Jimquisition: Accepting the Isms

JudgeGame

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m19 said:
JudgeGame said:
It's not violence unless it's enacted against a living being.
Well then your complaints about the torso are void.
It's heavily implied that the torso was of a woman who was brutally mauled by zombies. It is outright stated that the body meat was taken from a morgue. One is violence, the other isn't.
 

JokerboyJordan

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Yay! Jim mentioned liking Shadow Hearts! (All of my fanboyism).
Damn that is a seriously under appreciated game :/

But on the whole, yes, I agree. It's okay to acknowledge possibly inappropriate content in a kind without downright disowning it
 

Batou667

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franksands said:
I think it depends, we should not always forgive a game for offensive material. If the offensive material is a core part of the game, for example DoA Extreme Beach Volleyball, which can be considered sexist and misogynistic and it's a core part of the game: we cannot take off the bouncing boobs and etc without virtually removing the whole game. I think that should be the rule of thumb: if removing offensive bits the game as a whole is still functional and engaging, it's acceptable.
I keep seeing DOAX brought up as a conspicuous example of games that people would rather not be judged by. Clips of it get shown in every Escapist video that broaches the topics of "offense" or "sexism" or "misogyny". And why? Because it features some girls in bikinis? Enough of the sham dismay and puritanism, please. Get all the people who claim to be "disgusted" by DOAX and then see how many of them watch porn online, that should reveal the extent of hypocrisy.

Anyway, the video. Isn't Jim basically doing a reverse-silencing move? Saying that it's fine to take any game, or any portion of any game, and shine the bright light of shrill left-wing morality on it regardless of context? And furthermore, we're no longer allowed to nip tired, or worn-out, or pretty-much disproved arguments in the bud. Every charlatan who fancies taking a pop at videogames to further their own agenda is now entitled to a platform for their views. Great.

And lastly, what's wrong with Earthworm Jim / Dave Perry?
 

sageoftruth

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I completely support Jim's stance against the all or nothing mentality, but I'm not entirely sure if that's really what gets everyone fired up. I once saw a comedian (sorry, I forgot what his name was) who said, "If you really want to piss off a nerd, nothing pisses them off more than when you get their obsession wrong." As a result, I suspect that a number of the immature knee-jerk reactions to claims of sexism stem more from guys suspecting that their favorite game is being judged out of context by an outsider, rather than some fear that accepting any legitimate criticism against the game will get it taken off the shelves. At this point, it's only a theory, but in my experience, accusations against a game I like are much harder to swallow when it seems like the accuser is missing the point. Would you be able to keep quiet if someone called Schindler's List anti-semitic because of the horrible things that are done to the jewish characters?
 

Reyold

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erttheking said:
To be perfectly honest I think this website in general has made me more paranoid in general. I don't want to talk about racism sexism or homophobia in video games, Hell, I'm starting to reach the point where I don't want to talk about ANYTHING in video games because this website can be rather volatile. And I defended the Tomb Raider reboot, I didn't think that it was sexist, and I did jump on the Hitman trailer, because I did think that that was sexist. I have opinions I guess I'm just tired of massive flame filled debates that seem to go nowhere. I'm really starting to think that's all that goes on here.
Ugh, I know that feel. While these ARE important issues, and they do warrant plenty of discussion, it gets aggravating when those discussions don't seem to actually do any good.
 

Bribase

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Thought I might chime in on this giant thread.

Well said Jimothy. Your videos are getting better and better.
 

Kartoffelmos

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Reyold said:
erttheking said:
To be perfectly honest I think this website in general has made me more paranoid in general. I don't want to talk about racism sexism or homophobia in video games, Hell, I'm starting to reach the point where I don't want to talk about ANYTHING in video games because this website can be rather volatile. And I defended the Tomb Raider reboot, I didn't think that it was sexist, and I did jump on the Hitman trailer, because I did think that that was sexist. I have opinions I guess I'm just tired of massive flame filled debates that seem to go nowhere. I'm really starting to think that's all that goes on here.
Ugh, I know that feel. While these ARE important issues, and they do warrant plenty of discussion, it gets aggravating when those discussions don't seem to actually do any good.
What these guys said.

You know what? I give up. I give up!

