To Only Examine Inaccurate Portrayals of Females And Not Males Is Sexist

[conflictofinterests]

if Lara Croft were 105 pounds, had glasses, wore sweat pants, and had a eating disorder, no one would believe that she is an ass kicking,well, tomb raider.

How does having massive breasts help in being an acrobatic tomb raider?

Better weight distribution?

Nope. They call it "top heavy" for a reason. Let me outline the typical gymnast build for you: Less than 100lbs, Shorter than 5', A-cup MAX, and not an OUNCE of fat on them.

EDIT: Basically what I'm trying to say here is that an acrobat shouldn't be distinguishable from a 12 year old boy who JUST hit a growth spurt.

 

[Mr. 47]

Any subject that involves perceptions or rights of Men and Women always, ALWAYS without fail go to Women. Always. It's a double standard. Women have equal rights in most, if not all, developed countries, Men are never mistreated, or have less rights, but can we honestly say that we are treated equally to women? No, we can't. Any issue that is Women vs Men, Women pull sexism into it.

 

[Loonyyy]

OP, I think you misunderstand the feminist position. It's not that all characters are displayed as the peak of physical perfection (A point I agree on). It's that female characters are poorly written, usually, in the interest of making them subservient to male leads, or fit a badly formed "Badass chick" stereotype.
And, while the characters may all be perfect, play Mass Effect 2 again and tell me honestly that M-Sheps armour is as much of a "turn on" as Miranda's ridiculous skintight thing.
Or that Fantasy characters where men where plate and women where leather straps and bikini mail are not intended sexually.
Whilst your perfection analogy has merit, if they were both treated fairly, then the men would be runnning around in briefs. Which is rather rare.
As a male, when I play these games, I get disgusted by the pandering. I want to ask the developers "Do you really think me shallow enough to purchase this game for some poorly rendered digital ass?"
"Why are you using this to advertise instead of making your game better?" "$100 AUD for this game? That's the entry to a gentleman's club and a dance, both of which are more sexually appealing that a 3D sprite in a bikini."
More to the point, video games have been a "Male dominated" medium for a long time. Most players were male, most designers and devs were male, and thus, it was generally aimed at male audiences. If they were to put just ONE thong clad male model in, or remove the bikini mail in favour of a male shirt in just a few titles, then you could settle this. When only few and obscure examples don't make women feel objectivised and (some) men feel like they're being pandered too, you have a problem.

 

[Skoosh]

It has been a problem for a long time. Your example of males being objectified is simply wrong. They are made into the ideal alpha, not sexually exploited. Most female characters in videogames have been one-dimensional and mostly used for eye-candy.

I think it's gotten much better though. I play Dragon Age and my Hawke is a badass lady in full armor, not bikini bullshit armor. I play Final Fantasy and although the women are very pretty, they have full characters and not over sexualized. I play Portal 2 and see a lady thinking with portals as she flies through the air. My girlfriend and I are able to play lots of games together without anyone getting red in the face from a bimbo character. We play everything from Pokemon to Borderlands and games are simply much better about it now.

A lot of games are putting in female characters now maturely. They are fun to play as and keep that identity of femininity without being sexualized. There are still offenders, yes, but that number is shrinking. Female gamers are rising and male gamers are maturing. I don't think most of us want to play as a bimbo. There's still a while to go and a lot to be explored with it, but that's true of every aspect of gaming.

 

[TheDooD]

I find it annoying because people are trying to shoehorn realism into fantasy. Ok a woman is wearing nothing be a shear silk robe and some chainmail, this somehow equals rage inducing. Yet the fact she killed legions of monsters and soldiers single-handedly by herself. She's also extremely independent, sexually liberated with her own harem of men and women and her own fucking kingdom. Yet after all that makes her great, what pisses people off is what's on the outside. If you're badass basically naked it doesn't matter what the fuck you're wearing after that.

 

[RelexCryo]

Probably has something to do with the whole, treating women like second class citizens for a few hundred years, incident.

Also, Commander Shepard is a Spectre. We're talking better than the freakin' S.A.S here.

And fatties are not allowed to join the S.A.S.

I don't think men really care about they way we're portrayed in games, because the vast majority of games are based around men.

