The Big Picture: With Great Power

[Phrostbit3n]

Thank you Machine, have my applause.

leviadragon99, whether someone said 'fuck' or not on XBox Live is really none of your damned business. We have a thing in most countries now called "Freedom of Speech". Honestly if you can't take the headset off long enough to not burst into tears you don't have any business playing most games on XBL.

For the love of.... you are aware that freedom of speech does not work that way, yes? All freedom of speech does is guarantee that the state can not unduly infringe upon your right to say what you want (unless it directly infringes on the rights of others, such as open threats, revealing security information or causing dangerous situations, all of which could endanger right to life).

A SERVICE used to play a game can set up whatever requirements that they want, including prohibition on language. You agree to it in order to use the service, they are not entitled to pander to your desire to use them as a message board. This is the same way that freedom of speech does not entitle you to go onto your neighbor's property and spraypaint slogans on their walls.

Any attempt to claim freedom of speech protects you in this regard reveals an ignorance to the actual law and an entitlement that makes you very easy to dismiss as big mouth kid rather then someone to take seriously. I'd suggest you be more careful about trying to claim other people have to let you use their stuff to speak your messages. Freedom of speech only prevents the government from not letting you speak, it says nothing what so ever about giving you permission to use someone else's property in order to do so.

No, it doesn't. But it's a principal most of us strive for, and banning people left and right for saying dirty words isn't good business. Yes, my argument was flawed. My point still stands.

My point being: Get over it, or get the fuck out.

 

[Jegsimmons]

With Great Power

MovieBob calls for a new Geek Culture.

Watch Video

Did movie bob just use the term "CIS-Gendered"?


Excuse me while i pop a blood vessel.

 

[Bruce]

Just a point here, but since when has wanting to make money doing something been despicable? What, has Sarkeesian turned everyone communist? Are we all supposed to sing the sodding Red Flag now?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeX-SzAICdw

 

[Phasmal]

Well I can see this has already gotten... interesting.

I liked this episode.
We often like to trick ourselves into thinking we're inclusive and a great community, and we can be, but we aren't a lot of times.
I've still had to face nerd-checking and stupid resistance for being a girl. And not from moustache-twirling villains or from horrible faceless monsters - from people who really probably didn't even think twice before swallowing the `fake girls` myth. People just need to use their brains more, and call out this silliness when they see it.

 

[Uhura]

You're exactly right...she trolled 4Chan

And how did she troll 4chan?

And just look around these forums, too. Look in this very thread or ANY thread on TheEscapist talking about gaming & feminism or what have you. Is ANYONE here or in these videos making comments like "imma rape dis dumb ***** cuz i h8 st00pid womenz". Not even close. You're getting decent people making reasonable and relatively mature responses back and forth with one another.

The reason why you don't generally see those responses here is that people will get warnings/suspended/banned for those kinds of posts on the Escapist.

She's simply a despicable liar exploiting the naïve for, as you said, her own financial gain.

You do know that this doesn't really count as a "reasonable and relatively mature response", right?

 

[runic knight]

For the love of.... you are aware that freedom of speech does not work that way, yes? All freedom of speech does is guarantee that the state can not unduly infringe upon your right to say what you want (unless it directly infringes on the rights of others, such as open threats, revealing security information or causing dangerous situations, all of which could endanger right to life).

A SERVICE used to play a game can set up whatever requirements that they want, including prohibition on language. You agree to it in order to use the service, they are not entitled to pander to your desire to use them as a message board. This is the same way that freedom of speech does not entitle you to go onto your neighbor's property and spraypaint slogans on their walls.

Any attempt to claim freedom of speech protects you in this regard reveals an ignorance to the actual law and an entitlement that makes you very easy to dismiss as big mouth kid rather then someone to take seriously. I'd suggest you be more careful about trying to claim other people have to let you use their stuff to speak your messages. Freedom of speech only prevents the government from not letting you speak, it says nothing what so ever about giving you permission to use someone else's property in order to do so.

No, it doesn't. But it's a principal most of us strive for, and banning people left and right for saying dirty words isn't good business. Yes, my argument was flawed. My point still stands.

My point being: Get over it, or get the fuck out.

Actually, your point just fails. It hinges on an idea of what people or in this case businesses should do that is entirely subjective opinion of yourself rather then something that is legally protected against or even socially accepted as general practice. As went over, there is no legal protection. And everything from censorship on tv to public ordinances would show you that speech is has limits in society itself. By admitting you have no leg to stand on in terms of rights or legality, all that is left is the rights of the service provider to set the terms of service and enforce them. Therefore, when it comes to following the terms, regardless your preference or idea of what makes a good principle or business model, you still have to follow their rules to use their service. So, to put it as bluntly as you have, get over yourself or don't use the service. Deal with it or get the fuck out, so to speak.

----------------------------------------

Generalization is impossible to avoid when you're talking about any kind of society rather than the individuals composing it. If you're going to ignore individuality to treat a group as a homogenous being that possesses traits, then the only judgment we can make is whether those statements are true about more of the population than they're untrue of.

Yes, but the logic that supports treating a group as a group where 51% can ascribe traits to said group is the same logic used to justify racism and sexism itself. It is in ignoring not just individuality but the very idea that the group is made of them that lets such generalizations be used and in turn, is a sign of intellectual laziness, especially when used in a form of research as opposed to a general discussion. Even if, say, 51% of rescued characters in games are female (again, no actual data given or known, but for sake of argument) it isn't a fair assessment to say "most games have damsels or male rescue victims" as while technically true according to your definition, it presents a misleading idea. It is this sort of vagueness that makes it so worthless in research as well as so easy to use to manipulate public opinion on issues.

Yeah, I know it could have. I asked why it wasn't.

Well, my preferences and Ms. Sarkeesian's point of how often women are relegated to damsel in distress.

Because the creators didn't want that? Again, one can't even say "women are often relegated to damsels" without something to back it up. As a general claim, I might go with it for the sake of arguments, but from someone who collected money to do research, I expect actual data to support the claim. Especially given how the claim is applied more to triple A and memorable games and not indie, mid-teir industry or the countless amounts of forgotten or shovelware games.
Also, just because a pattern exists it is not enough to say discrimination or sexism any more then claiming makers of dresses are sexist because they don't often make male sizes. If you alter the definition, you could make the argument, but in altering the definition you remove the point of the term "sexism" from discrimination or bais against to rather any difference between the sexes, neutering the word and destroying any point of using it.

[

That doesn't really answer the question. Why did they want him to be the hero rather than Zelda? What specific train of thought led them to the decision to have one male character and one female, one of whom would fight the monsters and gain the powers and save the world, the other of whom would do nothing but dispense largely useless advice and get captured inside a giant rupee; how did they come to the decision that the female character would be the useless one? Why was that even a necessary choice to make?

Well, I can't claim to know designer or story maker motivations to start with. And I know that your rational here could apply to every story line ever conceived and why didn't they do Y instead of X. But I do have a hypothesis about it relating to simple sales figures. Games with male protagonists sell more then female ones. Be this sell fulfilling prophesy or merely better appeal to those who would buy games I don't know, but the data does support this. Therefore, for a better chance to succeed, a company would rationally choose a male avatar. Now, for the sake of variety and to add some more weight to a paper thin story, there would need to be a love interest/female counterpart. Female because, again, stories with such patterns do better then those without. Rather then a message about women, the characters are sexless parts to fill, with details chosen by market history and pattern. Gender just happens to be a detail here. But that was just a thought I had concerning it, one of many possible explanations as for why. Anything from historical gender roles to referencing the Arthurian mythos of the Knight errant may also be related.

Sexism is determined by context and by motivation behind actions. That a protagonist is male is not proof in and of itself that the writer thinks women are damsels. That's an accusation that becomes more valid when the game makes the titular female character a damsel.

I agree with the first part, Context and motivation are key. Problems arise when one seeks context that may not be intentional and uses that to claim motivation that might not be there. This is the same as saying Mario is communist propaganda, because one reads a context that may not be intentional and then uses that to presume motivation. I'll admit, no idea why they named the game after the princess, other then perhaps because the player could choose their own name and "legend of Gannon" seemed a little more off.

Ah. If you say so. As I've said, I never have played those games, and likely never will.

Me either, just thought I'd clarify it all.

The question is one of defaults. White, straight man is a default in America, to the point where unless someone takes pains to point out where he deviates ("A man and his son are in a car wreck; the man dies; the boy's doctor says, 'I can't operate on him, he's my son'"), the unspoken presumption is he's a white, straight man. Hell, we even assume Jesus was a white, straight man despite him having been born in the Middle frigging East, where some variety of brown seems much more plausible than white.

The assumption of default is sexist and racist to start with though. Any presumption of deviation from the "norm" is based on the inherent idea that there is a norm, an idea steeped in racism and sexism and one that is itself not so prevalent as it would be in europe during the middle ages where white jesus was pushed hard and left in the public mindset.

No idea. I'm not very good with the jargon of feminism. My best yet still admittedly shaky understanding is that a man with boobs is a character who seems male because of how much she wants everyone to know she's a woman, but I could be way off.

o.0 tomboy character then? Not sure I follow. I don't want to look at tvtropes though, as I will waste the rest of the day there and I know it XD

Are they both still trying to save princesses they make out with?

peek on the cheek for mario is hardly making out but even still, sure, why not? Keep in mind the princess character is genderless by default too (not sure what a genderless child of a monarch would be), and actually has more character definition from their inherented position in society as the ruler/ruler's child then from their own gender in most classic games. Why is the princess captured? Not because she is a woman, but because she is a ruler or has authority or some magical ability tied in with said position. Genders are just skins attached to game avatars in that regard.

I've argued in the past that they're not characters, yes, but they are intended to project male-ness.

