Twenty/Ten

Twenty years ago today, Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten, was released.

Twenty years.

Ten in particular (and to a similar extent a lot of its contemporary albums, including of course Nevermind, which will turn 20 just under a month from now) defined my transition into the teenage years in ways that aren’t really easy to capture in writing.

I grew up sheltered and nerdy, surrounded by scientists, on the East coast. The frenetic energy of “Even Flow” was something I was completely unprepared for when I first heard it. To this day I’m absolutely incapable of evaluating the record* — just hearing the opening to any of its songs switches off the critical part of my brain, and plays back all my memories of being twelve years old, beginning to be capable of understanding the world, and not knowing what to do with my energy.

Quick Hit: Whut?

Among the recent search terms that have been bringing people to my blog, apparently, are “randy milholland misogynist” and “hate randy milholland”.

Uh…

Y’all, you’ve come to the wrong place.

Really, Gearbox? Really?

[Cross-posted at Shakesville.]

I had really expected that nearly two years ago would be the last time I’d write about Duke Nukem. I’d happily put the character, the franchise, and its gleeful participation in the worst traits of gamer culture, out of my mind. Until Gearbox Software announced they had acquired the rights and that the vapor-for-fourteen-years Duke Nukem Forever would be seeing release after all. So, thanks for that, guys. That’s just swell.

Since that miserable announcement, almost like clockwork, predictably awful globs of congealed misogyny have been flung forth from Gearbox HQ, splattering all over the gaming press. They held a press event at a strip club; they flagrantly violated PAX’s longstanding “no booth babe” policy (a policy which, it seems, contrary to how it was presented, was basically voluntary all along); and most recently they announced that the multiplayer capture-the-flag mode (a de rigueur component, of course, of any multiplayer shooter) would be entitled “Capture the Babe,” and that when a player had “captured the babe,” slinging the presumably-otherwise-passive female character over his shoulder, she would occasionally “freak out,” and need to be slapped (on the ass, Gearbox hastened to clarify, not the face! So that’s OK then) to “calm her down.”

…yeah. The aim of the game mode is to 1) abduct sexually objectified “babes” who have no agency of their own, but 2) who hysterically “freak out” at being bodily lifted up and hauled around, 3) who you then physically abuse to ensure their compliance, and 4) collect them as trophies.

I was going to write at more length about this, but Gunthera1’s excellent post at The Border House pretty much covers it, so I recommend reading her if you need more background or detail.

I’ll add a couple of other notes, however. As a bit of background, Randy Pitchford from Gearbox was on the “Irrational Interviews” podcast produced by Boston-based Bioshock developers Irrational, back in February, and when asked about the challenges of marketing games, he (I’m afraid I’m paraphrasing from memory, but I don’t believe I’m misrepresenting him) explained that seeing marketing materials for a game is like “when you meet a girl (sic), and you decide in 5 seconds ‘would I do her, or not?'” It’s obviously a total shock that a fellow like that might be insensitive to concerns about sexist content in the game he’s making.

And finally, Penny Arcade — having, perhaps, after the Dickwolves debacle, decided to prove everyone wrong who ever praised them for attempting to take a thoughtful approach to game-related controversies — have joined in.* In an echo of their earlier misrepresentation of criticism of the “Sixth Slave” comic, here they misconstrue the DNF criticisms as being solely about the slap rather than about using women as trophies — literally objects — ignoring that at least within the conceptual framework of the game enemy soldiers in the Call of Duty games have agency and contend directly with the player, and slandering hundreds of thousands of soldiers as “murderers” into the bargain.

It seems like for every lovely moment like David Gaider’s eloquent rebuttal to an aggrieved “Straight Male Gamer” there’s still a half-dozen episodes which (to borrow Mr. Walker’s phrase) make my spine hurt. This is why we can’t have nice things, game industry.

Addendum: Denis Farr pointed out to me on Twitter something I’d missed: evidently the game also includes cigarette vending machines labeled “fags”. So, uh, yeah.

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*For those who may not want to click through, the comic shows Tycho, in an exaggerated “moral scold” posture, wagging his finger at Gabe and declaiming, “Did you know there’s a mode in Duke Nukem where you slap a woman’s bottom?” In the second panel, Gabe, looking bored, responds, “Did you know there’s a mode in Call of Duty where you murder, like, a million people?” as Tycho appears taken aback. In the third panel, Gabe continues, “It’s called Call of Duty.”

