The rampant Sexualization in videogames

[Drauger]

"Male Power Fantasy" bullshit, yeah I'm freaking tired of being told what I desire as a fantasy, guess what? I don't want to be a a white ash bald violent ashole who destroys everything as he walks, or a living saussage with legs that kills demons and turns his hair white, a fat ass italian cliche who can only repeat IT'S ME MARIO, or worse a mute androgyny elf whose only purposes in life are crash pots, cut the lawn, and search in X number dungeons for a spoiled princess who can't have a decent security system in her castle to say some.

Say all you want but , quote as much comics as you like but expecting guys to fantasize with the above examples it's just plain sexist, none it's cool nor for man or women, so what about if someone takes the hose and turns the fire off instead of saying "my fire is worse than yours?" or "That's not fire, mine is!"

 

[Sack of Cheese]

I find this is an easy comparison,

Spoiler: This is an example of 'sexualised' man - NSFW?

Spoiler: This is just an empowered man

I don't have a problem with sexualised characters in general, I'm too desensitised to them.

 

[Cybylt]

Sephiroth makes more fangirls in a day than Marcus Phoenix will ever have in his entire existence.

That bit's probably mostly true but there are women who find muscly men attractive. I mean, Marcus and Kratos weren't made with them in mind whatsoever, but still.

Anyway on to my main point(and this is likely spam or something because of it) IS THAT MOTHERFUCKIN' CHIBODEE CROCKET?

 

[Nakts]

If you really believe sexuallized male characters are male power fantasy and nothing more, take a trip to your local bookstore, check out the romance section, and come back ready to admit defeat.

 

[Stephen St.]

Its quite simple. The idea is that if you ignored a problem other people were having until you yourself had the problem, what right do you have to complain that people are ignoring your problem?

That's the "moral/ethical" basis the poster is coming from.

Oh well, I refuse to take these discussions seriously anymore. All it ever devolves into is people going into "personal" experiences which stand for fuck all in a real debate, how they "feel" which has more standing because of the debate subject, but is still worthless on its own and finally insults.

I am not using any personal experience or emotion though, I purely ask for the logcial conclusions that lead to your statenment: "If you have ignored other people's issues before, it is morally reprehensible/discredits you to now adress your own issues". I have already brought forward numerous points why I think this is illogical, and that this would, if applied to all movements, discredit pretty much every civil rights movement ever, since there are always more problems to be adressed.

I can bring forward additional points: Your statement assumes that a problem was "ignored", which requires knowledge of the problem. Can you prove that, prior to the feminist movement with regard to games, anyone knew that people were having a problem with the design of male characters in videogames?

 

[Gali]

There are gamers out there, male and female alike, that just want more variety/better storytelling. This is not about a feminist agenda to censor this type of media. It is just about gaming growing up and admitting, that there are more people on this earth than heroic white males and brainless bimbos with big boobs. And they are as much as capable to save the day and get the girl/guy as our beloved stereotypes. What I want to say is: We have a common issue here. It just came up recently because the representation of women in games is far more vile than when it comes to men, since you atleast GET to save the day.

Instead of fighting who is represented worse, we need to demand more variety. Not only when it comes to female characters. This doesn't mean the bimbos and heroic males are going away. It just means that we get more Jades, Nillins, Bayonettas (yes, she's sexualized, but there is an character attached to it - this is smart storytelling!) Lees and the like.

 

[VodkaKnight]

I think I'd be kinda cool if we had an AVERAGE protagonist.
Not that tall, not quite thin but not fat, reasonably attractive, fit, but not overwhelmingly so.
I look forward to that game, or a game with a disabled protagonist, because I can't think of any.

 

[Anthony Corrigan]

Sexuality is treated bizarrely by our society, firstly we have all this and on the other hand the slightest hint of nipple let alone any a bum or genitals gets a game banned. Then there is the fact that sex is treated as disgusting, more so than watching someone's head blown apart in slow motion. Its weird that its ok to sexualize someone to the point where they have no character but you cant make something sexual with all that goes with that (including an attractive personality and reciprocal sexual desire)

 

[CFriis87]

Oh boy, fun.

I'm not a major supporter of Feminism, hell I'm firmly against most of what third-wave Feminism is trying to do (Exceptions), but I don't buy the "male disposibility" argument.

Men are not required to support a family, you're just an asshole if you don't.
Men are not drafted to fight in wars against their will. (Yeah, we sign up for the draft, but it'll be a long time before I'll ever worry about it)
Men are not expected to be 6'3 athletic superhumans.
Men are no more disposable to today's society excepting a few small inconveniences which are either so minor to hardly have any effect (Baby gets ignored for a few minutes longer), or so rare "Women and children first!" that it's not affecting 99% of the population in any meaningful way at all, and people complaining about it are just bitching for the sake of bitching.

