Sean Deli said:
*deleted*
Just realised 3 people pointed out exactly the same already.
Oh, I found a better post to qoute and comment on!
Therumancer said:
there actually are nerds who try and treat this as a serious issue, largely because they feel that by speaking against fantasy artwork it will make them more appealing to women.
No, there are also people who attack fantasy armor because they are, you know,
history majors and they know what armor women used to fight in really! It was simple male armor. The way 14-15 century plate armor for males was built, it had more than enough room for breasts of almost any size.
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I've received several responses, but they all come down to the same basic thing.
Historically women didn't fight, sure there are a handfull of exceptions, but by and large they just didn't do it in the ancient world. There is no "well women used this on the battlefield on a large scale" because women didn't fight on a large scale. Even the individual exceptions are few and far between.
As far as breasts and how they work, and how "well women are discriminated against because men are pigs who want to use them for pleasure! not due to a lack of physical abillity", all I can say is that there are reasons why even today they segregate competitions. While it might make for entertaining fiction, in general you don't have things like cross gender martial arts tournaments or professional sporting events for a reason.
Also, trying to misrepresent what I'm saying (as some ladies seem to have done) doesn't do the case justice. It might not be a popular point that an impact through a breastplate is going to hurt women far more than men, but it remains true. That doesn't mean that this makes women general invalids or anything of the sort, but it does mean they aren't going to go running into hand to hand combat on a medieval battlefield... and they generally didn't. Of course this is only one of several reasons why this didn't happen. It's also a big part of why you don't have women competing directly against men in sports.
Now I do get it, fantasy art has been a popular target for years, and a lot of people like to look at it and go "lawl, ridiculous sexism" for a lot of reasons, most of which are incorrect and unfair. Yes the artwork *DOES* exist to be sexy, but then again women (and peope in general) tend to want to look good anyway. You'll find this doesn't generally change no matter who is doing the artwork or who it's directed at.
Of course one of the reasons why I make points like this, is that you increasingly see a lot of girls who buy into the politically correct hype and think they can fight men. Over many years of experience I have come to the conclusion that this is an increasingly dangerous trend with women tending to forget how vulnerable they are. While a girl can beat a guy if she's in massively better shape than he is (ie a serious athlete against a weakling), has vastly superior training, or actually outweights/masses her opponent, such situations are incredibly rare. I've seen the results when some girl who "has a black belt and can take care of herself" winds up getting raped in a parking lot or stairwell because she figured she could fight the guy who came after her. I worked casino security for years, and I'll be brutally blunt in saying that I think women need to be educated to back down, and run away, learning just as much self defense as they need to maybe break a hold. Real life is not an action movie or fantasy novel. Exceptions occur, but in general all the political correctness in the world doesn't amount to a hill of beans when a lady runs into some dude looking to exploit her in solitude, and trying to do karate on some dude who outmasses her by 50 pounds or more is usually just going to piss the guy off. Then someone like me gets to write a report, and we wound up with extra security patrols on the emegency stairwells and such for a while until someone in authority inevitably decides again that it's a waste of manpower (which is an entirely differant discussion)...
At any rate, the same basic thing applies to why you didn't have women picking up broadswords and leaping into battles through most of history, in terms of physical abillity, anatomy, etc... women just aren't as suited for that kind of thing as guys are. Perhaps that's sexist to many, but it is the way things are. The rare exceptions cannot be turned into the rule.
