Posts made by Kanye Qwest

Yeah, I've got nothing except a super mature desire to get myself an Epic D merit.

Make it "Advanced (Library)", or "Advanced (MERIT OF CHOICE)"?

@Arkandel said:

@Thenomain said:

In the case of most sports, I am a casual fan at best. For instance, I heard someone in basketball retired and a lot of people were sad.

Here, I'll give you a freebie sports tip you can reuse forever.

Father Time has yet to be defeated. All great players retire (*) and make a lot of people sad.

(*) Except for Tim Duncan of course who is an immortal and has yet to hit his peak.

Timmy Duncan is not a man, he is the Avatar of Fundamentals.

God bless!

@Thenomain It is kind of cool, I use it at work so I can control my Linux box without two setups. It can be a little tetchy, though. I have a new (1 year ish) laptop and when using synergy if I undock and redock my laptop sometimes it bluescreens. Maybe 10% of the time? Still worth.

So I started those books, and I was like wow that was kind of whatever, and people who love the series are like NO JUST WAIT, IT GETS BETTER. IT PICKS UP AND GETS REALLY COOL, YOU'LL SEE.

So for a couple of books, I was waiting for it to get good. Then there were two characters off in some other place that I actually really liked so I read on, thinking I'd hit the mythical turning point I had been promised (That turned out to be a lie. The story was tolerable for about 1/3 of a novel and then it was right back to your regularly scheduled hella rapes and overpowered dudes being really ridiculous and spazzy).

Then I kept reading because I was like you have got to be kidding me, there is no way he can do this for 9 books and get away with that, right? When I was pretty sure that was exactly what happened, I had to finish it just so I could say I had. It was my Sisyphean task.

I had PTSD and didn't pick up another book for months. I have stopped taking any and all recommendations from the friend that kept urging me "NO REALLY IT GETS GOOD"

Because my hatred for that series goes beyond your usual "oh this book is crap I am going to forget it and move on with my life."

I hate read all 9 of those books, and each of them was the worst book I've ever read in my life. I am convinced that guy's editors all committed suicide around about book three and no one was left alive to tell him that rewriting the same dumbass plot with the same dumbass characters two and three times in the same dumbass book is not a hot play. Or that having a list of plot threads as long as the actual series that never go anywhere is not the done thing. Or that maybe it would be ok for a female character to do something cool onscreen that isn't 'be possessed by a male god to knife some fools" or "get hella raped, then get hella raped some more, and by the way have you considered maybe being raped to inspire a dude to turn into a tiger?"

Basically all I do on Goodreads is scan for other people who hated the Malazan series even half as much as I did.

@Derp
Then by all means, let me be as clear as I can.

I'm not surprised you are having a hard time with this concept, because it is weighty and fucking DAUNTING. You will never, ever solve the issue of gender based harassment and oppression by stopping it piecemeal, when you see it.

NEVER.

Is it a good thing to do? Absolutely. Will it make a big difference for the female (or trans, gay, minority, whatever) in question? YES. Will it make one fucking difference in preventing it happening somewhere else, to someone else? Sadly, NO.

The only way to fix this - the ONLY way - is to change our society. That's a big task. A really fucking big one. Step 1, for you, is to stop looking for reasons to deny. You need to realize that is what you are doing. You are in a position of privilege, a position of power, just by being who you are. That's great for you - you benefit from it, even if you aren't taking steps to make sure it continues.

But the old saying is true : when righteous men do nothing, evil flourishes. In this case, it's not enough to just be innocent of this shitty behavior yourself. It is - sadly - not enough to try and prevent it if you happen to see it happening to a friend or someone you know. The only way to be 'part of the solution' here is to ACCEPT that because of your position of privilege, other people suffer.

What you need to do is be part of a wave, a rising chorus of voices saying "This isn't ok and I want it to change."

The only way to fix this is to make our society one where it is un-fucking-acceptable for one person to dictate to another. A society where it is NOT FUCKING ACCEPTABLE for men to make decisions for women. About ANYTHING. No telling us what to do with our bodies. No telling us what we should or shouldn't do when it comes to our careers. Our families. Where we walk, and when we do it. What we wear. What we say. What we attempt. No putting us in jail for having miscarriages. No restricting our access to fucking birth control. No implying that women are irrational, or unreasonable, or illogical. No super funny jokes about how if you use a vagina once, you end up paying for it. NO VICTIM SHAMING/BLAMING. You feel me?

Because in a society where it is acceptable (and even in some fucked up views, necessary) for men to make decisions for women? That means women do not have agency. It means women are not whole people in the way that men are whole people. That means there will ALWAYS be that undercurrent of viewing women as sub-people, which will encourage weak, fucked up assholes to victimize them.

@Arkandel
...huh. I don't think anyone is asking you to personally intervene to rescue women from gropers and harassers.

It's not about you seeing it in action and preventing it, at ALL, but I find it interesting that your mind goes that way. It's indicative of something important, and that thing is : loss of agency.

