PhiMed said:
MysticSlayer said:
PhiMed said:
She does totally say that, by the way. She HEAVILY implies, citing studies with MULTIPLE issues with them, that viewing "heavily sexualized images" causes people to be more likely to believe ideas which would make them more likely to agree with rape apologists or perpetrate violence against women.
I've already pointed out that believing rape myths is not the same as rape. I've also pointed out that being more accepting of sexual harassment is not the same as perpetrating violence. And if it is so heavily implied, then why hasn't anyone actually bothered to show the connection that is apparently flying over so many people's head?
Except my post wasn't claiming that believing rape myths was the same as rape.
Sorry, but those two have been linked way too many times, including, I'm assuming, in the OP, which is what I was responding to when you quoted me. I just thought that you're post was another one of them, so again, sorry if it wasn't.
But with that said...
According to Anita Sarkeesian if us men play a video game and do something against woman, we will think its ok to do something against woman in real life (kill, rape, beat, etc)
"Thinking it's okay to do something against women in real life" is virtually synonymous with "believing rape myths."
So you say that you weren't saying that rape myths and rape are the same, but you say that "do something against women in real life," which was clarified to include rape, is synonymous with believing rape myths? How are you not contradicting yourself here?
The_Kodu said:
So she's saying that despite in games them having context and reasons because taken out of context an event happens which without context seems wrong that the event shouldn't be there in the first place.
She's saying that context extends further than the game itself. The game itself contains its own context, but that context will itself be influenced by the culture. A similar example is how the presentation of guns in games is partially influenced by the culture surrounding them [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os3lWIuGsXE] despite having their own in-game context. And no, I'm not trying to make this a gun control debate, just pointing out how this affects another aspects of games.
But with that said, I wasn't so much trying to support her claims. What I was doing is pointing out that she isn't trying to viciously attack game developers or gamers. She's pointing out how the already existent culture can have a negative affect on games, which themselves then go on to become, at least partially, part of that negative aspect of culture. Considering how often she has been accused of claiming game developers and gamers are bad people, I figured that I should point that out. You bringing up the domestic violence comments in her video just happened to be a good springboard for that.
3:36
"This extra character development tends to make their eventual disempowerment all the more frustrating"
^ Complaining that previously two dimensional characters are fleshed out to more and they they prove that they just got beaten by one situation and aren't that weak really. Essentially claiming fleshing out characters actually hinders the experience more.
Oh, You mean we can't start on how she thoroughly burned[footnote]No pun intended[/footnote] Dante's Inferno. Fine...
Anyways, just a couple points:
1. I thought she was saying that in order to criticize games for, at least what she believes, conveys the message that women are incapable of breaking free no matter how strong they are.
2. At least from what I remember, her most recent video really didn't go into how women need to be characterized more. I thought that was something I, and maybe others, brought up in the thread about the video to capture my own thoughts on the solution better. At least I know I was confused on whether she wanted to remove sexualized women or to simply characterize them more.
With that said, I really don't agree with her comments at that part of the video. I agree that we should look for more ways to tell a story than through the damsel in distress trope, and we should also find different ways to tell a story that uses that trope. However, I do think she went way too far by dismissing the major advancement we have started seeing since games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros. After all, making them a character at least reduces, or removes, the problem of them being objects and/or win states.
The woman in question has turned into a monster in the game as will kill the player. The Player then fights beck to prevent them self being killed. Anita has just claimed that it is domestic violence because the man is hitting the woman. However the man in the cases is defending himself, he was attack and his choices in the game are fight back or die.
The framing of any action taken in self defence as an act of malice by the male character here is being portrayed by Anita as negative because it's against a female character.
Yet what are the options and what message does it send if a woman attacks a man and tries to kill him ? That he should stand there and accept it because it's only domestic abuse if he reacts and it's not domestic abuse he's presently facing ?
I agree with her that the prevalence is itself at least odd. It's only made worse when I consider that, of all the games I've played and can remember, almost every time I'm forced to fight a male friend, it was of his own free will,[footnote]The "almost" is the fact that some of the Metroid games are major exceptions.[/footnote] but every time I fight a female friend, it was because she was being controlled by an outside force, normally a male if that outside force is a person.[footnote]The "normally" refers to the fact that Peach was controlled by the Shadow Queen in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.[/footnote] To me at least, that shows an excessive presence of standard gender issues and stereotypes of a patriarchal system, of men being more in control of their destinies while women are led by something else, and of how men tend to be capable of aggression while women aren't.
