Feminism - Yes all women or chainmail bikini?

[Spring Bass]

It's variable, depending on how you want to sub-divide it.

[Stannisaurus]

Some of the reforms Riot came up with were small but remarkably effective. Originally, for example, it was a default in the game that opposing teams could chat with each other during play, but this often spiraled into abusive taunting. So in one of its earliest experiments, Riot turned off that chat function but allowed players to turn it on if they wanted. The impact was immediate. A week before the change, players reported that more than 80 percent of chat between opponents was negative. But a week after switching the default, negative chat had decreased by more than 30 percent while positive chat increased nearly 35 percent. The takeaway? Creating a simple hurdle to abusive behavior makes it much less prevalent.

There's no chat between enemies in WoW (aside from some funny "gestures"). The option to turn off chats or the ability to be contacted is already available (although it doesn't serve the same function as in LoL.)

Maybe the tribunal system would work... perhaps if it was anonymous or something, the interactions between players in WoW are much more common and constant than in LoL.

[sologdin]

How many branches of the feminist movement are there? And what are the differences between them?

we could probably cut it into a couple dozen sub-variants, but the most fundamental groups for me are liberal, radical, socialist.

the groups tend to disagree over the source/cause of oppression, tactics/objectives for abolishing/amending oppression, identification of oppressive technique/practices, inter alia.

[Galactus]

Oh God yes, you are totally right. Normally when I played WoW I just tried to block out that sort of...rational thought? I think TP and I had a discussion a long time ago that we sort of learnt to block out the misogyny and the homophobia. I guess the sexist characteristics and a lot of that stuff got lumped into the same "just ignore" bit of my psyche. :(

Now when I drag up old stuff I find all sorts of things. One I actually remember reacting to back in the day was how they went a bit nutters with Alexstrasza's bikini outfit considering how the early model looked. Same with Sylvanas. Apparently, fighting with your midrif bared equals success.

Regarding Tera, my SO played it for about a day or two and was pretty put off by the extreme chain mail bikini outfits. For those not familiar with this game, here is an example.

I can point out a lot of stuff that's wrong with SWTOR's handling of female characters (and that's discounting the slave girl outfit, which was probably inevitable given the setting) but it does have a pretty sweet number of female characters of varying level of competency (and that's not even including PC's) Garza, Saresh, Admiral Rankin & Lord Krovos, etc. etc.

[Galactus]

There's no chat between enemies in WoW (aside from some funny "gestures"). The option to turn off chats or the ability to be contacted is already available (although it doesn't serve the same function as in LoL.)

Maybe the tribunal system would work... perhaps if it was anonymous or something, the interactions between players in WoW are much more common and constant than in LoL.

The point isn't the inability to chat: It's just putting a minor hurdle in which means people who are mostlyin it to grief won't bother. (at least a good chunk of them)

It's one of this "opt in"/"opt out" thingies.

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

we could probably cut it into a couple dozen sub-variants, but the most fundamental groups for me are liberal, radical, socialist.

the groups tend to disagree over the source/cause of oppression, tactics/objectives for abolishing/amending oppression, identification of oppressive technique/practices, inter alia.

Thank you Solo, I appreciate it.

[Shryke]

Yeah, that makes sense; I agree with what you're saying. I'm not involved in any Christian communities, so I can't comment too definitively on how that culture comes into play here, but it does sound similar to what most female, feminist bloggers tend to go through when addressing audiences who, for whatever reasons, aren't going to be especially receptive to their ideals, to say the least. This happens all the time in internet gaming communities, for one thing; the level of vitriol sent toward women commenting on the still-present sexism in gaming is frankly disturbing, especially considering that you don't notice at all the same attitude toward male commentators (although their numbers are admittedly pretty low).

In short, I can see where you're coming from, but this is by no means a unique case, unfortunately.

The gaming community has always struck me as a really nasty combination of reactionary/defensive and clueless about basic gender issues.

So you bring up any sort of even vaguely feminist issue and the automatic reaction is ignorance followed by attack. "I don't understand where this complaint comes from or any of the ideas behind it. But it's a complaint about games, so it must be bad so I'm gonna go full troll on your ass."