In the same way that putting a 'stache on a rock projects maleness. It is not that the character is male so much as it is trying to encourage that association in order to, say ,tie in with market patterns or relate to classical knight stories or whatever else. Therefore it is hard to argue that a female character represents females any more then the males represent males as a whole, when both come off like genderless robots putting on a outfits in order to appeal to market demands or allude to a romanticized era or whatever.
Current games are more easier to make such arguments, as gender within them has a meaning within the game itself more frequently, though even then that is often paper thin at best. It is this very concept that seems to have people bringing up the idea that male characters suck as much as female ones do. Not in the same way, but in the same flavor: they aren't characters so much as costumes and in that regard saying a game is sexist misses the point as the robots just do as they are programed and put on the costumes. The sexism perceived is just the reflection of society itself, and calling video games sexism comes off as attacking the least defended mirror and not the problem seen in it.

 

[TomPreston]

You know... when MovieBob suggests geek culture needs to grow up, it's quite disheartening to see so many posts in this thread dealing once again with arguing about Anita. She was only briefly MENTIONED in the video, but by looking at the forum posts you'd think the whole video was about her.

That's... kinda sad...

 

[Gindil]

Actually, after watching this* it makes a lot more sense that Anita has a motivation to do exactly that which also addresses her issue of no trope solving as well as showing where she gets her arguments...

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiUvJNMlqxY

I'm not sure I'm understanding your point here, though I do agree that I would like the discussion to head towards solutions and away from finger pointing. In terms of Sarkeesian's money interests, Uhura makes a very interesting point in this post: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.820668-The-Big-Picture-With-Great-Power?page=14#19828330

The point is to show that Anita has a gun to her head and she manipulated the movement against her to her own profit. It's not out of character and she's not here to make the industry better, just make her own money.

-snip-

As for the examples of sexism, I'll take a few hours and pull together a response with more wholistic examples, but for now the basic premise is the subject vs object roles that men and women tend to fill.

First, the subject-object dichotomy is something entirely different from what Anita described.

Anita relies on talking about objects in one breath, then objectification, which is a huge leap of faith. Second, the huge counterargument is Joseph Campbell's Monomyth theory which says that women that are in distress are in a different stage of the Monomyth theory called the Ordeal. You don't have to ascribe to it, but not informing people of this strong counterargument leaves them woefully unprepared for anything close to accuracy in regards to storytelling debates.

I mean we know right off the bat that most developers are outright forbidden from making their lead characters female by their publishers. We know that women are very very rarely allowed to be part of the audience testers, or whatever they are called.

... So who were the leading heroes in Metroid, Portal, and Portal 2? Parasite Eve, Final Fantasy X, and all of the RPGs where you can decide your gender?

Are you really going to just look at what happened with Nilin and ignore the rest of the gaming industry? And do you not remember how Anita got blasted over Bayonetta? Come on, female protagonists have been in the industry for a long time and that's just the problems with ONE character from a new developer.

It's fairly easy to extrapolate from that that game industry, or at least the part of it that has the power to make these decisions, does not have any interest in sticking a woman or any sort of feminine identification in the role of the subject.

Right... Lara Croft isn't popular at all...

We also know that a huge number of games use women as the object on which the subject and their (or rather, his, usually) story pivots, whether it be the dead girlfriends/wives like from Dante's Inferno, the new Castlevania, Kane and Lynch, Bionic Commando 2009, The Darkness games, Infamous 2, the God of War games, etc. or just the captured ones like from the Mario games, Zelda games, that Star Fox game Sarkeesian mentioned, etc.

... You realize Dante's Inferno is a poem from the 14th century about the sins of the husband that condemned his wife, right? That the new Castlevania has multiple endings and that you even played as girls in the older games? That Kane and Lynch has two really bad guys that don't have their shit together? That BC was panned for its story? That Darkness had the girl headbutt the guy that killed him while the Darkness held you back? That the GoW games were set up like a Greek tragedy and Anita said nothing about all the men you killed such as the Greek pantheon? That she forgot and ignored all the RPGs that Mario has, showing Peach with agency? That Zelda is basically a reincarnated goddess who has her own trials and challenges that she overcomes regardless of being captured? That Star Fox's Krystal is a pretty capable girl while Slippy is mostly the person in distress?

I mean... There's so much about the stories that you're leaving out to come to her conclusions, it's as if you want to use the subject-object dichotomy but you don't really know what it is, nor do you want to understand the stories involved on anything more than a superficial level.

Sure, I suppose they individually make sense within each and every game, but if you're looking at how the game industry perceives women as a whole, they are nearly always just the thing that dies or gets captured in order to make the men do stuff.

If you want to ignore the context to come to a presupposed conclusion, I'm accusing you of confirmation bias. And no, games don't always have the woman dying and Anita hasn't proven that. She just ignores the genres of games where women are stronger while saying that all women fit into one archetype in this regard. That's not a holistic view or even a critical analysis. That's her own projection of what the game industry is.

Let me put this to you, how many decent, strong female leads has the videogame industry produced in comparison to the number of male leads? I could list off dozens if not hundreds of male leads off the top of my head, while under female leads we have Faith, Jade and at a push Lara Croft. The fact of the matter is, if you look at the roles of women in videogames, they are nearly always plot points instead of characters, and sure some men are as well, but no where near the majority and men get to fill an array of roles beyond lead character motivation.

Play Metal Slug. And ShockTroopers. And Samurai Showdown. Or Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Metroid, Portal, Parasite Eve, Giana Sisters, Bleed, Ms Pac Man, Mark of the Kri, Heavenly Sword, or the vast amount of games that have a female character that you can play as from back in the years or even now.

EDIT: Right well, the more wholistic examples post turned out not to really justify it's own post, so I might as well just list those examples here. We have the disgusting point in both Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem Forever with the half naked girls that have been arbitrarily put in to be mutilated and are asking to be killed, no men mind, just ex-sexy girls.

Uhm... The girls... Yeah... About that... You see, remember Aliens? Remember how the chest hugger thing worked? Go to about 1::45 of this* video (NSFW) to figure out what wasn't being said in Duke Nukem. Also... Remember... This is a parody game that basically isn't trying to tell a huge message of saving the world. Duke is supposed to be the objectification of men and all the stereotypically 80s horrible parables that stands for. I just can't believe we're talking about Duke Nukem as if it's the next classic of literature instead of a pop fiction knock off...

We have Bayonetta, who exists for the sole purpose of eye candy,

You might want to check her personality and how she beats around men in the game...

as do the Dead or Alive girls

Titillation, maybe, but Tina's a wrestler, one's an opera singer, a few kunoichi, and ironically the main character of the game is a female, so... What exactly is the problem here?

and I'm pretty certain the original Lara Croft and her ridiculous proportions sit here as well.

Why yes... A bug in the game made her boobs big. But let's not forget how much of a great adventurer she is or how her personality is pretty fun, let's just complain about how she's marketed... I'm sorry, but what exactly is the issue here? That she's marketed poorly for someone so accomplished (where her new retcon seems to fix that) or that having big breasts made her less of an adventurer?

I know I mentioned God of War, but I should also point out that just about every woman in the series either dies or is there to have sex with Cratos and put tits on the screen.

Okay... The ratio of men dying to women is about 100:1 and I'm discrediting the monsters considerably. You literally had Hades, Poseidon, Icarus, Ares, and Hercules as bad guys and you're going to tell me that the women died poorly? You pushed a guy into a furnace to open a door. Come on...

We have the array of women in fantasy and fighting games who seem to have decided the best way to protect themselves is to wrap themselves in as little metal as possible, obviously for eye candy purposes.

... Uh... No... Dragon Age 2 and its aethetics worked and unless you have sources, I'm not taking that seriously.

Even when we get to play as a female that is even slightly self-sufficient they either have to have Lara Croft-esque curves, or be in a skin tight jump suit and radiating sexuality, like Arkham City's Catwoman or Bayonetta.

So let's forget Harley Quinn's... Psychosis to just make it seem as if all women would wear a Joker-esque outfit showing how they're the queen of hearts or are we to believe that women don't want to play as sexualized fantasy characters?
And again... That's kind of the point of Bayonetta. So what exactly is the argument here? Humans aren't highly sexualized creatures who don't like fantasy characters that have rippling muscles for men while women get to play as fantasy adventurers that take out every male in the world and travel to the ends of the earth searching for treasure?

Hell, even Mass Effect, which is a series I adore and is overall pretty good on the sexism thing, has the Asari, a race of sexy, big breasted aliens. And there is no correlating examples whatsoever on the female side.

*blinks* If that's all you got about that game, and not the hundreds of variances of species in the galaxy, Gods help you...

Sure, characters like Cratos aren't wearing a huge amount, but that has bugger all to do with with sex appeal and everything do with making male players feel like a muscled bad ass. Again, we get ugly grizzled male leads like Marcus Phoenix, but a not single corresponding female lead of the type. Simply speaking, games are made with a male audience in mind and with absolutely no regard for the female audience.

*ahem*

Kratos.

And look at Chris Redfield, Leon Kennedy, and every other character that isn't Mario for the past few decades. The fact is, there's more machismo than you can shake a stick at. Contrary to your belief, that is indeed objectification of males. And no, you still haven't looked at this holistically. Because the main games that are more gender neutral are RPGs and MMOs where you even have to save Superman, or a woman saves herself (FFX).

Do you see a lot of normal characters that would be overweight badasses? Thing is, seeing a Bo Rai Cho (MK series), Rufus (SSF4) or Bob (Tekken) is not the norm in action games. I think the last time I read about an "ugly" girl would be either Gears of War or the Witcher, but if your entire point is that females are supposed to be ugly... I mean... Really? I just don't know what to say...

You're shooting the forest for the trees. Anyone can pick up troll behavior and say that's "representative" of the rest of the culture. That's exactly what Bob did here. A troll wants a reaction and works to get one. That's why they're a vocal minority. You ignore trolls because they're not there to support a viewpoint. They're there for a reaction. Saying that the gaming community is responsible for the behaviors of trolls is like saying a guy in California should put a leash on the dog in Florida. It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense that I'm to blame for the actions of 4chan and trollish behavior. Sure, the comments are bad. But they are a minority of the discussion.

I'm not saying it's representative of anything, at this point I'd say geek culture is far to expansive for anything to be representative of it. Trolling is, however, an aspect of geek culture and I'm going to stick to that because lots of geeks troll. [/quote]

And use sarcasm, and joke around, and otherwise be human while also being parts of other gaming cultures instead of being summed up into a huge one that's a big target for blame gaming.

