Feminism versus FACTS (Part 3, RE Damsel in distress II):- transcript

Many thanks to Linda for creating the transcript 😉

[0:00] Thunderf00t: You know, Feminist Frequency uses a lot of feminist buzz-words. Like: ‘patriarchy’ and ‘misogyny’.

[0:07] clip: “patriarchy, sexist, sexist attitudes, and paternalistic attitudes about women, gender clichés, -and doing misogyny”

[0:13] Thunderf00t: Yep. She sees the oppression of women everywhere.

[0:17] clip: “Women are being institutionally oppressed all the time, in nearly every facet of our lives”

[0:21] Thunderf00t: Now, in many ways, Anita using her “pop critic skills”-

[0:26] clip: “Now, I’m a pop culture critic”

[0:27] Thunderf00t: -to show how oppressed women are, has made it almost a very cartoony, caricature trope of the modern feminist.

[0:34] clip:

[0:48] Thunderf00t: That is, Anita has become the ‘straw feminist’. Which she has previously claimed was merely a sexist trope to undermine feminism.

[0:57] clip: “Every now and then in Hollywood-land, the character that’s identified as ‘feminist’ will magically make its way through the production process and appear on our television screens. Unfortunately, this is almost never good”
“I’ve heard it said that in the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team; they are the ball”
“Hollywood writers rely on one of the most deceptive and disgusting tropes ever to be forged in the fires of Mount Doom. That trope is called the straw feminist”
“Women are being institutionally oppressed all the time, in nearly every facet of our lives”
“In television and movies, the straw feminist works by deliberately creating an exaggerated character of a feminist, which writers then fill with a bunch of oversimplifications, misrepresentations, and stereotypes”
“Because it’s basically a choose-your-own-patriarchal-adventure porno fantasy”

[1:42] Thunderf00t: That is, she is not challenging stereotypes. She is reinforcing and fitting into them.

[1:47] clip: “The goal is to make feminists and our movements look completely ridiculous, over-the-top, and unnecessary.”
“It’s an old, yet effective tactic. But clearly it’s working. Because I often hear young women say, ‘I believe in the equal right of women. But, I’m not a feminist’”

[2:01] Thunderf00t: Now, personally speaking, so, broad egalitarian—you know, someone who thinks that everyone should be treated fairly—not just women. I like to use words like oppression to mean things like, this:
Or, words like ‘patriarchy’ to describe cultures like this:

[2:18]: To use the word ‘patriarchy’ to describe situations like this:

[2:22] clip:

[2:30] Thunderf00t: -merely reduces the word to a trivial level of first world problems.

[2:35] And believe me, no one has done more, or worked harder, to undermine the impact of these words, than modern feminists like Anita Sarkeesian.

[2:45 clip]: “The goal is to make feminists and our movements look completely ridiculous, over-the-top, and unnecessary.”

[2:51] Thunderf00t: for instance, Anita wants to uh, research games, of all things to find out just how much society is oppressing her.

[2:59]: Now, in science where we’re genuinely interested in discovering the unknown, we have a tradition. That is, you start with the research. And that after you’ve done the research, you draw your conclusions. This is the antithesis, of things like creationist research, where you start with the conclusions, and then you go to research things to show that your initial prejudice was correct. And this is also how Anita Sarkeesian does “research”. That is, she starts with the conclusion:

[3:30] clip: “Many games tend to reinforce and amplify sexist and downright misogynist ideas about women”

[3:36] Thunderf00t: And then asks for funding to go and do the “research”, to support these prejudices.

[3:41] clip: “As you might imagine, this project requires an enormous amount of research. This is an incredibly ambitious project, because of the scope and scale of the research and production involved. So please donate any amount you can”

[3:53] Thunderf00t: Now in her first video, she seemed to particularly pick on Mario.

[3:57] clip: “-four Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2, Mario games, Mario Brothers, Mario, Super Mario Brothers, Mario Party, Mario Sports, and Mario Kart, Super Mario series, Super Mario, Mario, fan of the Mario and Zelda franchise”

[4:08] Thunderf00t: There’s just one problem with the Mario example. Mario, just so we are clear is an Italian plumber. It really is hard to think of a more underrated, underprivileged, disposable, and instantly forgettable male.

[4:26]: Peach, on the other hand is A PRINCESS. Well, no privilege there then. Oh, I’m sorry. Did your pop culture critic feminist and womanly skills miss that?

[4:38] clip: “Now, I’m a pop culture critic. I am a feminist, and I’m a woman”
“Because, you know, nothing is worse in a patriarchal society than being a woman. Except maybe being a feminist”

[4:48] Thunderf00t: I’ll make this simple for you, Anita. Really, really simple. You claim as a hypothesis all you want, that woman not being portrayed as you want in video games, is making society misogynistic.

[5:02] clip: “The pattern of presenting women as fundamentally weak, ineffective, or ultimately incapable, has larger ramifications beyond the characters themselves, and the specific games they inhabit . . . We have to remember that these games don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re an increasingly important and influential part of our larger social and cultural ecosystem . . . The reality is, this trope is being used in a real-world context, where backwards sexist attitudes are already rampant”

[5:27] Thunderf00t: Just like you could claim that Pokémon is set in a real-world situation:

[5:32] clip: “Pokémon—plural—are incredible creatures that share the world with humans. Each has his own fighting abilities.”

[5:40] Thunderf00t: And is Satan’s way of getting at your children. In a world that is already rampantly anti-Christian.

[5:46] clip: “So Pokémon is a game, that teaches children how to enter into the world of witchcraft, how to cast spells, how to use psychic phenomena, how to put to work supernatural powers against their enemies, how to fantasy-role-play. . . Pokémon world is a world of the demonic, of the satanic. While you might not take it quite seriously, I assure you that demons take it quite seriously”

[6:11] Thunderf00t: However, merely stating a hypothesis, no matter how vocally, doesn’t make it true.

[6:18]: You fail to realize that you’ve yet to demonstrate any effect that these videogames have on people’s behavior. And until you do, you might as well be claiming that Pokémon are the ‘devil’s way of getting at your children’.

[6:32]: Hell, the people who claim that videogames make people more violent have a far better case than your claim that they make people sexist. And their claims have thus far, proved to be all but inconsequential.

[6:45]: The problem is of course, that people have claimed since time immemorial that violent fantasy media makes people more violent. Problem is of course, with the huge amount of violent video games played, there appears to be no clear correlation of violence in society. Meaning that any social vector, if it exists at all, is small. And they have a far, far, FAR stronger case than you do. Really, really, simple Anita.

[7:14]: Playing Assassin’s Creed does not increase your chances of becoming an assassin; because it’s a fantasy game.

[7:22]: The fact that you kill hundreds of people in this game, doesn’t make you any more likely to be a killer, than the fact that you died hundreds of times means that you won’t mind dying anymore. Because fundamentally, people can distinguish between reality and fantasy.

[7:38]: So, really, Anita. Where is your demonstration that the generation that enjoyed getting this Italian plumber, to rescue this princess from a giant turtle monster that are any more likely to be sexist? EXACTLY. These games are about as likely to make you sexist, as they are likely to make you think that violence against turtles is acceptable.

[8:04]: And this is why the fundamental premise of your entire video series is bullshit. And it will remain to be bullshit. Until you can actually demonstrate a link.

[8:17]: This is what happens when your idea of “well-researched” is to merely go and look for patterns that support your initial prejudices.

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