Urist McDorf

Ahhh politics.

Try the following experiment:

1- got to play.com

2- search for the Sex Pistols

3- add the God Save The Queen single MP3 to your cart

4- try to buy it

Hmmm… nothing to do with the Jubilee?

The Safe Space Network: The Safe Space Network

Intent.

I cannot claim credit for this, because I’m sure I read this before elsewhere, I just can’t find the source.

Intent is not magic.

If you step on my foot by accident, the normal reaction is to take your foot off mine and apologise.  You’re not apologising because you’re bad, and no one would ever suggest that your intent was to injure my foot, but you apologise and remove your foot because you hurt me, intent or no.

If you react to my “Ow!” by having a go at me because “it’s not my fault, I never meant to step on you’re foot, don’t get angry at me!”  All the while being too distracted with shifting non-existent blame to actually remove your foot from mine, I’m not going to look on you kindly.  And that has nothing to do with me assuming your “intent” was to step on my foot.

And maybe one day you step on my foot and I immediately start shouting at you, telling you off and asking how could you be so clumsy and careless?  Do you have it in for me or something?  Are you trying to break my foot?

And you feel hurt and attacked because it wasn’t your intent to step on my foot, how can I be angry?  How can I even think you did it on purpose?

But what you don’t know is this isn’t the first time you stepped on my foot.  It’s actually the third time today you’ve done that.  And earlier you bumped into me and knocked my drink over my shirt, and before that shut a door in my face.  You just don’t know it, because the first time I said nothing, realising it was an accident, and other times you breezed by so quickly, or you just plain didn’t even notice me.  Maybe you did notice and apologise one time, but by now I’m starting to wonder how sorry you can really be.

Because if you’ve stepped on my foot five times already, and you’re still not trying to take the basic precaution of looking where you’re going, how can you claim ignorance?  It might not be your intent to hurt me, but you clearly don’t care enough to make even the slightest effort not to.

So I’ve been enjoying, up until recently, a thread elsewhere on the internet that had begun to transform into potentially a really positive thread.  A discussion of a recent, minor incident where a very young child wore blackface for a “Martin Luther King” costume without knowing, or apparently without his parents knowing, about the history of the practice.  The event wasn’t terribly controversial - the school quietly explained the issue to the child who washed his face, and there was opportunity for education for all!  So the discussion instead turned to the issue of privilege and ignorance.

There were some concerns that it was unfair to blame someone for ignorance, when they’ve not had the chance to learn.  Understandable, and it’s true that everyone needs to learn something for the first time before they can change.  If I’d never heard of blackface before I’d probably be a bit shocked, and wonder whether I’d ever done something phenomenally stupid in my past relating to it.

But then, of course, it all turned to shit.

The conversation (with several people) basically went like this.

Me and Others:  Part of privilege is not knowing this stuff because you never needed to know - it was never in the forefront of your experience, or if it was you didn’t notice because it wasn’t relevant to you.  Like how my male friends never notice men catcalling women in the street, even as I’m right next to it and can hear every word.

Some People:  Right, but it’s not our fault we never knew this stuff.  You can’t blame us or get angry at us.  That little kid didn’t MEAN to upset anyone, it’s not his FAULT.

Me:  Well, no not totally.  But just because it isn’t your fault, doesn’t mean that you don’t have a responsibility to educate yourself when the opportunity does arise.  Entry-level story-style explanation of intent not being magic (see here).  Ignore comment about the little kid because no one in the entire thread has blamed or expressed anger at the kid.

Some:  Well I’ve never had that opportunity!  I never heard about blackface before today, how could I?  I was born in the 70s, this is all ancient history to me!

Me:  Actually, blackface and racebending in general has continued to be an issue to the present day.  See these links to a show aired in 1978, links to compilations of racist cartoons, the racebending website and a news article about that racist cake caricature thing we discussed in this very forum just a few weeks ago.  Believing it to be ancient history is exactly what I’m talking about when I talk about privilege and not needing to know.  Here’s some other handy links, in case anyone reading the thread wants to learn more.

Some:  But why is blackface racist?  People dress up as Native Americans all the time and that isn’t racist!

Me:  Uh yeah, it actually is.  Here’s even more handy links with information on.  Oh, and bonus - mascots, too, before anyone mentions them.

Some:  MASCOTS?!  Fucking PC, my local school lost their mascot even though it was MADE BY NATIVES and MY NATIVES SAID IT WAS OKAY because POLITICAL CORRECTNESS GONE MAD.  Now that mascot is gone MY LOCAL AREA HAS LOST IT’S NATIVE CULTURE.

Me:  Ummm… presumably the Native American people you mentioned who made it still exist, so your area has NOT lost it’s native culture.  Annnd… if your local people really wanted to keep the mascot, maybe you could ask the people that decided to remove it for more information on why.

Some:  Yes but my area has still lost it’s culture because ME AND MY WHITE FRIENDS can’t take part in it any more.  Also, What about haka, huh?  Sports teams do Haka and that’s a native dance so that’s cultural appropriation so why is THAT not racist?

Me:  One.  I never said it wasn’t.  Stop assuming everything isn’t racist just because you never heard it was and actually google this shit first.  Seriously.  Two.  The Haka is performed BY NEW ZEALAND SPORTS TEAMS and only by NZ sports teams.  Here, see the wikipedia link on Haka in sports.

Some:  That link had a photo of maybe three members of the All Blacks and one of them didn’t look very native Maori to me!  Not that I live in NZ or know any NZ native people or even really know what they look like but they’re supposed to be dark like our black people, right?  So why is that okay when it should still be cultural appropriation because sports team isn’t all natives!

Me:  I never knew you could correctly determine the exact race, upbringing and heritage of a person just by looking at a single photo of them.  Huh.  In any case, I have been doing even more googling on your behalf, and look!  The Haka DID have controversy around it!  But it’s considered okay because the Treaty of Waitangi, as well as a more recent treaty in 2011 that was signed with the Haka specifically in mind.

Some:  Yes but what about…

Sigh.  So basically

“That isn’t racist because no one ever told me it was.”

“Well, I’m telling you now.  Here’s some education stuff.”

“No it still isn’t racist because this other thing isn’t racist, also because no one told me it was.”

“No, that is as well.  More education stuff.”

“Well this one definitely isn’t!”

“It is.  See here.”

It’s like having the transitional fossil debate all over again.  Or the half-an-eye debate.  When you show them a transitional fossil between one thing and another they demand another between that new fossil and another, and then between the next and the next, hoping that when you eventually run out of fossils they can claim to have disproved evolution.

On the upside, they’ve kind of proved my point for me.

Have typed out three or four very long posts and deleted them all.

THE PRIVILEGE.  IT BURNS.

Urist McDorf: An Open Letter to Soda Pop Miniatures

An Open Letter to Soda Pop Miniatures

So.

Couple things I kinda want to get off my chest with you guys.  I had a little read about your Kickstarter campaign for Tentacle Bento.  (For those reading this who aren’t SPM or don’t know about the kickstarter campaign, see links here:

1:Here

2:Here

3:Here

4:Here

5:Here

Anyway.  When I first heard about the game you were proposing to make, my first thought was “meh”.  I’m a feminist, and do not appreciate rape culture, but I recognise that shit like this gets made, people pay for it, and the kickstarter fund received the money it did because the idea appealed to people.  I can critique the concept, rail against the many, many, many things about your game that I hate, but I simply didn’t have the en

ergy to care much.  If only because, if I did, I’d never get any peace at all.

What did get my attention was your response to the criticism laid out at you.

So here’s a few things.

One.  Freedom of expression means you can express yourself, and so can everyone else.  You have the right to stand on any street corner and say whatever you want.  And the people who overhear you have the right to talk back.  When you offer something of yourself to the public, especially when you offer your creative work to the public for them to give you money, the public are entitled to analyse, critique and review what you’re offering.  You’ve been on the internet before, right?  Surely you must be reasonably familiar with the way it works, especially since you know so much about tentacle hentai.  So surely you’re aware that there are feminist, and even not-specifically-feminist-but-not-misogynist-either spaces on the internet where people make a point of finding the energy to critique, review and analyse things through that lens.  And don’t tell me for one minute that the possibility of a little playful controversy didn’t appeal to you when designing this game.

That means that, when you decided to release a game about tentacle rape on Kickstarter, the entire internet had the right to comment on that game and say exactly what they thought.  They were not obligated to agree with you or like what you wanted to offer, and their expressing themselves in not infringing upon your free speech.  An Kickstarter are allowed to take note of the feedback they received and choose whether or not to associate themselves with your game.

Even now that your Kickstarter campaign was shut down, your free speech has not been impinged upon.  You still have your own website and blogs where you have a voice and can express yourself, and you’ve been able to offer a new funding campaign off Kickstarter to ensure you still get to make your game.

So stop whining like a little bitch because people disagreed with you on the internet.  It makes you look like a baby.

Another thing that I really want to share with you is this.  You are a coward.  You made a game about tentacle rape.  It was a cute-looking game in which gamers play the part of the tentacle monster kidnapping schoolgirls.  It wasn’t “inspired by” tentacle hentai.  It isn’t satire of tentacle hentai.  It is a tentacle hentai game.  It’s just closer to erotica than it is to outright porn.

OWN IT.

You want to make a game that some people find offensive, you can do that.  You have that right. 

If you want to go to that street corner to speak, and halfway through decide to start publicly masturbating, you can do that.  But when people react by shouting at you to stop, and you get arrested for public indecency, don’t stand there in a puddle of your own cum with your dick still swinging in the wind and try to claim you didn’t just jerk off in the middle of the street.

Courting the interest and money that a little naughty controversy brings and then trying to claim you didn’t do it when it turns out that controversy has consequences is cowardice.  Man the fuck up.  I may like your game, but I’d have more respect for you if you at least had the decency not to deny what you did like a snotty brat caught putting gum in his sister’s hair.