ManutheBloodedge said:
I agree that it is weird when we have games with oversexualized female characters and normal men, but my solution would be to sex up the men as well, not ban the sexy women. I am all for more male eye-candy and romance options, again, variety is a good thing. I know sex sells, that was not the point. What I essentially asked was if you are okay with them existing at all, not because you can't do anything about them. Basically, if you were in a hypothetical position of total control over the Game Industry, would you ban them or let them be? There are some character types I hate, i.E. the slaps of rage, armor and muscles most Triple-A shooters generously call protagonist, but I wouldn't want them GONE, because I know some people like them, and who am I to take someones fun away? I just don't want them to be my only option. Important here: I also don't excisting game series to change, I want new ones that provide the variety. If some Game wants to cater to archetypes I don't care about, more power to them, that is okay, I can play different ones. Again, variety. Dragon Age Inquisition has a trans character, but he is not romancable.
We basically agree, there is a time and a place for characters to be sexy. Characters in over the top fighting games like
Dead or Alive having sexy costumes, that's perfectly fine with me, so are sexy characters in 2D and Anime fighting games. Characters not in a combat situation wearing a sexy outfit while "off duty" is perfectly fine as well. A character in a fantasy game who has a class that requires loose fitting, or skimpy garment for it's range of motion is also fine. I don't have a problem with sexually attractive characters in games, until the context becomes: Armor for all the guys, skimpy leotards and catsuits for all the girls. Mostly because that's when "character design" starts showing off a sexist double standard.
ManutheBloodedge said:
Huh... when I looked into the term, I found meanings like "searching for the hidden meaning of a text or argument", not a bad thing. As I understood it "Putting words in someones mouth" is deliberately misconstructing someones argument to discredit them with points they nerver meant or said. "Reading between the lines" is the ability to look past the initial text or argument to point out what they actually meant or implied, even when they never explicity stated it. Something that goes on my nerves is the tendency of people online to go "I never explicitly said that". Yeah, sometimes you don't have to state something explicitly, your intentions come across in subtext, word choice and tone. It is perfectly valid to adress the concieved meaning, implication or logical consequence of a statement. You can't go around saying "I am gonna beat him until he doesn't move anymore!" and then say "Well, I never stated I want to MURDER him!". No you didn't, but it was both heavily implied and the logical consequence of what you were saying. Anyways, I neither meant nor said that you think I can't differentiate between fantasy and reality, it just was the logical consequence of some of your arguments. I was not trying to attack you, I just hate this sentiment that does exist, sorry if I came off as to harsh.
Again I think you're reading a bit too much into that initial post, because I was trying to leave it as broad statement, not to specifically target anyone. It was mostly an off-hand statement post. While context is important, remember that it's extremely difficult to read specific emotions into text posts, that's a well known issue. It's also difficult to read what was implied by a person in their post, because it could simply be the fault of bad wording. So I'll use a paraphrase of Hanlon's Razor:[footnote]Original Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."[/footnote] "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by bad phrasing." Sound fair enough?
ManutheBloodedge said:
The thing with Japan is that many men with their insane rising workloads don't have the energy left to invest in a normal relationship, so they are fine with a synthetic one. I don't think the problem comes from japanese men no longer finding normal women sexy. I can imagine that can happen to some, but that would be extreme cases.
I never said the problem came from Japanese Men, just that they tend to be an example, what's kind of sad is that while you're right in the first part... This problem is becoming more common than not, especially when in Japan the culture is that people over 26 years old are unworthy of getting married, if they haven't already. Which is more true amongst women. With more and more Japanese women working than staying home, it makes the marriage a more difficult proposition in Japan.
That's not the point I was trying to make though, because that's just a symptom of a larger issue, that's fairly prevalent around the world in general. Certain types of media, like romantic comedies, porn, video games with romance sub-plots, and more, are kind of giving people unrealistic ideas about romance and attractiveness standards for their partners. Well and sex too. Most people can get past this, but plenty enough can't and really it's damaging either way on a societal level. Though I believe this is more to do with the ease of access to media, allowing some people to shut themselves in, away from the world at large, then they get all their ideas about sex and romance from such media. Most people can still get past such things and will settle for a less than romantic comedy perfect relationship and a less sexy than a porn star partner. The big issue though is that when these unrealistic standards get a lot of exposure, it starts allowing people to damage their own self worth, because they're not as sexy as a porn star, or not as romantic as the people they see in romantic comedies. That's the bigger issue.
