Can Duke Nukem Become a Feminist Hero?

[teknoarcanist]

I think Duke is probably the most blatant ad absurdum for classic American pop culture's ideas of machismo that I can think of off-hand. He's that entire model extrapolated out to its most ridiculous extreme. I could easily see 'Duke' becoming fem shorthand for 'extremely exaggerated male depiction', much like 'Rambo'.

One downside, however, is that the developers appear to have INDULGED Duke by putting him in an adolescent male power fantasy, which does nothing but throw alternating waves of bad guys and talking vaginas at him. The problem with Duke is that, in the universe his developers have presented, women are objects which fulfill no purpose but sex and rescue. The 'duke is ridiculous' still stands through his design and characterization, but now it's got this sly wink of 'but yeah, no, he's kind of awesome, right?'

Here's hoping the next game features a down-and-out, five-o-clock-shadowed Duke in a morally feminism-advanced world, which has rendered him obsolete.

Until the aliens show up, and they call him back for one more job . . .

 

[mattaui]

Games are about living a fantasy. For some people it's being an elven wizard, for some it's commanding a starship. And I imagine for some it's being a gun-toting, misogynistic wanker. I really don't think there's any of the malefic intent that people constantly suggest comes out of these games.

Unless you count Rapelay.

I quite agree with the fantasy angle, that's generally what these games are, forms of escape. I'm not quite sure why they'd focus on Duke, they've got the entire Rap music industry to focus on if they're looking for examples of how men aren't supposed to behave. Gun-toting, misogynistic wanker describes most 'artists' from that category, after all.

 

[Terminal Blue]

What bothers me is that you have all these female supremacists that want women to lord over everything are using a term that was meant to be used to fight for equality. Most you hear from anymore don't want to be equal to men they want to be considered better or treated better.

Where are these 'female supremacists'. What are their names? What do they say which is problematic?

Where's the male equality? Why can a woman just scream rape with no evidence and everyone automatically believes her? Why can't a man get anyone to listen to him if he actually was raped by a woman and has proof?

Jesus Christ..

Firstly. of the 5% of rape cases which actually get reported, only 6.5% will result in successful conviction. That's not 'everyone leaping to believe her', is it?

And the reason a man can't get people to believe him is not because of the pernicious influence of feminism. Go read some actual feminist work on the subject, start with R. W. Connell.

I would prefer that people who wish to fight for equality do so for all humanity and refer to themselves accordingly.

If we actually lived in anything approximating an equal society, I would agree, but we don't. The term exists because, for some reason, women are treated different at almost every social level, not just in the legal frameworks but in the ways they are talked about and expected to behave, generally with fairly destructive consequences for them.

The 'problems' you're complaining about with the way males are treated are actually manifestations of privilege (noone said privilege was always a positive thing). It is harder to think of a man being raped because men are viewed as having sexual agency and not being vulnerable in this way. Feminism did not produce that idea, it is a part of masculinity which actually reflects very badly on women.

Sorry, but the degree of profound and wilful misunderstanding in this thread is annoying.

 

[Callate]

An interesting tack to take. Probably smarter than trying to defend Duke Nukem as a point of artistic expression. As for me, I know I'm not going to choose whether to play it on the basis of who it does or doesn't offend; I'm going to play it or not based on whether it gets decent reviews.

 

[punipunipyo]

all i care for now is to see more weapons than just the classic remakes...

The thing about women rights, video games phobics... etc can kiss my @*^%. It's a game, FOR ADULTS! so all the anti-gaming groups can just GTFO.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Just because the playing field is uneven doesn't mean its right to ask for unbalanced rules or biased referees. The rules should be equal- seek to level the field not justify unfair rules.

Who is asking for unbalanced rules and biased referees?

Again, you need to give me some names before you start talking about 'female supremacists', the 'feminist movement(s)' in one form or another have been around for a good long time now and there have been quite a lot of us. If you're going to make generalizing statements you need to add some kind of qualifier.

I've suffered directly due to the sexist misconceptions of those I'll loosely label as female supremacists. I even got into legal trouble due to them making sexist assumptions and automatically believing the woman over the man in a domestic incident in which I was the victim.