There are fewer females in video games, and as such, there needs to be better portrayals in that area.

Size doesnt matter for any spec ops unit, its the standard of physical fitness they are able to achieve.

Oh, so women have been oppressed ( for a lot longer than a few hundred years by the way) so it is okay to oppress men now?

You're right, size doesn't matter. But they still don't let fatties in.

Muscle =/= fat


Men have never been opressed, and we're not being opressed now.

The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of male video game characters are designed by males, so it's not particularly sexist in that regard because they're not designed to be sexually appealing.

The vast majority of female characters are not designed by females, and often pander to the teen male demographic.

See where I'm going with this?

Well, the disparity in design derives from the lack of interest women have traditionally had in the types of videogames most men play- and the lack of interest itself doesn't actually derive from the design.

Roughly 95% of all electrical engineers are male. It has traditionally been programmers who wind up designing games, even on the artistic level. It is the tremendous disparity between Electrical/Software Engineer genders which creates the disparity in design, effectively. And that disparity in Electrical/Software Engineers created the disparity in character designs, rather than being created by it.

More simply put- The disparity is simply the result of the fact that men are far more likely to become Software Engineeers. We are only just now entering an age where most games are designed by writers and artists who have no background in computer software.

 

[The Wooster]

-As Skoosh noted, the stereotyped representation of males shows them as effective alphas, not, in most cases, sex objects.

-Even if they were represented in such a way, the fact that unpleasant thing happens to group B does not justify it happening to group A.

-Women's rights groups are concerned with exactly that. Women's rights. That doesn't make them sexist. It makes them focused. They don't show much interest in the misrepresentation of fish either. But I don't see people complaining about that.

-The fact that Men's rights groups have limited exposure (Lol at the concept of they're not being any) is not the fault of Women's rights groups. If you don't think there's enough groups out there advocating for men then start one.

- The fact developers are doing this to appeal to the masses is irrelevant. Doing something immoral for money is no better/worse than doing it because you're a dick.

 

[OldGus]

This argument doesn't work, because if someone is discussing issue X, they are not obligated to also discuss issue Y.

For instance, if I am discussing why the book Eragon is terrible, it doesn't make any sense for you to jump down my throat with "but the movie Eragon is also terrible, and you are a bad person for not discussing how much the movie sucks, too!" Likewise, it makes no sense to get mad at people discussing sexism against women because they do not also discuss sexism against men.

It's not that it's not discussed, it's that many of the people who do discuss sexism against women will either outright deny that sexism against men exists, or pretend that it doesn't. Plus, yes, a book and a movie are two different things, two different media, often where one is better than the other. However, let's just say someone was talking to you about the movie Eragon and how horrible the bad guys in it were, how one dimensional the villain was, going on and on and on and on and on about it, initially off and on for 150 months or so, then constantly, almost non-stop for the past 50 months, not letting you get a word in edgewise about any other Eragon topic, such as the book, or the graphics in the movie, or even how bad the good guys or the princess were. Obviously, that person is not obligated to discuss the issue of the good guys in the same movie, but it would be nice if they at least pretended that the good guys being one dimensional is an issue too. Replace Eragon with sexism, and months with years, and that's about the sum of that half of the argument.
The OP's point in bringing the whole thing up is not to jump down people's throats for not bringing it up, but to point out an issue in the same topic that no one talks about, and quite frankly, that feminists do sometimes jump down your throat for bringing up. And he brings it up because, yes, even though in legal/civil disputes over sexism you don't have to address sexism against women and men at the same time, it is nice to address sexism against men at least once when the whole point seems to be "equality" rather than "superiority." Furthermore, he's also pointing out that perhaps the deeper issue here is not sexism in the portrayal of characters, but sexism in the target audience.

