The Forlorn Hope: Cyberpunk Off-Topic

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As far as game sites are concerned, the big problem is that they're trying to be three things at the same time, often in the same article. Journalists, reporting information that should be, as far as possible, factual. Op-ed commentators writing their own opinions, and advertising copywriters. Until they develop the maturity to separate those functions, they deserve all the criticism they get. If John Walker, or anyone else at RPS, wants to write an op-ed article on sexism every week, fine, but if they push the sexism agenda in what are supposedly news articles, then they're not meeting the standards I'd expect from journalists. Which is fine, as long as they don't pretend to be something they're not.

I grew up surrounded by journalists - my mother worked for a newspaper and, although she wasn't a journalist herself, all of her friends were, which led to a lot of very interesting dinner parties. And two of the four countries that I can, if I choose, call "Home" have notorious press - one for having the worst gutter-press, scandal-mongering pseudo-journalism in the world (but also The Guardian), and one for being state-controlled (but also good at straight reporting).

With all of that, I have a strange mix of jaundiced cynicism and respect as far as journalism is concerned. At its best, we have the Fourth Estate, revealing the awkward truths that Someone wants to keep hidden. Even though they get it wrong sometimes, I have every respect for the dedication and the work carried out by those journalists who are engaged in these activities, whether it's war reporting, or picking up on Government scandals, or sexism in gaming. They're the ones putting the spotlight on things we SHOULD know, whether we want to or not.

But then there's the other kind. The propaganda machine, pushing an agenda. The ones saying "I don't care if it's true or not, it's what I believe/what sells/what the bosses want me to say". And unfortunately, this is all too common an approach.

Add to this the circle-jerk mentality, where you only read that which reinforces views you already hold, and it gets worse. When I was a child, everyone read newspapers that followed their political views, but at least the TV and radio were (closer to) unbiased. Now, there's so much choice that everyone filters and only reads their favourite feeds, which means that any extreme views are getting reinforced daily.

And the final problem is the increased blurring between op-ed and factual reporting. It's no longer just a case of spinning the news to present it according to the newspaper's political views, there's a huge trend, in both the mainstream media and the secondary media, towards including opinion throughout articles being presented as fact.

So no, I don't automatically consider journalism to be honest.

tl;dr - 227's right, Fat Sardine's wrong. Duh.
 
I disagree with little of what you posted, save that I would say that it is as much your prejudices as Walker's that determine what is a "news article" and what is not. The sexism agenda, such as it is, has as much validity as a journalistic issue or story focus as the racial agenda, the leftist or rightist agenda and so on.

If it's an issue in the world and you want to report on it, highlighting it becomes necessary. An agenda makes it seem very created. I don't think that's the case with sexism in gaming - or RPS' stance on it. Any more than I think hammering the Tea Party in the U.S. is part of an anti-Tea Party agenda. Seeing patterns can become a habit, of course, but if you are pursuing a story, you naturally seek it out and cover it as it turns up in the world.

I hope you didn't think I automatically consider journalism in any of it's forms honest - much of the point of what I wrote is that it is a struggle to do so, given a reporter's own biases, the inability to prove much of what is being reported and the changing nature of a story. I think it's important that a journalist struggle for honesty.

tl;dr Your face is wrong. Urh.
 
An agenda on sexism is valid, my problem is the way that RPS goes about it.

Firstly, I dislike the strident nature of their arguments, the little digs on trivia such as the Triss Playboy spread, and the fact that when John Walker does get things wrong he won't admit it. These are all things that prevent the real message from getting through, which means that they do feminism a disservice instead of helping it. There're too many cases when I think they're preaching to the crowd, circle-jerking, and that the way they present the message will not convince anyone who isn't already on board.

Secondly, at a more emotional level, John Walker's op-ed pieces come across as paternalistic, which is entirely the wrong approach for this topic. Whenever I read one, I start to get "You don't own me" going around in my head - don't tell me what to do, and don't tell me what to say. He declaims, he doesn't listen.

