Does sexist tropes in video games influence behavior? Violence =/= Sexism?

[grassgremlin]

I think there's probably an argument to be made about something dangerous at the intersection of sexism and violence, where violence targeting women is depicted as sexualized. I'm not going to discuss that argument because I haven't studied up on it and I don't know what the positions for and against are.

As for sexism (on its own) vs. violence (on its own), we have to concede they are issues that operate with fundamental differences. Those differences demand that we not just treat them the same. We could make all kinds of arguments about how the psychology of sex and the psychology of violence are different and get into all kinds of arguments which we don't quite have the science to support about what the inherent nature of human thought is, but I think the most important difference is that for the overwhelming majority of people who play games, violence is not an every day occurrence. Living in a world where women also exist is a daily occurrence. Even the archetypal nerd dwelling in his mother's basement at least has to deal with his mother, not to mention the possibility that he might encounter a woman when he makes his weekly Doritos and Mountain Dew run. And since most gamers don't fit that ur-nerd archetype, most of us are going to have a whole lot more interaction with women. Which means we wouldn't be looking for the same kinds of influence we hypothetically would expect to find with violent video games - rare instances of someone blowing up and demonstrating an extreme and horrific influence by video games. Instead we're going to be looking for small, nuanced influences over a wider population. This means it's going to be very easy to find candidate data, but it's going to be very hard to definitively say that data came from sexism in video games and not some other source.

Nonetheless I think it's quite credible to say that sexism in video games most likely does have some effect on at least some players. The fact that there's such a large segment of the "hard-core" (the term itself seems a bit gender-loaded) gamer population vehemently opposed to even minor feminist commentary on video games by folks like Anita Sarkeesian is a pretty good indicator- even if we ignore the much smaller minority of that population who threaten and harass her we could easily point to the fact that the mere mention of her name is likely to provoke outrage and fallacious claims about her agenda and intentions toward games in general as evidence there is some kind of effect.

I think it's quite credible to suppose that there could be an effect on what we might call "nice guy syndrome" by an over-saturation of games with the "damsel in distress" trope. Now I think I'm fairly reformed, but as a teen I was a bit of a "Nice Guy" myself and I think my immersion in "rescue the princess" games probably contributed to that, though it would be too much to say it was the only influence. It would be nice to see some experiment actually studying this though.

At the very least it could be quite plausible that sexism in games negatively affects players indirectly by affecting which voices they encounter in their hobby. If "average" women are turned off by the sexism in games and avoid gaming communities because of it, then the voices in their community that are going to form much of the socialization of gamers are going to be limited by that. I recall reading research [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-who-like-big-breasts-are-more-sexist-says-study/] suggesting that men being especially drawn toward bigger breasts corrolates highly with men holding sexist attitudes. If gaming has an abundance of women depicted in a sexualized way to over-exaggerate their breasts, it seems reasonable that that might contribute to a larger number of male voices in gaming spaces expressing sexist views of women and a smaller number of "average women" voices in gaming spaces to counter.

None of this should be taken to mean that games are inherently sexist or that sexual content in gamers are bad or that all gamers are misogynistic or or that I want a law banning sexist content in video games or any other silly strawman someone is almost certainly going to try and make about my post. All I'm saying is that it's plausible and worthy of discussion. And if you can't handle the fact that the discussion is happening to the degree that you feel the need to silence it, then I think odds are good that you're part of the problem.

I like this, well worded and honestly I'm one to agree with it.

Even without the research, though I'm going to look into it, I think I understand more of how people say such things influence us. It's not the same influence as violent video games would give us. It's a mentality, something I've noticed in art and film.

I know people who think Jurassic Park is an accurate representation of dinosaurs, so it's not too far fetched that a game could plant a certain mentality of a specific ideal or demographic in someone's head.

I think it's less about people acting on it, and more about how they approach these things. Rape in a video game will not make you rape, however, it will paint your opinion of rape based on how it's represented.

If it's eroticized in some fashion, you'll view it in that fashion. People are turned on by rape fantasy, this is true in lots of porn hentai and doujinshi. I should know sense I read some of it. It hasn't made me uncomfortable because it's porn and I can separate fantasy from reality, but it still has influenced me when it comes to an interest in BDSM.

