Why are people so against 'feminism' in gaming?

[PhiMed]

All right, you're equating feminist extremism with feminism in general. So you're an idiot.

Okay. I stand corrected.

I find it interesting that you think there is a difference. However ALL feminist propoganda has been pretty conclusively proven wrong. You show me any feminist rhetoric that hasn't been disproven or debunked & i'll find you the accurate peer reviewed information you missed in the noisy cloud of feminist anger at a self constructed strawman. Because confrimation bias is a wonderful thing... Especially when you want a big bad monster to fight.

How about this piece of rhetoric: Women in Saudi Arabia aren't allowed to expose their faces, learn to read, or drive a car. They should be allowed to do those things.

And that would totaly be an actual point if
A. We were talking about the non existant feminist movement in a Saudi Arabia
B. Feminists in the western world had anything to with women in Saudi Arabia

Thats a logical fallacy known as Goal Shifting.

No. You're falsely compartmentalizing.

Asserting that feminists have no interaction with people in other countries is patently absurd in the age of the internet.

Why don't you just tell me which goal and assertions comprise feminism? Clearly you're speaking about a very clearly defined set of goals. Anything outside that tiny compartment you've created inside your own mind (which I'm sure, as you say, encloses nothing but unsubstantiated claims) you will dismiss as "not feminism".

I doubt feminists would agree with your idealogical taxonomy.

 

[Pist0l 07]

Well, this really is the perfect illustration of how male gamers are just getting het up about losing their "boys club" privileges isn't it? Paragraphs and paragraphs about the cruelty of game designers, stealing all those boobies. Sure, they aren't actually doing anything of the sort (as illustrated above) but it feels like the world is a less boobyiful place, and that's what counts! And sure, you can still get more porn than you could watch in a lifetime absolutely free -- plenty of large breasts there -- but that would require the imposition of opening a second browser tab! Woe. Most fascinating of all is that this supposed shift towards less fanservice is literally seen as an "aggressive attack" and is even characterized as "physical" ... the pain of having to look at a female character who can stand upright without a backbrace is comparable to physical assault? My, my, we feminists are definitely the whiny ones here. 9.9

No one is "taking away" games; at best, the ratio of [total fanservice] to [slightly decent female characters] might be improving slightly, but no one is tearing your Lara Croft games away from your sadly groping hands. If the rate at which fanservicey games are made is slightly decreased (which I'm not convinced it is) that's still not actually a loss at all. Furthermore, characters aren't a zero sum game, and making more good female characters won't require that you remove any of the "bad" ones (and really, was someone on this thread trying to get rid of Lara Croft? I don't think so ) But if you're proposing that the (majority male) game designers are creating slightly fewer impossibly stacked women, perhaps that's just because not every guy needs giant boobies to make him like a game? And some of them are tired of pandering to the lowest common denominator? You can't blame women for adult men choosing to create more mature and realistic games.

While I agree that your argument has valid points, your argument would sound a quite a bit better if you weren't so condeceding. I understand you dislike his opnion on the matter and you can get jaded by his argument but people are far more willing to listen and agree when you treat them kindly. You can have all the facts on your side but if you act like an ass and treat people harshly, they are far less willing to listen. If you treat other people with respect even when they don't deserve it, people are far more likely to agree with you or side with you in a debate. As for you giant boobs comment, I agree. An excellent quote from a friend of mine "more then a mouthful is a waste". (Please don't take that last sentance seriously, it is a joke, no offence intended.)

 

[agrajagthetesty]

The fact that you think that just demonstrates all the more why that video is necessary. Thank you for proving my point

Oh we dont "think that," we know that. The fact that that video includes a stat for girls raped while walking to school in any given year, which is actually higher then the entire national stat for rape in the contential US. The rest is equally wrong or misrepresented & has been proven to be wrong by peer reviewed studies & extensive number crunching by actual experts.

You keep saying that things are "proven wrong" but never give any evidence for this assertion. How about you cite your sources?

I'm not going to this time & i'll tell you why. Yes i could provide you with the peer reviewed studies to read, but history has taught me that whenever you give people the exact data, they lack the ability to properly read the data & then they play the goal post shifting game in the thread you posted the link in. So instead of giving you direct links i'm going to give you a couple of pointers for where to find it. For information of Domestic Violence (or as they call it Intimate Partner Violence) there is a peer reviewed study currently available from the CDC. From there you should also be able to find the meta-review that was later built off of it. As for the Rape Stats, you should take a look at the US census burearu.

I've found that the people who are willing to look up the data themselves are the ones willing to read the study once they find it. If you just give them the data they either just say "no its wrong," or cherry pick data that they think says a thing without reading as much as the abstract.

However if you want to do an end run all the webpage addressess are available in the show notes for a readio podcast show called "a Voice for Men." You should probably check it out if you are actually interested in hearing the otherside of this "gender war" from someone much more elloquent then i am & who does not editorialize.

First off, I find it incredibly ironic that you would mention "cherry-picking" and imply that I'm incapable of reading the data you give me when, only a few pages back in this thread, you utterly misread one of my posts and completely ignored the clear meaning of what I was saying, including an entire clause of my words.

Second, calling it a "gender war" is by no means a helpful attitude. I appreciate the quotation marks that you put around this term; they imply a level of caution while using it. But I wouldn't recommend thinking of it in those terms at all. Women's rights are human rights; men's rights are human rights. Gender equality is beneficial to everyone.

Now on to the main issue at hand. I am going to counter your only specific point made against John Funk up there: that the number of girls raped while walking to school that the video quotes is lower than the entire number of rapes across the U.S.

The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of rapes in 2007 as 90,427. The number quoted in the video for sexual assaults that occur whilst a girl is walking to school is 60 million. We can agree that the second number is larger than the first. But I have several objections to your assertion that because of this, the figure in the video must be incorrect.

Most relevantly and most obviously, the data from the U.S. Census Bureau deals only with the U.S.A. The video, however, gives the figure for assaults occurring worldwide. The sentence in question, word-for-word: "Every year, 70 million girls are deprived of even a basic education, and a staggering 60 million are sexually assaulted on their way to school." Nowhere does this limit itself to discussing the U.S. In fact, this figure follows on from an earlier one, which specifically refers to the entire world: "Women are responsible for two-thirds of the work done worldwide". The implication, since no further geographical specifications have been made since this statement, is that these later statistics also apply worldwide. Thus, there is no reason to believe through comparison with the U.S. Census data that the figure of 60 million assaults worldwide is wrong.

Additionally, the data from the U.S. Census Bureau is of known, actual rapes. The figure is too precise for this not to be the case. The fact is, however, that the number of reported rapes is much lower than the number of actual rapes. (From the United Nations Population Fund, 2000a: "Estimates of the proportion of rapes reported to authorities vary, from less than 3 percent in South Africa to about 16 percent in the United States.") The video, meanwhile, only states the number of girls who "are sexually assaulted", a phrasing which to me demonstrates that this figure accounts for unreported rapes as well as those which are reported. Thus, again, a large discrepancy is to be expected.

Lastly, the data from the U.S. Census Bureau refers to rape, while the video states "sexual assault". These are not necessarily the same crime. The U.S. Crime Bureau, I am assuming, uses the same definition of rape as the FBI does: "the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will". It is unclear whether this accords with the definition of "sexual assault" held by the makers of the video. Although the FBI's definition includes "assaults and attempts to commit rape by force or threat of force", it is still not possible to determine this, especially since I have not been able to find the definition of "sexual assault" according to the video's makers. It is possible, therefore, that the definitions differ. Personally, I would say that (for example) deliberately making contact with a person's genitals through a layer of clothing would count as sexual assault, while it would not count as rape.

But this is speculation. My first two points are already enough to counter your claim that the video's statistic is a lie since it is higher than the figure given by the U.S. Census Bureau. The video is referring to the world; the U.S. Census only to the U.S.A. The video is referring to all assaults; the U.S. Census only to reported rapes.

I'm afraid that the way in which you compare the two figures is mind-bogglingly flawed. I have not examined the basis for your claims that the other figures in the video are incorrect, because a) you do not offer any specific reasons why you believe so and b) frankly, it's nearly six a.m. where I live. I'm going to bed now.

 

[starwarsgeek]

This may have been discussed before but a search of the forums didn't bring up anything that I was looking for so...

I've been asked to write about sexism in gaming and I know it's a subject that has been done to death. I want to make it as fair an argument as possible. As a girl you can probably figure out which side of the debate I'm on but I do want to know why people are so vocal AGAINST people speaking up against sexist slogans in advertising and reinforcing white male gamer stereotypes.

For example, the recent gamestation advertising campaign saying their pre-owned games were cheaper than your girlfriend. When people complained that it was offensive the minority of gamers told them to shut up and get over it. So..why are people so against gaming becoming more gender neutral and accepting of female, child and elderly gamers.

I'm not slating it, I would just like to understand the mindset a bit better to at least try and make this piece of writing fairer.

If I had to guess, I'd say that those who do not feel insulted by things like that ad generally feel that the "feminist" side is over-reacting...sometimes it can be hard for people to understand things that don't directly affect them...especially on the internet.

In the broader scope, there's a certain percentage of "hardcore" gamers who don't really want the medium to expand its horizans and embrace new demographics because that means it will change, but I think those are actually two different issues with the idea of the "white male core gamer" being a link between them.

For the record, I found the ad to be idiotic and mildly insulting as well. "They really think that implying a used game is a better deal than my completely hypothetical girlfriend would work?" Of course, the store's goal wasn't to imply that it was undercutting women--or that men would be stupid enough to "fall" for that type of advertisement, but the stupid joke is insulting to any potential customers' intelligence.

 

[Trolldor]

This thread is a prime example of why everybody is DOING IT WRONG.

Stop getting offended, stop being proud, stop thinking you're special.
And that's directed towards every direction, including the fence.

Fuck man, stop raging at a male-dominated platform for appealing to its prime consumer base. Just ignore it. Don't shop there, stop your family going there, stop your friends going there, stop your significant other from going there, don't cry and rage and point fingers and scream about injustice.
Just dismiss and ignore them for being unremarkable.

Also, lol @ defensive, white males feeling threatened and persecuted.
Head from arse please. I'm sure your colon is fascinating but that's not where the world is.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Actually I've seen surprising little hate for feminism in games here. Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough but most people here are really liberal and progressive on their values. Some can make themselves into asshats when discussing people they perceive as less open minded (such as the people who go around trolling anyone who has any sort of religious faith) but things like feminism generally fall under the hat of things the escapist likes. I know most of the time people don't like feminism because it inherently means one group in power must give up that power in order for another group to have power and thus the group in power does not like it, but other then that very general shotgun statement, I dunno.

Oh and your OP is a a loaded question. It assumes that people all hate feminism and ask why rather then dividing this into two questions. Maybe I just don't take it as a true assumption that feminism is disliked though.

 

[Trolldor]

Actually I've seen surprising little hate for feminism in games here.

Well mainly because feminism has nothing to do with this topic. Again its just people using a word incorrectly.

Some can make themselves into asshats when discussing people they perceive as less open minded (such as the people who go around trolling anyone who has any sort of religious faith)

Yes, well as much as an arsehat as i may look when i point out that faith is an illogical belief in a thing which completely lacks for demonstrable evidence, it doesn't make my statement any the less correct. Nor does it make the opposing sides opinions on a magical sky daddy any the less valid a scientific response to the question, what evidence do you have for the existance of your deity of choice.

but things like feminism generally fall under the hat of things the escapist likes.

Wow, would you mind if you sit up on this table, stick out your tongue & say "arrr." Yep, just as i thought, a bad case of observation bias.

I know most of the time people don't like feminism because it inherently means one group in power must give up that power in order for another group to have power and thus the group in power does not like it

No we don't like it because it say "hey guys we want sexual equality," when in truth they are all "lets blame men for everything, have college degrees about blaming men & demand all the good stuff men get without putting in any effort to get it."

Of course most men have been taking shit for so long they don't notice that they've been given the short end of the stick. The fastest way to destroy feminism is to give them what they say they want: Equality. No more special privelege due to gender, no more government programs specifically developed to get women into colleges, no educational special placement based on gender, no more women only scholarships (which actually outnumber the amount of men only & co-ed scholarships combined), no more women studies as a course load, an equal amount of shelters for men as women (i'm pretty sure in the UK that takes it down to 2 shelters for women, as thats how many men get), insurance that costs just as much as a mans does, the destruction of government sponsored dedicated health service for women in the US (as women have countless, yet men have literally none), criminal sentencing that is equal to that of men, overturning the rape shield laws that protect women while declaring a man guilty even before an investigation is even started, an over turning of mandatory arrest laws that allow women to apply DV-by proxy, men would gain the smae right to opt out as father hood as women do motherhood, women held to the same standard for there actions as men are & my favourite: WOMEN BEING ABLE TO BE DRAFTED IN TO THE ARMED FORCES, JUST LIKE MEN CAN!

I lol'd @ rant.

White males are being oppressed! OPPRESSED I TELLS YA!

 

[Twilight_guy]

*wall of text removed for your convenience*

Let's take it from the top. *clears through*
1. I dunno what you're talking about. I read the OP and posted my thoughts on what I though she was trying to get across. I admit The notion of "feminism" may be bad or poorly defined here but I have seen plenty of people who want to see female characters get as much personality or fleshing out as main characters and want to see equality int eh representation of female in the medium. I also see plenty of people support of female gamers and the shrinking gender divide of people enjoying the medium. I don't see anyone decrying the state of gaming in this sense. This is of course just my opinion since its based on my exposure of course and may be incorrect in light of the whole. I didn't claim it was right though, I just stated my thoughts.
2. I didn't make any comment about one side or the other trying to prove validity or truth, I said "asshat." This is not a matter of content or what we're discussing its how the argument is made and many people make their statements in an angry of flametastic way. I think most people would acknowledge that more then a little flaming goes around the religion forum and that behavior is what I'm talking about. The community has a tendency to take some issues and go nuts over them. Support not support "feminisum" does not seem to be one of them. Other topics like politics and religion do seem to be a hot button though.
3. Once again, this was my opinion based on my beliefs. Of course its biased and I make no claim that it is not. I can never make an objective statement about this stuff because I don't know ever single person on the forum. I will note that your comment was condescending though. You don't have to be mean to vocalize your argument.
4. Well I've never seen a single feminist who has every said that or meet any feminist organization who made tat a goal. I'm not sure what groups you've been observing but they clearly are not eh same groups I have seen and thus we have different opinions.
5. Most groups I've ever seen do define feminism as a struggle for equality of gender thus implying that both are treated equally. I know this general notion sometimes get muddled due to different groups having different opinions and the popular portray of feminism, not to mention some groups that do advocate some unequal practices that should be addressed. I do know that feminism at its core advocates equality of gender, not simply rearranging the power the other way like you noted that you are against. I am also against this as I support the notion of feminism as aiming at equality and I will fight for that equality and argue on its behalf. I'm proud to wear my feminism badge and I will do everything to fight for the equality that that badge means to me.

 

[Twilight_guy]

1. I dunno what you're talking about. I read the OP and posted my thoughts on what I though she was trying to get across. I admit The notion of "feminism" may be bad or poorly defined here but I have seen plenty of people who want to see female characters get as much personality or fleshing out as main characters and want to see equality int eh representation of female in the medium.

And from that you got the Feminism... I can see whats been done, what i'm disagreeing with is that its a myopic statement. See the problem is not with female characters... Its with all characters. Game developers have a tendency to develop exceptionally lame characters. This makes it not a gender probelm & hence not a feminist issue. Its a poor development issue.

5. Most groups I've ever seen do define feminism as a struggle for equality of gender thus implying that both are treated equally.

an most people used to define the world as flat... They were wrong the & they are still wrong now & feminism is no different in that contemporary feminism in the western world may declare that it wants equality, but the only equality its really interested is "equality of outcome" (which is not equality at all).

Yeah game companies can make lame characters but that's only a side issue. Ask yourself of all the major games coming out soon, what is the percentage of male vs. female protagonists. The community playing these games is, according to statistics, roughly 50/50. I can't say for any particular game but the growing list of surveys that note the rise in females gamers seems to suggest that at the very least there is a comparable number of female to male gamers playing any given games. Now it has been historically the case that the number of male to female protagonists has not been reflective of the ratio of male to female gamers. That seems odd. Most stories don't address stories that require a male lead or a female lead so why is it that these numbers don't reflect what we would get from a random sampling of people, roughly 50/50? I mean if we throw a dice to determine the main characters gender should we have more female leads? Now you can argue over what this means of wiether this is good or bad but I see it as an issue that can be addressed. Why don't we have more equal numbers or at least the option to pick male of female leads? I mean its not an outrageous feature to implement and unless the topic calls for someone of one particular gender (which some games do) then why isn't there an option like this? I think that an issue that relates to feminism that can be addressed. Even if we say writers suck then at least male/female can suck in equal ratio.
2. I'm not going to argue with you here. I myself am selective in what things I see as equal and what things I see as forcing an issue or unfair.

 

[Treefingers]

Because i like sandwiches OH YEAH I WENT THERE

 

[John Funk]

The fact that you think that just demonstrates all the more why that video is necessary. Thank you for proving my point

Oh we dont "think that," we know that. The fact that that video includes a stat for girls raped while walking to school in any given year, which is actually higher then the entire national stat for rape in the contential US. The rest is equally wrong or misrepresented & has been proven to be wrong by peer reviewed studies & extensive number crunching by actual experts.

The world is a bit bigger than the continental US, sorry to say. Have you considered that the "raped while walking to school" bit may cover, oh I don't know, the entire world? And that the national stat for rape in the US is believed to be significantly higher than reported due to the fact that most rape is never reported?

Just keep digging your hole. You're free to cling to your misogynistic, privileged beliefs all you want, but it does not change the fact that feminism is a desperately needed force even in modernized countries.

 

[Twilight_guy]

As for the rest of it (which i've cut for reading convenience), you've used a relatively new member of the logical fallacy family know as the "Fallacy of X." This fallacy uses numbers to try and show something should happen more often, less or not at all, but is predicated on the law of averages. The most obvious Fallacy of X is the creationist logic that evolution is impossible & that if you put blah de blah in a blah de blah by "random chance" it wont turn into a blah ded blah. You've used the same logic. Characters don't occur due to dice rolling random chance, but by the vision of the creator/creation team (no matter how poor his vision turns out)

-M

Okay then the vision of creators is dominated by the notion of male as norm. This seems to be their default. They create male rather then female most of the time. Why should we accept this? Why should we accept a world where male is standard and female is deviant or not norm? Why is the social construct that we aromatically envision male first? Their is an inherent inequality in the social construct due to imagine male first as the norm. Now if humans are doomed to only be able to imagine one gender as normal and one as deviant and always make a binary choice of their default, so be it one side will always be the lesser but I'm not going to be defeated so easily and I am going to make a stand towards changing the core construction and trying to make neither gender the default and instead making the default as gender-less that can then become male or female rather then gender immediately becoming male for generic characters.

I will say that sitting on my soap box and saying we should force this issue is heavy handed but I still want to address that core constructed inequality and make it an equality so that the ratio will not need to be forced it will instead become "normal" for us to not define a gender so easily and thus the distribution will become more even naturally since there is no inherent preference.

 

[RelexCryo]

Tifa Lockheart and Lara Croft used to have huge breasts for example. Now they don't. Rather than creating new female characters with athletic physiques, they took fanservice characters and rewrote them to have more athletic physiques.

Rather than moving towards greater diversity, Square Enix simply destroyed male fanservice and tried to recreate the characters to be less likely to annoy certain people. Greater diversity would ultimately require making both fanservice for men, and realistic, athletic women. The industry, rather than including both, is making a move towards exclusively having realistic, athletic women.

Um what? Tifa is just as big as ever and as for Lara isn?t Eidos the one responsible for the change?

Oh yeah they really toned it down.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UAP4l44xsM

1:00

1 minute into the video.