Am I Sexist?

[TheDoctor455]

I don't think you're sexist, but that's just my humble opinion. You're a straight male, you like females, it makes sense you find a female form more pleasing than a males.

You're not against playing a male, you just don't want to stare at man butt all day. It's why I often avoid games where the main character is a skimpily dressed female because I don't want to look at lots of tits and ass. Course maybe I'm sexist too.

No. Just adhering to your sexual preference/orientation.

Me?

I flip a coin most of the time.

Unless there's a specific roleplaying reason involved, the gender of any of my characters in video-games or say... Dungeons and Dragons is entirely random. But then, I'm asexual, so its not as if I had a preference to begin with.

 

[Ledan]

I don't think so. To me, sexism has to include some form of discrimination.

Then you're changing the definition of the word, so there's no reason to ask anyone else what we think, since you're setting the rules of the game rather than asking if they apply to you.

prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sexism . Oxford dictionary. You were already using the incorrect definition.

By your definition, being attracted to women basically = being sexist.

Sexism is about the roles members of a sex are expected to play. Roles require active participation: They require the person in question to do something. Sitting around while people outside of her control are attracted to her is not an active process, so it is not a role, and is therefore not a valid topic for sexism.

Firstly, does finding one ass more aesthetically pleasing than another count as objectification?

No. It's not until you do something with that preference that you present it as an object of your desire and thereby objectify it.

Objectyfing an object is wrong how? What he is talking about is not a real woman, just a mass of pixels labelled "female" that does not correlate with the real world definition of women in any meaningful way.

And if so, does objectification always mean discrimination?

Discrimination is defined as making distinctions in favor of or against a person based on categories to which that person belongs rather than according to individual merit, so, no, it is possible to objectify without discriminating.

Aye, a person. Not talking about real people here. The reasons why he chooses his avatar are not indicative of how he treats women irl.

I would find it quite awkward to roleplay a woman, especially a straight woman.

Then you are defining her not as a person with personal tastes and preferences and quirks of nature, but rather by her sex and sexual orientation. That's sexist.

She isn't a person. It is an avatar, a puppet he controls. Sexism deals directly with discrimination against people due to their gender, what we are discussing has no gender, no thoughts, no nothing. Not a woman or a man or even an animal.

 

[Ledan]

So what you're saying is someone's ability to comprehend a woman's personality is based on their ability to take cock.

No; that's what Starbird is saying. I'm just repeating it because you seem to think that I haven't noticed him saying it. I am in no way, shape, or form agreeing with or endorsing that point of view: Neither sex nor sexual orientation are personality traits, and treating them as if they are is at least on the borderlands of actually offending me, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here because I get the feeling Starbird is a nice guy who doesn't mean any harm. I think he's just operating from a place of ignorance, not malice.

Arguing from dictionary definitions alone is just as daft. Language evolves and words/terms carry around semantic meanings that are very contextual and often a lot more than the dictionary can really summarize.

Nevertheless, words are the only tools we have to make ourselves understood in this textual format we have, so it behooves us to use them as precisely as possible.

Just found this, which to me makes a lot more sense:

Your post cuts off here. Is there supposed to be, like, a link or something following this?

I think the assumption that "straight men will almost always find a pretty girl more attractive than a man" is pretty safe.

I don't. Straight men will find pretty women more sexually attractive than a man. That is not the only measure of attractiveness or aesthetic quality.

Incidentally, I'm not trying to be a dick here, but I note that you use the word "girl," not "women." Unless you're actually talking about children, that is a word to strenuously avoid in a discussion about sexism, because--whether it's your intent or not--it infantilizes the woman in question.

And defining a virtual character by my attraction/want for it is bad...how?

I don't actually remember saying it's bad, but since you ask, it's because you're contributing to a culture that judges women by their sexual characteristics and their ability to arouse men. I'm not saying you're putting women in chains or anything, but enough drops of water eventually become an ocean, you know?

Discrimination does not require an overt act.

Here I must strongly disagree with you.

Sorry, but you're just factually wrong. Discrimination is an entirely mental activity. It is a way of thinking. It is not limited to outward actions.

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/discrimination?q=discrimination
the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
Same source, treatment: the manner in which someone behaves towards or deals with someone or something.
According to oxford, most widely regarded dictionary, again you are using the incorrect definition. Discrimination is not a mindset, it is how you treat people (an overt action) rather than how you think about people (not an overt action). I can think sexist thoughts all day, but if i do not act sexist towards anyone then I am not being sexist. If i think about murder all day but don't murder anyone, I am not a murderer.
I'm only repeatedly quoting you because you assume your definition is the "right one", without validating or double-checking your definitions.

However what we think doesn't matter, so long as we don't act on those thoughts, or rather that we don't act on those thoughts in a way that causes harm.