You want to be told where and when this type of thing happens, because you want to prevent it. That's noble, but misguided. We don't need white knights. We don't need protectors and heroes. To want to be that person is not helping women - it's trying to help yourself regain your lost agency.

What we ACTUALLY need is a deeper understanding of the pervasive social issues that make this shit commonplace. We need the people in power, the members of the group of people perpetrating this shit - in this case, men, specifically (because they have a much harder time accepting that struggles are real) white men - to accept that their permissiveness of this privilege is absolutely contributing to the problem.

I'm sorry if that's uncomfortable for you. It's understandable, but it sucks, because I think your (specifically you) heart is in the right place. You don't need to be told what to look for, you need to be told that your idea of helping is not actually the help we need.

@saosmash said:

I think that the fact that every single conversation about this becomes a demand for more evidence that it happens instead of a review of the massive screeds of evidence that it happens is a problem. Ten women should not have to say the same thing before it counts the same as one man saying "I've never seen this happen."

I wish I could upvote this ten more times, so that my opinion of it as a right statement would equal one MRA in disguise. I mean. Man-pinion.

Well, I'll be saving THAT picture to use on people after LoL matches.

Talking about women's issues:

Women: This is an issue.

Men: Are you sure you aren't overreacting or exaggerating?

Women: Pretty sure. I think about it a lot, you know, since it's been the context of my entire life.

Men: But it isn't even a problem. If this was happening to women around me, they'd say something so I'd notice.

Women: We are literally telling you. Right now.

Men: But I have never seen this happen. In my experience, things are fine for women.

Your experience has NO BEARING on women's experiences. I don't know what it is about this concept that is so hard to grasp.

@Arkandel

They wanted to play together, and since they couldn't they both left. Yeah, I think the implication is that they wouldn't have felt comfortable otherwise - which might be an erroneous assumption. Might not be. The point is, he didn't ask and didn't think about it, and sees that as a failing.

Great post, @Misadventure. Thank you for sharing.

@Apos
I know I personally watch the walking dead and am sure I would do it better.

"YOU COULD HAVE BEEN SLOWLY CULLING THIS HERD THIS WHOLE TIME YOU WERE JUST STANDING 'GUARD'."

"OMG YOU SAW THE WATER TOWER WAS F'D UP WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU."

They look like everyone else. They sound like everyone else.

There's no way to give you a type of person to look out for. I assure you, you know some. But here is one big red flag:

If someone justifies shitty comments or their behavior with "Learn to take a joke" or "I was just joking, don't be so sensitive"? That's the guy.

I'm not surprised that guys object "But I don't see it in MY social group", but it is disappointing. Are you looking for it? Really? Are you paying attention to the offhanded comments your peers make to/about females? Be honest with yourself. I know when I'm playing a game or engaging in a hobby, I'm usually pretty focused on what I'm doing (or about to do, you best believe Armageddon is coming out because screw your board state).

I'm reminded of a conversation I had not long ago with some VERY ethical, wonderful men. Men who would never condone this kind of behavior, and would absolutely speak out if they saw it. They were boggled. "Do men really randomly tell you to smile?" One asked.

They had no idea it was a real thing, when it is absolutely a real thing that I'd say close to 100% of women experience. Is it harassment? Not always, it's a mild example. But it goes to show how things you don't think about/experience can fly completely under your radar.

@Roz
I don't know. When I was very young, I personally heard BOTH "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed" and "if there's grass on the field, play ball", to a chorus of snickers from the guys around.

It isn't farfetched at all.

@Roz

Preach.

Not just limited to gaming as a hobby, I have been harassed, groped, threatened, stalked, photographed without my consent, and almost abducted three times.

I've also been called a liar and arrogant for making those claims. Arrogant. Like my self-esteem is so broken and I'm so twisted that I would not only welcome but INVENT that kind of thing. It's enough to make a girl give up on sharing these experiences, and in a lot of cases? It does.

When I say these things do happen, it's because I know for a fact that they happen.

#notallmen - Of course not. Most people are decent, men included! We really need those decent men to step up more, instead of assuming a claim is unlikely because it hasn't been their experience. If that's you, high five and please do carry on.

@Arkandel said:

@Kanye-Qwest What I would say is that in all of my time gaming I've never seen girls treated like that at all, and even more so as openly as that article.

Bully for you. You realize you're saying if a behavior isn't something you have noticed, it's unlikely to be happening? You seem like a smart and reasonable person, surely I don't have to explain the flaw in that logic.

Your experience does not in any way, shape, or form dictate another person's experience, and to my original point - the assumption that something didn't happen because you didn't see it is a large part of the problem.

Whether or not all the things described in that article happened to the author, all the things described in that article do happen. It behooves us as human beings to let conversations about them happen, too.

It's interesting that people immediately jump to call "bullshit". And by interesting, I mean completely typical.