Jimquisition: The Positive Side to Punching Nuns

[WitherVoice]

I just watched the trailer... apparently I missed the whole controversy train here, but I don't see what the big deal is. I do see some things that COULD offend, but I am not offended by any of them to an extent where I'd bother commenting on it in and of itself. For example:
[ul]
[li]Violence against women:
I'm against all real violence that the involved parties did not consent to (martial arts are violent, but fine, for instance). I'm for fictional violence against any party for any reason. Men, women, children, animals, aliens, objects, brutalize any and all of them as much as you like. Heck, if they try to murder you I'd be upset if I wasn't allowed to retaliate against women in a game.[/li]

[li]Sexualization/objectification of women:
it doesn't upset me, but I don't much care for it either. I play Hitman for the thrill of stealthy and clever infiltration, assassination, and combat pragmatism. These non-nuns seem out of character for the series, and I simply hope that the game will not significantly revolve around them or anything like them. If every level is this, count me out. If there's one level that has these attacking you, then I'll just live with it.[/li]

[li]Morality police trying to control your thoughts:
I'm okay with people trying to control what I get to watch, as long as they aren't allowed to succeed. I personally don't see this trailer as an artistic statement that should be vigorously defended, simply as a clumsy attempt at standing out in an ever more extreme soup of advertising glop. The irony of it not standing out at all because it tries so hard makes it doubly pathetic, but the bottom line is, if it offends someone then I'm glad they speak up. I feel no reason to agree with them but I think they should rage against it as much as they want until the next thing comes along that they dislike. And if someone wants to boycott the game over this, then that's fine, though I think they're overdoing it at that point. Not my call, though.[/li]

[li]EDIT: OMG they're nuns, you sick bastard:
No they're not. At least not of any denomination I ever heard of. The silly classical nun's outfit, that apparently is not even used any longer, can be seen in porn, stripping (not the same thing) and Halloween costumes. If THEY can wear it, then assassins can, too. If you're a religious person, then rest assured, nobody even for a split second thought of this trailer as representative of your religious views.[/li]
[/ul]

 

[Alandoril]

I saw that trailer and instantly thought that it fits into the same kind of line as Kill Bill. Ridiculous but not really that offensive. Could the marketing team have come up with a better way to advertise the game? Yes, of course.

But is it in some way doing it for the hell of it? No. You have to see that those nuns aren't "just" women...they are assassins. What was 47 supposed to do? Just let them kill him? Would we feel any different if it were a group of men dressed as priests who were then beaten to a pulp and killed? No. That's par for the course. Men fight and die. And in an age when we have female soldiers, so do women.

The reality is that if we want to live in a world where there is total sexual equality, then the good and the bad has to be taken in equal measure. People kill each other, a lot, not only in the real world but especially in games and movies.

Does that make it right? Of course not. But it does make it real. At least on a conceptual level.

 

[Jerkules]

Certain debates, like this one are founded in an antiquated double-standard. Violence against women regardless of context automatically means it's wrong. If this "outrage" is allowed to go unchallenged, then we're going to see an even more focused grouped, politically correct, and watered down corporate gaming experience than we have already. Jim's right this wasn't talked about years ago, because years ago, gamers knew that a woman in fighting game was just as deadly as a man in a fighting game, and just as shirtless.

The problem isn't that these women are having violence inflicted upon them, it's that the women themselves are being sexualized and, therefore, so is the violence being committed. If these women were dressed in something other than leather fetish gear, preferably something it might actually make sense for a group of assassins heading into battle to be wearing, this controversy wouldn't exist at the levels it does.

Young gamers today seem to be much more conservative, over-sensitive, and dare I say "wimpy" compared to the days when we had to defend games like Doom from the soccer moms and politicians who were talking like gamers are now!

This is just trite.

As for "objecitfication" do I really need to bring up the Twlight double-standards again where young teenage boys were sexualized and minimally dressed to tingle the vaginas of a female audience? If there was a story targeted at teens about a high schooler being fought over by sexy supernatural women for his affections, the fans would be considered immature, boyish, and accussed of objectifying women for their pathetic fantasies there as well.

That's not "a double standard", that's called "a standard". Twilight has been constantly mocked and satirized since its inception in the public sphere, for its immaturity among other things.

People just love to be outraged and having others hear just how outraged they are

People also love to ignore their own privilege and pretend that anything that doesn't bother them personally isn't a problem.

