The_Kodu said:
I think you're thinking of some-one else here ?
Quoted from the Wikipedia page on Catherine of Aragon:
"The Scots invaded and on 3 September she ordered Thomas Lovell to raise an army in the midland counties.[34]
Catherine rode north in full armour to address the troops, despite being heavily pregnant at the time."
Catherine of Aragon, first wife of Henry the 8th, led a military battle from the front lines as Queen of England.
The_Kodu said:
If the tropes themselves are not being used with sexist intent then it shows their use isn't automatically sexist.
Not these tropes are from a time when things were more sexist so using tropes from this time might bring up reminders of this time and um....... cause time to rewind ?
I'm lumping these two together.
Here is the point you are missing:
According to Women's Studies, certain elements of writing from the past - when women weren't citizens and were considered property of men - exist in writing and media today. Many people use those plot elements out of habit or because they are part of the culture. However, those plot elements (sometimes called tropes) are inherently sexist in and of themselves.
That is, the trope is sexist, the person using the trope is not. The trope is sexist, the work that contains it is not.
This basic idea - that the story structure itself can be sexist without the person using it even knowing - is "common knowledge" in Women's Studies.
All "sexist" means is that it treats women differently than men. That, by itself, is not inherently good or bad.
When Anita talks about the "danger of sexist tropes" she is talking about the fact that they tend to reinforce older ideas about gender roles - ideas that modern society outwardly scorns as being outdated and sexist.
You (and again, that's the wider you) can't seem to separate the idea that the trope can be sexist independently of the user or context.
You keep trying to prove that there is not "sexist intent" or that there is some contextual aspect that she is missing, but none of that matters to the idea that the tropes themselves are sexist independently of their user.
You, the viewers, keep congratulating additional meaning to everything she says. She is saying some fairly basic, low-key, mild things (in her more recent (last two years or so) videos anyway - if you go farther back in her timeline, she was more accusatory in her early videos - a stance she has stepped away from and put behind her, so you should as well).
The_Kodu said:
If these tropes aren't being used to promote sexism, then the fact sexism is bad is irrelevant to the debate until a link can be shown there's no connection right through. The point that needs to be proved is that these tropes are harmful.
Again, the idea that older tropes concerning women being treated differently - particularly like property, which was the origin of the Damsel in Distress trope - can affect modern treatment of women is a "common knowledge" aspect of Women's Studies.
Women's Studies is an entire field based on how older views of women affect women today - and the evolution of that treatment throughout history. Showing that is literally the entire POINT of the field of Women's Studies.
Again, it's like asking a mathematician to prove that... that calculus works. It's an inherent part of the field itself - the field couldn't exist without that basic aspect.
That said, there are some critics of the field of Women's Studies who question those assumptions. The field has critics who have some of the same issues that you all do with Anita. However, at the same time, they also have more proper research data and real scientific studies to back them up. How much impact all this has is a massive debate in the academic community, and has been for years.
Anita makes certain common knowledge assumptions based on years of research and supporting data from the Women's Studies academia. That's because she was a Women's Studies major. She was taught that these common knowledge are assumption are valid and correct - within her field. Outside her field, there are those that question those assumptions.
None of that makes her a bad researcher - it makes her work part of a larger discussion about Women's studies. Anita is just researching the way she was taught and assuming to be true what she has been taught it true by her professors.
The_Kodu said:
What kind of bear dissolves ?
A polar bear.....
sorry couldn't resist that one.
... I don't get it.
And that's just my point. I don't see how the pun on polar has anything to do with melting (unless you're implying that polar bears are made of ice?). I don't have whatever "common knowledge" is required to get that joke.
I'm a lit person who's taken a few analytical dips into Gender Studies and Women's Studies.
And, having read some of the stuff in Women's Studies, I can tell you that Anita's take on individual games (and the games industry as a whole) is actually fairly mild. You should see a Women's studies paper ripping Hollywood apart.
The_Kodu said:
Except fake death is also a sexist trope as it apparently comes under the trapped soul / not actually dead idea.
Exactly! My friend replaced one sexist trope with another. However, in response to what you said after that (and to avoid providing plot details of my friend's story), while she did use another sexist trope, she used it for a specific reason that would develop the wife character rather than making her a one dimensional character who only existed to die.
And that's the thing - sometimes you want to use a sexist trope. Maybe you want to deconstruct it (ie, to twist it in some way to use the audience's trope expectations to shock them), which is what my friend ended up doing. She makes the audience think she's fridged the wife, but later it turns out that something more complicated was going on. She plays with their expectations and fakes the reader out - and in doing so, examines the tropes rather than using them by rote.
The_Kodu said:
Except surely we shouldn't be decrying sexist anytime some-one uses such a trope but "Lazy writing"
Well, it's both.
Remember, sexism just means "treating men and women differently". It's not bad in and of itself. Women's Studies people (like Anita) aren't concerned about one person using a sexist trope - it's the repetition that bothers them. Hence why the concern is for the games industry not any one game.
The concern is that one reason that these tropes are used so often is that people don't understand what they mean or imply. Captured or dead females (to use Damsel as an example) are an easy, lazy way to get the male protagonist to do something.
The trope is lazy, but it works.
The sexism comes in because, most of the time, a female character is the Damsel. If the trope had an even split of men and women, it wouldn't be sexist, but in most writing, it is a female character who gets Damseled. Because the trope affects women more than men, it's sexist - because it treats men and women differently for no reason other than gender.
Women's studies doesn't want people to stop using this trope entirely. What they want is for people to think about the trope and what it implies before they use it. If they think about it first, then it is more likely that they will use it in a less lazy fashion and apply it with more care.
For instance, rather than making it a wife, lover, or daughter, they could kidnap a son. They did that in Lost and it worked great!