ManutheBloodedge said:
So we basically agree that finding someone (or some images) sexy is not a bat thing by default, and that objectification is a natural process that is not bad by default either. Great, that is more or less all I have to say about the subject.
Basically, objectification only becomes a serious issue when it's all someone can do when regarding certain people around them. By itself objectification is neither good, nor bad, it's just a thing humans do, but it can easily become a bad mind state. If you look at Roosh V. he's a perfect example of someone who sexually objectifies women to the extreme, there are a lot of people out there like that too. But I digress, we do essentially agree, the only thing is that I don't give objectification a free pass, I even will take myself to task if I notice I'm doing it.
ManutheBloodedge said:
Ok, I have to disagree with you there. Women have access to STEM fields, they are being treated favorably even, with scholarships and the like, the majority of women just don't want to study it, and that is okay. Personal freedom and all. A lot of the differences in men and women in the workfield comes from different choices people make, not structural advantages men have over women. Women have all the freedom to choose whatever job they want. Granted, they may face social pressure in some professions, but that goes for men in certain fields (childcare, flight attendant, beautican) too. Saying women have less freedom would only be accurate if some jobs would be forbidden for women to have, which is simply not true in the western world. And while women may be looked upon as less able, men are viewed by society more often as exchangeable and not in need of protection. And with offers of companies to their female employes to freeze their ovules, it seems to me the expectation of career women is to not have kids, not a shorter career (To be fair, men are not expectet or allowed to stop working to raise their children). So again, I still think men and women have it equally bad, just in different ways. I won't argue with you about the treatment of LGBT people, I think you are right in that regard, and you have far more experience than me in that field anyways.
That's not entirely true, women are actively discouraged from entering STEM fields. The majority of women I know who want to pursue STEM work, get pressured by career advisors not to pursue an education, or career in STEM fields. STEM field's also have a image of being a "boy's club" environment that can be hostile to women. There are scholar ships and aid programs that are specifically targeted at women, but that's because a lot of women simply can't get a standard scholarship, because the bureaucrats see female names and automatically go; "nope!" Yeah there is also a stigma against men being beauticians, childcare experts, flight attendants, and similar. One stigma, which only applies to child care is that men are seen as a threat to children, which is a stupid stigma based on fear mongering. The more applicable one to all "feminine" careers is that femininity is seen as a lesser, which makes expressions of femininity toxic for males.
Also things don't have to be banned by law to make them inaccessible to certain groups, all you need is enough of a social stigma to cause rampant discrimination. At which point such things might as well be banned by law to various social groups, because they have no access anyways. That's where "freedom of choice" falls flat as an argument, because the choices are limited, or outright removed, just by discriminatory practices.
Now saying men have it just as bad... I can agree with that to an extrent, because men literally can't express femininity without being considered as lesser, or gay. The problem is, men still get to control the social discourse, men constantly interrupt women and talk over them in virtually all scenarios. Women are still expected to shut up and let the men talk, which means women generally don't get to make any meaningful input. That and women are generally expected to do all of the emotional and house keeping labor in virtually every work place. [http://www.robot-hugs.com/workplace/] Work that is either unnecessary, someone else's job, costs money out of our pockets, and/or that's just assigned because it's seen as "women's work". Generally this type of emotional labor damages our ability to contribute, but when we don't do it we get told we're not contributing enough. I say this because I've experienced it first hand. A lot of guys also argued that they've had to do work that wasn't in the job description, but that's a false comparison. The work that's generally assigned to guys, which isn't supposed to be part of their job, is done so because there is no dedicated slot for said work, also the work is absolutely necessary. The emotional labor expected of women is generally something men can also do, but women get the task because of latent sexism, it's also virtually always totally unnecessary, or someone else's job.
The reason the term "patriarchy" is used in this case is because men have more control of the social narrative by default, while at the same time women and femme-type folk are always expected to be in the submissive role. That's the major privilege that men have over women in these cases, they're the ones who get control and trust by default. I'm not going to argue that a patriarchal structure doesn't harm men, because it does, just as much as it harms women, but there are certain privileges related to patriarchal structures that men cling to. So long as femininity is seen as a lesser expression and holds it's toxicity amongst men, then we have a patriarchal system. If femininity became the greater gender expression, and masculinity the lesser, then we'd have a matriarchy. What I'm saying is both are wrong, men and women are not equal, and the system we should have is one where neither gendered expression is dominate by default. Because as long as one set of gendered and sex based expression is the socially dominate one, then equality is not present.