I'm going to need some context here, because unless you were reporting this crime to a police force and legal system composed entirely of feminist women I'm not seeing the link.

Due to sexist misconceptions I was not even allowed to utilize the services of the local domestic violence shelter at first. The women that insulted me there are not doing a service for the cause of equality I will tell you that much. I was just as traumatized by my treatment at the hand of these supposed counselors as I was by being physically abused for 2 months.

So some women weren't very nice to you, and that makes all feminists bad?

Again, not seeing the link.

A truly equal society would not have enforcers of laws ever make those assumptions.

Most feminists would agree entirely. Pity we don't live in one.

I'm not blaming feminism in itself. I do think that under the cloak of true feminism there is much misandry, though, and to tolerate misandry because women have suffered and continue to suffer is hypocritical and morally weak. Because one group has suffered does not justify that group getting special privileges at the expense of others or making others suffer.

Look, I'm sorry you suffered, but let's be honest here. You didn't suffer because evil women have somehow stripped you of your human rights, but because you were presumed to be able to 'take care of yourself' or to be 'stronger' or to be 'more independent' and generally to be immune to physical or emotional abuse by women (with the reverse not being true). Those concepts were not initiated by feminists, they are not empowering to women. They are part of the system of unequal sexual difference which most feminists feel some kind of duty to reform.

You and I benefit from being seen as strong, independent, able to take care of ourselves. It makes us trustworthy and means we will be taken seriously more easily than some pretty girl who will be consistently told, both through representation and through people's actions, that she is only capable to achieving social legitimacy as an object of male desire. The fact that there are massive downsides and consequences to this for us as people does not make that any less true or the system which perpetrates it any less unfair.

I know some of the stats on domestic violence now- trying to tout the mistreatment of women domestically does not in any way justify the behavior of these sexist misandrists. Women being abused does not in any way justify the tolerance of men being abused or the assumption that a male can't be a victim.

Who is honestly saying it does?

Regardless of the causes of this imbalance the solution is not to treat the genders differently nor to defend the unequal treatment by pointing out past injustices and biases in society.

If they were actually 'past' injustices I would agree. As I think I have just illustrated, they're not. As I said, hegemonic male privilege is not unequivocally good for men, in fact it can be horribly hurtful to a lot of men, that doesn't mean it suddenly doesn't exist.

True feminists should work for the equality of both genders and not just say "tough" when men suffer from sexism as well. Working towards true equality and accountability for both genders should be the ultimate goal in my opinion.

I'm genuinely a little confused by this statement because I'm really not sure who is meant to be doing any different, or how you get to qualify what 'true' feminists are having not read massive body of literature involved.

I agree that a lot of feminist writing and thought only focuses on the problems faced by 'women', but that's because the vast majority of 'neutral' scholarship and theory does not focus on the particular issues faced by women. A lot of feminist literature, especially today, does focus on the particular issues faced by men as well. Generally speaking, 'normative' feminism is based around the idea that sex roles, expectations and representations need to be examined and changed, and that applies to and covers both sexes and beyond.

As I said, Connell would be a good example of a 'feminist' who has written extensively on masculinity and could probably give you an interesting theoretical background as to your own experiences. She's generally well accepted in the feminist movement and her ideas (particularly 'hegemonic masculinity') are day to day buzzwords in feminist scholarship and practice.

I can think of one 'big name' still active in feminism who might be accused of being an outspoken misandrist, and she's pretty widely disliked for it.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Aspiring Journalists and Screenwriters take note: There is comedic GOLD on the horizon here.
I cannot wait to see this turn into the greatest bizarro-spin case in the history of gaming.

Duke Nukem: Feminist Crusader. Oh good Lord the irony is too much to contain.

 

[Iron Lightning]

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Any game that punishes you for killing women is certainly not misogynistic.

But it could be sexist- I think its hypocritical that killing females is viewed in any way different than killing males in a game. By saying its ok to harm men but not women just reinforces harmful sexist mores. Its either ok to harm both or neither in a game. If a woman attacks you in real life it should be treated no differently than if a man attacked you in the same manner. Equal rights means equal wrongs as well. You can't have the benefits without the detriments without collectively being hypocrites.

