The Big Picture: Tropes vs. MovieBob

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

And once again the loads of insecure, spineless idiots-who-wish-to-be-macho-lunkheads remind me that gaming has no right to demand to be taken seriously when it handles itself this badly. What is it that makes men think talking about sexism equates to evil boogeywomen wanting to turn them into eunuchs?

 

[S0nofKrypton]

Where can I preorder a copy of Big Boob, Panty Ninja XII?

 

[Blind Sight]

The biggest thing these feminist arguments gloss over is that we live in a free-market society.

We don't really live in a 'free market' society though. A market society, yes, but not really a 'free market'. I'm not holding the free market up as utopia, but there is a distinction.

That being said, there's plenty of other criticisms that can be thrown at Sarkeesian's work, particularly her poor research and contextualization skills.

Speaking linguistically, I can see both terms being correct depending on your own view. In one sense, no, this isn't a free-market society, considering that there is a government to regulate the market, but in another sense, this is as close as it gets. And in the West we're still literal centuries ahead of dictatorships in Third World countries. So, for all intents and purposes, this is a free-market society, especially when trying to distinguish between the West and the Third World. (And on top of that the U.S. has an even freer market than its Western European, Australian and Japanese counterparts.)
I'd have something to say about the other issue you mentionted, but in this case I refuse to contribute to the discussion which has unleashed a disproporionate amount of rage on a single content creator, from all over the internet (including this thread).

Fair enough, just read Laissez-Faire and Communism by Keynes a week ago so I'm probably just a bit jaded on technicalities.

I would say that your critique is also fair, I also like to avoid the more...aggressive discourse going on right now in regards to the project. However I do feel that a better focus would be on an intellectual criticism of Sarkeesian's work, as her methodology is pretty terrible.

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Again, that's not my argument. I'm not arguing that people are powerless in the face of media. I'd argue that media can reinforce existing behavior by acting as part of a larger hegemony. To deny that would be to claim that all human beings are totally rational actors who only respond to the laws of the land and aren't in the least bit swayed by what other people (are represented to) think, say, or encourage.

It'd be just as absurd as the position you're trying to shoehorn me into.

Except that is the problem with your argument. You are saying that media reinforces existing behavior. So by that logic violence in video games will cause people to be violent who were already violent...oh wait see the problem?

Yes, there is a clear distinction between a cause (i.e. a necessary or sufficient precondition) and a catalyst (which merely accelerates/magnifies a causal interaction but is neither sufficient or necessary to cause something to happen on its own).

I completely understand women being upset that so many games are geared towards sex-crazed teenage boys and wanting more games to be geared towards them. This is what Bob and others seem to be arguing. However, anyone who argues that this stuff has to be banned or boycotted because it directly and substantially harms women has clearly disconnected from reality.

If people can't be held responsible for their own minds then what hope is there for democracy? Even in extreme cases like cult brainwashing we can't intervene unless the cult poses an immediate threat. Scantily clad video game Amazons hardly pose that kind of threat.

The fact of the matter is that personal liberty is just more important than promoting utilitarian goods. You can do your best to try to convince people not to buy these games by challenging their values and notions of beauty. More power to you. But you just can't stop people from buying these games if they want to, and you can't force the industry to change when it's only responding to the demands of its consumers.

I understand that these tropes are harmful to impressionable young girls, but ultimately it's up to the parents to correct for this by F&$%ING sitting down and talking to their daughters and not letting them sit down for hours on end consuming vapid media.

The battle for values is cultural, not economic. It starts at home. No amount of protesting companies is going to change anything if the populace has given into consumerism and lost its ability to think critically.

The angry parents who want things taken off of the market are essentially arguing that they cannot control what their children are exposed to. Does that make them good parents? NO. They are right to complain if the schools aren't doing a good enough job (after all, it is a service that they pay for either through tuition or taxes), but outside of school they are responsible for their child's upbringing.

Of course the response to this is that many parents have to work and don't have the time. This is probably going to make me sound like a terrible person, but no one has the absolute right to have children. Children are not things, they're human beings. It is morally irresponsible to bring a child into the world if you cannot take care of them.

 

[The Random One]

Glad you touched on it, Bob, but this deserves a much longer, involved treatment. Perhaps someone who's not bound to a weekly five-minute series will provide, but this is a nice primer.

I ended up not funding her kickstarter anyway just because I don't like the way she does videos. She's too serious. (It's a serious matter, but can be handled with humour - see the Nostalgia Chick - and doing so assures more people watch the video.) I was gonna after the troll attack, but I forgot.

Seriously, it'd be like going to a buffet restaurant and insisting that everything on the buffet be made of chicken, because I like chicken. It has nothing to do with hating vegetables or anything... but it's clear I don't view vegetable-liking folks as equal to myself, as I'm too focused on what I like.

This is a perfect metaphor, I'm not even joking.

 

[Something Amyss]

Now I really want to play Big Boob Panty Ninja 12.

Then you'd best yell at an EVIL FEMINIST because otherwise, you won't get to.

