Gender Issue Discussion

Well I feel sorry for you if the common held belief where you live is that men are the bane of every womans existence. Fortunately I don't live in such a community.

Secondly this:

Serious_Much wrote:That is unless you honestly belief that I think as a male we are simply a thorn in the sides of women and are the reason they have greater long term tolerance for pain, of course. I don't consider myself wholly informed on everything regarding the subtleties of gender issue, but I'm certainly not an ignorant fool, which you believing what I said as a serious statement implies.

I'm quite honestly staggered by how idiotic you think I am.

The difference is as you pointed out yourself and as we all agreed earlier on in the thread. Dragons crown as everyone agreed here in this very thread is not making fun of it (though I'm sure their PR team will attempt that excuse as a last gasp at saving face), and that the creative team of the game made a huge mistake, which I'm sure they are regretting while they sit home prepared for getting fired.

You're drawing parallels where there are none, and for what reason I honestly cannot imagine.

Edit: I'll split the thread now.

Problem is though, the game isn't really 'art' in the way that it requires interpretation based off almost nothing to go off. It's narrative- that changes the ball game.

In narrative, things are much more clear, and in my opinion there's no room for doubt unless the creator wished there to be so (Endings of inception and sopranos are examples). If the creator had intended it as a joke, since it is such a controversial and prominent topic he would have made it more obvious and as with the fashion in narrative with central themes do everything but rub our noses in the fact it is a parody. His/her failure to do so is all the justification I need to, not think, but know it's not intended that way. The fact the general consensus agrees with my opinion is no coincidence, it's because that's just how it is. No two ways about it.

I also can't help but appreciate the irony that now I've split the thread my whole post was based on the game

I didn't know you could take posts from one thread and move them to a new one... 

I'll repost:


For parody or satire the game would have to take those qualities it is satirizing and portray them in a negative, weak or otherwise hindering light. In this game however, the tropes are empowered beings who succeed and triumph. They may invoke nostalgia of a past time, and as such, the game becomes an emulation. That is problematic when the game it is emulating is from a time of embedded and accepted sexist imagery, and the game furthermore lacks any of the usual prompts that indicate satire.

Again, you don't know.

What if the developer went, "We'll put the girls in sexy positions...In full armor!  It'll be so retarded people will have to get this is stupid, no one will ever think that is sexy.  We'll make the Amazon super buff too, it'll be ridiculous, the Sorceress will have melons so big they couldn't function."  

Again, they might have been trying hyperbole.  It is not my personal belief that they are but it is an interpretation to consider.  We shouldn't consider only our own interpretation of a work.  And it being a narrative changes absolutely nothing, zilch, zero about it and I have no idea why you brought that up.

Intention is always subject to interpretation of course. However that doesn't detract from the issue if the outcome is sexist imagery, intentional or not. If it's poorly executed art that mistakenly lands as sexist, the images exist nonetheless, and are disseminated to the populace, and if the artist allows that to persist then those images become part of the sexist lexicon. Simply saying a sexist image was not intended in a sexist way does not disarm the power of the image. Only revisions to either the image or context they are presented in can change their meaning at that point.

Oh no I'm not saying they did it well if that was their intent, if it was their intent I think they did it in a piss poor way since they really didn't go off the walls enough to make it apparent to everyone it wasn't supposed to be serious.  If they meant it that way things should have been super crazy overboard, when you want to do hyperbole you should go balls deep so everyone possible knows it is ridiculous.  There is a difference between, "Our economy is bad so we should blame it on the (ethnicity)", and "Our economy is bad we should EAT OUR OWN CHILDREN" in regards to fiction.  One is something people actually did, the second is clear insanity and parody.  Now if you start with the first and lead into the second you can show the true ignorance in both and give off a proper satire in my book.

I just think some things should be considered.

Did the person intend harm?  Did the person mean something good but screwed up?  Are they just stupid?  Are they totally oblivious?  Are they themselves victims of something? (More of a cop out one than anything else)  Do they mean well but are horrible people?  Do they mean something horrible but are so crazy it comes off as satire?  

I just like to consider these things.

The reason I brought up it's a narrative is it gives us a more informed look at it's intentions. Whereas conventional art, such as modern art as we see coming out now days is wholly different. THAT is open to interpretation. You look at something like that, you will not have much idea at all.

