Poll: (Another) feminism discussion

[BloatedGuppy]

Is it? There are bigger issues, surely. Putting these problems in some kind of perspective might be valuable.

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

The fact there are bigger issues is utterly irrelevant as to whether or not this particular issue is worth addressing.

Arguments get judged individually based on their own merits. They are not ranked in a global hierarchy according to their significance.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Personally i think a lot of the male side of "omg games are sexist" is just poorly masked white-knighting. There will always be a certain air of sexism, as there will always be an air of racism until somehow the ability to be ignorant somehow is phased out. In other words, not in our lifetime. And its not so bad as people make it out to be, just highly visual because for some reason gender, sexual orientation and race all seem to be somehow a major issue. I agree there are some unfair things in this world, and they all stack up between those big three, but life doesn't give out guarantees of fairness either.
Should it be addressed? Yes it should, but at the same time realize how far we've come in the last century or so in those relations. Are we at an end point? No and we probably never will be. But things aren't as bad as some people would want you to believe.
A little background info, my mother is a hard working businesswoman who is extremely successful in real estate. I have never known her to cook a meal (she burned water on the stove the one time I remember her trying), whereas my father does the cooking. He is also a professional and owns his own business, also in real estate (appraisals). I rarely saw my mother growing up because she worked so damn hard. But she always made time for me. In short, I see her as the pinnacle of what I feel feminism is really about. She succeeded at what she wanted to do in life, and continues to succeed at anything she puts her mind to. Oh yeah, and she started out a model and extra in 80's films. She came a long way from what she started as, and as far as I can tell she broke the glass ceiling with little effort. And she still has many women tropes that can be attributed to her.
There's more to that, but I think my main point is that for every Anna Nicole Smith, there's a handful of women like my mom. I think people these days are so ingrained to looking for the bad that the good is so far overlooked they end of staring at the backs of their own heads.
Figure it out.

 

[BNguyen]

I still don't have a fucking clue what the issue is here. Why do people care so much about the artstyle in these games? How does it possibly affect anyone negatively at all?

Frankly anyone who seriously finds this kind of thing offensive needs to fucking reconsider their priorities in life.

Exactly, I want to know why people think that somebody's art somehow ingrains into the psyche of certain people to behave a certain way. These people are not hypnotizing you into acting against others, if somebody is sexist, it is because of their personal views which stem from their own upbringing which further comes from the part of the world and the culture that they come from. Of course people can choose whether or not to follow those cultural rules. But isolated incidents like Dragon's Crown do not make men mysoginistic.
Is it wrong that the creator decided to excentuate the features of the mage the way he did? Maybe, but he has every right to have developed his work in that fashion. We have every right to criticize him for his work but at the same time, he has the right to ignore it.
Something being considered sexist is all relative, and somebody's views on something being sexist stems from their choices and views in life, and at the same time, those views might be a little much.
Much of what I've heard Anita says points to how she thinks women can't decide things for themselves and that their actions are defined by what men tell them to do. Anita implies that a lot of women are just puppets and that is by far much more sexist than many of the games that she's reviewed. (Note that this view was taken from watching her Damsel in Distress video about the main characters saving the female character from themselves after having become monsters)

EDIT: and if sexualized images in video games are some of the biggest problems that people in First World countries can find then they seriously need to take a good look at what's been going on in the world

EDIT2: everything should be equally be portrayed, both good and bad, sexist or not - when we start censoring things, it wouldn't be long before others try to censor things they don't like, and when that day comes, the minority groups will be deciding what's best for the majority and the majority will have no choice but to go along with it because it'll be considered anti(insert group here) to fight back.
Maybe that view is a little extreme, but people are already trying to do this - think the PETA group or the anti-smoking group - a vocal minority trying to use legislation to enforce their views onto others even though their work or data is falsified for the sole purpose to paint their issues in a darker light

 

[wulf3n]

I guess it really depends on things yet to be proven, and how you define "problem."

Issues of sexism/objectification/misogyny work on the premise that the depictions of women in games are harmful to society, as it promotes real sexism/objectification/misogyny. However if that's true then I'd be more worried about the +30 million COD/BF players that are going to be murdering Russians and Muslims.

If we believe that the average "gamer" can recognize the difference between fantasy and reality, then it falls more into the category of a first world problem.

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Before I'm accused of posting off topic, that's where it comes down. We can't solve issues like misrepresentation in video games, of all things, with shouting and labels and defamation; we have to convince both women to push down those career paths, and men to reach out in their minds and try a different approach every so often. Asking to take away things like fanservice and the like aren't going to do anything positive- it'll just cause a backlash and the void of more substantial content will still be there. But if we take it as a challenge and encourage people to put their creative powers to the problem, I think we could see a very positive shift that offers new experiences, but doesn't deprive anybody.

This, entirely.