I'm a woman. I've been playing games since I was 8. I've followed The Escapist as well as many other gaming websites for years, and pretty much every time the issue of sexism comes up, I go through a certain process - I get a lot of thoughts I want to share, until I notice how the discussions are frankly dripping with stupidity, strawmen, even more sexism, backpedaling, excuses, elitism, and to be honest, I've had enough. The next time a male game dev or journalist makes a braindead joke or comment about women, and someone tells me to "chill out" about it, or to not be so "sensitive", I'm gonna walk the fuck away, and I'm not coming back until this whole community grows up.

And that's my very emotional and angry rant. Even though occasionally someone will talk about these issues in a very eloquent manner like Jim did, I just don't find it worth it anymore. I don't have the patience to deal with this level of toxicity.

And people wonder why women might feel alienated in the gaming community. Christ.
 

Vault101

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AdrianRK said:
I do think it's about time we talked about more serious things regarding our favourite pastime activity, like the fact that the people reviewing games get their money from the people making them, of the fact that a most of the game reviews are barely more than opinion pieces
wha?

thats what a reviw IS
 

Arcane Azmadi

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I hate to say it, Jim, but there was one part of your video you got completely wrong- your statement that "you're better than that". No, I'm sorry Jim, the simple fact is that a considerable portion of the gaming community are NOT better than that. They're juvenile, dimwitted, racist, sexist, mysognynistic, homophobic, unreasonable, amoral douchebags and you can't try and argue them into not acting like assholes because they simply ARE assholes. You might as well try and argue a chimpanzee into not acting like a chimpanzee.
 

Urh

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As I understand it, the crux of Jim's argument is "people on the internet need to chill the fuck out and not see any criticism (no matter how minor) as a scathing attack." Great sentiment, it's too bad the internet appears to have been designated as the official meeting place of the Global Society of Dickheads and Assorted Fuckwits.
 

Polarity27

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themilo504 said:
I agree although skyrim does take place in a medieval like world so of course there?s some sexism the fact that you can even play as a female character is already bizarre if you think about it.
I see this argument so often, and I detest it so damn much I can't even tell you. Skyrim takes place in a medieval-LIKE world, you say. Which also has functional magic. And elves. And dragons. And vampires. And vampire bandit wizards. And scrolls that will eat your brain.

Yet somehow it's "bizarre if you think about it" if the game fails to be realistic in terms of the sexism of real-world history? It's a FICTIONAL FUCKING WORLD. It's not even set in fictional Middle Age Europe, it's an entirely different *planet*, and virtually nothing about it is realistic. It drives me absolutely bonkers how people will watch hours of completely made-up shit and then say "oh, dude, it's not really realistic that there's a woman doing this", or, to pick a TV example, that it's not realistic that Gwen is black. If your (generic your) reality buffer can stretch enough to accept dragons but not female warriors (who did, btw, occasionally crop up in actualfax history) or black women in Camelot, there might just be some sexism or some racism going on there.

Unless you're writing historical fiction, you're not bound to history. That's the whole point of a fictional world in the first place. If you can decide there are dragons in your fictional world and that they don't defy basic biology or physics, it's not "bizarre" on any level at all to have women being warriors, heroes, mages, etc.
 

Polarity27

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Doom972 said:
As for that quest in Skyrim: I'm pretty sure that her secret was that she was practicing the Dibellan arts in secret - which means using men as a means to commune with the goddess Dibella without them knowing about it. This is considered inappropriate regardless of gender. She thinks that she'll get run out of town, but there's no way to know for sure if that'll happen, since you can only extort her or do nothing. No sexism, just a feminist trying to find sexism where there's none.

Source: http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Haelga
If you're going to do this, at least get your facts right. Without them knowing about it? Bullshit. She had sex with them in a room with a huge statue of Dibella that's awfully hard to miss, and then, when they were done, she gave them *Marks of Dibella*. When you ask the men about the marks of Dibella, they don't look at you blankly, they know exactly what you're talking about. I don't know how it could possibly be more clear that they know she's into Dibella. She seems to not want the general population of Riften to know she's Dibellan (why, I have no clue, since Dibella is acknowledged one of the Nine Divines, and there's a perfectly respectable temple to her elsewhere in Skyrim), not the men-- the men clearly know this already.

