I saw a rant which is indicative of a usual rant among anti-feminists.

"If all women flaunt their bodies to manipulate men, men shouldn't be criticized for enjoying and making use of women's bodies."

This always struck me as silly, acting like it's some sort of equivalent trade between the sexes.

If a woman acts slutty, it's okay to treat her like a sex object^*. By this logic, if a woman sells drugs, it's okay to buy from her.

LAME.

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The actual, and much less coherent, post is here, in response to a female commenter saying that small breast size was a refreshing change in fantasy artwork.

First, a woman saying that she likes something to be different every once in a while is hardly controversial radical feminism. That's like saying: "Hm, today I'll have the baked potato instead.." ... "YOU FEMINIST NAZI BITCH!"

Second, there is the huge logical fallacy in grossly generalizing about one half of the world's population. Do severe burn patients, agoraphobics, female bodybuilders, nuns, lesbians, lesbian nuns and this idiot's grandmother flaunt their body to manipulate men? Hmm.. no. Those extreme examples aside, what our male guest is complaining about is "the type of clothes you wear, all the make up you trowel on, the type of heroes that you worship in the media," which he cites as proof that womankind is out to manipulate and leech off of men.

Hmmm. For the most part, women dress up to please themselves and other women. When I buy a stylish necklace, I think "Ooh, this is cute," not "Ooh, this will make men do my yardwork." Women like Jennifer Anniston are popular with other women because they're stylish and glamorous trendsetters, not because they have huge bazongas. (And if you can't differentiate between stylish and "huge bazongas," I hope the police are there to pry you off as you uncontrollably hump a pair of Prada shoes.)

Do men care about the color of your nailpolish? Do men care whether your shoes match your purse? Do men care whether you put on moisturizer or curl your eyelashes? ... Well, some men do, but they're gay.

(Not to mention the good number of women who don't dress up at all)

Women dress to impress men as much as men get spinning rims to impress women. Which is to say, a little, but not much.

As to "the type of heroes that you worship in the media," the women that other women idolize are different from the women men idolize. Who's a hot, busty woman? Jessica Alba. What movies was she in that made her popular? ... Fantastic Four, and Sin City. Who watched those movies? Men. Who is Kate Beckinsale in tight leather popular with? Men. Who is Jennifer Garner popular with? Men. Who is Angelina Jolie popular with? Men. Who is Pamela Anderson popular with? Men.

Who's popular with women? Oprah.

I rest my case.


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*I make a distinction between being slutty and looking good. When I say I'd like some video game women to not have giant gravity-defying boobs, tight leather catsuits and high heels, that doesn't mean I want video games starring withered hag-women and cement bricks. I like boobs of all sizes, actually. It's the ridiculous outfits I dislike. After all, men like to play as attractive men, but you don't see avatars in World of Warcraft wearing butt-thongs and giant codpieces, do you?

The Economics of Warcraft

Now is a good time own shares of copper, tin and other common industrial metals. No, not in real life, silly... in World of Warcraft. Apparently the Ahn'Qiraj quest line has raised the demand for common wholesale materials, raising the prices on Auction Houses from Ironforge to Everlook.

You could ...

Whine about rising prices of raw materials for manufacturers:

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"The economy is totally upside down right now. 20 linen went for 15-20 silver now goes for 2-3 gold. Thorium bars are up almost 1g-2g a piece now. This goes for leather and other materials needed by the so-called 'war effort'. Craftsmen who buy and sell items off AH are just screwed until this war effort is over."
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Call for price controls:

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"1.) Without governmental controls (i.e., rationing and price caps) prices will clime dramatically on the war effort goods. If Blizzard is smart they'll come up with a voucher program and AH price caps for the war materials in next week's patch."
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Refute that argument by extolling free market values:

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"Blizzard isn't forcing anyone to pay or list those prices. Blizzard didn't create this - the players did by paying. It's that simple. Simple supply and demand. I can't believe how many people can't grasp this concept."
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"The general rule of thumb is when the costs of your goods outweigh the cost of the product produced, you don't produce said product."
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Sell goods for ridiculous amounts:

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"People need to think of the economy as now being on a wartime footing. The price of certain items will go up as there is a new need for them. I think it shows how dynamic a MMORPG economy can be. And once this event is over, prices will settle down again. But for now, this is an opportunity for war profiteers who manage the temporary changes to the economy well to make a lot of money."
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Moralize about the military-industrial complex:

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"You're encouraging war profiteering? Whoever said ethics were dead in Azeroth was right."
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Decry the triumph of capitalistic self-interest over common unity:

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"The whole server COULD have banded together and said... "Let's open AQ first!!! DROP ALL PRICES TO NOTHING!" I'm sorry to say however, in a capitalist run world in which nearly all of us exist in...we're programmed to respond differently."^*
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Worry about post-war recessions:

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"However, Blizz did affect the supply in the fact that thousands of people had god knows how many stacks of runecloth saved up ... Now that these stockpiles are gone, it will be interesting to see the price of runecloth after the event is over."
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Just not give a damn:

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"'Casual gamers' don't launch tirades about the awful burdens Blizzard puts on their video game commodities market. They don't complain bitterly about the going rate of bear skins in video game land."
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-Fin!

