Sexuality is treated bizarrely by our society, firstly we have all this and on the other hand the slightest hint of nipple let alone any a bum or genitals gets a game banned. Then there is the fact that sex is treated as disgusting, more so than watching someone's head blown apart in slow motion. Its weird that its ok to sexualize someone to the point where they have no character but you cant make something sexual with all that goes with that (including an attractive personality and reciprocal sexual desire)
The rampant Sexualization in videogames
- Thread starter siomasm
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"Men are not required to support a family, you're just an asshole if you don't."Generic4me said:
Are you fucking kidding me? You've never heard of men going to debtor's prison (something that's otherwise illegag for for failing to pay alimony or child support?
"Men are not drafted to fight in wars against their will."
We may not actually be "drafted", but until selective service gets half of it's recruits from young women, there is no such thing as equality on that point.
"Men are not expected to be 6'3 athletic superhumans."
And women are not expected to be buxom supermodels... what's your point?
"Men are no more disposable to today's society excepting a few small inconveniences which are either so minor to hardly have any effect (Baby gets ignored for a few minutes longer), or so rare "Women and children first!" that it's not affecting 99% of the population in any meaningful way at all, and people complaining about it are just bitching for the sake of bitching."
*cracks knucles and stretches fingers in preparation*
Even though murder is the leading workplace cause of death for women, a statistic often used by gender feminists, that number is only a percentage of the 6% of workplace deaths that women comprise. In other words, a fraction of a small fraction.
Reactions to that? VAWA and extensive campaigning to make all workplaces more welcoming and safe to women.
Men are 93% of workplace deaths and accidents, and that's not even counting deaths in military service.
Reaction to that... nothing.
Men are the overwhelming majority of rape victims, yet anti-rape campaigns treat women as the majority of victims.
Men being forced to penetrate either vaginally, orally or anally isn't even legally counted as rape.
There are friggin' underage boys forced to pay child support to their female rapists in the US right fucking now!
Title IX removes a male college student's right to due process if a female student accuses him of sexual assault, presumably because punishing the innocent is an acceptable sacrifice to make it easier to charge someone with sexual misconduct.
Men receive on average, more than TWICE the jail/prison time for the same crimes as women.
Men are fully half of the victims of domestic violence (26% of intimate partner homicides), yet are denied service at most tax payer funded domestic violence shelters.
The CDC reports that in cases of non-reciprocal intimate partner violence (one directional) that women are more than twice as likely to be the aggressor. The report cites that women comprise 70% of perpetrators, men 29%.
Men today die on average 6 years sooner than women. In 1920 the variance was one year. The death rates for prostate and breast cancer are similar, but because men die of other things more frequently-accidents ,war, heart disease etc., there are fewer men left to die of prostate cancer. This is akin to saying people from a nation like Zimbabwe are immune to Alzheimer?s- but in fact they die of other things before they can get old enough to contract Alzheimer?s.
To date, there are numerous federal offices on women?s health, and not a single one for men. Also, the lion?s share of gender specific medical research is done on behalf of women.
Boys are facing a significantly harder time in early education than girls.
Yet girls, from primary education through college still benefit from many more special programs designed to help them gain ?equality? with males.
So please, tell me again how men aren't treated as disposable tools
Because deep down, women hate each other, and the more successful and sexy a woman is, the more loathing it awakens in the ones sitting there reading about them in Cosmo.Lonewolfm16 said:To be fair, I have never understood why all the improbably skilled, badass, incredibly attractive, women in comics, games, ect ect don't generate a "I want to be them" attitude from women. From things like fashion magazines and make-up, and for a few breast implants, I can gather that at least some women are fairly concerned about their appearance. So why are the badass male characters with six pack abs and a gleaming smile male power fantasies, but equally badass women with big breasts and a pretty face not female power fantasies? Perhaps its because comics and video games tend to be very male focussed so there's less of a sense of the characters being "for" them.CloudAtlas said:Thing is, "I want to fuck them" and "I want to be them" is a bit of a different kind of attraction.SpunkeyMonkey said:Ha ha ha ha, I actually like the thread & the point Siomasm
It wouldn't be so bad if sexualisation of lead roles hadn't been an industry standard since the entertainment industry was born, but it has, so I don't get why it's that big an issue?
