Flash Game Makes Players Beat Up "Tropes vs. Women" Creator

[Smeatza]

Not really because it just feels like pandering.

I want to play female characters that command a bit of respect and are characters in their own right. It doesn't mean that they have to be ugly the two aren't mutually exclusive. Take Lara Croft for example she is quite an awesome character in her original games yet she quite clearly looks like she was designed as a sexual fantasy for men.

I think that men often think women want all video game characters to be fugly. We don't. We just want them to be more than a pair of tits. Because women are more than a pair of tits.

Sorry to interrupt, but that's not what I see people complaining about. I see people complaining about skimpy costumes and attractive curves, and very rarely do people actually take issue with the fact that often the writing is so bad to reaches the realms of sexism.

Anyway.

This is where interpretation becomes an issue, if a character is well rounded, well written and a decent portrayal of your average woman, but wears sexually provocative clothing, some people will call that sexist, others empowering. I personally will not consider a game sexist for having overly-simple and cliched portrayals of women if all the portrayals of male characters are also overly-simple and cliched, some will.

Also, considering western culture (and all other types of media) is obsessed with sex, sexual ideals, gender roles and judging people based on their gender, it's unreasonable to expect any more of video games, or to attempt to single it (or it's fans) out as sexist.

What really get's to me with all this "video games and the video gaming community are sexist" talk is that the femminist supporters just love to take the moral highground, and pretend they don't know the difference between malice and ignorance. To expect a 14 year old male teenager to understand how the world works is unreasonable, to expect a 14 year old male teenager to act mature in the face of somone who is attacking their favourite past-time in an unreasonable and antagonistic manner is just insanity.
To then make judgements on the gaming community as a whole, based on the reactions of some kids, is just depressing (which is what many people, even on these very forums, have been doing).

A couple of months ago I was firmly in the "video games are in general more sexist than other types of media" camp, but after researching it and reading many a debate on the issue over the past month or so. I can't help but think that videos games are no worse than any other type of media as a whole.
So while you can certainly say there is an element of sexism, it's the same element you find in any other type of media, the same element of sexism that works against men in many situations. An element of sexism that is ultimately harmless within the walls of fiction.

And if I was to write a list of all the problems facing the world today, fictional sexism (might be a poor choice of words but serves a poetic point) would be very close to the bottom, alongside limited wi-fi access.

 

[Kahunaburger]

[citation needed]

Seriously, I know /v/ really, really wants to believe this, but there's no convincing evidence it's the case.

Ms Sarkeesian needs no stinking citations so i don't know why we should. Of course, you could go back a few pages to see the videos that show images of the posts, including timestamps. This reinforced by the notes on her video, in which she tells her viewers not to worry about the comments that will soon flood the channel, which means she either knows youtube is full of trolls or she willfully spammed 4chan to get her project attention from the seedier parts of the world.
http://youtu.be/OExCdOImmVA?t=10m55s
Tuned up to the only parts you need to see. I know that some escapists don't like seeing videos. But this likely is not enough, so i went into her comments & found the oldest hateful one. Unfortunately anything older than 3 weeks is not showing up. Dont ask me to go back, if i see that arrogant eye-roll once more i will stab myself in the throat. Its an extremely grating entrance to the video.

Well, that certainly convinces me that there's more to the conspiracy theory than /v/ and reddit T.Ting.

Clearly she must be some master social engineer to predict that youtube's community of whining children might take exception to an adult saying mean things about their video gaems, particularly an adult without a Y chromosome. With that level of sheer tactical genius, I'm surprised she's not running her own country by now.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Not really because it just feels like pandering.

I want to play female characters that command a bit of respect and are characters in their own right. It doesn't mean that they have to be ugly the two aren't mutually exclusive. Take Lara Croft for example she is quite an awesome character in her original games yet she quite clearly looks like she was designed as a sexual fantasy for men.

I think that men often think women want all video game characters to be fugly. We don't. We just want them to be more than a pair of tits. Because women are more than a pair of tits.

Sorry to interrupt, but that's not what I see people complaining about. I see people complaining about skimpy costumes and attractive curves, and very rarely do people actually take issue with the fact that often the writing is so bad to reaches the realms of sexism.

Anyway.