The narrative of the game however shows itself on more occasions. It's not really as open to interpretation, in fact in most narratives (especially the simple ones that most games employ, as this does) are pretty obvious as to the intentions of the creator, and this gives us more than enough. It throws fan service at us. Fan service is not ironic. It is not parody. It is just objectifying women for the pure pleasure of the fans so inclined. Simple common sense shows it to be sexist. The ideals of the creator are pretty obvious to me- lets put a sexy girl in it to boost sales. There's no quick wit in that, just a dinosaur of a sales technique that has long gone past it's sell by date.

To be fair Tolvo in terms of the creator being a victim they aren't left with very favourable options- they're either a victim of their own bigotry or ignorance.

If a creator at a young age was sexually assaulted by a man for instance, and there was some anti-men things hidden in a piece you would probably realize that and go, "Oh, so that's why that was there.  Something terrible happened to them and it changed their view of the world."  I'm not saying it is acceptable, just something to consider.

It being a narrative changes nothing.  Maybe it's because I'm into books more and understand that often narratives can be used to give a warped view of something.  I'm not sure how the game goes about it personally since I'm not really interested in it.  But if I can use an example, a Catcher in the Rye.  That book is narrated by a young character that thinks he knows everything and is very opinionated.  You get berated with ideas, and "facts."  The whole thing is actually making fun of that concept, he isn't a narrator you can trust and was designed as a way to satire such people especially youngsters that think they know everything about the world better than those that have lived through it.  Narrative can be deceptively used, you can have narrators that are supposed to be stupid, and misrepresent the events.  Let's not forget the concept of Gonzo.

And those are good things to consider.   They deserve the benefit of the doubt when determining intent but I also don't believe it unfair to expect institutions and individuals to correct their mistakes if they made oblivious choices.  In the instance of Dragon's Crown, the starting point has to be admitting that the imagery is sexist.  Now, the next step must be either they say

"this imagery is sexist and we stand by it"

or

"this imagery is sexist and since it is unintentional/regretful we are going to change that by doing xyz".  

The unacceptable answer most institutions and people give is

"this imagery is sexist and we are going to stand by it even though we don't support it".  

That kind of maneuvering creates murkiness, passes responsibility to nebulous parties and is the very crux for persistence of sexist tropes.

Call a spade a spade and take responsibility for the choice one way or another.  The former is professional suicide and deserving as such, and the latter is honest revisionist discourse that pushes societies forward.

Oh yeah I'm not going to argue that they shouldn't own up to it, they morally should though for the sake of business they'll likely never comment on it.  Though the polygon review pointing out the sexism was actually given a thumbs up by the developers and called their own fans sexist essentially for rejecting a review just since a woman made it and she gave her impression of how it made her personally feel.

I know I've accidentally made offensive characters in the past myself, but when I notice it I correct it and admit, "Jeez.  I was just throwing elements together and didn't even notice I did THAT.  Sorry about that it doesn't represent my views, it was an accident."

We'll see how it is dealt with I guess. It's already released in japan and tomorrow in america..

Think they'll patch it or something?

Back to something this links to- usage of sexuality to boost sales and popularity of something. It's everywhere. I wonder where you all draw the line on this. If films do it is it bad? What about music where the singer is likely doing to on purpose? (Rihanna for example) What about books like fifty shades of grey? (never read it obviously, but I'm sure there's something in there)

Patch is doubtful. They will take option 3 mentioned above, out of laziness, costs and indifference. They knew about the negative press throughout most of development, and it didn't sway their decision to go gold with it. As far as the line goes, sex should be confined to sex. I like my sex in my sex only. Not in my football, my beer, my cars, my music, my games or my movies. I don't need to be pandered to. It's a ridiculous and irrelevant approach to marketing. I like coffee a lot. It isn't related to football. Don't sell me football by having the players throw coffee beans instead of footballs. We would all scoff at the preposterousness of that, so why do we say nothing when a girl in a bikini kicks a football? If I want sex, I'll go have some.

I think there is some merit to it working well in the context of the wrestling industry.  

skarekrow13 wrote:I don't think there's a need to apologize Pendant.  I, for one, think it's a good discussion.  I don't think it's what you intended about the game but it's an opportunity for those of us who feel it's necessary to state our points and attempt to educate like we say is important.  

It's been a little more heated than my "Your name is a color" thread I think, but I also feel that this community has enough respect floating around to get through this mostly unscathed.  

