Modern Feminism - What's the deal?

[Eroginous]

And, by all means, link to a video by someone who wanted to explore gender tropes in video games, and was threatened with rape by every mouth-breathing troll on the internet for her trouble, in your antifeminist crusade.

1. Video games are a form of entertainment. Discussing gender roles in video games is about as useful as discussing gender roles in movies. They are fiction, who cares if someone wants to create and sell a video game that depicts a woman as a 'damsel in distress?' Are you seriously trying to draw a parallel between video games and real life?

2. Which do you think is better? A society where men help women in need of it (damsel in distress) or a society where men just laugh at women for their misfortune? Remember, this is real life, not some fairy book story where damels are really super powered female heroes.

3. Being threatened over the internet is about as consequential as dating over the internet. Until it's spilled over in your real life, it's dumb to get all worked up over trolls and their rape threats. I mean seriously, you want equality, well be a man and take your rape threat like one.

[Slybak]

She is a scammer. She is not a gamer. She, the media 16x9 and TED have no interest in representing the truth or facts.

She asked for money to produce a set of videos and received said money for producing said set of videos. Clearly she needs the bitch beaten out of her, in a totally non-misogynistic way with a disclaimer and everything.

These goals being political power and influence just by claiming they are vicitimized.

Please submit your full name, physical address, and any other contact information in a clearly visible spot on the internet and then say something with which cowardly reactionaries disagree. In fact, you don't have to do any of the former; they'll gleefully do it for you, and then run around in circles justifying the harassment that inevitably ensues as some high-minded application of a venerated moral principle.

Then come back and tell me you don't feel victimized.

[Cybran]

2. Which do you think is better? A society where men help women in need of it (damsel in distress) or a society where men just laugh at women for their misfortune? Remember, this is real life, not some fairy book story where damels are really super powered female heroes.

The bigger question is. What game would sell better. A game where mario saves his princes or a game where saves his brother?

People dont realize that people dont value men nearly as much as women in the first place. Saving a woman has been seen as far more benefitial to society than saving a man.

[Slybak]

1. Video games are a form of entertainment. Discussing gender roles in video games is about as useful as discussing gender roles in movies. They are fiction, who cares if someone wants to create and sell a video game that depicts a woman as a 'damsel in distress?' Are you seriously trying to draw a parallel between video games and real life?

Forms of entertainment, as is culture in general, is a reflection of the values held by those who participate in them. The fact that the expressions of these values are symbolic is neither here not there; they are still expressions, and ones with a far-reaching impact. And you have to look at depictions in the aggregate, not as individual expressions that are completely decontextualized.

2. Which do you think is better? A society where men help women in need of it (damsel in distress) or a society where men just laugh at women for their misfortune?

False choice, and a fundamentally misandrist argument to boot. "There's no way we can teach men to treat women as fully autonomous human beings, so women should just get used to it because the only choice they have is between being locked in a cage or beaten to a pulp."

---------- Post added 2013-03-10 at 05:16 PM ----------

The bigger question is. What game would sell better. A game where mario saves his princes or a game where saves his brother?

People dont realize that people dont value men nearly as much as women in the first place. Saving a woman has been seen as far more benefitial to society than saving a man.

You're getting dangerously close to a real point; that misogyny victimizes men as well.

[Eroginous]

The bigger question is. What game would sell better. A game where mario saves his princes or a game where saves his brother?

People dont realize that people dont value men nearly as much as women in the first place. Saving a woman has been seen as far more benefitial to society than saving a man.

The point is that 'who saves who' is completely irrelevant. The type of story attached to a video game is going to have it's own implications along with it's own fan base. Some people enjoy the story where the guy saves the woman. Game companies are going to make video games for that fan base, and those fans are going to buy them. This idea that real life gender roles or feminism should shape what our video games contain is fallacious at best. The vast majority of video games out there feature many things that have no basis in reality, such as magical powers, fantasy creatures, alien worlds, fictional science, and gratuitous violence. If we made video games only with real life content in them, there would be no point to playing video games at all.

Forms of entertainment, as is culture in general, is a reflection of the values held by those who participate in them. The fact that the expressions of these values are symbolic is neither here not there; they are still expressions, and ones with a far-reaching impact. And you have to look at depictions in the aggregate, not as individual expressions that are completely decontextualized.