If men want to try to take away from the Feminist movement, the best argument is to basically say: "Jeesus, toughen up a little.". Crying about the smallest inequalities on one hand than telling Feminists that they can't do the same thing isn't going to solve anything. Whining about everything gets nothing done and just makes us look like a bunch of morons who have no comprehension of the real world, which, surprise, doesn't care that you've been oppressed and would like you to get back to work.

Yes, Nathan Drake is more attractive than me. Instead of bitching about it and saying it's offensive to me and everybody should lower their standards, I should spend that time trying to better myself.

"Men are not required to support a family, you're just an asshole if you don't."
Are you fucking kidding me? You've never heard of men going to debtor's prison (something that's otherwise illegag for for failing to pay alimony or child support?

"Men are not drafted to fight in wars against their will."
We may not actually be "drafted", but until selective service gets half of it's recruits from young women, there is no such thing as equality on that point.

"Men are not expected to be 6'3 athletic superhumans."
And women are not expected to be buxom supermodels... what's your point?

"Men are no more disposable to today's society excepting a few small inconveniences which are either so minor to hardly have any effect (Baby gets ignored for a few minutes longer), or so rare "Women and children first!" that it's not affecting 99% of the population in any meaningful way at all, and people complaining about it are just bitching for the sake of bitching."
*cracks knucles and stretches fingers in preparation*
Even though murder is the leading workplace cause of death for women, a statistic often used by gender feminists, that number is only a percentage of the 6% of workplace deaths that women comprise. In other words, a fraction of a small fraction.
Reactions to that? VAWA and extensive campaigning to make all workplaces more welcoming and safe to women.

Men are 93% of workplace deaths and accidents, and that's not even counting deaths in military service.
Reaction to that... nothing.

Men are the overwhelming majority of rape victims, yet anti-rape campaigns treat women as the majority of victims.

Men being forced to penetrate either vaginally, orally or anally isn't even legally counted as rape.

There are friggin' underage boys forced to pay child support to their female rapists in the US right fucking now!

Title IX removes a male college student's right to due process if a female student accuses him of sexual assault, presumably because punishing the innocent is an acceptable sacrifice to make it easier to charge someone with sexual misconduct.

Men receive on average, more than TWICE the jail/prison time for the same crimes as women.

Men are fully half of the victims of domestic violence (26% of intimate partner homicides), yet are denied service at most tax payer funded domestic violence shelters.

The CDC reports that in cases of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence (one directional) that women are more than twice as likely to be the aggressor. The report cites that women comprise 70% of perpetrators, men 29%.

Men today die on average 6 years sooner than women. In 1920 the variance was one year. The death rates for prostate and breast cancer are similar, but because men die of other things more frequently-accidents ,war, heart disease etc., there are fewer men left to die of prostate cancer. This is akin to saying people from a nation like Zimbabwe are immune to Alzheimer?s- but in fact they die of other things before they can get old enough to contract Alzheimer?s.

To date, there are numerous federal offices on women?s health, and not a single one for men. Also, the lion?s share of gender specific medical research is done on behalf of women.

Boys are facing a significantly harder time in early education than girls.
Yet girls, from primary education through college still benefit from many more special programs designed to help them gain ?equality? with males.

So please, tell me again how men aren't treated as disposable tools

 

[CFriis87]

Ha ha ha ha, I actually like the thread & the point Siomasm

It wouldn't be so bad if sexualisation of lead roles hadn't been an industry standard since the entertainment industry was born, but it has, so I don't get why it's that big an issue?

Marlyn Monroe, James Dean, Bradd Pitt, Megan Fox, Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts, etc. etc. - all designed with attraction in mind (whether it be from "I want to fuck them" POV, or "I want to be them" POV.) Even if they aren't to your taste, the motivation behind their image is always to attract buyers.

It's just a bog standard thing used to boost sales.

Thing is, "I want to fuck them" and "I want to be them" is a bit of a different kind of attraction.

To be fair, I have never understood why all the improbably skilled, badass, incredibly attractive, women in comics, games, ect ect don't generate a "I want to be them" attitude from women. From things like fashion magazines and make-up, and for a few breast implants, I can gather that at least some women are fairly concerned about their appearance. So why are the badass male characters with six pack abs and a gleaming smile male power fantasies, but equally badass women with big breasts and a pretty face not female power fantasies? Perhaps its because comics and video games tend to be very male focussed so there's less of a sense of the characters being "for" them.

Because deep down, women hate each other, and the more successful and sexy a woman is, the more loathing it awakens in the ones sitting there reading about them in Cosmo.
"Luckily" that very same magazine offers them all a common enemy to direct all their vitriol at that isn't each other.