Marlyn Monroe, James Dean, Bradd Pitt, Megan Fox, Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts, etc. etc. - all designed with attraction in mind (whether it be from "I want to fuck them" POV, or "I want to be them" POV.) Even if they aren't to your taste, the motivation behind their image is always to attract buyers.
It's just a bog standard thing used to boost sales.
"Luckily" that very same magazine offers them all a common enemy to direct all their vitriol at that isn't each other.
So as I see it, many women think just because a man is Tall, handsome and powerful that I should want to be him. Considering that the roots of said traits are in protecting their mates, and thus being attractive to women for their ability to do so, women think I want to be attractive to them because that's simply what a man should be.
In other words, again creating the expectation that while women should be bangable, men should be handsome and powerful (which no one has an issue with) because you can't just be you.
Right. Not sexist at all.
In other words, again creating the expectation that while women should be bangable, men should be handsome and powerful (which no one has an issue with) because you can't just be you.
Right. Not sexist at all.
EternallyBored already gave an answer to this question.Lonewolfm16 said:To be fair, I have never understood why all the improbably skilled, badass, incredibly attractive, women in comics, games, ect ect don't generate a "I want to be them" attitude from women. From things like fashion magazines and make-up, and for a few breast implants, I can gather that at least some women are fairly concerned about their appearance. So why are the badass male characters with six pack abs and a gleaming smile male power fantasies, but equally badass women with big breasts and a pretty face not female power fantasies? Perhaps its because comics and video games tend to be very male focussed so there's less of a sense of the characters being "for" them.CloudAtlas said:Thing is, "I want to fuck them" and "I want to be them" is a bit of a different kind of attraction.SpunkeyMonkey said:Ha ha ha ha, I actually like the thread & the point Siomasm
It wouldn't be so bad if sexualisation of lead roles hadn't been an industry standard since the entertainment industry was born, but it has, so I don't get why it's that big an issue?
Marlyn Monroe, James Dean, Bradd Pitt, Megan Fox, Sean Connery, Johnny Depp, Julia Roberts, etc. etc. - all designed with attraction in mind (whether it be from "I want to fuck them" POV, or "I want to be them" POV.) Even if they aren't to your taste, the motivation behind their image is always to attract buyers.
It's just a bog standard thing used to boost sales.
I didn't mean to imply that those two fantasies can't overlap. They often do, and the line between them is often blurry.
Yes, male characters are often designed to be attractive, too. But their attractiveness generally does not come at the expense of their badassness. But if your female hero is wearing armor that doesn't really protect anything, it does. Being sexy is nice, but surviving is nicer. If the camera is lingering on their T&A all the time, it does. If she still has to be saved by guys all the time, it does.
It just matters a great deal what is prioritized over what.
Alright:FFKonoko said:
Workplace deaths - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_fatality (as well as the sources cited in the wikipedia article)
Men are 80% of US suicides (85% in Canada) - http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm
?The other most common suicide victims are divorced and/or estranged fathers like Derrick Miller. In fact, a divorced father is ten times more likely to commit suicide than a divorced mother, and three times more likely to commit suicide than a married father."
http://www.glennsacks.com/distraught_fathers_courthouse.htm
Male rape victims are much more prevalent mostly because of prison rape.
Outside of prison, rape statistics greatly favour women because of feminists lobbying (chiefly the National Organisation for Women) to exclude male victims from the definition of rape by classifying "rape by envelopment" as not constituting rape, but merely sexual assault.
Compare the numbers of men forced to penetrate to the numbers of women raped in the 12 month statistic on pages 18 and 19 (page 28 and 29 on the scroll bar) of the CDC's NISVS report of 2010:
http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf
I could speculate on the HUGE discrepancy between the stats for the last 12 months and the lifetime stats, but that would merely be speculation.
As for the criminals sentencing disparities:
http://www.terry.uga.edu/~mustard/sentencing
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/judged-bashes-probation-department-gender-bias-favor-leniency-girls-article-1.473763
False rape claims:
http://falserapesociety.blogspot.dk/p/prevalence-of-false-rape-claims.html
Title IX removing rights to due process:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324600704578405280211043510.html?mod=hp_opinion#articleTabs%3Darticle
Male domestic violence victims:
The source for those stats is the same CDC NISVS report as the rape/forced to penetrate statistics, I don't remember which pages skin through it yourself, it should pop up.