Extensive studies have shown otherwise. I could play a game all day where I blow people away with military grade weapons, and in real life still find the prospective act of doing so, completely abhorrent and wrong.

False choice, and a fundamentally misandrist argument to boot. "There's no way we can teach men to treat women as fully autonomous human beings, so women should just get used to it because the only choice they have is between being locked in a cage or beaten to a pulp."

It's not a false choice. There are women who need help every day. Women in every day situations where a man could just say 'you got it' and keep on walking. You forget that men helping women stems from common courtesy while conveniently assuming that men only help women because they are 'objects to be won.'

[Slybak]

The point is that 'who saves who' is completely irrelevant. The type of story attached to a video game is going to have it's own implications along with it's own fan base. Some people enjoy the story where the guy saves the woman. Game companies are going to make video games for that fan base, and those fans are going to buy them. This idea that real life gender roles or feminism should shape what our video games contain is fallacious at best. The vast majority of video games out there feature many things that have no basis in reality, such as magical powers, fantasy creatures, alien worlds, fictional science, and gratuitous violence. If we made video games only with real life content in them, there would be no point to playing video games at all.

This is going to turn into an anthropology lesson real fast, and I'm not sure you know what "fallacious" means.

One of the major functions of culture is that it is the means through which a group of people classify shared experiences and make value judgments about them. Culture, put simply, is the stories that we tell each other to communicate what is and what is not socially acceptable behavior. Religion is often the biggest facet of this, but so is entertainment. It is not a matter of what some individual expression of a symbolic experience tells us, but what they tell us in the aggregate. What do our stories have in common? You tell one kind of story often enough, to the exclusion of competing stories with different values, and it begins shaping the behaviors and practices of that group.

And the stories we mostly tell ourselves, especially in Western culture, are those of men who save women. Generally helpless women, at that.

Extensive studies have shown otherwise. I could play a game all day where I blow people away with military grade weapons, and in real life still find the prospective act of doing so, completely abhorrent and wrong.

And if your parents played that game all day. And their parents. And their parents. And so on, stretching back twenty generations? You think that would have zero impact on the kind of society you would live in and to which you would be expected to conform?

It's not a false choice. There are women who need help every day.

And there are men who need saving every day. And there are women who don't need saving every day. And there are men who need saving that may best be provided by a woman, or another man, and women in need of saving by a woman. But we don't tell those stories as often as the the one about the man saving a woman, because they do not conform to the expected relationship.

Women in every day situations where a man could just say 'you got it' and keep on walking. You forget that men helping women stems from common courtesy while conveniently assuming that men only help women because they are 'objects to be won.'

When that help comes from a sense of chivalric duty, culturally ingrained from eras of warrior codes which were nothing if not hostile to women, then its misogyny. If its help that comes from an anticipated reward of sex, it's even worse. To say that the damsel in distress trope is not built on either of these is to strain credulity.

[Eroginous]

This is going to turn into an anthropology lesson real fast, and I'm not sure you know what "fallacious" means.

One of the major functions of culture is that it is the means through which a group of people classify shared experiences and make value judgments about them. Culture, put simply, is the stories that we tell each other to communicate what is and what is not socially acceptable behavior. Religion is often the biggest facet of this, but so is entertainment. It is not a matter of what some individual expression of a symbolic experience tells us, but what they tell us in the aggregate. What do our stories have in common? You tell one kind of story often enough, to the exclusion of competing stories with different values, and it begins shaping the behaviors and practices of that group.

And the stories we mostly tell ourselves, especially in Western culture, are those of men who save women. Generally helpless women, at that.

Culture, even VIDEO GAME culture, exists as it's own entity completely independent of what we see in our film and video games. Smart people distinguish real life from video games instead of trying to imply that video game content has a direct result on real life culture. I'm almost positive you don't know what 'fallacious' means.

And if your parents played that game all day. And their parents. And their parents. And so on, stretching back twenty generations? You think that would have zero impact on the kind of society you would live in and to which you would be expected to conform?

Society evolves based on real live perceptions and values. Not based on what we see in a video game or movie. Hard concept, I know.

And there are men who need saving every day. And there are women who don't need saving every day. And there are men who need saving that may best be provided by a woman, or another man, and women in need of saving by a woman. But we don't tell those stories as often as the the one about the man saving a woman, because they do not conform to the expected relationship.