It has a lasting effect. Every piece of media does and it does it positively and negatively. I think people are seeing it as a verbal thing more then a physical thing.

It's mental influence maybe and people project it.

 

[Netrigan]

The thing to remember about people are they're a social animal and they're vulnerable to social pressures. The media is a part of a web of influences which dictate what is normal within a particular group.

So, for instance, your Facebook herd decides that dumping a bucket of ice water on your head is a perfectly acceptable and desirable thing to do, then many people will be influenced to dump a bucket of ice water on their head, even if they don't completely understand why they're supposed to be dumping a bucket of ice water on their head. This is socially acceptable and desirable behavior, so they go along with it.

It's why mobs can get unruly, because the behavior of a group can cause individual members to act in ways they'd not ordinarily act. There have been studies that uniforms can do the same.

The argument about sexism isn't "video games are causing sexism", it's they're perpetuating already existing sexism. We as a society are often already cool with certain kinds of behavior... at least within certain groups. People have no problem enjoying porn while slut-shaming the women who create it. I've known scores of men who had no problem sleeping with a woman, while slut-shaming the woman for sleeping with them. And then you have the festering wound that is The Nice Guy, who has a serious problem with women because they won't sleep with him, and will frequently accuse them (without an ounce of proof) of being sluts because why require a woman to have sex to slut-shame her. There's a lot of unhealthy social dissonance going on around the sexuality of women and that seeps into a lot of media.

 

[Skatologist]

So does the phrase 'what about the menz', and so does pretending that talking about men is somehow derailing when the topic is general sexism.

The tactic, at least from my experience, is mostly used to essentially silence the topic of sexism on any given subject, especially ones in media. People bringing up examples seem too often make very poor ones and don't really tie it to how it effects greater culture or perceptions. Perhaps this is a poor representation, but, for many men, it almost seem when they hear "women" and "problem" or words similar in the same sentence, they must use the argument and find out how that problem or a similar problem effects men. More power to anyone actually cares about those problems and wants them fixed, though.

Ok, I bite and leave the judgement of the following article to you:

....
The occupants were burned alive.

All of the victims were boys. Reports indicated that the young girls the militants encountered were spared. According to the BBC, the militants told the girls to flee, get married, and shun the western education to which they were privy.

Beyond wire reports and a handful of segments on globally-focused outlets like NPR, this atrocity went unremarked upon in the popular news media.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/why-did-kidnapping-girls-but-not-burning-boys-alive-wake-media-up-to-boko-haram/

You know what, thank you and I appreciate this. You may not have known this, but I do generally agree that media outlets will not paint men as victims of violence and other crimes very often and I'm all for people expressing that displeasure because I do find it to be an incredibly large problem needing to be addressed.

Are you guys seriously complaining about preemptive attacks on strawmen while initiating a preemptive attack on a strawman?

Like, could you try to have at least a little self-awareness?

That is fully on me and no one else and I was aware of what I did almost immediately after I did it. Also, it can be argued if it were a strawman, since the structure of a strawman is usually "person A says X, person B responds by misrepresenting it." I don't necessarily do that in actual discussions with people, so I suppose the "pre emptive" is the most important part of that and I apologize for bringing it up when it wasn't exactly necessary or constructive to do so. I've been in too many comment sections ruined by anti feminists to not essentially recognize the tactic I brought up. You may scrutinize me saying "most" but unfortunately that is what I most see, people derailing conversation on sexism against women by inserting sexism against men in the topic for no good reason other than not wanting to see people talk about the topic at all.

 

[Suhi89]

So does the phrase 'what about the menz', and so does pretending that talking about men is somehow derailing when the topic is general sexism.

The tactic, at least from my experience, is mostly used to essentially silence the topic of sexism on any given subject, especially ones in media. People bringing up examples seem too often make very poor ones and don't really tie it to how it effects greater culture or perceptions. Perhaps this is a poor representation, but, for many men, it almost seem when they hear "women" and "problem" or words similar in the same sentence, they must use the argument and find out how that problem or a similar problem effects men. More power to anyone actually cares about those problems and wants them fixed, though.

Ok, I bite and leave the judgement of the following article to you:

....
The occupants were burned alive.

All of the victims were boys. Reports indicated that the young girls the militants encountered were spared. According to the BBC, the militants told the girls to flee, get married, and shun the western education to which they were privy.