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*(I don't see that the prices are deterring people from donating to the war effort, since the demand is mostly price inelastic. Say the quest requires 90,000 bars of copper to be donated to the war drive to trigger the world event- if the price is low, a lot of newbie players will purchase the 90,000 bars, whereas if the price is driven up, a small elite guild of level 60 ubergamers purchases the 90,000 bars. Equity and distribution are irrelevant in this case. Overall quantity demanded is more or less the same.)

For those of you who aren't aware, Penny Arcade is organizing the Child's Play charity again this year, where video gaming fans buy toys for childrens' hospitals around the world, just in time for the holiday season. It was basically started by Gabe and Tycho to show the world that not all video gamers are violent, anti-social assholes, and of course to help sick kids.

It's a really good cause. Plus, one of the hospitals you can donate to is our very own Children's National Medical in D.C. I had surgery there when I was ten. They help you not feel scared, and they're good people.

Tears of St. Lawrence

Friday was aptly named, being that I spent it at Matt's place cooking up veggie tempura and attempting to roll sushi. We played an Oriental Adventures style game based on Exalted mechanics. After a night of pretending to be Asian, we went outside, tried to catch the meteor shower, failed, and went home. The Leonids, by the way, are also known as the Tears of St. Lawrence because they fall near his feast day. St. Lawrence is famous for being burned alive on a gridiron, and is reported to have said, "Now you may turn me over, my body is roasted enough on this side." I don't know what it is with Catholic saints all being more famous for dying in a hideous manner than for doing good deeds. My sister's church, for example is lined with pictures of bleeding Korean martyrs. I personally, think it would be more important to learn how to live well than to die well.

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Went to Atlantic City on Saturday.

Hot as balls on the beach, lots of old people, little Chinese men, chain-smokers at slot machines, and shiny lights. Carl made $200 on poker. He calculates that as basically earning $60 an hour. Congratulations, Carl. He has a reputation in roleplaying games for making deals with demons in exchange for dark power, and usually dying in hideous ways, so this isn't surprising. (Mike Robbins even made a comic series called, "The many deaths of Carl.") I also got an economics lesson. I couldn't gamble legally (since when has the gambling age been 21???) and the minimum bets on craps were like $10. Blackjack was like $20. As opposed to um, Guild Wars, which costs $50 and will last me a year.

Old Senate fogeys like complaining that video games are sinful. You all have probably heard the big scandal about Grand Theft Auto's Hot Coffee mod (which I, undoubtedly like thousands of others, promptly downloaded after all the press). While I find games like GTA distasteful, and I know parenting is a hard job even without video games, the only way to get a mod like Hot Coffee is to... mod.

Fact of Life #1: If some hacker accesses areas of the game that were intentionally locked off, that's not the game developer's fault. That's hacking. Duh.

Tons and tons of unfinished code remains in all games as a matter of course, which can't be deleted, only locked off. If someone goes out of their way to hack the game, who's fault is that?

Fact of Life #2: Fourteen year old boys will masturbate. I don't know why parents are so shocked to hear this. "Oh, my little Johnny would never touch his weewee!" Talk to your kids about sex. If you slap your son everytime he looks at a breast, he'll grow up neurotic. This isn't to say, give your kids smut, but don't, you know, go ballistic.

Jack Thompson even condemned the Sims as being sinful. In this life simulation game where you can do anything from getting a job or getting married to washing the dishes or reading the newspaper, Thompson gets his panties in a jumble because in the game you can take a bath or change baby diapers. Woe is me, the lustful nudity! Nevermind that all nekkid people, even kids, are covered up by a blur. Supposedly there are hacks that can remove the blur. Nevermind that naked Sims look like Barbie/Ken dolls, without nipples or genitalia. Nevermind that EA (the company that makes the Sims) cracks down harshly on any such mods that they find. Nevermind that the Sims is the best and most popular example of a game that doesn't rely on sex or violence for entertainment. Nevermind that the Sims is the game that best reaches out to older gamers and women. Nevermind that violent crime this decade is the lowest it's been in history. No no no, Jack Thompson is on a crusade.

Jack Thompson says that game companies are to blame because they encourage modding, nevermind that most modding is the creation of new levels or different character models. Counter-Strike, the first person-shooter where you fight terrorism, started out as a mod for Half-Life and got so popular it's now a separate game. In the case of the Sims, the mod community mostly does innocuous things like custom-designing wallpaper for your house or a new spring outfit for your daughter. While we're busy persecuting game companies for what a very small minority of modders do, why don't we start arresting celebrities for public indecency, since porn sites are photoshopping their heads onto naked bodies?

Of course, like gambling, all the outcry will die down once they realize how much video gaming contributes to the economy...

Hypocrites.