Pedestal-ation by Absence?

Looking at an article here - I'll preface (and prime, a lil') by saying when one party acts childish, that isn't some sort of excuse for another party to give violent threats.

Plus I'm just focusing on the bit about the author Watts.

Requires Only That You Hate is regularly showered with hatred for her thoughts on science fiction and fantasy–she was called a rabid animal by Peter Watts, a luminary in our field, who received very little public condemnation for his statements. (A rabid animal! Because she thought a book was sexist! I thought humorless feminists were the ones who took things too seriously!)

Now I'm just focusing on this point. Even if I proved something wrong with it, that does NOT prove the other points to be wrong.

I 'spose what gets me when I start adding to the heap, is the absence of permission.

Lets take it for a moment that 'rabid animal' isn't a childish slur but actually worse. Okay, so he can't say that...what can he say, in childish response?

It's the absence of permission for any sort of response that makes me suspect a 'on a pedistal' type of sexism. That if a woman, pushes a cream pie into someones face, she is above having a cream pie then pushed into her own face as well? Even if 'rabid animal' is just too much, what is an okay cream pie to use? On that, nothing is said and...that leads to a pedestal.

Yes, this is all amongst abhorrent death threats and rape threats. But it's exactly in threatening situations where were reflexive responce is to start to give up/take away liberties in the name of security - ie, start putting certain peoples on pedistals. We really have to watch out for that.


Plus the "doesn't mean male authors get to unload loaded slurs at them" bothers me, in that why is the sentence only aimed at what men don't get to do?

Ultimately what strikes me is in the power of what is un-said.

Screen shots for the game - titled: Bio Hackers

The bio hacker game is building up, and imaginatively named 'Bio Hackers', for now atleast. It's deliberately very much text based right now. So if that burns your eyes, look awaeeeee! If you're used to games built by big companies, you might wonder how anything without spiff graphics everywhere can be a game - well, there are alot of text based browser games on the net with quite a following. And basically you're spoiled - get over it a bit! Also the random chat in the shoutbox is smudged because it's all test stuff and upon reflecting on it, I realised anyone else reading it might get strange ideas! Click to enlarge.

This is kind of your main area, which would branch off to various stuff you can buy or sell.

This one is the conflict area where you basically pick a fight. This particular game is based on the idea of social conflict - ie, you're not beating the other guy to death, you're out posing him, out styling him. It'd be funny if that sounded more pretentious than killing for power.

Finally it's the combat, which is very basic and essentially there to watch the moment happen. Again, there are alot of browser games which have non interaction combat in them, with quite a few players.

Come to think of it, I might put the shout/chat box underneath that as well!

So that's the progress so far!