Gamers make bad feminists
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The one problem (and solution) is female protagonists in video games. There are not enough and more of them would help. Get people to actually play as females there is going to be less of the separation between "them and us". Walk a mile in their (virtual) shoes.
PS: I have a theory that the Hitman trailer was DELIBERATELY controversial in a facile way JUST to get forum threads made about them to get free exposure for their game. There really isn't much to talk about but the more you talk about it the more the word gets out there a new Hitman game is coming out.
PS: I have a theory that the Hitman trailer was DELIBERATELY controversial in a facile way JUST to get forum threads made about them to get free exposure for their game. There really isn't much to talk about but the more you talk about it the more the word gets out there a new Hitman game is coming out.
Yes, us feminists want special treatment so we can feel like we're equal rather than, say, actually being equal.sanquin said:
I'd love if there were more female protagonists in games, apart from games where sex is interchangeable and it doesn't affect gameplay in the slightest. It would be awesome if there were more well-balanced female leads. It would be nice if they made more female characters that weren't made on that 'badder than the boys' template. I don't know if that explains what I mean properly, you know that character type where the woman has a serious chip on her shoulder because every other character in the game is a male and she ends up essentially being a male character with a feminine face?Treblaine said:
People should use that term more.Kahunaburger said:
Sorry for quoting a first post, but....
*sigh*
...I kinda prefer the false "expertise" statement. Especially since the "reaction" wasn't solely about sexualisation. But hey, 999 people on this site have knocked down that strawman, why not make it an even thousand?
Hell, it seems like at least half of the people responding to the issue of the Hitman trailer are defending it, so I'm not even sure why you feel this tirade is necessary. Obviously, we haven't become anti-boob crusaders. Hell, the question of sexism in gaming has been around on this site alone for ages. Hell, why bring it up now? Why not bring it up after the outcry to Aris Bahtanian?
*sigh*
I hope you're taking the piss here. I REALLY hope you're taking the piss here.Zappanale said:
*phew* Wait, this isn't much better, actually.
...I kinda prefer the false "expertise" statement. Especially since the "reaction" wasn't solely about sexualisation. But hey, 999 people on this site have knocked down that strawman, why not make it an even thousand?
Well, that's accurate, and not reactionary in and of itself.
[deadpan]Yes. You would never have heard a comment like that before the nun assassins.[/deadpan]
Which is problematic in itself, but more for the use of "****" to attack a woman rather than any issue with "anti-boob crusaders."
Seems like another massive strawman. It doesn't look like any of these people are against women in games.
Hell, it seems like at least half of the people responding to the issue of the Hitman trailer are defending it, so I'm not even sure why you feel this tirade is necessary. Obviously, we haven't become anti-boob crusaders. Hell, the question of sexism in gaming has been around on this site alone for ages. Hell, why bring it up now? Why not bring it up after the outcry to Aris Bahtanian?
Reactionary outrage calling for the end of reactionary outrage. It's so meta, it could be an inception sequel.
I just wanted to applaud you, good sir or madam.manic_depressive13 said:
But only because they're certain this is what we want. If there wasn't money in it, they wouldn't keep it up.Emiscary said:
I wonder - as to the hitman trailer - you the equivalent gender inversion work?
For example, a Beatrix Kiddo type assassin mending her wounds in her house when she is attacked by a punch of guys dressed like BDSM gimps/strippers armed with military weapons.
To me, I think it would work. To me the way the Hitman trailer works is the incronguity between nuns, weapons, sexuality, violence and combat.
For example, a Beatrix Kiddo type assassin mending her wounds in her house when she is attacked by a punch of guys dressed like BDSM gimps/strippers armed with military weapons.
To me, I think it would work. To me the way the Hitman trailer works is the incronguity between nuns, weapons, sexuality, violence and combat.
- Apr 1, 2009
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You implied it. And getting your definitions from idiots doesn't really help you much, I mean even wikipedia agrees with my definition of it (yes yes I know). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feministsanquin said:
You cite a story without providing any other information about it, you need to work on that. Plus I never said that everyone who called themself a feminist wasn't a moron or jackass, I just said the ones that are morons or jackasses aren't really feminists. Also, there is a group who call themselves the feminists who do want to see women get better treatment then anyone else but these are't feminists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_FeministsDarkmantle said:
Fantastic. It's always so good to see so much wilful misunderstanding of feminism in threads like these. I particularly enjoy the liberal use of extreme examples that haven't held true since the 70s. Almost as much as I enjoy the assertion that modern feminism is just a cover for The Great Conspiracy To Punish Men (TM).
