In light of the controversy that has been extending back for more than half a year at this point, something extremely depressing has come to light.
Not too long ago, Totalbiscuit, a popular games critic who is supported by GamerGate (though he claims to be neutral), wrote a lengthy Twitlonger questioning the theory of media influence, particularly in video games, asking “where are the scientists?”
[added on reflection] Let me also say on other thing. There are a number of us in academia who love games, care about games, and believe games are important. We have been working for years to make games a legitimate tool for education and for study, and we were making progress. People were starting to take games seriously. And then came GamerGate. I have seen the careful progress of a decade come crashing down, and now, when I go to talk about games to industry groups or fellow academics, GamerGate always comes up as an example of how terrible and immature people who play games are. It will take years and years to repair the damage, and it is absolutely devastating to the serious study and application of the power of games to real problems. We are going to have trouble getting grants, getting foundations to fund
games, and getting people to take us seriously. It is devastating and
makes me very sad.
For many years, people have been fighting for games to be recognized seriously as an art form. GamerGate, as it seems, has caused serious damage to that. Social scientists have been studying the influence of games, not just because of their negative effects, but because of the potential positive effects as well. Games could potentially be a powerful tool to help teach empathy, and increase satisfaction and happiness.
But now that GamerGate has shattered public perception of gaming in academia, we may never be able to fully understand how to allow games to reach their full potential in this regard. But it’s not just media studies in video games that have suffered.
Rebecca HG, also known as 8BitBecca, is a video game archivist. Her work is vitally important to the future of video games, as the passage of time guarantees that physical storage media degrades and becomes unusable. Within decades, many out-of-print games may be lost forever, outside of illegal ROMs.
To any reasonable person, this would be devastating. Nobody benefits from this. Academics refusing to take games seriously means that games can never be realized as an art form. Even worse, without academia the task of preserving, understanding, and maintaining the cultural history of games becomes a daunting task. Half of all American films made before 1950 are lost forever, and were it not for the work of archivists and academics, it’s likely we would never have been able to preserve even that much.
So what happens to video games when academics don’t take them seriously at all? What happens when people refuse to archive games or study their cultural significance?
To put it bluntly, video games will have no future. If we do not take care to study the cultural history of games, it may forever disappear to us when cartridges and CDs inevitably die, emulators become obsolete, servers shut down, manuals are lost, and the publisher history fades into obscurity.
This should make any gamer uncomfortable, but unfortunately, this is not the case. GamerGate has not been shy about their disdain for academia in video games, as evidenced by the popularity of anti-academic figures such as the Youtuber known as “Sargon of Akkad”, who is one of the most widely-praised supporters of GamerGate. Just reading the title of one of his videos tells you all that you need to know:
I didn’t know this stuff either, and feel like that’s a good thing. Like this is what allies should be doing. Not taking parts and awards and saying how they should have or could have gone to the person that should have it. Also, one shouldn’t be yapping about it for credit all the time. You just do the shit because the shit is right.
The Original Series people weren’t fucking around.
I mean, let’s talk about this. TOS premiered in 1966. So that is during a) the Cold War b) the Civil Rights Movement and c) not all that long after WWII (and—importantly for this discussion—Japanese Internment)
Not only did they have a) a Russian on the bridge, b) a Black WOMAN as communications officer and c) a Japanese bridge officer (the actor playing whom was in a interment camp as a child.) But they also did episodes which specifically dealt with racism, prejudices, current events.
HELL, friggen MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. told Nichelle Nichols to stay on the show because it was so important for the Civil Rights movement. That this show showed a future when the movement was over. When Black people had achieved equality with their white peers. ALSO IT HAD THE FIRST INTERRACIAL KISS ON TV. And Shatner and Nichols deliberately ruined all the alternate takes where the kiss didn’t happen so that the producers were forced to air the kiss.
Whoppi Goldberg saw Nichelle Nichols on screen for the first time and went screaming to her mother about how there was a Black lady on tv who wasn’t a maid. And this is one of the pivotal moments that made her want to act.