...Bob should have ended his video with "No Homo." Just for lulz.

 

[Frost27]

I have a big problem with several facets of this argument.

Tropes vs. MovieBob

"Yes, it's true that unrealistic body images of men are about as pervasive in the media as they are for women, its just not a problem in the same way"

Because 99% of women aren't aroused by visual stimuli the way that 99% of men are. If video game developers began spewing out large numbers of titles in which a conservatively dressed, average looking working woman comes home from a hard day at the office to find the housework done and her overly handsome husband slowly washing the dishes by hand or alphabetizing her DVD collection. That would be, on an arousal level, comparable to what developers want to get out of male audiences now.

I just can't call this a "problem". It's not my fault my gender gets its attention grabbed faster by visual stimuli rather than mental.

"The issue of the media promoting grotesquely unrealistic body standards for women is a problem because those standards are still actively used against women all the time."

I have to point out that if you ask many actual women, you'll find that they do this to each other and hold each other to these stereotypes as much as if not moreso than any media. Before you argue, I guaran-damn-tee you any high school 16 year old girl out there with self image problems is having those self image problems and holding herself to an unrealistic standard of beauty because of some "hot girls" clique tho teases her for being too fat, thin, short, tall, ginger, breasts too small, too big, etc. and none of them give a shit about video games and "manly" television programming.

More of the root of these issues come from advertising that is aimed at women by companies selling things for women. Not from programming designed for adolescent men. Check out a fashion show, makeup commercial, skin care commercial, underwear ad, etc. aimed at women.

I can't believe a single woman in the world has been damaged because I might like Cammy's ass.

I, like many men, know for a fact that real women don't look like that and the few that do usually have such worthless empty personalities, they aren't worth the time it takes to ignore them.

Video games have in no way altered my perception of women and a woman somewhere claiming she missed a promotion because the one that got the job looked like Kittana is just as often a case of sour grapes from the loser as it is potential favoritism.

I would also like to mention that the fact that "everyone looking like she does" and the "there aren't as many varieties of body types of women as there are of men" is sort of out of place here. In fact, it's entirely out of place.

The entire existance of the kickstarter and the videos it is attempting to create, aren't because these individuals are after EQUALITY, which is what the entireity of the last minute of the video was about. They aren't out there saying "Chun Li's thighs would be less offensive if you added a couple fat chicks to street fighter" and I don't think if you did add more "average" women that this issue would be diminished in the least.

 

[aba1]

Bob made very clear and reasonable observations I just thought it be worth tossing out that while there may be more male body types in games that girls also tend to be attracted to a broader range of body types as well.


Also while women do tend to be heavily sexualized in gaming it has been proven time and time again that a game will sell well or worse regardless of these sorts of things.

ALSO yes guys can lose jobs to better looking guys in just the same way just women as a whole tend to push less to go higher in the work force even still to this day. In fact if you watch a few shows this happens on tv all the time.

I guess my point is all these things go both ways just men happen to have had more opportunity and with that said I agree with bob that that in of itself it a reason to tone back at the very least.

 

[TWEWER]

If you want video games with more varied women then make one yourself. Making a video proclaiming what people already know will not have any effect on the medium.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Topic is 13 pages long, any commentary that isn't personal perspective is likely useless.
So that's what I'm sticking with.

When I sat back and thought about the most attractive video game female characters I can think of (well, as appealing as a work of fiction can be anyway) those who came out on top were not based on their appearance or their "badass factor", but their ability to act realistically and sensibly given the situation they were in.

The reason for each came out to being thus: "I found the character believable."

The glut of "Female Ninjas" (who ironically wear less than a topless Vegas show) sporting quadra-Ds and tiny waists to me, look like hilarious abominations...and shamefully pandering.
Not merely "Barbie" (who comes across as incredibly Uncanny Valley to me), but "Jessica Rabbit".

 

[I.Muir]

Never really cared

It's only an issue for me when all of these tropes become my fault because I was born male and for no other reason

 

[maturin]

*OP*

AMEN

Edit: I know you had to focus and keep the episode short, but mentioning only the issue of universal female attractiveness in games is a good way to dredge up a bunch of these willfully dense toilet paper role tunnel vision counterarguments.

 

[Xanthious]

I noticed Bob conveniently ignored that men are indeed objectified in much the same way as women in things like trashy romance novels, daytime soap operas, TV shows like Desperate Housewives and Gray's Anatomy, or even movies like Twilight and I could go on. Last I checked there aren't hordes of men getting in line to buy soap boxes to stand on while they get all indignant on the internet about that though.

Last I checked, the people who make trashy romance novels aren't trying to market to both genders. And also last I checked, they aren't trying to avidly defend their portrayals of men as "fair."

It's not that things can't be geared toward one gender or another. It's that many games nowadays are trying to appeal to a gender-neutral audience, but they still greatly favor the male side of things, portraying women only as men want to see them. That is why there gets to be so much outrage about this stuff. The fact that they make something that clearly panders to a male audience, and then try to tell us women we should like it too. It's just insulting.

