Today GameGal posted a “Hall of Shame” featuring E3 Booth babes in skimpy outfits, which prompted me to post the following comment on Joystiq:
I just wish that people (men and women both) would stop spouting tired feminist rubbish and doing things like making “halls of shame” that make it seem like some terrible crime is being committed every time a guy looks desirously at a woman, or every time a woman puts on a bikini. That’s just biology. And there’s nobody being oppressed here, either, which seems to be the implication any time anyone objects to the “objectification” of women. Every one of those booth-babes, I’m pretty sure, made a choice that they’d enter into a contract with an employer to put on a costume and prance around E3 in exchange for a fee. So long as they’re not being forced, GameGal, you ought not to have a problem with it. Unless of course you like prohibiting people from making their own choices…
Of course the “evidence of me turning into a cunt” aspect is tongue in cheek. I personally don’t think my remarks are remotely cuntish. People’s sex should not be a big consideration in how we treat them, or how we think of the way they should be treated. And overall, the most important thing is that people be able to make their own choices. What, GameGal, do you propose we do if the existence of E3 booth babes is so shameful: ban them? Granted, booth babes (in their role, not in their persons) don’t really have a lot to offer the videogames industry, but what are you going to do about it? And who, honestly, do you expect to care, except for university educated feminists (female and male alike) who’ve spent several years being indoctrinated by lecturers and tutors at university who think that 90% of everything is a plot to oppress somebody?