Beyond wire reports and a handful of segments on globally-focused outlets like NPR, this atrocity went unremarked upon in the popular news media.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/why-did-kidnapping-girls-but-not-burning-boys-alive-wake-media-up-to-boko-haram/

You know what, thank you and I appreciate this. You may not have known this, but I do generally agree that media outlets will not paint men as victims of violence and other crimes very often and I'm all for people expressing that displeasure because I do find it to be an incredibly large problem needing to be addressed.

Are you guys seriously complaining about preemptive attacks on strawmen while initiating a preemptive attack on a strawman?

Like, could you try to have at least a little self-awareness?

That is fully on me and no one else and I was aware of what I did almost immediately after I did it. Also, it can be argued if it were a strawman, since the structure of a strawman is usually "person A says X, person B responds by misrepresenting it." I don't necessarily do that in actual discussions with people, so I suppose the "pre emptive" is the most important part of that and I apologize for bringing it up when it wasn't exactly necessary or constructive to do so. I've been in too many comment sections ruined by anti feminists to not essentially recognize the tactic I brought up. You may scrutinize me saying "most" but unfortunately that is what I most see, people derailing conversation on sexism against women by inserting sexism against men in the topic for no good reason other than not wanting to see people talk about the topic at all.

Bit in bold. In my experience, that definitely does happen. However, I think that often it's legitimate to ask the question. I'm going to copy and paste a recent response I made to this topic on another forum.

Spoiler

I would say that often when I see the what about the men trope, it is when someone says something along the lines of ?The prevalence of violence against women shows how society values women less,? or, ?Men don?t have to constantly worry about being attacked when out and about,? or ?the lack of action involving FGM shows that women are less valued, if it were men then the problem would have been solved by now,? or any domestic violence article which frames the issue as a problem with men only, then it is fair for people to point out the stats that men are likely to be the victims of violence, or that they?re more likely to be attacked in the street, or that circumcision is a huge issue and in fact legal and regularly practiced, or that a fairly high percentage of domestic violence is perpetrated by women.

If someone tries to frame a general issue as a uniquely female issue, particularly in a place like the Guardian which isn?t aiming for a woman specific readership, WATM is a fair question.

I will admit, however, that there are many issues that are female only that are derailed by people asking WATM, and it is infuriating when it happens. A discussion about breast cancer shouldn?t be getting comments about prostate cancer unless the discussion starts making claims about how breast cancer would have been solved already if more men got it. The thing is, it?s infuriating because it derails the discussion. How anyone can accuse Ally of derailing when writing about the issue on his own blog is beyond me.

OT: The problem is that people are using their intuition. Human intuition is notoriously bad. Intuitively, it seems like it's obvious that sexist media will influence the consumers of that media, or that violent media will do the same. Humans just aren't that simple. You need to look into the matter scientifically, with a number of well conducted studies that don't try to make claims beyond what they actually show.

Also a general piece of advice when looking at studies. Single studies, even well conducted ones (and all studies have methodological flaws), are rarely the be all and end all of these matters. You need a number of independently conducted studies all showing the same thing before you can categorically say what the result of exposure to various types of media can have. This is just as true in the "hard" sciences as in the social sciences. Media reports tend to overhype the results of single studies, when how those studies fit in with the totality of literature on a subject is what is more important.

 

[manic_depressive13]

That's a non sequitor. Them feeling uncomfortable/excluded is not evidence that they're making other people more sexist

And as a general rule, if you want to say that games cause sexism/violence/whatever you have to prove it. Saying "they probably effect you in some way, it's unlikely you'll be completely unaffected" doesn't cut it. You still have to prove those specific effects.

Until that happens this is all mere speculation.

No one is saying video games cause sexism. They are saying the depictions of women feed into an already harmful culture, reinforcing backwards notions about women. They propagate sexist attitudes, and those attitudes are clearly reflected in the community.

 

[WhiteNachos]

So does the phrase 'what about the menz', and so does pretending that talking about men is somehow derailing when the topic is general sexism.

The tactic, at least from my experience, is mostly used to essentially silence the topic of sexism on any given subject, especially ones in media. People bringing up examples seem too often make very poor ones and don't really tie it to how it effects greater culture or perceptions. Perhaps this is a poor representation, but, for many men, it almost seem when they hear "women" and "problem" or words similar in the same sentence, they must use the argument and find out how that problem or a similar problem effects men. More power to anyone actually cares about those problems and wants them fixed, though.