And no one said there was ONLY women who need help. The difference is that you're sitting here advocating a position that wants women to be treated as if they don't ever need help, and you attack a form of media entertainment which has absolutely nothing to do with real life. In a Zelda game, I don magical powers and magical items to embark on a quest to save a woman who was taken by an evil force. Please explain to me how that has ever once happened in real life, let alone how it's a common enough occurrence to where our real life culture expects women to be objects strictly for men's saving.

On the contrary, society has evolved in a way where increasing numbers of women are stepping outside of traditional gender roles. If video games were in any way responsible for gender role identification, women wouldn't be allowed to step outside those roles since most gamers are men and 'damsel in distress' is a popular form of video game trope. My guess is that games will continue to come out with stories where the men save the women, and real life will continue to NOT follow suit.

When that help comes from a sense of chivalric duty, culturally ingrained from eras of warrior codes which were nothing if not hostile to women, then its misogyny. If its help that comes from an anticipated reward of sex, it's even worse. To say that the damsel in distress trope is not built on either of these is to strain credulity.

I only said 'help.' Plenty of men are capable of helping women who need it based solely on the fact that they need it, with no expectation of reward or perception they will be receiving a prize. Again, you're assuming the worst to support your argument, and it's dishonest. No one needs to crucify the entertainment industry to prove that women are capable people.

[Sorrior]

This is going to turn into an anthropology lesson real fast, and I'm not sure you know what "fallacious" means.

One of the major functions of culture is that it is the means through which a group of people classify shared experiences and make value judgments about them. Culture, put simply, is the stories that we tell each other to communicate what is and what is not socially acceptable behavior. Religion is often the biggest facet of this, but so is entertainment. It is not a matter of what some individual expression of a symbolic experience tells us, but what they tell us in the aggregate. What do our stories have in common? You tell one kind of story often enough, to the exclusion of competing stories with different values, and it begins shaping the behaviors and practices of that group.

And the stories we mostly tell ourselves, especially in Western culture, are those of men who save women. Generally helpless women, at that.


And if your parents played that game all day. And their parents. And their parents. And so on, stretching back twenty generations? You think that would have zero impact on the kind of society you would live in and to which you would be expected to conform?


And there are men who need saving every day. And there are women who don't need saving every day. And there are men who need saving that may best be provided by a woman, or another man, and women in need of saving by a woman. But we don't tell those stories as often as the the one about the man saving a woman, because they do not conform to the expected relationship.


When that help comes from a sense of chivalric duty, culturally ingrained from eras of warrior codes which were nothing if not hostile to women, then its misogyny. If its help that comes from an anticipated reward of sex, it's even worse. To say that the damsel in distress trope is not built on either of these is to strain credulity.

Ok the chivalry comment did it. Do you have ANY idea what it's like to be even SEMI chicalrous these days? It's bloody horrible. Other men call you stupid or a "white knight" while the more extreme feminists just try to tell you how you're abusing women somehow.

No man chivalry is pretty nuch dead and those with even an ounce of it are mocked ridiculed and laughed at.

I for one seem to have at least some concept of chivalry as a form of genetic memory...Can't turn it off. Which has honestly caused trouble in modern times.

Oh and the whole helo fir sex thing? With chivalry almost dead is pretty much the go to reason now for most men.

See helping out of kindness/deaire to is a form of chivalry to me. It's what i often do. But it also causes alot of issues it seems.

Oh and funny thing my mom who has lived through over half of modern feminism(she's 69) actually agrees that some forms and changes are getting out of hand and will likely have bad end results.

She is no housewife however(though she did take time off from teaching for my sister and me). Hell she's the prinary provider right now. She has taught at both highschool and college levels while now working for a company that specializes in helpinf those with psychological/mental disabilities.

Her references should even be online if you need them.

So not all women think we're going down the right path.

Oh and can i just add maybe just MAYBE some of those gender roles existed for a reason.

Oh and bear in mind all of this comes from a guy who wants to be a househusband and is pro choice as well as pro equal woro chances and all of that...

But we DO have to ask at some point is this really for the best long term.

[Deleted]

If saving a princess in a video game creates gender stereotypes, then call of duty creates violent school shooters.