There is an issue with sexism, but it's more about societal preconceptions and cannot be solved by simply demanding game developers to stop putting sexualized women in their games.

 

[The_Echo]

I... I honestly don't think there's a problem. Like, at all.

You want a more "female friendly" games industry? Well then get more females in on it.

And that's all I have to say about that, really. I prefer to have fun playing my games, rather than get myself all upset over the gender politics behind them.

 

[Voulan]

Also, telling people to effectively get over it is incredibly rude and bigoted. You are a male that gets pandered to, so of course you have no issues with it - but about about women like me?

Is it? There are bigger issues, surely. Putting these problems in some kind of perspective might be valuable.

And ya know, males and females aren't distinct homogenous masses that get 'pandered to'. Tastes vary (certainly I don't feel my own tastes are pandered to). You're assuming a lot. There are markets, and there are products that appeal to them, and there are individual developers driving things; there's not actually a big oppressive pandering machine that's out to ignore your feels or anything.

Personally, I'd like more hawt males and ugly females in my games. But this is a minority view, unfortunately.

Cheers!

Of course there are bigger issues, but that doesn't deminish this one. And we are discussing it here, so of course I'll be a little hostile towards having the issue dismissed on some arbitrary scale of 'what problem deserves addressing'. Not that I'm angry or offended, I understand it's difficult to sympathise all the time.

Still, you can hardly argue that gigantic bouncing breasts or ridiculously impractical bikini armour are meant to attract women to these games. I'm not saying every game ever is to appeal to everyone (that would be stupid and an impossible request) and nor am I saying there should never be fan service ever again. But certainly games and other media are designed towards a certain demographic, and when there's painfully few examples of good female characters it's just dreadful.

 

[NoeL]

There is some sexism in games, but not a lot.

If a developer fills their game with tits because they like tits, that's not sexism.
If a developer fills their game with tits because they're targeting males as their primary demographic, that's not sexism.
If a developer fills their game with tits because they don't consider female gamers at all, that is sexism.

Scratch that - there's plenty of sexism in games. Want to know what changed my mind?

Racism.

If there's a game (or movie, book, tv show, cartoon, whatever) that portrays a black person as a bumbling fat-lipped servant we don't care if the creator likes portraying blacks that way or is catering primarily to whites - we call it for what it is: racism. So how is it any different for a creator portraying women as busty, lusty pinup girls - a stereotype of their ideal woman that isn't exactly looked favourably upon by actual women? If there's a distinction there, I'm not seeing it.

So yeah, I guess the game industry (and comic industry, and much of pop culture in general) is quite sexist.


EDIT: Oh, and there's definitely an issue with sexism among gamers - possibly more so than the industry itself.

 

[wulf3n]

If there's a game (or movie, book, tv show, cartoon, whatever) that portrays a black person as a bumbling fat-lipped servant we don't care if the creator likes portraying blacks that way or is catering primarily to whites - we call it for what it is: racism.

Not exactly a great source of "evidence" but:

Google: Deus Ex Racist - 272,000 results.
Google: Dragons Crown Sexist - 642,000 results.

It would seem people get upset less over racism than sexism.

edit: Also I think it does a disservice to both issues to truly consider Racism and Fan-Service Sexism as equivalent.

 

[Lieju]

I still don't have a fucking clue what the issue is here. Why do people care so much about the artstyle in these games? How does it possibly affect anyone negatively at all?

Frankly anyone who seriously finds this kind of thing offensive needs to fucking reconsider their priorities in life.

So, when Yahtzee or anyone else criticises the modern shooters for being too grey and brown, do you say the same thing?

Art-style is a part of the game, why should it be immune of criticism?

 

[Hagi]

I'd say you can roughly divide game characters up in three categories:

- Story characters, which are overall rare but don't really seem to suffer from this issue so much since the games that do provide them generally have a healthy mix of genders.

- Cool characters, where most characters fall into. Pretty much any character who mainly fulfills the role of being/looking awesome. They might have secondary roles in a story or being sexy, but they're mostly there to be awesome. I think female characters are seriously underrepresented in this one.

- Sexy characters. Characters whose main or sole purpose is eye-candy. Characters both cool and sexy would still fall into this category if most people not directly attracted to them find them awkward at best, meaning any coolness is completely dependent on their sexiness. I think female characters in this category are just fine, it's the men that are seriously underrepresented here. As Cookie puts it:

Games don't need less fanservice, they need more MANSERVICE!

So yeah, we need more cool female characters whose coolness is completely unrelated to any sexiness they may or may not possess and we need more male eye-candy, to the point where they make anyone not attracted to men feel awkward playing the games involving them.

I personally don't see any problems with female eye-candy or heavily sexualized fictional characters whose sole purpose is to titillate those attracted to them.

 

[NoeL]

It would seem people get upset less over racism than sexism.

