, and the idea of being married to my high school sweetheart, pregnant with my second child, makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I’m the stereotypical man when it comes to chores. And I like video games just fine.
It’s 1954, and you’re a 26-year-old white woman. You finished high school at age 15 through a combination of brains and hard work, and applied to the local University for a law degree. You were patted on the head and told to “go back to high school, dearie”, so you did, for a whole year, and tried again, only to be told the same thing. Your family was too poor for you not to work if you could, so you took an actuarial course and got an accounting job until the Boys came home from overseas and made you redundant. Now you’re married, and have been for five years, to a 28-year-old travelling salesman who dropped out of school in grade four. He’s almost never home— just often enough for you to have three children with a fourth on the way. You live in a two-bedroom row house in Montreal that you rent yourselves, and will until your husband’s job takes you elsewhere. Besides keeping house and looking after three children under five by yourself, you are active in your church, your neighbourhood, and your eldest daughter’s school, because it’s better than going crazy from cabin fever.
Yup, good times, ladies. Good times.
Dancing in the streets! That was the downfall of the ballroom, the drawing room, and all propriety, right there!
I’m sorry, you’re both wrong. The original downfall of civilization and the end of morality and propriety was when the waltz came along. Johann Strauss was the Elvis of his day, corrupting the youth with his sexy music.
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
Oh, yes, playing the “it was so much better in the old days” game. My favorite version is from British SF writer, Brian Aldiss who tells the story of God walking around the Garden of Eden on the Seventh Day saying, “You know, I think I liked this place better a week ago.”
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
Ditto on the biological clock Mighty pony girl, I never bothered to set mine.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but I remembered some lecture from my undergrad days on hearing that there was no such thing as a “biological” clock pre-legalized contraception, or something like that. Because it was usually you just had sex enough and you got pregnant typically, unless you were a sneaky woman using alligator dung or pennyroyal tea. It wasn’t until women en masse actively started using birth control, like the pill, putting off having babies for their careers that this notion of a “biological clock” came into being probably as a scare tactic against women. Does anyone know when the phrase really got started?
I can’t stand how the assumption is that if you are an adult, then you must be boring and miserable.
Wasn’t the point in growing up to be able to be mature enough to balance entertainment and the necessities in life?
Most of these “entertainment X is ruining our culture” rants seem just to be jealousy that someone else is having more fun.
In the end, I am an adult. Therefore I game.
Wow, Jimmy Kimmel really smartened the fuck up.
Wait a minute, why didn’t this comment show up the instant I thought it up but instead waited until I typed it and pressed submit? IT’S ON NOW!
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
I can’t read Kotaku anymore because of the horrible commenters. The “hot tears of shame” category with upskirt pictures of pvc figurines and cardboard advertising cutouts didn’t help matters much, either.
Mnemosyne, it depends on where you put the end of propriety. The waltz (and, a decade or so later, the polka, had young people whirling around ballrooms in each other’s arms, touching for an entire dance, so you’re right there; however, these were both still dances of European ancestry, and their teaching was the purview of dancing masters (and the odd dancing mistress). In its day, long after society had become accustomed to the notion of dances in which partners held each other’s bodies, the two-step shocked and dancing masters, because of its simplicity. It was also one of the first popular dancing styles to originate in the U.S. to be danced to American music, heralding States’ development as an originator, rather than simply a consumer, of culture and fashion. And we know where that lead.
Your comment was insufficiently spammy! Or maybe it was too spamtacular. One of those two, anyway.
I’m a bit of a messy person myself. I don’t think its acceptable really and I get immense guilt trips if I discover anyone’s cleaned my stuff up. But I find it hard to get motivated when it’s just me. I usually only clean up when people come over.
Ultra Magnus:
According to etymonline.com, 1955.
“Also, my biological clock has been blinking 12:00 since it arrived from the manufacturer.”
Hmm. We must have gotten ours from the same manufacturer.
“Maybe the “some women DO want children” thing was meant more to point out that some of us — including many men — would actually like to have steady relationships.”
How and what does that have to do with having kids and how and why does liking video games, or not wanting to get married and have kids mean that they don’t want a steady relationship? There is more than one way to do all that.
