Petrie Ditz
It's time for yet another installment of "Who's Blaming Their Porn Addiction On Someone Else This Week?"
I'm fascinated by the Neanderthal brain. To be sure, it's predictable, but amazingly complex in the ways it attempts to force its host's head into its primitive yet cavernous ass, all the while insisting it can see daylight. In fact, long-time readers will remember an eerily similar set of contortions not that long ago.
Over at Petries Last Word, Petrie (who is, I suppose, not just a sack-of-shit candidate for a glass bellybutton, but also a wacky and insecure pterodactyl) had this to say about why women are given such a hard time on the internets:
Here's the real reason male gamers harass females online.
You know this is gonna be good because there just has to be a legitimate reason that an entire gender class is harassed online. Oh do tell us Petrie, we await your wisdom from the mountain top with rapt ears and slackened jaws. Oh yes we do.
We are then treated to photos of a girl in a bikini and Santa hat, a girl playing Guitar Hero in a tank top and mini, and then there's some kind of…um…robot drawing that makes Petrie feel tingly in his britches (hint: it's a robot that says cock, which is just not done in the polite company of online male gamers who harass female gamers), and he does not like that one the fuck bit. But it does support his main point:
…this is just one example of many out there, showing exactly why men see women gamers in such a negative light. You allow yourselves to be represented by your sexuality instead of and [sic] kind of discernible gaming skill.
What's funny (head-shaking funny, not haha funny) about this position is that not only is it condescending and puritanical, but it's also untrue. Women have proven themselves very capable and competitive over and over again, even in the behemoth multi-thousand dollar business that is the esports industry. In fact, at least one of these girls is 8 years old and can kick your ass Petrie, so stfukktyvm.
And by the way Petrie, let's get one thing straight. If female gamers are displaying their sexuality, it's because there is demand for it from male gamers. The very women you're masturbating to are the same women you're condemning for exploiting their sexuality.
Petrie also uses the Miss Video Game Contest to support his point, probably unaware that the VP of Business Development and main point of contact for the contest is one Mark Donovan. He's the guy providing your whack-off material, Petrie, so that you can justify calling them whores while you wipe up the last of the hand lotion when you're done.
And then we get to the inevitable yet utterly hilarious disclaimer:
I realize this does not apply to all women, but let's take a generally accepted stigma such as "most 360 gamers enjoy first person shooters"; I own a 360, therefore until I prove otherwise, it will probably be assumed I enjoy that genre. Well it is generally accepted that women gamers consider themselves different from their male counterparts, and until you prove otherwise, men will continue to treat you as such.
Ahhhh, do you smell that? That's the smell of truthiness. It's funny when Stephen Colbert does it, because he's just acting like an uneducated hick. It's not funny when you're seriously basing an entire argument around it, especially when that argument is "I will continue treating women like shit until they start to act like men." (Hint: real men aren't afraid of women who kick Unreal ass and look good in a bikini.)
Albert Einstein said it best: "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
February 1st, 2007 at 6:40 am
Petrie’s blog appears to be down, whether it’s traffic or it was taken down, I’m sad that we can’t enjoy the full text of it!
February 1st, 2007 at 8:17 am
When I was a kid I was a huge Land Before Time fan, FYI. Now I watch it with my daughter… ok fine, I am STILL a huge fan.
This guy’s logic is unshakble. Allow me to extrapolate… Until he starts acting like a human, I say we treat him like a cartoon, or a dish filled with germs.
Not that all Petrie’s are cartoon dinosaurs or germ-filled dishes, but most are and until I see proff otherwise, thats just the way it is.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:49 am
I like that he mentions the Titanic story (not sure it’s a “syndrome”). I have to admit it troubles me the way some women think they deserve all the benefits of mythological chivalry and none of the consequences. (A life of subservience to your husband? That’s what the two-months-salary-engagement-ring stands for ladies!)
But excusing one’s behavior towards a group based on a stereotype? Always wrong. And in this case you’d have a hard time establishing that the stereotype is representative, or even common. Tarted up ho girl gamers? I imagine that most girl gamers look like guy gamers. You’d have a hard time telling them apart actually, the way those guys grow out their hair all long and nasty.
February 1st, 2007 at 9:53 am
I better start with the part about agreeing with you lest you misunderstand me.