You didn't ask if it matters. You asked if it's discrimination. I can't tell if you're shifting the goalposts here or if you just misspoke, but again, I really don't get the feeling you're a bad guy, so you get the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not 'judging' as much as I'm simply acting on attraction.

When you make a choice, you're making a judgment. It might not be conscious, articulated judgment, but it is judgment all the same.

Then the word is meaningless, because it's not something we can avoid, change or even really criticize.

Humanity is nearly unique in the universe in that we are self-aware. We can change our natures through effort and training; through the application of will.

No, I'm saying that since the sexual traits are not mine, I won't be able to immerse myself/project myself onto it as easily.

Unless the character is going to go out and fuck, her sexual traits and orientation are irrelevant, and require no more definition than her personal taste in which dairy's milk she prefers to drink. The only reason for it to come up is if you make it, and if you won't even try to see her point of view because her sex life is that primary in your mind, then yeah. It's sexist.

It's not really about sex though, is it? Women tend towards certain personality traits, due to the culture they are raised in not inherent traits, and he does not feel that he can emulate those. Furthermore, it seems that when he RPs it is a very personal thing, putting himself right there in the world, so he wants his avatar at this time to reflect him.

I'll choose the character that I consider closest to me, or at least what I aspire to/identify with. And I identify more with a young, straight male than, say, a middle aged straight woman.

Do what you do. Not my business.

What I don't get is why the hell this makes me sexist.

Because you're not viewing women as collections of thoughts and beliefs and personality traits. You're viewing them first and foremost through the lens of their sexual activities. You are defining them not as people but as vaginas.

He isn't talking about women. He is talking about a token in a game that he controls. Gender isn't all about sex. There are other differences, variations of differences, between men and women. He sees this as a greater difference that what it may be, but he isn't focusing on how they fuck.

 

[JimB]

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sexism . Oxford dictionary. You were already using the incorrect definition.

Random House Webster's College Dictionary is where I get mine from.

Objectyfing an object is wrong how? What he is talking about is not a real woman, just a mass of pixels labelled "female" that does not correlate with the real world definition of women in any meaningful way.

Because it's a symbol of women. Symbols have meaning; if they don't, then the entire purpose of characters and avatars and whatever else is madness dreamed up by a lunatic. The meaning of this symbol is, "This is what we, the game developers, expect women to look like, and we do because it's what you, the consumer, expect women to look like. Oh, sure, you might say something defensive about how what you expect video game characters to look like is no measurement of what you expect women in the real world to look like, but if our female characters didn't look this way, more of you than not would be making snide comments about how fugly they are; and women hear that, so they know that their appearances are being compared to that of impossible cartoon strippers and that their worth is being based on the strength of that comparison."

 

[JimB]

I'm only repeatedly quoting you because you assume your definition is the "right one," without validating or double-checking your definitions.

Let me know when you're done, so I can quit putting out responses sixty seconds after you've created a new post directed at me and just consolidate them all.

 

[Charli]

Straight female with mostly male blood elf WoW chracters.

Honestly it's not so weird, and I'd much rather stare at that, plus the blood elf female 'oof' and 'ouch' emotes sound vaguely sexual and I don't really see my character as 'me'. It makes me uncomfortable. Much rather listen to Cam Clarke getting hit on the noggin.

I'ts not sexist I believe. :S

It's just what you like.

 

[Warped_Ghost]

Never tell someone how to play their own RPG experience. (giving them hints is fine)

 

[bluepilot]

Nah, I often find that the female characters have better costumes, better hairstyles, and are just generally more fun to look at than their male counterparts.

Am I playing games or dress up?....hmm...

Finding women more pleasing to look at does not make you sexist, it just makes you straight and male...or female and getting confused *cough*

 

[Ledan]

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sexism . Oxford dictionary. You were already using the incorrect definition.

Random House Webster's College Dictionary is where I get mine from.

Could you provide their definition? Having problems finding it online.
This does lead to the conclusion however that words are not set in stone defined, and that you shouldn't call people out for having a different definition of a word. You can't assume everyone uses your source.

Objectyfing an object is wrong how? What he is talking about is not a real woman, just a mass of pixels labelled "female" that does not correlate with the real world definition of women in any meaningful way.

Because it's a symbol of women. Symbols have meaning; if they don't, then the entire purpose of characters and avatars and whatever else is madness dreamed up by a lunatic. The meaning of this symbol is, "This is what we, the game developers, expect women to look like, and we do because it's what you, the consumer, expect women to look like. Oh, sure, you might say something defensive about how what you expect video game characters to look like is no measurement of what you expect women in the real world to look like, but if our female characters didn't look this way, more of you than not would be making snide comments about how fugly they are; and women hear that, so they know that their appearances are being compared to that of impossible cartoon strippers and that their worth is being based on the strength of that comparison."