I don't recall any of his posts including any interview, poll, opinion of what women actually WANT, it's always about what they SHOULD be doing.

And now I'm going to bed, so take your time replying :)
 

227

Forum veteran
Woodward and Bernstein worked mostly from anonymous sources. They believed Deep Throat. He had convincing stories and, to them, solid credibility. They did their best to verify what he said, but, of course, it was cover-up.
Ah yes, Redford and Hoffman. I definitely enjoyed Hook. Anyway, the difference is that stuff like Watergate can be proven or disproved, while something like sexism in the Cyberpunk teaser is subjective enough that there's never a clear right or wrong answer. Great for confirming something the reader already believes (reminds me of this line in the first episode of The Newsroom where Will loudly interjects, "People choose the facts they want now!"), but not really anything that belongs in the middle of that interview.

There's ultimately a big difference between (to take some recent news) "sources say that the IRS targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny" and "so-and-so is a socialist," with the term being used as a pejorative. Both may have the same effect of riling up the same people, but one is factual and based on evidence while the other is just glorified gossip-column fodder based on one's subjective feelings that can't be proven either way.

So as to not let this thread get too heavy, here's a picture from Final Fantasy 6 where Celes' name has been changed to "penis."



You're welcome.
 
Thank you. I penis you have a good point. Of course even the idea of "subjective enough" varies from person to person. I consider the Cyberpunk trailer to be chock-full of sexual triggers. That whole nearly-nude, skin-tight clothing wearing woman in a pose deliberately copied from a suggestive pose in the PnP book - and right behind the nearly-nude woman. That's a lot of evidence for me.

I would also distinguish between saying "so and so is a socialist" without grounds...and saying that about someone who espouses socialist views.

Isn't "the Newsroom" fantastic?


In reply to Dragon, as I re-read Walker's articles, I would point out a couple things: if he did try to say or find out what women want, he would be accused of putting words in mouths. If deriving consensus from your subjects is the job of a reporter. He does quote different people and reference a wide range of female game developers/industry people, but of course very few if any of them say, "it's fine!" Perhaps none do. The second thing I would say is that much of it is his opinion on the matter, and what data he used to come up with that opinion. I actually haven't seen a lot of what he thinks women should be doing - he tends to address the males.

I'm not sure what Walker got wrong, facts-wise, although I have a dim glimmer of some error he made on a contested chart he linked to.

The Triss spread was what it was - a highly sexualized usage of a fictional game character. If that's what you want to do with your characters, fine, but expect to get called on it. Exploiting even made-up women for their T+A is hardly new and is an example of how the gaming industry generally treats the female sex in their subject matter. I enjoyed it, yes, absolutely, but I also didn't pretend it was anything other than erotica. Women in erotic poses on the Internet, yay. Where's Geralt's version?

Years ago I noticed that women are player character options typically in a third-person view only. First person games are almost always male characters. When I asked my friends at the time why they made a female character, you of course know the answer. "The view".

May I take a moment now and say how unusual it is, and what a pleasure, to have a rational discussion on this and other subjects on the boards. Often a contentious issue, as males often feel they are being made sexist and women feel they are being objectified in a whole new, more complex manner, it's quite nice to simply chat and compare notes as adults.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled dick jokes.
 

227

Forum veteran
Thank you. I penis you have a good point.
Don't testes my patience with puns. That's exactly the kind of thing that's gonad scare away the other members.

Of course even the idea of "subjective enough" varies from person to person. I consider the Cyberpunk trailer to be chock-full of sexual triggers. That whole nearly-nude, skin-tight clothing wearing woman in a pose deliberately copied from a suggestive pose in the PnP book - and right behind the nearly-nude woman. That's a lot of evidence for me.
Yeah, I guess. Still, there are other ways of approaching stuff like that if they have a problem with it. Right now all I see is a bunch of people pushing their causes at every perceived slight and starting a commotion in order to "start a conversation" in places that should remain objective, but no one seems to actually be having that conversation. For example, I've heard that fewer women are involved in computer-centric industries than men; does that play a role in the perceived gender inequality/sexism that some find in games? I don't know the answer to that, obviously, but it seems to me that paying attention to stuff like the teaser could potentially be focusing so much on the symptom that the actual illness causing it gets completely overlooked.