Or, to reference a book I just read, the hero shows up to rescue the kidnapped damsel and ends up fighting with her captor. He loses the upper hand and is about to be killed by the villain when the "damsel" hits the villain over the head, knocking him out, and saving the hero. The hero did all the work to get to her, and even fought the boss, but she helped him win. That allowed the normal hero-saves-girl progression, but with just a little twist at the end, it let the female not only save herself, but also save the hero. It made their budding romance seem more mutual and less possessive.
And there are plenty of other ways to modify the trope to make it more thoughtful and interesting. And these uses are fine (if still semi-sexist) because they avoid the lazy stereotype that women are helpless.
The lazy writing version sends the message that women are weak. Almost any minor change to the formula (aside from the fridge) breaks that.
Thus, Anita seeks to educate writers about the trope so they use it better. It's the laziness that's bad, because the laziness sends outdated messages and is also crappy writing.
The_Kodu said:
Except didn't we establish earlier the tropes themselves can be used without sexist implications?
Actually, the issue was that the trope was sexist without any intent on the author's part. But I also just did what you just said a moment ago.
And yes, exactly. That's the idea. Anita wants to point out the sexism of the tropes so that people can either avoid them or modify them. Either method works.
The_Kodu said:
She was demoted from main character to supporting character. Her actions as the supporting character may have been awesome, but she still took a step down. But we'll get to that...
The_Kodu said:
Because it became a main part in a franchise rather than an individual entity. Most likely to drive sales.
Yup. Because female protagonists don't sell video games. There was a whole stink about that not that long ago.
And yes, of course it was a business decision. But it was a sexist business decision based on the idea that a solo female protagonist wouldn't sell so they had to make the protagonist male. They chose Starfox, an established brand, but in doing so they eliminated a game that was going to add a second a female protagonist (the first being Samus) to Nintendo's lineup.
That sucks. That sucks a lot.
AND it was also massively off topic for her video. Like I said, Anita ain't perfect. She wandered off topic. Yes, Krystal gets damseled, but the much larger issue with Kyrstal is that she had her game stolen and given to a male protagonist. Yes, it was for money... but that doesn't make it suck less. That makes it suck more, because the games industry has convinced itself that female protagonists don't sell (even though they clearly do).
The_Kodu said:
Except if you're going to throw specific examples of games as evidence of a systemic issues it's kind of undermining your own point when that series itself has shown it's capable of having good female characters
No it doesn't. Her point is that the tropes cause
accidental sexism, not intentional malice. Thus there's no reason why a game couldn't employ sexist tropes AND have a strong female character. She even mentioned that when she brought up Zelda - that Zelda was a great female character who ends up being damseled.
The point is that even good female characters from writers who clearly aren't sexist themselves get hit by sexist tropes because the writers are A) lazy or B) don't realize the trope is sexist. Educating people about how the tropes themselves can be sexist even without intent allows authors to avoid or modify to improve their writing.
The_Kodu said:
Except there is seemingly not discussion of her points allowed. Not directly anyway. Sure we can discuss them here but again they're not being presented as a discussion it's being presented as objective information.
That's because no one seems to want to actually talk about her points in context. Most people who want to "discuss" things with her end up
1) Threatening to rape or kill her (most extreme example)
2) Call her a liar or a bad academic
3) Defending specific games in an attempt to prove that the individual game isn't sexist without addressing the individual tropes within that are/may be.
Hardly anyone is actually discussing her points. I've said before, I don't actually agree with everything she says. I'd love to talk about all the ways I think Anita is wrong about stuff. But I can't because I'm too busy trying to deal with #2 up there (and occasionally #3).
On the #3 point - having a sexist trope in a game does not make the game sexist. It makes the one or two tropes used sexist and that's it.
Some games are sexist - like Duke Nuken Forever - because they are wall-to-wall sexism.
Other games are fine - great even, with good female characters - but still employ one or two sexist tropes.
Those two are not the same thing, and Anita isn't saying that they are.
Anita isn't saying that the Zelda game she mentioned - or even that Starfox game - are sexist games. They both contain good female characters that are developed and interesting.
They also both contain a common sexist trope - damsel in distress. That one trope does not somehow taint the rest of the game - it merely exists within it.
**catches breath**
You know, I normally don't go so far as four posts. Normally, once I have determined that someone just isn't going to listen, I cut my sanity losses. However, you Kudo actually seem to be listening to me. Disagreeing, but you're responding in a way that makes me feel like I might be getting through. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic here, but...
The_Kodu said:
Except Pacific Rim is being used as an example to show the errors in a test which was developed pretty much as a joke itself. The Betchel test was adopted by people to fit the cause and wasn't designed to be used that way as such.
Which is exactly my point. You (and others) are trying to twist Anita into a Straw Feminist who hates all things that contain sexisism (the way some feminists twist the Betchel test into something it's not).
But she isn't. Pointing out a flaw in an otherwise good game isn't hating on the game - it's just pointing out a flaw.
I did it myself in another thread to prove a point - I can point out an example of homophobia in my very favorite game. And (as you may know), I am HUGELY against homophobia and speak out loudly against it. Yet my favorite game has an awful gay stereotype in it.
Does that ruin the game for me? Hell fucking no! The game is 99% awesome... and 1% homophobic. It's a minor flaw. Do I wish it didn't have that flaw? Sure. But I'm not going to stop replaying it and enjoying it just because there's one bad element.
That's what Anita's doing. She's pointing out flaws in otherwise good games (and some shitty games too) not to say that the games themselves are bad (or that their creators are bad), but to try to improve the thing she loves.
Yahtzee hates motion controls, but loves games - which is why he speaks out against motion controls - to try to improve games.
