Clinton’s been a complete sucker for the Thompson view of gaming, so gamer men who express ill feeling towards her are at least making a sensible reaction based on their own interests, even if those are not interests you share. I do think it’s sad that a lot of young people are so un-engaged politically that that’s the only thing she’s been involved in that they know and care about, but if you’re meeting a lot of young male gamers who have ill feeling towards Hillary, that’s exactly what she’s asked for from that demographic, no more and no less.

The number one thing that attracted me to my husband was that when I met him, he was in the middle of a divorce, and his explanation of the situation was thus: “She wanted something I couldn’t provide (children), and she did what she had to do for her to be happy. I don’t like how she went about it, but I can’t blame her for doing what she needs to do to be happy.” Not a nasty word in sight.

On a strange note, I developed a litmus test for guys to date based on pets. Men who like cats, or are neutral about cats are fine. Men who actively dislike cats are not (for me)- I found that people who can’t tolerate independence in an animal often can’t take independence in a mate.

I play videogames for some of the reasons you mentioned - to withdraw from a society where rules and goals are less obvious than they are in a game, to find a more relaxing, easier to understand universe, sometimes to play at being a badass. (Which I’d argue isn’t the same as ‘revenge’ - LisaKS’s post on Punkass explores the ‘knight’ stereotype for women; personally I think that fake videogame heroism and fake videogame revenge are very much two sides of the same coin, in that they’re both exploring the idea of violence successfully applied to serve an emotional purpose).

I have a problem with these reasons being so pathologised. It sounds like you’re saying that a woman shouldn’t want to pass some of her time in a less frustrating, more goal-oriented world - or that a woman somehow wouldn’t want this because women are so DIFFERENT from men and can’t possibly be considered on the same level as them, as fellow gamers - Honestly, I sometimes think there’s more sexism in the way gamers are framed than there are in the games themselves. When women game, no one wants to hear about it. The games women favour most (Sims, some RPGs, Tomb Raider) are often framed in gamer culture as more ‘casual’ than games which go out of their way to avoid appealing to women, because women’s free time obviously isn’t as SERIOUS as men’s. (And again, who plays what is largely determined by design and marketing, not by the cognitive process of gaming itself). Maybe women’s gaming habits aren’t pathologised like this because their feelings about the games they play aren’t as important, or as dangerous, as men’s?

Am I a co-freak on an equal pathological level with the boys’ club? Or am I just having fun in a way you & Kimmel don’t approve of?

I don’t believe that was the point at all. I believe the point was simply that just because someone finds something “fun” and “recreational” doesn’t mean it’s an activity one should engage in. And what a person does for recreation does say quite a lot about them.

Except that it isn’t really women who have established these norms. And even if they had, it’s still not women’s fault if the man -chooses- to become a bum or sexist asshole who wanks off to misgoynistic porn…or plays games like GTA where you get to beat up hookers.

There are definitely spaces that are pretty reserved for male privilege, such as non-pc language, lots of macho confrontations, that sort of thing. But there are also a lot of spaces (that a lot of men choose to join) that are socially conscious and don’t allow racism, sexism, or hateful language of any sort. So the feminizing, civilizing influences are very present in WoW at least, if not GTA. But I think you’re spot on about everything else.

Disagree with Hugo: I have in mind an “activist” whose activism consists of holding and attending meetings where everyone thinks the way he does. Now, as someone whose activism for peace consists of going as a witness and peacemaker into areas of potentially lethal conflict and working for justice and peace; whose activism for literacy consists of tutoring in maximum security prisons and housing projects where drive-by shootings happen from time to time; whose environmental activism has consisted of nearly getting killed a couple of times working on alternatives to carbon-intensive transport, I have to ask this: why should I not lump this particular “lad” among the “lost souls”? How much do we have to or risk for what you like to call “Tikkun Olam” to get out of the “lost boys” club, and who decides?

It’s just FUN. You know, recreation.

What people do for fun says a lot about them. Unless you think that nobody should have given a shit about Michael Vick because dogfighting was just like FUN, dude.