 

[siomasm]

So as I see it, many women think just because a man is Tall, handsome and powerful that I should want to be him. Considering that the roots of said traits are in protecting their mates, and thus being attractive to women for their ability to do so, women think I want to be attractive to them because that's simply what a man should be.

In other words, again creating the expectation that while women should be bangable, men should be handsome and powerful (which no one has an issue with) because you can't just be you.

Right. Not sexist at all.

 

[CloudAtlas]

Ha ha ha ha, I actually like the thread & the point Siomasm

It wouldn't be so bad if sexualisation of lead roles hadn't been an industry standard since the entertainment industry was born, but it has, so I don't get why it's that big an issue?

Marlyn Monroe, James Dean, Bradd Pitt, Megan Fox, Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts, etc. etc. - all designed with attraction in mind (whether it be from "I want to fuck them" POV, or "I want to be them" POV.) Even if they aren't to your taste, the motivation behind their image is always to attract buyers.

It's just a bog standard thing used to boost sales.

Thing is, "I want to fuck them" and "I want to be them" is a bit of a different kind of attraction.

To be fair, I have never understood why all the improbably skilled, badass, incredibly attractive, women in comics, games, ect ect don't generate a "I want to be them" attitude from women. From things like fashion magazines and make-up, and for a few breast implants, I can gather that at least some women are fairly concerned about their appearance. So why are the badass male characters with six pack abs and a gleaming smile male power fantasies, but equally badass women with big breasts and a pretty face not female power fantasies? Perhaps its because comics and video games tend to be very male focussed so there's less of a sense of the characters being "for" them.

EternallyBored already gave an answer to this question.

I didn't mean to imply that those two fantasies can't overlap. They often do, and the line between them is often blurry.

Yes, male characters are often designed to be attractive, too. But their attractiveness generally does not come at the expense of their badassness. But if your female hero is wearing armor that doesn't really protect anything, it does. Being sexy is nice, but surviving is nicer. If the camera is lingering on their T&A all the time, it does. If she still has to be saved by guys all the time, it does.
It just matters a great deal what is prioritized over what.

 

[CFriis87]

^- [Citations Needed]

Alright:

Workplace deaths - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality (as well as the sources cited in the wikipedia article)

Men are 80% of US suicides (85% in Canada) - http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm

?The other most common suicide victims are divorced and/or estranged fathers like Derrick Miller. In fact, a divorced father is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a divorced mother, and three times more likely to commit suicide than a married father."
http://www.glennsacks.com/distraught_fathers_courthouse.htm

Male rape victims are much more prevalent mostly because of prison rape.
Outside of prison, rape statistics greatly favour women because of feminists lobbying (chiefly the National Organisation for Women) to exclude male victims from the definition of rape by classifying "rape by envelopment" as not constituting rape, but merely sexual assault.
Compare the numbers of men forced to penetrate to the numbers of women raped in the 12 month statistic on pages 18 and 19 (page 28 and 29 on the scroll bar) of the CDC's NISVS report of 2010:
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf

I could speculate on the HUGE discrepancy between the stats for the last 12 months and the lifetime stats, but that would merely be speculation.

As for the criminals sentencing disparities:
http://www.terry.uga.edu/~mustard/sentencing
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/judged-bashes-probation-department-gender-bias-favor-leniency-girls-article-1.473763

False rape claims:
http://falserapesociety.blogspot.dk/p/prevalence-of-false-rape-claims.html

Title IX removing rights to due process:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510.html?mod=hp_opinion#articleTabs%3Darticle

Male domestic violence victims:
The source for those stats is the same CDC NISVS report as the rape/forced to penetrate statistics, I don't remember which pages skin through it yourself, it should pop up.

Disparity between sexes in healthcare:
Google "federal offices for women's health", then google "federal offices for men's health".
Google how much funding breast cancer research gets, then google how much funding prostate cancer research gets. And yes, those two types of cancer have roughly the same rates of victimization and death.
When's the last time you even heard of fund raising campaigns for prostate cancer? I can name one, that always seems to catch flak for creeping women out, what with so many men suddenly growing out their "creepy" mustaches for Movember.

Discrimination against boys in education:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/08/boys/factsheets/ed/index.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqOTj9NDv80


Sorry that took me so long to write out... I should probably work on a compendium of stuff like this sometime.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

I don't think that men are sexualized in the same way that women are sexualized, but male characters definitely fall into their own insultingly shallow and limited collection of stereotypes - and I'm not sure why that's any less heinous.

Example: I'm nothing like Nathan Drake. I don't like him at all. He's an unfunny, greedy sociopath and a mass murderer. He makes it difficult for me to play the Uncharted games. I imagine that's how women feel when they select the sorceress in Dragon's Crown. I understand that it sucks to be put into such a narrow box based solely on your gender. But it's not a special, gender-specific issue. It's just the way pop-culture and big business boil EVERYTHING down to idiotic mass appeal.

