AGS Awards 2013 Ceremony discussion

[Adeel]

I apologise for being rude to lesbians last night, I also extend my apologies to men with small testicles who I constantly remind them of it, also to the announcers who I constantly interrupted, to Jim who made a great ceremony game and I crashed it clapping madly, to Icey who I joked about even if he wasn't there. To my fellow winners who I did not support on their time of joy because I was plain jealous, to guys with small balls who, wait I already apologised for that! There was a sprite who had a huge rack and I made rude comments as well, so, I may as well apologise to its proprietary. I also want to apologise to my country who had such high expectations on me, being the only Portuguese using AGS and all.

I'd like to apologize for the same too. I didn't make any joke regarding anyone's testicles (except miguel's ) though. And yeah, I truly understand what the ladies want to convey. And I agree that seeing two males making out with each other would have made me little uncomfortable and alienated too.

But I'll not deny: seeing ladies cheering up for those males would've looked somewhat nice for a change!

[Myinah]

So you think that being homophobic and sexist is cool and that us women who don't like it should go sit in the IRC where we cant see it, but know its going on? Just so you can look at kissing ladies, because "Tee hee hee they are gay! Isn't that funny and sexy and risque!"?

Yeah, that makes more sense that just taking out the lesbian stuff and letting the women enjoy the ceremony in game with everyone else. I loved the music last night, the set was awesome, there was a lot of fun stuff. That one thing was off putting though and I wouldnt want to sit in the IRC knowing I was there for that reason.

Thank you so much to all the guys stepping up and being true allies in this. I'm really glad so many of you heard us and get it. You are exactly the kind of devs I'm proud to be in a community with and makes me feel encouraged.

[Snarky]

There is no "official" awards ceremony program, Snarky. There is just a man who put in the hours to make something fun and novel and shared it with the community he is part of.
To everyone bashing the Greek: "one who makes no mistakes makes nothing”, or more appropriately "one who makes nothing, makes no mistakes".

Well, when it's hosted by the Awards organizer and announced on the awards thread as the primary way to attend the ceremony (and the way practically everyone DOES attend), I think it's splitting hairs to say that it's not technically official.

Edit: It's fair enough to say that the AGS Ceremony is put together by Dualnames (and Wyz, at least in the past... and Ali who created the background, etc.) on his own initiative and on his own time, and I think everyone appreciates and values what a gift it is to the community, and don't mind him embedding some of his personal interests/sense of humor in it. And in fact, the first time around, any criticism of the "AGS lesbians" was pretty gentle. But if we want the awards to be an event for the entire community, not every inspiration is appropriate, and this has gone beyond an innocent mistake.

If this was a regular AGS game, then "if you don't like it then just don't play it" would be a better argument.

[Calin Leafshade]

I dont think anyone was being homophobic here. The sexualisation of lesbians is crass and childish but it's not homophobic. Dualnames is not a bad person. Let's not demonise.

[Myinah]

The butt of the joke is that they are gay. That being gay is somehow funny or sexy? It's a completely male gaze thing. How is that not homophobic when the entire joke is that these women are gay and so "Tee hee hee its fun to look at them"?

I am not saying Dual names is a bad person at all. I'm not saying he's intentionally being homophobic or sexist, but I'm not going to skirt around the issue here.

[Problem]

I have a deep respect for all the work that went into this ceremony. It was very well done, technical problems aside, and great fun.
But saying that you should better attend in the IRC if you feel offended by sexist jokes is like having a separate room for women. That's not a solution, it's just absurd and goes completely against the idea of a community.

[Calin Leafshade]

Some people (male and female) find sexual interaction between two people of the opposite sex to be, as you put it, "sexy".
To say its a "male gaze" thing is absurd. It's an opposite sex thing which in this case happens to be lesbian. Many women find gay men arousing (check tumblr). You can't police that.

I'm not defending dualnames at all. As I said I found it childish and in bad taste.

[Adeel]

Or perhaps place a button to give everyone the power to censor images for themselves, be it for any reason such as: being offensive, kids-being-in-the-room, parents-being-in-the-room etc.

Also, I agree with Calin Leafshade that it's definitely not a 'male's gaze' thing. It's same for many females as well (even though this phenomenon is found more in males as compared to females).

[miguel]

Thank you Snarky. I second this and will be boycotting the ceremony next year unless things change. I am unwelcome on Dualnames terms.

Miguel, boys will be boys is basically trivialising our feelings. It's not a valid excuse. You dont need to tell us to calm down either. None of us are in a rage, we are all actually calmly telling you how we feel about last night. You guys are capable of critical thinking and not alienating forum members so please reflect on that.