 

[Jerkules]

I saw that trailer and instantly thought that it fits into the same kind of line as Kill Bill. Ridiculous but not really that offensive. Could the marketing team have come up with a better way to advertise the game? Yes, of course.

But is it in some way doing it for the hell of it? No. You have to see that those nuns aren't "just" women...they are assassins. What was 47 supposed to do? Just let them kill him? Would we feel any different if it were a group of men dressed as priests who were then beaten to a pulp and killed? No. That's par for the course. Men fight and die. And in an age when we have female soldiers, so do women.

The reality is that if we want to live in a world where there is total sexual equality, then the good and the bad has to be taken in equal measure. People kill each other, a lot, not only in the real world but especially in games and movies.

Does that make it right? Of course not. But it does make it real. At least on a conceptual level.

You can't play the realism angle while conveniently ignoring that the female soldiers in this case are dressed in leather fetish gear. Agent 47 shouldn't have let the assassins kill him, the assassins should have been dressed in something other than leather fetish gear.

 

[Nurb]

It isn't that women are killed. It is that they are needlessly sexualized while they are killed. To quote myself:

Point is, we will never see a trailer of a bunch of male assassins in tight shorts with no shirts on getting murdered while the camera does close ups of their pecks and asses.

Which is part of the problem.

Certain debates, like this one are founded in an antiquated double-standard. Violence against women regardless of context automatically means it's wrong. If this "outrage" is allowed to go unchallenged, then we're going to see an even more focused grouped, politically correct, and watered down corporate gaming experience than we have already. Jim's right this wasn't talked about years ago, because years ago, gamers knew that a woman in fighting game was just as deadly as a man in a fighting game, and just as shirtless.

The problem isn't that these women are having violence inflicted upon them, it's that the women themselves are being sexualized and, therefore, so is the violence being committed. If these women were dressed in something other than leather fetish gear, preferably something it might actually make sense for a group of assassins heading into battle to be wearing, this controversy wouldn't exist at the levels it does.

And to that I have to say: So what? So what if they're dressed in fetish gear? They're fictional people about to kill a fictional person and engage in a fictional bloody battle that ends up with people dead, who cares how they're dressed. They have a career as professional murderers and others complain about them dressing as... fetish nuns or whatever.

It's fiction. It's all fiction. it's not real. It's fantasy. In some fantasy entertainment that's targeted at a certain majority some of the characters are made to look "more attractive". There's nothing wrong with enjoying attractive or even sexualized characters in fantasy material and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of gamers know the difference between fantasy and reality.

I brought up the Twilight thing, and I suppose I didn't express as well as I could have that I DON'T care that the high-school-age-looking male characters were often minimally dressed and sexualized because that's the kind of story some are into, I'm just annoyed that people complain about how fictional assassins are dressed but ignore the same sexualization and objectification in fiction that THEY enjoy. That's a double-standard.

Some women and girls like the fantasy of hunky supernatural guys fighting over them, some women like to read those romance novels where all the men look like Fabio and flex their muscles around fair Scotish lasses with oppressive fathers or inattentive husbands, some younger women like those yaoi comics with flawless femmy guys going at each other in really weird stories...and some guys like playing video games with firm bodied women in tight nun costumes trying to kill them for being such a badass.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. That's what fantasy is about, enjoying crazy things that won't happen in reality, but what I take issue with is this double-standard where what men like in fiction is wrong and what women like in fiction is A-OK because it's sexualization in entertainment they personally enjoy.

Young gamers today seem to be much more conservative, over-sensitive, and dare I say "wimpy" compared to the days when we had to defend games like Doom from the soccer moms and politicians who were talking like gamers are now!

This is just trite.

You misspelled "right".

 

[Jerkules]

And to that I have to say: So what? So what if they're dressed in fetish gear? They're fictional people about to kill a fictional person and engage in a fictional bloody battle that ends up with people dead, who cares how they're dressed. They have a career as professional murderers and others complain about them dressing as... fetish nuns or whatever.

It's fiction. It's all fiction. it's not real. It's fantasy. In some fantasy entertainment that's targeted at a certain majority some of the characters are made to look "more attractive". There's nothing wrong with enjoying attractive or even sexualized characters in fantasy material and I'm pretty sure the vast majority of gamers know the difference between fantasy and reality.

You're being incredibly dense if you think the fact that it's fantasy means it doesn't matter. If you think works of fiction can't greatly influence people's perception of reality, look up the film "Birth of a Nation". Look up the works of L. Ron Hubbard or Ayn Rand. Works of fiction influence culture at large, and culture influences how real people treat each other. Women being treated as sex objects in fiction is a problem because women being treated as sex objects in real life is a problem.