I would also distinguish between saying "so and so is a socialist" without grounds...and saying that about someone who espouses socialist views.
That's what I meant by pejorative. Obviously there's a legitimate usage of the word, but it's also become a bit of a go-to attack for some, a foreign-sounding insult to be used in situations where it's technically not even applicable because of how scarily ominous it can sound in some sentences. The word is basically the English-language equivalent of Carmina Burana and well-timed thunder.

Isn't "the Newsroom" fantastic?
It definitely has some good lines, but it's a bit slow-moving for my tastes, and the characters and timing come off as unbelievable at times. Other than that and some hyper-political moments where it stops just short of telling you which side is right (though I'm operating on memory, here—the only episode I've seen recently is the first one), though, it's a fun watch.
 
'K. This is going to be a shorter reply (but not as short as slimgrin's).

I'm not sure what Walker got wrong, facts-wise, although I have a dim glimmer of some error he made on a contested chart he linked to.
and
I would point out a couple things: if he did try to say or find out what women want, he would be accused of putting words in mouths.

It's long enough after the incident for me to link directly to the article, so here it is.

The message was, of course "OMG Gender Wage Gap!" but that isn't what the graphs show, and the Border House blog that he mentions also stops short of saying that, instead, rightly, highlighting that it raises questions.

The statistics are incomplete, and yes, they MAY indicate that women get paid less for doing the same work, but the data shown points to a different cause , that women, on average, have fewer years of experience in the industry.

And that MAY indicate that women tend to leave the industry early, but it may also indicate that there's been a big upsurge in women joining the industry in the last few years, which has made the statistics unbalanced.

And if women tend to leave the industry, it MAY be because they're in a workplace that's hostile to women, or it may be because they're in a workplace that's hostile to both sexes (long hours, job not as exciting as they'd expected) and they're more inclined to move on.

He glosses over this in the article with "...this absolutely doesn't explain away these massive discrepancies." but yes, it PROBABLY does.

And as the data must have been available in order for Game Developer Magazine to come up with the pie charts, a good journalist would have checked first. And a good op-ed writer who makes a mistake and gets called out on such issues would have backed down (or come up with the confirming statistics) instead of just describing anyone who disagrees with him as a Male Rights Advocate and part of the problem.

Now I can see that John Walker gets so much hate mail that he's reached the point where he sees everyone who disagrees with him as an enemy, but anyone engaged in journalism, including op-ed, really needs to be able to look and listen to what's actually happening, not just focus on a narrow beam of light.

So then we get to this article, written earlier:
http://botherer.org/2013/02/15/male-rights-advocates-and-their-attempt-to-silence-discussion/
Yes, MRA's do use those arguments, but that doesn't mean that everyone who disagrees with John Walker is an MRA. Unfortunately, at some point he seems to have decided that they are.

So yes, he's very much guilty of "putting words in mouths". The problem is that he doesn't necessarily get the right words, or the right motive behind the words. I'm just going to pick up on one specific point here:
Another, and perhaps the most insidious, is the claim that in discussing matters of misogyny and sexism against women, we are deliberately refusing to discuss matters affecting men.
together with
That done, the person who wrote about, say, the depiction of women as sex objects in a game has now become someone who doesn’t care that men kill themselves and get murdered. It’s so preposterous, and so demoralisingly tiresome.

If an example of discrimination of women, such as "they're all prostitutes", is being presented as an examply of misogyny then yes, it is perfectly valid and a necessary requirement to check if there's an equivalent discrimination against men. Because if there is, it points to some other problem, not misogyny, as the root cause. In the real world, "men were slaughtered" is a valid response to "women were forced into prostitution". In games, that particular argument is weaker, but "Loredo. Dethmold" is still a valid response to anyone complaining that it's sexist having the Lodge as the antagonists in TW2. You can't simply dismiss "men too" as an invalid argument across the board, it has to depend on context.



And finally, back to your post:-
Years ago I noticed that women are player character options typically in a third-person view only. First person games are almost always male characters. When I asked my friends at the time why they made a female character, you of course know the answer. "The view".

Well, of course. And it's also probably the answer you'd get if you ask a woman why they make male characters, or why they're OK playing games like The Witcher. If I play DA:O as a male Warden, I'm Morrigan. And if I play DA:O as a male Warden who's a mage, I use a mod that lets him use armour because I don't like the view if he's in a dress.

Edit:
@227
The word is basically the English-language equivalent of Carmina Burana and well-timed thunder.
I am so not getting this. PM if not suitable for sensitive ears. (And yes, I'm very familiar with Carmina Burana. I even flew to Amsterdam one Christmas just to hear it live).

Edit:
Oh. It was that long. tl;dr - dicks.
 
OMG SO LONG.

Ah, yes, that pie chart. I found those statistics telling myself. Sure, there were other quite possibly solid explanations for them, but the most likely one seemed to be the one Walker hammered at: serious wage discrepancy caused by sexism. I say this not as someone who has studied these stats or the methods used to gather them, but more that the balance of evidence could easily point to such a gap. It does in nearly every other industry.

The study hardly clinched anything for me, and I found the percentages high, but I'd say there was valid cause for concern. I also found it telling that many readers were more excited about Walker's perception of those stats in contrast to their own, or the study's more conservative take, as opposed to the issue raised.

Walker could be wrong in following along to his conclusion...but he could also be right. Write? Given the percentage of women in the industry and the general sexism present, such a gap seemed not unreasonable to me. Still does. More or less. Walker has definitely not said that everyone who disagrees with him on this issue is an MRA. If he had, I'd like to see the post. Also if he has, he's lost his mind.

I don't think, "men were slaughtered, too" is a completely valid counter-argument, no. I'm not sure, "men, too", is invalid, either. Using one to justify the other seems to pollute the issue. Women are depicted as prostitutes a lot - I'm not sure that's misogyny or that Walker bears responsibility for allowing the idea that it is.
What Walker seems to be saying is that using the "bad things happened to men!" argument does not excuse making certain, specific, sexist bad things happen to women. All the same bad things too.

Nor does it excuse the bad things that happen to men - that's just not the argument here. It could be, but that isn't the issue raised. Context is important, but it's no an excuse. I think I'd agree with Walker - women in video games are typically sexualized all to hell and back. That's too bad. But it's a separate issue from how men are treated. Or at least it is for the purpose of RPS anti-sexism stance.

Ironically to my argument here, I've always twitched at the "Stop Violence Against Women and Children" movement. I'm on side, I just wish they wouldn't discriminate. Sure, men do most of the violence, but we also experience it. Hoo, boy do we ever. Most of us aren't too fond of the experience. But I get the domestic abuse angle and I'm on board with focussing on it. Too bad only one side of the coin gets looked at.

Women I know who play video games....never make male characters. Go figure. If they did to look at butts, I'd laugh at them too. And again, where is my Geralt nude pin-up posters by CDPR? Kinda don't think we'll see many of those. I COULD BE WRONG. Hot.

Oh damnit, also long.

tl;dr - ducks.
 
Sure. I hadn't thought our thought-patterns were that far apart, actually, but there you go. Too bad, it was getting interesting.
 

227

Forum veteran
I am so not getting this. PM if not suitable for sensitive ears. (And yes, I'm very familiar with Carmina Burana. I even flew to Amsterdam one Christmas just to hear it live).
Carmina Burana is totally ominous-sounding. Like, if you had to do some kind of presentation on the plagues of Egypt (for whatever reason), you probably wouldn't set that to Justin Bieber's "Baby."