(BF retorts: But some people don’t care about the mess, and I say, Yeah, because they don’t have to. This is why women lose games of Housework Chicken.)
You don’t have to, either. There’s a simple solution, and it involves not putting up with a boyfriend who has openly told you that he would rather make you do an unfair share of the work than get off his ass for five minutes. Housework Chicken becomes a very easy game to win when you realize that the issue is not “Who will do this housework?” but “What are the consequences of the unfairness?” In this case, it seems to be that you will persuade yourself that you “have to” care more and “mind more” that there is a mess. Nice deal for your BF.
Amanda, note that underlying all the whining about man-boys is the notion that they would give up all their frippery if some woman would marry them and straighten them out. Without that assumption, the whole argument falls apart; after all, why would a woman want to have a husband who is a man-boy? The pretense is that they need to get their heads out of their consoles long enough for some nice lady to drag them to the altar and Civilize Them.
Mnemosyne, it depends on where you put the end of propriety.
Exactly. I can’t quite figure out the search terms, but there’s a famous quote by a Greek or Roman philosopher deploring how terrible their kids were and how they were going to be the end of all civilization.
Heck, I guarantee you that the first proto-human who swung down from the trees was excoriated by his elders for ruining society.
What’s all this superstitious nonsense about rock’n'roll music? Everyone knows ’twas Jazz and demon rum that destroyed the virtue of the American maiden! What do you think sank that blasphemous, ‘unsinkable’ vessel of sin, Titanic? Now if you’ll excuse me I’m off by streetcar to purchase a jaunty boater and a new tin of moustache wax.
Also, ‘Hooting Dickholes’ would be an excellent name for a rock band.
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
I hope Amanda knows all the pain she has caused me by blocking me. So much for SISTERHOOD!
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
I hope Amanda knows how much pain she’s caused me by blocking me. So much for SISTERHOOD!
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
I hope Amanda knows how much pain she’s caused me by blocking me. So much for SISTERHOOD!
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
I hope Amanda knows how much pain she’s caused me by blocking me. So much for SISTERHOOD!
Elinor, my point is that people’s wishes shouldn’t be poisoned by a toxic consumist culture that has a LOT to gain from having us acting like insecure teenagers for decades.
I never meant to say that “ALL women want children”. I do not think that. What I was saying is that women who do should have their wishes respected by men and society and shouldn’t be dismissed as fun-killing meanies who want to “trap” men into marriage. This doesn’t seem to be the case in England or Spain, but it seems more common in the US.
I hope Amanda knows how much pain she’s caused me by blocking me. So much for SISTERHOOD!
“Heck, I guarantee you that the first proto-human who swung down from the trees was excoriated by his elders for ruining society.”
You damn kids, with your “let’s walk on two feet” crap! If walking on all fours was good enough all these years, why isn’t it good enough now?!?!…
That is all very well, Amanda, except that women DO have biological clocks and DO want to have children, which tends to require a man involved in the process.
Or perhaps you are advocating for women to stop having children altogether?
I reject the idea that it’s impossible to find a decent father for your child. On the whole, I’ve known more men who certainly are pro-children than women, who I’ve known to be more ambivalent, passive about it (if it happens, it does), and anti. Of course, there are the certain ones that do, but they’re not in significantly higher percentages than men. But as always, YMMV. If you personally are finding it impossible, then as a responsible adult, you have every right in the world to get thee to the sperm bank. And remember that life doesn’t come with a guarantee.
Alas, I cannot take credit for the phrase Hooting Dickholes, as that was coined by Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame.
“If you personally are finding it impossible, then as a responsible adult, you have every right in the world to get thee to the sperm bank.”
There’s a big problem with the sperm bank. All you’re gonna find there is…
…wait for it…
…Jerks!…
…thanks, I’ll be here all week…
Thanks XtinaS.
And the admonishing of young people, as others have pointed out well, is NOTHING new, as the term “whipper snapper” shows:
One might imagine that the term derives from the understandable temptation among more productive citizens to “snap a whip” at such sullen layabouts, but the whips in question actually belonged to the whippersnappers themselves. Such ne’er-do-wells were originally known as “whip snappers” in the 17th century, after their habit of standing around on street corners all day, idly snapping whips to pass the time. The term was been based on the already-existing phrase, “snipper-snapper,” also meaning a worthless young man, but in any case, “whip snapper” became “whippersnapper” fairly rapidly.