But as for specific cases, I will say that it is as legitimate a storytelling method as any other, and I don't really think it needs to be linked to domestic abuse either way. After all, there are plenty of other stereotypes we can link it to. Sure, we could do less with the prevalence and find different ways of approaching it, including the lopsided ratio between men and women, but I have seen it used to great emotional effect with both men and women as the victim, so I really don't see it as an all bad with no potential for good.
And jut to avoid confusion, my comments earlier about cultural context still stand. I wasn't saying she was entirely right, but whether or not it was right still doesn't dismiss the purpose (that she isn't as negative towards us as was being claimed) that I mentioned it for.
"When violence is the primary gameplay mechanic and therefore the primary way the player engages with the game world it severely limits the options for problem solving"
Which I'd say is a a very clear indication of the message of less violence in games and far more non violent solutions. Or even no games where violence can be the primary mechanic, so no Dynasty Warriors then.
Well, to be fair, stealth action games, especially Dishonored, have shown that both violent and nonviolent solutions can be equally appealing in the same game, and action games don't necessarily have to use tropes based on gender stereotypes, and I'd imagine Anita would advocate one solution or the other. But again, I think such situations can be used well--and often are--but there are just some minor issues I have, though I don't necessarily agree with Anita on where those issues are.
So what she's just said is showing these acts in game is encouraging these actions in the real world.
She's using shock value to create fear because this is bad, those figures are horrifying. She's then presenting the solution of not including these aspects in games.
Advertising 101 right there.
She said that they can reinforce already harmful beliefs, but like I've been saying, there's far more mental barriers to wrong actions (especially violent ones) than there are harmful beliefs, so we really can't make the two equal.
if was claimed on BBC Mens hour that 40% of all domestic abuse cases are against a male victim then every 11 seconds a man is getting beaten by a woman in a domestic violence incident.
Out of curiosity, did the study actually deal specifically with female-on-male, or did it also include male-on-male domestic violence? I've seen aspects of the study, but from what I can tell, the 40% isn't specifically female-on-male, and from what I've read elsewhere, male-on-male is far more common than female-on-male, but I have trouble trusting them fully considering most of them come with homophobic slants or cite studies that come with one.
Now, I'm not saying this to say that the issue of domestic violent against men should be ignored, but I also haven't managed to come across anything to show that the problem is a mostly female-on-male issue. With that said, the issue should be addressed regardless and many of the relating problems to it are a great example of how gender stereotypes can negative affect men. Of course, I'd say that feminism itself addresses those at least indirectly, but that's a discussion for another day.[footnote]As I'm typing this, it is getting really late where I live and I'm getting tired, so I'm really just trying to get out of lengthy explanations for right now.[/footnote]
Those are easy to make objections to the video without touching on any areas that could be considered open to subjective interpretation where I could just as easily claim that rescuing a child is a trope because generally children are weaker than adults, instead of the gender of the child being the important part.
There is of course the difference that a child will outgrow that weakness and association. Women are sort of stuck with the association with weakness their whole lives.
OK, to some extent that can come across as rape apology, but it is possible to accept rape myths while still not dismissing the crime that happens.
Except those are two highly conflicting things from a moral stand point. A crime is wrong generally speaking but justified actions are not. Now if the justified actions are also criminal the moral stand point is to overlook the criminality of them
Whoever said that people never hold conflicting moral positions? Often times, people go out of their way to justify how their moral positions are consistent whenever everyone else around can tell that they contradict. Heck, we even have entire argumentative methods to point out contradictory viewpoints that someone holds.
I'm not saying that it isn't contradictory to hold a rape myth while not dismissing it, but it is a problem that at least I have seen with far too many people I know.
A better wording would be from the rape myth stand point "You only got raped because you were wearing such revealing clothes" not that they were potentially a small contributing factor (most likely they weren't)
That's basically what I was trying to say. You just phrased it better than I did.
Except there in lies the problem she wishes games to stop giving into social culture as it stands.
She is asking for the medium to be changed not in fact to carve out a niche potentially for such games.