Ok, I bite and leave the judgement of the following article to you:

What tactic? 9 times out 10 when I hear what about the menz it's being used to mock anyone who brings up double standards that hurt men, not just people who say "men have similar problems and we don't complain so shut up".

 

[Robert B. Marks]

Well, it's a fascinating question...and I have read some research on it.

Everything credible I've read suggests that video games can influence behaviour. This influence, however, is not a direct "violence in games = violent person in real world," but much more subtle.

For example, I remember reading about a study where the behaviour of two groups of children were examined over time - one group was playing violent video games, and the other wasn't. The group that played the games was more aggressive (not violent, but AGGRESSIVE - there is a difference) than the group that didn't.

I remember reading about another study that looked at dreams - people who played lots of action games tended to have nightmares wherein they were a combatant rather than a victim, whereas those who didn't play those games tended to have nightmares in which they were helpless victims.

There's also some evidence that FPS video games can duplicate part of military training, but this means functionally that it would change the "fight or flight" reflex from a default of "flight" to a default of "fight," although it would only do it in very specific situations that duplicated the circumstances of the games being played (so if the game in question was Doom, you'd be out of luck if you weren't being attacked by demons).

So, the media that we consume does have an effect on us. To bring it back around to sexism, that effect doesn't tend to be conscious, though - you're not going to watch or play a bunch of media with sexist tropes and suddenly say "That's right - women ARE objects to be possessed!" But, if you already have some sexist leanings, it can subconsciously nudge you a bit further in that direction, or possibly give you one or two subconscious leanings that you didn't have before. Hard to say without more research, though.

 

[Dragonmouth]

I like how Dan Olson (the Folding Ideas webshow) put it. I don't think fiction is very good at influencing our actions. However, it is good at influencing our emotions and our opinions. In the case of sexism, sexist video games might not make you a rapist or abuser but it does affect how you emotionally react to rape or abuse. This can be a problem if said person is on the judge or jury for rape or if he is asked for help from a rape victim.

If one sees rape frequently in fiction, one becomes desensitized to real rapes as they might be considered "not as bad". Consider Judge G. Todd Baugh, who sentenced a teacher to one month in jail for raping a student, or Judge Michael Metyear, who gave a rapist a light sentence due to him not being a "classic rapist."

 

[Izanagi009_v1legacy]

I think there's probably an argument to be made about something dangerous at the intersection of sexism and violence, where violence targeting women is depicted as sexualized. I'm not going to discuss that argument because I haven't studied up on it and I don't know what the positions for and against are.

As for sexism (on its own) vs. violence (on its own), we have to concede they are issues that operate with fundamental differences. Those differences demand that we not just treat them the same. We could make all kinds of arguments about how the psychology of sex and the psychology of violence are different and get into all kinds of arguments which we don't quite have the science to support about what the inherent nature of human thought is, but I think the most important difference is that for the overwhelming majority of people who play games, violence is not an every day occurrence. Living in a world where women also exist is a daily occurrence. Even the archetypal nerd dwelling in his mother's basement at least has to deal with his mother, not to mention the possibility that he might encounter a woman when he makes his weekly Doritos and Mountain Dew run. And since most gamers don't fit that ur-nerd archetype, most of us are going to have a whole lot more interaction with women. Which means we wouldn't be looking for the same kinds of influence we hypothetically would expect to find with violent video games - rare instances of someone blowing up and demonstrating an extreme and horrific influence by video games. Instead we're going to be looking for small, nuanced influences over a wider population. This means it's going to be very easy to find candidate data, but it's going to be very hard to definitively say that data came from sexism in video games and not some other source.

Nonetheless I think it's quite credible to say that sexism in video games most likely does have some effect on at least some players. The fact that there's such a large segment of the "hard-core" (the term itself seems a bit gender-loaded) gamer population vehemently opposed to even minor feminist commentary on video games by folks like Anita Sarkeesian is a pretty good indicator- even if we ignore the much smaller minority of that population who threaten and harass her we could easily point to the fact that the mere mention of her name is likely to provoke outrage and fallacious claims about her agenda and intentions toward games in general as evidence there is some kind of effect.

