Arkham City.... Sexist?

[JohnDoey]

Eh.

I agree with the 'Hulk' articles in that the whole this is clumsy, meaningless, thoughtless and completely lacking in finesse, but sexist...? I don't know.

They're calling her a ***** because they're not nice people and she's kicking them in the face. She's a woman. When someone wants to yell something nasty at a woman, "*****" is kind of the got-to word. Especially when your dialogue is written by people who were probably unwilling to use anything stronger.

If anything, I'd say it's just another awkward attempt at maturity rather than misogyny or sexism. Because, as everyone knows, maturity consists of breasts, blood and profanity, right?

I dunno, I'm a guy. Maybe it all comes across differently to women.

And now, I'm outa here. This thread is going to turn into a textual sewer in record time, probably starting with the moment that any female tries to say anything. Hey, let's see how long it takes for someone to bring up "femi-nazis" or "reverse sexism"

...

PS. As for Mr Gameoverthinker and his bitter Other M comparisons, he's just sore that people said nasty things about a Nintendo property.

How is it clumsy most of the people in the city are hardened criminals a lot a them probably haven't seen a women in months or years and in Two Faces cases she tried to rob him and with the random enemies shes beating the tar out of them i'd call her a ***** under the circumstances.

 

[cobra_ky]

This is similar to the whole "Left 4 Dead is RACIST!" fiasco a while back. Just writers trying to get some attention by creating controversy. Move along, people.

Oh, wait up. Look, I'm persuaded by the arguments that the sexist elements here aren't as bad as I first thought, but to say they're on a par with that thing is a going a bit far.

There are no sexist elements. Calling a woman a ***** is not sexist. The only way this game could have been sexist is if it implied that all women are bitches which it does not do.

Calling a black person "******" is usually racist.

Calling a gay man "******" is usually homophobic.

But calling a woman "*****" isn't sexist?

 

[game-lover]

No it's not sexist. People are stupid.

I'm a girl and this is just silly. Women call each other ***** all the time. If we thought it was sexist, we probably wouldn't use the word so freely.

Besides, they're bad guys. She's the enemy. What else are they gonna call her? While they're trying to murder her in very violent ways?

 

[Zhukov]

Eh.

I agree with the 'Hulk' articles in that the whole thing is clumsy, meaningless, thoughtless and completely lacking in finesse, but sexist...? I don't know.

They're calling her a ***** because they're not nice people and she's kicking them in the face. She's a woman. When someone wants to yell something nasty at a woman, "*****" is kind of the got-to word. Especially when your dialogue is written by people who were probably unwilling to use anything stronger.

If anything, I'd say it's just another awkward attempt at maturity rather than misogyny or sexism. Because, as everyone knows, maturity consists of breasts, blood and profanity, right?

I dunno, I'm a guy. Maybe it all comes across differently to women.

And now, I'm outa here. This thread is going to turn into a textual sewer in record time, probably starting with the moment that any female tries to say anything. Hey, let's see how long it takes for someone to bring up "femi-nazis" or "reverse sexism"

...

PS. As for Mr Gameoverthinker and his bitter Other M comparisons, he's just sore that people said nasty things about a Nintendo property.

How is it clumsy most of the people in the city are hardened criminals a lot a them probably haven't seen a women in months or years and in Two Faces cases she tried to rob him and with the random enemies shes beating the tar out of them i'd call her a ***** under the circumstances.

Uh... yeah.

You realise I said all that on my post, right? Read the second paragraph.

I think you may have quoted the wrong person.

 

[RevRaptor]

Sigh once again the feminists baffle us with their idiocy. what are the bad guys meant to yell. Why do small narrow minded people have to make big deals out of little harmless things. If you don't like bad words then why are you playing batman, it's a dark game expect dark things.

 

[JohnDoey]

Batman is super masculine, Catwoman wears leather and uses whips...

That is a little bit lame, in my opinion. It seems to especially have gotten worse. Batman used to be more corny and campy and fun. Because it was exactly what a caped superhero should be, a bit silly. Instead, in order to make him "relevant", they made him darker and edgier and tried to make him more "macho" or something like that. At least Robin has managed to escape some of the of "coolness" makeover that Batman has gone through.

It seems to be particularly bad in the recent movies and video games. I know everyone loves "Batman Begins", helped by an attractive guy dying in it.

This is why I always liked Spiderman a bit better than Batman. He's not near as hyper masculine as Batman and many other masked heroes. There are some problems in Spiderman, too. But it's not nearly as annoying to put up with. I'd much rather have my hero a joke cracking, someone scrawny and sweet geek like Peter Parker than the brooding Bruce Wayne.