I brought up the Twilight thing, and I suppose I didn't express as well as I could have that I DON'T care that the high-school-age-looking male characters were often minimally dressed and sexualized because that's the kind of story some are into, I'm just annoyed that people complain about how fictional assassins are dressed but ignore the same sexualization and objectification in fiction that THEY enjoy. That's a double-standard.

You're assuming the women (and men) objecting to the portrayal of women in video games are the same ones uncritically enjoying Twilight. That's a completely unsupported assumption. A straw (wo)man, really.

Some women and girls like the fantasy of hunky supernatural guys fighting over them, some women like to read those romance novels where all the men look like Fabio and flex their muscles around fair Scotish lasses with oppressive fathers or inattentive husbands, some younger women like those yaoi comics with flawless femmy guys going at each other in really weird stories...and some guys like playing video games with firm bodied women in tight nun costumes trying to kill them for being such a badass.

There's nothing wrong with any of that. That's what fantasy is about, enjoying crazy things that won't happen in reality, but what I take issue with is this double-standard where what men like in fiction is wrong and what women like in fiction is A-OK because it's sexualization in entertainment they personally enjoy.

Like I said, there is no double standard. You only think there's one because you're basing your assumptions off of legions of hypocritical women that you've conjured up in your head. Also like I said, it's not the sex that's the problem - it's the objectification and the sexualization of violence against women (which, I remind you, is a big problem in real life).

 

[Nurb]

You're being incredibly dense if you think the fact that it's fantasy means it doesn't matter.

It doesn't.

If you think works of fiction can't greatly influence people's perception of reality, look up the film "Birth of a Nation". Look up the works of L. Ron Hubbard or Ayn Rand. Works of fiction influence culture at large, and culture influences how real people treat each other. Women being treated as sex objects in fiction is a problem because women being treated as sex objects in real life is a problem.

Comparing influencial cultural works with intentional economical, racial, and religious messages and their historical impact to a modern video game is a little hyperbolic don't you think? I consider the Old Testement to be fictional, but it's not on the same level as as a Hitman sequel. There is no message being conveyed that women need to dress sexy all the time in reality. You don't like it, which is fine. It doesn't mean people are bad for enjoying that in fantasy and it doesn't mean it makes people treat others as sex objects in reality for having seen it

You're assuming the women (and men) objecting to the portrayal of women in video games are the same ones uncritically enjoying Twilight. That's a completely unsupported assumption. A straw (wo)man, really.

Like I said, there is no double standard. You only think there's one because you're basing your assumptions off of legions of hypocritical women that you've conjured up in your head. Also like I said, it's not the sex that's the problem - it's the objectification and the sexualization of violence against women (which, I remind you, is a big problem in real life).

And you completely ignore the hypocrisy. Yes, there is objectification, violence and sexualization going on in video games. It goes on in a lot of entertainment for both men and women, but those targeted to and enjoyed by women (which are fictional equivalents to video games) get a pass for it.

As for objectification, sexualization, mixed with violence I have to say again: So what? If only 2 out of 3 were used, would you not be objecting? They're absurd bondage nuns, it's what they do according to the devs. Number 47 is a non-sexual clone with issues over catholicism (really it's part of his history). He's killed people in fetish clubs, including an absurd, obese "head fetish guy" that looks like the fat vampire from Blade. All characters are exaggerated and overdone.

Like -I- said, it's not real, it doesn't influence people like you think it does. Seriously, if people were that easily influenced all these decades, women would be expected to dress like E3 booth babes 24/7. There's a problem in areas in reality, but video game trailers are not the cause of it and developers changing characters won't fix it.

Just how Doom and violence in video games hasn't influenced people to murder others. Neh?

These same problems you're talking about, influencing negative/unrealistic perceptions about women and violence have been blamed on comic books, rock music, television, certain genre films in the 60's and 70's, metal music, rap music, comic books again during the 90's boom, and now video games. You're doing the same thing as those people did and you don't even realize it. That's why I know video games don't matter and have no influence on people who understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

The problems in reality don't have a simple cause and they don't have a simple solution, but it hasn't stopped people from trying to lay the blame on whatever the popular entertainment was at the time over the years with the same "If we just stopped X, then Y will go away" arguments.

 

[Jerkules]

It doesn't.

Yes it does.

Comparing influencial cultural works with intentional economical, racial, and religious messages and their historical impact to a modern video game is a little hyperbolic don't you think? I consider the Old Testement to be fictional, but it's not on the same level as as a Hitman sequel.

