Jimquisition: Objectification And... Men?

[Stalydan]

I recall having a similar discussion about the portrayal of men vs the portrayal women in popular culture overall. For from objectifying men, this other person seemed to think that men were unfairly stereotyped as fat idiots who were completely dependent on women to save them from themselves. Now I want you to look at these pictures and ask yourself
http://www.bundyology.com/bal2.jpghttp://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oJk4uH5eXdY/TVylPQrTwnI/AAAAAAAAAFw/whLXMmyXaOE/s1600/peggy.jpg
Which standard is harder to live up to?

Is that Jay from Modern Family on the left? Damn, he was pretty good looking when he was younger. Still kind of is now.

OT: I agree with everything that was said but it's all been said before really. If something new was added this time, it'd be interesting but it really was like listening to the same old argument again just with different examples.

 

[HappyRat]

I have listened to this debate for some time now and would like to clarify some facts that have gone amiss by members of my species.

When people say "Men aren't objectified" what they really mean is "men aren't objectified sexually".

I registered here just to give you kudos on this post. I was thinking the exact same thing listening to Jim. I often really like Jim, but he was off his mark for focusing to narrowly here. Men sexually objectify women. Society objectifies men's lives. I mean, we can get into the whole disposable male theory another time, but when you boil it down this certainly at least holds true in games.

I mean, my character in Fallout NV flirted with Cass, but he slaughtered men by the hundreds. Perhaps the Dead or Alive or Gears of War titles don't properly illustrate this, but I find it laughable to say "games don't objectify men" when every RTS game ever made has purposefully disposable male infantry. In fact, in Red Alert 2 (without counting YR and the Virus), the only female characters were either secretaries who never fought (like Sofia and Eva), or the Hero unit Tanya who got more screentime than the president. Female voice actors are only used for the hover transport units. Essentially, the only 'girl' units you have are so valuable, like Tanya, that you don't want to loose them, or non-combatants that have a use that makes them important to keep alive, like the transports. The ho-hum army of waves of infantry to throw at your enemy, and paper thin tanks are all voiced by men.

I mean sure, maybe it's still all related back to male power fantasies, that we want our women as sexual objectives, but men are objectified to an even more perverse degree, they're not objectives, they're objects, a means to an end.

Just read the wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectification

Females are treated, in games at least, with denial of autonomy, ownership, fungibility and denial of subjectivity, but males get much the same treatment, but atop that are subject to extreme violability and instrumentality.

 

[Nurb]

In video games, both are equally objectified in the sense male and female game characters are objects that do what we want for our entertainment and fantasies, whatever they may be because it's fictional escapism.

Women are pretty and nice to look at, and men are fodder for the player to wade through with any given weapon weilded by a perfect looking protagonist. Men are not evil for enjoying sexualized fictional characters, nor are we evil for enjoying laying waste to thousands of enemies that want to stop our character.

Now please, no more forced gender debates!

No one is evil for liking or hating these characters. The only bad thing about them is that they are used too much.

As for the "male, female, at the end of the day, we're just a bunch of dang avatars made of bits and polygons", while true, the problem is more with the art(how the characters look), and the story(how the characters act).

Things that are not always in control of the player.

Also, that is a cute cat(picture and your avatar).
You may like this user group: Catoholics anonymous. If you are in already, sorry, I didn't see your name when I looked at the members list.

That's the point of fantasy, though. Not all games do this depending on what they are of course, but in some, a busty, sexy female character or being a perfect looking guy that can do damn near anything is just nice to imagine. Games are ment to get away from reality.

Though there's also this false presumption that because men enjoy video games in a larger number than women, it must be because developers and gamers are actively trying to keep women out of the hobby, which just isn't true. We're talking demographics, and some things appeal to some people more than others for whatever reason. Just as there's not a huge number of guys into romance novels, and it's not that authors and fans want are trying to keep guys from young guys from reading them and why "But vampires don't sparkle!" falls on the deaf ears of fans and Twilight Moms. XD

and if you're on the internet you're suppost to like cats. It's a rule I think.

 

[RaikuFA]

Theres some other issues that need to be addressed in this debate. Like the fact that Senran Kagura might never make it outside of Japan due to the west being prudish and crying sexist at anyything that has boobs.

No matter how objectified a women is in a game, no matter how much we argue about it, it has never stopped a game from being released. If anybody says that, they are making an excuse.

I hope you're right but XSEED/Marvelous said last week that due to recent events, the games will be a lot harder to promote without crys of sexism. I think they're telling the truth. But it could be a publicity stunt(which I'm hoping it is). Either way, this topic needs to stop for awhile.

 

[AWAR]

I don't fully agree with Jim here, what is this "idealized" thing he keeps raving about? What kind of ideals Markus Phoenix and Kratos promote? Giving zero fucks about anything, being ripped beyond belief and killing first - asking questions later?
If that really is the "ideal" man, then why can't we say that a huge breasted happy go lucky character (obviously objectified) is the ideal female too?

 

[InfinityProject]

if they stopped making guys look like 200lb wrecking machines with chins that could split atoms, and chainsaw Dicks, and actually developed character designs on real internal structures, characters wouldnt get so much flak for being objectified.

 

[PeterMerkin69]

People are objects. Look up the definition of the word object:

Noun
A material thing that can be seen and touched.

The superstitious myth that man is somehow Something Moar is a throwback to the days when invisible, bearded sky giants comprised valid explanations for lightning and agriculture. That shit doesn't fly anymore, and everything we know about reality strongly implies that humans are self-aware, organic computers. Decent ones, but still just computers. So yeah, objects. Although I doubt computers would confuse themselves for anything more than that so, limited power notwithstanding, they may still be ahead of you.

Women often take offense to being "treated like a piece of meat." Whenever I hear that I think to myself that I'd like to open one up and show them what they're really made of.

OMG!! Stop burning that bra and put it back on, your objectifying yourself!

Heh, it's okay--she didn't need it anyway.

 

[Mosley_Harmless]

People are objects. Look up the definition of the word object:

Noun
A material thing that can be seen and touched.

Women often take offense to being "treated like a piece of meat."

I'll just leave this here.
At times Patrice O'neal would encourage people to call out to the stage in order to set up a punchline. "Ladies, how would you keep your man if you lost your vagina?," O'neal would ask of his audience. When the women would invariably reference oral and anal sex, the comedian would respond, "See, I gave you the chance to talk and you qualified yourself as a series of holes."

 

[Ukomba]

If objectification of men and women where more 50/50, these kind of scenes would be more normal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CESpInzM9yA

That makes the very large assumption women think like men. Most women I know find a well dressed man more attractive than a naked one. A naked man can be more threatening to women than a dressed one.

That clip is more homosexual fanservice than female. Male objectification from a man's thought process. In the same way two naked women making out is male fan service and not lesbian fan service.

 

[ThreeName]

snipasaurous

You know, I was going to come in here and write like a paragraph on why it's still objectification, and the argument made by people with working brains was that if we're going to talk about objectification in video games, it should be about the objectification (not necessarily sexual) of both genders, not that "They're both equal so there's no problem", which actually seemed to be shoehorned in there pretty clumsily. But this guy, this guy here, nailed it. Well done sir. Well done.


Jim, I've gotta say I disagree with you this week, and a lot of that is because you've sort of straw man'd (totally a word) and entire argument using one NeoGAF user. Men are objectified. It doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about women being objectified, and implying that people who say the former usually say the latter is just weak. If you're going to argue against a point of view, you have to argue against where the view is strongest, otherwise there's no point.

 

[Lieju]

Thats all pretty nice but on the topic of "All female chars have to be beautifull" Uhm... yeah? Wich woman would want to play an old hag that looks like the hunchback from notre dam.. or who wants to play the super fat lady from borderlands 2? Among males and females.. i would say no one. Or have you ever seen a female player make a ugly fem shep and say "Yup... thats who i want to play as"

I do, for one.

I like characters who look like they have history behind them, wrinkles, untidy hair, tattoos, scars, etc.
I like playing mage/scientist characters who pay no attention to their appearance and who can be more unique-looking than the standard female character I get in everything.

But way too often, I can't even choose not to give my female character huge boobs...

At one of my Dragon Age origins playthroughs I made my female character as ugly on purpose as I could, looking like she had had her face smashed in, and that she was angry all the time, and then played her as a total brute who had the IQ of a toddler but was some kind of a fighting-savant.

 

[1337mokro]

I have heard this argument before when people talk about comic book women being objectified. This is the best response I have seen.

Make of it what you will.

Question!!! Why does Superman shave his legs? HOW does Superman shave his legs? I mean Greenlantern I can get, Human with alien technology. How does Superman manage though? Industrial strength polymer leg waxing?

Like, maybe he just uses his breath to freeze his own leg and then just brushes them off. Or maybe he just, like, burns them off with this eyes.

Can Superman's powers harm himself? His hair is basically indestructible if not he'd have his glorious mullet burned of every single time a heat based enemy was encountered. So why should there be an exception for his own heat vision which still works on the same principles and does not seem to be all that strong, compared to other heat powers in the same universe.

Kryptonite razorblades?

There you go.

We have solved one of the greatest mysteries in the world! Now for the other one.

Why DID he shave his legs?

As I recall, Clark shaved with his own fingernails in Smallville.

I can only imagine that he trims those, in turn, with his teeth.

Being a Kryptonian god sure makes these things complicated.

Don't ever ask him to scratch your back then. Razor sharp nails plus super human strength? OUCH!

 

[Shjade]

I mean to say, Brienne in a computer game would come across as female and utterly, UTTERLY badass.

Considering Brienne herself pretty much tries to not be female as much as she's capable of doing so, I'm not sure that's the case.

Maybe I misread, but from what I remember of the story Bri pretty much would be a male character with a female skin if she were in a video game. It's what she'd try to be at the very least.

 

[Scott Rothman]

I have heard this argument before when people talk about comic book women being objectified. This is the best response I have seen.

Make of it what you will.

Is this from the Hawkeye(guy) Initiative?

 

[m19]

So what about the evolutionary psychology arguments? Such as that men are more attracted to things that represent fertility in women such as full breasts, youth, health (clear skin, hence skimpy outfits), child baring hips, etc. Hence bikini babes.

While women instinctively put more emphasis on ability to perform (because he has to provide for all when she's incapacitated with pregnancy for 9 months) such as strength, skill, status, and all the "alpha male" stuff. Hence all the fluffy chick lit that is generally a feminist nightmare about damsels and controlling men (Twilight, 50 shades, etc.)

And yes I know those are extreme examples and we don't follow our caveman instincts everywhere.

Do we really sexualize each other the same way?

 

[Gorrath]

I can understand your statement on what is the proper portrayal of a female protagonist and its something I'd like to see explored. What about a female protagonist who is a mother of two trying to survive in a zombie-filled wasteland while having to make drastic decisions to protect her children (I.E. does she kill another human being to take his/her food rations to feed her kids)? How about a female soldier having to deal with PTSD and re-adjusting to civilian life? There are hundreds of ideas to be explored but as long as the industry caters to the teenage male demo, video games will never evolve any further.