Only shallow men would compare video game women to real women, aesthetically. I would like to draw a comparison to the publicly available fantasized version of men by women, eg. Jacob, Edward, Bieber, %0 shades of grey, etc. I personally don't know any men that feel that we are being judged in comparison to these men, nor do i think women expect us to be like them. Drawing from that, I would be surprised if women feel that their worth is being based on a comparison with video game women. If they do, then there is something wrong in our culture(or perhaps in the female half) where women aren't being told to an equal extent as men that media representations of them are not qualitative of how they are expected to be. I prefer to let everyone have their fantasies, and we can all agree to treat each other with equal treatment in real life.

("Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"- Sigmund Freud.
An inherent quality of symbols is that there are a large variation of meaning you can draw from them. Arguing about symbols is eventually pointless, because we will draw different meanings and conclusions from them.)

EDIT:

I'm only repeatedly quoting you because you assume your definition is the "right one," without validating or double-checking your definitions.

Let me know when you're done, so I can quit putting out responses sixty seconds after you've created a new post directed at me and just consolidate them all.

All done . Only further point would be that the definition of girl can only change if we use it with a different meaning. That way both 'guy' and 'girl' will have a much more similar meaning. Or we can try and figure out another colloquial word for a woman, but that's a lot harder to do.

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

I don't think anyone who doesn't want to be sexist and is trying to do whatever they can to not be sexist can be a sexist. Well, maybe you can, but you seem genuinely ashamed of yourself for even doing one thing that gives you maybe a sexist vibe while doing it, so you can't be a bad person.

It's not sexist to prefer looking at women in games, that'd be dumb. If there was something beyond that - if you admitted that you saw the women as nothing but pieces of meat or something vile like that - then, yes. I'd be worried. But like I mentioned, you seem to be interesting in not being a sexist and if someone genuinely told you it was a sexist thing I feel like you'd do as much as you can to stop. (That is to say, someone with some semblance of authority on the issue, like a psychologist or socialist or feminist or a woman.)

 

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

But if I was to play as a man, how would I get my game-and-fap-breaks?


I really don't have anything usefull to contribute to this thread, but this joke had to be made.
But you may use this post to insult me in any way you see fit.
You could:
1. Imply that I am secretly homosexual and confused about my sexuality.
2. Call me out on being sexist for not also fapping to male characters.
3. Insult my inteligence and call me a sexual deviant and pervert.

But please refrain from insulting my avatar, since I quite like it.

All of those things are true. But your avatar is stellar!

There's no problem here. You like the female form? Fair enough. You would rather play as a man if there is romance involved? Also completely fair.

I can see a difference between your bog-standard questing and romance and how you might be projecting yourself onto the avatar differently for each thing.

Ignore the hyper-sensitivity...this matters so little.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Well if given the choice I ONLY play as female characters despite being a male, even if I can't see them, cause, well, I find I usually get more immersed when playing as a woman and find the conversations seem more interesting. I don't consider it sexist. But then again I'm a rather odd person...

 

[chadachada123]

I play as straight male characters in games that have deep roleplaying, because I'm a straight male and prefer to roleplay situations that can actually happen to myself when love is involved.

In games where deep roleplaying isn't a factor (Diablo, WoW, etc), I generally play as a female, not because they are more visually appealing or anything sleezy (not that I have a problem with guys that do), but just because it's a change of pace. I also consider it more "badass" to be a female warrior than a male warrior in many instances.

It's not sexism anymore than it is personal preference, in my opinion. I can't read a female love story and really understand what the character is feeling, and would prefer a male love story. However, I'd absolutely read an action story with a badass female lead because it's just slightly more awesome than a badass male lead.

TL;DR:

WoW/Diablo/Runescape: generally female characters
Skyrim/Star Wars KOTOR: male or female, no preference
Mass Effect: male characters

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

snip

Playing a female character because she 'looks pretty' seems kind of sexist to me. I mean do you see her as a a warrior or whatever you are playing her as or just a pretty face/ ass.

I think that's the question that separates it from being sexist or not.

On the Project Eternity forums (Obsidian's kickstarter) there were a few people saying 'don't make the main character able to be a female, women can't really be adventurers.' That to me is sexist. If you see your female character in that light and just see her as something nice for you to look at then yeah it's sexist.

If you choose the character primarily because it's pretty and then take her seriously as a warrior or whatever then it's not sexist.

 

[Starbird]

snip

Playing a female character because she 'looks pretty' seems kind of sexist to me. I mean do you see her as a a warrior or whatever you are playing her as or just a pretty face/ ass.