I guess I'm tired of all the attention being paid to gender issues when the overriding problem is obvious: video games, for the most part, are extremely dumb. The vast majority of character design, dialogue, and story is complete garbage on par with, well, the lamest, most exploitative pulp romance and action novels/movies. Men are aggressive, muscle-bound douche bags who feel justified in killing pretty much anyone. Women are helpless, busty sex objects.

For whatever reason, some people can ignore the window dressing and play the games. Others can't. That's fine. Vote with your dollars. Produce that definitive female gaming experience that stabs deep into the heart of that great untapped market. When you're swimming in your millions, there will be a legion of copycats lined up behind, ready and willing to balance the scales of this lopsided industry.

But you know what won't make a single goddamn shred of difference? One more incredulous forum thread, Kotaku article, or self-righteous youtube rant. We're full up on those, and the ones we've got aren't accomplishing a fucking thing. Because this is a business, and dollars are the only language publishers understand.

 

[CFriis87]

...Men are generally aggressive, muscle-bound douche bags who feel justified in killing pretty much any other man. Women are generally helpless, busty sex objects.

Did some minor corrections to that one for you.
Also, the market isn't going to change before the public opinion does, that's why we have the forum threads, articles and youtube videos. To create a discourse to alter public perception.

 

[CFriis87]

Much better.

Thanks... I hope typing all of that means someone will actually read it and give it fair consideration.
I'm all too used to info like this being met with chanting of "Cry me a river".

 

[Ryan Minns]

To be fair, I have never understood why all the improbably skilled, badass, incredibly attractive, women in comics, games, ect ect don't generate a "I want to be them" attitude from women. From things like fashion magazines and make-up, and for a few breast implants, I can gather that at least some women are fairly concerned about their appearance. So why are the badass male characters with six pack abs and a gleaming smile male power fantasies, but equally badass women with big breasts and a pretty face not female power fantasies? Perhaps its because comics and video games tend to be very male focussed so there's less of a sense of the characters being "for" them.

Too be honest they are power fantasies for many women. One thing these and many other forums seem to forget is we live in a world over 7 billion strong. Women as a whole are BILLIONS strong and being people with their own minds can make their own decisions and those decision consist of billions of differences. My friend gave a rather nice speech she called "The forgotten woman" awhile back which basically represented the numerous women who are ignored often in these debates claiming to represent them.

 

[generals3]

To be fair, I have never understood why all the improbably skilled, badass, incredibly attractive, women in comics, games, ect ect don't generate a "I want to be them" attitude from women. From things like fashion magazines and make-up, and for a few breast implants, I can gather that at least some women are fairly concerned about their appearance. So why are the badass male characters with six pack abs and a gleaming smile male power fantasies, but equally badass women with big breasts and a pretty face not female power fantasies? Perhaps its because comics and video games tend to be very male focussed so there's less of a sense of the characters being "for" them.

Too be honest they are power fantasies for many women. One thing these and many other forums seem to forget is we live in a world over 7 billion strong. Women as a whole are BILLIONS strong and being people with their own minds can make their own decisions and those decision consist of billions of differences. My friend gave a rather nice speech she called "The forgotten woman" awhile back which basically represented the numerous women who are ignored often in these debates claiming to represent them.

This reminds me of a discussion about the scarlet blade. If people don't what that game is. Well think about all the games which oversexualizes women. Now think about how a game would look if they decided to go much further than that. Yes that's the scarlet blade. Now take a look at this particular topic on the forum of SB: http://www.aeriagames.com/forums/en/viewtopic.php?t=1793473&start=1100.

Yes indeed, PLENTY of women playing that game. I'd say in that topic where people introduce themselves it's what 50/50 male/female?

 

[Hawkeye21]

I honestly don't care for big boobs, I'd rather be with a girl who has a good personality and is attractive to me in general, not necessarily by virtue of having some delicious, curvy, supple and warm attributes... where was I? Oh, right. Even if I WAS attracted to gals with giant jugs, I would not be attracted to girls in videogames because I don't associate them with REAL PEOPLE, and most of the time they are NOT EVEN REAL CHARACTERS. Those curvy scantily dressed cardboard cutouts are placed in the games for the same reason they are placed in Hollywood blockbusters, to create sex appeal in order to attract people who go for that kind of mindless shit.

Oversexualization of female "characters" in video games is not a problem, it's rather a symptom of a condition, which is: most gamers ARE TEENAGE BOYS, WHO LIKE BIG BOOBIES, AND THEY THINK ABOUT SEX 90% OF THE TIME. They are immature, but they will get better with age (probably). Problem is, as you get older, you have less and less time to play videogames, therefore, videogames target audience will probably remain immature forever.

Anyway, here is a funny video about boobies: