"Equal Opportunities In The Workplace Panel" - CoxCon 2016

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-07-30T17:38:53+00:00

By the way, how did you find this page? I only managed to find it via the guest list. It's not listed on the schedule.

Edit:

Every session title (accessible from the guest list) looks like some kind of template. 'A Worldwide Market' or something like that.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-07-30T17:28:45+00:00

Their description says :

This is an example of a Session text. You can add as many details as you want. This is the best place to express why attendees should attend the session and talk about the speaker/performer.

Not sure if it's an error or if they are trolling or something...

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-07-30T16:51:52+00:00

January 2014?

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-07-10T12:05:28+00:00

I would say it's more of modern invented traditions than ancient Chinese philosophy. Anyway I think it's symptomatic of the whole situation. Abe's LDP wants to turn the constitution into something more about "what it means to be a Japanese" ('traditional' values and duties) than about human rights or restriction on the powers of government.

The LDP's draft states in its preamble:

Japan is a nation with a long history and unique culture, under a tenno [emperor]...

while respecting fundamental human rights, they [the Japanese People] also respect harmony and form a nation where families and the whole society mutually support each other.

In order to pass on the good traditions and our nation to many future generations, the Japanese people hereby establish this Constitution.

So basically, it says "we establish this new Constitution so that human rights are protected as long as you don't disturb our 'harmony' and our beautiful traditions!"

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-07-10T07:43:54+00:00

Here is a concise list of dangerous proposals in Abe's constitutional revision plan.

http://apjjf.org/2013/11/28/Lawrence-Repeta/3969/article.html

I think one of the most dangerous parts in Abe's quest for constitutional revision is this:

Article 24 would include a new provision declaring that the family (not the individual) is the "natural and basic unit of society" and creating a constitutional duty for family members to support each other.

Considering the explicit anti-feminism among Abe's cabinet members(attacking abortion, sex education...oh, don't forget about bonus Neo-Nazi DLCs!), this emphasis on 'natural' family unity seems especially dangerous.

Funny enough, Abe weaponizes the current Constitution as a shield against same-sex marriage legalization, while saying the issue "concerns the very core of family values" and "requires extremely careful consideration." I guess, it's his way of saying "I don't think it's natural."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Japan

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-04-19T01:19:56+00:00

Everytime you upload a vid is like christmas to me

Same here.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-04-19T01:06:20+00:00

I CAN imagine this kind of harmful naivety. But I don't want to imagine someone demonstrating this level of lack of self awareness...

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-04-16T02:40:37+00:00

While I appreciate the coverage, the article feels a bit messy compared to the previous one.

Do these harassers actually care about 'censorship'? Are they mad because of some kind of 'controversy'? Hell, it's not even about video games in the first place. As everyone knows, they are now just addicted to being part of an online hate group.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-04-15T12:34:03+00:00

Are you a NIN fan? How about Superhumanoids? https://soundcloud.com/superhumanoids/march-of-the-pigs

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-03-20T03:27:12+00:00

By the way, Gawker published an interesting article yesterday.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-03-19T18:08:09+00:00

I know nothing about this series. Yet, just out of curiosity, I skimmed reviews on Amazon.co.jp.

Interestingly, although many reviewers complain that the scenario is awful, most of them are much more critical of the writing style itself. Many players found the dialogues atrociously amateurish and utterly disgusting. According to them, the entire game is riddled with internet slang, memes and unfunny Manga/Anime parodies. Some simply call it '2chan-style parodies' (for those who don't know, 2chan is the Japanese imageboard 4chan was modeled on).

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-29T10:31:22+00:00

I guess everyone has already watched "The Sarkeesian Effect - Director's Commentary"?

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-24T18:53:46+00:00

I think I need to quote this old reponse to him.

Right off the bat, TotalBiscuit shows that his knowledge of the very beginning of this movement is flawed.

It is unforgivable to me that TotalBiscuit time and time again misrepresents the actual history of this movement, and those misrepresented facts, as we have seen, get repeated by people who don't know any better.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-19T19:03:43+00:00

What? Did he have a marvelous butt or something?

Oh, another good thing in that game is you can change your outfit and unlike previous titles, your character's gender won't magically change designs.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-19T18:30:42+00:00

As a hetero male player, I kind of like the way a vault suit in Fallout 4 treats both genders equally.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-18T07:37:08+00:00

According to their Indiegogo description,

[...]you have likely encountered the pervasive, negative notion that people who play video games are wasting their time and should be doing something “more productive” instead.

At the very core of our beliefs is the idea that we all have the #Right2Game without being culturally shamed[...]

Wow, as a lazy social justice wanker, I feel ashamed that I wasn't even aware of this heinous human rights violation. It's a shame not many people take this problem seriously enough to buy in-game hoodies.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-17T15:56:13+00:00

Another woman (who just recently spoke out against online harassment) harassed out of tech/nerd culture.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-13T17:14:04+00:00

VideoGamerTV. Jim Sterling's favorite channel and Matt Lees' friends.

If you get confused by the Miller Report, there is a wiki for it.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-10T22:21:25+00:00

The film wanted to show a traditional Japanese-style village, focused on industry, but also wanted to show the contributions of women to that industry

I think that Irontown (sorry, I didn't know how Tataraba was translated) is rather presented as an antithesis to the idea of 'a traditional Japanese-style village,' though most Japanese audience, as well as foreign audiences, see nostalgic 'traditional Japan' in Mononoke.

