Skullgirls and Sexism

[ShadowKatt]

Hold on, I'm noticing something here...

If you do anything with girls, it's sexist and cliched. ANYTHING.

If you have an action movie and a woman is your gun slinging lead, she's the action girl, and that's a cliched and sexist stereotype.

If you have an action movie and a woman is a support character, then she's not empowered and that's cliched and sexist.

If it's not an action movie then you're implying that women can't do anything except sit at home, and that's cliched and sexist.

If you DON'T put a woman in your game/movie then it's JUST PLAIN SEXIST because you ignored all the women of the world and told them that theycan't play games/watch movies.

If you have a game/movie with ONLY women and one of them dresses scantily clad, it's sexist against women.

If you have a game/movie with ONLY women and one of them dresses sensibly(ie, shirt and pants), then she's dressing like a MAN and that's sexist.

...Am I wrong here? It doesn't matter what you do, SOMEONE is going to take you to court for sexism and bleed you dry. This whole sexism thing has gotten WAY out of hand and needs to go away. I'm tired of the victim/persecution complex trying to blame everyone for what's wrong in their life based on "sexism" and the people that want to use sexism as a club to hammer down everything they don't like, whether it was sexist or not because everyone is terrified of being labeled as "sexist".

It's fucking shameful that we as a people have sunken so low.

 

[The Human Torch]

Sexy, barely clothed girls in a fighting game? WELL, THAT NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!

Seriously, as long as they don't fight by rubbing boobs together, I think it's safe to say that this is not sexist. Otherwise we might as well call Street Fighter sexist because of all those muscled, shirtless guys running around, punching each other in the dick.

 

[Thaluikhain]

It doesn't matter what you do, SOMEONE is going to take you to court for sexism and bleed you dry.

Oh? I can't think of too many examples of games or movies that were successfully sued for having female action heroes nor not having main female characters.

and the people that want to use sexism as a club to hammer down everything they don't like, whether it was sexist or not because everyone is terrified of being labeled as "sexist".

Terrified of being labeled as sexist? You can be as sexist as you want, and some people might get pissed off at you. That's about it.

Hell, look at Roman Polanski. He drugged and raped an under-aged girl. You don't get much more sexist than that. And yet hordes of people still think he's wonderful, watch his movies, and get pissed off when people try to extradite him.

 

[k-ossuburb]

Hmm.

I'll just be leaving this here. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114581-Skullgirls-Dev-Dismisses-Cries-of-Sexism]

There's a forum about this already, am I missing something here?

 

[Grahav]

Hmm.

I'll just be leaving this here. [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114581-Skullgirls-Dev-Dismisses-Cries-of-Sexism]

There's a forum about this already, am I missing something here?

I apologize for not checking this before.

But the creators answer to the subject was posted today. I put it in the opening post.

 

[spartan231490]

Why am I not surprised that people started jumping on the racist button for this. He's just making a damn game, part of the fun is to be ridiculous, that's why the girl has hair that punches, and another can rip her own head off, and why all the fighters are these ridiculously tiny cute little girls that normally we would see as harmless and innocent. Get. Over. It.

 

[FallenMessiah88]

My cousin (a female gamer, BTW) posted this link to her facebook wall yesterday that I think rings true pretty well for this argument. I was gonna put this in its own thread, because I think it's really interesting, but I think I'll gauge the reaction here first.

Nerds and Male Privilege [http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2011/11/nerds-and-male-privilege/all/1/]

Yeah, that's what we're dealing with when confronting sexism in nerd culture guys.

Yeah, all guys should just admit that we are, in fact sexist pigs. Oh what's that you say? You don't think you're a sexist pig? Well do you have a Penis? Yes? Well then you are! discussion over!

 

[geK0]

TF2 is sexist to men!

I could never be as large and manly as the heavy!

 

[Kahunaburger]

Is is sexist? Duh.

Is it unusually sexist for a fighting game? Nope.

Is this whole "controversy" probably pulled out of the devs' collective ass to get free publicity? Probably.

 

[LilithSlave]

Things like this are a part of an unfair double standard.

What do the women in Darkstalkers look like? Strippers. What do the men look like? Monsters.

What do the women in [typical fighting game here] look like? Strippers. What do the men look like? Atheletes/Body-Builders.

At least some fighting games like Street Fighter do a little better by making their women sorta athletic looking and aren't afraid to draw a few muscles on them. This trend would be a little less sad if they would at least make the female fighters a little more beefy to fit their hobby/occupation/law-breaking.

"But muscular women aren't attractive to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeee", too bad.

Fighting games need more of this:
I know I prefer to main here in the Street Fighter games that have her.

 

[DoctorNerdLove]

Allow me to save you the year: It's a geek dating advice site. Says so right in the upper left corner.

Plus, there's all the articles on escaping the friend zone and how to avoid premature ejaculation.

 

[DoctorNerdLove]

I'm glad you liked the article, Grahav! Hope you enjoy the rest of the site too.

 

[DoctorNerdLove]

Nope, it was laying the groundwork for the follow up article "How To Not Be A Creeper".

 

[busterbeam]

I saw that Kinuko (lead animator of Skullgirls) had a short Twitter discussion with one of the Kotaku writers that's been writing a LOT about 'sexism in games' and I found that interesting because the aforementioned artist is someone who draws boatloads of fetish porn involving huge-breasted women for no other reason beyond that she likes it.

Instead of vilifying the Kotaku writer I actually reasoned with her about some of the past things she's written, mainly her complaints about Street Fighter. I actually got her to change her mind and agree that when it comes to games designed for a mostly male audience, Street Fighter has far wider appeal to both men and women than most of the stuff out there, and is comparable to Skullgirls in that regard. Also that sexualizing female characters for the sake of the audience isn't inherently bad if you actually have a varied cast of characters designed with more in mind than just "who would a guy want to be" and "who would a guy find hot". Said discussion also made me realize that "white knight" is a dumb term.

So, I managed to learn something AND change someone's mind about a deep seated belief they had by being nice to, and reasoning with, someone that initially made me think "oh hell no, I will never agree with anything this person says". I guess there's a lesson somewhere in there.