I am a feminist. I really, really care about gender equality and respect for both genders. I know a lot of other feminists, some "organised," some not. Sometimes I get angry about feminist issues. So there you have it, I am a self-confessed, unrepentant "angry feminist."
Guess what? I also have no problem with men. I have lots of male friends. I have a boyfriend. I take part in traditionally male dominated hobbies. Furthermore, I don't like all women. At all. I don't even like all feminists. How is this possible? Because, as a feminist (and, I like to think, as a decent human being) I don't give a monkey's what gender someone is. People are people, they are not defined by their gender. I want more people (male and female) to think like that, because I am a feminist.
Guess what again? Men can be feminists. My own father happily describes himself as such. I'd hope so too, given that he has two daughters. Oh, and he's not under my mother's thumb as some of you are likely imagining. On the flip side, women can very much be anti-feminist.
But hey, what do I know? Some people on the internet have decided they feel threatened by feminism, maybe met a few manhaters once, so it must be evil. I, and all the other feminists I know, male and female, must really hate men and want "special treatment" so we can punish them, we just somehow didn't notice.
One last thing: please, please can we all stop thinking that because someone points out that women have had a rough deal from men in the past, or when they use words like "patriarchy" that it's a personal attack on all men today? It isn't. I know it can be uncomfortable to think about how your gender/race/class/religion/whatever has acted or been portrayed in the past, and I've had to explain this to male friends and to my boyfriend before, but please. It's not about you personally. Acknowledging what has happened in the past doesn't mean you're admitting to any wrongdoing yourself. Once again, feminists don't hate men.
/rant
Thank you.
I am a feminist. I really, really care about gender equality and respect for both genders. I know a lot of other feminists, some "organised," some not. Sometimes I get angry about feminist issues. So there you have it, I am a self-confessed, unrepentant "angry feminist."
Guess what? I also have no problem with men. I have lots of male friends. I have a boyfriend. I take part in traditionally male dominated hobbies. Furthermore, I don't like all women. At all. I don't even like all feminists. How is this possible? Because, as a feminist (and, I like to think, as a decent human being) I don't give a monkey's what gender someone is. People are people, they are not defined by their gender. I want more people (male and female) to think like that, because I am a feminist.
Guess what again? Men can be feminists. My own father happily describes himself as such. I'd hope so too, given that he has two daughters. Oh, and he's not under my mother's thumb as some of you are likely imagining. On the flip side, women can very much be anti-feminist.
But hey, what do I know? Some people on the internet have decided they feel threatened by feminism, maybe met a few manhaters once, so it must be evil. I, and all the other feminists I know, male and female, must really hate men and want "special treatment" so we can punish them, we just somehow didn't notice.
One last thing: please, please can we all stop thinking that because someone points out that women have had a rough deal from men in the past, or when they use words like "patriarchy" that it's a personal attack on all men today? It isn't. I know it can be uncomfortable to think about how your gender/race/class/religion/whatever has acted or been portrayed in the past, and I've had to explain this to male friends and to my boyfriend before, but please. It's not about you personally. Acknowledging what has happened in the past doesn't mean you're admitting to any wrongdoing yourself. Once again, feminists don't hate men.
/rant
Thank you.
But pointing out sexism is a lot like pointing out fascism. In almost all cases (on the internet at least) people are either grossly exaggerating the problem or trying to make a problem where none actually exists.Kahunaburger said:
Complaining about feminism is a little different. It's just an never-ending argument about semantics. Any argument based entirely around what a word means (that isn't taking place at a dictionary convention) isn't really worth having.
Speaking almost-seriously for a moment, I would personally like to see some sort of banned list of topics. One of the bass guitar forums my boyfriend goes on has a sticky titled "Are you looking for a bass guitar to play metal? LOOK HERE FIRST!" because the topic comes up so often it drives regular members insane.
Maybe we could have a sticky for: "Worried about sexism and/or feminists in gaming/game-development/game-journalism? Argue here!"
And this neatly demonstrates the point made above, it's petty little arguments like these when obviously the poster did not claim that there is no sexism in the world.Kahunaburger said:
I also concur with the OP, the Escapist is particularly bad for bandwagon jumping.
Personally, as a woman and a feminist, I only found the Hitman trailer kind of amusing in a camp, "taking the piss" kind of way. Though I think it is important to keep the context of IO Interactives previous Hitman games in mind when watching it.Treblaine said:
47 has always been portrayed as asexual, to the point that he reacts with shock when kissed in the first game. Add to this that the Hitman series have always mixed brutal violence with a not-quite-entirely-serious tone (see spoiler at the end). This trailer was kind of the same thing to me, by first presenting the female hit(wo)men as nuns and then turning it around and making their "actual" outfits be the kind of stripperific you normally associate with poor porno depicitions of nuns. What then ensues is a massive fight where these professional killers put up their best fight but are still overcome by the cold blooded hitman they came to kill.