This is where interpretation becomes an issue, if a character is well rounded, well written and a decent portrayal of your average woman, but wears sexually provocative clothing, some people will call that sexist, others empowering. I personally will not consider a game sexist for having overly-simple and cliched portrayals of women if all the portrayals of male characters are also overly-simple and cliched, some will.

Also, considering western culture (and all other types of media) is obsessed with sex, sexual ideals, gender roles and judging people based on their gender, it's unreasonable to expect any more of video games, or to attempt to single it (or it's fans) out as sexist.

What really get's to me with all this "video games and the video gaming community are sexist" talk is that the femminist supporters just love to take the moral highground, and pretend they don't know the difference between malice and ignorance. To expect a 14 year old male teenager to understand how the world works is unreasonable, to expect a 14 year old male teenager to act mature in the face of somone who is attacking their favourite past-time in an unreasonable and antagonistic manner is just insanity.
To then make judgements on the gaming community as a whole, based on the reactions of some kids, is just depressing (which is what many people, even on these very forums, have been doing).

A couple of months ago I was firmly in the "video games are in general more sexist than other types of media" camp, but after researching it and reading many a debate on the issue over the past month or so. I can't help but think that videos games are no worse than any other type of media as a whole.
So while you can certainly say there is an element of sexism, it's the same element you find in any other type of media, the same element of sexism that works against men in many situations. An element of sexism that is ultimately harmless within the walls of fiction.

And if I was to write a list of all the problems facing the world today, fictional sexism (might be a poor choice of words but serves a poetic point) would be very close to the bottom, alongside limited wi-fi access.

No one said gaming is any worse than any other media.

It's pretty much what we are complaining about. Female characters are mostly there to be eye candy and not characters in themselves. That's the sexist part. The sad thing is this defensive backlash is not limited to 14 year olds. Go and look at the facebook answers to the video tropes vs moviebob there you will see grown men in university and various professions denying that women have a place in gaming and that we are 'trying to force our way in and ruin things'

The portrayal of women in video games only furthers this. They are there as a reward something to rescue, something that is pretty to look at. It teaches guys that women exist for them and this is why we see the trend of guys thinking women owe them something for being nice to them or even just playing a multiplayer game on the same server.

It's a whole mess of misogyny that needs to be untangled before video gaming can move forward.

The appearance thing is important because a lot of male gamers (I'm definitely in no way saying all) see women as a body. Just look at the guy who called Felicia Day a booth babe. He assumes that because she is a woman she got where she is because of her looks not because she is clever or witty. There is a thread on this very forum accusing a woman of attention seeking for daring to wear makeup while showing off her pc in a youtube video. This is a problem in nerd culture, a women's worth is their body. We are tits and ass and that's all we will ever be until something changes.

I guess we aren't allowed to solve any problem until we have solved world hunger by your rationale.

 

[BRex21]

Ivy has a rich backstory you just never bothered to learn it

You mean the "backstory" that consists of a couple of paragraphs that never make it into actual gameplay?

Yes, that pretty much sums up exactly the stuff you cut out of my quote. Of course it misses the part where i said its a genre thing because... oh hell im just going to do this:

Although if you are complaining about it not being clearly explained in gameplay that's really a genre issue though isn't it? In gameplay there is a complete lack of characterization beyond this is person X they are stereotype X. Its not a sex issue its all about genre.

Im also going to say that she has picked one of the companies with the best writing in one of the genres that allows for the most characterization and compared it to one genre that has virtually no in game characterization and some of the worst writing. This isn't comparing good female characters to bad ones this is comparing good characterization in general to crap. The problem isn't a lack of good female characterization its a lack of good characterization in general, with most characters being largely hollow shells that we are supposed to project onto.

She specifically trolled 4chan

[citation needed]

Seriously, I know /v/ really, really wants to believe this, but there's no convincing evidence it's the case.

Fortunately a few you-tubers captured the links which this guy specifically got off of her website http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OExCdOImmVA#t=633s
I don't specifically agree with the video, but its pretty obvious that posting something like that at a troll infested hellhole 15-20 minutes apart would be pretty convincing that she is spamming.