I think that's the question that separates it from being sexist or not.

On the Project Eternity forums (Obsidian's kickstarter) there were a few people saying 'don't make the main character able to be a female, women can't really be adventurers.' That to me is sexist. If you see your female character in that light and just see her as something nice for you to look at then yeah it's sexist.

If you choose the character primarily because it's pretty and then take her seriously as a warrior or whatever then it's not sexist.

Well, I don't take any character 'seriously' as a warrior

I'd just rather be watching Xena than Hercules, y'know.

 

[Ultra Man30]

No you aren't and I really don't see any reason why you would be, other than people just over-analyzing what you say and twisting your words to make it seem like you are.

 

[Klagermeister]

I tend to do the same thing, though not for the same reasons.
I just play as female characters because it's just refreshing to be a different gender player.

My first Skyrim and Morrowind characters were females. I didn't even attempt to make them look attractive, just not hideous. It just seemed to make more sense for a female to be a wood elf archer than a male (Amazonian style or whatever).
My main character on Soul Calibur V is Natsu. She has a fun moveset.
I tend to play as the Trickster or Corsair on AC:Revelations multiplayer. I usually pick the female characters because their appearances lend themselves more to the title of "assassin" (honestly, do the Crusader and Bombardier look at all like they would kill stealthily?).
My favorite video game femme is Faith Connors (Mirror's Edge). Is she purely aesthetic? No, she kicks some serious ass and does parkour, and barely shows any femininity.

But if you're gonna pick video game characters purely because you like some decent eye candy while you're playing, by all means feel free.
It's only sexist if that translates into the real world (i.e. you only give attention to girls with hot bodies).

 

[JimB]

According to Oxford, the most widely regarded dictionary, again you are using the incorrect definition. Discrimination is not a mindset, it is how you treat people (an overt action) rather than how you think about people (not an overt action). I can think sexist thoughts all day, but if I do not act sexist towards anyone then I am not being sexist. If I think about murder all day but don't murder anyone, I am not a murderer.

Then we're down to arguing about whose dictionary has the right definition and whether we can apply adjectives and adverbs to thought processes. At that point, it becomes meaningless to create a thread like this one, since we're just hopping from expert to expert until we find one that gives us the answer we want; so I hope you'll forgive me if I say I am completely disinterested in this line of argumentation.

I'm only repeatedly quoting you because you assume your definition is the "right one," without validating or double-checking your definitions.

If we grant that discrimination is a term that can only apply to overt acts, it still stems from a belief system and thought process; therefore, discrimination takes place in the mind before it ever flows out to the hand typing up the annual performance analysis or the mouth talking about Those People or whatever.

It's not really about sex though, is it? Women tend towards certain personality traits, due to the culture they are raised in not inherent traits, and he does not feel that he can emulate those.

And if he was playing in his own culture instead of one where women are and always have been equal to men due to the equalizing force of magic, that might matter.

Could you provide their definition? Having problems finding it online.

I provided it earlier in this thread, but I'm too lazy to go looking for it, so: attitudes or behaviors based on stereotypes of sexual roles.

Only shallow men would compare video game women to real women, aesthetically.

Yet we live in a world where Steve Buscemi can get regular, high-profile work, but Camryn Manheim can't.

I would like to draw a comparison to the publicly available fantasized version of men by women, eg. Jacob, Edward, Bieber, Fifty Shades of Grey, etc. I personally don't know any men that feel that we are being judged in comparison to these men, nor do I think women expect us to be like them.

Yeah, that's my point. It wouldn't be sexism if men and women were being held to the same standard.

Only further point would be that the definition of girl can only change if we use it with a different meaning. That way both 'guy' and 'girl' will have a much more similar meaning. Or we can try and figure out another colloquial word for a woman, but that's a lot harder to do.

Why does the definition of "girl" need to change, and why is it a good idea to have two words that mean the same thing except for the genders of the people involved? Why is it necessary to make new language that continues to reinforce a basically useless gender divide?

 

[In Search of Username]

That's not sexist. I don't really understand your logic since I can't say I've ever found video game characters attractive anyway, but I can't see how doing so is at all sexist.

 

[Colin Bagley]

I take more issue with people who seem to think it's OK to vilify men for finding hot girls sexy, than the whole "unrealistic armour" thing.

Personally I like Hot girls. I also like armour. Pretty much all armour, on anybody, lights a fire in my interests. So when there is a hot girl wearing unrealistic armour, I'm disappointed from an "Armour-phile"s perspective, but... well I'm still a hetero guy. So the Hot girl factor balances that. (Hopefully that personal statement will make me slightly more flame-resistant).

ps. It's strange how the paragraph trying to lend legitimacy to my Statement, was twice the size of the Statement itself.