Wanted to reply back and let you know that I agree wholly that it would be GREAT to see a wider variety of characters, particularly females ones, in all media. I also very much want to see various view points, ideals, values and morals written in to my games. However, I don't think we need to worry about any sort of proper way of characterization and simply worry about expansion into new ideas. Creativity will come with incorporating new ideas, not simply lambasting the old. That's why I took exception to the idea of 'proper' characterization of a gender. I like T&A and I also like punch-ups or shoot-em-ups, and I can like them both while admitting that both contain objectification, stereotypes, bad writing and poor characterization. I think we can move forward and see the medium grow and develop and that we don't have to silly things to do it. This isn't a zero sum game where in order to see more well rounded female or male characters, we have to do away with all the ones that aren't. We can have our deep, riveting stories and meaningful characters and still keep the cotton candy crap too. Literature's been doing it for a very long time.

 

[Arakasi]

I don't say there isn't an inequality, but I will say that this whole ridiculous notion of 'objectification' is philosophically stupid (I can't find any evidence, but I'm pretty sure it's from the existentialists). Sure, the way they are represented in games is unrealistic, but it's a fantasy. As per usual it comes down to one of my favorite sayings: "Don't like it, don't play it."

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Thanks Jim. Something to link when people bring this tired and completely false argument up. I've actually had people tell me I should find Kratos sexy and if I don't I must be doing it wrong.

I don't like sexual objectification because it reduces a person down to one aspect. Just look at the posters of Ivy from Soul Calibur where they cut her head off. She wasn't even allowed her head!

I don't think this is a problem for the game characters themselves (that's silly) but it is a problem when you think than gaming is the largest medium in the world. In that medium women are largely portrayed as sexual objects. Is that good for society and how young men see women? Probably not.

I know people are going to come at me with 'But videogames aren't real they don't cause violence either!' That's true. But something like objectification is subtle, it's insidious. It's the media telling us how to view a gender.

Jim points out the fact that men are idealised....depression has become an increasingly bad problem with young men. I don't think it's a coincidence.

 

[Raioken18]

I think showing Drake from uncharted might have been counteracting your own argument. Drake is a very sexualized character.

Also the thing is men and women objectify each other in different ways. Women tend to be a lot more subtle, which is why Drake in particular is a great example. He fits a perfected stereotype that women see in fashion magazines and such. He's muscular, but still slim, has a nice clean haircut which is also styled properly, his release was around the time there was a trend for men to wear scarves for the sake of it, and he was conforming to that fashion criteria. He's unshaven, but only for a few days giving him stubble, but not too much.

Don't get me wrong, they are sexualized and objectified in different ways, and women moreso than men. But Drake is a terrible example.

Also what is the solution? Is there a need to sexualize men more? Will it bring more women to the videogame industry?

As I'm pretty sure sexualizing women less would lose them customers...

 

[Xanadu84]

Wanna be horribly depressed? Read all the, "I respectfully disagree" comments here. Then, go find a discussion about, "Tropes vs Women", and read all the angry comments. Then, realize that the arguments being made are extraordinarily similar. Sure, Jim is funnier, but something tells me that that isn't the reason for the lopsided outrage...

On an unrelated note, is there a place I can stock up on flame shields in bulk? I...uhh...may need them.

Here's another thing: An ideal woman, even from a woman's point of view, would look attractive to most men. Because who doesn't want to look attractive?

The problem there is that, well...this is attractive to most men

Spoiler

http://0.tqn.com/d/animatedtv/1/0/h/F/1/korra_02HR.jpg

Spoiler

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/bitter_kitsune/alyx-vance-2.jpg

...heres some other women who are considered attractive

Spoiler

http://e-shuushuu.net/images/2007-09-29-73278.jpeg

Spoiler

http://thefightingconnection.com/sites/default/files/pictures/mai-shiranui-king-fighters-2000-picture.jpg

I'd say that clearly, one of those is a kind of attractive that women would consider an ideal worth wanting to aspire to in a manner similar to men wanting to aspire to most male protagonists, and the other is not.

We need to get to a point where this is no longer rare

Spoiler

http://images.wikia.com/gameofthrones/images/8/87/Brienne-of-Tarth-game-of-thrones-31362150-639-960.png