I think it's quite credible to suppose that there could be an effect on what we might call "nice guy syndrome" by an over-saturation of games with the "damsel in distress" trope. Now I think I'm fairly reformed, but as a teen I was a bit of a "Nice Guy" myself and I think my immersion in "rescue the princess" games probably contributed to that, though it would be too much to say it was the only influence. It would be nice to see some experiment actually studying this though.

At the very least it could be quite plausible that sexism in games negatively affects players indirectly by affecting which voices they encounter in their hobby. If "average" women are turned off by the sexism in games and avoid gaming communities because of it, then the voices in their community that are going to form much of the socialization of gamers are going to be limited by that. I recall reading research [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/men-who-like-big-breasts-are-more-sexist-says-study/] suggesting that men being especially drawn toward bigger breasts corrolates highly with men holding sexist attitudes. If gaming has an abundance of women depicted in a sexualized way to over-exaggerate their breasts, it seems reasonable that that might contribute to a larger number of male voices in gaming spaces expressing sexist views of women and a smaller number of "average women" voices in gaming spaces to counter.

None of this should be taken to mean that games are inherently sexist or that sexual content in gamers are bad or that all gamers are misogynistic or or that I want a law banning sexist content in video games or any other silly strawman someone is almost certainly going to try and make about my post. All I'm saying is that it's plausible and worthy of discussion. And if you can't handle the fact that the discussion is happening to the degree that you feel the need to silence it, then I think odds are good that you're part of the problem.

Do you think that there is a feedback loop with the media determining the audience and the audience reinforcing the tropes of the media making it harder and harder for opposing tropes to enter.

OT people can and are influenced by multiple influences based on environment and upbringing. Video games are now becoming what tv and movies were for the older generations, they can set the tone for a society and inspire or downplay certain things. I would say that information should be more varied in our media (IE, more tropes and better execution of said tropes) or baring that, people be more cognizant of the tropes and their implicit meanings. I would ultimately want people to fully be able to detach themselves from their views and observe from a more outside perspective, but that would require a lot of information to be known to a person and may be difficult to do.

 

[Erttheking]

I'd think it obvious: if millions of gamers are, collectively or individually, influenced by these games to the point it can reasonably be said to affect their behavior, then we would be seeing THOUSANDS of Columbines and Jack Thompson would have been 100% correct.

Ad absurdum, ad nauseum.

They are not the same thing. I seriously think that one of the main reasons that gamers are so hostile to outside criticism is because we're so jumpy from all of the crap we've had to go through in terms of being accused of causing violence. There's a difference between playing Grand Theft Auto and deciding that driving on the sidewalk is fun, and seeing the depiction of women objectify or the sexist portrayal of women in hundreds upon hundreds of games and having your mindset of women be subtly affected by it. There's a difference. Heck, I'm STILL realizing horrible objectification of women I didn't even notice until recently. Just a month ago I looked at a mannequin in a store, then at my mother who had spent the last several months getting into shape, and then did a double take because apparently the mannequin was modeled off of someone who had anorexia because it was a twig compared to my in shape mother.

Stuff like that works its way into your head without even realizing it. Murder can't because it's too obvious, too out in the open. Sexist ideas are more subtle and sneaky, that's the difference.

 

[Callate]

Cagey answer: for the vast majority of people, with the vast majority of tropes/media, probably not, or minimally. Canada gets access to the same violent media as the United States. Areas with higher access to pornography reportedly have similar or lower rates of sexual assault. Japan has, on a whole, far more sexual violence in their pornography than the United States, yet even if its report rate on sexual assault was one tenth that of the United States, its rates would still be lower.

But, there are the out-liers who end up with a gun and a mission seemingly because of something they read in Catcher in the Rye. Or the Boy Scout Handbook. Or the Bible. Or from watching Taxi Driver.

And there's certainly a sense that if a hostile environment is created for girls and women in video games, boys and women are less likely to see women, as players or characters, in those games- and I doubt that does good things for the empathy of any group.

Some day we might reach the balance that recognizing the presence of a trope doesn't mean trying to stamp it out, which I think would be the ideal. But we're not there yet, and the present imbalance is painful to watch.

 

[The Lunatic]

Video game causes sexism in the same way it causes violence.