The male of the species are totally pathetic when it comes to communicating and interacting with the opposite sex. So, by introducing females into an environment where boys are comfortable, and worse, anonymous. They become bold…and display the retarded stupidity that comes pre-programmed. A guy has to learn to be civil and polite. Unless taught these things we are as you say, neanderthals. It’s been a generation or two since children were being taught proper manners by their parents (should we even call them parents anymore if they aren’t…well…parenting). How women are treated online is embarrassingly bad.
The one point I have to take issue with is blaming demand for all the sex we see in advertising. Sure the men buying video games based on the boobies in the cover art are tools, and deserve to have their money taken from them so easily, but the people in charge of showing flesh to sell a product deserve some blame as well. They could promote the qualities of the product if they choose, but no, they take the easy route. Selling sex to men is just as easy as selling feelings to a women. Flowers, a massage, words like honey dripping in her ear, will get a girl to do anything. Surprise her by doing the dishes and the laundry, have a meal on the table when she gets home and she’ll gladly slip into that litte number you bought her at victoria’s secret. It’s harder to display feelings on a billboard, but if you could, it would work just as well on women, that doesn’t mean we should blame women for the fact that there is a love interest in every single freaking movie. It is not the target markets fault that the advertisers choose to exploit men’s internal chemical problems.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:23 am
There’s a chapter in Grapes of Wrath where the banks have foreclosed on everyone’s farm and have hired one local to plow all of the land under. He goes out on a tractor, doing the work of dozens of men in days. One of the locals asks him why he took the job, and the driver replies that he needs the money to feed his family. The local angrily replies that by feeding his own family, the tractor driver is causing a hundred families to go hungry. The driver justifies it by saying that if he didn’t do it, someone else would step in and do it.
We live in a free market economy. If there is a demand, then there will be a supplier. You can blame the supplier if you want, but someone is gonna drive that tractor.
I don’t care that women use their sexuality to sell themselves or products or whatever, as long as nobody is being hurt. As you say, if someone buys a product because it has boobs on the package, then that’s their problem. But what I do have a problem with is a man who avails himself to a woman’s sexuality, and then harasses her for doing it.
If male gamers such as Petrie are so offended by women who use their sexuality, then he should himself focus on their non-feminine attributes. Instead of justifying why he treats them like shit, he should be encouraging his fellow male gamers to ignore their blatant attempts at pushing their bewbies in their face, and to treat them as just another gamer. If he were really interested in stopping the behavior, he would stop espousing the stereotype.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:42 am
WOW, what inescapable drivel (from Petrie) {and maybe Amber} I can say I have never been this embarrassed to be MAIL. Oops Neanderthal kicking in. Seems to me any one with a selectively stiff appendage and with more then a single brain cell to rub together had the ability to insight significant ire and venom from a seemingly timid/shy bloggerist. Perhaps the dig wouldn’t be so sharp if it did not ring so true. Economics works will sexuality. If there are women who look good and smell good and can kick your ass at Halo 2 then they MUST like to cyber. Tru? LOL!!11 (By smell I mean the smell of the warm monitor that the female’s ”picture” is displayed on cuz you know a warm monitor is like a 1337 smell and all that)
Although if I could read this ingrate’s full stupidity I would most likely come down on the femanaziest side possible. Not sure it is relevant but I usually treat the real females online with respect though perhaps I was raised better then the weirdoes flapping their epeens around the intertubes this day and age. Didn’t you know? As soon as you get a puter with interweb you can pop ur epeen out and get it cyborzed.
P.S. I really don’t speak like this in real life or online except to continue the stupidity. Also the level of brainlessness was ebbing and needed refreshing. This guy needs a hobby involving blindfolded self-surgery with grapefruit spoons. (The ones with the serrated edges)
February 1st, 2007 at 10:48 am
The reasons that young men objectify and harass women online are the same reasons that young men objectify and harass women in real life. Anonymity makes it a lot worse, but other than that, it’s not really much different from real life. It’s just amplified.
Incidentally, I tend to find that it’s the female gamers who have more dignity than the male gamers, not the other way around. I don’t know why people seem to assume that female gamers run around flailing their sexuality all over the place.
February 1st, 2007 at 10:49 am
Petrie is a low-life. I think that’s pretty clear. He strikes me as the kind of person who would push for the slutty advertising in the first place if given the opportunity.
You on the other hand have the chance to be above that. What I don’t get is (in accordance with your grapes of wrath story) why you are putting yourself in the shoes of the banker or the tractor driver? Have you no interest in being a better person than that? You are blaming the locals for being in debt, and they should take some responsibility, but why are you so willing to defend the foreclosing bankers?