The list of emotionally unstable zealots from WoW includes mainly: Angry!Jaina, Vereesa and Sylvanas Windrunner, Tyrande, and Admiral Rogers. I'm sure there are plenty of other examples in more minor character. It's appallingly amazing how much this one archetype comes up. I must say though WoW isn't really too bad with the chainmail bikini's even in the earlier days. Certainly it's got nothing on games like Terra online. I think i'd feel embarrassed to play that.

Metzen has been worsening as a writer. Which is impressive.

Blizzard in general these days is working at a very shallow and stereotypical level of storytelling. It feels like they are trying to include more females but since they only pick from a small grab-bag of stereotypes you end up with alot of female characters with the same bad character.

[TrueMetis]

These days? Unstable zealot has been a staple since Warcraft 3.

[The Drunkard]

I don't think WC3 was too bad. The only one I can think of would be Tyrande "only the Goddess can deny me anything" Whisperwind, but she was an actual zealot, devoted completely to her religion and her people, who wouldn't let anyone cow her, and not some ranting powder keg who 'snaps' and needs to be mansplained back into being calm, like ToW-and-onwards Jaina.

[Lyanna Stark]

How many branches of the feminist movement are there? And what are the differences between them?

Solo listed the main ones as far as most people are concerned.

Liberal feminists are mainly fighting for equal rights in a legal sense. One of the most famous liberal feminist goals was women's suffrage, for instance. The main thought behind it is that once women gain equal rights in the eyes of the law, we will reach equality.

Radical feminists went further/has a different focus in that a lot of feminists looked at what liberal feminism had achieved and thought that while good, it was not enough. It could not touch the areas of the private sphere, for instance, or try to explain why even though we are equal in the eyes of the law this was not enough. Even if there were no theoretical barriers to women in education and in the workplace, we still suffered inequality. One of the famous lines often attributed to various radical feminists (although the origin is unclear) is "the personal is the political".

Socialist feminism relies heavily on explaining women's oppression through a socialist framework. As socialism originated in the class struggle, you can fairly easily work within that framework to also include oppression against women. (Interestingly enough, even if this at first glance seems superextremist/weird, a lot of these thoughts on explaining hierarchies and structures of oppression can be found in sutff like the kyriarchy theory).

These are just very small abbreviated explanations. Personally I am most familiar with liberal and radical feminism, but I believe socialist feminism is becoming really relevant especially when trying to analyse power hierarchies.

Waves:

Further, there are also the waves of feminis. Normally the "standard ones" are the first and second wave. Exactly where they started and ended seem to be a topic for debate, but generally, first wave feminists were liberal and fought for stuff like women's suffrage, women's right to education, equality in the eyes of the law. The main achievement is definitely women's suffrage.

Second wave feminists are normally seen as the "60s bunch", i.e. it really took off during the 60s. While the first wavers were looking to women's suffrage and legal equality, second wave feminists focused on reproductive rights, rights in the work place, family etc. They were active in a huge number of areas, but I think it's pretty easy to see the difference from first wavers and that the second wave feminists were thinking more along the general lines of radical feminism, that the personal is political, especially with the focus on reproductive rights, domestic violence, the fight for legislation against marital rape, etc.

Third wave feminism is a bit more blurry (perhaps because it is more modern and it will be easier to see it "crystalising" with the wisdom of hindsight) but in general, third wave feminism aim at being more inclusive when it comes to women of colour, women who aren't from the US or western Europe. It's also taken strides towards allying more with the LGBTQ movements and many third wavers are far more queer and trans-positive than the second wavers. There's also a move towards rejecting the "gender binary" (more on that below in the constructivits vs essentialist divide).

Constructivist vs essentialist debate:

This is the debate on whether there is something essentially feminine,a female essence, that all women carry with them at all times.

The essentialists mean that there is such an essence, that there is something universally feminine in all women and that this stands in opposite to the universally male essence, as it were. This line of thought means that there is a fundamental difference between men and women that explains our current gender roles. Often this ends up with certain traits or attributes being seen as feminine, for instance altrusim and receptiveness. The solution to the problem is then to devalue male essence while simultaneously adding value to what is seen as the essential feminine.

Constructivists mean that our gender roles are constructed and that how these roles are constructed is a product of our culture and society. Hence constructivists reject that there is an essential femininity to each woman, like some magic uterus power. Constructivists emphasise that the differences between male and female gender roles are divided in such a way due to cultural pressures. Further, constructivists are also often positive to "breaking the gender binary", i.e. there is a move towards accepting non-standard gender expression. Constructivism has gained a lot of traction within third wave feminism and is now far more popular than essentialism. This is also why third wave feminism is more trans positive. If gender is a construction that is not determined by birth sex, then you have a completely different ranges of gender expression available.