Disparity between sexes in healthcare:
Google "federal offices for women's health", then google "federal offices for men's health".
Google how much funding breast cancer research gets, then google how much funding prostate cancer research gets. And yes, those two types of cancer have roughly the same rates of victimization and death.
When's the last time you even heard of fund raising campaigns for prostate cancer? I can name one, that always seems to catch flak for creeping women out, what with so many men suddenly growing out their "creepy" mustaches for Movember.
Discrimination against boys in education:
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/08/boys/factsheets/ed/index.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqOTj9NDv80
Sorry that took me so long to write out... I should probably work on a compendium of stuff like this sometime.
I don't think that men are sexualized in the same way that women are sexualized, but male characters definitely fall into their own insultingly shallow and limited collection of stereotypes - and I'm not sure why that's any less heinous.
Example: I'm nothing like Nathan Drake. I don't like him at all. He's an unfunny, greedy sociopath and a mass murderer. He makes it difficult for me to play the Uncharted games. I imagine that's how women feel when they select the sorceress in Dragon's Crown. I understand that it sucks to be put into such a narrow box based solely on your gender. But it's not a special, gender-specific issue. It's just the way pop-culture and big business boil EVERYTHING down to idiotic mass appeal.
I guess I'm tired of all the attention being paid to gender issues when the overriding problem is obvious: video games, for the most part, are extremely dumb. The vast majority of character design, dialogue, and story is complete garbage on par with, well, the lamest, most exploitative pulp romance and action novels/movies. Men are aggressive, muscle-bound douche bags who feel justified in killing pretty much anyone. Women are helpless, busty sex objects.
For whatever reason, some people can ignore the window dressing and play the games. Others can't. That's fine. Vote with your dollars. Produce that definitive female gaming experience that stabs deep into the heart of that great untapped market. When you're swimming in your millions, there will be a legion of copycats lined up behind, ready and willing to balance the scales of this lopsided industry.
But you know what won't make a single goddamn shred of difference? One more incredulous forum thread, Kotaku article, or self-righteous youtube rant. We're full up on those, and the ones we've got aren't accomplishing a fucking thing. Because this is a business, and dollars are the only language publishers understand.
Example: I'm nothing like Nathan Drake. I don't like him at all. He's an unfunny, greedy sociopath and a mass murderer. He makes it difficult for me to play the Uncharted games. I imagine that's how women feel when they select the sorceress in Dragon's Crown. I understand that it sucks to be put into such a narrow box based solely on your gender. But it's not a special, gender-specific issue. It's just the way pop-culture and big business boil EVERYTHING down to idiotic mass appeal.
I guess I'm tired of all the attention being paid to gender issues when the overriding problem is obvious: video games, for the most part, are extremely dumb. The vast majority of character design, dialogue, and story is complete garbage on par with, well, the lamest, most exploitative pulp romance and action novels/movies. Men are aggressive, muscle-bound douche bags who feel justified in killing pretty much anyone. Women are helpless, busty sex objects.
For whatever reason, some people can ignore the window dressing and play the games. Others can't. That's fine. Vote with your dollars. Produce that definitive female gaming experience that stabs deep into the heart of that great untapped market. When you're swimming in your millions, there will be a legion of copycats lined up behind, ready and willing to balance the scales of this lopsided industry.
But you know what won't make a single goddamn shred of difference? One more incredulous forum thread, Kotaku article, or self-righteous youtube rant. We're full up on those, and the ones we've got aren't accomplishing a fucking thing. Because this is a business, and dollars are the only language publishers understand.
Did some minor corrections to that one for you.FieryTrainwreck said:
Also, the market isn't going to change before the public opinion does, that's why we have the forum threads, articles and youtube videos. To create a discourse to alter public perception.
Too be honest they are power fantasies for many women. One thing these and many other forums seem to forget is we live in a world over 7 billion strong. Women as a whole are BILLIONS strong and being people with their own minds can make their own decisions and those decision consist of billions of differences. My friend gave a rather nice speech she called "The forgotten woman" awhile back which basically represented the numerous women who are ignored often in these debates claiming to represent them.Lonewolfm16 said:
This reminds me of a discussion about the scarlet blade. If people don't what that game is. Well think about all the games which oversexualizes women. Now think about how a game would look if they decided to go much further than that. Yes that's the scarlet blade. Now take a look at this particular topic on the forum of SB: http://www.aeriagames.com/forums/en/viewtopic.php?t=1793473&start=1100.Ryan Minns said:
Yes indeed, PLENTY of women playing that game. I'd say in that topic where people introduce themselves it's what 50/50 male/female?
I honestly don't care for big boobs, I'd rather be with a girl who has a good personality and is attractive to me in general, not necessarily by virtue of having some delicious, curvy, supple and warm attributes... where was I? Oh, right. Even if I WAS attracted to gals with giant jugs, I would not be attracted to girls in videogames because I don't associate them with REAL PEOPLE, and most of the time they are NOT EVEN REAL CHARACTERS. Those curvy scantily dressed cardboard cutouts are placed in the games for the same reason they are placed in Hollywood blockbusters, to create sex appeal in order to attract people who go for that kind of mindless shit.
Oversexualization of female "characters" in video games is not a problem, it's rather a symptom of a condition, which is: most gamers ARE TEENAGE BOYS, WHO LIKE BIG BOOBIES, AND THEY THINK ABOUT SEX 90% OF THE TIME. They are immature, but they will get better with age (probably). Problem is, as you get older, you have less and less time to play videogames, therefore, videogames target audience will probably remain immature forever.
Anyway, here is a funny video about boobies:
Oversexualization of female "characters" in video games is not a problem, it's rather a symptom of a condition, which is: most gamers ARE TEENAGE BOYS, WHO LIKE BIG BOOBIES, AND THEY THINK ABOUT SEX 90% OF THE TIME. They are immature, but they will get better with age (probably). Problem is, as you get older, you have less and less time to play videogames, therefore, videogames target audience will probably remain immature forever.
Anyway, here is a funny video about boobies:
Edit: yeah, I think attaching "generally" to what are obviously generalizations to anyone with a brain is kind of unnecessary. Should I also put "I think" before everything I type, or can we all safely assume that people are sharing opinions here?CFriis87 said:
Is there some magic number that will successfully shame people into feeling a certain way?
The sad, harsh truth about the internet (and most of human discourse throughout recorded time) is that no one ever changes anyone's mind. Take a guy who buys and enjoys Dragon's Crown. You honestly believe a handful of articles about the overly sexualized female characters would dissuade him from making the same choice? How many articles must he consume exactly? What's the shaming threshold? Short of outlawing something, you can't erase a market like that.
You can tap a new market and give the industry greater balance, but that requires money and risk. I mean if it ever were going to happen, there will probably be some clear watershed moment wherein a developer punches through all of the preconceived notions and rakes in untold fortunes by appealing to more unique and intelligent tastes. I'll applaud it when/if it happens. But wringing our hands over the existing paradigm is pointless when we know "the solution". At this point we're just waiting for someone to put their money where their mouth is.
Incidentally, this would have been a far, far better cause for a Kickstarter than a series of videos examining and explaining what anyone with a brain already knows and recognizes.
Wow, those are some seriously interesting statistics. Thanks for taking the time to post that. Some numbers lack reliable conclusions, though.
Men are, apparently, more likely to commit suicide. Your claim is apparently this is because society treats them as inherently worthless. I would instead argue that Men are encouraged to be self-sufficient and furthermore supporting their family. Inability to live up to these expectations can lead to severe depression and suicide. Again I see no clear link to a theme of "disposability".
The apparent discrepancy in the laws seems to stem from the premise that mothers are inherently more responsible and more able to care for children, a belief that I find sexist and wrong. Has nothing to do with disposability, though.