“Come on, nobody’s that heartless” -Emperors New Groove
February 1st, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Male gamers harass female gamers online?
Yeah, gamers harass gamers online, it’s called the internet people.
Truth be told, if women want to be treated the same as men in an online environment, it won’t be pretty, it will be even worse. Guys are cockwanks even among ourselves and thats a really deep cesspit I think most women gamers would prefer not to go into.
Yeah, there is a differance in how men and women are treated to be sure, if Amber shakes it in world of warcraft, she’ll get free gold, if I shake it, I’ll get called ghey and asked to go rape myself.
February 1st, 2007 at 2:04 pm
rrrrr, that blockquote above was the perfect female gamer as seen by Thom Wade, forgot to say whom I blatently stole it from.
February 1st, 2007 at 2:59 pm
True but Petrie is justifying his treatmento f women not just people on the internet.
Dave (someone stole my cool internet name)
February 1st, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Doctor Barnett put forth:
“I like that he mentions the Titanic story (not sure it’s a “syndrome”). I have to admit it troubles me the way some women think they deserve all the benefits of mythological chivalry and none of the consequences. (A life of subservience to your husband? That’s what the two-months-salary-engagement-ring stands for ladies!)”
Doctor, men acting as gentlemen, and women acting as ladies had nothing to do with female subservience. It was a model for people to get along becasue they were treating each other well. Indeed if you look at all the hate, anger, resentment, etc in the modern world, I believe a great deal of it comes from having lost the habit - in our every day lives, in our relationships with those we love, in our politics, and in our diplomacy - of treating people well.
The whole system was built on graciousness, and grace. The graciousness to give when you needn’t, and the grace to accept and appreciate those gifts. It went both ways. It allowed people to make contributions to other peoples lives and feel good about themselves on a daily basis. It’s not about thinking you deserve it so much as how smoothly and well things can go when it’s present. In modern society, with women who get angry if you hold the door, and men who don’t bother to hold the door, we have lost a great deal of that.
What we end up with instead are anonymous assholes who harass girls they don’t know online because of some dim understaing that it’s ok somehow.
February 1st, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Painting any single group of people with wide brush strokes is unhelpful, unless they play WoW, in which case it’s okay to label them as just about anything derogatory. So while the “Titanic syndrome” may exist in individuals, it’s as unfair to say this about an entire gender as it is to say that all black people love watermelon. (I mean sure, they all *like* watermelon, but I’d never say they all *love* watermelon. That’s just crazy talk.)
We have all worked with the woman who abuses the male tendency to help out the weaker sex. But we’ve also worked with the crude guy who makes you want to wear a sweater even in July. Hell I once worked with a black guy that *loved* watermelon. In fact, I was the maid of honor at his very disturbing wedding. Their kids are very cute. Very green, but very cute. But these are all exceptions, not the rule.
Thank you I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.
February 2nd, 2007 at 10:28 am
Just had to chime in here and say that the issue here is just an extension of the larger issue of misogyny in our society. Women are often misogynists, too. Those girls who use their sexuality to gain some sort of personal advantage are buying in to the stereotype and cashing out at the expense of their self-respect. The Miss Video Game pageant is a mockery because it claims to be representing women when it is simply perpetuating sexist views. A woman who doesn’t want to be ogled won’t present herself that way. A man who thinks it’s disrespectful to ogle a woman won’t do it.
I think it’s the personal responsibility of every man and woman to decide how he or she wants to be treated. If a woman wants to be treated as a man’s equal, then she should act like it. If she wants to be treated like the weaker sex, then she needs only to follow the rules society has laid out for her. It’s the easy way out, but for many, many women, it works for them, and maybe they’re just not reflective enough to understand its larger consequences.
Remember, breaking any of society’s unwritten rules comes with a price (there’s actually a lengthy discussion on my blog about this while discussing the topic of virginity with a thirty-something-year-old virgin). It’s up to you whether you think that price is worth it.
February 2nd, 2007 at 11:19 am
Sounds like Petrie isn’t getting any booty and he is miffed about that.
February 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
“Doctor, men acting as gentlemen, and women acting as ladies…”
Sweetmeat, do you believe in fairy tales? In the old times that you’re conjuring, most people were too busy dying of starvation to be particularly graceful to one another. “Gentlemen” and “ladies” were quite officially the nobility and not the common people. Whatever that noble class did, they’re culpable for their rule over the miserable 99.9% of the population. This is, more or less, history, and not a good model for our modern society where the average person’s quality of life is remarkably better.