That, and all of Svana's text is seriously slut-shaming. Svana is grudgey against her aunt (despite her aunt taking her in when she was homeless) because a) she doesn't approve of her religion or her consenting sexual behavior, b) she thinks working in the working-bunkhouse is beneath her (even though she doesn't do much work, if you listen to Haelga's text), and c) her aunt tells her that her dearly beloved, Sibbi Black-Briar, is essentially a worthless piece of shit who isn't seriously in love with her. Haelga is pretty clearly in the right about the latter, as any two-second conversation with Sibbi aptly demonstrates. But no, there's no sexism at all in "my aunt is too loose, help me shame her!" (Also, if you deny Svana's quest, she seems to realize that she was out of bounds.)
 

bastardofmelbourne

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tkioz said:
Ahh yes the "you're a racist because you're sick of hearing about it" argument. I'm sorry that doesn't count either. I'm not a racist, I simply think the focus on one single side of any argument to the exclusion of all else is dishonest and does a disservice to history.
I didn't call you a racist? I'm sorry if I gave that impression.

I have a degree in history, and I do agree with you that focussing on a single side of the argument is bad form. The point I was making is that it is very rare for a government to acknowledge a historical framework which implicates them in crimes against humanity. As far as I'm concerned, it's the whitewashing we need to be worried about, not the opposite.

My "history" classes focused almost exclusively on the "crimes" of "white" Australians, without much information presented at all on the aspects of history, for example when one history teacher spoke about the settlement of Australia she constantly referred to it as a "white invasion", it was only years later that I wondered... can you really have an invasion when your "army" is made up of SLAVES?
The convicts who were moved to Australia, you will recall, were guarded by members of the British colonial military. The convicts didn't shoot Aboriginals and pile them up in holes in Tasmania. The British soldiers did. That's what your teacher meant by "invasion."

It's utterly nonsensical to say that you can't have an invasion when the army is made of slaves, because those slaves have slave-drivers. The British didn't just dump convicts in New South Wales to let them roam free, and if they had, they wouldn't have been slaves.

Yes, the treatment of Indigenous Australians was a Horrible Crime, but what about the Horrible Crime committed against the "white invaders" by the British Empire? Most of them were slaves in deed if not in law, they had zero choice, they were grabbed off the streets for the most mundane of reasons, herded into ships by the hundreds, and taken half way around the world, forced to work, and faced the whip or the noose if they refused or even spoke back... Where was the information ABOUT THAT?
There is plenty [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code] of literature about the murderous nature of the British criminal justice system from 1700 to about the early 1800s. In fact, the reason so many convicts were transported to Australia is because it was considered a merciful alternative to the mandatory death penalty the judges were otherwise required to hand down.

If you weren't made aware of that, perhaps your education really was substandard, but the fact is that this is an issue that is definitely not shoved under the rug. Historians discussing the colonisation of Australia talk about the brutally unjust nature of the British justice system of the period all the time. They have to, because it was the reason for the mass transportation of convicts to Australia.

A balanced examination of any argument is what is needed when you talk about anything, you can't simply focus on your personal pet agenda, you need to examine every aspect, you need to understand the good things, the bad things, the indifferent things, anything else is a disservice to history and the argument itself.
I agree completely. My point, rather, is that considering our government still refuses to acknowledge all the bad things, and in fact was fairly recently trying to whitewash all the bad things by sanitising the public school historical curriculum, I really don't think the perspective you're complaining about is being hammered down enough. I mean, if every Australian knew the reason why there aren't any black people in Tasmania, we wouldn't keep electing governments that refused to consider it an issue, would we?

I think, rather, that you got one of the fanatical post-colonialist history teachers, and they may have soured you off history completely. If that's the case, I feel sorry for you, but you need to understand that the focus on this aspect of our national history is more than justified.
 

