Because intelligent friends are interested in her, I tried to watch one Anna Sarkeesian video. It was not a pleasant experience. The video was about Legos attempts to interest girls. What Lego had done was to produce a pretty tacky series of pink-and-purple coloured worlds in which Lego girl dolls could be placed, including a beauty parlour. Sarkeesian was into eye-rolling mode, even complaining about the colours. She completely missed the point as far as I can see, which is that some girls, and boys too, like that stuff. What Lego have done is increased their range. There is nothing stopping girls from playing with largely gender-neutral traditional Lego. So where is the inequality? Sarkeesian starts off with an unproven premise - that traditional Lego is targeted at boys, and then trashes any attempt at at a feminised alternative. Lego isnt targeted at boys: its targeted at children who like machines and building. Its physical minecraft, and minecraft has plenty of women players. Im not against feminism. Im for feminism that is intelligent and based on reason and evidence. Trite commentary about non-issues can only do harm.
Posted on: Sun, 02 Nov 2014 14:51:45 +0000