Gena Davis institute on Gender in media tries to link violent games to mass shootings and police violence

CriticalGaming

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The Last of Us 2 has been defended by feminists and has all manner of horrible crap happen to the two main female leads. Jessica Jones and Supergirl are also beloved by modern feminists and went through all kinds of crap in their shows.
Those are the exceptions and the reason why they are exceptions is that they are female led stories. You see misfortune towards women is not a problem when the women are the hero. But when the man is the hero, when it's Nathan Drake, or Mario, or Brad Pitt, then you have the problems.

Admittedly the fervor for this has died down quite a bit since most people stopped listening to crazy people and we've mostly moved on. Although it wont take much to ignite the ire again.
 

Avnger

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Those are the exceptions and the reason why they are exceptions is that they are female led stories. You see misfortune towards women is not a problem when the women are the hero. But when the man is the hero, when it's Nathan Drake, or Mario, or Brad Pitt, then you have the problems.
That's crazy! It's almost like people dislike it when their main representation in media is being offed/kidnapped/etc for plot convenience or as a joke...

When the protagonist of a story suffers misfortune but then overcomes it, OF FUCKING COURSE THAT'S DIFFERENT. They've been given agency. Your argument here is so obliviously privileged and out of touch with others' life experiences that it could almost be mistaken for someone purposely taking the shit.
 

Hades

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Frankly though, I think the reason Captain Marvel got so much hate was exclusively base off Bree Larson thinking her shit didn't stink and acting like now that Marvel had finally hired a woman she would be the thing that saved the MCU. And you could tell that even the MCU cast couldn't take her trash.
Then again that doesn't really reflect well on the haters. Even if we were to agree Bree Larson isn't likable then her stances are still pretty tame in the grand scheme of things. Which in turn makes the big drama against the film kinda petty and undignified.
 
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CriticalGaming

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That's crazy! It's almost like people dislike it when their main representation in media is being offed/kidnapped/etc for plot convenience or as a joke...
Of course it's for the plot! Wtf are you mocking there!? Things happen to people that drives motivation for the characters to do things. Otherwise you have a boring story in which nothing happens to anybody ever. This is a stupid point.

When the protagonist of a story suffers misfortune but then overcomes it, OF FUCKING COURSE THAT'S DIFFERENT. They've been given agency. Your argument here is so obliviously privileged and out of touch with others' life experiences that it could almost be mistaken for someone purposely taking the shit.
So you are implying here that things can only happen to the main character and never to anyone surrounding that character. Don't kidnap their kids, don't kill their loved ones, don't hurt their friends, because anything you do to drive agency into the main character is inherently sexist because you are using sub-characters as tools instead of treating them like real people? Is that what you are saying here? Because in that case you must hate 99% of everything you play/watch/read.

How many stories can you name in which event happen to the main character and the main character only?
 
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CriticalGaming

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Then again that doesn't really reflect well on the haters. Even if we were to agree Bree Larson isn't likable then her stances are still pretty tame in the grand scheme of things. Which in turn makes the big drama against the film kinda petty and undignified.
Perception is important though. And when the public gets the perception that Bree is a douchebag, then they will hate the movie because they hate the actor. Even if the movie itself is alright.

That is why certain movie stars disappear after they have a falling out in public. Once the public doesn't like the actor anymore, the career is basically over. Even if they were put into the best movie ever made, people would flame it because of the perception they have of the actor.

So while Bree Larson was just smelling her own farts, it tainted the audience. Every other MCU actor has been very humble about the role and respecting of the comic legacy that they are embodying. Bree is the only one who did that, and it poisoned the well so to speak.