It does not.


Of course, there is a few outliers, there are a small number of people whom were influenced by video games to hurt people.

These people usually suffered from some behavioural problems.

I can only imagine the same applies to "Sexism" from games.

 

[Verlander]

I don't think so. Is anyone actually saying that they are?

 

[Lightknight]

I have been confused by this particular concept from both sides with a lot of people comparing violence to sexism when it comes to objectifying women in games.

The problem is this argument seems muddled heavily so, I've wanted to find some research on it.
What seems to be the general consensus is . . .

Those who say no site people like Jack Thompson and I've even been linked a Jim Sterling video on violence. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6692-Desensitized-to-Violence

We even seen videos like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MxqSwzFy5w


However, I've also been told from those who say they do influence behavior that the violence argument does not factor. I've seen links like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AB66tcIqDiE&list=UUGMegrt_97F75N-iUgyp0Tg

And I've seen people site this article as an affirmation that video games do influence something.
http://time.com/2940491/study-violent-video-games-morally-sensitive/


So I need to understand. Is comparing violence to sexism a proper comparison or are they entirely different elements.

Is it possible people's behavior when gaming and playing certain sexually active games have influence their responses to women? Even men?

What's going on here, I need to understand.

Just a disclaimer, I'm going to use forms of the word 'you' in the response. I intend that use as the royal you rather than referring to you as the poster. I understand that you are just looking for information so I'm going to respond to this post as if I'm responding to people who believe that games teach sexism and cause us to act in sexist fashions.

If something influences thought, it influences action. So let me put that out there right away.

The problem is proving that it influences thoughts in the way you intend. For example, do you understand the difference between fantasy and reality? If you played games in which you could fly would you be conditioned to believe that you could yourself fly and be at risk of jumping off the roof? If you are unable to distinguish the two then you're schizophrenic and there are pills for that.

I've never had any notion of attributing qualities of fictional characters in games, movies, tv or any other form of media to people in real life. I get the difference and most other people do too. Princess Peach being in trouble never once made me think that women are helpless or any such trite conclusion. Why? Because I understand the difference between fantasy and real life. I also understand that one person can have drastically different qualities than another. I know women who do stand on chairs at the sight of a spider and scream for their husbands to come help them even if they aren't there. Then I know my wife who would calmly take off a shoe and teach the spider the error of its ways (well, she does that with any bugs except for spiders, spiders are still my domain). So, in making the argument that games make people sexist, they're both accusing gamers of being incapable of distinguishing fantasy from real life (aka schizophrenic) as well as being stereotyping assholes who don't evaluate individuals on their own merits. So every time you're accused of letting games color your opinion of groups, you're being called a stereotyping bigot.

What's more is that you've got to evaluate that the lesson being taught is itself wrong. Are men capable of kidnapping women? Yeah... they are... that's why we have a problem with rape, because there is a power disparity between genders. Sure, there are absolutely women who can knock most men on their ass but the average woman has as much as 50% less upper body strength and 30% less lower body strength. So an average woman has to double her natural upper body strength to match that of an average man. That's medical fact, not biased perception and yet Anita claimed that this was a socially perpetuated myth in her first video "which is of course false". A scientifically measurable fact. I would advocate that men and women should be aware of the power disparity because humans are prone to taking advantage of such things. Is it not right to teach young boys to fight against other males who might use their strength to abuse women or anyone that would find themselves at an unfair disadvantage to someone else? It's a real problem in real life and teaching us to be the heroes isn't a bad thing in a world populated with actual villains.

Look, the dialogue of damsel games isn't that women are weak so much as that the villain is powerful and needs to be overcome. It's that there are bad people out there who will harm people if they have the power to do so and so you, if you are able, should seek to oppose them. Games don't take the agency away from the women, the villains do and the entire point of the game is to return their agency and to stop the person who would take it away. The damsel isn't even always a girl. Objectification is treating a person as a thing without respect for their dignity as a person. That's the kidnapper who is doing that. Not the person who values the individual's life and right to agency highly enough to risk life and limb to save. Anita once stated that objectification is making someone the thing that is acted upon. She framed her entire damsel comment on this point and it's wrong. That's the grammatical definition of object, not objectification. "I'm speaking to you right now", in that sentence, you would be the grammatical object because you are the object of the sentence being acted upon. "Anita defends feminists" would be objectifying feminists by Anita's definition which is just silly.