I mean, I would, but only when arriving at the "death of the firstborn" plague because of how hilariously insensitive it'd be. Definitely Carmina Burana up until then, though.

Also, all of this has been too civil. It's revolting, not to mention contrary to everything I know and expect from the internet. Seriously. Not one hitler/WW2 reference? Shame on you all.
 
OMG SO LONG.

Ah, yes, that pie chart. I found those statistics telling myself. Sure, there were other quite possibly solid explanations for them, but the most likely one seemed to be the one Walker hammered at: serious wage discrepancy caused by sexism. I say this not as someone who has studied these stats or the methods used to gather them, but more that the balance of evidence could easily point to such a gap. It does in nearly every other industry.

Right. I'm back, loins girded (metaphorically. It was actually more like "breakfast eaten").
I have a problem arguing this. I worked in IT for 30 years, I didn't encounter either gender wage gap or gender inequality. nor did it exist in the companies that I worked for and in the companies that were our customers or business partners. That covers UK in the '80s and Singapore in the '90s and '00s. And neither were due to legislation.

That sets my paradigm, but I'm also fully aware of the flaws of the "I didn't experience it THEREFORE it doesn't happen" argument. I've seen enough people say that it does exist in other countries, such as the US, to recognise that any argument I have is going to be weak. But I have thought a lot about why it didn't exist in that part of the industry that I know, in the countries and decades that I know, and that's left me with a lot of doubt over any argument that starts from "Because Men". UK happened, I think, because nobody really thought of IT as a male career. Singapore happened, I think, because of good childcare and because women really, really wanted to have careers so that they could be independent of men. Government influence was just in pushing technical courses at the universities and colleges.

The study hardly clinched anything for me, and I found the percentages high, but I'd say there was valid cause for concern. I also found it telling that many readers were more excited about Walker's perception of those stats in contrast to their own, or the study's more conservative take, as opposed to the issue raised.

This is where I think we can't have a meeting of minds, because that study clinched it for me in the opposite direction, that it was a question of years of experience, not pay differentials.

Walker could be wrong in following along to his conclusion...but he could also be right. Write? Given the percentage of women in the industry and the general sexism present, such a gap seemed not unreasonable to me. Still does. More or less. Walker has definitely not said that everyone who disagrees with him on this issue is an MRA. If he had, I'd like to see the post. Also if he has, he's lost his mind.

The one that's usually quoted is a twitter exchange. Quote here, to keep it in context:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/forums/showthread.php?10102-I-don-t-get-some-of-these-articles-lately&p=283495&viewfull=1#post283495

I don't think, "men were slaughtered, too" is a completely valid counter-argument, no. I'm not sure, "men, too", is invalid, either. Using one to justify the other seems to pollute the issue. Women are depicted as prostitutes a lot - I'm not sure that's misogyny or that Walker bears responsibility for allowing the idea that it is.

It's a valid counter-argument in real life (Insert obligatory WWII comfort women vs Nanking massacre reference here. But not Nazi), but I don't think that it is in video games. Something we agree on :)

What Walker seems to be saying is that using the "bad things happened to men!" argument does not excuse making certain, specific, sexist bad things happen to women. All the same bad things too.

If it's the SAME bad thing, or similar, then it stops being a sexism argument and becomes something else. Discrimination against peasants, or foreigners, or whatever. You can't scream "Sexism" unless the issue is directly related to the fact that the victim is a woman.

I think I'd agree with Walker - women in video games are typically sexualized all to hell and back. That's too bad. But it's a separate issue from how men are treated. Or at least it is for the purpose of RPS anti-sexism stance.

Agreed. But the "I will not listen to any other view" argument is destructive, because it moves the discussion away from the real problems into a discussion about whether or not John Walker is a decent commentator/journalist. Oh, wait a minute...

Women I know who play video games....never make male characters. .

Bullshit. You know me.

Carmina Burana is totally ominous-sounding. Like, if you had to do some kind of presentation on the plagues of Egypt (for whatever reason), you probably wouldn't set that to Justin Bieber's "Baby."

Oh. Disappointing. And I prefer Ride of the Valkyries for that kind of soundtrack.

Also, all of this has been too civil. It's revolting, not to mention contrary to everything I know and expect from the internet. Seriously. Not one hitler/WW2 reference? Shame on you all.

Fixed that. :)
 
Well, thank GOODNESS you fixed the Nazi thing. The temptation was killing me.

I looked at the twitter bit, hard to say if he had a problem with the person, what they said or their argument. Probably a combination of all three. I think if you asked him directly, he'd deny he meant that. I think.

For the study to have clinched that it was years of pay experience, rather than create the question, I would have had to see a lot more evidence across a spectrum of workers and time in trade. It would be interesting to see that, too. I mean, I'd like to believe we are evolving out of using a gender or sexual preference or race as a roadblock in equal pay, but I don't think we are. Perhaps I've met too many upper executives on vacation.

But I'm open to persuasion, of course. Your experience as a woman, (AS YOU CLAIM), sounds quite positive. I'd like to think it's a marker for the industry. Did you find your payscale identical to your male peers, given time-in-grade and skillset? Your advancement opportunities nearly equal?

Much of my perspective comes from growing up under my parents. My mother never, ever, ever lets anyone put her second. Including my father. Or her bosses, if she wasn't the boss, which she rapidly became. Or the weather, bankers, you name it. She was very tough. Still is.

So I find the outside world that I went out into..lacking in potent female figures, especially at the upper end. Senior managers, ship skippers, upper echelon bankers and lawyers, nearly all men. Even in "enlightened" Canada.

I guess I'd say I don't find Walker a bad reporter - no worse than many and a million miles better than, say, FOX news. I like his take and his honesty and I hope he brings more attention to sexism in videogames, until there is much less. Also because images of nude men REALLY annoy homophobes, and that pleases the hell out of me.
 
But I'm open to persuasion, of course. Your experience as a woman, (AS YOU CLAIM), sounds quite positive. I'd like to think it's a marker for the industry. Did you find your payscale identical to your male peers, given time-in-grade and skillset? Your advancement opportunities nearly equal?

UK: It just wasn't a gender issue. There were still certain careers where there were known gender biases. like engineering, but the career path that started as "Computer Programmer" wasn't one of them. I made Senior Manager level before I was 30, and I was running the internal IT department at the local facility of an American multinational before I left the UK in '91. I was very well paid, and I didn't consider myself to be a high flyer. In all of the companies I worked at, women were equally represented but only up to Senior Manager level, so there's a possibility of a glass ceiling. I didn't stay long enough to hit it.

Singapore: Career stall because of being a foreigner and because I was contract staff for several years. I ended at Senior Manager level in a large company. The business unit I was in was technical - both software and engineering. The General Manager was a woman, and so were four out of the five department heads. At staff and junior management levels, including engineering, it was around 50-50. For pay grades and promotion, there was discrimination regarding nationality, and some discrimination against unmarried staff, but not gender. As far as glass ceilings are concerned, yes, but it was cracking. The top levels of management traditionally came from the military, which meant all male, but as the women had climbed up to VP level, that was being eroded.

Much of my perspective comes from growing up under my parents. My mother never, ever, ever lets anyone put her second. Including my father. Or her bosses, if she wasn't the boss, which she rapidly became. Or the weather, bankers, you name it. She was very tough. Still is.

Yup, I got that too. My father made his own damn sandwiches. And made them for the rest of us at the same time.
 
Fascinating! I know the UK is still biased as hell, at least from my cousins and aunt there. Well, their experiences. And my neo-uncle here who goes over and comes back grumbling about classism being alive and well. I suppose women might dodge the classist trap, but not from what they say. None of them are in IT, though.