Was she that bad? No not really, but compared to the other stars of the MCU it stood out in a very bad way.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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Of course it's for the plot! Wtf are you mocking there!? Things happen to people that drives motivation for the characters to do things. Otherwise you have a boring story in which nothing happens to anybody ever. This is a stupid point.
And when the woman only exists for it? She has no agency, no self-control, she's just a prize for the man to recover. And it happens again, and again, and again, and men say "well, this is fine, just shut up about it and be glad we even let you play our games".
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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The Last of Us 2 has been defended by feminists and has all manner of horrible crap happen to the two main female leads. Jessica Jones and Supergirl are also beloved by modern feminists and went through all kinds of crap in their shows. There are loads of stories feminists love that deal with women going through abuse or something terrible in general.
Because "consistency be damned gotta own dem Gamers™"
It shows the hollowness of wokeness.
Black female character brutally beaten to death during gameplay around the time BLM was really starting up? Yeh totally fine no trouble.
A Ninja story about defending your homeland from invaders? "IMPERALIST RIGHT WING EVIL PROPERGANDA!!!!!"

It's Proof if you signal hard enough the woke lot will happily accept it. I watched Supergirl and yes Season 1 had some cringey moments but they also had Cat Grant to sort of balance things out a bit and bring some level of sanity too to sort of almost mock the more extreme activist ideas like calling out the idea "What's wrong with girl in the name Supergirl I'm a girl still just an older and wiser one" When it moved to the CW they changed her Sister Alex to being a Lesbian (in Season 1 she was shown to have a romantic Interest in Maxwell Lord but in season two the CW threw all that out the window and made her lesbian (not Bi just lesbian exclusively).

Most of the stuff I saw them put supergirl through was emotional termoil rather than physical Admittedly I gave up watching at the end of the Invasion and Cademus arcs so I dunno what they did around the time Braniac 5 came in.

The weird reason for being ok with some stuff and not others is there's two modes for women seemingly allowed. Absolute victim who rises above it eventually (Jessica Jones) or Complete badass who never faces any struggles really (Rey, Captain Marvel etc....)

Then you look at Stargirl which so far none of the woke lot are hollering about and it really does seem like a far better balance like she gets her ass kicked so badly the next episode is like 30 minutes of her in the hospital then at home recovering before ending up rushing off to fight with her hands still bandaged up.

It's about signalling in the end is all it's why there was no real woke love for Killjoys but then they were all over how great Vagrant Queen was. They're very similar shows the different was Killjoys didn't overtly market to said crowd.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Those are the exceptions and the reason why they are exceptions is that they are female led stories. You see misfortune towards women is not a problem when the women are the hero. But when the man is the hero, when it's Nathan Drake, or Mario, or Brad Pitt, then you have the problems.

Admittedly the fervor for this has died down quite a bit since most people stopped listening to crazy people and we've mostly moved on. Although it wont take much to ignite the ire again.
I'll say now on twitter the anger and bitterness of The Last of US Part II stans hasn't died down that much. I still see probably 1 -2 per day launching into raging rants about the evil Gamers™
 

Dwarvenhobble

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That's crazy! It's almost like people dislike it when their main representation in media is being offed/kidnapped/etc for plot convenience or as a joke...

When the protagonist of a story suffers misfortune but then overcomes it, OF FUCKING COURSE THAT'S DIFFERENT. They've been given agency. Your argument here is so obliviously privileged and out of touch with others' life experiences that it could almost be mistaken for someone purposely taking the shit.
I'm


Sorry


You

were

Saying

Something

About

Media

Representation?
 

Dwarvenhobble

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And when the woman only exists for it? She has no agency, no self-control, she's just a prize for the man to recover. And it happens again, and again, and again, and men say "well, this is fine, just shut up about it and be glad we even let you play our games".
Mercutio says hello
 

Cicada 5

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Ok I'm going to step in here and try to point out how I think people are on different pages here.

On the most technical definition level sexism = Treating men and women different based on sex.
This is different (or should be but often it's conflated with or used in place of) Sexual discrimination = Treating a person differently in a negative way because of their sex.
So using the most technical level definition Medicine is sexist because due to men and women being different they get different treatment literally due to necessity.

The issue is Anita and others only accept and allow 1 kind of treatment to be ok while claiming others are sexist.