Before it was video games, sports and their dirty waltzes, young men had their whips.
And then there’s this gem, which is in dispute but I still found it funny when I’d first heard it:
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L.Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277
(1953).”
Even Socrates might have shook his fist at the young’uns.
(if anyone pointed that out already, my apologies)
Mary, your paranoia is not very becoming. I didn’t “block” you when I didn’t clean out moderation for a couple hours. I didn’t steal any precious sperm from you, either. I was at the studio all morning helping put together my boyfriend’s TV show, which while it is about football, doesn’t mean he’s a complete louse who never takes responsibility for anything.
“Heck, I guarantee you that the first proto-human who swung down from the trees was excoriated by his elders for ruining society.”
What the hell were they doing evolving feet and leaving the ocean in the first place?!
Amanda - Any chance of putting up a notice saying that comments will be put in a moderation queue? It seems like that would cut down on a lot of confusion.
The ad being displayed right now with this post is really ironic.
Holly,
As a gamer and a programmer at a video game company who has a degree, is well read and a daily visitor to both Kotaku *and* Pandagon, I must say your comment is *right* on the money.
The lack of education or tact or grammar of the average player in World of Warcraft or Xbox LIVE is just absolutely astonishing, and it’s what really keeps me playing single player games for the most part.
*BUT*
I’ve found the gaming community is a pretty accurate reflection of life in general. In games just as in life I hang out with a small group of very smart and funny people who I like very much, and anyone outside that circle is pretty much presumed stupid until proven not-stupid.
BTW I have had a TOTAL crush on Amanda long before the wrote these recent fantastic posts on gaming.
Rjak, a group of people who assumes “everybody but us is stupid until prove otherwise” is a pretty good description of any random high school clique, and at about the same intellectual level.
I would have agreed with some of what Mary said, but I’m laughing too hard at the thing about Amanda hatin’ on the sisterhood.
Anybody with kids has probably read Verdi, and remembers all the old pythons lying around moaning about their aches and pains, and how the animals they swallowed live were much bigger in the old days.
In response to the idea: That is all very well, Amanda, except that women DO have biological clocks and DO want to have children, which tends to require a man involved in the process.”
—
But, but I DO have children, all 70: 2 priests, a moonkin, and a rogue.
=D
Whether or not my biological clock is ticking really isn’t the responsibility of some man somewhere who is living life the way he wants, or even the responsibility of my partner if he doesn’t want children himself.
As far as Hymowitz and Muir go, I have some advice for them:
Bitter is best served with two shots of whiskey and a maraschino cherry.
Agreed, mythago, that the civilizin’ duties of womankind is where this is all leading. That men play video games or even are addicted to them is a direct result of women doing something wrong. I fully accept that I have failed in my duties as a man-civilizer for absolute lack of give-a-shit-tivity. My least favorite life plan in the world is frog-marching someone down the aisle and then proceeding into a life of….what exactly? I’m not even sure what the video game shamers expect men (or women, who they don’t seem to realize play video games) to do with their free time. I’m fairly certain that “joining a swinger’s club” is out of the question.
I am not a fan of men who bury themselves in Maxim magazine and play video games non-stop in order to avoid the company of scary, scary women. However, I am a fan of them continuing to avoid me. It’s worked since puberty and I suppose always will. If other women are having a problem with trying to get these guys to change, I think it’s probably advisable that they quit wasting their time. Honestly, the dearth of men who want to marry and have children is a myth. Even the most feminist-minded men realize that they’re probably going to get the better end of the deal, anyway.
I’m so grown up I had two plates of poffertjes for dinner.
No, it’s the collectible card game players that are expected to join the swinger’s club. Video gamers are supposed to put those nimble video game-playing fingers to use in servicing their partner monogamously. :p
The second paragraph of my comment took that on, somewhat. It has nothing to do with the video games; it has to do with the scenario quoted at the beginning of the post, which equates playing video games and being unmarried at 26 with a life of one-night stands. Those things don’t all have to go together. In fact I’d guess that they generally don’t. The whole “I don’t have a biological clock” thing is nice, and duly noted, but the thing is, if you accept the original writer’s framing, that men who play video games are incapable of having meaningful relationships, and then imply that women just shouldn’t want meaningful relationships…you see the problem?
I don’t mean to suggest anyone did that, but Mary may be sensitized to hints of it.
Luckily, it is actually possible to live a life that contains both video games and meaningful relationships. And luckily, the notion that only women want meaningful relationships is plainly false.
I agree. I think this is occasionally a progressive blind spot, frankly — wanting to have a long-term monogamous relationship that involves, you know, emotions and cohabitation and maybe even marriage and kids isn’t inherently a sign that you are immature or incomplete or enslaved to the patriarchy (or, on the flip side, that you’re some boring meanie out to trap men and take away all their fun). But at the same time, I don’t think that’s what Amanda was trying to get at in her post at all.
P.S. The spaminator on this site gives me grief on a fairly regular basis. It’s not personal.
That’s the deal, all right. I like men who play video games. (Or computer arcade games, since no one I know actually has a console).
I fully accept that I have failed in my duties as a man-civilizer for absolute lack of give-a-shit-tivity.
Quote of the week.
And in my experience, any woman who has ever told a man “no, I’m not terribly interested in marriage or kids” knows exactly how fast the average Maxim reader’s biological clock starts to tick. It’s very easy to pretend you don’t want something when you’re sure you’re going to get it.
MP, goddamit, I knew there was something up with all those “tournament nights”!
Well, Mary shouldn’t take it out on me, then. Because my point was that video games and meaningful relationships happily coincide. I speak as someone with a very meaningful relationship with a man who has trouble finding room for all the video game consoles he has. Still, I’m not going to lie and pretend that it isn’t hard for some women to find that meaningful relationship, for whatever reason. I can say I know plenty of women who want that but find themselves beating their heads against the wall because all the guys they meet or date dick around, putting them off, and just generally playing them.
My point is that there are a lot of disrespectful men because they have more power, and so they can get away with it. Therefore, the only way to increase the number of men who act right is to decrease their power, make them equal to women. What doesn’t decrease male dominance? Um, female submission. Submitting has been recommended for eons as the way for women to gain power, and so far has never worked. We have been played.
Letting go of neediness is the best personal move you can make to gain some leverage. Needy people just attract players and those who are seeking someone who will tolerate being neglected. Of course, the problem with neediness is you can’t just not feel it. You have to really overcome it. And there’s definitive steps to reducing neediness. Having your own income and hobbies. Having friends. If you want children, have a definitive plan on what you’re going to do if the father doesn’t materialize when you’d hope. The less holes in your life that you look for a man to fill, the less that you’ll be open to taking on substandard applicants. Believe me, I learned this the hard way. Living alone was probably the best thing I could ever do for myself in that sense.
>I dare say that this problem of waiting around on man-boys is a direct result of not really taking the feminist call to own your own life seriously, but instead waiting around for some man to define you.
You’re being dismissive of those women who HAVE taken the feminist call to own their lives seriously who still struggle to find a partner willing to share the responsibilities of biological parenthood before it becomes too dangerous to them to become pregnant. Perhaps it’s because you don’t want to be a mother. But I doubt I’m the only feminist out there who finds herself in this predicament.
“after all, why would a woman want to have a husband who is a man-boy?”
We don’t. Hence the increase of women putting off marriage. Also know as the “marriage strike” that MRA like to pretend they started.
____
“I am not a fan of men who bury themselves in Maxim magazine and play video games non-stop in order to avoid the company of scary, scary women. However, I am a fan of them continuing to avoid me.”
And perhaps the added benefit that paranoid Mary is missing is that, if the misogynistic man-boys* don’t marry and procreate - then they aren’t contributing to the gene pool. And that is no bad thing.
*- as opposed to the rest of them who just aren’t interested in the whole white-picket fence fantasy, instead of being trapped in the He-man woman hater’s club mentality.
