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Feminism in VideogamesFollow

#177 Mar 11 2013 at 1:22 PM Rating: Good
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Grady wrote:
The point is that you rarely see men put in the similar situation, and, perhaps as a result, we as a society give tacet acceptance to the "women are weak and men must be the hero" mentality. Sure, it could have been Mario's dog, but it's not. And, women in most video games on the market in the past and even today are weak, sexual objects to be rescued by the big, awesome male hero.
There are lots of violent young men with guns in video games too.

The whole princess rescue trope goes back thousands of years. I'm not so sure how detrimental or even relevant it is to gender equality in this age.

People being rescued from something - whether it's physical danger, or emotional rescue, or a financial rescue, is what life stories are all about. Sure, most 'physical' rescues are man rescuing woman, but there are many women and men who relate to that. it's romantic. It does makes use of the fact that women are in general not as physically strong as men.

But those stories are just one type among many. There are lots of games/movies/stories of men being weak morally or ethically - giving in to avarice or tempted by lust.... I'd hate to think we have to abandon those types of stories as well so as not to encourage that kind of behavior.

I think we have to give all people the credit of understanding the difference between real and make-believe. If we can't we have no business pretending at all, whether it be in writing or reading a book or playing a game.

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#178 Mar 11 2013 at 1:25 PM Rating: Excellent
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Smasharoo wrote:
Oh is that the criteria? Exclusivity? Since when has that mattered?

Since the point where people argued "Oh no, this woman is weak so that means we see all women as weak" and ignore weak males and/or strong females within the same setting.
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#179 Mar 11 2013 at 1:31 PM Rating: Good
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Smasharoo wrote:


Oh is that the criteria? Exclusivity? Since when has that mattered? "Well, we did make a game where you bang a hooker to restore health and then you can kill her to get your money back with no consequence, but we ALSO have a women who can shoot you with a minigun, so we're good, right?"
Are you sure that hooker was a woman?
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#180 Mar 11 2013 at 1:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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She WAS in the woman's room...
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#181 Mar 11 2013 at 1:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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If she only had a pistol she'd have been okay.
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#182 Mar 11 2013 at 1:36 PM Rating: Excellent
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#183 Mar 11 2013 at 1:43 PM Rating: Good
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Well, that'll make them easier to spot.
#184 Mar 11 2013 at 1:46 PM Rating: Good
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Since the point where people argued "Oh no, this woman is weak so that means we see all women as weak" and ignore weak males and/or strong females within the same setting.

Right, so the argument to that is somehow exclusivity? Wouldn't it be ratio? One strong woman to 500 weak ones equivocates to 500 hero archetype men and one weak one? I don't really care what media people produce or consume. I don't think it's a "problem" that women are portrayed as weak in media, but pretending they aren't is idiotic. If you want to make "***** killer 3d" where you stalk and kill prostitutes and people want to buy it, great, I'm fine with it. When you throw in a few gay hustlers and argue it's not presenting women as weak, it's not really addressing the issue, is it?
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#185 Mar 11 2013 at 1:53 PM Rating: Good
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So now we're angry about Gay Tony?
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#186 Mar 11 2013 at 1:59 PM Rating: Excellent
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Smasharoo wrote:
Right, so the argument to that is somehow exclusivity? Wouldn't it be ratio?

Ok, fine. Give me some games from the last year or two with wildly skewed ratios.
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#187 Mar 12 2013 at 8:10 AM Rating: Good
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Duke Nukem if you're going out of your way to be offended.
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#188 Mar 12 2013 at 8:23 AM Rating: Excellent
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People played Duke Nukem?
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#189 Mar 12 2013 at 8:37 AM Rating: Good
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I did say you'd have to go out of your way.
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#190 Mar 12 2013 at 10:16 AM Rating: Decent
Jophiel wrote:
People played Duke Nukem?

I ate that **** up. And I'm still out of bubble gum.
#191 Mar 12 2013 at 11:45 AM Rating: Good
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I played a bunch of Duke Nukem 3-D. It was one of the first decent fps games you could get for the PC. I don't remember any women it. Maybe I just didn't recognize them - or probably didn't pay any attention to them.
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#192 Mar 12 2013 at 12:27 PM Rating: Excellent
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Uglysasquatch wrote:

I don't dispute that there's a wage gap, I just want to make sure that when we're comparing things, with all things being equal, we're actually comparing things where all things being equal.