Sure, not all trolls are geeks, but as I was saying with my overlap point, we have loads of people in the geek or nerd community who are trolls and troll in relation to their geek association. I think it's no coincidence that the feminist who relieves the most bile is the one who is trying to uproot aspects of geek culture.

If she were trying to do something than making money off her imagined plight, I'd agree. Sadly, all she's doing is creating a perpetual gender war that's regressive. It's why I personally believe more in other people like Extra Credits or Nostalgia Chick who at least back up their issues with sources. Anita won't do that and her language choice is too biased to be taken seriously.

I agree that they are a minority, but at this point that doesn't necessarily make them a small group and they're a hell of a vocal one at that are giving the entire community a bad name and understandably so since firstly so few of us seem willing to confront them and secondly since now that the sexism debate has been brought into the public eye, a lot of the non trolls seem unwilling to accept any change towards a more equal perspective on women within the industry.

I'd argue the same about Anita.

... Yeah, that just makes no sense. "It's not about her, it's about the attacks she received." But then that is still focusing on the few attacks that she received as trolling responses over the criticisms that she hasn't responded to. It's an emotional plea that ignores actual conversation about the points raised. Politicians love doing this.

Except it demonstrates the perception women in the industry. Trolling or not, we've seen a sizable chunk of the community has absolutely no issue with acting in a misogynistic manner just to get their stupid pot shots off at a feminist. We've also seen as a result that a much bigger part of the community doesn't seem to give a shit about how women are perceived or treated within the community.

... No it doesn't. It doesn't show how popular games by women (Portal) or help them get in the industry at all. It's just a perception held by a select few such as MB because he failed to capture people's interest in this topic when he talks about it. He tried twice to explain why he liked Other M: and the gaming public tore him a new one. I'll theorize that's partially the reason that he wants Anita to bring up this argument because he hoped she'd talk about it better. Sadly, she doesn't. Her discussions leave the industry worse off. She wants game developers to self censor, not utilize the Damsel plot at all, and basically make women as just a stronger species in general. That just doesn't make sense without a lot of explanation for this. She wants women to be stronger, she can make her own game. Just my take on that. Oh, and she should stop "pirating" other people's arguments. She just isn't good at stealing from Extra Credits and Nostalgia Chick.

"For every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction."

And loads of people calling her a fat ***** was an equal but opposite reaction?

When she did it first? Newton's second law works both ways.

Which puts us yet again to the point you keep missing. You keep responding that this is a product of geek culture. This is not true. 4chan has a unique community the same as there are various gamer cultures. I love being a geek, gamer, or whatever else but I hate how people continuously lump me and people I enjoy talking to into the same pool as trolls. It's beyond insulting. We should have the conversation of Anita vs 4chan, not gamer culture. Because the gamer culture responded by showing that her arguments are illogical and shallow. So I implore that next time, learn why 4chan is known for trolling people and the reactions they want. Stop blaming separate cultures for things they did not do.

And again, I don't buy that. Like you said, things aren't black and white and 4chan and geek culture are far from mutually exclusive. In fact I'm just about the only one of my friend group that identifies as a nerd and doesn't go on 4chan. You may personally have nothing to do with 4chan, like me, but that doesn't mean nerd/geek culture doesn't. Trolling is as much a product and aspect of geek culture as it is of 4chan and the likes.

By who's standards do we push for trolling? Because people have a computer? Come on... This is trolling*. It's not a product of anything but immaturity from others and shouldn't be taken seriously. Yet people do it. Some people are getting taken out of the situation slowly like Aris but it is occurring that gaming is becoming more inclusive.

*http://fatuglyorslutty.com/

Uhm... Your argument is that gamers make misogynistic comments based on not liking what Anita is doing because she's a woman. That's exactly what you're doing by claiming that gamers couldn't respond to her civilly (which she will never comment about anyway).

And as I've said, you're confusing those trolls with gamers that didn't care about Anita until she spammed Kickstarter for sympathy.

Seriously, how did you get there? I never said anything about gamers being unable to respond to her civilly, in fact after literally spelling out in previous posts that these aren't the majority of games, that many people do have perfectly valid criticisms of her and that I myself think some of her points are nonsense and literally saying in the post you quoted "no one is claiming gamers are all misogynistic, I have now in fact repeatedly said the opposite", I really cannot understand how you concluded that that was my argument.

That's Anita's argument and you seem to be in agreement with it. You use terms like "sexist" along with "comments" or "trope" in conjunction with a plot narrative. So I'm going to get the feeling after time that you agree with her argument that misogyny in video games is rampant. It's rather hard to come to another conclusion when that supports believing that trolls represent the gaming community en masse and trying to support Anita's points when she relies on rhetorical arguments and a misreading of games...

The feeling I'm getting is that our argument is mainly reliant on questioning if 4chan represents the gamer community for them to be a spokesperson for the masses. Given how large gaming is, I don't think that's the case. I think that the gaming community is diverse and we unfortunately don't have mechanisms to help us when we're attacked by demagogues (yes, I believe Anita isn't here as anything other than her own private benefit) and others for being anti-social "misfits" while the industry makes billions. I can't make the case that 4chan represents the gaming community as a whole. I think they're mainly trollish who attack a target for the lulz. Go into other communities, you'll have one or two trolls, but you either get accepted or rejected based on what they value. If I were to talk about Dark Souls, I'd try to know more about it. If I'm just a visiter to Neogaf, I'd be ostracized for a while. But that doesn't mean both of these communities represent the entire gaming culture, such as retro gamers, Xbox gamers, PC gamers, and others. That's my main issue that seems to be the recurring issue.

Fair enough, disagreement agreed upon.[/quote]

 

[JimB]

I might not be answering further replies in this thread, because it seems to not be giving me messages when people reply to me, so I might or might not know when anyone's said anything to respond to. Nothing personal.

Yes, but the logic that supports treating a group as a group where 51% can ascribe traits to said group is the same logic used to justify racism and sexism itself.

The difference is whether you're attempting to describe a state as it exists now and has existed historically or how such a state ought to be or will be in the future.

It is in ignoring not just individuality but the very idea that the group is made of them that lets such generalizations be used and in turn, is a sign of intellectual laziness, especially when used in a form of research as opposed to a general discussion.

Can it ever be valid to discuss "the video game industry" at all, then?

Because the creators didn't want that?

Okay. So, why not?

Now, I ask that as a hypothetical question, because questions of motivation are always murky and inherently unprovable. All we can do is examine the observable actions taken and make inferences; intent can be inferred by following the bullet, as someone came close to saying in a legal trial once. Zelda's weakness is the basis for nearly every Zelda game, and it's a trait common among games, so we can infer that the video games industry sees women as too incompetent to provide for themselves and that they should be used as trophies to be awarded to the male characters who save them.

Again, one can't even say "women are often relegated to damsels" without something to back it up.

The assertion is supported by my anecdotal experience. Going through my personal library, the vast majority of characters who need to be saved from capture are female, and the ones doing the saving are always male. The only exceptions are Megaman X3 (X gets captured during the intro stage) and Beyond Good and Evil (Jade saves the bulky guy in the armor and maybe also the pig dude, I forget).

Also, just because a pattern exists it is not enough to say discrimination or sexism any more then claiming makers of dresses are sexist because they don't often make male sizes.

Why couldn't you claim that? Aren't dresses gender-specific and even gender-segregated? Isn't that, in turn, sexism, because it tries to define how women ought to differentiate themselves from men?

I know that your rationale here could apply to every story line ever conceived and why didn't they do Y instead of X.

Okay, but that doesn't answer the question of why it was done in the Legend of Zelda, or by extension every Zelda game, or by extension every video game that puts a princess in peril. And even if it could be applied to every story line ever, so what? How is the question of why it is always a princess--never a prince, never a king, and only rarely a queen, but a princess; a woman who should have the power to command the lives and deaths of thousands of subjects yet who is helpless until some dude from nowhere picks up a stick to beat people with that saves the titular head of a nation because his muscles make him more powerful than all the forces this girl can command--how does asking why it's always the princess in a medium other than video games invalidate the question when it comes to video games?

But I do have a hypothesis about it relating to simple sales figures. Games with male protagonists sell more than female ones. Be this self-fulfilling prophesy or merely better appeal to those who would buy games I don't know, but the data does support this. Therefore, for a better chance to succeed, a company would rationally choose a male avatar.

Oh, so the video games industry isn't sexist; it just profits from sexism, sort of like how lots of Spanish privateers didn't hate black people but were willing to sell them as property to the English?

I agree with the first part, context and motivation are key. Problems arise when one seeks context that may not be intentional and uses that to claim motivation that might not be there.

I'm not sure "intentional" is the word you mean here. I get the feeling--and I may be way off here, so just remember I'm only hypothesizing--that you think intent is what happens when someone says, "I'm going to make a game about a guy who saves a princess because girls are weak and stupid." Intent is what happens when an action is taken voluntarily. It's nice to say that there's no intent to paint women as helpless and inferior by making a damsel in distress game, but the thing is, nothing happens unintentionally in making a video game. Every choice has to be written, coded, and crafted. Every choice is intentional.

I think you're confusing "intentional" for "carefully examined prior to being enacted."

The assumption of default is sexist and racist to start with though. Any presumption of deviation from the "norm" is based on the inherent idea that there is a norm, an idea steeped in racism and sexism and one that is itself not so prevalent as it would be in Europe during the Middle Ages where white Jesus was pushed hard and left in the public mindset.

Yes, it is. It is very, very sexist and/or racist and/or, uh, homophobic? Is there an -ist for assuming straight is the default? Well, whatever, you get my point; you just seem to think I endorse it.

Tomboy character then? Not sure I follow.

If someone has to tell you something about himself, whatever he said is a lie. Like, uh, let's take South Park as an example. When Mr. Garrison undergoes a sex change, there are a few episodes where he feels the need to tell everyone, "I'm a woman!" That he needs to say so means he's lying, because he really believed it was true, it wouldn't be something he'd feel like he had to make people aware of. His inherent human selfishness would make him assume everyone already knows the truth that's so evident to him.