“What we end up with instead are anonymous assholes who harass girls they don’t know online because of some dim understaing that it’s ok somehow.”
I agree, this pisses me off when I see it online and on the city streets. I do my best to put myself between women and their hecklers on the sidewalk, if you can believe that, though I’m not macho enough to pick fights over it. (I’d also never get to work, since it happens pretty much every day.) But where you see (idealized) traditional gender roles as a solution, I see gender roles as the origin of the problem. The hecklers are generally poor and come from regressive cultures; they are not a new phenomenon. If anything, their behavior is the model of common men and women’s relations before modernity. At least we agree that it’s bad.
February 5th, 2007 at 10:16 am
Doctor I don’t really approach it as gender roles, I look at it as people treating each other well. Let’s take a look at what happens when a woman lets a man buy her dinner for instance.
1: A man offers to buy the woman dinner.
2: She accepts the offer.
3: They go to dinner together, and he pays the bill.
Interpretations of the event aside, this is what happens.
Ok now we can look at this a bunch of ways, like she is using him for a free evening out, and like he is hoping she will feel indebted and put and have sex with him. Taking these views, and making them your own is where people miss out on what’s possible out of the event.
When you do nice something for someone, it makes you feel good. That it’s an attractive woman doesn’t really matter, it’s the act of doing something selfless that gives enjoyment. OK so if it stopped there, the man would gain all the advantage in the event, which is where a lot of women miss the point. That she allows him to pay, by being gracious and accepting his invitation is in reality her doing him a favor as well. If she declines the invitation because he’s paying or insists on dutch, both of them would be robbed of the opportunity. If you approach it right, both of them get to feel good about it. That we don’t teach our children about this is what leads us to a world where people very often do things for selfish reasons. They’re not instructed that there’s another, more civil, and infinitely more enjoyable way to approach and engage in relationships. Indeed, they don’t really know what they’re missing. They have to stumble on it by accident, and most people don’t recognize exactly what happened and why they fealt good about it when they do.
I have no illusions that the “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” of past centuries were in any way what I would refer to as acting like a lady, or acting like a gentleman. In the middle class in the 20th century those terms took on a new meaning where by any one was allowed to behave in a gentlemanly, or ladylike fashion. I think that it had benefits for our society when a large portion of our society elected to behave in that manner. I think many less people do it now, and that it is becoming increasingly rare in each generation.
I could go on, but I think I’ll leave it at that.
February 5th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
I think I will pay for Amber’s dinner….if my wife lets me that is (wink wink)… Also I’ll spring for a dutch…if thats what your into. Not sure what a dutch can do that I can’t….sept speak Dutchish that is.
February 6th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Sweetmeat, I appreciate your civility in arguing your position. I prize civility, and people doing nice things for each other in general. But if you insist on partitioning civility into “being like a gentleman” and “being like a lady,” you’re adding unnecessary limitations and, significantly, expectations. It isn’t fair to powerful women who, for example, would like to do the nice thing of paying for dinner without it becoming gossip. Or, likewise, men who would like to be treated to dinner. (Cluck, cluck.)
I have nothing against traditional couples, and I’m very happy for all couples that have found their balance. I apologize for my over-the-top comment about a “lifetime of subjugation.” But having been around plenty of young, single men (college!), I can tell you that most do resent at least a little being expected to foot all bills when dating, culminating in an expensive trinket for engagement. That resentment transforms directly into some very unkind talk about women in general.
These days I work in an office made up almost entirely of women. I’ve actually heard a now-married woman say, “If he doesn’t have enough cash on him at all times, I’m not interested,” to which several others voiced their approval. (Hear that boys? No MasterCard for these classy dames!) And I was thinking, I know what my college friends would call your cash-only policy.
If only men and women could observe the trash talking each group does in private, perhaps they would drop their romanticized, disingenuous expectations of each other and strive for human kindness instead. Until then I guess I’ll just keep filling up Amber’s weblog with really long comments. (Sorry, hon!)
February 6th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Not to worry Doc. If you use up all the words we’ll make more.
February 11th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Reading through a few more entries from this guy, he seems way too focused on female gamers. Personally, I just concern myself about girl gamers like my wife and my daughter.