Oh Ivy yeah...the one who has stayed exactly the same age while the male characters have all aged around her...and only her boobs are shown on advertisements. I'm sure she's really there to be a rich and deep character.

So you think it's her fault that she was attacked for speaking her opinion and women should just keep their opinions to themselves or have to put up with endless and vicious harassment. Um..yeah..how about NO.

''Besides, by "relatively plain" you mean has it going on in the traditional sense don't you?'' I have no idea what you mean by that, seriously.

This wouldnt be the same game that showed a mans well defined glistening abs with some scarification for the promos of soul calibre 5? or traditionally puts well bemuscled guys onto the front of their game box? I'm aware its all pandering, but that is largely what media is.
And as for her harassment, some will always come when you express an opinion, look at The Amazing Atheist and find out how frequently he is called fat or told that he should die, look at ANY mens rights channel on youtube and you will see the same with people threatening, insulting the masculinity of and providing ad homonym attacks against the video poster. BUT what she specifically did was provoke as much as she could in order to garner the most hate speech, then, with a video that she is censoring the comments of, allowed it to be filled with the backlash. This provided her with something to cry about to allow a gaming press, eager to prove its pro-women, an opportunity to tell her side of the story.
The woman is a professional troll and has now made $160,000 dollars out of it.

[edit]

There's no reason to think that the women would be any worse off than the guys. I think everyone knows they have only been replaced because they wouldn't make good eye candy.

Aside from biology that is. Women are at a much greater risk of osteoporosis/osteoarthritis in there 40s face much greater rates of joint trouble doing similar workloads and recover slower and less completely than men once they get to about the mid 20s only facing more difficulty with age, This has to do with traits are passed down and survive through mate selection.
From an evolutionary standpoint men have always been the competitors needing to be stronger and more able to fight and survive while women tended to survive best through passivity, that's evolution for you.

 

[Kahunaburger]

[citation needed]

Seriously, I know /v/ really, really wants to believe this, but there's no convincing evidence it's the case.

Fortunately a few you-tubers captured the links which this guy specifically got off of her website http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OExCdOImmVA#t=633s
I don't specifically agree with the video, but its pretty obvious that posting something like that at a troll infested hellhole 15-20 minutes apart would be pretty convincing that she is spamming.

So does this guy not know how posting on 4chan works, or does he think the rest of us don't know how posting on 4chan works? Or both?

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

From an evolutionary standpoint men have always been the competitors needing to be stronger and more able to fight and survive while women tended to survive best through passivity, that's evolution for you.

If you actually think that is the reason I think you are kidding yourself. There is no reason to think an athletic woman would be any worse than a guy in that situation.

Men have physical problems as they get older too. But that's besides the point since there's only once aspect of biology the devs were considering and it involves jiggle physics.

 

[BRex21]

[citation needed]

Seriously, I know /v/ really, really wants to believe this, but there's no convincing evidence it's the case.

Fortunately a few you-tubers captured the links which this guy specifically got off of her website http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OExCdOImmVA#t=633s
I don't specifically agree with the video, but its pretty obvious that posting something like that at a troll infested hellhole 15-20 minutes apart would be pretty convincing that she is spamming.

So does this guy not know how posting on 4chan works, or does he think the rest of us don't know how posting on 4chan works? Or both?

I actually don't use 4chan, i'm simply reading the time stamps on it and the ones in her post are often withing 15-20 minutes of each other. I apologize if i missed something but it does not change that fact that you could literally find, in the 15 pages of 4chan, that there were pages largely dedicated to tropes V women, and that i have seen multiple people talking about her spamming them with screen shots to back it up.

However here:

Clearly she must be some master social engineer to predict that youtube's community of whining children might take exception to an adult saying mean things about their video gaems, particularly an adult without a Y chromosome. With that level of sheer tactical genius, I'm surprised she's not running her own country by now.

you seem to have missed the whole point of the conversation. That Anita Sarkeesian engineered her own victim hood by ensuring that as many trolls as she could find would know exactly where she was.

 

[Kahunaburger]

From an evolutionary standpoint men have always been the competitors needing to be stronger and more able to fight and survive while women tended to survive best through passivity, that's evolution for you.