(That example opens a big old can of worms about whether I think transsexual people are lying to themselves when they claim to be of their identified sex, but let's stay away from that for now except to say I won't tell any transsexual person what his sex is. I'm only discussing a fictional character here.)

A man with boobs would be like that: Someone whom the writer is so insecure about the femininity of (maybe with good reason, but probably not) that he makes the character tell us she's a woman. If she has to say so, then she's lying, and she's a man with boobs.

Again, that's just my best guess, though. I really should bother to learn the terminology.

In the same way that putting a 'stache on a rock projects maleness. It is not that the character is male so much as it is trying to encourage that association in order to, say, tie in with market patterns or relate to classical knight stories or whatever else.

Market patterns which want men to be more powerful than women, and knight stories that have male characters more powerful than female ones.

If these tropes are genuinely sexless, then why aren't there at least as many stories of female knights saving helpless princes as there are of the reverse?

 

[Tono Makt]

In connection to the Tropes vs Women reference, I don't take Alisia Sarkeesian seriously.

Watch her episode, then Facts vs Women and you'll see why.

It's hard to take Feminism vs Facts seriously. There are many things wrong with Tropes vs Women, but Feminism vs Facts is just head shakingly bad.

Regarding Bob's call for a new Gamer culture because we're now the Guys On Top: let's not get ahead ourselves here, eh? We're getting really, really lucky these days that Marvel is doing so well, and Batman has done so well. But that may not last; X-Men have faltered to the point where we're crossing our fingers that The Wolverine won't suck, we're still giggling at the idea of a Justice League movie since the Justice League has no place at all in it for Nolan's Batman and no other DC property seems to be able to catch on in the minds of the audience (and the less said about that movie that includes Roy Biv's middle initial the better), Transformers and GI Joe are starting to bottom out so we're starting to run out of Geek things to dominate the culture with. All it's going to take is a few more Lone Rangers or John Carters or that referenced-but-not-directly mentioned-movie-above to derail our apparent ascension to the ranks of the Elite. If City of Bones and Enders Game bomb, if 300: Rise of an Empire bombs, or if any of the "Can't Miss" movies bomb (Captain America 2, Thor 2, Hobbit 2, Hunger Games 2, Agents of SHIELD on TV), we could be at the apex of our ascension and looking at the downward decline of our power in Hollywood and pop culture.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't try for a new culture - we should. But let's not base it on the idea that we've got great power and with that comes great responsibility, since that power is precarious and once it's gone, our reason for creating a new culture is gone with it. We need to create a new culture because frankly, Geek Culture sucks ass for most people who are non-white, non-male, non-middle class, non-geeky/nerdy. If you aren't white, male, middle class and geeky or nerdy, Geek culture is not exactly welcoming to you. That needs to change, regardless of whether we have "power" or not.

 

[feauxx]

As I've said earlier in the thread, she didn't ask for $150 000, she asked for $6 000, which is not an unreasonable amount if her intention was to buy enough games to get a more wholistic perspective on how the videogaming industry sees women

Even then, that's still a pretty hefty price tag. And again, to do WHAT with it? Buy more games? Improve video production (that again, doesn't even have seemed to change from the years she's been doing this)? Seek out extra help and/or somebody to bring in for another POV? Create DVDs/promotional stuff to take with you to places? You still don't get much of anything in the original kickstarter page. Is it too much to ask for some CLARITY and DETAILS about WTH you're doing other than vague, nondescript summations? Or am I just another one of "teh trolls" that's actually wants concrete answers to reasonable questions?

Did you donate to her? I'm sure you can ask these questions to her on her kickstarter page etc. If you did not actually give her your own money, you have zero reason to complain about it. I haven't seen a single complaint from any actual donators.

 

[Gindil]

Gindil, even though I disagree with you, I do try to be civil in discourse. That probably sounds like the beginning of a threat, or maybe of an announcement that I intend to rescind that civility, but it really isn't (well, mostly). I bring it up because I am in a shit mood right now, and I do not know how effectively I'll be able to maintain the tone of civility I aim for. If I do falter, please know that most of my anger is coming from crap I've been dealing with elsewhere and is not meant as a personal condemnation; and while you're at it, feel free to call me out on any lapses. I'd appreciate that.

Okay then, here we go.

Fair enough. I try to maintain as much neutrality as possible unless I'm sarcastic... Or hungry...

Or sarcastically hungry...

[Regarding what Anita Sarkeesian needed a Kickstarter for, I want answers] that makes sense.

I--I really don't know what to tell you. She made all but an itemized list of the equipment she wanted. Uhura provided a link to the page where she does so. Six thousand dollars won't even cover the "hundreds of game titles" she wanted to buy, at sixty bucks per console game.

Here's my issue... She made a video for her Kickstarter page... Where she has all of the consoles. She takes a picture in an old school arcade to make it seem like she's a gamer girl but she also doesn't seem to play that games. That just seems like an advertisement to me. Let me ask you... If you're a gamer asking for people's money... Wouldn't you already have a few of the games? Wouldn't you be on Ebay and finding deals? It's just... Off. Like it's forced. And since her KS page isn't available to anyone but backers, it's not like I can see all the equipment that she needed. I just see that she wanted to buy it. Just like her videos, that's no context whatsoever. It's like me getting a ham sandwich without cheese and telling you it's the greatest thing in the world. Except it's not because I forgot the cheese. I just didn't tell you about it.

Why have a picture of you with the lighting if you need more funds?

To indicate that the setup she has right now is a low-budget affair taking place in a room in her own apartment, I'd wager.

She already had a studio. And like I said, it wasn't a low budget affair. The quality had already been in place since she finished her first series and moved onto Bayonetta.

Nice sarcasm, but you missed the part where I linked you to a Youtube video where I back up my position by showing that I'm not the only one questioning her methods of accessing funds.

I didn't miss it; I ignored it. I don't care who else is asking the same questions you are. I'm not talking to them. I'm talking to you. I do not want to debate with someone who isn't here, and I don't want to try to figure out whether the answers you give are your own or if you cribbed them from someone else and I can only hope they're accurate to you.

The questions support the argument that something is amiss with Anita and I'm not interested in taking her down. I'm only interested in the truth. That's why I'm pursuing more journalistic endeavors such as this. It helps in the research. Further, when we're talking Anita and how she can market herself, it helps in understanding that her background in communications and marketing make her very internet savvy, to the point that it's not unreasonable to think she manipulated the public to make money. Some of the things were brand new to me such as her taking liberally from Nostalgia Critic, but it does answer some of the questions that I've had since this gender war started.

She's arguing that the video game industry has been sexist since 1981 based on Shigeru Miyamoto popularizing a trope that has been in all forms of media and depriving women of agency based on said trope.

Er...so? All that means is she needs 51% accuracy to be right in her generalizations.

Nope. She needs to be a lot more accurate when saying that a trope's existence is leading to the moral decay of an industry. It's kind of like saying that comic books rots people's brains. Sure, it sounds logical, but you need some good evidence to show that. Like having bacon without sausage and a biscuit, it's just one part of the example of a good breakfast, not the entire thing.

She doesn't bring up female protagonists at all except that they're somehow in distress.

Um, again, check out her Kickstarter page. Female protagonists are not the subject of her damsels in distress video. They are the subject of future videos. You're criticizing her for not talking about something she never said she's talking about.

Here's the problem... When female protagonists are in trouble, they also get saved. Samus needed help in Super Metroid, yet she isn't brought up. Further, the DiD doesn't have anything to do with a woman being weak. Hell, Zelda in Twilight Princess went willingly to save her kingdom and was pretty powerful as a sage. The point here is that Anita won't look up or discuss topics holistically, instead opting to fit women into her narrative without context. And let me tell ya... Missing the part where you get to play as Krystal as well as her being a fighter pilot capable of taking down multiple enemies in Starfox Assault? That isn't a "disempowered" woman. Oh, and she takes back her staff without a thank you.

Women are "robbed of their ability" to perform and be heroes in their own right. This makes no sense when you consider how Zelda is one of the most powerful people in all of her games. In the very first one, she is the one who hid the eight pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom that Link went around to pick up.

Yes, she broke the weapon that allowed Link to kill Ganon instead of using it to do the job herself. Honestly, why couldn't Zelda have been the protagonist? Why couldn't the story have been rewritten so Ganon's attempt to claim the Triforce shattered it, and Zelda had to do the work herself of gathering the pieces, finding the weapons, and killing the bad guy instead of having to wait in a dungeon to be rescued by a boy who fixed the weapon she broke instead of using?

Uhm... Let's put it this way... Those games sucked.* And they don't fit the narrative about Zelda being the Triforce of Wisdom and doing what's best for the realm. Meanwhile, the fact is, most people that want a "reverse" gender role don't see outside of the "Damsel in Distress" narrative except for gender. So... What does that say about the trope?

And all this really shows is that she keeps her supporters ignorant of the facts. All that really is... Is that Zelda is at a different stage of the Monomyth Theory than Link. Also, just as a suggestion, Zelda, being a princess, told Impa to find someone willing to answer the call to action. So she couldn't just leave the castle as you seem to want to imagine based on her agency as the princess**

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-i_games_from_The_Legend_of_Zelda_series
** http://www.infendo.com/nostalgia-the-legend-of-zelda-game-manual/

She is the one that fights for seven years while Link is in the Temple with the Master Sword.

And does a piss-poor job of it, too, because she made less impact in seven years of fighting Ganon than Link did in roughly two weeks. It's arguable that this is unfair of me to observe, what with Link being the fated hero with the magical MacGuffin sword and all, but again, Link's status as plot-driven hero is a completely arbitrary decision. Why couldn't Zelda be the fated hero? What's stopping the writers from giving her the MacGuffin Sword?

Whoa, whoa, whoa... What do you mean that she made less impact? She did a shitload of stuff, and because she didn't kill the villain (which she helped do in the end) she's less of a person?

WTF? First, Sheikh passed herself off as a male Sheikh, who's the same race as her protectors. Second, she helped rescue Princess Ruto, while Zora's Domain was closed off. She also tells Link about the Seven Sages, bear in mind, she's also one of them who help to restore the balance. Then, when Ganon tries to kill them all, she helps to destroy him. Again, how is this not heroic? She had a different impact, but she had an impact all the same.