Polarity27

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maninahat said:
That's where the problem lies: Skyrim encourages players to take part in a behaviour that has become associated with the oppressors of womankind, by turning slut-shaming into a mission objective. As I mentioned in a previous post, game progression requires you to do this mission, and outside of not doing the Thief quests, there is no choice. You are expected to do this deed and get rewarded for it. In so doing, the player has to endorse slut-shaming as much as they endorse any of the other thief guild activities. Presumably, the devs thought you'd have as much fun doing this as killing or stealing.
Um. No, game progression absolutely does not require you to do this mission, nor is it a Thieves Guild quest or required to progress with the Thieves Guild. I'm sitting on a Nightingale who never did it and another working toward Nightingale who never did it. The Thieves Guild requires you to play the role of enforcer in a protection racket-- you have to go hassle business owners to pay their debts to the mob, basically. Haelga is one of the ones you need to collect from to progress as a thief. You can either beat her up, as with all three of the business owners, or you have an optional method of threatening her statue of Dibella (IIRC, you threaten her statue, break the Pawned Prawn guy's ugly sculpture, and threaten the Argonian innkeeper's family for the optional quests. Or, you can skip the optional persuasion methods and just hit them. Actually, depending on the order you did it in, the third merchant will usually hear about what you did with the other two and just hand you the cash. Haelga was my third, so she caved the minute I walked through the door.)

The slut-shaming quest is completely outside the Thieves Guild mission, it's simply a single quest from her (very grudgy) niece. You absolutely do *not* need to do it to progress in the game or with the Thieves. You can decline it and nothing happens to your game. I agree that it's a nasty quest, my first character did it and it's on my mental list of "quests that made me feel so oogy I'm never doing them again", but you're way overblowing it here. I really don't know what the devs intended, since on one hand they made Haelga kind of a joke character (look under her bed!) but on the other hand they made the niece who gives you the quest *really really clearly* lazy, unpleasant, ungrateful, and completely deluded about the sleazeball guy she has a fixation on.

TwistednMean said:
So the "isms" are only worth debating if there really is an issue. Accusing a woman of having three sexual partners in Skyrim? Sorry, folks, it's part of the narrative. Sure, it's sexist, but that's the Redguard's misguided social norms, apparently. You can disapprove of the Redguard's culture, but it doesn't give you the right to get offended.
Where are you people *getting* this stuff? I'm starting to think I'm the only person here who actually did this quest, and hung around the Bunkhouse listening to the character-to-character dialogue (I think I was doing something out of game at the time and forgot to pause, but still.) There are no Redguards involved with this quest! The shamer is a Nord. The woman with the three partners is a Nord. Further, there is a Redguard priestess of Dibella in Markarth (the only Redguard woman you can marry, in fact.) I can't imagine where you pulled Redguards from, since there's nothing in the game of which I'm aware that hints at sexual prudery in Hammerfell-- if you've got something that does, please show the receipts because it's *definitely* not this quest.

Ultratwinkie said:
Whats the problem with the Skyrim slut shaming quest?

Isn't that, technically, par the course for a pseudo-medieval culture? Its not like Cyrodiil where everything is "civilized." This is the harsh northern territory we are talking about that is steeped in tradition and very "hand to mouth." Those cultures were never known to be open minded.
Yes, Skyrim is so "uncivilized" with respect to sexual prudery that it has an established temple to Dibella in a major holdfast, a sidequest to find the goddess' chosen Oracle, and an altar in the bloody *capital city* of Skyrim. It's totally cultural! Except for how it isn't. (Please don't get me on how the real life Vikings weren't that way either. Modern street prostitutes would consider what actual archaeology is finding was Viking women's dress too revealing, so...) Nor were the Vikings "medieval", and Skyrim is pretty clearly Viking-inspired.

The quest-giver in this instance is pissed at being asked to work to support the business that feeds her, and more to the point, angry that her promiscuous aunt dissed her wannabe boyfriend, so she wants a little revenge.
 

JudgeGame

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Polarity27 said:
maninahat said:
That's where the problem lies: Skyrim encourages players to take part in a behaviour that has become associated with the oppressors of womankind, by turning slut-shaming into a mission objective. As I mentioned in a previous post, game progression requires you to do this mission, and outside of not doing the Thief quests, there is no choice. You are expected to do this deed and get rewarded for it. In so doing, the player has to endorse slut-shaming as much as they endorse any of the other thief guild activities. Presumably, the devs thought you'd have as much fun doing this as killing or stealing.
Um. No, game progression absolutely does not require you to do this mission, nor is it a Thieves Guild quest or required to progress with the Thieves Guild. I'm sitting on a Nightingale who never did it and another working toward Nightingale who never did it. The Thieves Guild requires you to play the role of enforcer in a protection racket-- you have to go hassle business owners to pay their debts to the mob, basically. Haelga is one of the ones you need to collect from to progress as a thief. You can either beat her up, as with all three of the business owners, or you have an optional method of threatening her statue of Dibella (IIRC, you threaten her statue, break the Pawned Prawn guy's ugly sculpture, and threaten the Argonian innkeeper's family for the optional quests. Or, you can skip the optional persuasion methods and just hit them. Actually, depending on the order you did it in, the third merchant will usually hear about what you did with the other two and just hand you the cash. Haelga was my third, so she caved the minute I walked through the door.)

