Saturday, January 24, 2015

Entertainment for men


One of Anita Sarkeesian's beefs with video games is that they routinely treat women as "sexual playthings" for men.

But of course that is pretty much the standard in this culture, and has been for at least 60 years.

Playboy magazine, founded in 1953 bears the subtitle "Entertainment for Men." And the cover image has always made clear that the entertainment on offer is women.

Prior to being known as entertainment for men, women were mainly useful as beasts of burden and bearers of children. Thanks to advances in birth control women were allowed to be commodified sexbots instead.

And men have been raised with this idea that women exist to provide entertainment for them, and so when a woman refuses to do so, and actually expresses her own sexual agency, men can get mighty angry.

I was watching a video about Anita Sarkeesian's hassles with the gamergate misogynist freaks when who should pop up but the newly-discovered (by me, anyway) Cindy Gallop. I never heard of her until about a month ago, and now it seems like she's everywhere. When feminist worlds collide!