Now that that's done... @Jangles. I agree with the main point that the existence of musclebound and chisel-jawed men alongside unsafely proportioned women seems to indicate that marketing is more a problem than simple sexism. I vote that games should include at least several titles where the characters are the female-ideal for each (male and female characters alike), several titles where the characters are the human-ideal, and a lot more titles where the characters are normal, especially in games where its supposed to somewhat mimic real life (as I stare at Fable and half-shake the hand of Fallout). Honestly, making the characters white, or male, or attractive, or muscular because the designer wants us to relate with and listen to the characters almost makes it seem like the designer thinks we wouldn't listen to Samuel L. Jackson, Maggie Thatcher, our grandparents (who I doubt are attractive to you), or Stephen Hawking. And if its about role-models or heroic ideals rather than listening to or relating to... Samuel L. Jackson, Maggie Thatcher, our grandparents (most of us,) and Stephen Hawking are proof that we can be mature enough to know those qualities are not intrinsically linked to one's appearance. You want anymore proof of that, checkout Badass of the Week. There's proof enough that heroic qualities are found in all walks of life.

 

[The Wooster]

This argument doesn't work, because if someone is discussing issue X, they are not obligated to also discuss issue Y.

For instance, if I am discussing why the book Eragon is terrible, it doesn't make any sense for you to jump down my throat with "but the movie Eragon is also terrible, and you are a bad person for not discussing how much the movie sucks, too!" Likewise, it makes no sense to get mad at people discussing sexism against women because they do not also discuss sexism against men.

It's not that it's not discussed, it's that many of the people who do discuss sexism against women will either outright deny that sexism against men exists, or pretend that it doesn't.

Could we get a source on this?

 

[Paragon Fury]

However, what they are purposely overlooking is the fact that males are inaccurately portrayed as all being adonis like. All male characters are the equivalent representatives of their female counterparts.

SNIP

---> Just like in movies, developers do not put average, ugly, or plain people in their games because if commander Shepard was 20 pounds overweight, if he had bad acne, or if he was too skinny and short, then no one would be immersed in the story Bioware creates.

SNIP

Not so much "Adonis" like as "Slab of meat" like. Seriously, the men in most games are WAY closer to being modeled after a rectangular prism than any body builder I'VE ever seen.

Male Shep is a bad example, because for some reason even though the voice actor only ever emotes when he's FULL renegade, and otherwise sounds like a highschooler reading a report, there are fans who STILL think he's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm pretty sure, in light of that, he could get away with acne, or 20 extra pounds, just not both (Well, maybe he could if the voice actor gave two shits outside of SUPER renegade options)

Actually, amongst the Mass Effect community its generally excepted that FemShep is the superior Shepard and should be the one they use to market the game, not MaleShep.

 

[Nyaliva]

This is a problem in advertising as well. Older ads would portray men as having the superior intellect including knowing about the product to make theirs and women's lives easier. Now almost every ad has a stupid husband and a smart and clever wife who helps fix her husband's problems with the product in question. Why? Because advertising agencies don't want to seem sexist by making women seem stupid or less intellectual than their husbands. So what do they end up doing? The completely swap the roles and think nothing more, even though the male is now sexistly portrayed as the idiot. And the funny part? People accept this as the natural order.

Times were when the roles were reversed it was considered the natural order that men were smarter. What happened? Women started getting angry and wanted equality. So gentlemen, I ask you, do we do the same, hoping to swap the roles back and forth every decade to a lesser and lesser degree until we finally have equality, or just sit tight and accept what we have now in an attempt to be the bigger men...er...people?

 

[conflictofinterests]

Actually, amongst the Mass Effect community its generally excepted that FemShep is the superior Shepard and should be the one they use to market the game, not MaleShep.

I am in full support of this, but apparently Bioware thinks we're the vocal minority. I'm trying to decide whether I care more about not giving them more money than I HAVE to because they think FemShep isn't the superior Shepard, or buying the special edition to have FemShep boxart.

Still, I've talked to a couple people who can't IMAGINE playing FemShep for some reason. Thus my previous post.

 

[OldGus]

However, what they are purposely overlooking is the fact that males are inaccurately portrayed as all being adonis like. All male characters are the equivalent representatives of their female counterparts.

SNIP

---> Just like in movies, developers do not put average, ugly, or plain people in their games because if commander Shepard was 20 pounds overweight, if he had bad acne, or if he was too skinny and short, then no one would be immersed in the story Bioware creates.

SNIP

Not so much "Adonis" like as "Slab of meat" like. Seriously, the men in most games are WAY closer to being modeled after a rectangular prism than any body builder I'VE ever seen.

