That Gamers Women Trope Thingie #2 is UpFollow

The irony is that those who yell loudest about this subject seem to have a view of female power that makes the females appear to be as much like males as possible,

No. The irony is that people who assume that seem to have this view that characteristics like "strong, successful, competent, powerful", etc are somehow tied to gender. Wanting power equity doesn't make women appear to be "as much like males" as possible, assuming it does sort of makes the point about what the problem is. That said, video games aren't really the most fertile ground to pursue the cause in, being targeted at a demographic that's overwhelmingly 15-40 year old men. Escapist fantasy isn't going for realism. It would be like complaining about how unrealistic it is for AverageGirl1234 (Bella Swan, Katnis Everdeen, Elizabeth Bennet, etc) to suddenly be an all consuming object of love, lust, and adoration for every man that meets her. We all know Darcy would have hit that once and rolled back to Pemberly without waking her up the next day.

The problem starts in society. Women are often still portrayed in all mainstream media this way because sadly, the overwhelming majority of women still behave this way. My own mother is the kind that completely defines herself by her husband. Having a man is and was the most important thing in her life, even above her children. I love my mom, but I don't understand her and can only imagine that it's just a generational gap that is slowly disappearing as equality becomes more prevalent.

But then.. I see **** like teen mom and lose all hope again.

I don't think we will see much of a shift from the "Damsel in distress" stuff until there's an actual real life shift and the majority of women change their attitudes. Right now there's a minority of highly intelligent, educated, and mature females that are breaking into things like the IT industry and becoming high ranking corporate officials... But for every one of us there's 5 teen moms throwing their lives away on 15 miserable seconds with a teenage boy. When that ratio shifts, we'll see better representations of women in general.

You think if your Dad were to define his life, it wouldn't include your mother?

You can be intelligent, productive, well read and still cherish your partner.

Someone has to cook.

I would.

Most everything is an attempt to make the wife and kids' life better. Really I think a lot of guys are that way, it's just not always something they'll admit upfront.


Edited, May 31st 2013 8:58am by someproteinguy

Way ahead of you, I'm sure I'll have the other one ruined in a couple of years.


She'll do it to my wife and her little sister as well apparently. I dunno, just struck me as surprising.

Edited, May 31st 2013 9:05am by someproteinguy

I bet you forgot the coupons at home too.

I'd like to make some snarky reply implying she needed monthly womanly supplies, but I'd really be putting myself out there on the very tip of the weakest limb on the sexism tree.

Wonder if that counts as that mythical female power fantasy thing we've heard so much about?

Can the treasured carrots do laundry?

Treasured carrot sounds good. Those damsels are usually high maintenance anyway. Always getting captured again in the sequels and what not.

Carrot escort missions? Can I just put it in my pocket?

Lol, I had a friend a ventured around Middle Earth with in LotRO. Pretty sure s/he was a tad bit OCD and had to check every corner of every cave, nook and cranny. The explanation for the behavior was the hope of finding the Golden Poo.