And Krystal is a fighter pilot in Starfox Assault, working with Fox because she's an empowered woman. But we have to ignore that because it doesn't fit with the narrative that women are damsels only.

I've never played that game and never will, but does Krystal ever accomplish anything Fox doesn't, aside from getting trapped inside a rock?

Yep.

Women are only secondary characters that fall into this trope. Except...they're not. Women have been heroes since the inception of gaming. The 1970s was all about fighter pilots and starships, and anyone is able to pick up a game and play it.

A character has a name. That a game can be played by a woman doesn't mean the character is female. The only character in those game exists in the player's mind, and that's useless to talk about, since she's talking about the industry, not the players.

Again. Context matters. Not talking about women in gaming like Tyris (Golden Axe) or Ms Pac Man, makes her argument weaker by making it seem as if women just can't be heroes and don't have strong personalities or that gamers don't like playing as women. Which kind of brings me back to Samus... Most gamers were clamoring for a new Metroid game for a LOOOONG time before Metroid Prime came out. And most people liked it. That's one of the best series I've seen for females and most American gamers accepted it. Other M... Yeah, that just never happened.

She ignored how the original Mario Bros, a "core" game, didn't even use this mechanic along with Wrecking Crew which used Mario as a construction guy.

I'm confused. What mechanic are you talking about? You haven't referenced a mechanic at any point in this paragraph.

Sorry, that should be "narrative", in regards to Damsel in Distress. The original Mario Bros was all about jumping on turtles coming from a pipe. And Wrecking Crew had no damsels... It was all about destroying buildings.

And it's amazing how the women in RPGs fare a lot better and subvert, invert, and parody this trope, but we don't hear about that either.

Again, those are probably coming up in future videos. At a guess, I'll say "Voodoo Priestess/Tribal Sorceress" and/or "Man with Boobs."

And that's why I don't trust this... She's not looking at these issues realistically and she's willing to manipulate facts to come to her own conclusions.

Basically, taking her argument at face value, there's a lot of problems with narrative coherence that flies in the face of what people understand about gaming in general. Namely, they save the girl, she's not property, and they like emotional impact which is received by saving a princess moreso than saving a prince who's supposed to avoid such things.

And that final sentence there is proof of her position, isn't it? Princes--men--aren't supposed to be victimized and saved; that is for women.

... No... I want you to take a step back for one second and honestly ask yourself a question... If Mario had to save a prince at the end of Mario Land, would you be as emotionally invested in the story? If Princess Toadstool was instead Prince Toadstool, would you have felt like the Prince should have been able to take care of himself and gotten out of this mess?

And just to think about this even more, there's been games that turned this mechanic on its head. Donkey Kong Country used it to have you save Donkey Kong with Dixie and Diddy while both DK and Diddy were captured while Dixie and Trixie went to save them.

Women aren't weak, and needing a helping hand every now and then doesn't make it so. It's why Anita took two videos to make it seem as if women are weak when you ignore female protagonists in all media as well as ignore the games that don't fit the narrative. That's confirmation bias. Seeking out only games that fit your pre-supposed position is like going into a Chik-Fil-A hoping for beef.

Her videos? Heh, that's a foregone conclusion that she's using this to make money.

I did not ask you what you think her videos will accomplish. I asked you what you want them to accomplish. Is there a problem here that needs addressing? If so, what is it, and how?

[/quote]

Her videos won't address those problems. If you want to talk about female protagonists, that's one issue. If you want to talk about communities that allow women, that's another. And if you want to talk about women getting into the gaming industry, that's still another. She won't address the three separate problems of women in gaming, instead lumping narratives and story into problems with (some) competitive online communities along with not understanding context of how stories are told. What she would have to address would be things such as Joseph Campbell's Monomyth Theory which is a form of storytelling that is gender neutral. She would have to stop lumping all plot narratives into the same argument when it suits her, and she'd need counterexamples and arguments to be shown in a more objective manner.

Given how her "style" has been this same ignorance for 35 videos now, I highly doubt she'll do anything, opting instead for the same negative stuff that garners attention while solving nothing.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sandwich to make...

 

[Gindil]

You know... when MovieBob suggests geek culture needs to grow up, it's quite disheartening to see so many posts in this thread dealing once again with arguing about Anita. She was only briefly MENTIONED in the video, but by looking at the forum posts you'd think the whole video was about her.

That's... kinda sad...

He kind of does this crap for the negative attention.

And calling for a "new" geek culture when this one works just fine except for his own biased opinion is kind of one of the reasons people aren't going to accept being moralized to.

 

[JimB]

Here's my issue: She made a video for her Kickstarter page where she has all of the consoles.

I don't know what that has to do with anything. To the best of my memory, she never said she needs money to buy consoles. She--and I--said she wanted to buy "hundreds of games."

Wouldn't you already have a few of the games?

I consider myself a gamer, and I doubt I have a full thirty games to my name. That number, incidentally, includes what I still own from the NES.

She already had a studio. And like I said, it wasn't a low budget affair. The quality had already been in place since she finished her first series and moved onto Bayonetta.

I'm not sure how good quality implies high budget, but okay.

Nope. She needs to be a lot more accurate when saying that a trope's existence is leading to the moral decay of an industry.

Has she said "moral decay of an industry?"

When female protagonists are in trouble, they also get saved.

Leaving aside for now that I'm not sure "female protagonist in trouble" is anything but passingly similar to "damsel in distress," how many male protagonists can you think of who have been in the same position? Scanning through my library, the only games I see when that happens are Megaman X3 (X is cornered by Sigma in a cutscene and someone hits him with an antivirus), and arguably Chrono Trigger (after his death, Crono needs to be resurrected, but you can beat the game without doing so) and Metal Gear Solid (but only if you don't save yourself). That would require a generous reading of events to categorize as something that occurs in ten percent of my games.

Hell, Zelda in Twilight Princess went willingly to save her kingdom and was pretty powerful as a sage.

Less powerful that a shepherd, though.

And they don't fit the narrative about Zelda being the Triforce of Wisdom and doing what's best for the realm.

Then why was the narrative crafted that she was the Triforce of Wisdom and not of Courage?

Meanwhile, the fact is, most people that want a "reverse" gender role don't see outside of the "Damsel in Distress" narrative except for gender.

I don't understand what this sentence means.

And all this really shows is that she keeps her supporters ignorant of the facts. All that really is is that Zelda is at a different stage of the Monomyth Theory than Link.

Why? Why couldn't she be in Link's place?

Also, just as a suggestion, Zelda, being a princess, told Impa to find someone willing to answer the call to action.

...Are you arguing that telling an old woman to go find some random dude to save the kingdom is equivalent to protagonism?

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you mean that she made less impact?

I mean, while Hyrule was under her watch, it became a hellscape. When Link returned, he defeated every monster plaguing it, saved two entire species from extinction (the Gorons and the Zoras), reformed a criminal organization into a peaceful, sovereign nation (the Gerudos), and sealed Darth Vader himself in a void beyond time and space. What did Zelda do, aside from teach him a couple of songs and give him the Arrows of Light? That amounts to heroism in the same way the guy who sold John McClane his gun is the hero of Die Hard.

She had a different impact, but she had an impact all the same.

I didn't say she made the same impact, or a different impact. I said she made less of an impact in seven years than Link did in less than one month.

Not talking about women in gaming like Tyris (Golden Axe) or Ms. Pac-Man makes her argument weaker by making it seem as if women just can't be heroes and don't have strong personalities or that gamers don't like playing as women.

Her Kickstarter page--and I'm not a backer, so this is information available to the public--mentions she will be making a video called "Mrs. Male Character," or words to that effect. I have no doubt that if she chooses to address Ms. Pac-Man, she will do so there. I don't know Golden Axe, but without even bothering to look it up, I will guess that Tyris is probably a Vallejo babe with a sword and a fur bikini and would thus fit under the topic of the "the Fighting Fucktoy" or the "the Sexy Sidekick" videos she mentions.

Sorry, that should be "narrative", in regards to Damsel in Distress. The original Mario Bros was all about jumping on turtles coming from a pipe. And Wrecking Crew had no damsels... It was all about destroying buildings.

Er, so, your point is that she's required to mention games that have no female characters at all as proof of how well women are treated by the video games industry? Isn't that like saying a video criticizing depictions of black people in movies is required to mention the Wizard of Oz as a positive example of black people in cinema?

I want you to take a step back for one second and honestly ask yourself a question: If Mario had to save a prince at the end of Mario Land, would you be as emotionally invested in the story?

That's a bit of a bad example, because I can't make myself care about the ironic-quotation-marks "story" of a Mario game at all (except for Super Mario RPG and Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door; represent, guys!), but I'd certainly be more interested in a game where there's a prince to be saved rather than a princess. How would the writers portray him? Five to one says he'd be an effeminate fop whose weakness and shrill, girlish voice are played for laughs, but still, if the writers portrayed him well and honestly, I'd love it.

If Princess Toadstool was instead Prince Toadstool, would you have felt like the Prince should have been able to take care of himself and gotten out of this mess?

Can Prince Toadstool fly like Princess Toadstool (Super Mario Bros 2), participate in brawls like Princess Toadstool (the Smash Bros series), or fight with weapons and magic like Princess Toadstool (Super Mario RPG)? If so, yes, I'd expect him to be able to get his own fat ass out of Bowser's weaksauce traps.

Women aren't weak, and needing a helping hand every now and then doesn't make it so.

The point isn't that women are weak; it's that they're being portrayed as weak. Perhaps that's what you meant to say, but I think the distinction is important enough to underline.

Her videos won't address those problems.

Okay, but again, that's not what I asked. I asked if you think there is a problem that needs to be addressed, and if so, how it needs to be done.

 

[runic knight]

I might not be answering further replies in this thread, because it seems to not be giving me messages when people reply to me, so I might or might not know when anyone's said anything to respond to. Nothing personal.

I didn't know it even would give messages about that. Though in this regard, that may have been because I manually added the quote tag rather then the reply button.