Male Shep is a bad example, because for some reason even though the voice actor only ever emotes when he's FULL renegade, and otherwise sounds like a highschooler reading a report, there are fans who STILL think he's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm pretty sure, in light of that, he could get away with acne, or 20 extra pounds, just not both (Well, maybe he could if the voice actor gave two shits outside of SUPER renegade options)

\
Yeah, this. Support? Morgan Freeman, Betty White, Clint Eastwood.

 

[conflictofinterests]

However, what they are purposely overlooking is the fact that males are inaccurately portrayed as all being adonis like. All male characters are the equivalent representatives of their female counterparts.

SNIP

---> Just like in movies, developers do not put average, ugly, or plain people in their games because if commander Shepard was 20 pounds overweight, if he had bad acne, or if he was too skinny and short, then no one would be immersed in the story Bioware creates.

SNIP

Not so much "Adonis" like as "Slab of meat" like. Seriously, the men in most games are WAY closer to being modeled after a rectangular prism than any body builder I'VE ever seen.

Male Shep is a bad example, because for some reason even though the voice actor only ever emotes when he's FULL renegade, and otherwise sounds like a highschooler reading a report, there are fans who STILL think he's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm pretty sure, in light of that, he could get away with acne, or 20 extra pounds, just not both (Well, maybe he could if the voice actor gave two shits outside of SUPER renegade options)

\
Yeah, this. Support? Morgan Freeman, Betty White, Clint Eastwood.

Uhm.... What? I don't understand what you're trying to say... Could I get some explanation, please?

 

[OldGus]

This argument doesn't work, because if someone is discussing issue X, they are not obligated to also discuss issue Y.

For instance, if I am discussing why the book Eragon is terrible, it doesn't make any sense for you to jump down my throat with "but the movie Eragon is also terrible, and you are a bad person for not discussing how much the movie sucks, too!" Likewise, it makes no sense to get mad at people discussing sexism against women because they do not also discuss sexism against men.

It's not that it's not discussed, it's that many of the people who do discuss sexism against women will either outright deny that sexism against men exists, or pretend that it doesn't.

Could we get a source on this?

http://battlinbog.blog-city.com/why_so_few_men_protest_antimale_sexism.htm
And actually, a retraction. There was at least one NCIS episode willing to cover domestic violence against the husband. So I guess people don't pretend it doesn't exist.

However, what they are purposely overlooking is the fact that males are inaccurately portrayed as all being adonis like. All male characters are the equivalent representatives of their female counterparts.

SNIP

---> Just like in movies, developers do not put average, ugly, or plain people in their games because if commander Shepard was 20 pounds overweight, if he had bad acne, or if he was too skinny and short, then no one would be immersed in the story Bioware creates.

SNIP

Not so much "Adonis" like as "Slab of meat" like. Seriously, the men in most games are WAY closer to being modeled after a rectangular prism than any body builder I'VE ever seen.

Male Shep is a bad example, because for some reason even though the voice actor only ever emotes when he's FULL renegade, and otherwise sounds like a highschooler reading a report, there are fans who STILL think he's the best thing since sliced bread. I'm pretty sure, in light of that, he could get away with acne, or 20 extra pounds, just not both (Well, maybe he could if the voice actor gave two shits outside of SUPER renegade options)

\
Yeah, this. Support? Morgan Freeman, Betty White, Clint Eastwood.

Uhm.... What? I don't understand what you're trying to say... Could I get some explanation, please?

None are what you would just by looking at them call attractive now, but they are all still very good, very well respected actors.

 

[RelexCryo]

-As Skoosh noted, the stereotyped representation of males shows them as effective alphas, not, in most cases, sex objects.

-Even if they were represented in such a way, the fact that unpleasant thing happens to group B does not justify it happening to group A.

-Women's rights groups are concerned with exactly that. Women's rights. That doesn't make them sexist. It makes them focused. They don't show much interest in the misrepresentation of fish either. But I don't see people complaining about that.

-The fact that Men's rights groups have limited exposure (Lol at the concept of they're not being any) is not the fault of Women's rights groups. If you don't think there's enough groups out there advocating for men then start one.

