maybe you should check the defenition of feminist. you seem to make a whole bunch of assumptions about us, and then argue against those assumptions, which isnt very constructive to this discussion. here is some clarification from wikipidia;
"Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women."
I'm not sure how you construe standing up for people to make what they want as being against the games my company has made. I personally kind of like trashy art anyhow, but I'm not so stupid that I'm unable to identify it.
How do you reconcile your decision to make trashy art while simultaneously believing that such content harms women by perpetuating negative stereotypes?
Do you just not care enough about the harm you're doing to stop?
maybe you should check the defenition of feminist. you seem to make a whole bunch of assumptions about us, and then argue against those assumptions, which isnt very constructive to this discussion. here is some clarification from wikipidia;
"Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women."
A nice and vague enough definition to paint anyone opposing it as a monster. Lovely. I imagine the wikipedia article goes on to cover a little feminist theory, which is where the real fun stuff is. The religious devotion to fighting the invisible "patriarchy" for one thing.
It's not a "social right" to interfere in the work of some other person because it offends you, especially if this is done through getting your country's government to do the actual dirty work. That's using censorship to force an agenda.
@Ninjas - you're deciding evidence of the actions behind feminist rhetoric is not valid, and using that to dismiss everything I've said?
How do you reconcile your decision to make trashy art while simultaneously believing that such content harms women by perpetuating negative stereotypes?
Do you just not care enough about the harm you're doing to stop?
Maybe you can quote me? I don't recall expressing that opinion.
[edit]
Also, if you think it's somehow hypocritical for an artist to make art they find objectionable, I think you don't understand art.
It's not a "social right" to interfere in the work of some other person because it offends you, especially if this is done through getting your country's government to do the actual dirty work. That's using censorship to force an agenda.
Maybe you can quote me? I don't recall expressing that opinion.
Sorry maybe I've misunderstood:
Do you believe that (as Anita Sarkeesian posits) stereotypes of women used in entertainment harm them throughout society?
"Harm" here used broadly as Anita Sarkeesian would describe it, basically anything from physical abuse, mental/emotional anguish, reduced career opportunities, etc.
I'm not sure how you construe standing up for people to make what they want as being against the games my company has made. I personally kind of like trashy art anyhow, but I'm not so stupid that I'm unable to identify it.
Also, we are not "producing" that game, David developed it -- 8 years ago, when he was in high school. Judging from your post history, if I was able to find something you made 8 years ago it would probably be in crayon.
I'm in this industry because I love video games as a medium, and it's pretty clear to me that if I don't make games I like, then nobody else will.
so this woman who has 160k+ needs you to stand up for her so she can get what she wants made?
its a fair answer what you have given but I just don't see why you would portray gamers as a whole as stupid, why you personally would support a company which perpetuates a stereotype you clearly find despicable, you are free as a company to remove your past works given you feel so strongly on female empowerment through games you would surely want to cleanse your past and remove this trope you fell into in your early days .
as for the crayon comment, post count and time on forums clearly equates to skill levels, if only I was sick more often and had more time to post on forums about feminism I would be a glorified CG expert no doubt! and then I could stop making "Trashy Art" :P.
as for the trope itself its weak to attack games in this regard and gamers reading level, all these themes go back as far as the Iliad or even the Odyssey, but then there's also marketing mass media, capitalism, target audiences, its not economically viable to throw away such tropes in the name of political correctness, I think the issue of positive black heroes is a far more under represented group in gaming, or Mexican/Latino, I can't think of one game where you play a Mexican which isn't a stereotype.
And that's one of my fundamental issues with feminism, it stands for the Equality of women, where as I simply believe in equality, and freedom, People are free to make a game anyway they like, and others are equally free to make it anyway they like, its art, if you don't like it, don't buy it, then it no longer becomes so economically viable.
And anyone that has played call of duty on xbox male or female has likely been bombarded with threats of rape and death,it happens, Welcome to the internet.
Wow, this thread is getting pretty crowded with straw men I'm not sure there's room for me! Maybe you guys should address what I said instead of some stupid bullshit you thought I meant because you can't read very well.
So I am going to dip my toe into the cesspool here.
Admittedly I have only skimmed the thread so I have probably missed some good discussion.
One of the biggest mistakes any particular person could make I feel is forcing a particular viewpoint onto anyone else (which hey is part of why this thread exist in the first place). The problem I am finding myself in whenever I boot up cghub or any other various art gallery is you are essentially bombarded with the same material over and over again (big boobed girls strapped into mech's that look like fuck machines for one example or as you see in alot of eastern ccg art girls that are being sexually exploited but often have this look of uncomfort to them that makes the art unsettling to look at).
The thing I have vowed to myself personally is the thing I hope to see more of. Content creators need to ask themselves what is the soul of the character/content they are making and learn to fill in the gaps with interesting material. Sexuality is fine as long as it has some context. Sexual exploitation is not fine when I am supposed to believe the girl strapped in power armor is supposed to be some hardened warrior when you have clearly put makeup on her and she has enough time to have ultra stylish hair and armor design all so cleverly designed to show off cleavage.
Sex is fine, it is a wonderful great act that brings joy into this world. There is just a proper time and place for it, hell one thing comics and such should start doing is having good girls with good morals who actually like to fuck. Far to often women are vilified by liking or wanting lots of sex.
The reason I'm able to post these dissenting opinions is that it hasn't truly happened yet. The point is that there are people (seemingly plenty in this thread) who would call for the "community" to self-censor (a fallacy, obviously groups do not think or act except to the extent of actual people inside the grouping) - resulting in the writing, the visual art, etc... of developers being bent to fit a third party agenda. In this case, if the Tropes Vs Wymyn thing becomes super-popular and ends up being demanded into law, any media not "correct" by that external, imposed standard would risk censorship.
But if it makes you feel better, you can just assume that I cannot have any valid view, I am simply against this kind of thing because I hate women and want to oppress them, etc etc. Also I am made of straw. EDIT:Wow. Really... Before this thread I never knew that telling someone "No, you don't have any right to say what I can or cannot make."is a strawman.
Wow, this thread is getting pretty crowded with straw men I'm not sure there's room for me! Maybe you guys should address what I said instead of some stupid bullshit you thought I meant because you can't read very well.
I'm asking because I'm interested in your opinion, sorry if my initial question assumed too much about it.
acid: kind of ironic that you think that feminist are paranoid and fightingn the ivisible "patrarchy", when you seem to have very exxagurated fears of censorship. if you would have one example to back it up, it would be a much more fruitfull discussion
I'm asking because I'm interested in your opinion, sorry if my initial question assumed too much about it.
I read a transcript of the first video because I found it too tedious to watch. I thought the content I read had a lot of problems, but like virtually all Youtube content, I found it unremarkable and not worth my time.
I do find it awesome how she is able to troll a quarter of the internet for months on end. That part is really remarkable.
so basically the "well then why wont YOU make a better game?"-argument again?
if someone critize something they think is wrong, it doesnt have to be backed by a complete solutuion of that problem. havent you ever complained about late trains? then i could say the same; "why dont YOU start your own railway company?"
point is, of course its legimite to JUST critize. critic rests on its on merits.
I have a bit of a problem with this. With any other field I'd agree 100% on that. But I feel video-games are different.
Consider even just the classic games that she's talking about. They were made in the 80s and 90s, some by just 1 dude, most by a very small group of guys. How is it that guys back in the 80s could do this, but women were inexplicably missing from that scene?
This is when the "society told women they can't" argument comes up. Which again, normally I'd 100% agree with. But video-games programming? Really? Society told men we can't do that either. Unless you believe that being a nerd, learning how to program on your own, and making video-games, all while basically creating a new industry, all during the 80s, was a choice guys did to be popular at school.
The negative stereotypes against nerds, programmers, and gamers are still huge today. As far as society is concerned, this entire field shouldn't have existed. But some guys saw past the bullshit, learned all the skills they needed in spite of the stereotypes, and basically created a new industry by themselves. But for some reason women just didn't. There was nothing stopping them back in the day from learning programming on their own, and going in and making games just the same. Or at least, the same things that would have stopped them applied equally to guys back then.
acid: kind of ironic that you think that feminist are paranoid and fightingn the ivisible "patrarchy", when you seem to have very exxagurated fears of censorship. if you would have one example to back it up, it would be a much more fruitfull discussion
You're possibly right about me here, but have you seen the amount of people (mostly Tumblr creatures) who want Bioshock Infinite banned or completely remade because they didn't feel that it catered exactly to their needs?
I read a transcript of the first video because I found it too tedious to watch. I thought the content I read had a lot of problems, but like virtually all Youtube content, I found it unremarkable and not worth my time.
I do find it awesome how she is able to troll a quarter of the internet for months on end. That part is really remarkable.
Understood, thanks for the clarification and again, sorry for getting ahead of myself.
I suspect the locked comments serves that trolling well. It forces everyone to spread it to other blogs/forums to post their opinions where they can fight it out with a bigger audience instead of letting it live on in isolation under her video where it's easy to forget about.
I have a bit of a problem with this. With any other field I'd agree 100% on that. But I feel video-games are different.
Consider even just the classic games that she's talking about. They were made in the 80s and 90s, some by just 1 dude, most by a very small group of guys. How is it that guys back in the 80s could do this, but women were inexplicably missing from that scene?
This is when the "society told women they can't" argument comes up. Which again, normally I'd 100% agree with. But video-games programming? Really? Society told men we can't do that either. Unless you believe that being a nerd, learning how to program on your own, and making video-games, all while basically creating a new industry, all during the 80s, was a choice guys did to be popular at school.
The negative stereotypes against nerds, programmers, and gamers are still huge today. As far as society is concerned, this entire field shouldn't have existed. But some guys saw past the bullshit, learned all the skills they needed in spite of the stereotypes, and basically created a new industry by themselves. But for some reason women just didn't. There was nothing stopping them back in the day from learning programming on their own, and going in and making games just the same. Or at least, the same things that would have stopped them applied equally to guys back then.
acid: yeah well all that seems unrelated to this thread
"Yeah well, I'm going to dismiss it"
Different subject matter, same formula.
I think x is an issue
therefore people should be controlled in order to make x what I decide it should be
Somehow I make myself believe this is fairness or equality or some other buzzword
@DKK
Wow. Seriously? You're going to make a blanket statement about all men saying that no man has been raped. What the shit.
Also, correlation =/= causation. If a 10 year old yells at a YouTuber and tells her to get raped, then she ends up getting raped later, the two things probably have nothing to do with each other. It's not "OMG PATRIARCHY I NEED FEMINISM"
@DKK
Wow. Seriously? You're going to make a blanket statement about all men saying that no man has been raped. What the shit.
No, not seriously. If he had meant that, he would have said "No man has ever been raped" Generally, you don't need to qualify every statement when the meaning is obvious. I will help you out this time -- he meant "men are almost never raped" or "men are raped vastly less than women"
No, not seriously. If he had meant that, he would have said "No man has ever been raped" Generally, you don't need to qualify every statement when the meaning is obvious. I will help you out this time -- he meant "men are almost never raped" or "men are raped vastly less than women"
So drawing character art with huge boobs is "oppressing" women, but trivialising the rape of men is fine because it's supposedly not as common?
Logic weeps.
acid, its very hard to discuss with you since you insist on projecting assumptions into this discussion. i cant answer for what every person who calls them selfes feminist post on tumblr.
EDIT: if you want to start a thread about men being raped, do it. please stay on topic here though
So drawing character art with huge boobs is "oppressing" women, but trivialising the rape of men is fine because it's supposedly not as common?
Logic weeps.
wow now this thread is really getting derailed. like i said, start a new thread about this since it has nothing to do with the topic
On topic: honestly, with no wit or condescending tone, do you see what I'm trying to convey? There's a frightening trend of behaviour, whether it will come to actually affect most people on this board or not, that follows the process of:
> I think x is bad
> therefore people who make x should be forced to change it
Which is clearly a violation of any kind of freedom people have these days. It seems to be usually justified by a net benefit to the abstraction of "society" while glossing over the acts of censorship that would be required and that affect actual people who are being told what they can and cannot do with their own resources, what they can or cannot deliver to their own audience.
haha i also like how everybody is super sad that the internet was so cruel to phil fish in that other thread, but compared to anita sarkeesian, its a drop in the sea, and people are all like; "yeah suck it up, its the internet" regarding her harrassement.
EDIT; acid, where you see something threatening, i see social change. i still cant think of an example where someone has been censored for not being feminist.
Reported male on female rapes in the US in 2010 -- 84,767
No idea why you would attack me for that one man. i was just pointing out that it happens. that it happens less is also true, but the fact that it happens at all on either side is just as bad.
haha i also like how everybody is super sad that the internet was so cruel to phil fish in that other thread, but compared to anita sarkeesian, its a drop in the sea, and people are all like; "yeah suck it up, its the internet" regarding her harrassement.
There is no shortage of people saying Fish was a thin skinned pussy that needed to walk it off because internet.
You make it sound as though there's some significant rift in how people received these two events when they look pretty similar to me.
No idea why you would attack me for that one man. i was just pointing out that it happens. that it happens less is also true, but the fact that it happens at all on either side is just as bad.
No idea why you would attack me for that one man. i was just pointing out that it happens. that it happens less is also true, but the fact that it happens at all on either side is just as bad.
Perhaps you think it's just as bad, but I personally think 80,000 rapes is about 26,000 times worse than 3 rapes.
Perhaps you think it's just as bad, but I personally think 80,000 rapes is about 26,000 times worse than 3 rapes.
Come on. You can't accuse others of strawmen and then take it as literal fact that only 3 male rape victims exist in the world.
Also, even if that was the case. If you got stabbed, does your experience improve simply because more people with a different gender got stabbed in unrelated incidents? No.
C'mon, chaps and chapettes, let's try to be above ad hominems, generalising statements, endless debates over who is being oppressed most and discussions over which kind of sexual assault is worst. At this rate the thread will see itself locked within mere hours. For what it's worth, I admit I shouldn't have made that comment I made a handful of pages ago, that was inappropriate.
Now! I think the topic of Spelunky and its damsel of choice is actually very interesting. Sarkeesian points out that it's pretty sad that you can replace the role of the woman in the game by a dog. Maybe, but I think that just goes to prove that they're not actually objectified women, but objects womanified, with the skin of a woman. They do not, after all, possess any quality that a man or a dog couldn't also possess. That's still bad! But it means that we're using a visual language in which 'this object has to be rescued' is most often represented by 'a woman', no doubt because it's effective. With a dog, you'd usually expect some kind of support from it at first glance, more so than from a princess. I suppose if you follow that reasoning, though, the problem at hand isn't so much the qualities that games are attributing to women, but the course of action towards women that it reinforces; the game doesn't necessarily speak of what women can or can't do, only that the job of a man is to rescue women, that they're the rewards. So are all romantic relationships that RPGs want to develop, despite all of the characterisations that take place in them. I'll have to think some more about this.
Another issue I've been thinking about: people routinely suggest Samus Aran as a good example of a strong female character. But! For the first Metroid at least, the only reason she is a woman is so that she can undress at the end of the game and 'reward' the player with a picture of a bikini clad woman; play better and she'll have less clothing. So while she's not a damsel in distress, the only difference between Peach and Samus is that the first is a diegetic reward and the second a non-diegetic, one rewards Mario who is you, the other rewards you directly. I'm not sure which is worse, and I don't think it matters much.
C'mon, chaps and chapettes, let's try to be above ad hominems, generalising statements, endless debates over who is being oppressed most and discussions over which kind of sexual assault is worst. At this rate the thread will see itself locked within mere hours. For what it's worth, I admit I shouldn't have made that comment I made a handful of pages ago, that was inappropriate.
Yeah, everyone, lets try to get this back on topic and drop the vitrol.
zwebbie: well the major difference is that, except being a reward(which is bad), she also is the player avatar which makes her do all the cool stuff like shooting monsters and exploring and such.
zwebbie: well the major difference is that, except being a reward(which is bad), she also is the player avatar which makes her do all the cool stuff like shooting monsters and exploring and such.
Saying that it's "bad" implies an objective standard, surely?
I guess the main issue I have with the spelunky thing is that I see the obvious irony in it, but maybe that is my "privilege" as a man or something.
But it also makes me wonder what place sarcasm, irony or portraying something in a semi crass manner to make fun of the opposite has in a PC world. Some would say if you can't do either of those without it offending anyone you're doing it wrong, but in a world of offendable people you're bound to offend someone nomatter what.
As for Samus, I think the main argument of her being a good female character comes from the the Prime games, or anything post Metroid 1, where she is just a woman, getting shit done. But therein you have the problem that she is just a silent protagonist.. doing her job, so is that the image then? We want women to just shut up and do things for us? Unless you count Other M, which many don't as it turned Samus into a whiny trope.
Does it really imply a moral standard? Or is it simply that Zwebbie finds it Immoral?
And is this not at it's core a moral debate?
Well, tt'd be interesting to know how many pro-feminist posters are in favour of some kind of legal intervention, as that transforms this from a simply academic and basically toothless debate into a debate where one side wants to silence and/or transform the other.
And no, I don't see this happening soon. I'm not putting on my tin-foil hat. Just saying that if this attitude of "waah, my feelings are hurt" is adopted by law, bigger problems would exist than "I don't like how that character is even though it in no way affects my life."
EDIT:
Metroid instructs women to be silent in the same way that Pokemon Red makes all men silent burglars and sworn enemies of PETA
If I had to try to add something actually productive to this discussion, it would be this:
Outside of obviously negative things like stereotypes that women are just terrible at math, physically inept, etc, I don't feel qualified to judge much.
For example, I'm sure there are plenty of large breasted, skinny females that are perfectly fine with those features being depicted as optimal. It seems largely a debate of women vs. women about what it means to be a woman, and so it doesn't have much to do with me.
While I don't want to make art that hurts people's feelings, it seems kind of unavoidable to some extent. I would like to be inclusive and considerate, for no other reason than I don't want to be an asshole, but in the case where I really like some idea that some people find hurtful, I will just have to weigh the merits and try to make a choice I can live with.
I have a hard enough time just dealing with what it means to be me, and what the best me would be like to care about trying to be super manly, and I care even less about women trying to define what's female.
Replies
"Feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights for women. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women."
Do you just not care enough about the harm you're doing to stop?
A nice and vague enough definition to paint anyone opposing it as a monster. Lovely. I imagine the wikipedia article goes on to cover a little feminist theory, which is where the real fun stuff is. The religious devotion to fighting the invisible "patriarchy" for one thing.
It's not a "social right" to interfere in the work of some other person because it offends you, especially if this is done through getting your country's government to do the actual dirty work. That's using censorship to force an agenda.
@Ninjas - you're deciding evidence of the actions behind feminist rhetoric is not valid, and using that to dismiss everything I've said?
Maybe you can quote me? I don't recall expressing that opinion.
[edit]
Also, if you think it's somehow hypocritical for an artist to make art they find objectionable, I think you don't understand art.
please show examples.
Do you believe that (as Anita Sarkeesian posits) stereotypes of women used in entertainment harm them throughout society?
"Harm" here used broadly as Anita Sarkeesian would describe it, basically anything from physical abuse, mental/emotional anguish, reduced career opportunities, etc.
its a fair answer what you have given but I just don't see why you would portray gamers as a whole as stupid, why you personally would support a company which perpetuates a stereotype you clearly find despicable, you are free as a company to remove your past works given you feel so strongly on female empowerment through games you would surely want to cleanse your past and remove this trope you fell into in your early days
as for the crayon comment, post count and time on forums clearly equates to skill levels, if only I was sick more often and had more time to post on forums about feminism I would be a glorified CG expert no doubt! and then I could stop making "Trashy Art" :P.
as for the trope itself its weak to attack games in this regard and gamers reading level, all these themes go back as far as the Iliad or even the Odyssey, but then there's also marketing mass media, capitalism, target audiences, its not economically viable to throw away such tropes in the name of political correctness, I think the issue of positive black heroes is a far more under represented group in gaming, or Mexican/Latino, I can't think of one game where you play a Mexican which isn't a stereotype.
And that's one of my fundamental issues with feminism, it stands for the Equality of women, where as I simply believe in equality, and freedom, People are free to make a game anyway they like, and others are equally free to make it anyway they like, its art, if you don't like it, don't buy it, then it no longer becomes so economically viable.
And anyone that has played call of duty on xbox male or female has likely been bombarded with threats of rape and death,it happens, Welcome to the internet.
Admittedly I have only skimmed the thread so I have probably missed some good discussion.
One of the biggest mistakes any particular person could make I feel is forcing a particular viewpoint onto anyone else (which hey is part of why this thread exist in the first place). The problem I am finding myself in whenever I boot up cghub or any other various art gallery is you are essentially bombarded with the same material over and over again (big boobed girls strapped into mech's that look like fuck machines for one example or as you see in alot of eastern ccg art girls that are being sexually exploited but often have this look of uncomfort to them that makes the art unsettling to look at).
The thing I have vowed to myself personally is the thing I hope to see more of. Content creators need to ask themselves what is the soul of the character/content they are making and learn to fill in the gaps with interesting material. Sexuality is fine as long as it has some context. Sexual exploitation is not fine when I am supposed to believe the girl strapped in power armor is supposed to be some hardened warrior when you have clearly put makeup on her and she has enough time to have ultra stylish hair and armor design all so cleverly designed to show off cleavage.
Sex is fine, it is a wonderful great act that brings joy into this world. There is just a proper time and place for it, hell one thing comics and such should start doing is having good girls with good morals who actually like to fuck. Far to often women are vilified by liking or wanting lots of sex.
The reason I'm able to post these dissenting opinions is that it hasn't truly happened yet. The point is that there are people (seemingly plenty in this thread) who would call for the "community" to self-censor (a fallacy, obviously groups do not think or act except to the extent of actual people inside the grouping) - resulting in the writing, the visual art, etc... of developers being bent to fit a third party agenda. In this case, if the Tropes Vs Wymyn thing becomes super-popular and ends up being demanded into law, any media not "correct" by that external, imposed standard would risk censorship.
But if it makes you feel better, you can just assume that I cannot have any valid view, I am simply against this kind of thing because I hate women and want to oppress them, etc etc. Also I am made of straw.
EDIT:Wow. Really...
Before this thread I never knew that telling someone "No, you don't have any right to say what I can or cannot make." is a strawman.
I read a transcript of the first video because I found it too tedious to watch. I thought the content I read had a lot of problems, but like virtually all Youtube content, I found it unremarkable and not worth my time.
I do find it awesome how she is able to troll a quarter of the internet for months on end. That part is really remarkable.
I have a bit of a problem with this. With any other field I'd agree 100% on that. But I feel video-games are different.
Consider even just the classic games that she's talking about. They were made in the 80s and 90s, some by just 1 dude, most by a very small group of guys. How is it that guys back in the 80s could do this, but women were inexplicably missing from that scene?
This is when the "society told women they can't" argument comes up. Which again, normally I'd 100% agree with. But video-games programming? Really? Society told men we can't do that either. Unless you believe that being a nerd, learning how to program on your own, and making video-games, all while basically creating a new industry, all during the 80s, was a choice guys did to be popular at school.
The negative stereotypes against nerds, programmers, and gamers are still huge today. As far as society is concerned, this entire field shouldn't have existed. But some guys saw past the bullshit, learned all the skills they needed in spite of the stereotypes, and basically created a new industry by themselves. But for some reason women just didn't. There was nothing stopping them back in the day from learning programming on their own, and going in and making games just the same. Or at least, the same things that would have stopped them applied equally to guys back then.
You're possibly right about me here, but have you seen the amount of people (mostly Tumblr creatures) who want Bioshock Infinite banned or completely remade because they didn't feel that it catered exactly to their needs?
Take a look at this: http://designislaw.tumblr.com/post/47313514087/bioshock-infinite-and-the-terrible-case-for-banning-all
"waah you should all be banned from writing and making things I don't like"
I suspect the locked comments serves that trolling well. It forces everyone to spread it to other blogs/forums to post their opinions where they can fight it out with a bigger audience instead of letting it live on in isolation under her video where it's easy to forget about.
emmm.... ? whats you point?
"Yeah well, I'm going to dismiss it"
Different subject matter, same formula.
- I think x is an issue
- therefore people should be controlled in order to make x what I decide it should be
- Somehow I make myself believe this is fairness or equality or some other buzzword
@DKKWow. Seriously? You're going to make a blanket statement about all men saying that no man has been raped. What the shit.
Also, correlation =/= causation. If a 10 year old yells at a YouTuber and tells her to get raped, then she ends up getting raped later, the two things probably have nothing to do with each other. It's not "OMG PATRIARCHY I NEED FEMINISM"
No, not seriously. If he had meant that, he would have said "No man has ever been raped" Generally, you don't need to qualify every statement when the meaning is obvious. I will help you out this time -- he meant "men are almost never raped" or "men are raped vastly less than women"
So drawing character art with huge boobs is "oppressing" women, but trivialising the rape of men is fine because it's supposedly not as common?
Logic weeps.
EDIT: if you want to start a thread about men being raped, do it. please stay on topic here though
I'm just trying to help you read better dude
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/man-abducted-from-train-and-raped-1557478.html < male on male rape
http://www.policymic.com/articles/33593/canadian-man-sexually-assaulted-by-four-women-showing-rape-goes-both-ways < female on male rape.
http://www.ibtimes.com/six-women-rape-man-death-nigeria-uroko-onoka-wealthy-nigerian-bentue-state-killed-his-six-wives < death by rape of women on man.
http://www.thegloss.com/2011/07/12/culture/woman-allegedly-rapes-would-be-robber/ < funny story in a way... guy tries to rob a hair salon, gets kidnapped and raped for a while, no charges pressed on either side.
On topic: honestly, with no wit or condescending tone, do you see what I'm trying to convey? There's a frightening trend of behaviour, whether it will come to actually affect most people on this board or not, that follows the process of:
> I think x is bad
> therefore people who make x should be forced to change it
Which is clearly a violation of any kind of freedom people have these days. It seems to be usually justified by a net benefit to the abstraction of "society" while glossing over the acts of censorship that would be required and that affect actual people who are being told what they can and cannot do with their own resources, what they can or cannot deliver to their own audience.
EDIT; acid, where you see something threatening, i see social change. i still cant think of an example where someone has been censored for not being feminist.
Wow, 3 world-wide... that sure is a lot.
Reported male on female rapes in the US in 2010 -- 84,767
I understand you are afraid, but I'm not, and I find the fact that you're afraid hilarious.
You'll have to tell me what it's like to be okay with the idea of controlling other people.
No idea why you would attack me for that one man. i was just pointing out that it happens. that it happens less is also true, but the fact that it happens at all on either side is just as bad.
It's rad!
You make it sound as though there's some significant rift in how people received these two events when they look pretty similar to me.
Also this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/wales/10169257/Woman-who-made-a-string-of-false-rape-allegations-is-jailed.html
Reported =/= true
Perhaps you think it's just as bad, but I personally think 80,000 rapes is about 26,000 times worse than 3 rapes.
Come on. You can't accuse others of strawmen and then take it as literal fact that only 3 male rape victims exist in the world.
Also, even if that was the case. If you got stabbed, does your experience improve simply because more people with a different gender got stabbed in unrelated incidents? No.
Come on. You can't accuse others of strawmen and then take it as literal fact that only 80,000 female rape victims exist in the world.
all rape is bad, what is wrong with someone when you must quantify it to suit a agenda?
Sorry, I have my degree in economics. It's pretty common to measure utility in that way, although we call it "science" rather than "a[sic] agenda"
Now! I think the topic of Spelunky and its damsel of choice is actually very interesting. Sarkeesian points out that it's pretty sad that you can replace the role of the woman in the game by a dog. Maybe, but I think that just goes to prove that they're not actually objectified women, but objects womanified, with the skin of a woman. They do not, after all, possess any quality that a man or a dog couldn't also possess. That's still bad! But it means that we're using a visual language in which 'this object has to be rescued' is most often represented by 'a woman', no doubt because it's effective. With a dog, you'd usually expect some kind of support from it at first glance, more so than from a princess. I suppose if you follow that reasoning, though, the problem at hand isn't so much the qualities that games are attributing to women, but the course of action towards women that it reinforces; the game doesn't necessarily speak of what women can or can't do, only that the job of a man is to rescue women, that they're the rewards. So are all romantic relationships that RPGs want to develop, despite all of the characterisations that take place in them. I'll have to think some more about this.
Another issue I've been thinking about: people routinely suggest Samus Aran as a good example of a strong female character. But! For the first Metroid at least, the only reason she is a woman is so that she can undress at the end of the game and 'reward' the player with a picture of a bikini clad woman; play better and she'll have less clothing. So while she's not a damsel in distress, the only difference between Peach and Samus is that the first is a diegetic reward and the second a non-diegetic, one rewards Mario who is you, the other rewards you directly. I'm not sure which is worse, and I don't think it matters much.
Yeah, everyone, lets try to get this back on topic and drop the vitrol.
Saying that it's "bad" implies an objective standard, surely?
I guess the main issue I have with the spelunky thing is that I see the obvious irony in it, but maybe that is my "privilege" as a man or something.
But it also makes me wonder what place sarcasm, irony or portraying something in a semi crass manner to make fun of the opposite has in a PC world. Some would say if you can't do either of those without it offending anyone you're doing it wrong, but in a world of offendable people you're bound to offend someone nomatter what.
As for Samus, I think the main argument of her being a good female character comes from the the Prime games, or anything post Metroid 1, where she is just a woman, getting shit done. But therein you have the problem that she is just a silent protagonist.. doing her job, so is that the image then? We want women to just shut up and do things for us? Unless you count Other M, which many don't as it turned Samus into a whiny trope.
Well, tt'd be interesting to know how many pro-feminist posters are in favour of some kind of legal intervention, as that transforms this from a simply academic and basically toothless debate into a debate where one side wants to silence and/or transform the other.
And no, I don't see this happening soon. I'm not putting on my tin-foil hat. Just saying that if this attitude of "waah, my feelings are hurt" is adopted by law, bigger problems would exist than "I don't like how that character is even though it in no way affects my life."
EDIT:
Metroid instructs women to be silent in the same way that Pokemon Red makes all men silent burglars and sworn enemies of PETA
Outside of obviously negative things like stereotypes that women are just terrible at math, physically inept, etc, I don't feel qualified to judge much.
For example, I'm sure there are plenty of large breasted, skinny females that are perfectly fine with those features being depicted as optimal. It seems largely a debate of women vs. women about what it means to be a woman, and so it doesn't have much to do with me.
While I don't want to make art that hurts people's feelings, it seems kind of unavoidable to some extent. I would like to be inclusive and considerate, for no other reason than I don't want to be an asshole, but in the case where I really like some idea that some people find hurtful, I will just have to weigh the merits and try to make a choice I can live with.
I have a hard enough time just dealing with what it means to be me, and what the best me would be like to care about trying to be super manly, and I care even less about women trying to define what's female.