There's also something wrong in the typical DC and Marvel comics that almost every male is a huge muscleman and every woman has hips and boobs twice the size of her stomach. DC is even worse, they don't even seem to have any protagonists/"good guys" that go outside of a very specific and annoying ideal of looks. Marvel at least has things like Nightcrawler. You see a lot less of that sort of thing in DC.

Still, you are missing one thing. This all doesn't come down to a few people using the word "*****", even more than Batman in general, this game seems to be doing things wrong.

You obviously don't know shit about Batman.

 

[Treblaine]

So, Kotaku recently posted an article how Arkham City might contain some elements of sexism. Take a look. [http://kotaku.com/5851358/batman-arkham-citys-weird-*****-fixation] What do you all think? Is the overuse of the word "*****" in this context just simply unfortunately lackluster writing? Or is it something more?

Some takes on this from others:
http://filmcrithulk.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/goddammit-video-games-the-first-few-hours-of-arkham-city-is-lots-of-fun-but-super-duper-sexist/
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2011/10/will-arkham-city-be-this-years-other-m.html

Of FFS

Fiction 101:

"The values expressed/practices by the most repugnant characters are NOT a eflection of the author's values or the message of the story"

Most likely YES, the thugs Catwoman fights ARE sexist, but that doesn't make the GAME sexist. The game is all about beating those sexists into a coma, the game in no way justifies or excuses such language. And yes low-IQ bruising street thugs are no known for their broad verbal repertoire.

I think if anything the developers RESTRAINED the villains, there are far worse insults you can throw at a woman than to liken her to a female canine. There's nothing wrong with dogs, everyone likes dogs, even the female ones. What about ****, whore, slut, or dyke even are far more inflammatory and not used.

Case:
Closed [x]
Fukken closed [x]
Closed-a-geddon [x]

You know what is sexist? Sex and the City. You know what isn't? Arkham City.

...

Sex and the Arkham City

...

That's all I can think of now.

 

[Deadyawn]

I wouldn't say that it sounds particularly sexist. I haven't played it yet, but from what I just read it seems that the writers came up with some unoriginal and repetitive combat taunts, which in and of itself is only slightly less common in games these days than a pause function. I suppose having most of the male characters (who, it's worth pointing out, are generally criminals) call the few female characters bitches (who, lets face it, kind of are) would convey a sexist tone that seems more a result of the setting and content than anything else. I think the real crime here is that they couldn't come up with some original and entertaining insults. I can definetly imagine that hearing ***** non-stop would get really annoying. Come up with something better that aims at personality flaws and attitudes. Call catwoman an oversexualised kleptomaniac instead!

 

[Michael Hirst]

I think the overuse of calling Catwoman a ***** and the thugs talking about her in an aggressive or sexual way is intended much more as a means for us to despise the criminals, consider that we never get to know their stories and that they have no redeeming quality to them, they are violent thugs, their ideas on how to treat a woman and what to call her are there to make us hate the criminals and see them as nothing more than pieces of trash that need cleaning up which is precisely what you do because YOU'RE THE GOD DAMN BATMAN!

We can't complain about Catwoman being sexualized because that's a huge part of her character and always will be, if he suddenly became completely submissive to Batman then I'd call sexism but she's always stood up to him and made one of the craziest comic book relationships ever written.

Stupid article written from a singular viewpoint that ***** = bad therefore game = bad, there's context, tone and the very people who are being sexist get their asses kicked.

NOTE: It's possible in some places to give generic criminals a sympathetic story and make an audience feel sorry for their predicament whereas Batman always has and always will want to paint them as selfish, cruel and disgusting despots who leech off of society and try to bully normal people to their will. THE GAME WANTS YOU TO HATE THESE PEOPLE!!!

 

[DracoSuave]

I think those arguing the point certainly see those aspects as pointing to the wider issue, along with Harley Quinn's more revealing attire (seriously, what was wrong with the.. y'know, Harlequin outfit?) and the weird fixation on Poison Ivy's panties.

Thing is, Harley Quinn IS an INTENTIONALLY sexist statement. She is a woman defined ENTIRELY by her obsession over an abusive male, and her eagerness to take all the crap she gives her, good or bad. She is completely incapable of passing a Bechdel test.

But she's a portrayal of an old trope, of the mob moll, just in Joker's gang... which is why it works.