I might add here as well that Julia Serano has some very good theories on modification of the constructivist ideas which further breaks it down and makes it more...reasonable? Less theoretic?

This is the turbo variety, so people may disagree with details. :P Most of it off the top off my head and what I can remember from L. Gemzöe's Introduction to Feminism.

[Shryke]

To add to what Lyanna wrote, one of the things distinguishing the feminist waves is the essentialist/constructivist/etc debate, along with general views on women's place in society and legal vs social issues.

First wavers, as much as they were fighting for women's rights, still tended to accept alot of the structures and gender dichotomies of their sexist society. They tended to focus alot on legal rights.

Second wavers were generally very essentialist and also began pushing the social side of things and not just the legal aspects. They were also alot more interested in tearing down gender roles.

Third wavers most distinguishing feature, I think, is probably the hard turn towards constructivism and intersectionality and the push for rights for women who weren't just middle-to-upper-class in the 1st world and white.

[Gwydden]

Metzen has been worsening as a writer. Which is impressive.

Blizzard in general these days is working at a very shallow and stereotypical level of storytelling. It feels like they are trying to include more females but since they only pick from a small grab-bag of stereotypes you end up with alot of female characters with the same bad character.

I've never gotten this argument. I don't think Blizzard was ever a good storyteller. Their plots and characters (of either gender) were passable at best. I actually think Starcraft II is their most decent game in that regard.

[deleted01]

Lyanna (and others), thank you for providing that information. It can all get a bit confusing, so I for one appreciate it when people lay it out in a simple way.

Back to the "lad culture", it does seem to be sport-related. The things the guys do on the rugby or football "initiation nights" are just unbelievable. I'd never heard of it before, only seen it in American films and the like, and though, 'ah that's fine, it wouldn't happen here'. Wrong.

Unlike Theda, I don't go out much. I've been out a handful of times while at uni - I much prefer going home and sitting in a quiet pub with a few friends. Although this "lad culture" of course happens at home (which isn't a student city), it's less tolerated.

[Buckwheat]

Lyanna, thank you for that clear and informative post. And everybody else who has things to contribute to this thread, it is very interesting to read. :)

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

Lyanna, thank you very much for the information :)

[Arch-MaesterPhilip]

Wow that was really thorough Lyanna, thank you. I knew this was the right group to ask.

[The Weirwoods Eyes]

Just posting so I can find this thread easily.

[Elder Sister]

Lyanna and co., thanks so much for the breakdown. Really good stuff. :)

[Lyanna Stark]

I'm glad it's helpful! :)

Your interest is really making me think I should read up more to create better write ups! :lol:

There's no chat between enemies in WoW (aside from some funny "gestures"). The option to turn off chats or the ability to be contacted is already available (although it doesn't serve the same function as in LoL.)

Maybe the tribunal system would work... perhaps if it was anonymous or something, the interactions between players in WoW are much more common and constant than in LoL.

The main issue with WoW and many other online games where you are meant to interact with and chat to other players is that it's common with misogynist and homophobic language. It's totally normalised. It's also really hard to constantly turn off chat since the games rely on social interactions.

[TrueMetis]

I don't think WC3 was too bad. The only one I can think of would be Tyrande "only the Goddess can deny me anything" Whisperwind, but she was an actual zealot, devoted completely to her religion and her people, who wouldn't let anyone cow her, and not some ranting powder keg who 'snaps' and needs to be mansplained back into being calm, like ToW-and-onwards Jaina.

Grom was a zealot, Arthas entire story was becoming a zealot and it being used against him, Kael'Thas and Illidian were zealots, Kel'Thuzad and the members of the death cult were obviously zealots. Maiev was a zealot. Admiral Proudmoore was one, and I'm pretty sure I'm actually missing a couple.

And I'm not sure if I agree with the mansplaining, the first thing that comes to mind on that is after she kicks the Sunreavers out of Darlaran and Varian is angry about that, but it didn't strike me as manslplianing, more that bullshit "you should have psychically known exactly what I was planning and worked towards that" thing that a lot of leaders seem to do in fiction. Though I'm probably missing something on that since I'm still trying to figure out when Varian became reasonable.