The slut-shaming quest is completely outside the Thieves Guild mission, it's simply a single quest from her (very grudgy) niece. You absolutely do *not* need to do it to progress in the game or with the Thieves. You can decline it and nothing happens to your game. I agree that it's a nasty quest, my first character did it and it's on my mental list of "quests that made me feel so oogy I'm never doing them again", but you're way overblowing it here. I really don't know what the devs intended, since on one hand they made Haelga kind of a joke character (look under her bed!) but on the other hand they made the niece who gives you the quest *really really clearly* lazy, unpleasant, ungrateful, and completely deluded about the sleazeball guy she has a fixation on.

TwistednMean said:
So the "isms" are only worth debating if there really is an issue. Accusing a woman of having three sexual partners in Skyrim? Sorry, folks, it's part of the narrative. Sure, it's sexist, but that's the Redguard's misguided social norms, apparently. You can disapprove of the Redguard's culture, but it doesn't give you the right to get offended.
Where are you people *getting* this stuff? I'm starting to think I'm the only person here who actually did this quest, and hung around the Bunkhouse listening to the character-to-character dialogue (I think I was doing something out of game at the time and forgot to pause, but still.) There are no Redguards involved with this quest! The shamer is a Nord. The woman with the three partners is a Nord. Further, there is a Redguard priestess of Dibella in Markarth (the only Redguard woman you can marry, in fact.) I can't imagine where you pulled Redguards from, since there's nothing in the game of which I'm aware that hints at sexual prudery in Hammerfell-- if you've got something that does, please show the receipts because it's *definitely* not this quest.

Ultratwinkie said:
Whats the problem with the Skyrim slut shaming quest?

Isn't that, technically, par the course for a pseudo-medieval culture? Its not like Cyrodiil where everything is "civilized." This is the harsh northern territory we are talking about that is steeped in tradition and very "hand to mouth." Those cultures were never known to be open minded.
Yes, Skyrim is so "uncivilized" with respect to sexual prudery that it has an established temple to Dibella in a major holdfast, a sidequest to find the goddess' chosen Oracle, and an altar in the bloody *capital city* of Skyrim. It's totally cultural! Except for how it isn't. (Please don't get me on how the real life Vikings weren't that way either. Modern street prostitutes would consider what actual archaeology is finding was Viking women's dress too revealing, so...) Nor were the Vikings "medieval", and Skyrim is pretty clearly Viking-inspired.

The quest-giver in this instance is pissed at being asked to work to support the business that feeds her, and more to the point, angry that her promiscuous aunt dissed her wannabe boyfriend, so she wants a little revenge.
I think it's overcomplicating the issue. It's not a question of should the quest exist or should it be skippable, it's a question of did the writer convey that slut-shaming a woman is wrong? If they didn't they are condoning slut-shaming. If this was unintended they are bad at their job and if it was intentional they hold misogynist views.

From the many reactions I've seen, I can only conclude the developers completely failed to convey slut-shaming a woman is wrong.

You can write about absolutely anything. However if you are going to write about a controversial issue and fail to have the moral decency to set the proper tone for your product, you should be ashamed as a person and as a professional,
 

Doom972

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Polarity27 said:
Doom972 said:
As for that quest in Skyrim: I'm pretty sure that her secret was that she was practicing the Dibellan arts in secret - which means using men as a means to commune with the goddess Dibella without them knowing about it. This is considered inappropriate regardless of gender. She thinks that she'll get run out of town, but there's no way to know for sure if that'll happen, since you can only extort her or do nothing. No sexism, just a feminist trying to find sexism where there's none.