 

[Treblaine]

There's a relatively small limit to actual terms one can apply to a woman, in this context. Most of them are intrinsically sexual, being references to prostitution. Having the villains scream "Slut!" or "Whore!" would have caused no end of sexism accusations, despite Catwoman being at her core a very sexual character. Really, they fall back on ***** because there just aren't many well defined phrases to substitute it with that won't cause even more problems for them.

And note that saying something ridiculously silly like "That damned cat!" is part of causing more problems because nobody will take the thugs seriously. They needed an insult that gets the point across that a bad person is angry, but that won't get the studio slammed for sexism by implying she sells her body for money. End result: They STILL get slammed for sexism

I get where you're coming from with this, but I disagree. "Mangy feline." "Gutter trash." "Alley cat." "Little sneak." There's a whole heap of terms that could have been used. If nothing else, they could have diluted the use of the gendered term by removing its exclusivity. That they didn't speaks to laziness and issues of gender representation.

What?!?!?

What kind of hardened street thug calls a woman he intends to lobotomise with an iron pipe an "alley cat" or "little sneak" rather than "*****"?!? Catwoman isn't fighting Mr Rogers, those are the kinds of terms an old man would use to shout at kids who are on his lawn, not a brutal brawl to the death between insane masked vigilantes and armed goons! These are INSULTS, they are supposed to be insulting!!!!

The whole PURPOSE of making the thugs unlikable so you (a) don't feel bad beating them senseless and (b) actually have a reason to enjoy beating them up.

To women who don't like being called a *****, you are SUPPOSED TO BE OFFENDED! The problem here is instead of actually PLAYING THE GAME and taking it out on the characters who dealt the sexism, they are taking it out on the developers who made the characters... even though they made them almost purely as a punching bag, a sexist straw-man for you to pummel. But what do they get in return.

Demands of self-censorship.

That's the issue here, the expectation of self censorship for the mere use of a term in ANY context is without justification or artistic merit. Self-censorship is as dangerous as authoritarian censorship, by how it injects fear of backlash the artist is constrained by fear.

 

[DanielDeFig]

The first thing that came to my mind while reading the kotaku article was this:

Ok, the goons and many of their bosses only use the word '*****' when referring to females. Why would this be the case?
My best explanation, is that it's 'cultural'. The goons have probably spent most of their lives in prison (Going by comic-book logic, not real-life logic), and have had limited exposure to women. Instead, they spend most of their time with fellow goons/prisoners, and the 'tough guy attitude' demands that they refer to women as 'bitches', at least with their goon pals (Because thrash talking and sexually objectifying women, is apparently a sign of dominance). But with a lifestyle that almost never gets them away from their fellow criminals, they start using the word '*****' as a general term for women, regardless of the context.

Basically, the goons and several of the Batman villains, don't use the word ***** so much because the writers were sexist, but because the writers were clever enough to keep them 'in character'. These characters, as established by their comic-book source, simply use the word '*****' to refer to any woman, because the life they lead leaves the with no other alternative. So unless they're smart enough to be a boss, they're not going to use more than one word to refer to the same thing. (Once again, comic-book logic)

 

[Denariax]

You mean a game based on a hero-esque comic book has extremely buff men, super-slim females, and villains so obviously evil?

GASP.

 

[NotSoLoneWanderer]

It is a maximum security prison with inmates being the worst members of society. It's not surprising that they would call Catwoman that.

 

[KingofMadCows]

I think part of the problem is that the writers had a problem finding better T-Rated insults. They can't use the really bad swear words but a lot of the other insults don't sound "mature" enough.

If you watch Bruce Timm's first straight to DVD movie "Superman: Doomsday," you'll see the similar problems. Swear words were being used in odd and unnecessary places because the writers really weren't used to making PG-13 rated movies.

 

[owbu]

The game itself is not sexist, just because it has characters in it, that probably are.
Neither is the game mentally ill, just because it contains the Joker.
A game gets sexist, if it rewards you for being sexist by its game mechanics (Achievements, Expierience Points etc)or if it uses women only as helpless sex objects without any characterisation.

In this case evil guys are calling the hero a ***** and the game lets you stomp them into the ground and rewards you expierience for that.
SO Arkham City....feminist?

 

[Astoria]

Really? What do you expect them to call her when she's beating the crap out of them? "Ouch you horrible woman whom I do not like". Yeah I think that might just kill the vibe the thugs have got going don't you think? Would people stop being sensitive to absolutely everything! I haven't played Other M but that sounds more like sexism to me because of how Samus just accepts it even though she's supposed to be this badass but even then that could just be terrible writing.