My friend, you speak the truth, however this is a truth that does not apply to Duke Nukem 3D. You see in Duke Nukem 3D there are only three living dudes, Duke, some General guy in a cutscene, and Hannibal Lector: who you find encased in bulletproof glass during the prison level as a silly little easter egg. The gender of the aliens at large is, of course, unknown except for the pig cops who were former (presumable male) police officers who were mutated by the aliens in to pig-men-slaves. Killing them could be viewed as an act of euthanasia as well as self-defense. Additionally, the last boss in the game is the Alien Queen, who is basically a female supremacist's wet dream in that she is vastly superior to the alien drones (who are presumably male, as we can infer from their species sociological similarity to bees.) Lest we forget that the baddest muthafucka in the game's universe is Duke, who is quite male.

I've suffered directly due to the sexist misconceptions of those I'll loosely label as female supremacists. I even got into legal trouble due to them making sexist assumptions and automatically believing the woman over the man in a domestic incident in which I was the victim.

Sir, I am absolutely appalled by the machinations of our horribly biased legal system. I am very sorry about your troubles, and I can only hope that you got or will get the justice you deserve. As a true humanist the continued existence of cases like yours is an issue that we should address perhaps even more so than the issue regarding sexism against females. Certainly, any system where sexism is written into the law deserves more attention than usually unchangeable personal sexism. I just want you to know:

You've got a friend in me.

 

[Galad]

hahaha, I'd buy mr. Pitchford a beer. Or whatever he normally drinks

 

[mxfox408]

Alot of feminists wont admit that they love the bad boy, or at one point f****d and got d*** whipped by a bad boy and have been hurt which is what led to thier femenist thinking in the first place. The funny thing is thier movement seems to be more about dominance over equality, just research thier cases and youll see what im talking about. Lastly I also was on the rio hondo debate team in college and one topic was called equal rights for women, I was told that alot of women at the school would hate me depending how it turned out, because i choose to opose their point of view only on what I found to be bullshit and what was actually causing men to pretty much give even more disrespect to women than 60 years ago. The way i see it they already have the uperhand in divorce and in most cases custody battles. Personally i hope they use Duke because it shows how uptight and stupid this movement of thiers really is.

 

[mr_rubino]

Thanks for adding to the debate, Pitch. Go back to making the game and quit trying to be witty. We've been waiting so long, the 90s ended over a decade ago. Clearly someone hasn't informed you of this.

(OT: So once again, someone said the F-word and the thread devolved into 12 year olds complaining about that version of feminists they've heard so much about but never seem to have been able to meet in the real world.)

 

[Jack Macaque]

If it works for good, it will work, people will make sure of that.

 

[tgbennett30]

Feminists often focus on small things because they are symptomatic of big things. The blankets, for example, are interesting because they highlight the issue of binary sexual difference, its position in childrearing and the hundreds of years of cultural history which produce those subjects. 'Pink' has associations, 'blue' has associations and those colours will mark the way those children grow up for the rest of their lives, often to their detriment.

Sorry, but this is mostly silly. Please check out the developments in developmental psychology, behavior genetics, and epigenetics over about the last 40 years or so - genes determine the VAST majority of who and what we are. The whole discussion of "nature vs. nurture" is obsolete, since it is in fact both for some things, one thing or the other for some other things, and the interaction of the two for yet others. However, *most* traits you care to study (such as IQ, level of "The Big 5" personality traits such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, etc.) have a much higher loading with respect to genes - technically, heritability, the actual genes are not so easily pinned down.

Look no further than the many "twins reared apart" studies. Essentially, these are studies that looked at identical twins raised in vastly different settings - for example, one in China to low-level peasant parents, the other raised by upper-middle class folks in America - and their personalities, behavior, etc. are *remarkably* similar over the life span.

To assume that calling a little boy "a cute girl" because he mistakenly has on a pink ribbon - well, that may embarrass the person saying it, but it will have little to no effect on the kid.

 

[Avashnea]

Feminists have nothing to do with the rights of women. Actually, they hinder the rights of women...