Singapore sounds like quite the equal-rights utopia. Do you think that's true of other industries there as well? And how much is dependent on women as the driving force vs male accomodation?

I found Thailand quite interesting in this regard. While on the surface, women are definitely subject to bias in terms of pay, ceilings and career opportunities, in actuality women are running a remarkable amount of businesses. Even in the more Muslim areas to the south, such as Krabi. The men, who will hold forth if you ask them about it, don't seem to see the contrast between what they say about equality and the daily reality.

Thinking about it, I realise that if Walker had posted an article talking about the growing equality in pay, I would have been surprised, pleased and much more critical of the study done. I doubt I would have given up on him as a journalist because he reasoned to somewhat weak conclusions, but i would have been a lot more critical.

Prejudices - the first intellectual trap, eh?
 
Fascinating! I know the UK is still biased as hell, at least from my cousins and aunt there. Well, their experiences. And my neo-uncle here who goes over and comes back grumbling about classism being alive and well. I suppose women might dodge the classist trap, but not from what they say. None of them are in IT, though.

I actually wonder if it's got worse, as IT moved from being "pioneer" (aka "we'll take anyone") to mainstream. But I'm too distant from it to know these days.

Singapore sounds like quite the equal-rights utopia. Do you think that's true of other industries there as well? And how much is dependent on women as the driving force vs male accomodation?

Women as the driving force, plus Government policies that weren't there to prevent gender discrimination but had that effect. Good childcare. Cheap foreign maids to get past the "two jobs" problem. Mandatory national service for men only, which gives women a two year head start. For the women themselves, there was/is still a traditional hierarchy in the home for married women, and a LOT of women chose to stay single in order to avoid that (in particular, the dominance of mother-in-law). There was also a push for women to educate themselves and get good jobs to get out of the poverty trap, because their menfolk weren't. I don't know for certain, but that probably also accounts for a lot of what you saw in Thailand too. Women struggle to get equality in the "traditional" male jobs, but can get an education, so they move into the "new technology" jobs or start their own businesses.
 
Mm. An excellent point. Quite a lot of the women bosses we ran across were in tourism, logistics, travel - I ran across a senior I guess "security" person when the gem scammers had me for a little walk, quite entertaining, and she was in charge. So, yeah, mostly running their own small businesses.

I wonder also how much is a chicken-egg argument. Okay, there aren't a lot of senior women in software or gaming, but is that because of inequality, less opportunity, recruiting prejudices - or is it just that much of the top-shelf games we see, the Halos and Call of Duties, are pretty obviously aimed at teenage boys and young men. Which means that's who grows up to aspire to do that work, which means that's who is qualified for it when hiring time comes.

I quite enjoyed the Witcher, for example, but my love found it much less interesting to watch, never mind play, than The Last of Us that I'm playing now, or, say, Heavy Rain. The sword and fantasy genre simply isn't to her taste, in videogames. She didn't care at all about the portrayal of women in it, or mind the sex - the story matter and gameplay simply weren't to her taste.

Now if they made a game of Mists of Avalon, or an actual good RPG for Game of Thrones, loaded with intrigue, mystery and treachery, yeah, she'd be into that.
 
Yup. I think it will change, it's probably already changing (which is where I go back to the different reading of those statistics). Whether or not the strident voices are necessary, helpful, or a hindrance - I don't know.

And I think we've exhausted the topic, as the arguments are going to start repeating themselves soon. I suggest that we either switch to iambic pentameter in order to introduce some variation, or open up the thread to others again by talking about cats. Or penguins.
 

227

Forum veteran
I'm not really able to add anything to what the two of you are talking about right now, but every time someone says John Walker, Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" starts playing in my head. Larry Walker used to be introduced during Rockies games with that song, so it's just something my brain is hard-wired to expect from people named Walker.

Dun-dun. Dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun (ay ay ay). DUN-DUN, dun-dun, dun-dun (*rattle*).
 
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