I will apologize here though if the reply is sort of rambling, rather tired at the moment and it is hard to properly grasp the concepts I am trying to share with words in order to translate and share them.

The difference is whether you're attempting to describe a state as it exists now and has existed historically or how such a state ought to be or will be in the future.

It still seems like bullshit to me I am afraid. I suppose I just can't divorce myself from the feeling that the idea of 51% here is devoid of value in any discussion not based in emotional appeal rather then rational discourse.

Can it ever be valid to discuss "the video game industry" at all, then?

Yes, but one has to at least preface claims appropriately if not even bothering to get relevant data. Hell, even take the effort to break the industry down into bare-bones categories where the patterns are more prevalent (like Triple A compare to Indie to mid-tier) narrows the claim some and can help mitigate the misleading nature such sweeping generalizations create (A major aspect I find fault with them in the first place, that they manipulate the view to trick audience). It is the same issue I have with labeling a person a liar when you are debating them. It is true, as everyone has lied and therefore are technically a liar, but it presents a misleading, negative view that is done more for emotional responses in the audience then any actual discussion or clarity of opinion.

Okay. So, why not?
Now, I ask that as a hypothetical question, because questions of motivation are always murky and inherently unprovable. All we can do is examine the observable actions taken and make inferences; intent can be inferred by following the bullet, as someone came close to saying in a legal trial once. Zelda's weakness is the basis for nearly every Zelda game, and it's a trait common among games, so we can infer that the video games industry sees women as too incompetent to provide for themselves and that they should be used as trophies to be awarded to the male characters who save them.

No. Intent is not so easily inferred as ballistics, as not all people think the same way. You try to compare an objective science to a subjective interpretation, and it doesn't work. I'll mention my mario communist idea again, as the same idea is prevalent among all games (working class plumber is required to keep the ruling government working by opposing the tyrannical royalty overreaching itself in the way of the oppressive king koopa. It is a story about the strength of the working class, though perhaps more akin to the French revolutionary notion then the more vilified current incarnation.)
Beside that flaw, you make broad, unproven claims about the commonality of the trope and a subjective inference of the game industry based on said subjective inference. The entire thing is personal interpretation being used to support more personal interpretation. There is nothing objective about it, and it is more akin to religious persecuting practices then any valid court of law. You over reach every step of the way to "support" an idea already decided upon. Damsel does not mean weakness, weak damsel does not mean negative view of women as whole. Reuse of trope does not mean company opinion on women as whole. Company reliance on trope does not mean industry opinion.

The assertion is supported by my anecdotal experience. Going through my personal library, the vast majority of characters who need to be saved from capture are female, and the ones doing the saving are always male. The only exceptions are Megaman X3 (X gets captured during the intro stage) and Beyond Good and Evil (Jade saves the bulky guy in the armor and maybe also the pig dude, I forget).

I am pretty sure you are aware the folly of trying to use anecdotal evidence in even simple discussions, yes? As said, it is the same justification of bigots ("only black people I met were criminals"). But I think that was not your intent. My point here wasn't even mainly a "prove it" stance (though, in part, it was) so much as it was "they didn't even start with a solid foundation before piling stuff on top."

Why couldn't you claim that? Aren't dresses gender-specific and even gender-segregated? Isn't that, in turn, sexism, because it tries to define how women ought to differentiate themselves from men?

If you define sexism that way, it cheapens the word though. It renders the use of it worthless when the definition is so broad and also reveals a concentration on gender first and an inability to separate gender from things. It changes the idea from a discrimination against to merely a difference between and it looks to gender first, rather then as a detail equivalent to all other details that may relate to motivation. Let me explain.

A dress maker usually makes dresses in certain sizes, with patterns, cuts, textures and general designs chosen all based on what has sold well before. Now, for the most part, not a single one would deny a male from buying the product. Not a one would prevent them or discriminate against them. They do not design the product with the male figure in mind, but that is not discrimination. They do not design it with a male in mind, but in a sense, they don't do it with either gender in mind. The details of the dresses, the shapes and sizes and colors are all reactionary to market demands. What details sell best are made again, those that flop are dropped. Yes, more women will buy them by far then males. Yes the reason they buy more is a cultural pressure about gender and style. Yes, this means more women will have opinions heard and the product designs towards their preferences, but at no point does that make selling a dress discrimination in and of itself, nor the dress makers sexist for making a product with those traits. A man can still buy and use the same product, it will may not be optimized for his build. This can create a demand in the market to be filled, but a company not filling a demand does not make them sexist. If I make a widget that has an 80% male buyer demand, it would not be sexist to keep making that same product. I am under no obligation to change the details of a product in order to get a larger female market share, and in not doing so, I am not discriminating as I am not the one creating the gender tread.

Going back to games industry, we often distinguish games as made for males, but that is just a simpler way to say that the design choices used seem to sell better to that demographic. Sexualized character designs, violence, male protagonists simply sell better as a whole (according to triple A publisher market testers), and sell better towards males over females in general. The details are associated with successful products are reused and like them or not, pattern of gender sales or not, that alone is not discrimination. I highly doubt that at any point anyone in the industry said "women can't buy this." Too often we start with association of traits towards genders and it took your last reply to settle in before I realized that any attempt to associate traits as positive or negative towards a gender as a whole actually are sexist themselves by presuming that a gender makes someone predisposed towards or against aspects of the game, rather then merely as reflections of society itself and gender roles previously established.

Do women dislike scantily clad characters with no personalities? Can you even answer that without making a claim that, at its heart, is sexist by nature, according to your definition of the word? Is it not a socially created notion of defending one's self worth by defending one's gender's portrayal as though a portrayal of a character with your gender in any way represents you yourself?

Okay, but that doesn't answer the question of why it was done in the Legend of Zelda, or by extension every Zelda game, or by extension every video game that puts a princess in peril. And even if it could be applied to every story line ever, so what? How is the question of why it is always a princess--never a prince, never a king, and only rarely a queen, but a princess; a woman who should have the power to command the lives and deaths of thousands of subjects yet who is helpless until some dude from nowhere picks up a stick to beat people with that saves the titular head of a nation because his muscles make him more powerful than all the forces this girl can command--how does asking why it's always the princess in a medium other than video games invalidate the question when it comes to video games?

It doesn't invalidate the question, it reveals what should be the true target of the complaint. When someone calls something sexist, it is distinguishing it away from a cultural default as most people do not consider culture sexist (similar to how no one thinks themselves evil). It is calling it up as an example of something beyond the norm. When it comes to video games though, it is an unfair stigma to attach for doing what every other media is doing, many far worse. It makes it look like someone is picking on video games for being a medium punching bag rather then trying to address what causes the thing in the behavior first place. Setting aside the whole argument about defining sexism and subjective interpretations stemming from that, video games do nothing no other media does not do. Many movies, for instance, use the damsel trope and probably on a very disproportionate gender line too. If the detail of the familiar trope (tying back to the paragraphs before) sell well, they will be used again and again and aped by media of all sorts. What is special about it when video games apes it that merits it being distinguished among it's media peers to be shunned and pressured to change, often in a way counter to what market demand would have it. It is attempting to get a media to change away from what works when all they do is the same as what works for all other media, and it is attempting to get that change by appealing to morality and guilt.

Oh, so the video games industry isn't sexist; it just profits from sexism, sort of like how lots of Spanish privateers didn't hate black people but were willing to sell them as property to the English?

Close, though for someone arguing about the 51%, you seem to mix the details of hate and indifference to suffering.
Compared to the whole of society, the game industry as a total is probably no more or less sexist in behavior. Sexism is subjective, so I use cultural norms as a bit of a barometer simple because democracy of sorts. They reuse the same details because the culture supports it by purchase which leads to the conclusion, even if flawed, that those details sell. Those details lead to gender divisions in purchases but not discrimination against. They don't profit from sexism because there is no discrimination. They profit because the details they use, the ones you subjectively attribute to sexism, are not attributed to it as whole by the majority of the culture that buys the product. The sexism here is not the product but rather society's reaction influence on the reaction to it. Why are scantily clad women in media often considered sexist if they are not discriminating (read-actively prohibiting) other women from enjoying the media and it is a cultural notion pushed on the women that determines their dislike of the detail?

I'm not sure "intentional" is the word you mean here. I get the feeling--and I may be way off here, so just remember I'm only hypothesizing--that you think intent is what happens when someone says, "I'm going to make a game about a guy who saves a princess because girls are weak and stupid." Intent is what happens when an action is taken voluntarily. It's nice to say that there's no intent to paint women as helpless and inferior by making a damsel in distress game, but the thing is, nothing happens unintentionally in making a video game. Every choice has to be written, coded, and crafted. Every choice is intentional.

I think you're confusing "intentional" for "carefully examined prior to being enacted."

What you infer is subjective interpretation. It will never be intent, no matter how much you try to point to details that support it. Intent is creator's will and voluntary decisions tied together. It is a tied aspect, because otherwise every fan theory out there would all simultaneously be correct even if they contradict because the choices voluntarily made by the creators that were interpreted by the fans would then support the fan theories. the logic fails here as it would create contradictions. I could see mario as communist propaganda because I associate him with the working class man based on his design and subjectively read into his fight against Bowser as representative of class struggle. My friend could see mario as representative of working class as well, but see the efforts done in order to put the true ruler on the throne as instead subjectively read into it that it is the notion of divine rule because mario doesn't just take the rule himself in the end and fights a demonic usurper.
Every choice is intentional, but implications are not. A female character is intentional, that the female represents all women is not. A damsel is intentional, that the character being a female representing the designer's opinions on women is not. You again apply a subjectiveness where it does not fit. You see damsels as representative of weak and stupid or whatever, thus you see the use of one as representative of creator intent. They may not see it as such, which is why I keep saying you can not claim to know the intent just because of trope choice alone. You need to divorce your opinion of the trope from the equation if you seek to know creator intent.

Yes, it is. It is very, very sexist and/or racist and/or, uh, homophobic? Is there an -ist for assuming straight is the default? Well, whatever, you get my point; you just seem to think I endorse it.

Not endorse so much as forget how far that concept of "default" applies. Why males may like, or seem to like, certain product details and why females might reject those same ones for instance.

