Jimquisition: Objectification And... Men?
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
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Is that Jay from Modern Family on the left? Damn, he was pretty good looking when he was younger. Still kind of is now.DVS BSTrD said:
OT: I agree with everything that was said but it's all been said before really. If something new was added this time, it'd be interesting but it really was like listening to the same old argument again just with different examples.
I registered here just to give you kudos on this post. I was thinking the exact same thing listening to Jim. I often really like Jim, but he was off his mark for focusing to narrowly here. Men sexually objectify women. Society objectifies men's lives. I mean, we can get into the whole disposable male theory another time, but when you boil it down this certainly at least holds true in games.PrarieDog_319 said:
I mean, my character in Fallout NV flirted with Cass, but he slaughtered men by the hundreds. Perhaps the Dead or Alive or Gears of War titles don't properly illustrate this, but I find it laughable to say "games don't objectify men" when every RTS game ever made has purposefully disposable male infantry. In fact, in Red Alert 2 (without counting YR and the Virus), the only female characters were either secretaries who never fought (like Sofia and Eva), or the Hero unit Tanya who got more screentime than the president. Female voice actors are only used for the hover transport units. Essentially, the only 'girl' units you have are so valuable, like Tanya, that you don't want to loose them, or non-combatants that have a use that makes them important to keep alive, like the transports. The ho-hum army of waves of infantry to throw at your enemy, and paper thin tanks are all voiced by men.
I mean sure, maybe it's still all related back to male power fantasies, that we want our women as sexual objectives, but men are objectified to an even more perverse degree, they're not objectives, they're objects, a means to an end.
Just read the wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification
Females are treated, in games at least, with denial of autonomy, ownership, fungibility and denial of subjectivity, but males get much the same treatment, but atop that are subject to extreme violability and instrumentality.
That's the point of fantasy, though. Not all games do this depending on what they are of course, but in some, a busty, sexy female character or being a perfect looking guy that can do damn near anything is just nice to imagine. Games are ment to get away from reality.Imp Emissary said:No one is evil for liking or hating these characters. The only bad thing about them is that they are used too much.Nurb said:In video games, both are equally objectified in the sense male and female game characters are objects that do what we want for our entertainment and fantasies, whatever they may be because it's fictional escapism.
Women are pretty and nice to look at, and men are fodder for the player to wade through with any given weapon weilded by a perfect looking protagonist. Men are not evil for enjoying sexualized fictional characters, nor are we evil for enjoying laying waste to thousands of enemies that want to stop our character.
Now please, no more forced gender debates!
As for the "male, female, at the end of the day, we're just a bunch of dang avatars made of bits and polygons", while true, the problem is more with the art(how the characters look), and the story(how the characters act).
Things that are not always in control of the player.
Also, that is a cute cat(picture and your avatar).
You may like this user group: Catoholics anonymous. If you are in already, sorry, I didn't see your name when I looked at the members list.
Though there's also this false presumption that because men enjoy video games in a larger number than women, it must be because developers and gamers are actively trying to keep women out of the hobby, which just isn't true. We're talking demographics, and some things appeal to some people more than others for whatever reason. Just as there's not a huge number of guys into romance novels, and it's not that authors and fans want are trying to keep guys from young guys from reading them and why "But vampires don't sparkle!" falls on the deaf ears of fans and Twilight Moms. XD
and if you're on the internet you're suppost to like cats. It's a rule I think.
I hope you're right but XSEED/Marvelous said last week that due to recent events, the games will be a lot harder to promote without crys of sexism. I think they're telling the truth. But it could be a publicity stunt(which I'm hoping it is). Either way, this topic needs to stop for awhile.Holythirteen said:
I don't fully agree with Jim here, what is this "idealized" thing he keeps raving about? What kind of ideals Markus Phoenix and Kratos promote? Giving zero fucks about anything, being ripped beyond belief and killing first - asking questions later?
If that really is the "ideal" man, then why can't we say that a huge breasted happy go lucky character (obviously objectified) is the ideal female too?
If that really is the "ideal" man, then why can't we say that a huge breasted happy go lucky character (obviously objectified) is the ideal female too?
if they stopped making guys look like 200lb wrecking machines with chins that could split atoms, and chainsaw Dicks, and actually developed character designs on real internal structures, characters wouldnt get so much flak for being objectified.
People are objects. Look up the definition of the word object:
Women often take offense to being "treated like a piece of meat." Whenever I hear that I think to myself that I'd like to open one up and show them what they're really made of.
The superstitious myth that man is somehow Something Moar is a throwback to the days when invisible, bearded sky giants comprised valid explanations for lightning and agriculture. That shit doesn't fly anymore, and everything we know about reality strongly implies that humans are self-aware, organic computers. Decent ones, but still just computers. So yeah, objects. Although I doubt computers would confuse themselves for anything more than that so, limited power notwithstanding, they may still be ahead of you.
Women often take offense to being "treated like a piece of meat." Whenever I hear that I think to myself that I'd like to open one up and show them what they're really made of.
Heh, it's okay--she didn't need it anyway.Ukomba said:
I'll just leave this here.PeterMerkin69 said:
At times Patrice O'neal would encourage people to call out to the stage in order to set up a punchline. "Ladies, how would you keep your man if you lost your vagina?," O'neal would ask of his audience. When the women would invariably reference oral and anal sex, the comedian would respond, "See, I gave you the chance to talk and you qualified yourself as a series of holes."
That makes the very large assumption women think like men. Most women I know find a well dressed man more attractive than a naked one. A naked man can be more threatening to women than a dressed one.ElinHime said:
That clip is more homosexual fanservice than female. Male objectification from a man's thought process. In the same way two naked women making out is male fan service and not lesbian fan service.
You know, I was going to come in here and write like a paragraph on why it's still objectification, and the argument made by people with working brains was that if we're going to talk about objectification in video games, it should be about the objectification (not necessarily sexual) of both genders, not that "They're both equal so there's no problem", which actually seemed to be shoehorned in there pretty clumsily. But this guy, this guy here, nailed it. Well done sir. Well done.PrarieDog_319 said:
Jim, I've gotta say I disagree with you this week, and a lot of that is because you've sort of straw man'd (totally a word) and entire argument using one NeoGAF user. Men are objectified. It doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about women being objectified, and implying that people who say the former usually say the latter is just weak. If you're going to argue against a point of view, you have to argue against where the view is strongest, otherwise there's no point.
I do, for one.Karadalis said:
I like characters who look like they have history behind them, wrinkles, untidy hair, tattoos, scars, etc.
I like playing mage/scientist characters who pay no attention to their appearance and who can be more unique-looking than the standard female character I get in everything.
But way too often, I can't even choose not to give my female character huge boobs...
At one of my Dragon Age origins playthroughs I made my female character as ugly on purpose as I could, looking like she had had her face smashed in, and that she was angry all the time, and then played her as a total brute who had the IQ of a toddler but was some kind of a fighting-savant.
Don't ever ask him to scratch your back then. Razor sharp nails plus super human strength? OUCH!JediMB said:As I recall, Clark shaved with his own fingernails in Smallville.1337mokro said:We have solved one of the greatest mysteries in the world! Now for the other one.Orekoya said:There you go.1337mokro said:Can Superman's powers harm himself? His hair is basically indestructible if not he'd have his glorious mullet burned of every single time a heat based enemy was encountered. So why should there be an exception for his own heat vision which still works on the same principles and does not seem to be all that strong, compared to other heat powers in the same universe.Clovus said:Like, maybe he just uses his breath to freeze his own leg and then just brushes them off. Or maybe he just, like, burns them off with this eyes.1337mokro said:Question!!! Why does Superman shave his legs? HOW does Superman shave his legs? I mean Greenlantern I can get, Human with alien technology. How does Superman manage though? Industrial strength polymer leg waxing?Ashoten said:I have heard this argument before when people talk about comic book women being objectified. This is the best response I have seen.
Make of it what you will.
Kryptonite razorblades?
Why DID he shave his legs?
I can only imagine that he trims those, in turn, with his teeth.
Being a Kryptonian god sure makes these things complicated.
Considering Brienne herself pretty much tries to not be female as much as she's capable of doing so, I'm not sure that's the case.Mr F. said:
Maybe I misread, but from what I remember of the story Bri pretty much would be a male character with a female skin if she were in a video game. It's what she'd try to be at the very least.
Is this from the Hawkeye(guy) Initiative?Ashoten said:I have heard this argument before when people talk about comic book women being objectified. This is the best response I have seen.
Make of it what you will.