Reddit reviews The Billionaire's Obsession ~ Simon: A Billionaire's Obsession Novel (The Billionaire's Obsession series Book 1)

Long Rant... You've been warned.

Let me preface this statement: I'm a woman, I'm a minority, and I'm a feminist, which means I want equal rights for everyone. Based on my experience in a large city with a high minority population working in an occupation typically run by white males, it's still clear that equality needs to be addressed - not every white person is trying to oppress people and not every minority is a saint and shocking some perpetuate racism and sexism. You typically have little gauge for how an employer will behave based on age or race, however I've noticed women have a higher tendency to be more aggravating to work with because of insecurity. Women and men who are insecure bosses have nearly the same behavioral patterns, but one occurs more frequently than the other because of historical and current social norms. I unfortunately was gifted with a stereotypical "redditor" personality and spent a lot of time feeling alienated and twisted all over the place.

The fact that feminist writers/bloggers were receiving so many fucked up messages after the PyCon shows that there are still significant issues that need to be addressed. But going after the video game industry strawman in this way is a hugely hypocritical. In her analyses of characters, she doesn't touch on the fact that it's female romance authors which provide the pivotal negative female stereotypes while male writers have been in equal force in creating feminist characters. The entire damning existence of the biggest publishing genre of romance that constantly reinforces the anti-feminist sentiment on a magnitude so much greater than the video game industry.

Both the romance book industry and video gaming industry are profiting along the lines of gender separation, and both have their own wishfulfillment fantasies. Just glance at Kindle's bestseller list, and the most damning evidence of how feminism hasn't met its goals is staring you in the face with tripe stories about how the secretary wants to hop into bed with her millionaire/billionaire boss who may or may come from a culture where women are second class citizens or one of those "old-fashioned types." Women are buying these types of stories in large amounts. Where does someone like Sarkeesian and others like her get off throwing one industry under the bus and blatantly ignoring the other, which I think denotes that they're not as objective as they claim to be. Video gaming isn't as large of a media platform as movies, books and television.

I read her Buffy vs. Bella article, (which I mostly enjoyed and agreed with) and I noticed that she doesn't put out there that it was when a male wrote Buffy, it changed how so many young women viewed themselves in power. Even men have an easier time identifying with Buffy because it opened the idea of a female heroine who wasn't weak and was capable of handling herself. Bella was written by a female author and launched into its pop culture status not by a mixed gender group but a majority female group. It demonstrates that there is a problem of authorship and other layers of how most women are conflicted about how their sexual fantasies are fulfilled. If women get to find comfort in that arena through romance novels and stories, why are we going after men for the same thing? How do you justify going after men buying a video game where the girl needs to be rescued when you have books like The Billionaire's Obsession in the Top 10 of the Kindle Bestsellers List? (Note: I'm not criticizing this book or its author or the romance genre as I read and enjoy romance novels and media; my point is that there's a hypocrisy of where to judge the use of gender tropes.) How can the feminist cause be taken seriously when it's showing these sorts of conflicting market data? It's an embarrassment that Twilight, which looks like it was written by a 9th grader who just failed summer school English wrote it, has so much more market value to young women than other novels where the female character is empowered. I don't think video games (which is still a new industry) had very much of a factor in that, even when accounting for the levels of patriarchy.

TL;DR: Redressing the video game industry before going after the romance industry is a effort in futility. Why are women allowed to profit from the gender archetypes but men are not? We talk about empowerment, but all this time we don't use what clout we do have to empower ourselves, we pervasively wait for men to act as agents of change we want to see in ourselves. Sarkeesian is technically doing what she's accusing the video game industry of doing - she's waiting for men to be agents of action and change in feminism. It shifts back to the fact that men change the dialog because when women are left to do so, they fall back into traditional gender norms for storytelling.


EDIT: I loved KiteTales video reply to Anita.

I’m not sure where the h works but this book has a “never-met” billionaire proposal.