If someone has to tell you something about himself, whatever he said is a lie. Like, uh, let's take South Park as an example. When Mr. Garrison undergoes a sex change, there are a few episodes where he feels the need to tell everyone, "I'm a woman!" That he needs to say so means he's lying, because he really believed it was true, it wouldn't be something he'd feel like he had to make people aware of. His inherent human selfishness would make him assume everyone already knows the truth that's so evident to him.

(That example opens a big old can of worms about whether I think transsexual people are lying to themselves when they claim to be of their identified sex, but let's stay away from that for now except to say I won't tell any transsexual person what his sex is. I'm only discussing a fictional character here.)

A man with boobs would be like that: Someone whom the writer is so insecure about the femininity of (maybe with good reason, but probably not) that he makes the character tell us she's a woman. If she has to say so, then she's lying, and she's a man with boobs.

Again, that's just my best guess, though. I really should bother to learn the terminology.

I think I get what you are saying here. The character says they are of x trait because the creator either lacks the skill to demonstrate it, is insecure in the ability to do so, or is trying to present the character themselves as insecure in the trait as representative of themselves.

What does that mean when Linkara does his "I am a man!" gag?

Market patterns which want men to be more powerful than women, and knight stories that have male characters more powerful than female ones.

If these tropes are genuinely sexless, then why aren't there at least as many stories of female knights saving helpless princes as there are of the reverse?

Great question. I'll just role with the "want men more powerful then women bit" for the sake of the larger point here, just know I frown at that idea. Part is because in history more males could read then females, and obvious social limitations on female roles in general, would mean far far more male hero tales. Given how all media copies itself now, with a greater amount of male lead stories, it makes sense that more of those would be made. Add this into the discussion of detail based market forces that merely fall along gender lines, and you now have a market of mostly males until more recent history buying a product with details that better match what they would want, such as a male lead. the tropes ARE sexless, as they are interchangeable, it is just through history, the market has supported the details that garnished a greater male audience and companies are often conservative by nature, preferring to use tried and true rather then innovate when it comes to core design and target demographic. Most triple A games are not so much designed for males as they are the reaction to the larger male demographic buying their stuff. A circle, true, but still there.

 

[Tribalism]

I don't know. If nothing really changes, why do all those straight males throw a hissyfit when something other that a straight, white, male is the protagonist?

That's sort of the double standard of gaming. We're told it shouldn't matter if there's a lack of minority representation, and yet we have the incredibly overblown reactions of the majority at pretty much every turn. "ewwww, there's a girl on the front cover! I might get cooties!"

I'm a straight male and I'd put Mirror's Edge & Bayonetta in my top 10 games, Portal Runner in my list of "under-appreciated gems" and am content to roll a female character in RPGs (the last time I had a choice in gender was Demon's Souls where I rolled female). While the concept might have been considered racist by some or a poor representation of Cherokee beliefs, I liked the theme and idea behind Prey's protagonist. I've never played a game with a homosexual protagonist (I tend to avoid games with "romancing" as an option, since it's an uncomfortable experience regardless of who my character is having a good grope of), though I found Stephen Fry's novel "Making History" an uplifting experience to read (deals with homosexuality in an alternate version of history where homosexuality, amongst other things, is a crime).

Notable mention goes to GTA: San Andreas, a game which sold well and I'm sure most gamers will agree was not tarnished by the skin tone of its protagonist or its heavy emphasis on gang culture for the first segment of the game.

And here we're somewhere between a false dichotomy and a strawman. There's more options than "not having lgbt people in the game" and "making it all about their sex/sexuality/identity." Nobody wants the latter. At least, nobody I've ever come across. They seem to be some strange bogeyman that exists only in minds of people trying to justify the majority stance.

The problem is that games are, for the most part, poorly written. Characters are not well rounded, especially when given a 10 or less hour span to tell a story in between gameplay. Even games like Heavy Rain, a game meant to be about telling a story, suffer from the protagonist (Ethan) being 1-dimensional. Introducing a character's sexuality/transgendered nature is often difficult outside of RPGs, irrelevant to the story or used for the wrong reasons (that one scene in FFVII as an example). As such, very few games strike the middle ground of having the subject brought up without it being parody or the focal point of the game. I won't go into women's portrayal in video games because... well, that's a big debate.

You've got that backwards, sweetie.

I'd think not. "Jargon", for want of a better word, alienates people. If it's outside of their daily use, overuse of it in a text or conversation is less engaging to the audience. Imagine someone who never plays games trying to read an article on gaming where "FPS", "MMORPG", "DoT", "F2P" and several other acronyms are used without explanation. It makes people switch off.

Many people don't know what "Cis-gendered", "pansexual" or "genderfluid" mean and these are some of the simpler terms to understand. In fact, there's a great host of words which are commonly used in discussions pertaining to the LGBT movement and all its sub-branches which the majority of people haven't heard of. Chalk it up to ignorance, but most people don't care enough to take the time to learn these phrases to join in the discussion. I know whenever this comes up in an online discussion, I need to reference google/wikipedia frequently to remain on the same page as everyone else. I can't fathom how this is anything but alienation.

When fighting for a cause, your message must be clear and understood by as many people as possible. Successful protests for women's rights and the rights of black people, movements which made actual progress, were made by people wishing for unison and equality. They spoke their native tongue, clearly voiced their hopes and dreams and made no effort to distinguish themselves from the rest of society as "different" by means of self-created words or phrases.

Put simply: How can people understand how you're different if they're not told clearly? If people can't understand how you're different, how can they accept you for being different?

(Here I am not implying you do or do not belong to the LGBT movement or are "different". "You" is being used in a broader sense. Further, "the LGBT movement" is used as a blanket term to cover any movement pertaining to sexual identity and issues of gender identity. I'm trying to be as politically correct as possible here.)

 

[JimB]

I will apologize here though if the reply is sort of rambling, rather tired at the moment and it is hard to properly grasp the concepts I am trying to share with words in order to translate and share them.

No more rambling than my responses tend to be. I really wish that, instead of Mr. Garrison's sex change, I'd used all his "I love poontang" statements as my example for people who need to announce that kind of thing being liars; it would have been way less potentially inflammatory.

I suppose I just can't divorce myself from the feeling that the idea of 51% here is devoid of value in any discussion not based in emotional appeal rather than rational discourse.

Since a group's behavior can only be defined by the behavior of the majority of that group's components, if we insist on treating the group as an individual, then 51% is good enough for me. I suppose in interests of fairness it would be nice to have a disclaimer, but still.

It is the same issue I have with labeling a person a liar when you are debating them. It is true, as everyone has lied and therefore are technically a liar, but it presents a misleading, negative view that is done more for emotional responses in the audience than any actual discussion or clarity of opinion.

Still, if someone lies often enough, it's not unfair to point that out.

Intent is not so easily inferred as ballistics, as not all people think the same way. You try to compare an objective science to a subjective interpretation, and it doesn't work.

Actually, the original "intent follows the bullet" statement isn't about measuring ballistics but about intent. It means that if you're aiming at Joe but actually shot Bob, you can still be prosecuted for shooting Bob because intent follows the bullet, and "But I meant to shoot Joe!" is not a defense (though it is a factor in determining the crime you'll be charged with, but never mind, let's not complicate it). What the industry is aiming for with Zelda doesn't much matter to me since Wind Waker is the only version of her I can think of where she participates in the story except as an exposition dump or glorified treasure chest. I suppose she does a little something in Twilight Princess, but I dislike that game too much to be charitable to it, so I don't think you can trust my objectivity when I say her participation in the final fight is nothing more than assigning the bow to an automated firing button.

I'll mention my Mario Communist idea again, as the same idea is prevalent among all games (working class plumber is required to keep the ruling government working by opposing the tyrannical royalty overreaching itself in the way of the oppressive King Koopa. It is a story about the strength of the working class, though perhaps more akin to the French revolutionary notion then the more vilified current incarnation).

Given that Mario games don't tend to have story, I think that theory works better as a motif or a reference than as a plot analysis, though it's not an unconvincing case you make.

Beside that flaw, you make broad, unproven claims about the commonality of the trope and a subjective inference of the game industry based on said subjective inference. The entire thing is personal interpretation being used to support more personal interpretation. There is nothing objective about it, and it is more akin to religious persecuting practices then any valid court of law.

Do you suggest there is any way to objectively prove intent? For my part, I'm satisfied that the video games industry is generally sexist. My conscience doesn't bother me when I make that statement. I have too many Soul Calibur games, too many Final Fantasy games; I have heard too many complaints and seen too many videos to believe otherwise. I have not read any peer-reviewed, published, academic studies (is there even such a thing?), but the world I am aware of, the world I perceive, is one in which the video games industry is pretty sexist.

Damsel does not mean weakness; weak damsel does not mean negative view of women as whole.

There's this episode of Law & Order, I forget which one. The plot has something to do with a girl who gets her brain bashed in at a party. Turns out she was gay and her girlfriend did it. One of the two of them wrote an e-mail to the other that read, "Why can't they understand it's not all about sex," which is how the ADA figured out the victim was gay: She realized the writer was complaining that people think being gay is all about fucking. They don't understand that gay people want all the same things straight people want: someone to hold hands with, to talk to, to fight about washing the dishes with; a good job, a nice house, a comfortable bed; blah blah blah. People think that being gay is one hundred percent about sex, because that's all such people talk about.

I bring that up because I think it maps to this situation: If the only woman the games industry likes to put into a game is a weak damsel (and I concede that it's not, but I'm exaggerating for now since that's the only trope we're discussing), then I have to assume that's what they think women are.

I am pretty sure you are aware the folly of trying to use anecdotal evidence in even simple discussions, yes?

Yeah, but my own experience is the only basis I have to form my perceptions of the world, so I'm kind of stuck with it. If you can think of some more games where men are in distress and/or saved by damsels, feel free to point them out. I kind of wanted to mention Final Fantasy IX, but no one really saves Zidane; they just yell at him until he decides to save himself.

If you define sexism that way, it cheapens the word though. It renders the use of it worthless when the definition is so broad and also reveals a concentration on gender first and an inability to separate gender from things.

