It’s passed the House of Commons by a huge majority. Now on to the House of Lords. Of course, philosopher Roger Scruton was on the wrong side of this one, with the argument that “gay marriage is homophobic”.
Note: this post has been updated in light of the excellent point made in the first comment!
This is a really interesting essay that touches on: postcolonialism, perceptions of distant others, immunity of theories to revision by evidence, audience interpretation, context, communication, privilege (of various kinds), empathy and probably a host of other philosophical topics as well.
The Border House is a great blog about video games and social identity.
They have a recent post up entitled, “TransMovement: Freedom and Constraint in Queer and Open World Games”
(All the blockquotes here are from the Border House article by Samantha Allen)
When Bethesda Games’ Todd Howard previewed the open world role-playing gameSkyrim, he famously promised that the player would be able to traverse any visible geography. His breathless assurance of the player’s ultimate freedom has already come and gone as an internet meme: “You see that mountain? You can climb it.”
In it, the author mentions a video game (that you can play right in your browser without downloading anything) called dys4ia.
I want to contrast this ultimate freedom of movement with the mechanics of movement in Anna Anthropy’s much-discussed game dys4ia, which she describes as “an autobiographical game about my experiences with hormone replacement therapy.”
It’s articles like this that make me think there is lots of potential for philosophy and video games to get together and make sweet, sweet knowledge. Especially in regards to social justice and oppression.
I’ll confess that I seem to enjoy the rampant freedom of open world games just as much as anybody. But, for cisgender gamers, the supreme motility of open world games often functions as an exaggeration of a freedom of movement that they may already enjoy in the physical spaces of non-game worlds.
In her 1980 essay, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment Motility and Spatiality,” feminist philosopher Iris Marion Young thinks through the style of movement typical of women in the United States. Women, in her view, do not “make full use of the body’s spatial and lateral possibilities” unlike men who are able to move freely, with long strides and swinging arms (Young 1980, 142).
I’m not arguing that all games should constrain player motion so that the much-stereotyped white, male, cisgender game-playing teenager can understand my experience as a transwoman. I do want to resist, however, game critics’ tendency to think of the open world, “ultimate freedom” genre as the evolutionary endpoint of video games as a medium. Different styles of movement produce different emotional effects and both should be available to us as players and as game-makers. To regard “fun” as the ultimate litmus test for the success of a video game is to sell short the emotive capacity of the medium itself.
I also want to call attention to the implicit masculinity of the open world genre, not to dismiss it entirely, but rather to point out the ways in which freedom of movement can be experienced differently by people outside the largely white, male cisgender realm of video game preview and review culture. […] Because I don’t equate fiction with reality, I can’t hold Far Cry 3 accountable for neocolonialism. I can point out, however, that it’s a reflection of an implicit masculinism, the seductiveness of which is facilitated by the mechanics of movement in the open world genre of games. Let’s enjoy our fictional worlds and our innocent-because-virtual power fantasies. But let’s also try to be a little more nuanced and reflexive in our approach to going anywhere and doing anything.
N.B. Revenge porn = a naked or salacious picture of a person is uploaded to the internet by an ex-lover for the sake of humiliation and spite, i.e. revenge (for dumping their skeazy misogynistic ass, probably.)
IsAnybodyDown posts revealing pictures, mostly of women, without their consent, along with their full names and identifying information like phone numbers and Facebook snapshots. If they want to get off the site, victims get directed to a takedown “service” that costs $250. The site is an even sleazier, and possibly more extortionate, version of Hunter Moore’s famous site “IsAnybodyUp.”
In the interview, Brittain says his site should just be considered “entertainment,” not extortion. He was also straightforward about his desire to turn the controversial business of “involuntary porn” into a big moneymaker.
When asked whether he thought what he was doing was “really sleazy,” Brittain offered this gem: “We live in a really sleazy society.”
Will copyright be the tool that pummels IsAnybodyDown?
So-called “involuntary porn” sites are certainly pushing the legal boundaries of free speech—especially when they include thinly-veiled attempts to wring money from the people portrayed.
I hope the people making money from these websites get sued into oblivion. And I hope everyone who gets off to these photos realizes how beyond F***ed up that is. Though really, this is on a spectrum with the rest of our culture and our F***ed up senses of sexuality, ya? So it’s not even like the people jacking off to this are an uber-class of misogynists. Their actions are a reasonable extension of Girls Gone Wild, the crazy ex-girlfriend stereotype, and having a madonna-whore complex.
So the asshole who made the site is right on that count; we do live in a sleazy society. And that makes him a coward who doesn’t have the guts to fight for something better.
Feminist Philosophers 