I'm with Skare on this one, Pedant


Perhaps by discussing all this we won't "change the world" or "change the human nature to good" or anything but,

People who are reading this will get to know many opinions about important topics that should be discussed on real life, liking or not. Right now reading on these comments I remember myself having such important conversations with my parents, and thank God for the great education they gave me. I'm saying this because many of my friends didn't had this education and by the dangerous age of 17-18 they're still people who don't have personal opinions on anything and follows the media step-by-step. I'm still young and learning, but I'm sure that when I get to teach my children, they'll have the same or better education than I had, and this topic greatly contributed for it

That's about how I feel (what E said). With marketing I want to know why your product is the best option for me. Beer commercials should talk about flavor or the process to make it (good work Sam Adams). Funny commercials are alright like Dos Equis' most interesting man but they generally don't sway my opinion (and those have some unnecessary elements too). I wish cheerleaders did more cheerleading and less dancing with skimpy clothing. Interact with the crowd. Get people loud. Like the mascots. I don't think they're actually necessary but it can be done well. At the professional level they could add males for instance. If there's sex in a movie or book fine. As long as it fits the story. Dark Tower: fits. Most blockbusters: it can be safely cut

By the way I do agree, it's actually a reason I generally can't enjoy anime.  I'm watching something and it seems okay, then suddenly panty shot.  Then another, then another, then beach episode, and I've quit.

It's actually why I don't play as female characters generally in video games, Dark Souls is one of the only games I can play as a female character in and not feel like a creep, or get offended.  Generally I'm just running around in my Knight Armor and i forget the gender of my character until I swap out a head piece or something, and I quite enjoy that.  

The only case is books, where often female characters are just female.  It is probably because you can't see the characters so in ways it is harder to sexualize them outside of romance novels, though there are a fair share of books that only use women as romantic interests.

50 shades kind of just seems like dumb erotica for women, but I can't give a real opinion of it since I refuse to ever read it.

Saturday-Saint wrote:

PlasticandRage wrote:Youtube is terrible.

I quite like the place.

Twitter has always been fine for me, except for the 140 character limit.

That was taken out of context I think. I love Youtube. It's probably up there among the websites I've spent the most time on total of anything else on the internet. I mean in my experience it's generally been a terrible place to have civil debate that's taken seriously by both sides and not either just be attacked or totally bombarded by meaningless nonsense as a result.

Plastic on a video about women being accepted as gamers for Youtube Reacts I had to read through 3,000 comments on that video.

In my opinion 4chan /B is better than youtube.

When you read comments from people referring to a scientist as "Just another blub(Blubber)" you die a little inside.

Yup. It's just difficult to have any kind of cohesive conversation, let alone debate, in that setting. It works a lot better in places like this where it's just a few of us talking, and entering into the discussion already having a mutual respect and desire to be civil. It's just not the same there. There's just too many people, and waaaaay too many people with the desire to throw wrenches into any kind of conversation being had, regardless of the topics, just because they have fun doing it.

In manga and anime I just tolerate it. I find it dumb honestly, but im not naive enough to not know there are people who are attracted to drawings like that.. But generally it's made to just be there as a thing if you like it. If I see something though that is full on fan service I'll just skip it. I guess I could applaud the mangaka's adept skill at drawing even, round lines on their paper.

TV I just accept they pick more attractive people. There are some actors/actresses who get put through despite their looks (and generally are good actors), but sadly they get put in roles purposely to play off their lack of appeal, or to make importance out of their growth of sex appeal (eg peggy in mad men). An example of this that made me laugh was I saw a news sotry the other day that David Beckham (yes the footballer) got offered a movie role. No prizes for guessing why lol.

Female characters in video games I feel are done a decent amount of justice. I think most story driven games do well with the female character front, though that could mainly be due to the range of characters they have.

Stepping back in real quick to ask a question I just read someone else on another forum ask.  I know the people here so I can better appreciate the discussion here than there, so I thought I'd unofficially repost/ask it.  Anyway, for those unable/unwilling to click the link, the question is:

"Ever Notice that you tend to kill more men then women in video games, why is that?"

I exhausted my mental chops on this kind of thing last night, so I can't say I have a detailed personal opinion on the matter right now.  Especially having only just now stumbled across the topic.

Because men are more typically found in combat roles.

No shhh people dont want to hear it from the other side. But on a serious note thats a very good point but unfortunately most people ignore it because they want to be correct, and I can say the same about this topic as it focused completely on women I for one see the male characters as highly sexualized but that gets completely ignored