All in all, it was the kind of over the top stealth parody that the hitman series has been doing since its' first inception. Could it have been presented better? Sure, but as mentioned before in this thread, I find the Far Cry 3 trailer to be quite a lot worse in regards to sexualization.
Kill a bikini dressed woman by pushing her into her own pool and making her drown instantly in Blood Money. The entire Ninja Castle/Bond Villain Hideout in Silent Assassin. The Angel Stripper assassin and that entire Nightclub/BDSM-dungeon level in Blood Money. Killing someone by shooting out the bottom of the pool he's sitting in. This list could go on for quite some time
Any protagonist - male or female or genderless robot - must be tough enough for the job, they need to have then mental fortitude to be victorious and refuse to accept defeat. There are male approaches to that but I know there are female ones as well. A female protagonist must be resolute or else it will be too incongruous with the player who is playing to the competition and accepting the challenge by continuing to play the game. That's not being "Badder than the boys" that's being made of "The right stuff".Colour-Scientist said:
I think the key is to have more female characters even in a single game, so many games which are highly character driven have ENTIRELY male casts. I would really like to play a character driven game like Uncharted where the principal cast are female.
What's the name of that test, it is "does at least one named female character talk to another female character"? Surprisingly, almost every game and film fails to have this to spite having named male characters talking to each other all the time. Unless they are specifically targeted as "women's films". This treats women like they are a minority.
(google searches)
Bechdel Test. That was what it was called. Really, do you have a woman as a token character (even as protagonist) to fill some minority quote or is 50% of humanity really being given their time in the lime light. I forgot the last part, if the two named women in the cast do talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man being the subject of the conversation? This is why even shows like Sex and the City barely pass as entire episodes go by where the women can talk entirely about men, obsessing over them. As if we didn't see enough of them.
I REALLY want more women in films and games, while they seem to be just in "girly" media. I write (and rewrite) a lot with entirely female principal casts.
I'm not talking about their actions but more the 'personalities' they give them. There's a difference between being resolute and being completely masculine. I think you can create a character that's essentially feminine but is still made of 'the right stuff'. Kat from Halo: Reach would be an example of the male with a feminine face type I'm talking about. I can think of very few female characters that were created to get shit done but who still retain their femininity.Treblaine said:
I'd be intesting in seeing how you write a multitude of female characters interacting almost solely with each other.
The term egalitarian is more common, and if you Google "gender egalitarian" you'll certainly find some blogs on the topic.Ickorus said:I actually really like the term 'equalist' (Never heard of the term before just now, by the way) it implies that you support all equality as a whole rather than a single facet of it and I think that's far better than simply calling yourself a feminist which suggests a bias towards one form of equality over another.Worgen said:Sounds like someone is getting their definitions from fox news. Actually feminism is about equality, people that say its about female dominance are getting their definition from right wing idiots who seek to discredit it.sanquin said:Then you're not a feminist but an equalist.Marv666 said:Feminists, these days, are only all about women's rights. No longer about just equal rights. Or rather, feminists these days are all about getting special treatment just so they can 'feel' equal to men even though they do less work, are weaker, etc. (Not saying women all do less work or are weaker, just that the ones that are want to still feel equal for doing/achieving less.)
So yea, you're an equalist! Same with me.
You'll find very few people who disagree with the statement "Women are people too and should have the same rights as any other person."arbane said:
If that's the total definition of feminist you want to go with, then sure, why not, I'm a feminist.
If you go from there to "therefore women should be given special preferential treatment and/or lowered standards to do things that aren't already at least 50% women, and possibly even then", then I stop agreeing. Equality doesn't mean special explicit systematic privilege for one group.
Or perhaps an argument that relies on the assumption of women as always victims and never perpetrators, or of women as never being deceitful, malicious, cruel, or otherwise horrible, you've lost me again -- those are human traits, not gendered traits. A *lot* of feminists particularly engage in this one, for example claiming that women are never violent, or only men rape[footnote]For purposes of this post, I am defining "rape" as "sexual acts performed on a person through force, the threat of force, or while the victim is intoxicated, unconscious, or otherwise incapable of consent.[/footnote], or women *never* falsely accuse (one particular popular feminist blog I've read in the past likes to make this claim, and summarily delete/ban anyone who provides a contradictory example).