If things are only permissible to members of a certain gender, I think they are contributory to, or at least a symptom of, the underlying problem. Put a man in a dress and he will be treated like a joke to be laughed at or an abomination to be scorned, whereas a woman in pants is no big deal: What does that say about gender roles in America? I think it says men are admirable and it's okay to emulate us, but a man who wishes to emulate a woman is cheapening himself and is therefore worthy of derision.

The details are associated with successful products are reused and like them or not, pattern of gender sales or not; that alone is not discrimination. I highly doubt that at any point anyone in the industry said "women can't buy this."

No, they just said, "We won't sell this to women because we'd rather sell to men."

Too often we start with association of traits towards genders and it took your last reply to settle in before I realized that any attempt to associate traits as positive or negative towards a gender as a whole actually are sexist themselves by presuming that a gender makes someone predisposed towards or against aspects of the game, rather then merely as reflections of society itself and gender roles previously established.

Yep. And I don't know many female gamers personally, so perhaps I oughtn't to speak up, but the ones I do know don't say they want games for women. They say they want to stop feeling like they're being excluded from games. They want Final Fantasy X's camera not to be aimed directly at a female character's ass for every cut scene, not to have the camera staring at the guys's asses.

Do women dislike scantily clad characters with no personalities? Can you even answer that without making a claim that, at its heart, is sexist by nature, according to your definition of the word?

Sure: I define sexism as a matter of prescription rather than description; as a matter of saying, "This is how women should feel" rather than "This is how women feel." Most of the women I know are irritated, embarrassed, or otherwise turned off by the things female characters wear--or more accurately, don't wear--in video games, and I can't blame 'em for that. Now, it's worth noting that I also don't know any women who rage about it night and day, either; my most eloquent friend described it as a papercut. Every time she sees some big-tittied slut in a leather harness and high-heeled hooker boots in a fighting game, she gets a little papercut. She'll never bleed out from it, but it stings all the same.

When it comes to video games though, it is an unfair stigma to attach for doing what every other media is doing, many far worse.

Moral relativism isn't much of a defense. That there are media more sexist than video games does not mean video games are not sexist. It just means the accuser has prioritized discussing video games, probably because he's more interested in them than those other media.

Many movies, for instance, use the damsel trope and probably on a very disproportionate gender line too.

Yeah. If you haven't heard of it before, Google "Bechdel test" some time and see if you own a single movie that would pass it. It's a good way to make yourself feel uncomfortable.

Close, though for someone arguing about the 51%, you seem to mix the details of hate and indifference to suffering.

Not at all. I think most people define hate as an intense emotion, like rage. That's valid, sure, but for these discussion, I don't care about unexpurgated emotions. As long as hate stays inside your head, I don't care if you hate women. For these discussion, though, I define hate according to its behavior. Like, there was this guy I argued with once (he's not on this site, as far as I know) who said that he has gay friends and likes movies made by gay directors, so that means no one can accuse him of hate when he fights against gay marriage rights. That's crap: Of course he hates them, because regardless of how hot or turbulent his emotional state is, he's still fighting to deny gay people legal rights.

Similar situation here. If you're willing to insult and demean all women to profit off that behavior, then you hate women.

Why are scantily clad women in media often considered sexist if they are not discriminating (read: actively prohibiting) other women from enjoying the media and it is a cultural notion pushed on the women that determines their dislike of the detail?

I think that's outside the scope of this discussion, but the only guess I have to field is passively observing women on a screen or in a book is not as emotionally engaging as taking control of a woman's actions, as one does in video games.

Intent is creator's will and voluntary decisions tied together.

I'm not sure how one can make a decision involutarily.

A female character is intentional; that the female represents all women is not.

I forget who said this, but the quote I like here is: "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is enemy action." Obviously, when the numbers are as huge as those available in video games, three isn't a conclusive number itself, but I think the tropes repeat often enough for reasonable people to be convinced of underlying assumptions informing them.

I think I get what you are saying here. The character says they are of x trait because the creator either lacks the skill to demonstrate it, is insecure in the ability to do so, or is trying to present the character themselves as insecure in the trait as representative of themselves.

That sounds about right.

What does that mean when Linkara does his "I am a man!" gag?

He's referencing a joke from one of his earliest videos. I forget the one, but I think it was a Superman book. The writer made Superman punch a robot and yell something like, "You are a robot, but I am a man!" or something like that because he (the writer) thought it would be bad-ass and cool, when it's actually just laughable.

Great question.

Thanks, I get a good one in now and then.

I'll just roll with the "want men more powerful than women bit" for the sake of the larger point here, just know I frown at that idea.

Fair enough.

 

[Tribalism]

The area where your attempt to gender flip fails is that you are implying that unattractive men and women alike are met with an assumption that they will be judged for their minds rather than their sexual characteristics. I do not believe this is true. I can't, off the top of my head, think of a single woman I've ever met of any level of attractiveness whose physical appearance isn't the first thing people comment on. See also the comments for any Lisa Foiles video. I think she's proven that she's funny and witty, but how many people dismiss her as being too pretty or not pretty enough, discussing only her appearance rather than the content of her message? Conversely, how many people look at one of Yahtzee's poetry videos--and I think he's an attractive, well-groomed man who wears his style well--and bring up his appearance as a relevant factor?

Society's emphasis on appearance for women is mirrored by its emphasis on successful and protective appearing men. Thousands of years ago, the male was the hunter who earned the food for his family through strength. As such, strength is a desirable trait in a man. In recent times, this has been somewhat replaced by or at least paired alongside wealth because of a wealthy man's ability to provide for his family. Strength is shown through muscles, feats of dexterity, a willingness to do tough physical labour. Wealth is demonstrated by his apparel, his willingness to provide gifts or the brand of his watch/car. A man who is unwilling to work and has no signs of wealth is generally viewed as undesirable.

The female was mainly used for reproduction. She was to nurture and raise her children. A fertile female was a desirable female, which still remains today in men's approval of wide hips. Females were not hunters in the same sense as the males, they did not provide for their family so much as help create and develop it. As such, a woman who was incapable of raising a family was viewed as undesirable.

As such, a woman is generally judged on her appearance, whereas a man is judged on his success. I won't make claims about how "easy" or "difficult" it is for either gender to fulfil these expectations, though I will mention that jobs aren't being just "handed out" any more and a male that society views as "strong" takes a lot more effort to maintain than what society views as a "strong" female.

Is this a progressive view to maintain? Not really. Society is currently this way due to the fact that until the last century, women couldn't provide wealth for their family in the same way a man could. Now, more than ever, women are showing their ability to be smart with at least a 55%/45% split of university graduates in favour of women. As such, women may have to show they have something of value to say because of the way society is, but they're statistically more capable of doing so.

Finally, your opinion on Lisa Folies is subjective. I view her videos to raise my blood pressure and get angry. I rarely get a laugh out of any of her material. Her video on cosplay fails would have... probably been removed and required an apology if it was presented by a guy. Funny you should mention Yahtzee, however, as his material comes under a lot of flak from many critical viewers and outside of a few episodes of Zero Punctuation meant to be a joke (FF XIII as one example) or just clearly not researched enough (Monster Hunter) most of his material is well constructed, which is why it's one of the few series carrying this site into mainstream relevance. Lisa Folies comes under scrutiny because her material is comparatively shallow (comparatively, thinking of a topic then picking 5 entries takes less time than completing the average video game, script writing should take equal time, blue screening is simpler than animating and recording voice overs). People criticise her looks because she very prominently displays them and because her appearance outweighs her actual content (that is, she's pretty but has little to say). People don't criticise Yahtzee's appearance because for the first 4 years of his time on the escapist he shied away from the camera aside from during the occasional gag. His appearance is irrelevant because he has demonstrated he has something worthwhile to say. In fact, what he has to say is SO worthwhile that The Escapist would be as relevant as any other gaming news site if not for him being hosted here. If we want another example of this, try Jim Sterling's "Jimquisition" or anything by Susan Arendt. Both put out quality work. Jim isn't camera shy, nor the slimmest candidate, but his videos aren't filled with fat hate because he tackles some of the most worthwhile topics to discuss in current gaming that many shy away from. Susan Arendt submits quality reviews (and I hazard a guess at much more content, I don't follow her too closely) and I'd assume she doesn't get appearance based comments because she has something worthwhile to say.

TL;DR Folies gets shit because she's a pretty face with a "popcorn" feature. Other people get judged on their material (like the discussion we're having now) because their quality of content is generally great, even if they aren't "pretty" by most people's standards.

 

[JimB]

Society's emphasis on appearance for women is mirrored by its emphasis on successful and protective-appearing men.

Is this intended to refute my point, or just explain it? Because I don't disagree with any particular thing you say between this line and the next one I intend to quote; I just also don't think an explanation is a valid excuse.

Finally, your opinion on Lisa Foiles is subjective.

Aren't all opinions?

Lisa Foiles comes under scrutiny because her material is comparatively shallow (comparatively, thinking of a topic then picking five entries takes less time than completing the average video game, script writing should take equal time, blue screening is simpler than animating and recording voice overs).

Fine, but why wouldn't the conversation then be about the content of her videos and not how fuckable she is?

His appearance is irrelevant because he has demonstrated he has something worthwhile to say.

So offering a simple opinion piece makes her appearance relevant?

Jim isn't camera shy, nor the slimmest candidate, but his videos aren't filled with fat hate because he tackles some of the most worthwhile topics to discuss in current gaming that many shy away from.

No, but they do get filled with plenty of hate for his message rather than his appearance, which I think supports my point: When people want to criticize Mr. Sterling, they do it for his message rather than his appearance, just as they do when they want to praise him. It's...well, not exactly the opposite for Ms. Foiles, but it's considerably less true for her. Positive and negative feedback alike is disturbingly likely to talk about how sexually attractive people find her.

Susan Arendt submits quality reviews (and I hazard a guess at much more content, I don't follow her too closely) and I'd assume she doesn't get appearance based comments because she has something worthwhile to say.

I actually haven't seen any of her videos. They tend to be too long and take up too much of my daily ration of bandwidth. I therefore can't speak as to her.