How about a double blind study?

Quote:
Nobody who is familiar with the literature on this will be surprised, but it’s good to accumulate new evidence and also to keep the issue in the public eye: academic scientists are, on average, biased against women. I know it’s fun to change the subject and talk about bell curves and intrinsic ability, but hopefully we can all agree that people with the same ability should be treated equally. And they are not.

That’s the conclusion of a new study in PNAS by Corinne Moss-Racusin and collaborators at Yale. (Hat tip Dan Vergano.) To test scientist’s reactions to men and women with precisely equal qualifications, the researchers did a randomized double-blind study in which academic scientists were given application materials from a student applying for a lab manager position. The substance of the applications were all identical, but sometimes a male name was attached, and sometimes a female name.

Results: female applicants were rated lower than men on the measured scales of competence, hireability, and mentoring (whether the scientist would be willing to mentor this student). Both male and female scientists rated the female applicants lower.


Screenshot


Link to original post on the pic.



Edited, Mar 12th 2013 11:28am by Olorinus
#193 Mar 12 2013 at 12:45 PM Rating: Excellent
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What's that graph tell me about Duke Nukem?
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#194 Mar 12 2013 at 12:50 PM Rating: Excellent
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You can shoot scientists without guilt, since they're sexist bastards anyway.
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#195 Mar 12 2013 at 4:15 PM Rating: Decent
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Some things that I noticed.

1. Women in fighting games often wear thong type outfits and often use kick moves.

2. Women in RPGs are typically healers.
#196 Mar 12 2013 at 4:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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Almalieque wrote:
2. Women in RPGs are typically healers.

Should translate this expectation into women playing support classes and healers in MMORPGs. We got some fun stories on our end from when my wife used to MT. Smiley: lol
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#197 Mar 12 2013 at 4:52 PM Rating: Excellent
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Speaking of MMORPGs, back when I played City of Heroes and hung around in the costumes forum, female players were every bit, if not more, likely to create sexy female character costumes as male characters.

CoH had a lot of women tanks and DPS classes as well but I think the removal from the fantasy paradigm may have helped that.
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#198 Mar 12 2013 at 5:40 PM Rating: Good
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I can't be the only one that never thought the Princess was kidnapped because she was female. At a young age it was always because she was a princess, a member of royalty, that she was taken.

If anything, Super Mario Bros. is sexist towards men. Bowser kidnaps 7 males but only 1 female. I'm gonna make a video about that now.
#199 Mar 12 2013 at 7:20 PM Rating: Good
xantav wrote:
I can't be the only one that never thought the Princess was kidnapped because she was female. At a young age it was always because she was a princess, a member of royalty, that she was taken.


See, I never even thought of it like that.

To me, the only reason Bowser kidnapped the Princess was because he knew Mario liked her and he wanted to make Mario mad. There was never any social subtext at all. People will read anything into.. well.. anything.. just to build a platform for their agenda.
#200 Mar 12 2013 at 7:39 PM Rating: Good
I never thought about why Bowser kidnapped the princess. I never really gave Bowser mich of a personality in my head because it was just a simple side-scrolling video game with as little backstory as possible.

And I admit to trying to make the sexy costumes in CoH. It was fun.

I don't know. It seems that games are evolving to an extent. I'm playing Skyrim the most at the moment, and it doesn't seem to be all "women are weak." And for every female bandit wearing a loincloth there's a male bandit wearing the same thing. Hell, you can get gay married in the game if you want. That's pretty progressive.

Then there's Portal, where the good guy and the bad guy are female characters (if you don't count Weatley, and who does?), and neither one is exactly sexy.
#201 Mar 12 2013 at 9:12 PM Rating: Good
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I never thought Bowser kidnapped the Princess. It was all a ruse to try to get Mario to accidentally fall to his death, so the Princess and Bowser could settle down together without fear of him stalking them.
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