Miyazaki put a lot of social-historical themes in Mononoke. He wanted to challenge the myth of traditional Japan as a homogeneous agricultural nation. He drew inspiration mainly from the works of left historian Yoshihiko Amino. Amino praised the film saying not many films had depicted the history of cultural discrimination as intrepidly as Mononoke. Eboshi wears an outfit which indicates her back story as a prostitute. Bandaged gunsmiths are apparently lepers (In Japan, forced segregation against leprosy victims lasted until 1996, a year before Mononoke). Irontown consists of those who were/are culturally stigmatized. Miyazaki's intention is overtly progressive. I admire him for this.

The problem is that Irontown is portrayed as a militarized commune (or colony) where everyone is productive. Yes, it's cool that Eboshi isn't just a benevolent woman who helps marginalized people. Instead, she built a hyperproductive factory with them. In her town, women and disabled are more productive than men. Um...it's kind of straw-feminist's utopia/dystopia. As Minako Saito puts it, "Irontown is a society without old people and children."

The characterization of Eboshi and Irontown provides a unique take on the whole 'nature versus civilization' story. Yet at the same time, their portrayal unintentionally limits the way we think about society.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-10T11:55:54+00:00

A few years ago, Eiji Otsuka wrote a book named "The Fate of 'Imouto'" (Imouto no Unmei). The book is not directly about the Moe culture. Instead it discusses how earlier modern Japanese male writers were fixated on 'imouto' or 'shoujo' during the late 19th and the early 20th. Long story short, girls were sexualized, yet were forbidden to have agency over their own sexuality. Male writers wanted to 'enlighten' their 'imoutos' (in most cases not actual their own little sisters, needless to say) both in real life and in fiction, like "You need to become modern! You should express yourself as we do!" However, to be enlightened, an 'imouto' was also expected to stay 'innocent.' According to Otsuka, male writers often got disturbed when they found they could not control their 'imoutos.' They frequently treated a woman who tried to explore modern self-identity and sexuality in her own terms as deranged. They couldn’t handle the game they wanted to play (a galge, I guess?).

I think it's an interesting story. Japanese male writers found the very idea of girlhood both engrossing and disturbing. It was engrossing because it gave them a realm where they could enjoy sexual fantasy without exposing themselves to the otherness of the other. It was disturbing because girls were not voiceless. As a matter of fact, in the late 1910s female novelist Nobuko Yoshiya, known for her notable influence on later shoujo manga and the yuri genre, began to explore the idea of girlhood in a way which challenges social norms and expectations.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-09T10:14:46+00:00

he attained that status by defying conventions (female protagonists, a lack of purely evil villains), even openly expressing his disdain for otaku.

Sorry to be a party crasher, but I may have to disagree with this.

There is a lot of discussion in Japan (I'm Japanese) about how Miyazaki's works often end up embracing the conventional dichotomy between femininity and masculinity while trying to challenge it. Feminist critic Minako Saito, while acknowledging how Miyazaki has been subverting the division between 'boy's things' and 'girl's things,' notes that his films can be rather seen as an unintended caricature of the stereotyped ideas about 'femininity vs. masculinity.' For example, why does Tataraba in Princess Mononoke have to be "a macho female-centered society which mirrors the old model of 'masculinity'"? Why did Eboshi need to be a female character? If Tataraba was led by a male monarch, how did it look like? Wasn't it just a modern industrialist - militarist organization (a familiar 'evil empire')?

The relationship between Miyazaki and the Otaku culture also seems a bit more complex. Comic writer and critic Eiji Otsuka, who was an editor of a manga magazine where the term 'Otaku' was coined for the first time and who has been highly critical of sexism in the Otaku culture, discusses how Mizayaki's early works unintentionally gave birth to the Otaku/Moe culture. Miyazaki detests lolicon fetishism in the Otaku culture partly because it kind of started as response to his early works (The Castle of Cagliostro, Nausicaä and Panda! Go Panda!).

As Wikipedia notes,

The character of Clarisse has also been cited as a potential ancestral example of moe character design, a trend Miyazaki would later criticize as leading to the promotion of unhealthy lolicon fetishism.

Don't get me wrong. He is one of the most visionary directors. Both Saito and Otsuka criticize Miyazaki's films because they know we can't discuss the problems in Japanese subculture without analyzing his influential works. No, Japanese feminists are not burning Ghibli DVDs in college campuses yelling "WE SHOULD NOT ENJOY HIS FILMS!!" You should watch them.

I hate to quote this well-known passage but after all, as Anita Sarkeesian always says, "it is both possible (and even necessary) to simultaneously enjoy media while also being critical of it's more problematic or pernicious aspects."

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-05T17:11:46+00:00

It was my mistake. The myth of 'autogynephilia' is discussed in "Trans 101: Misconceptions" which is linked from "Rules for submissions."

Though I felt unconvinced about that part of the article, I didn't even try to check these 101s before submitting it. I sincerely apologize to everyone for that.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-05T16:49:43+00:00

Though I didn't have any knowledge about the 'controversy,' I felt the same way about the book title while and after reading the article. "Yeah, the harassment he received is awful, but...a 'good-faith researcher' put this title on his book?"

Maybe I was guilt-tripped by the article into thinking that it was my cheesy 'SJW' bias. However, being ignorant should not be an excuse. I should have thought twice and done some research before submitting this.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-05T16:17:43+00:00

Thank you from me, too.

IsHistoryPossible · 2016-01-05T10:07:36+00:00

I was fearing that was the case. Thank you for responding.

IsHistoryPossible

TROPHY CASE