Zen Of Design

The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Ms. Sommers Just Can’t Let It Go

September 26, 2014 /

So it’s been a week since I pointed out that Christina Hoff Sommers logic in her ‘games aren’t sexist’ movie is, like, really, really logically flawed.’  She responded by… I’m not making this up… attacking my spelling.  She also intimated I smeared her while, at the same time, misrepresenting my point enough that a whole bunch of people thought I was calling gamers Nazis and Klansmen. Which was a nifty bit of gold-medal caliber trolling.

But hey, my original argument was a tad emotional and a little abbreviated because, er, I was trying to squeeze in a few Milo slams, but really because the article was more about how this was evidence that SOME people were attempting to hijack #gamergate in order to shut down certain voices in the games industry that are already underrepresented. And, er, she sure isn’t doing anything to disprove THAT point, but whatever.

So I responded the next day with a more focused and cohesive takedown of why her argument is really unworthy of the term ‘logic’.  Her response was… ignore it and just bash me about spelling again when talking about a completely unrelated article.

Hey, it’s a slanted article that doesn’t try to challenge her broken logic at all!  Of course she likes it!  It continues to support her narrative that she’s REALLY a feminist, it’s just a coincidence that she’s leading a lynch mob against other feminists!  And by the way,just my two cents, but picking on typos is what you do if you have no real argument.  Just before that, she also manages to lump my shitty little blog in with… erm… real press.

I’m really not sure what she ‘now understands‘ from this article, which has nothing to do with me at all, although I guess I should be flattered that she thinks maybe I’m important enough to be associated with some of the top journalists in the field, who actually have time and paychecks freeing them to do much, much more thorough and high caliber work than I.

I’m guessing she thinks I’m on the Secret Mailing List of Game Journalists, and we all colluded to secretly agree that her movie is friggin’ terrible, makes no actual sense, and kills brain cells faster than Ozark Moonshine.  Here’s a hint.  I’m a developer.  I develop the games that the people on the list complain about.  I am, to them, the problem that they go onto that list to solve.  But hey, crack research there.

But anyway, I’ve been ignoring her and moving on, because clearly she doesn’t want to engage in the fact that her logic is utterly bogus and by extension, her movie is completely trash.  But apparently, I’ve gotten under her skin because she sent this yesterday morning.

Yes, the article she links to is…. the first one I linked above.  Yes, Christina is trying to create an illusion that I’m still pestering with her in order to rev up the troops, when really I’ve been ignoring her because I really have no interest in engaging with someone who just wants to drive-by Twitter trolling, rather than address the incredibly glaring logical holes in her argument.

Well, hey, it’s been a long time since I’ve gotten this kind of frequent attention from a new woman in my life.  Here’s the article.  Here’s her rebuttal, with their rebuttal to hers.  Here’s what we’ve learned.

  • That this feminist (as described by the civil article above) thinks that feminists have ‘silenced women and men alike’.  She doesn’t challenge this.  Of course she doesn’t.  She has a nice gig in being the un-feminist.
  • That she got completely wrong basic rape stats, resulting in her ballooning a relatively minor decrease in supposed rapes into an enormous one that doesn’t exist.  She doesn’t challenge FAIR’s account.
  • That she completely misrepresented the story of why a professor who took down a painting of a nude in a public classroom – she challenged that, but the professor backed FAIR’s account.
  • That she claimed that wife-beating was not allowed in English common law, but this is the opposite of known history.  Sommers doesn’t challenge this.
  • That she got basic stats on anorexia wrong.  She challenged this, but FAIR debunked her by… you know… getting stats from people who study eating disorders.
  • That she ignored evidence that domestic violence is higher on Super Bowl Sunday.  In this part of the article, she misquotes people, misattributes professional relationships, and ignores ombudsmen who challenge sources she used.  She doesn’t challenge this.
  • That she really wants you to believe that GQ magazine just made up the quote that  “There are a lot of homely women in women’s studies. Preaching these anti-male, anti-sex sermons is a way for them to compensate for various heartaches–they’re just mad at the beautiful girls.”  There is, in this case, no way to know.  On one hand, one assumes that legitimate news organizations don’t do that.  On the other, the reporter misplaced the notes so maybe she has a point that he’s clearly not a very good one.

To answer her question in the tweet, I didn’t link to the rebuttal because the article was already long, I was writing with 3 glasses of wine in me, and it’s not like I *needed* her to look worse than the original article did, which this pathetic rebuttal does. Seriously, I have no earthly idea why Christina Hoff Sommers would want to call attention to this article and rebuttal. Because it really doesn’t make her look very good at all.  Reading through it leaves the undeniable impression that Sommers cares very little about facts, and only cares very much about bending perceptions towards her cause.  But then finally, finally, she actually gave a fact-based, logical explanation why her logic about sexism in games isn’t very, very bad.

I’m kidding.  After that, she prompted her growing mob of fans to make fun of a pair of high school girls who DARED to try coding a video game!  Haha!  Girls who want to code games addressing social issues are funny! That, or a terrifying sign of how feminists indoctrinate our kids, of course.

I fully expect for her to spend the next week challenging their grammar.

Gamergate, Social Justice Stuff, Unwanted Political Opinions

8 Comments

  1. Matt Couch

    Domestic violence isn’t higher on Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a myth that doesn’t have any data that backs it up.

    http://www.skepdic.com/essays/superbowl.html

    • John Henderson

      Yeah, I’d like to say FAIR has always been fair, but they haven’t been throughout their entire history. The Super Bowl + domestic violence connection in particular was weak.

  2. John Henderson

    I also played Tampon Run. It did not speak to me.

    • Damion Schubert (Post author)

      My forums need a like button.

      • John Henderson

        I don’t think so, no.

      • Lunar Archivist

        Why would they need something that no one would ever be inclined to use?

  3. well great

    You posted the article and the rebuttal and the rebuttal to the rebuttal and you still think Sommers is wrong?

    Are you blind or do you lack reading comprehension?

    The rebuttal to the rebuttal says:

    Sommers is not asking researches, she is doing junk science? Are you supposed to do that if you have an opposing claim? You really believe that there are hundreds of thousands of deaths due to anorexia and nobody has caught on?

    They then try to refute the claims about the professor’s sentiments on the painting, which Sommers used quotes for.

    So they go quoting again, the quote they present contradicts their initial claims. They were basically wrong.

    Look it’s clear that the professor had a problem with the piece of art, everything else is semantics. She got it removed, her sentiments are: basically I was uncomfortable with it. The wording, the form of the complaint etc is not really important in the end.

    Basically this professor has a problem with the naked form.
    She basically can’t separate art and nudity makes her uncomfortable, I’m sorry if I can’t give her opinion any gravity, but that’s what happens when you act like a child. She used feminism to avoid that feeling, so basically: FAIL.

    They don’t refute anything else.

    Then they finally correct themselves.

    So to reiterate, Sommers refutes all their claims. Then they try to refute her rebuttals by:

    1) claiming something without source, but by saying she should be using more sources, than official stats,
    2) they counter their original assertion,
    3) they admit error.

    And game.

  4. well great

    Oh I forgot to say something I see as really important:

    you have attributed some of your mistakes on consuming alcohol. This is something Leigh Alexander has also done.

    I understand that this is not your day job, but that doesn’t really excuse anything when you are hurling accusation around.

    I don’t think any excuse is a valid argument, it’s an excuse and I may understand it, but it doesn’t stand as anything else and it doesn’t reduce your error’s effect or severity.

    I have seen a lot of this on tumblr too. Too much drinking.

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