You mentioned the Old Testament, which prescribes that women be treated as something between second class citizens and two-legged cattle. You'll note that it and similar religious texts have historically been used to justify exactly that kind of treatment in real life. You'll note that this is still happening. If you consider these texts works of fiction, you're only making my point for me. It's just a question of degree. The portrayal of women in media as sex objects, in the aggregate, negatively influences the way men perceive women and the way women perceives themselves.

There is no message being conveyed that women need to dress sexy all the time in reality.

What? Yes there is, do you live under a rock that doesn't get cable or internet access?

You don't like it, which is fine. It doesn't mean people are bad for enjoying that in fantasy and it doesn't mean it makes people treat others as sex objects in reality for having seen it

See above. We've been over this.

And you completely ignore the hypocrisy. Yes, there is objectification, violence and sexualization going on in video games. It goes on in a lot of entertainment for both men and women, but those targeted to and enjoyed by women (which are fictional equivalents to video games) get a pass for it.

I'm not ignoring anything. You've made up the so-called hypocrisy in your head. I already explained to you that Twilight doesn't "get a pass". Twilight, and to a lesser extent Stephanie Meyer herself, have been mocked from every angle in popular culture, over and over and over again. And really, you're drawing a false equivalency when you say Twilight and romance novels are equivalent to video games.

As for objectification, sexualization, mixed with violence I have to say again: So what?

Then I guess I have to say again: Women are treated as sex objects in real life. Doing the same thing in media exacerbates the problem. You only need to lurk in online communities frequented by self-identified gamers and see how hatefully and vitriolically they respond whenever the subjects of sexism or feminism are brought up to see this principle in action.

Like -I- said, it's not real, it doesn't influence people like you think it does.

We've already established that works of fiction routinely wield enormous influence over people. Your only response to that fact has been to suggest that because it's video game-related, it doesn't matter. For some reason.

Seriously, if people were that easily influenced all these decades, women would be expected to dress like E3 booth babes 24/7.

Again, do you have... any experience with popular culture? Like, at all?

There's a problem in areas in reality, but video game trailers are not the cause of it and developers changing characters won't fix it.

Video games and their trailers are not the cause, they're a cause. Nobody said that if developers were to stop objectifying women that the real life problem would be fixed. It would help, is what we're saying.

Just how Doom and violence in video games hasn't influenced people to murder others. Neh?

These same problems you're talking about, influencing negative/unrealistic perceptions about women and violence have been blamed on comic books, rock music, television, certain genre films in the 60's and 70's, metal music, rap music, comic books again during the 90's boom, and now video games. You're doing the same thing as those people did and you don't even realize it. That's why I know video games don't matter and have no influence on people who understand the difference between fantasy and reality.

There's no doubt in my mind that all of those things you've mentioned have had some measure of influence on the perception of women and violence in popular culture. That doesn't mean any of those things need to go away, it means they need to be more responsible. I say this as a fan of most of the things you've listed.

The problems in reality don't have a simple cause and they don't have a simple solution, but it hasn't stopped people from trying to lay the blame on whatever the popular entertainment was at the time over the years with the same "If we just stopped X, then Y will go away" arguments.

If you're going speak, speak to me. Argue with me. Not this person you've made up in your head that says all these things I haven't said.

 

[Nurb]

It doesn't.

Yes it does.

Nope!

Snip

I know how the Old Testement treats women, I had to study the damn thing through most of my school years and argue with conservatives all the time about how the Jewish and Christian God values women less down to dollar amount and sanctions slavery but not gender equality. If you re-read my paragraph there, I said it's not on the same level as a video game because it tries to teach religious doctrine and has a bigger social and cultural impact than something ment for pure entertainment.

You seem to be suggesting that nothing or very little if anything has changed since the beginning of the gender equality movement and sexual revolution. At least that's how it comes across when you're saying that expectations of women are to be booth babes are everywhere, in which case I hope you're joking intentionally.

Your disagreement with the fact that video games being fantasy and aren't the real problem because most can differentiate between a game and reality also has you placing me into a camp that would just love to have women as fishnet wearing servants.

You just want an easy target for a complex real world problem that's always existed, but you're looking in the wrong place with silly fantasy where the same thing happens in other entertainment (and yes I know the twilight/yaoi thing is mocked, but it's not targeted as an influence to a real world problem like you're doing with video games where the creators are smeared as bad people). Religious dogma is a good start though.