Response to Randy Milholland

Randy Milholland, a friend of mine and the author and artist of Something*Positive, asked me today,

Honest question for you: how come you’re bothered by the Penny Arcade stuff but the Redneck Tree never bothered you?

And that’s a fair question. I was going to respond in a series of twits, but 140-character bursts become unwieldy when you need more than a couple of them, so instead I’m writing this post. I don’t want to make Randy wait too long for me to answer him, though, so this is basically going to be a listing of the things I was going to say over Twitter, rather than a more carefully structured post.

Herewith:

First, the Redneck Tree was years ago (almost 9 years, now that I look it up), and my views have changed since then (I like to think they’re better now).

Second, I actually was somewhat uncomfortable with it — just not enough to say anything at the time. If it were a new SP strip, I most likely would speak up. I haven’t gone back to bring it up both because I hadn’t really thought about it in a while, and because I didn’t think it’d be productive to.

Third, Randy’s not running a convention attended by tens of thousands of people, let alone threatening to blacklist critics from that convention.

Fourth, the original Dickwolves strip is less an issue than their response, which was to lie about the criticisms, attack the critics, double down on the problematic content, and insist that they shouldn’t be held responsible for things they did and said. Randy didn’t do any of that (though I don’t recall any criticism of the Redneck Tree anyway — there may well have been some, but I don’t think I saw it).

Fifth, Randy’s never positioned himself as representative of a whole subculture; Gabe likes to act as though no “real” gamers or PA fans have a problem with what they did — see Kirby Bits’s post, where she discusses his use of “some people” vs. “you” — when the fact is that the criticisms are coming mainly from longtime PA readers. The PA response has essentially been to assert the prerogative to define who is and who isn’t a “real gamer” according to whether a person doesn’t or does, respectively, have a problem with the Dickwolves strip and their subsequent actions. That is, effectively, they assert the prerogative to define gamer culture as a subset of rape culture. As a gamer who opposes rape culture, that makes me really angry.

Finally, as I said, Randy’s my friend. I don’t want to have a fight with him, or seem like I’m attacking him, so although there are a lot of things to criticize about the Redneck Tree stuff, if I were going to present that criticism I’d want to be fairly careful how I went about it. I’ll admit, I don’t really care very much whether things I say regarding the Dickwolves mess hurt Mike or Jerry’s feelings, so long as I’m confident I’m not saying things that aren’t true.

So that’s my response, and I apologize, Randy, for the delay in posting it.

Well, I Guess That Resolves Things

Again, probably reading Kirby Bits’s post is the best place to start; I only have my own commentary to add on a couple of points.

One is that Krahulik has been out front, and taking most of the heat, on this issue. That’s probably by design; he’s always seemed more comfortable with confrontation than Holkins. And it’s left room for people (including me — I have certainly always preferred to think that he was in general a more thoughtful an empathetic person than Krahulik) to fill in the gaps with their own assumptions about where he stands on the issue. I think at this point, though, Krahulik’s behavior has become hostile enough toward rape survivors that Holkins’s apparent neutrality begins to look like tacit approval, or at best cowardice. Jerry, if you happen to read this, this isn’t actually a complicated question. You can just speak up. Are you for, or against, mocking the suffering of rape survivors? Having a voice other than Mike’s speaking for Penny Arcade, at this point, would probably be a good idea.

The other point, which Kirby Bits doesn’t directly address, is the dig in this section:

I’ve gotten a couple messages from people saying they are “conflicted” about coming to PAX. My response to them is: don’t come. Just don’t do it. In fact give me your name and I’ll refund your money if you already bought a ticket. I’ll even put you on a list so that if, in a moment of weakness you try to by a ticket we can cancel the order. (emphasis added)

Sure enough, Krahulik threatened to blacklist anyone so upset or angered by his mockery of rape survivors that they weren’t sure they’d feel comfortable attending PAX.

Guess I’m not so conflicted anymore. It’s a shame — as I mentioned in my last post, I really enjoyed going to PAX East last year, and I think that the work Child’s Play does is really valuable. But even if I’d still have a good time — which I very well might — if I went to PAX East this year, PAX attendance numbers (among many other factors, obviously) affect Penny Arcade’s clout in the video game industry. So my having fun would go hand in hand with helping to boost Krahulik and Holkins’s profile, driving more advertising dollars to their site, and increasing their legitimacy as representatives of video game culture. I’m not willing to contribute to Penny Arcade’s push to define gamer culture as hostile to everyone but heterosexual, white, cisgendered men. So whether or not Mike has actually put my name on the auto-cancel list at Penny Arcade Expo HQ, I won’t be going to PAX this year.

Child’s Play is a somewhat trickier issue. I worry that on the one hand, if people stop giving to Child’s Play over its association with Penny Arcade, Krahulik and Holkins will yell “look, they’ve got a vendetta against us and they don’t care if they hurt sick kids!”; but that on the other hand, if people don’t stop giving to Child’s Play over this, they’ll point to those numbers as evidence that they’re Good People, and so all the mean things those Nasty Internet Feminists said about them must be false. I think that I’ll continue to give to Child’s Play, myself, because ultimately it’s only an aggregator — the gifts are still picked from wish lists put up by the hospitals, and still go directly to the hospitals. And because even if Gabe and Tycho don’t, people like this woman deserve to be honored.

Quick Note: Egypt

I would like to comment on what’s going on in Egypt right now, but I don’t feel remotely qualified to do so. It’s probably much too early to know what this is going to mean, but it’s hard to imagine that it won’t at least mean the end of Mubarak’s three-decade rule. I’m following @bencnn, @ioerror, @AJEnglish and @sharifkouddos on Twitter, and @RamyRaoof‘s Flickr set, currently. It’s not from Raoof, and I don’t know the original source, but I think that the picture of a protester kissing a member of the riot police will be one of the enduring images from this uprising.

My hopes are with the people of Egypt.

Why I’m Conflicted About Attending PAX East 2011

Kirby Bits’s excellent post at The Border House pretty much sums it up, actually. As KB notes on her blog, in the two days since that post went up, the “Dickwolves” merchandise appears to have been removed from the Penny Arcade store; that’s certainly a good step, and it deserves some recognition.

But it isn’t really very much — to, months after initially responding to criticism with dismissal, mockery, willful misrepresentation, and attacks, quietly stop trying to turn a buck by trading on rape culture in a couple of instances. (Especially when they’re still trading on rape culture, misogyny, and violence against women as a punchline.) It’s a step — and, again, it deserves recognition as such — but it’s also important to recognize that it’s only one, fairly small, step, and for it to be meaningful they need to follow up on it. If you hurt someone accidentally, and especially if at first you reacted defensively and insisted you’d done nothing wrong, doing something small in the way of redressing that hurt late is better than nothing or never, but if you don’t also make a point of being careful to avoid hurting them again, people are going to find it harder and harder to believe the “accidental” part.

I’ve been a Penny Arcade reader for over a decade (and yes, that means I’ve passed over a lot of problematic material without comment in that time, for various reasons; that’s not something I’m proud of), I attended and enjoyed PAX East last year, I’m a huge fan of their charity work, and I’ve offered praise for Tycho’s relatively thoughtful engagement with difficult issues in the past. So I would like to believe — and I do have some hope — that they will follow up appropriately on this, educate themselves on rape culture, and react more thoughtfully to criticism in the future. I don’t know how likely it is, but I’d like to believe it. (I mean, while we’re at it, I’d also like for Gearbox to have left Duke Nukem Forever to rot, so…)

So ultimately, I’m conflicted about attending PAX East this year. Some friends are going to be in from out of town to go to the convention, and Gabe and Tycho have always been insistent that PAX isn’t about them, it’s about the gamer community. I don’t necessarily think writing PAX off and conceding the space is a productive approach, but it also can’t be denied that Penny Arcade sets the tone for PAX, and at the risk of being redundant, just pulling the Dickwolves merchandise is far from sufficient, and while it deserves recognition as a positive step, it doesn’t deserve a whole batch of cookies or renewed unconditional support.

Of course, there’s still about a month and a half until PAX East, so any number of things could happen in that time to affect my decision on this. One possibility — I did this in the case of Talib Kweli’s new independently produced album, Gutter Rainbows, because I like his music and want to support independent music production, but was troubled by the line “life’s a bitch, it’s how you handle her” in “I’m On One” — is that I’ll go to PAX, and also give an equivalent amount to an organization like BARCC that works to fight rape culture and provide help and resources to survivors of sexual violence. On the off chance that any of my approximately four readers are feeling similarly conflicted about this situation, perhaps they’ll find that approach to be workable as well.

Welcome!

I see I’ve been getting a relatively high number of visitors lately, mostly from links to I Don’t Care if You’re Offended via Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. Hello! I’m happy to see people reading, and I hope enjoying, my work.

If you look around, you may notice that my posting frequency has dropped significantly. I’m hoping to bring the rate back up somewhat in the coming year, but it’s anyone’s guess how well I’ll succeed at that. In any case, thank you for reading, and I’ll try to be worthy of continued attention.