Edit: The video does make some good examples of actual discrimination against boys, though obviously it is hard to tell whether this is an intended policy or a side effect of ignorance. I think the mindset behind the lack of measures is pretty well presented in the video: Teachers and administrators are ignorant to the specific differences in development and the resulting need for different methods. Everything is supposed to be one standard for everyone, and since girls happen to be easier to integrate into the current system, the choosen standard is girl. So the boys, as stated by the video, get treated as a foreign body, and suffer as a result. I am all for adressing that problem. I don't think it's intrinsically related with the videogame discussion, though.
What conclusions do you draw from these two statistics? It seem obvious that men are engaged in more dangerous jobs than women, and it seems likely that this is a cultural phenomenon. I would argue that this is caused by the fact that women generally migrated into the workplace via office jobs and healthcare and associated fields. The great historical disparity between the available jobs for the two sexes is still very much in place, so I don't know what other inferences we could draw from that.CFriis87 said:
Men are, apparently, more likely to commit suicide. Your claim is apparently this is because society treats them as inherently worthless. I would instead argue that Men are encouraged to be self-sufficient and furthermore supporting their family. Inability to live up to these expectations can lead to severe depression and suicide. Again I see no clear link to a theme of "disposability".
While I am dubious about the article, there is a very real problem with disparate treatment of fathers when it comes to support and child custody. I think this is being acknowledged by more and more countries nowadays, I know Germany has been gradually passing laws that made it easier for fathers to gain child custody and defend themselves against wrongful assertions of fatherhood.CFriis87 said:
The apparent discrepancy in the laws seems to stem from the premise that mothers are inherently more responsible and more able to care for children, a belief that I find sexist and wrong. Has nothing to do with disposability, though.
The difference in definitions is kinda fishy, I agree. Even if we take that into account though, women are still more likely to experience sexual violence and/or harrasment, in some areas vastly so.CFriis87 said:
There is good evidence for a significant problem with gender bias in court cases, especially with regard to sexual violence. There might be several reasons for this, the most likely seems to be that women are not generally viewed to be actively violent, but rather passive and kind. Which, funnily enough, is exactly the stereotype that appears in video games and in the case of court cases, leads to a disadvantage to male defendants. I guess we should really fight that stereotype, then!CFriis87 said:
I skinned through it, and could not find that number. Given that the only statistic that is even close to being even between the sexes is psychological violence (which seems to be close to 50/50), I find that statement unlikely, but I would be happy to be educated.CFriis87 said:
I cannot find any good number for funding, since its broken up between so many organisations. I personally do not remember prostate cancer research ever getting flak, so I don't think we can use that as any anecdotal evidence. Furthermore, funding for research isn't administered by a central agency. There might be any number of factors at work, and I don't see how we can draw meaningful inferences without venturing into conspiracy theorist territory.CFriis87 said:
Your fact sheet doesn't include one word about discrimination. It is, instead, a writeup about the very real challenges that boys face in school because male development, especially during puberty, works different from female development, and that disadvantages boys in the current educational system. It is an issue that has only recently come to light because, for the last centuries, girls have not have equal opportunities to boys with regard to education. I am still wathcing the video, but other than some groups lobbying against the reasonable (surprise!) I see no indication for any targeted discrimination.CFriis87 said:
Edit: The video does make some good examples of actual discrimination against boys, though obviously it is hard to tell whether this is an intended policy or a side effect of ignorance. I think the mindset behind the lack of measures is pretty well presented in the video: Teachers and administrators are ignorant to the specific differences in development and the resulting need for different methods. Everything is supposed to be one standard for everyone, and since girls happen to be easier to integrate into the current system, the choosen standard is girl. So the boys, as stated by the video, get treated as a foreign body, and suffer as a result. I am all for adressing that problem. I don't think it's intrinsically related with the videogame discussion, though.
I'm not saying that these statistics directly are signs of male disposability, I'm saying the lack of focus on these issues is a sign of male disposability.Stephen Sossna said:
It's not like nobody knew about any of this before I posted it here, just that nobody cared enough to do anything about it.
"The difference in definitions is kinda fishy, I agree. Even if we take that into account though, women are still more likely to experience sexual violence and/or harrasment, in some areas vastly so."
I assume you mean in some geographical areas, as in the western world, the "rape culture" found in prisons (prison rape was not factored in the CDC survey) and correctional facilities actually make men the most prevalent victims.