I'm sure some women would enjoy the idea of being seen to have such value men and willing to fight and die to protect them. Some women don't want that as see it as belittling their abilities especially as more modern weapons eliminate the need or advantages of strength.

With the Annie Oakley example it could be argued the changes were sexually discriminations towards men because it's based on he stereotype that men can't accept a woman being better than them at something.
That stereotype does exist but I doubt that was what was going through the creators' minds.
 

CriticalGaming

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And when the woman only exists for it? She has no agency, no self-control, she's just a prize for the man to recover. And it happens again, and again, and again, and men say "well, this is fine, just shut up about it and be glad we even let you play our games".
This is every character in fiction. A character only exists in a piece of fiction for the plot and no other reason. If a women were only to exist in the media for no reason whatsoever than she is window dressing and isn't that worse? At least she has importance and relevance to the piece of work if something HAPPENS with her. And something MUST happen in order for her to be a part of the story.

And to think every women being saved is being saved as a prize simply discounts how many women have been saved by their father's in stories. How about the Taken films? Is Liam Neson's daughter his prize? Or is it a story about how far a father will go to save his family?

This mentality is so narrow minded and stupid I can't believe people can have such little empathy for the human condition that they consider this a logical viewpoint.
 
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Hades

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A Ninja story about defending your homeland from invaders? "IMPERALIST RIGHT WING EVIL PROPERGANDA!!!!!"
I'm aware there's some feeling that the press ''had it out'' for Ghost of Tsushima but it seemed to have reviewed universally positively so I'm not sure what they're talking about. I think its mostly a trick to try and pretend their ''symbol against wokeness'' is under attack.

I actually view it more of a case where the other side isn't consistent. They needed a ''real game for the REAL gamers'' to rally behind in opposition to TLOU2 and wokeness. This despite Ghost being more than a little woke, more woke and political than TLOU2 in fact. It also purposely made its character uglier which apparently wasn't a mortal sin this time around when they could use the game as a stick to beat another game for having a muscle girl in it.

The right rallying around Ghost as the antithesis of a woke game highlights how artificial their views really are. They rallied around the game purely because they needed something to rally behind and were willing to completely miss, and overlook supposedly unforgivable sins to keep the charade up.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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If a women were only to exist in the media for no reason whatsoever than she is window dressing and isn't that worse? At least she has importance and relevance to the piece of work if something HAPPENS with her. And something MUST happen in order for her to be a part of the story.
Yes. But with women, it's almost always something happens to her, not because of her. And then a man must come and make things right. It teaches girls and young women that they must be passive, that they must wait for a man to come along and make everything right.

This mentality is so narrow minded and stupid I can't believe people can have such little empathy for the human condition that they consider this a logical viewpoint.
It's funny- I'm thinking the exact same thing about you.
 
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CriticalGaming

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I actually view it more of a case where the other side isn't consistent. They needed a ''real game for the REAL gamers'' to rally behind in opposition to TLOU2 and wokeness. This despite Ghost being more than a little woke, more woke and political than TLOU2 in fact. It also purposely made its character uglier which apparently wasn't a mortal sin this time around when they could use the game as a stick to beat another game for having a muscle girl in it.
I never really liked the concept of the "real" game.

For me the difference between TLOU2 and Ghost came down to a simple key fact.

Ghost was fun. TLOU2 was not. At the end of the day that's what wins it in the end.

There are lots of factors that make a video game what it is in the end. And several things can add up to make or break a game. A bad story for example can be forgiven with excellent gameplay. At the same time, bad gameplay can be excused if the story is incredible. The Uncharted games, don't have fantastic gameplay but they have stories that lead players on such a cheeky adventure that the janky gunplay is forgiven.

But ultimately what always happens is people get defensive about the thing that they chose to like. People who liked TLOU2 have to defend the shit out of it because that's the game they ended up liking. Or hell both games came out at the same-ish time and many people probably couldn't get both games in the middle of lockdowns, so if they picked TLOU2 they'll defend the fuck out of it just to feel like they didn't make the wrong choice.

It's like when we were kids, whatever console your parents bought you for Christmas was the best console. And you defended it to your friends and talked shit on the other console. It's just what people do. And to this day, that tradition continues.
 

CriticalGaming

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But with women, it's almost always something happens to her, not because of her
What does that mean? She got robbed BECAUSE she went to the place where the robbers were. This statement is offiscating the fact. You are just shifting adjectives around to justify why it is wrong specifically towards women simply because they are women. Ironically you are making things seem even more sexist by implying that things only happen to women STRICTLY on the basis of them being women. You remove the character, you remove the role in the plot, you strip her down into nothing but her sex just to prove how sexist it is to do things to her.

In your viewpoint she is nothing because she can be nothing. She is a victim no matter what. Despite everything that might happen in the story around her to prove context to the things that she does or experiences, none of it matters because she is nothing.

It's nonsense.
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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I'm aware there's some feeling that the press ''had it out'' for Ghost of Tsushima but it seemed to have reviewed universally positively so I'm not sure what they're talking about. I think its mostly a trick to try and pretend their ''symbol against wokeness'' is under attack.

I actually view it more of a case where the other side isn't consistent. They needed a ''real game for the REAL gamers'' to rally behind in opposition to TLOU2 and wokeness. This despite Ghost being more than a little woke, more woke and political than TLOU2 in fact. It also purposely made its character uglier which apparently wasn't a mortal sin this time around when they could use the game as a stick to beat another game for having a muscle girl in it.

The right rallying around Ghost as the antithesis of a woke game highlights how artificial their views really are. They rallied around the game purely because they needed something to rally behind and were willing to completely miss, and overlook supposedly unforgivable sins to keep the charade up.
Well it's mostly sites that refuse to give score that also tend to take said shots at games so reviewing well is somewhat expected now because aid companies get on company blacklists more often if they rock the boat with harming review scores for a game.

Also Progressive is different to woke, it's one of the things I've always maintained. Ghost to Tushima was deemed problematic and you can even still see it coming up today among the TLOU2 stans.

The easily want to point out the difference is the show The Boys which mocked the woke stuff in the recent series with the whole Maeve subplot when honestly Maeve just wants to be her a hero who happens to be bisexual but corporate wants her marketed as a Lesbian because it sells better according to market research.

Also did they make the characters uglier in Ghost to Tsushima? I'm looking now and not seeing much difference beyond the kind of expected amount of Motion capture related issues that cause slight changes.
 

Cicada 5

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Except you seem to very much be ignoring the contingent of people who do literally seem to only like certain properties due to perceived political messaging to them. You want to like Battlefield V then go ahead. I personally played the Beta and found it very lackluster and feeling like the series had barely evolved since Battlefield 3 at that point.
It's no different than years ago when Sarah Palin was pushing American Sniper.
Only now you get thrown under the bus and have far more people trying to shame you for not enjoying [insert certain film / media property here] rather than some detached politician most people already thought was a bit disconnected from reality anyway.

I've always maintained and will do that Woke and progressive are two different things. Stargirl is progressive as a series, the Villains in it ironically would be considered almost avatars of being woke.


Except the uglification theory very much holds weight because some companies are scared of their characters being deemed to sexy thus deemed sexualisd. I think it was one of the art directors of one of the more recent Mortal Kombat games that admitted on twitter they deliberately made the female characters less attractive.

Also most people don't take The Daily Mail seriously to begin with.
Are we talking about the same Mortal Kombat game were most of the women wore tight clothing and high heels and two of them have a move where they break the opponent's face with their ass?
 
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Dwarvenhobble

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Are we talking about the same Mortal Kombat game were most of the women wore tight clothing and high heels and two of them have a move where they break the opponent's face with their ass?
Yes, they were also claimed and pushed as "More realistic depictions". Because that's what the game with magic powers really needed where people can get up from broken skulls and spines and keep fighting like nothing happened.......