Here's the thing. If a certain game portrays women in a such a way that it offends their delicate senses they are free to vote with their money and simply not buy it while supporting games that DON'T objectify women.

Hell if there are women out there super pissed off by all this they can go make their own games with sensibly dressed slightly overweight angry man hating feminists as their main characters all while portraying the evil misogynist men as some kind of half man half donkey type of creatures. Even then I can promise the vast majority of men still won't give two shits how they are being unfairly portrayed.

The issue of some sort of sexist conspiracy in gaming is a tempest in teapot, and a really small teapot at that. It's only an issue because a certain sect of people wish to make it one. The simple truth of the matter is sex sells. That's marketing 101 right there. However, even in light of the fact that skin moves product there are still mountains of games that don't rely on scantily clad ladies to produce sales. People are free to choose whichever they like.

 

[Raioken18]

I don't usually disagree with Bob, but this time... though it's mainly due to personal experience.

(Ironically I chose my avatar because she's cute, not sexy.)

Anyway, I disagree with the statement that in the workplace the physical expectations of women are carried over into irrelevant areas like researchers, economists and clerical and statistics work (my areas). Looks was not the determining factors for being hired in the workplace at all, however the policies in place to accomodate for the percieved inequalities caused way more harm that good.


I had experienced an overabundance of, hey we will treat everyone else special except for your stereotypical white male, so even though I had a ton of qualifications, others were hired due to circumstances like we need a female intake of at least 80% and 40% need to be disabled for from ATSI backgrounds (people were quite honest about this information. So when I was finally hired it was due to begging one of my contacts to at least get me into a basic administration job, I advanced quickly because I had to work hard to prove that I belonged there, (the intake involved 20 people), I was able to continually get 90%+ for all assessments and ratings, the closest second was 70%.

So I got 2 promotions, which had also purposely been held back so that disabled and female employees with lower grading could be promoted ahead (to keep things equal >_>). My workplace then held a secondary grading to replace the first in which my result was removed so that others would be given a chance to be promoted ahead. The end result was that the section head told me that despite my grade compared to other employees, I wouldn't ever be promoted again because the educational opportunities my workplace offered would only ever be given to women, disabled persons or ATSI participants.

Now I felt completely robbed, if I was able to outperform others who were already being given ample opportunities to progress, why shouldn't I also be allowed to progress also? I get that ATSI and disabled people have different needs, but these were already being seen to and the field did seem equal if not weighted in their favor. Why is the amount of effort I put in worth so much less that the tiny amount of effort others put in just because of those factors...?

 

[empirialtank]

This week, moviebob vs the assholes on youtube.

 

[Elate]

Nope, I agree with the majority of things you said, yeah, that's fine.

But SHE, the person doing the series, has about as much analytical skill as a 11 year old, and so I don't see how in anyway she deserves to have.

$158,922 THROWN AT HER TO DO A BUNCH OF 20 MINUTE VIDEOS EXPLAINING THE MOST BASIC THINGS.

It is fucking, outrageous. People do this shit for FREE, and do a damn sight BETTER. Hell I would actually contribute if it were say Susan Arendt, Extra Credit or even Movie Bob doing it because I know they would do a good job, BUT I STILL COULD NOT, IN A MILLION YEARS, JUSTIFY, THEM HAVING $158,922 TO DO 12 PART VIDEO SERIES.

Where the hell are the production costs, she HAS all the equipment she needs, as evidence from her god damn promo video, so why does she even need this money? And if it's to pay for her food, then that begs the question of why she say, doesn't have a job, like, I don't know, MR BOB HERE, who does basically the same thing, just a lot fucking better and of higher quality analysis. I will tell you why, because she's a hack, she's starting a kickstarter because she's so bad she can't GET anyone to pay her normally to do said series, because her quality is so poor.

So yeah, nice one internet, $158,922 for 12 videos, at 20 minutes each, of which is lower quality, than I could do. Yes, that's right, I'm saying I could do a better job than her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD0Faha2gow

That's what we have to look forward to, the most basic concepts, deconstructed in a fashion akin to a highschooler, and she's being paid stupid amounts of money to do it.

 

[Tradjus]

I feel like the biggest reason for the knee-jerk reactions is not genuine misogyny but is something Bob referenced. He says something like, "Acknowledging that there is a problem with the portrayal of women in video games is not going to cause anyone to take your games away."
But that's just it Bob, it may not in and of itself, but it may advance an agenda that has been slowly but surely chipping away in any way it possibly can at our right to enjoy games.
-Any- ammunition given to Conservative Anti-Game people, -any- at all, is a step toward the destruction of the medium, either through oppressive regulation or outright banning of certain elements that obliterate the experiences that we enjoy.
I fully admit that this is an issue, but this is the reason, the only real reason, that there is such a massive drive in the gaming community to brush this under the rug and not talk about it. It's not that we hate women, or that this stuff doesn't make us uncomfortable, it's that really getting a dialog going about it would be suicidal to our medium, just like talking about the level of Violence in games.