____
“The whole “I don’t have a biological clock” thing is nice, and duly noted, but the thing is, if you accept the original writer’s framing, that men who play video games are incapable of having meaningful relationships, and then imply that women just shouldn’t want meaningful relationships…you see the problem?”
Franky, I don’t because your post in deeply confusing to me. Are we here accusing women who want kids of being patriarchy defenders or meanies out to trap men or not? Are we saying women shouldn’t want meaningful relationships or not? You’re saying yes and no and I’m having trouble parsing what your point is.
Mary is arguing a strawwoman - repeatedly.
Betty, what Elinor is saying (and she’ll correct me if I’m wrong) is that the response to “Man-boys don’t want to marry!” should not be “Women who want to get married are boring meanies!”
Wanting to be married to a responsible man and have kids is not something that makes women a tool of the patriarchy. Insisting that video games are automatically childish, and implying that it’s woman’s job to marry a man and civilize him into putting away his Xbox, does.
I suspect that, like most of these moral panics, there’s pretty much nothing there but a handful of anecdotes. Age at first marriage is going up, conservatives need an explanation but can’t talk about the truth (wage stagnation), so they grab at the irresponsible X-Box player and shove him in front of the camera.
My stepbrother is 38 and unmarried, but it has more to do with his parents’ bad marriage and nasty divorce and his two brothers’ divorces three divorces than with his love of video gaming.
D’oh! His two brothers’ three divorces. Though they may be at four by now, I can’t quite remember.
I guess I don’t understand this part. Are you saying women have to care about a messy room? If so, why? I’m guessing you mean that women have some sort of societal pressure on them to maintain higher cleanliness standards than men.
As I told my husband at the outset of our marriage: when someone comes in and sees our house messy, only one of us gets the disapproving looks and snickers behind the back. And it ain’t him.
To quote: “Agreed, mythago, that the civilizin’ duties of womankind is where this is all leading.” - Amanda
You know something really interesting? When my wife and I play games which feature all-on PvP…she’s the really mean one. She hunts ‘em down, kills ‘em, steals their stuff, and giggles all the while.
Civilized, indeed!
And, let’s be honest, a lot of those disapproving looks come from the same husbands who can’t be bothered to do their share of the work. That’s wife work!
From MikeEss:
…Jerks!…
Dude, I luv yas.
Wanting to be married to a responsible man and have kids is not something that makes women a tool of the patriarchy.
I’ll resist making a joke that could be misinterpreted as my actually meaning it and just agree, of course it doesn’t. I’m definitely trying to be sympathetic to women who feel that responsible, loving men are out of their reach. It’s worth noting, of course, that if you automatically eliminate all video game fans from that pool, you’re only failing yourself. Many of the most upstanding marriageable guys I know love their video games. Of course, I sincerely doubt there’s anyone here who would equate video game fan=unwilling to ever commit.
Rjack: The lack of education or tact or grammar of the average player in World of Warcraft or Xbox LIVE is just absolutely astonishing, and it’s what really keeps me playing single player games for the most part.
The problem here is invoking the prescriptivist fallacy which demands that all language forms should conform to some bastardization of formal Latin, and imposed on children as a way to determine social class structure. (Yes, the primary function of the American school system was to separate managers from laborers on the factor floor.) Linguistically, what is and is not proper grammar is going to depend on community consensus, medium and mode. Face-to-face spoken utterances rarely meet the same standard as AP, or Chicago, because the pragmatics of non-verbal body-language trumps noun-verb agreement and implied punctuation. Likewise, people communicating using a medium that is limited or expensive have tended to rely on abbreviations, codes, and truncated sentence structure.
People using radio, telegraph, teletype, post cards, ads in newspapers, marble headstones, or even expensive scraps of paper rarely wrote in the extended expository style. The 19th century literate person might find the jargon of chatspeak to be opaque, but would certainly understand the impulse to abbreviate.
Heck, does anyone really think that the Romans with their pervasive grafitti always used the idealized forms that became the basis for modern prescriptivist conceit?
Bingo. We should be more “adult”, like the morons at the National Review? Or like people like William Kristol, who lie constantly in a juvenile attempt to score points for their team and avenge their high school wedgies? Or like the mainstream press that obsesses over what a female politician wore or whether her voice cracked?
Most “adults” do not function like mythical adults.
Playing video games is far less juvenile than writing an entire book calling people who disagree with you fascists.
Playing video games is far less juvenile than writing an entire book calling people who disagree with you fascists.
Tim Noah annoys me, but I cracked up at his review of Jonah’s book at Slate. My favorite line:
And gawsh, I’d take open chat on WoW over my otherwise brilliant extended family over a sports game on TV. Sports has a much more violent and extended history of hooliganism compared to MMORPGs that there is not much point in comparing them, and has anyone actually listened to the extended vomit of barely coherent verbage that is “color commentary” during a good play?
As we tell our kids (and we’re 48 and 42), the best part about being a “grown-up” is knowing when to be a KID!
RE: I sincerely doubt there’s anyone here who would equate video game fan=unwilling to ever commit.
—
The guild my rogue is in has two, that 2!, stay-at-home-dads. They have to leave in the middle of a raid sometimes to change diapers or put the kids to bed.
I call bullshit on the “unmarried man = insecure, anxious advertising-raddled consumer” meme. It assumes that men who aren’t fulfilling their patriarchy-ordained role of suburban paterfamilias are necessarily insecure or incomplete or all the other things usually ascribed to women who aren’t married and at home with a large brood. (And, of course, it assumes that only slacker laziness stands between 20-something men (or women) and the income required to support suburban lifestylethe there are just tons of jobs out there that would support a suburban lifestyle, just as there are millions of high-paying jobs just waiting for ever poor black person who simply makes a decision not to be impoverished any longer.
I’ve found that consumerism seem more likely to hit once people do become “responsible” and “fulfilled” by marriage. Roommates and secondhand furniture are all very well if you’re single or just living together, the reasoning seems to go, but once you’re established only the best will do. Regardless of whether you can afford it (can anyone say “subprime mortgages”). And once you start having kids, Your Baby Might Die if you don’t protect their sleep with an Heirloom-Quality Crib made of Real Hardwood and Wood Solids. And your toddler’s brain and social standing will wither without the latest toys.
A WoW guild with lots of adults in it is an enlightened sanctum of utter politeness and refinement compared to some of the misogynist, homophobic bile that gets spewed around constantly in the more thoroughly male sectors of the gaming community, notably first-person shooters. Try play Call of Duty or Halo on Xbox LIVE… actually just google around, there are hundreds of short stories from girl gamers talking about the abuse they get. In general, the global gamer community sans its more refined or girl-friendly corners is a cesspool of 4chan-esque jokes and declaring things “gay” etc. Sorry if I sound cynical, it’s just that I gave up on the mass of the community quite some time ago, as a gamer and as a designer of games.
Playing video games is far less juvenile than writing an entire book calling people who disagree with you fascists.
This is what you call a low bar.
Seriously though, I’d settle for “mature” rather than “adult”. As in, the kind of crap Holly talks about being the exception rather than the rule. This has nothing to do with sniffing at archaic Latinate grammar rules or the shorthand of a fresh new medium; it’s the result of a hobby being crowded with a lot of immature young men with fucked-up ideas about women and sex in general. And that’s not because they’re unmarried and need a nice woman to show them the light. They’re just assholes. Aren’t there enough assholes in real life?
mythago: They’re just assholes. Aren’t there enough assholes in real life?
Well, in some ways I suspect that the hysteria regarding video games is good in a way, in that people are paying attention when men are assholes via a video game. In the past, men could be assholes in sports fandom and get a free pass.
They’re just assholes. Aren’t there enough assholes in real life?
Actually, I think it’s more than that they’re assholes. Being an asshole is an individual problem. This is very much a collective problem — as in, a culture has developed over many years (I’ve been there to watch it, since I was a kid) that’s gotten progressively more and more depraved. Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for a bit of depravity, but not when it’s ludicrously misogynist and ends up being a mostly male echo-chamber that greets any woman who gets identified with a combination of sexual threats, slurs, and unwanted propositions. You can solve individual problems by just taking out some assholes. A systemic cultural trend — the “boys will be boys” misogyny of gaming culture — is a lot harder to alter.
I kind of think the only way will be for more women to play games and be clear that they won’t play with jerks. To cordon off the jerks in their own sewers, basically (and more power to them in there, free speech is fine as long as there are enough other places for everyone else to play…)
The current trend, however, is towards segregation. Girls play with other girls, either in clubs or in events organized at certain times. If those aren’t available to you, and you’re still interested in playing male-dominated games like FPSs, you either pretend you’re not a girl (some women try to sound like little boys) or you put up with the abuse. That’s not really fair. Ideally, all the guys who don’t like the misogynist atmosphere, along with all the guys who just “go along with it” would realize it’s better to be able to play with more women than more assholes, and the assholes can go off and wank by themselves.
Well, in some ways I suspect that the hysteria regarding video games is good in a way, in that people are paying attention when men are assholes via a video game.
Unfortunately, most of the hysteria about video games to date hasn’t been about gamers acting like assholes at all. It’s been about the perceived content of the videogames (like the recent slander that Fox News broadcast about Mass Effect being a porn game, or Jack Thompson’s tirades) or about how guys are playing games instead of growing up and being real men, stuff like that. Nobody other than other gamers who are bothered really cares that much about how misogynist and generally foul gaming culture is.
I just remembered, I read an article in a paper about “the New Single Man” - basically, how he saw no need to get married because he was happy on his own, etc. and thankfully no mention was made of the Playboy lifestyle. I had to laugh when one man mentioned his “beloved” pet CAT. So now it’s single MEN with cats, eh? Will that make the inevitable misogynist ailurophobes finally STFU?
There is a thread at Feministe discussing, I believe, Kay Hymowitz again. Some person mentioned on the thread how her father was one of those early-marrying 1960s young men - and how he felt so trapped and miserable he took it out on his family. I bet that was rather common in that era. This is all too often what happens when unwilling people are coerced into marriage, and why *feminists* reject the Mean Mommy meme. Is this what Kay Hymowitz and K-Lo want? Lots of trapped, angry men abusing their kids? Won’t someone think of the children?
Holly, don’t forget that a lot of girl gamers get a sort of Stokholm Syndrome where they engage in the same misogynistic behavior in order to be “one of the guys.”
I haven’t seen that gamer culture is getting worse; it’s still misogynistic but it used to be much, much worse. (Particularly in tabletop gaming.)
mythago, I think you missed the joke (my fault, not yours). I was trying to make the point that you have to put up a *ridiculous* amount of guard in the world of online games. If you had to keep that kind of guard up in real life you’d be, well, pretty much as you described.
Speaking of school, any joke that requires this much explanation of the exaggeration gets an automatic F. Sorry ’bout that.
Admitting I’m a girl in MMORPGs is almost like coming out of the gaming closet. I really don’t get it, it’s not as if I hide my gender at all.
“Y’know, I didn’t know you were a girl. You don’t act like one.”
“Wait … what does that even mean? Was I supposed to run around and scream and faint every time I saw a monster or something?”
And then it gets awkward because usually the excuse is that I’m ‘cool’ or something and then I ask why they assume that being cool automatically means I have a penis. Generally though I’ve found it better to have people suspect me of being a boy right off the bat because it shakes their assumptions about girls and sometimes aren’t as insensitive as before. The fact that my game is very strongly grounded in creating a community (after a point the game is really shitty but it’s impossible to quit, even after years) probably plays into being able to change someone’s opinion.
I’m also probably pretty lucky that in my game there are prominent girl players (I think one is in the top ten for our server) and I have seen them chewing out people for being sexist. Still there’s a LOT of work to be done. Sexism was a big part of why I no longer play CS. The moment they find out I’m a girl it can get pretty lewd and misogynistic. It’s also why I’m really hesitant to play xbox live. A friend of mine swears that nobody would say anything to me because like last week a girl kicked his ass at Halo or something but he’s not aware of the constant girl-hating things he says (”I really like Lilly but she’s such a whore I’d never be able to date her.”) so I don’t exactly trust him on that.
Whee that was rambly xD
Thanks, mythago. That is indeed what I meant. The fact that the response to Mary was a chorus of “you don’t need a man to have a baby” and “I don’t want kids anyway” was somewhat disheartening to me.
Elinor, here̵