- The fact developers are doing this to appeal to the masses is irrelevant. Doing something immoral for money is no better/worse than doing it because you're a dick.

May I ask a question? Some forms of entertainment are designed for women- for example, books like Twilight- and they feature men designed to be what women want them to be, and female characters designed to be what women want to be. Essentially, the female equivalent of current videogames, in literature format.

Do you feel that designing these books to appeal to women is an offense to men? If the answer is no, is it the fact that videogames primarily designed to appeal to men exist that bothers you, or the fact that a large percentage of videogames being released are designed for men that bothers you?

 

[mrdude2010]

Probably has something to do with the whole, treating women like second class citizens for a few hundred years, incident.

Also, Commander Shepard is a Spectre. We're talking better than the freakin' S.A.S here.

And fatties are not allowed to join the S.A.S.

I don't think men really care about how we're portrayed in games (I certainly don't), because the vast majority of games are based around men, so there are far more examples of good/bad portrayals to choose from.

There are fewer females in video games, and as such, there's obviously going to be harsher criticism of their portrayal.

i'm kind of bored of the whole bulletstorm gears of war type portrayal to be honest but fuck it


it more irritates me how everything is either criticized for being a stereotype or deliberately avoiding a stereotype. it's like developers can't win

 

[mrdude2010]

Jangles, if you're not a troll then you're someone speaking from atop the walls of male privilege (google it). There is actually a huge amount of gender equality theory out there, folks have been studying it for 50 years now, and you seem to be aware of none of it.

Long story short, the games designed for the male dollar are full of scantily clad women to do, and alpha males to be. Meanwhile, the games for girls have petz and poniez and all sorts of patronising shit. The difference isn't just in the volume of games for guys, it's in the fact that they bother to aim them at guys properly, whereas for girls they just slap some pink together. You talk about 'both sides of the equation' to glibly dismiss a valid criticism about argument focus, and yet you ignore that a portrayal is nothing without an audience. Male audiences are being treated MUCH BETTER than female audiences, despite recent evidence that huge proportions of women game as well. Furthermore, you explicitly reinforce the notion that pandering to male gamers is 'where the money is', ignoring the counterpoint that there might be money in pandering to women instead or *gasp* producing a mature piece of entertainment for all audiences.

When male isn't the default playable character gender, when women are involved in designing games for women, when gender differences in character stats are better than "She can't carry as much, she's a gurl", and when we've found some way to atone for the whole jiggle physics thing THEN the straight white males can talk about how we are being misrepresented. Until then, it just comes off as ignorant bitching from a privileged class that doesn't like losing its privileges.

i agree with your post completely (except, physiologically speaking, the average female can carry less gross weight than the average male, but has more relative lower body/hip strength). however, remember back in Fable II when all the female players were complaining because when they made strong fighting female characters they looked too bulky, "like russian shotputters" as peter molyneux put it? what the hell! of course your character is going to look buff if they are buff, what did you expect? that working out tirelessly and swinging a great big sword around wasn't going to make you look bulkier? did they want to retain their slim, stereotypical physique so they could loko pretty for the entire game? i mean come on, i hate blatant gender roles as well, but to also complain when a game accurately depicts what a bulky/strong woman would look like is just getting a little too nitpicky

 

[Danceofmasks]

Actually, amongst the Mass Effect community its generally excepted that FemShep is the superior Shepard and should be the one they use to market the game, not MaleShep.

I am in full support of this, but apparently Bioware thinks we're the vocal minority. I'm trying to decide whether I care more about not giving them more money than I HAVE to because they think FemShep isn't the superior Shepard, or buying the special edition to have FemShep boxart.

Still, I've talked to a couple people who can't IMAGINE playing FemShep for some reason. Thus my previous post.

I did my part for the cause, I uploaded (almost) every mission on insanity with femshep to youtube.
Sure, nobody watches those videos (probably because I can't be bothered labeling them as "Mass Effect 2"), but they're there.

And apparently, some people think my femshep is hotter than miranda.
Which may or may not be silly since I went out of my way to make her look like a particular korean actress, and most of her features are "average."
Who knows, maybe having average features is hot.