Gene Roddenburry knew what he was doing. And he picked all the right people to play the parts in this.
This is Kane and their daughter Mackenzie. Mac is 13 years old and awesome. Kane is a graduate student, genderqueer, and a devoted parent.
But In 2006, a Midwest probate court decided someone who “doesn’t even know what gender they are” wasn’t fit to parent a child. Mackenzie was removed from the only parent she’d ever known, and sent to live with some disapproving elderly conservative Christian relatives. Kane’s struggle to regain custody has been ongoing for nearly 8 years now, with many
twists and turns and hopes and disappointments along the way.
Because
of developments in the case and changing attitudes in the state, there
is new hope that Mackenzie and Kane will be reunited soon. However, they
need to raise at least $5000 for legal and relocation costs to get
Mackenzie home. No donation is too small to make a
difference.
You can send donations to Kane directly via Paypal at atransdad@gmail.com or contact this blog privately for the link to the family’s
GoFundMe page. (For the sake of Mackenzie’s privacy, we decided not to
share that link on Tumblr, since it uses her legal name.) If you can
signalboost this post to your friends, that’s a great help, too. Thank
you!
as a transgender parent this is my biggest fear come true. my heart is in my throat and i can barely breathe. please donate, and if you can’t then please signal boost
Dr. Mae Jemison, MD, the first black woman in space and first actual astronaut to appear on a Star Trek show, one of the very few people on this planet of whom two pictures can be posted depicting them doing their job on a spaceship with entirely different contexts.
Holy shit this is a serious contender for the best post I’ve ever seen on tumblr.
According to Vulcan mourning traditions, a death is mourned only if the life was wasted. Leonard Nimoy lived an incredible life and leaves behind a wonderful legacy – one of compassion, creativity, and kindness. Let’s honor his life and celebrate his legacy by making an effort to uplift and encourage our fellow travelers on this little blue planet. #LLAP
Uh, okay, so that doesn’t have quite such a good ring to it.
I’ve never worked out what it is that means that some days I get up with the energy of a thousand suns, burn through activities and feel totally positive and able to do anything; and why some days I get up and, well, the activity of getting up is bad enough, but then there’s the whole rest of the day to face. I spend most of my life fairly well centred between these two, but sometimes I swing off to one end of my enthusiasm spectrum.
I know at the end of the day its all neurotransmitters and biochemistry. But it’s fairly strange. Thankfully today was one of the super-enthusiastic-oh-I’ve-just-had-the-best-idea days. Which was aided by the fact the weather totally cooperated with my plan, unexpectedly. So I shot out of the house in the morning and went to our local department store that does the ColourTrends paint that we really (really) like and got the paint for the stair rails (and white trim… and doors…). I also came up with a (genius) plan to make pseudo-green-houses for the areas in front of the deck. Which meant that I really needed to get on with finishing the under-deck-doors.
So I whipped around and grabbed hinges and locks and such. Then nipped to Two Day Coffee to get the fuel for such activities, before dropping some coffee off at a friend’s house (she’s poorly at the mo’ with a miserable cold/cough). Then a flying visit to the bakery and then a extra flying visit to the garden centre (slug pellets). And finally a visit to the autoparts place, because I noticed the Prius has used some oil…
Anyhow, after a quick lunch (which was courtesy of Hart’s Bakery, another route to happiness there), I headed down to the garage, cleared up a tiny bit and threw the heater on. Thankfully I’d already stripped down a bunch of pallets so I didn’t even have to do the tedious bit and I had nice dry wood to work with. Not long later I emerged from the garage with two of these:
You’ll have to excuse this bit of the garden, it’s where all the crap’s landed. But under the deck there are now two doors. Yay:
So I only need to box in that final segment at the right hand end, and the stairs, and I’ll be ready to start building the planters that are going to live in front of it *and* be pseudogreenhouses. I hope. Assuming Kathryn likes my idea. Otherwise they’ll just be planters.
This, of course, means getting some more pallets. Again.