Source: http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Haelga
If you're going to do this, at least get your facts right. Without them knowing about it? Bullshit. She had sex with them in a room with a huge statue of Dibella that's awfully hard to miss, and then, when they were done, she gave them *Marks of Dibella*. When you ask the men about the marks of Dibella, they don't look at you blankly, they know exactly what you're talking about. I don't know how it could possibly be more clear that they know she's into Dibella. She seems to not want the general population of Riften to know she's Dibellan (why, I have no clue, since Dibella is acknowledged one of the Nine Divines, and there's a perfectly respectable temple to her elsewhere in Skyrim), not the men-- the men clearly know this already.

That, and all of Svana's text is seriously slut-shaming. Svana is grudgey against her aunt (despite her aunt taking her in when she was homeless) because a) she doesn't approve of her religion or her consenting sexual behavior, b) she thinks working in the working-bunkhouse is beneath her (even though she doesn't do much work, if you listen to Haelga's text), and c) her aunt tells her that her dearly beloved, Sibbi Black-Briar, is essentially a worthless piece of shit who isn't seriously in love with her. Haelga is pretty clearly in the right about the latter, as any two-second conversation with Sibbi aptly demonstrates. But no, there's no sexism at all in "my aunt is too loose, help me shame her!" (Also, if you deny Svana's quest, she seems to realize that she was out of bounds.)
There's a difference between just being a Dibella worshipper - which means following her tenets and praying at her shrine, and practicing the Dibellan arts - which is considered by some inappropriate to do outside of Dibella's temples and in secret.
It's not known if she would've actually been run out of the city if she was exposed, since you don't have the option of exposing her, so it could just be taking advantage of her paranoia.
 

Blunderman

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The problem isn't and has never been the purportedly "questionable" content of games, it's that people are like children and can't handle something so devastatingly trivial as media. There isn't a single group of people on the planet that is spared the generalisations and tacky depictions of video games, or any other media for that matter, that's the axiom of free speech; you get to say and depict whatever you want and if people don't like it, they don't have to pay any attention to it.

There is endless content everywhere that I disagree with, generalisations and stereotypes that apply to me, or to people that I love, but neither I nor them have any difficulty accepting free speech and that not liking something doesn't make it objectively bad. It may be tacky, it may be stupid, it may be full of stereotypes, it may be grossly disrespectful, but here's the thing: You don't have to give a shit.

Let me put it this way: Nothing is "wrong" and nothing is "offensive." Those are labels that individuals or groups put on content that they themselves have personal grievances with. You don't like the assassin nuns in Hitman? Don't buy the game. You don't like the rape theme in Tomb Raider? Don't buy the game.

Never does your personal opinion give you the right to censor anything. If you take offence, that is your problem, and you need to grow up.
 

DataSnake

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wizzy555 said:
predictable reply: oh but if she was a man she would just have got beat up not sexually assaulted

well done, you've proved the nasty pirate character in fact discriminates by gender. Perhaps we should have equal opportunity villians in all our games.
We really should. Buck [http://farcry.wikia.com/wiki/Bambi_%22Buck%22_Hughes] was an absolutely chilling villain for just that reason.
 

DataSnake

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Polarity27 said:
The quest-giver in this instance is pissed at being asked to work to support the business that feeds her, and more to the point, angry that her promiscuous aunt dissed her wannabe boyfriend, so she wants a little revenge.
Polarity27 said:
That, and all of Svana's text is seriously slut-shaming. Svana is grudgey against her aunt (despite her aunt taking her in when she was homeless) because a) she doesn't approve of her religion or her consenting sexual behavior, b) she thinks working in the working-bunkhouse is beneath her (even though she doesn't do much work, if you listen to Haelga's text), and c) her aunt tells her that her dearly beloved, Sibbi Black-Briar, is essentially a worthless piece of shit who isn't seriously in love with her. Haelga is pretty clearly in the right about the latter, as any two-second conversation with Sibbi aptly demonstrates. But no, there's no sexism at all in "my aunt is too loose, help me shame her!" (Also, if you deny Svana's quest, she seems to realize that she was out of bounds.)
My impression was that Svana's main complaint was that the patrons at Haelga's wouldn't keep their hands to themselves, and her concern that Haelga being willing to bang any guy that walked in set a precedent she was expected to live up to. Then again, I don't remember either of them mentioning Sibbi in that quest at all, so I may be remembering it wrong. I do recall being disappointed that I couldn't use the marks to blackmail her into paying off her debt to Brynjolf, since I got Svana's quest in the middle of collecting.