So even before we can start to evaluate influences in thought, we've go to show that the thoughts we're claiming are being reinforced are actually what's being reinforced and I don't think most of the claims really follow to the logical conclusion. Especially not when humans are capable of distinguishing between fantasy and real life unless they're actually delusional in which case there's a different problem afoot.

As far as sexualization? Yes, women are absolutely depicted sexually, in all forms of media even. Evolution has done far more to sexualize the gender you're attracted to than any form of media can ever do. People are going to think sexual thoughts about the other gender and the only way you're going to circumvent that is to neuter and spay all your children. As far as sexualizing goes, people are aware that there is literal porn on the internet right? Stuff that is entirely transparent in its desire to sexualize and may be actually damaging in as far as the range of demands people think they can impose on their partners or can expect from their partners. I also believe that males are sexualized too. It's just that there are different sexual ideals of each gender. Females have physical attributes that are easily exaggeratable whereas male attractiveness is usually muscle tone (though some women also go for bulk as evidenced by most covers of of women's romance novels or heart throbs like Fabio or Sully from Dr Quinn Medicine Woman) with a face that is either masculine or boyish. If society found manboobs sexy then they'd be flopping around on our protagonists too. But they aren't so they shant. But soulful eyes and kissable lips that women desire? That's nowhere near as exaggerate-able and that thing men have that is exaggerate-able isn't appropriate for depiction in non-adult games.

 

[Erttheking]

Stuff like that works its way into your head without even realizing it. Murder can't because it's too obvious, too out in the open. Sexist ideas are more subtle and sneaky, that's the difference.

Except, that's not really the point is it?

Ask yourself this question: What is your response (and society's response) to the statement: Video games influence and perpetuate aggressive/violent tendencies?

Now ask yourself this: What is society's response to the statement: Video games influence and perpetuate discriminatory/sexist-like tendencies?

Point being: For the first question about violence, society (ie. Gamers/Game's Media in this case) blows it off as being an "exaggeration." That even if true, overall violence and crime has dropped significantly during the same period. Meaning that video game violence is barely even a contribution.

Whereas, in the second question about sexism, it is viewed as being "Widespread" despite overall discriminatory violence and sexism has also dropped quite significantly.

This is a blatant double standard in how people approach these topics. When there's no "victim-like group", no one cares. But when you can claim that the victim group is either a certain ethnicity or gender, suddenly, everyone merely pretends like it's an issue.

The standards are different because they are different situations. People don't react the same way to different things because there are different circumstances that lead to those reactions. Not all these decisions are made in a vacuum.

It's pretty well established that murder is bad. Hence people know that although murder is seen in media a lot, they know is bad.

Sexism though? In my country, education on sex is so poor that there are plenty of people that don't see anything wrong with things that can be legally defined as rape. Plenty of people don't get taught about consensual sex, therefore media can easily affect their viewpoints. Among other things.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/dont-have-sex-because-you-will-get-pregnant-and-die#17yc5tv

I can look up other links if you wish.

And yeah, people in both cases would react poorly because people don't like to think that they can be affected by outside sources. That doesn't make them right. People think way too highly of themselves very often.

Also overall discriminatory violence has dropped? Citation needed.

 

[Vigormortis]

You know what truly sickens me?

BOTH sides of this fucking debate have devolved so far into absurdity that they routinely; and at times solely; utilize logic fallacies to back up their (often) demonstrably absurd claims.

Even worse, both sides use these logical fallacies while simultaneously accusing the other side of doing the same. Hell, just watch the L0G1C B0MB video the OP linked. That guy is so egregious in using the same logical fallacies he condemns I literally grit my teeth trying to watch his videos.

It's come to the point that I'm almost entirely convinced that this debate will never see a conclusion, simply because all sides are so lost in their own nonsense that any logical conclusion is beyond reach.

It's such a shame. It's even worked it's way into this very thread.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Personally, no attack on the poster, I completely disagree with this approach and is why i find true SJWs utterly terrifying, they honestly believe you need protecting from yourself, you are subconsciously evil, influenced by things only they can identify, and only they know how to fix your content and you. It's really scary.

Yeah, I didn't actually say any of that.