I love pallets though. I could never’ve afforded to build this much ‘stuff’ without free wood. In expectation of this I’ve ordered a new set of batteries for the autofeeding screwdriver (well, I’ve ordered a bunch of tagged SC cells so I can build a new pack for it).
The only problem with one of these moods is this is when I order 50 bajillion things, and they all arrive two weeks later by which time I’ve lost interest.
Ah well.
In related news, the dead 18v pack has arrived for my circular saw, which tempts me to buy knock-off Makita batteries and chargers, because I’m hoping I might be able to 3D print an adaptor. Especially now I’ve got the thing that is meant to fit. But I’m wondering if John might be able to charge it a bit with his desk supply, which would mean that I might have some hope of testing the saw before I go splashing out actual cash on it. If it works it’d be tempting to build an adaptor for the craptastic ‘Challenge’ 18v drill, because I suspect that thing has 1mAh cells in it given how long the bloody thing lasts. Fully charged (I assume, it’s hard to tell because it doesn’t come with an intelligent charger, you just have to unplug it after ‘a while’*) it didn’t even make it through screwing in all the screws on one of the doors before it was flat.
Le sigh.
Anyhow, it’s been a productive day, which makes me feel pretty good :)
Incidentally, today’s music is: Gwenno / Y Dydd Olaf which, given how much time I’ve spent in Wales the last few weeks seems very apt. Am quite upset that the vinyl sold out, though. I’ve been waiting to get it for ages… finally get paid and it’s gone :(
* Mind the cheeky sods have put a red and a green LED on the charger so it looks like it’s an intelligent charger. ‘course it’s pretty obvious when you turn it on and both lights come on, stay on, and do nothing different, ever, that it’s not. It’s just an 18….oh hang on my little chickens, perhaps I can charger the 18v battery myself. I have an 18v 23v** supply just kicking around.
** Obviously it needs to be a wee bit more than 18 volts to charge an 18v battery. Just checked and it’s 23V
I’ve been giving it some thought for days now, about what aspects of casting a man to play a trans woman—especially a major historical figure like Lili Elbe—isn’t just insulting, but jumps my rage meter from 0 to 10. And believe it or not, it’s not because you’re calling us men. I’ve spent my entire adult life with some pumped-up asshole telling me I’m a man to try and undermine me. I can deal with that. Being a trans woman means a life of dismissal and ridicule and violence and a super-magnified virgin/whore dichotomy.
It’s because you’re saying we deserve it.
Because let’s be honest: No one would ever cast a straight white man to play a cis woman, and if they did people would be upset. No one would argue that Jared Leto was just the best actor to play Adda Lovelace or Boudica, or Hermoine Granger. No one would tell critics they were overreacting if they called foul at Orlando Jones playing Harriet Tubman or Cleopatra Jones. No one would say Eddie Redmayne was just doing women a favor by taking on the stressful role of Anne Frank so a woman didn’t have to, when the casting call never even went out to women. Elenor Roosevelt had a masculine face, but the general public would balk at casting Andrew Garfield to play her.
But when they cast a man to play a trans women, the general public trips over themselves to tell we angry few why we’re in the wrong for being upset. Because they think we’re men. And you think we’re men.
And that means you agree with every piece of garbage legislation that says trans women shouldn’t be allowed in women’s bathrooms. That means you’re on the side of the middle-aged men hounding and threatening teenage girls for the crime of peeing. That means you think it’s perfectly okay for trans women to be cut off from from vital women’s services, including women’s shelters and rape counseling, being left to freeze to death in the dark. It means you’re on the side of every man who found himself attracted to a trans woman, decided she was to blame, and punished her violently for ‘tricking’ him. What you’re saying is that trans women are men, and that we should be treated like men, and should be punished like any man who walks into women’s space or attracts another man.
You don’t think a male actor is the best choice for the role. You think a male actor is the honest choice for the role. And you’re happy to tell us to our faces when we get upset. You’d never admit how much you think we deserve the pain, but you’re all too eager to remind us that our place is in the middle of it.