Myinah, I clearly said "we need to calm down" counting everybody in.
I also said it was good that you expressed your opinion.
I'm old enough to have matured my feelings and considerations towards minorities. I just want for people to take it easy and stop labelling persons based on one party night.
There's no moral right to alienate women from anything really, lesbians or not, but there aren't any lesbian haters around here that I know of.
It's clear that it was a big case of childish lack of taste, nothing more.

[Myinah]

Who's sexuality am I policing? In the privacy of the bedroom, I have literally zero care what people enjoy. In a public forum that is not about sex, in a public awards show, I dont want to see pay for gay lesbians because it's in incredibly poor taste and is disrespectful to lesbians and women in general.

Calin, I literally don't understand how you think I am policing sexual preference. I can find gay men attractive and not spout that in public. I'm not going to hang a picture of two sexy guys making out on my pin board at work. It's inappropriate, even if I like it. And that is my issue here. It's not cool to publicly fetishize a sexuality in a place like AGS that is supposed to be neutral. This is not a lesbian porn appreciation forum, this is not a sex website. Its a game dev community and last night made men, straight women and lesbians feel uncomfortable.

As Kiira said in her first post, would we think it was cool if we had jews or black people as the butt of the joke thanks to the shivah or the journey down. I don't want to argue with you over this Calin, I just dont think it's ok to sexualise groups of people in certain contexts, such as last night.

Again, I dont want a censor button. Because its not a child/adult issue. It is inappropriate and alienating and I'll just not go at all if it has to stay.

Edited: To add the men felt uncomfortable also. I know some did.

[Calin Leafshade]

Sorry, I wasn't implying that you were attempting to censor. My choice of the word "police" was poor and ill-thought-out.

To clarify, I do think it was fully inappropriate and crass as I said. I thought that you were saying that it was homophobic to sexualise homosexual activities when one was not, themselves, homosexual.

I apologise deeply for the misunderstanding.

[Myinah]

Thank you. I'm sorry I didn't make my original post clearer too. I can understand why you would object to that, I would too! All just a misunderstanding. I am in agreement with you 100% regarding the crass nature of it all.

[Snarky]

We can quibble over the precise terms to characterize it (I personally wouldn't call it homophobic either, but think it falls pretty squarely under "male gaze"), but I think the key point is that making "sexy lesbians" such a big part of the ceremony sends a clear (though no doubt unintentional) signal that this is a show meant for straight guys, and that if you're not a heterosexual male, or you're not comfortable with this degree of sexualization, you do not belong and are not welcome. And that sucks!

[Problem]

So Dualnames, you are saying that some people here are not worthy enough to express their opinions. Fine, if that's your attitude. If "STFU" is all you have to say against well-meant criticism (just read Kiira's post once again), then so be it.

No let's just celebrate the award winners instead. 

[Monsieur OUXX]

I understand Myinah's points, and I fully agree with them, every aspect of them...

...BUT... Myinah, there's something you failed to see, and aparently also some people who seem to laugh at Dualname's joke without undertsanding it: Dualnames is actually mocking the people who use "lesbians" as an incentive.
That's what he wrote, and that's also how I understood it:  "It's a joke, that's intentionally childish".

Therefore, both Myinah and Duals are saying the same thing: Myinah, in a serious manner, and Dualnames, by using derision.

It's sad though that some people miss the point and write such things as "it's ok to mock lesbians, it's humour". Nope, as a community of heterosexual white male, it's not ok to mock or diminish lesbians. It's only ok to mock people who mock or diminish lesbians. That's what Dualnames did, and he's cool.

[Andail]

Jesus Christ. A few people ask you to relax a bit with the sexist jargon and now you're pulling this enormous Yahtzee?

You're all stressed and worked out by this ceremony, man. Take a few days off and cool down a bit.

[Myinah]

But where was it apparent that he was mocking people who will use lesbians as an incentive? It's not like he posted a stick figure drawing of two women next to each other. That would have been more obvious it was a joke. Like a sign that says "SEX! Now that I have your attention..." he could also have just not shown any pictures of lesbians and said "I just said that to get you here!" Instead he just used real, sexy images of women during the ceremony. If the joke ends up being the same thing as the sexism its mocking, the intention behind it doesn't make it any less sexist. Especially if the joke is so subtle that no one gets it and you have to explain it to us all. In fact if you have to explain it, it's probably not a very good joke.

[Snarky]

I refuse to apologize to anyone offended by the joke about the lesbians. It's a joke, that's intentionally childish, a nod to Arby And The Ch13f (a machinima series). I will not make attempts to comfort those who fail to see the nature of the joke. I am mostly offended by those judging my efforts when at the same time, they did nothing to contribute to this community, besides stirring up fights and pretending to be in charge. The AGS community was not supposed to be run by assholes. Me and Wyz, spent over two months working on this, I even coded an irc bot to handle the commands, even though it failed because the testing was not under the same conditions.

Where were when the test was going on, to tell me about your opinion?
Where were you when people were actually DOING stuff?
Where were you when something required you as an AGS member, and not an arrogant high-nosed person, hiding behind an avatar on a forum?

Some people get the idea that because they've made valuable contributions they should be above criticism, and get a free pass to do whatever they want. Sorry, doesn't work like that.

For everyone's information, I asked the few female people that were on the AGS Ceremony test how they found the lesbians this year, and they thought it was acceptable. So I went with it. Apologies for trusting those female members, so wrong of me. To those of you being white knights all of a sudden, this is 3-4 years since we first used lesbians, go check the log of previous years, theo says "PUT ME BETWEEN THE LESBIANS I WANT THIS TO BE GREAT", he must be a sexist pig. I wrote a speech about Ponch, a member of this community reeeiving lifetime achievement award, that has contributed in his own ways, and you find a lesbian gif, to be more important. We were over 50 yesterday, but you find a lesbian gif to be more important.
I'm sorry, but THIS is pathetic and sad.

It's not like this hasn't been raised before (more gently), so don't pretend this comes completely out of the blue. Not to mention that you took it to a new level this time around.

Yes, Ponch's greatness is certainly worth putting a spotlight on.... for example by giving him an the AGS Lifetime Achievement Award and all of us cheering for him.

Take of this post what you think. This is my last one in this forum, I hope that makes you happy. So long and thanks for all the fish.

Or you could just get over yourself. What was it you wrote just a few weeks back? "I was reminded that this is not my idea, I use a medium made by someone else to project a vision made by someone else. Namely, I use AGS and the Sockets plugin made by Chris Jones and Wyz to help create the result that is the AGS Live Ceremony."

[Monsieur OUXX]

But where was it apparent that he was mocking people who will use lesbians as an incentive? Especially if he actually did show sexual images of lesbians.

Well, (to me) it seems obvious: One cannot repeat 100 times "there will be lesbians! come!" (when it's obvious that there will be none -- even though this time he actually did show lesbians, to spice the eneverending running gag. That wasn't a very good idea, as it blurred the line), and be serious. But as you've seen it's not obvious for everyone.

Now, you have two choices :
- take my word for it. And you've explained your point at length, and some people understand and agree, while some don't, and are the most vocal, and you can't do anything for them.
- not believe me.  But you've explained your point at length, and some people understand and agree, while some don't, and are the most vocal, and you can't do anything for them.

I think it's the time to leave all that behind, since everyone's position is clear -- even if someone answers again something incredibly stupid and makes you want to answer them. We should stop on this topic.

[bicilotti]

So Dualnames, you are saying that some people here are not worthy enough to express their opinions. Fine, if that's your attitude. If "STFU" is all you have to say against well-meant criticism (just read Kiira's post once again), then so be it.

No let's just celebrate the award winners instead. 

Jesus Christ. A few people ask you to relax a bit with the sexist jargon and now you're pulling this enormous Yahtzee?

You're all stressed and worked out by this ceremony, man. Take a few days off and cool down a bit.

This attitude (insolent, if I may say so), just costed us the lone developer of the AGS Awards game (and previous MAGS organiser, blog writer, etc.). Can you say you two were more active in and for the community as he has been?
Does that mean he should be above criticism? Not at all, Sirs, not at all. But...  is really irony everything you got for him?

But where was it apparent that he was mocking people who will use lesbians as an incentive? It's not like he posted a stick figure drawing of two women next to each other. That would have been more obvious it was a joke. Like a sign that says "SEX! Now that I have your attention..." he could also have just not shown any pictures of lesbians and said "I just said that to get you here!" Instead he just used real, sexy images of women during the ceremony. If the joke ends up being the same thing as the sexism its mocking, the intention behind it doesn't make it any less sexist. Especially if the joke is so subtle that no one gets it and you have to explain it to us all. In fact if you have to explain it, it's probably not a very good joke.

You have been very vocal about this Myinah, I hope to see you in late autumn volunteering to develop the AGS Game Ceremony with the same enthusiasm you took in this thread.

Some people get the idea that because they've made valuable contributions they should be above criticism, and get a free pass to do whatever they want. Sorry, doesn't work like that.

Snarky, I respect your way of debating much, but can't you see this thread has become a gigantic For Brutus is an honourable man?
Was this public escalation really necessary?
I am not able to take part in the debate (apparently Soxbrooker's video is still loading), but I can't but feel this has quickly become from a (worthy) "let's make our community more inclusive" to a "let's smear this guy" (yes, smear).