Or maybe, "we need to discriminate regarding victim services with respect to gender." Or to go all radfemhub[footnote]http://radicalhub.com/[/footnote] on you, "therefore we need to employ biological solutions to dealing with the male problem." Or that "when women are behind in some field or activity it shows that there is something wrong with that event or activity; when men are behind, it shows that something is wrong with men." Or that gender privilege is a one-way street (it shocks me that feminist women [the only women you ever hear talk about male privilege] can claim that "privilege blinds" when referring to men not seeing advantages, but then not realize the same statement applies to women).
The three above paragraphs all reflect things I've heard feminists argue in the past. All pretty terrible. All stuff I disagree with. That's one of the problems with "feminism." "Feminism is not a monolith" lets you get away without having to defend feminist positions by simply claiming that you don't hold them and they don't really count. At the same time, it lowers the bar to be a feminist essentially to the point of meaninglessness.
Personally, I believe women are people too and should have the same rights and responsibilities that men do, or equitable ones in any case where identical rights and responsibilities are literally impossible. I also believe that men are people too and should have the same rights and responsibilities that women do, or equitable ones in any case where identical rights and responsibilities are literally impossible.
[ul]
[li]That means holding both to the same standards and requirements, everywhere.[/li]
[li]That means giving men some means through which to opt-out of the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, and the mother having no say in that choice; much as women have that same right through abortion, adoption, and in some places abandonment, with no say from the father in any case.[/li]
[li]That means assuming joint custody as a starting point, barring good reason to make it otherwise.[/li]
[li]That means enforcing custody arrangements as strongly as child support.[/li]
[li]That means taking a rape accusation seriously regardless of the genders of perpetrator and victim, investigating it thoroughly, trying it properly on the basis of actual evidence corroborating testimony like any other crime, and it means taking the possibility of false allegations seriously as well.[/li]
[/ul]
A few choice quotes from Erin Pizzey[footnote]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1215464/Why-I-loathe-feminism---believe-ultimately-destroy-family.html[/footnote], who literally started the first DV shelter ever, and was a major part of making DV shelters a "thing" in the first place:Worgen said:
It's worth noting that she had two abusive parents, but I didn't use any quotes with direct reference to her father's violence, because no one even suggests that men can't be seriously and destructively violent and abusive.
I have a theory regarding the tendency to gender the ability of people to be horrible. I think it's a form of confirmation bias, and in the "men are terrible, women aren't" case it's supported by studies funded through sources that encourage those kinds of results (kind of like "cigarettes aren't addictive" studies funded by the tobacco industry, or "stevia is a dangerous drug and should not be allowed into food" studies funded by NutraSweet).
Essentially, since most people have romantic interactions primarily with one gender [IOW, bisexuals are a minority of the set of all people], are generally decent people, and people tend to hang out with people like themselves in various ways [thus skewing demographics within a given social circle], it creates a skewed perspective in which they are more more likely to hear about and/or interact with horrible people of a specific gender and thus lean towards that group having more terrible people (for various values of "horrible" and "terrible").
IOW, "most bad people are men" and "bitches be crazy" come from more or less exactly the same root, observing from a social context that tilts the number of "bad" examples of a given gender encountered. It then gets colored by social memes, hence why women get referred to as "crazy" rather than some of the words used to describe similarly behaving men. There's also a tendency to minimize women's agency when they do wrong lumped in with that.
You mean it hasn't been the primary face of feminism since the 70s. Because I can certainly point out examples post-70s. Like it or not, Solanas, Dworkin, Daly, and the like have had significant influence. There's a reason the senate version 20112 VAWA reathorization included language to bar discrimination of all the usual kinds but left in an exclusion for if you really, really, want to discriminate against men. [footnote]Technically, it permits discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived gender. However the STOP funding guideline require that any service that receives VAWA funding is required to serve women, regardless of who else it may be directed toward.[/footnote]Eamar said:
"I have black friends and like rap music, so I can't possibly be racist." Nope, doesn't work for that either.Eamar said:
I can point to feminists that I agree with on more than not. I can also point to feminists who hold every single one of the terrible positions I mentioned above, and they are more influential.Eamar said:
Gamers make bad anythings. Hell, most of the time we're not even good gamers.
[sup]Keep rocking, bro.[/sup]
Why the hell isn't it called Equalitism, then? This is a genuine question, I'm not trying to be a dick.
Not seeing the sexist side to MoS's response, although that may just be because I love the guy.Zappanale said:
[sup]Keep rocking, bro.[/sup]
Y'know, this might be going a tad off topic, but people say that a lot. "It's not about female dominance, it's about equality between the sexes!"Worgen said:
Why the hell isn't it called Equalitism, then? This is a genuine question, I'm not trying to be a dick.