2011, Already?

Well, may it not suck.  Happy new year, anyone still reading — posting fell off here pretty badly, but I’ll see whether I can’t do better (and actually start getting some stuff up on I Am Not A Ninja, too) next year.

On Security Theater

(Updated below)

I assume that y’all are more or less familiar with the TSA’s new “security” measures — you get the choice of submitting to a full-body imaging scan which produces detailed images of your naked body, which images are then supposed to be but not necessarily actually destroyed, or of submitting to an “enhanced pat-down” (and if you think that sounds a lot like “enhanced interrogation technique,” well, that’s maybe not such a coincidence) in which a TSA employee of the same gender (as long as you’re cis and your gender presentation fits the conventional binary) gropes your entire body, chest and groin included.  If you’re inside security and try to refuse both procedures, you will neither be allowed on the plane nor allowed to leave the airport without being threatened with arrest and hefty fines.  I’m dashing this post off quickly, so I won’t include links to sources — I’m confident that Google will back me up.

A few points about this situation, though they’re probably not going to be new ideas to anyone.

• There is no reason whatsoever to believe this will in any way make air travel safer.  People who want to sneak things onto planes will still find ways to do so, because people who want to sneak things onto planes are not stupid, and will be able to figure out, just as I have figured out, and just as you have probably figured out, that neither the grope-down nor the naked scanner will reveal any objects hidden inside a person’s body.  People who, for example, want to blow up a plane while they’re on it are probably not going to be deterred by the idea of sneaking the explosives on by swallowing them or inserting them rectally — after all, drug smugglers have been doing so for ages.
• What makes air travel safer is good investigative and intelligence work, so that plots against air travel can be stopped in the planning stage, before anyone gets on a plane.
• Approximately one in six American women has been the victim of rape or sexual assault in her lifetime.  That means about 8% (at least) of the flying public are now legally required to relive their sexual assaults.  (The remaining 92% are “merely” required to submit to an initial sexual assault.)
• A common refrain from defenders of the new measures is “I’d rather be groped than blown up.”  It’s crucially important to try to get through to people who argue that, that being groped in no way reduces their already-minuscule chances of being blown up.
• Another common claim is “we have to do anything we can to prevent another 9/11.”  But, aside from the aforementioned intelligence work, which we aren’t doing as much of as we should because we’re distracted by nonsense security theater like this — and aside from the bill being sponsored by Rep. Markey which would require screening of 100% of air cargo, an entirely sensible measure — we have already done all we can to prevent “another 9/11.”  Namely: we locked the cockpit doors.  It will never again be possible for hijackers to gain control of an airplane and fly it into a building, killing thousands; and unless you’re just invoking the September 11th, 2001 attacks for cheap political gain you have to accept that nothing short of that would be “another 9/11.”  (The September 11th hijackers themselves also had a hand in ensuring that another such attack could never happen: they let all air passengers know, from now on, that it is not safe to assume hijackers are just after ransom and intend to the hostages unscathed once their demands are met.)
• We have to assume that the people in charge of devising and promulgating these policies — the TSA, DHS, and up the chain to the President — are themselves also not stupid, and know just as well as some guy with a blog that there’s no plausible way the new screening methods will improve security in any meaningful sense.  We have to conclude, then, that improving security is not their purpose.
• Finally, even supposing that there were some way in which these measures would reduce the already-minuscule chances of dying in a terrorist attack, it wouldn’t matter.  It wouldn’t matter because these searches are clearly in violation of the 4th Amendment: they are neither reasonable, nor spurred by immediate probable cause, nor backed by warrants issued on evidence of probable cause and describing the specific things to be searched for and seized.  This would be plainly true even if these techniques were effective, and the fact is that they aren’t.  (In DC v. Heller, for example, the Supreme Court made it clear that even a law which is demonstrably effective at reducing crime does not supersede [their interpretations of] the Constitution.)

Update: Of course, another thing to keep in mind here, and it’s something I’m as guilty of as anybody, is that arbitrary harassment and abuse by authorities who can’t be effectively held accountable for it have just been the status quo for many marginalized populations in the US, especially people of color, GLBTQI people, people with disabilities, poor people, etc.  It’s only now that affluent white men — John Tyner, a software engineer; Penn Jillette, a millionaire comedian — are being subjected to this kind of treatment that there appears to be some serious outrage growing.  Only now that white men aren’t treated differently from those other people.  There are all kinds of ways in which that doesn’t say anything good about our society.