Normally, this title would be reserved for me. Whether it's falling off my bike, walking into a post (usually groin first) or saying 'I love you,' instead of 'one pineapple please,' (often in Japanese, but sometimes to a very pretty grocers daughter) I'm fairly confident I could fill a thousand pages with ways to make yourself look stupid. I do it regularly.
This post is something else entirely. I read this (warning: it's very long) post by a game creator, who recently wrote this post for a gaming website. I recommend reading both before continuing, or at least getting as far through them as possible.
I now have a confession to make. At first, the original article made me rage. It made me so angry that I had to stop halfway through (I've since finished it, through gritted teeth and much fist waving). Not because the men were acting stupid, childish or immature, but because the woman involved was being so pathetic that it made my heart rate increase, my blood boil and any other metaphor related to anger.
When you examine the article, far from being a feminist superhero, she is actually a controlling, manipulative wench. Here is why: Her flowing tears were nothing to do with 'being objectified.' She was expecting her boyfriend (whom she deliberately hides as being her boyfriend until the latter stages of the article, for dramatic effect) to jump into the fray to save her dignity/honour. When he didn't share the same expectations as her, and didn't tell the idiot to shut up, she ran out of the room crying. As exuberant feminists tend to do, she then examined the various relationships involved, checking to see if they were still worth her while. If they don't defend my honour, what's the point in friends - that's exactly what she is saying. Of course everyone is inherently selfish, and relationships of all forms are merely ways to improve ones own standing, physically, mentally or socially, but she expects the rest of the world to carry her views about life; when no one else does, she will cry and huff and puff and make everyone recognise their own mistakes. Whether they want to be reformed or not, they will damn well accept it.
The continuation on Kotaku is almost incidental - her hyperbole filled rhetoric is not dissimilar to my own; it's based on opinion and skewed world-views, nothing more. (Aside from her incorrect usage of misogyny (I can kind of understand it, it's sometimes misused even in mainstream media) belying the actual philogyny in her argument.) Two things strike me - first, philogyny is underlined as being a misspelt word. This means the powers that be determine hatred of men to be far less important than the hatred of women (the penalty for which is death, no compromises) and the wikipedia article I linked to philogyny is orders of magnitudes shorter than the antonym. Equality for all! Especially women. Orwell is correct in any application of equality involving more than one group. It will always be the case, I suppose.
Kotaku is a gaming website, written by a couple of interesting people, a couple of average writers, and a couple of morons, (generally changing positions when the mood takes me) but I never feel the need to go home crying when one of the morons starts saying things I don't like.
Instead I write a blog post about it.
Woah, hold your horses there sparky. She did the same thing! You are no better than her (directed at me, a strange sentence to write).
Except I didn't project my own insecurities onto my boyfriend in the form of a monumental guilt trip, while mislabeling a group of people in an attempt to tarnish an entire gender.
Also - stop trying to ruin my video games, you dumb bint. Also - try a sports bra next time.
Thank you for your time.
(Towards the latter stages of this post, the rage became unbearable and I started writing random nonsense. Couldn't help myself.)
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