[Spectral]

If there's something that's dopey and kind of sexist in video games, it's plate armor bikinis in WoW. Ultimately, I think the art looks good though, and I think most people agree.

[Kasierith]

If saving a princess in a video game creates gender stereotypes, then call of duty creates violent school shooters.

I wouldn't say that it created stereotypes as much as it was a representative of a minor mentality mixed with very generic plot structures. A lot of older games didn't exactly have a lot of depth; you can't get much more simple than dodge the barrels to save the princess. I think that if you overthink it, you can argue that Mario is centered on a damsel in distress mentality, but overall that's just a project of making a game designed towards children and isn't even central for anything but lining up the objective. And most healthy individuals are going to quickly distinguish this difference between simplified fantasy and reality fairly quickly in their lives.

[Deleted]

If there's something that's dopey and kind of sexist in video games, it's plate armor bikinis in WoW. Ultimately, I think the art looks good though, and I think most people agree.

The game is mostly (but not exclusively) targeted at male audiences. So it's understandable. Men/boys in general like eye candy.

[Kasierith]

If there's something that's dopey and kind of sexist in video games, it's plate armor bikinis in WoW. Ultimately, I think the art looks good though, and I think most people agree.

There aren't nearly enough of those nowadays!

[Spectral]

I wouldn't say that it created stereotypes as much as it was a representative of a minor mentality mixed with very generic plot structures.

I think this is right; games might be involved in shaping mentalities, but I think they're more likely to be reflective of society than to create these sorts of things de novo.

---------- Post added 2013-03-10 at 03:33 PM ----------

There aren't nearly enough of those nowadays!

Which is why transmog is the best!

All my female toons are casters though.

[Deleted]

Which is why transmog is the best!

All my female toons are casters though.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=21663

I had that on my priest.. troll female.

[Zhangfei]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=21663

I had that on my priest.. troll female.

I'd hit the hell out of that Worgen wearing it.

Not the troll though, sorry Tiili. A man gots to have his standards.

[Endus]

If there's something that's dopey and kind of sexist in video games, it's plate armor bikinis in WoW. Ultimately, I think the art looks good though, and I think most people agree.

Even that's not "sexist". Plate armor bikinis are a trope for the same reason musclebound barbarians wearing only a fur loincloth are a trope. Fantasy characters are typically portrayed as idealized and hypersexualized. Both genders.

There's a bit of a shift just recently where men aren't being hypersexualized and women are, which is why you'll see men in WoW who are almost invisible under their dayglo armor while women are scantily clad (not to mention other games like TERA). But this is exceedingly new. Typically, when people attack this trope, they'll point to characters like Red Sonja;


Red Sonja is basically the prototypical chainmail bikini character; she's been around since '73 and is based on a '34 Howard character.

And, being based on a Howard character, that means the male equivalent is this;



They're from the same setting, and have worked together in the past; http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dStBa4ZtOV.../conan+_44.jpg

The point is, they're idealized. Part of that idealization has to do with body structure, and you can't see body structure if they're covered in plate armor. That's the root of why they're half-naked. So you can tell that they're idealized. It has nothing to do with misogyny, originally, it's just an art trope, and both genders got treated pretty equally in the process.

[Cybran]

All my female toons are casters though.

Sounds like someone is perpetuating gender roles. tctctc

Didn't you learn anything from Colin Stokes? Impressionable boys need to learn that their masculinity is toxic and have to accept the fact that women are better at everything, especially leadership, than them.

This is why My girl is tanking, raid leading and looking serious while she does it.

[Kasierith]

The point is, they're idealized. Part of that idealization has to do with body structure, and you can't see body structure if they're covered in plate armor. That's the root of why they're half-naked. So you can tell that they're idealized. It has nothing to do with misogyny, originally, it's just an art trope, and both genders got treated pretty equally in the process.

So kind of a call back to Michelangelo and the humanists, than? A focus on the strengths of the perfect body, the perfect structure with no barriers between you and the rawness of the human physique? I hadn't really thought of that before.

[smelltheglove]

If there's something that's dopey and kind of sexist in video games, it's plate armor bikinis in WoW. Ultimately, I think the art looks good though, and I think most people agree.

everybody knows that all vital organs reside in the breasts and groin. i thought you of all people would be more up to speed on biology! :PPP

seriously, i hadnt thought of that endus, and you have a point