Smersh

I won't even bother with the first part of your response, as you're trying to use an extreme corner case to prove your point. I'll only way that any stigma that attaches to male victims is that of being feminized, and that only goes to prove my point.

As to your statistical nonsense, you're wrong. No one, no reputable source, and not me, is claiming that 90%+ of women are victims of sexual assault. You're also making statements about the statistics that are not borne out by the statistics I am looking at. Go take a look.

Oh, so because I am incapable of "looking for things beyond what is presented to me" I am blinded by gender perceptions?

Somehow, I don't think that's the case, Mister I Can't Be Bothered To Cite My Sources.

I think the point you are trying to make is one of sensationalism and media, where you would, in fact, have a valid point. But to try to apply that to me is utterly wrong.

I really have looked at, and thought about, gender roles in America in great depth. I've done the readings, rejected some things, incorporated others into my worldview. And, honestly, I can't say that men have it worse when it comes to sexism, and anyone who does believe that is, in my opinion, interested in reinforcing gender roles and benefiting from male privilege.

Now there's an idea! Universal name purge! Everyone has to rename all their characters!

You're depriving the creator of royalties. Therefore, it is theft.

Yeah. Totally sucks having to treat women and minorities as real people. I hear you, man. [/sarcasm]

I do as well, and I have come across hir and sie before.

They're gender indefinite pronouns; I've also seen them used in an insulting way to designate transgendered persons by people who did not want to grant the gender chosen to those individuals.

I think they only go back to the 1970s or 80s in origin, but I don't see why they're inherently bad neologisms. In fact, I think they're probably more useful in an internet age.

I do, however, think the OP could have just as easily referred to the character's gender rather than refusing to speculate on the player's gender.

1) You're making the argument, you have the burden of proof. Not me.

2) **** is ****, regardless of the victim's gender. It's the sort of trauma that needs to be dealt with on an individual level. Resources exist for individuals who have been victimized, in various different forms. The shaming of victims of **** is reprehensible, regardless of gender. No professional who helps victims will trivialize ****, regardless of gender.

It may be more difficult for men to locate aid, but that's a matter of statistics. 91% of **** victims are female, and 99% of attackers are male. That does not mean that there are not resources for male victims, just that they are not as widely available, because of the relative rarity compared to female victims. If there are 10 support groups for women compared to 1 for men, that is not sexism, that's demography in action.

Here's one for you, Dur - one in six women will experience an assault in their lifetime. Only 16% will ever be reported. And only a quarter of assaults are by strangers. Most are by someone a woman knows. And women are ten times more likely to be a victim than a man. Those aren't hypotheticals, those are statistics from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics.

3) Acknowledging that sexism exists, and that the primary victims of it are women, does not make me a sexist. No more than acknowledging that racism exists makes me a racist.

1) I can cite sources for any subject that it's requested for. I don't say 'I forget where I saw it, but it's totally a real magazine, trust me' and try to use that as an argument.

2) Yeah, you're not going to change my mind on that one.

3) It is against military regulations to disrobe while on active combat duty, first off. Second, your tank example doesn't hold all that much weight to me considering the Navy is going to start allowing women to serve on submarines.

4) That opens a whole other can of worms... femininity is also only permissible within certain bounds, and is inherently subservient to male privilege. That's the whole sexual conduct double standard, and defining women by their relationship to men. It's ingrained into the language - even calling a man a ******* or a son of a ***** is insulting, not to him, but to his mother. Calling him a pansy or anything along those lines is calling him feminine. And the wide array of words used against women... well, we won't really go there. Suffice it to say that they are largely sexual in origin, and are specifically insulting because they refer to feminine attributes. That, however, is neither here nor there.

I never said that sexism does not exist, only that it should not exist. You are arguing that sexism does exist, which I agree with, and that it is worse for men, which I absolutely disagree with. Your fixation on violence against women, which is an endemic problem regardless of how society views it, ignores a variety of other factors which I will not address here.

I would love to see a set of statistics that shows a high rate of suicide among men who feel that they are victims of sexism. Until that time, I'll put this argument into the category of 'things Durakken thinks but can't prove in any way.'

Yeah, the poor put-upon men who are committing suicide in droves because they can't beat up women who deserve it.


It is a privilege to be able to do what you want to do with your life without artificial barriers being imposed. If you want to be a Navy SEAL, there's a process to go through, and there are strict requirements that you have to meet. If you can meet those requirements, Dur, you can be a SEAL. But a woman is not permitted to do so, specifically because of her sex.

That's one example of male privilege. It does not matter whether you consider it to be a privilege or not.



Wrong. If you want to define sexism as 'different treatment based on gender', then you can say what you said is true. I define sexism as 'ill treatment based on gender.'

Again, I never said that sexism does not exist. Only that it should not exist.

"But, sir, I have a nigh-infinite number of apartments, any of which you can have now. Just not *that* one."

It's not the best analogy.

Well, there is that. I suppose that it would be more accurate to state that being an idiot or prejudiced is not a prerequisite for living in the world I would like to see, which is what Dur said. I'm sure that such people will always exist... I just want them to be viewed as avatisms.

I am, in general, against the beating the crap out of anyone. It's very gender-neutral. I try to restrict my beating the crap out of quotient for my life to fictional entertainment. I don't even like to watch people beating the crap out of each other for sport - I don't watch boxing or MMA, or even professional wrestling.

The only real-life cases where I support it are cases of self-defense, and it's not the sort of thing I tend to run across in my daily life.

Teenage girl beating up on her boyfriend for no real reason? Not something I cheer for. Woman in fear for her life beating up an attacker? I can cheer for that. Man threatened by a woman with a gun? I'm all for hoping he can pull that one off. Gender doesn't even enter the picture, it's all about self-defense, or defending another person who is in imminent threat of injury.

I'd prefer that you do not make assumptions about my stance on violence. If you must know, I am against violence, for gun control, and have never served in the military. I am also married to a disabled veteran, and believe that being a soldier is an honorable profession, despite being against war. I have no problems with holding any of these positions, and do not see any cognitive dissonance inherent in holding them.

The world I would like to see need not be populated by prejudiced people or idiots.

1. If you can't cite your source, you can't use it as an argument.

2. "Oh, won't someone think of the poor men!" No. You're just denying that you have male privilege.

3. I am, in no way, glorifying war in my post. Not at all. That does not change the fact that there are women who volunteer to serve in the armed forces and are denied certain postings because they are considered front-line combat positions. Postings that some women would otherwise actively seek.

I'm not glorifying war. I just see the military as a place where the ability to do the job should trump gender.

4. You are claiming to be suffering under the burden of male privilege. Oh, woe is you.

Male privilege exists to support sexism and discrimination against others. It is not sexism in and of itself. It's the ability of a male to challenge the masculinity of others, because that which is feminine is weak and undesirable.

It's a long-term project... the character is still in single-digit levels.

I was planning on dumping and ignoring defense entirely, choosing instead to rely upon 90% resistances and an 18% heal that's up every five seconds. That plus energize should, I think, outpace Recluse's damage.

I need to rework that build, actually... what's there is a thought experiment on capping smash/lethal resists. There's plenty of room to tweak that build for a bit more recharge.

My goal was to be able to do it indefinitely. Overkill? Certainly.

A quick perusal did not show me the thread with the MA/SR tanking Recluse. Could you provide a link?

You know... some people don't really want criticism coming out of nowhere.

It's one thing to do some proofreading when someone asks you to. It's another entirely to be hanging out, playing the game, when all of a sudden a tell pops up telling you "Your bio has mistakes in it!"

There's a time and a place for that.

Also, unless the character was gender neutral, it's okay to use gender pronouns based on the character's gender. Honest.

Base empowerment buffs are unavailable during master runs.

Mod5 has pretty much told me that I'm not allowed to post in threads like this, but I'm doing it anyway.

Durakken, you're wrong.

Sexism is heavily entrenched in western culture. What you describe is male gender expectations, which are a part of it, but it's not used to discriminate against men. It's used to discriminate against women and men who do not fulfill those gender expectations

Sexism against men is only used for those who choose not to meet the male ideal. Those who do? They basically get a free pass to discriminate against men who show anything determined to be 'feminine' traits. They get to discriminate against women who do not fulfill their vision of 'feminine' traits. Often, this male privilege is used to deny women bodily autonomy - your view that **** only occurs in dark alleys at knifepoint, which is the case only in a tiny fraction of such assaults. Most are committed by someone the victim knows. And that's not even touching on any other hot-button political issues.

What you are describing is male privilege, the ability for those who conform to societal norms to attack those who do not without fear of repercussion.

Your anecdotes fail - your hypothetical list does not exist. You're making that up and trying to use it as a valid argument. Likewise, data on domestic abuse (an extremely underreported crime) does not support your contentions.

What you are doing is attempting to use your male privilege to minimize the impact on those who do not benefit from it. It's wrong, and you should stop.

Sexism against men is *not* worse. No one advocates that men should not have total control of their own bodies. The glass ceiling simply does not exist for men. No one argues that men should not serve in combat. If there's a question of whether women should be allowed to do something, ask yourself why there isn't a question about men doing it.

So, Durakken, you are completely wrong. There is no "Why will no one think of the poor men?" It doesn't work that way in our society.

And don't try to refute me with anecdotes... there are as many anecdotes as there are people. Use data and facts, or don't respond at all.

Never said there wasn't an IO investment.

It's not quite capped, but the uncommon Alpha will easily do it.

This is a good list.

The unspoken corollary is that, if they did it and it didn't work, why do it again?

Work, in this case, is defined as increasing profits sufficiently to outweigh opportunity costs.

But, in business, there is a default. The default model is the one that lets you meet all your expenses and realize a profit.

Does that mean that business never changes? No. But they are only going to change after they've examined the issues and determined that the risks are outweighed by the benefits.

If you gave a business an opportunity to make a $1 million profit on an investment of $1, they would jump on it. Even if the chance was one in two or one in ten of the investment paying off. But if the chance is infinitesimal, then it's not a good risk to take. See: the lottery.

This is what successful businesses do.

Conversely, if you tell a business that they can make $1600 on a $1500 investment, for a net profit of $100, it's going to need to be a nearly sure thing before they'll make that expenditure.

This is not about hypotheticals, this is about risks. Businesses are risk averse to one degree or another. You won't find businesses taking on hypothetical risks willy-nilly, because it's foolish in the long term.

And, yes, the tools do exist to assess the risks. Will you ever see a guaranteed thing in business? No. Apple will come out with a new iPhone, but there's a chance that it will flop. Not a large chance, but that chance does exist. Will Apple still make a significant investment in a new iPhone, despite the fact that there exists some element of risk? Yes, because they've run the numbers, and it makes sense to take that risk.

Will Apple diversify into auto-making? No. There's a significant investment that would have to be made, and there would be a significant risk that the auto line would not sell well, that the electronic expertise they have will not translate well into mechanical know-how, and that the Apple brand would become damaged as a result.

This is basic stuff, business and economics 101. If you have something that works and makes money, don't mess with it unless the benefit outweighs the risks.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal.

For my position on it: it makes zero economic sense for NCSoft to do a name purge.

The fact of the matter is, their job is to get $15 a month from as many players as they can. If you're here on the boards posting about how you can't get a name you want, it does not matter - you're still paying $15 a month.

On the other hand, when NCSoft sends out a reactivation weekend, they do so with the intention of snaring lapsed subscribers - the ones who are not paying $15 a month. I'm no expert, but I would be willing to bet that a full roster of characters that had to be renamed is not the most inviting re-introduction to the game.

Unless it is provable to NCSoft that it is in their economic interests to do a name purge, it makes no sense to do it. That proof would come in the form of the exit surveys - a bunch of people canceling their accounts and filling out the survey, saying that they canceled their subscription *because* they could not get the names they wanted for their characters.

As it is now, NCSoft could cripple their reactivation efforts to appease a small but vocal forum minority, who are on the forums and therefore not sufficiently incensed to cancel their accounts until there is a name purge. Or they could maintain the status quo. It would take a lot of people quitting the game over naming issues - enough to make an impact on the bottom line.

I rather wonder which event causes a bigger spike in subscriber rates - a reactivation weekend or a name purge. My guess, and it is a guess, is the former.

Your $15 a month is good. Not burning the bridge and keeping the chance of getting someone else's $15 a month? Even better.