Ahahahahahahaha I didn't even see this. Do us all a favor and read up on hunter-gatherer societies before you try to whip out the

 

[Kahunaburger]

I actually don't use 4chan, i'm simply reading the time stamps on it and the ones in her post are often withing 15-20 minutes of each other.

Wow, almost as if there are some obsessed ppl on 4chan?

I apologize if i missed something but it does not change that fact that you could literally find, in the 15 pages of 4chan, that there were pages largely dedicated to tropes V women, and that i have seen multiple people talking about her spamming them with screen shots to back it up.

Yeah, because /v/ is 100% factual and 0% rumor mill.

 

[CaptainChip]

[citation needed]

Seriously, I know /v/ really, really wants to believe this, but there's no convincing evidence it's the case.

Fortunately a few you-tubers captured the links which this guy specifically got off of her website http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OExCdOImmVA#t=633s
I don't specifically agree with the video, but its pretty obvious that posting something like that at a troll infested hellhole 15-20 minutes apart would be pretty convincing that she is spamming.

So does this guy not know how posting on 4chan works, or does he think the rest of us don't know how posting on 4chan works? Or both?

I go on 4chan, and no, those posts aren't how it works.

Trolls normally keep to their own boards because off topic threads normally get sage or ignored due to nobody caring about the topic they troll about.

If you noticed in the video, the spammers post on multiple boards. Including the cosplay board.

Also, been watching these threads for a while now, love your gratuitous usage of ad hominems, strawmans, and just general saying the other person is wrong without providing proof in return.

EDIT

I apologize if i missed something but it does not change that fact that you could literally find, in the 15 pages of 4chan, that there were pages largely dedicated to tropes V women, and that i have seen multiple people talking about her spamming them with screen shots to back it up.

Yeah, because /v/ is 100% factual and 0% rumor mill.

Yes, becuase every single thing from /v/ is a lie and not even screenshots are true.

 

[BRex21]

From an evolutionary standpoint men have always been the competitors needing to be stronger and more able to fight and survive while women tended to survive best through passivity, that's evolution for you.

If you actually think that is the reason I think you are kidding yourself. There is no reason to think an athletic woman would be any worse than a guy in that situation.

Men have physical problems as they get older too. But that's besides the point since there's only once aspect of biology the devs were considering and it involves jiggle physics.

Nice work butchering up the post, which was an offside comment because you said something patently false and I called you on it. Since women lose bone density, joint cohesion and muscle tone at a faster rate then men women aging would be at a disadvantage.
I agree men can age while women can't. However the same could be said for the real dating world. Salt and pepper hair is seen as an attractive trait to most women, it could simply be called objectifying men with traditionally sexually attractive appearance.
However i also assume you are simply trying to construct a strawman as you could not argue that they don't try to push traditional sexually attractive features of men to similar degrees to women or that you are attempting to argue that a poorly written game demonstrates sexism with poorly written characters, while a well written game dosn't because it is well written.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Also, been watching these threads for a while now, love your gratuitous usage of ad hominems, strawmans, and just general saying the other person is wrong without providing proof in return.

So you came here to make accusations of logical fallacy that you don't actually back up? Welcome to the Escapist. You may notice a slight difference between what is considered a good argument here and what is considered a good argument on 4chan.

 

[subtlefuge]

I'm convinced that no matter who the person is, the more press you give them, the more successful they will be. She doesn't bring enough value to the table for what she got paid, but creating a game where you assault her doesn't exactly communicate the message properly. Also it accomplishes so much the opposite of what is intended, that you could even think that it's all a big scam to promote Tropes v. Women.

 

[BRex21]

From an evolutionary standpoint men have always been the competitors needing to be stronger and more able to fight and survive while women tended to survive best through passivity, that's evolution for you.

Ahahahahahahaha I didn't even see this. Do us all a favor and read up on hunter-gatherer societies before you try to whip out the

While i was specifically talking about mating behaviour, where men compete amongst each other for women providing mates only for physically superior males, while females were more likely to pass on their genes though non-confrontation. From the abstract of this report:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231.pdf

The Time To the Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) based on human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is estimated
to be twice that based on the non-recombining part of the Y chromosome (NRY). These TMRCAs have special
demographic implications because mtDNA is transmitted only from mother to child, while NRY is passed along from
father to son. Therefore, the former locus reflects female history, and the latter, male history. To investigate what
caused the two-to-one female-male TMRCA ratio rF=M = TF=TM in humans, we develop a forward-looking agentbased
model (ABM) with overlapping generations.

Our results support the view that we are descended from males who were successful
in a highly competitive context, while females were facing a much smaller female-female competition.

However if you want to go about this in the sense of hunter gatherers...
While some people maintain that neanderthals were simply dumber, it i commonly accepted that they died out due to applying a egalitarian division of labour that could not compete with the gender roles of modern humans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/science/05nean.html?ex=1322974800&en=8035324427fdde48&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Basically a woman staying home not only provided for better protection of the fertile wombs and offspring, but allowed them to perform tasks to better aid men in the dangerous tasks of hunting large game.

 

[Brad Shepard]

I love how creative people can be on the internet, and is this really news worthy? Does this woman need MORE news about her?

 

[BRex21]

Wow, almost as if there are some obsessed ppl on 4chan?

Fortunately a few you-tubers captured the links which this guy specifically got off of her website

Hang on ill fix this for you.

Wow, almost as if there are some obsessed ppl on 4chan who specifically advertise their actions on a page run by Anita Sarkeesian and her friends.

seriously, its like the only argument you can come up with is Nuh Uh.

 

[Xan Krieger]

I'm trying to find the game but it's on no other sites . Can't really judge it if I can't even play it.
OT: This is no different than the usual beat up the president game that comes out whenver people hate the president.

 

[CaptainChip]

Also, been watching these threads for a while now, love your gratuitous usage of ad hominems, strawmans, and just general saying the other person is wrong without providing proof in return.

So you came here to make accusations of logical fallacy that you don't actually back up? Welcome to the Escapist. You may notice a slight difference between what is considered a good argument here and what is considered a good argument on 4chan.

Well how about this one: Moving the Goalpost fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts

You asked for evidence that Anita's group spammed 4chan. People posted screenshots of said spamming. You say, "Nope, not good enough, it's obviously just how 4chan works", making a faulty generalization about it's users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization

And that's just from your last few posts alone. So, continue. Tell us how Anita's fans did not spam 4chan.

captcha: face to face

 

[Kahunaburger]

From an evolutionary standpoint men have always been the competitors needing to be stronger and more able to fight and survive while women tended to survive best through passivity, that's evolution for you.

Ahahahahahahaha I didn't even see this. Do us all a favor and read up on hunter-gatherer societies before you try to whip out the

While i was specifically talking about mating behaviour, where men compete amongst each other for women providing mates only for physically superior males, while females were more likely to pass on their genes though non-confrontation. From the abstract of this report:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1203.6231.pdf

The Time To the Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) based on human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is estimated
to be twice that based on the non-recombining part of the Y chromosome (NRY). These TMRCAs have special
demographic implications because mtDNA is transmitted only from mother to child, while NRY is passed along from
father to son. Therefore, the former locus reflects female history, and the latter, male history. To investigate what
caused the two-to-one female-male TMRCA ratio rF=M = TF=TM in humans, we develop a forward-looking agentbased
model (ABM) with overlapping generations.

Our results support the view that we are descended from males who were successful
in a highly competitive context, while females were facing a much smaller female-female competition.

That's much better. The correct conclusion to draw from the study is not, however, that one gender is the "active" gender and the other gender is the "passive" gender. It's more that men have historically had a higher attrition rate than women. Which we pretty much already knew. It's important not to extrapolate conclusions from these studies that are not supported by the evidence.

However if you want to go about this in the sense of hunter gatherers...
While some people maintain that neanderthals were simply dumber, it i commonly accepted that they died out due to applying a egalitarian division of labour that could not compete with the gender roles of modern humans:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/science/05nean.html?ex=1322974800&en=8035324427fdde48&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Basically a woman staying home not only provided for better protection of the fertile wombs and offspring, but allowed them to perform tasks to better aid men in the dangerous tasks of hunting large game.

Honestly, I was not impressed by the analysis in that article. We have better information than that re: how Homo Sapiens Sapiens operates in a hunter-gatherer environment, and most such hunter-gatherer societies tend to have a significantly less absolute division of labor than the article implies.