Uh, no - only that the issue of sexism in Dragon's Crown is a more popular talking point than racism in Deus Ex. But like you said, it's bad "evidence". I also have no idea how it's relevant to what I said, so you might need to elaborate.

edit: Also I think it does a disservice to both issues to truly consider Racism and Fan-Service Sexism as equivalent.

Why?

You also seem to think that 'fan-service racism' was never a thing, which I highly doubt. Consider characters like the crows from Dumbo, or even Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. I think it's less likely the creators (and most viewers for that matter) were racist pricks and more likely they were fans of that 'art style' (i.e. how blacks had commonly been portrayed in animation and other media).

 

[SillyBear]

snippyity ddo

Have you noticed that you haven't once, in your entire post, given a reference to an actual problem? You've been going on and on about how "sexualising" women is bad - yet you haven't given us a reason why it is bad.

Seriously, why is it bad? How is it negatively affecting society? I don't want to hear more vague confused rhetoric, I want to see specific examples of how society is suffering because of this.

 

[wulf3n]

Uh, no - only that the issue of sexism in Dragon's Crown is a more popular talking point than racism in Deus Ex. But like you said, it's bad "evidence". I also have no idea how it's relevant to what I said, so you might need to elaborate.

It was a case of yes we call racism in games racism but few seem to actually care. I just can't think of anything that would actually prove that position.

edit: So the idea that we don't allow racism because its bad so we shouldn't allow sexism, only works if one considers Racism in games to be an issue we avoid.

What I was trying to show is that Racism is still in games, yet most don't care, so why does everyone get so upset over sexism.

Why?

You also seem to think that 'fan-service racism' was never a thing, which I highly doubt. Consider characters like the crows from Dumbo, or even Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. I think it's less likely the creators (and most viewers for that matter) were racist pricks and more likely they were fans of that 'art style' (i.e. how blacks had commonly been portrayed in animation and other media).

Fan-service, at least how I come to understand it, is the appeal to simple sexual gratification, a base instinct inherent in most people.

I guess it's the idea of lumping malicious intent with that which isn't malicious and not necessarily a choice.

It comes off as extremist, and does more to turn people against the position out of principle [or self defence] even when they don't necessarily disagree with it.

 

[Abomination]

Every single fucking female character ever either being ridiculously sexualized and/or kidnapped? Yeah, yeah... that's a problem.

But... not every single female character is ridiculously sexualized and/or kidnapped...

So there's no problem! Hooray! We solved gender equality in games!

I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point here or if you're just being cute.

No, not every female character is sexualized or victimized, but you have to search pretty bloody hard to find the ones that aren't.

Well, I could always argue that culture begets art, not the other way around... but we'd all be going over old territory again and again.

I just find it unfair that Dragons Crown is being lambasted because of the culture of the medium it exists in rather than because the game portrays women in a negative manner.

Being sexual is not a bad thing... it's just a thing. It's the opposite of being chaste - which is neither a good thing or a bad thing.

 

[wizzy555]

There is some sexism in games, but not a lot.

If a developer fills their game with tits because they like tits, that's not sexism.
If a developer fills their game with tits because they're targeting males as their primary demographic, that's not sexism.
If a developer fills their game with tits because they don't consider female gamers at all, that is sexism.

Scratch that - there's plenty of sexism in games. Want to know what changed my mind?

Racism.

If there's a game (or movie, book, tv show, cartoon, whatever) that portrays a black person as a bumbling fat-lipped servant we don't care if the creator likes portraying blacks that way or is catering primarily to whites - we call it for what it is: racism. So how is it any different for a creator portraying women as busty, lusty pinup girls - a stereotype of their ideal woman that isn't exactly looked favourably upon by actual women? If there's a distinction there, I'm not seeing it.

So yeah, I guess the game industry (and comic industry, and much of pop culture in general) is quite sexist.


EDIT: Oh, and there's definitely an issue with sexism among gamers - possibly more so than the industry itself.

There is something of a distinction, most males are sexual (and heterosexual) and thus sexy women is targeting that. Adding bumbling black people to a game probably isn't going to draw in attentional whites - the outright racist demographic isn't that high.

On another question, how much nerd stuff is actually marketed to ethnic minorities (that's the PC term in my country I believe) anyway? I mean the avengers had Samuel L Jackson, but he's universally loved at this stage. Did they add anything to get the black or Hispanic or Asian audiences specifically?

If this idea of sexism is only targeting one gender, then not only are a lot of things sexist (even outside of video games - make up/clothes companies). It means a lot of things are racist too.

 

[Dr. Crawver]

There is some sexism in games, but not a lot.

If a developer fills their game with tits because they like tits, that's not sexism.
If a developer fills their game with tits because they're targeting males as their primary demographic, that's not sexism.
If a developer fills their game with tits because they don't consider female gamers at all, that is sexism.

Scratch that - there's plenty of sexism in games. Want to know what changed my mind?

Racism.

If there's a game (or movie, book, tv show, cartoon, whatever) that portrays a black person as a bumbling fat-lipped servant we don't care if the creator likes portraying blacks that way or is catering primarily to whites - we call it for what it is: racism. So how is it any different for a creator portraying women as busty, lusty pinup girls - a stereotype of their ideal woman that isn't exactly looked favourably upon by actual women? If there's a distinction there, I'm not seeing it.

So yeah, I guess the game industry (and comic industry, and much of pop culture in general) is quite sexist.


EDIT: Oh, and there's definitely an issue with sexism among gamers - possibly more so than the industry itself.

Huh, I had never thought of it from that angle. Not a bad thought of why is portraying one in such a stereotypical light racist, while another not a problem?

I've been on the side of sexism being a problem in games, but this line of though I'd never considered before, so good spot if nothing else.

 

[OneCatch]

If there's a game (or movie, book, tv show, cartoon, whatever) that portrays a black person as a bumbling fat-lipped servant we don't care if the creator likes portraying blacks that way or is catering primarily to whites - we call it for what it is: racism. So how is it any different for a creator portraying women as busty, lusty pinup girls - a stereotype of their ideal woman that isn't exactly looked favourably upon by actual women? If there's a distinction there, I'm not seeing it.

That's possibly the most elegantly I've actually seen the distinction put.

I think the practical difference is that such portrayals of black people is almost universally reviled, certainly in this internet community.
I don't think we've hit that critical mass when it comes to sexism yet. But it'll happen sooner or later.

Also, this :

It's not the specific examples that are the problem. It's the trend that is a problem.
A female character being kidnapped then rescued by a guy? Not a problem. Female characters in Dragon's Crown being ridiculously sexualized? Not a problem.
Every single fucking female character ever either being ridiculously sexualized and/or kidnapped? Yeah, yeah... that's a problem.

Obviously game developers have a right to create whatever the hell they want, but that doesn't mean that we can't bemoan the tendency towards a lack of meaningful female representation across the spectrum of gaming.
It's the same as me enjoying World War Z (yeah I went there), but getting pissed off about too many summer blockbusters in general. Or liking Disturbed, but getting vaguely irritated at the Nu Metal scene on the whole.

 

[NoeL]

Uh, no - only that the issue of sexism in Dragon's Crown is a more popular talking point than racism in Deus Ex. But like you said, it's bad "evidence". I also have no idea how it's relevant to what I said, so you might need to elaborate.

It was a case of yes we call racism in games racism but few seem to actually care. I just can't think of anything that would actually prove that position.

edit: So the idea that we don't allow racism because its bad so we shouldn't allow sexism, only works if one considers Racism in games to be an issue we avoid.

What I was trying to show is that Racism is still in games, yet most don't care, so why does everyone get so upset over sexism.

Not being a popular talking point doesn't necessarily mean that people don't care. I think you're drawing completely the wrong conclusions there. I would argue the simple fact that racism is far less blatant and commonplace in the industry today as reason for why it's not talked about as much as sexism.

Why?

You also seem to think that 'fan-service racism' was never a thing, which I highly doubt. Consider characters like the crows from Dumbo, or even Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs. I think it's less likely the creators (and most viewers for that matter) were racist pricks and more likely they were fans of that 'art style' (i.e. how blacks had commonly been portrayed in animation and other media).

Fan-service, at least how I come to understand it, is the appeal to simple sexual gratification, a base instinct inherent in most people.

I guess it's the idea of lumping malicious intent with that which isn't malicious and not necessarily a choice.

It comes off as extremist, and does more to turn people against the position out of principle [or self defence] even when they don't necessarily disagree with it.

Fan service applies to all gratuity, not just tits and ass. Having C-3PO in The Phantom Menace was fan service: he was retconned into Anakin's pet project just so fans of the originals can scream "OMG IT'S C-3PO!!!". His presence was merely to serve the fans, hence 'fan service'.

Secondly, appealing to a "base instinct" is a naturalistic fallacy. We also have a base instinct to serve the in-group at the expense of the out-group (protects the tribe/our genes), and racism is a natural extension of that. It was only once we recognised that our base instinct had led us to behave poorly that we began actively seeking to redirect those instincts in a more productive manner. If there's an inherent problem with depicting female characters as little more than eye candy (which many would argue there is) then we have a moral duty to address that "base instinct".

Thirdly, there was no malicious intent with Coal Black, yet we still identify it as racist and have actively censored it because so.

Fourthly, what comes off as extremist? Calling something you perceive to be sexist 'sexist'? I understand your concern, but I think it's a big step backwards not to call a duck a duck just because there are people that aggressively disagree. Those people will always exist, but have to be overcome if you want any kind of progress on the issue.