When you ask an industry to change to your wishes then you harm the diversity of such an industry, instead you need to ask for a place in said industry to create the product you want not ask the whole industry to be responsible for that product you want.
If games are art, they need to be allowed to grow up and explore far more shocking and horrifying issues.
Every so often games do address issues such as Spec ops the line with the whole glorification of violence and military superiority and even back to Silent Hill which explored and questioned the morality of euthanasia.
If games are to grow as a medium they need to be allowed to tackle these issues and people who see these as triggers or as problems themselves need to look at their own issues preventing this or not wishing the media to explore these beyond "But it's an icky subject". True we need to approach such ideas with caution to and not embrace games using them as great without first seeing if it's implemented well.
Honestly, I don't think feminism is an enemy to diversity in games. OK, maybe some variants are, and perhaps Anita is one of them, but honestly I think people see her as trying to limit games far more than she actually wants to. Anyways, I think feminist ideals would ultimately help liberate games.
We can do much more with the damsel in distress if all the women (or men if we're going for the flip) aren't just Standard Damsel in Distress #7894 who has no characterization, no agency, and is just a win state for the game, and games like Paper Mario and The Witcher 2 have given us glimpses of the potential that breaking away from the standards of the trope can give us. We can offer much more out of sexualized female characters if they all weren't just Standard Prostitute #99999 and Mandatory Eye Candy #4908342, and games like The Witcher (ironically) have shown us that a prostitute character can be more than just a sex object.
Maybe Anita seems to be limiting (after all, she doesn't offer many alternatives to the current standards), but I personally don't find feminism to be an enemy to diverse storytelling in games. If anything, it offers was to get more diverse stories and characters. It's just focused on a very specific subject.
Only if the problems don't appear to contradict themselves or the problem only exists due to lack of appreciation or understanding of the reasoning for design decisions.
But we really can't say that those design decisions are removed from the culture of the person who made them. Pointing out a problem could get us to see how we held incorrect assumptions, possibly even subconsciously. I'm not saying that the designers don't have a reason for why they do something, but even an understandable reason doesn't go without criticism. As a less cultural example, we can understand the design around the flashlight in both DOOM 3 and DOOM 3 BFG, but even though we can understand both decisions, we can't say both of them aren't deserving of at least minor criticism, as saying one is perfect sort of negates of the other of having any positive qualities. Likewise, we can understand why something was designed the way it was, but that doesn't mean it isn't deserving of criticism, even cultural criticism.
Not been to a strip club personally but something tells me you don't have the stipper talking about how shes a single mother and her child is struggling at school. They sell a fantasy in real life just as they mostly do in games.
In fact games portray sex work normally quite differently to some aspects of reality (again no real experience here in this section but bare with me as it's based to an extent on information) now how many times has an escort been portrayed in games. Yet in reality escorts (high pay / higher class sex workers) can often be a choice made by intelligent people.
The blog which "Secret Diaries of a call girl" was based on which talks about the real life of an escort was to an extent an autobiographical piece written by someone who is now a university fellowship member who took up sex work as a way to fund her pHD education.
The portrayal as sex workers as only prostitutes / street walkers is the more prevalent one in games.
The difference being that, regardless of how games portray their job, we really don't get to see that any of them are anything but a sex worker. Sure, it might not make much sense at the time that you are at their work place (unless you're Dishonored), but games often have trouble of letting us see even a bit of their character outside their work or giving us any sexualized character that isn't mostly reduced to eye candy. I'm not saying that Mass Effect had to give us meaningful discussion with every Asari dancer we met, but it at least gave us some Asari characters, most notably Liara, to give us a glimpse into their culture and the fact that they weren't just sex objects. In The Witcher, the player didn't have to have deep conversation with every prostitute, but Carmen at least stood in to remind us that prostitutes aren't just sex objects.
Games don't have to break away from the work realities of a stripper. However, they also don't have to just throw in Lightly Contextualized Eye Candy Segment #4355. They could add more to the world and characters while they're at it, and I'd say games like Dishonored, The Witcher, and Mass Effect benefitted tremendously by at least giving us the option to have glimpses, even minor ones, into the fact that the sex workers weren't just workers. They were potential characters with histories and personalities that let us see far more of the world and story than the areas we may have seen them in.