Here's a little extra:
94% of sexually abused youth in correctional facilities reported being abused by female staff. From: Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities, 2008-09. - http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svjfry09.pdf
Among inmates reporting staff sexual misconduct, ~ 65% reported a female aggressor. From: Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2008-09. - http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/svpjri0809.pdf
50% of homeless youth reported being sexually abused by a female. From: It?s Not What You Think: Sexually Exploited Youth in British Columbia. - http://www.nursing.ubc.ca/PDFs/ItsNotWhatYouThink.pdf
According to the 2009 United States National Crime Victimization Survey estimates, only 55% of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to law enforcement officials. When a male is raped, less than 10% are believed to be reported. Female-male and female-female rape are ignored altogether in this survey.
There are estimated to be over 300,000 male rapes per year in American prisons and jails.
Meanwhile A United Nations statistical report compiled from government sources showed that more than 250,000 cases of male-female rape or attempted rape were recorded by police annually. The reported data covered 65 countries... as opposed to the prisons and jails of ONE country.
I don't think I've ever heard of research into prostate cancer being criticized either, but I have heard petty criticisms leveled at the only fundraising even I know to be dedicated to it.
The OP's weak attempt at a several-months-too-late joke aside, it's not just me that sees gaming, and any media that was for the longest time targeted specifically at male adolescents, making big steps past the objectification of women stage, is it?
I mean, as a community, we basically laugh characters like Duke Nukem out of the room, now, and since I still excuse Dragon's Crown as a parody, it's been a long time since I've seen anything in games that can hold a candle to the way Image Comics was depicting women in the 90's (and probably still is today, I wouldn't know, because fuck Rob Liefeld.)
There's still a long road to travel, and it certainly doesn't help that the detractors of Anita Sarkeesian set the scale back a few years or so every time she releases a video, but I think we're getting there.
I mean, as a community, we basically laugh characters like Duke Nukem out of the room, now, and since I still excuse Dragon's Crown as a parody, it's been a long time since I've seen anything in games that can hold a candle to the way Image Comics was depicting women in the 90's (and probably still is today, I wouldn't know, because fuck Rob Liefeld.)
There's still a long road to travel, and it certainly doesn't help that the detractors of Anita Sarkeesian set the scale back a few years or so every time she releases a video, but I think we're getting there.
It's an avatar in a fantasy setting that has nothing to do with real life. Please stop seeing them as anything more than just that. These are feathers that need to stop being ruffled. We each have our little fantasies of who we would like to be and what we like other avatars to look like, but in reality those ambitions are very limited, and those worth having around keep fantasy and reality separate. Also this just isn't a problem with video games, it's the same in literature, movies, advertising, etc. Anything that can be deemed "entertainment" will have skewed versions of reality to make something seem better than it can be at times, or it allows us to live out our fantasies.
You're right, my bad, I got my studies and surveys mixed up.Stephen Sossna said:
This is my source for the stats on male victims of domestic violence:
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V74-gender-symmetry-with-gramham-Kevan-Method%208-.pdf
When I was a kid, boys did significantly better with the models of learning in school that were used then, and I'm only 26. This would indicate that something has indeed changed in the education system to benefit girls at the cost of boys.
The reason I'm bringing all of this up in a video-game discussion, is the claim that the objectification and depiction of men as disposable, is either not perpetuating a real life phenomenon, or at least not one that is as damaging as the objectification/sexualisation of women as seen in games and other media.
I'm bringing all this up to support my argument that the objectification of men in gaming is at least as damaging as the objectification of women in gaming. Not saying that men are committing suicide in droves over being objectified and dehumanized in games and movies, I'm just saying that the depictions of men in said media is somewhat representative of the collective zeitgeist in the western world.
Yes, I think we will. And maybe that's the real reason some folks are so butthurt? Sucks to be on the losing side of history.rob_simple said:
And, who knows, a number of years down the road, we might see a movie critic complaining about the dearth of good female characters in blockbuster movies, and point to games as a positive counter example? Wouldn't that be cool?
But who's losing here? If gaming becomes more inclusive, then surely that can only be a good thing? I always thought it was a joke that there were men who thought girls were coming to take their games away, surely people don't actually think like that?CloudAtlas said: