Really nice find Poop! Enjoyed them but being a guy I felt all guilty like which gotta mean something... And the manic pixie thing (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind) really bothered me because I never seen it as something derogatory...
i'm sorry if this thread is specifically about videogame gender studies, but here's a recent speech about the issue of congruity in the game industry that I found interesting.
That'll require a whole other thread.
we could name it "the gaming elitism" or "why my taste is better than yours"
It is true, but the result is that feminists are quick to chop off everything thar resembles a stick in any way.
Any small issue that might be harmless creations of someones personal experience, like a heterosexual man creating a male-centered story where the female partner ends up in a fridge, which really only is the result of the creators own personal experiences and the fear of losing close ones.
Or the classical prince saves princess, which comes close to being verboten and removed as a quest to enforce equality with new childrens books being rewritten in weird ways.
i don't think this is the problem at all. i honestly believe there would be no issue with men portraying women they way they want if that wasn't the ONLY way they were ever portrayed. Guys are never going to get tired of looking at boobies and scantily clad women, or being the hero that saves the poor damsel in distress. the problem is women have no choice in how they are portrayed, and never have. women have had no chance to even define their role for themselves, only to serve one of the premade roles created for them by a man. Men get to be portrayed as the bad ass heros that kill predator, save the world from a robot attack or alien infestation, race car driver, jet pilot top gun bad ass, what guy doesn't want to be those things? he still gets the opportunity to be portrayed that way even if sometimes he is portrayed as a child molester or wife beater.
women only get to see themselves has housewives or sluts, prostitutes or man servants. think if every movie ever made that has a man in it was like a lifetime channel movie. where men are always the bad, beating, raping, murdering psychopaths? and think if there was nothing you could really do about but bitch about how that's not how you like to be seen by the rest of the world, or how you don't want you son to grow up thinking that's how your suppose to act to be a real man.
i don't think any feminist is really attacking your freedom of speech to tell the stories and scenarios of your fantasies, i think they are reacting to the lack of freedom they have to be portrayed in a way they would like. and i think getting pissed off and grinding an axe is a perfectly acceptable way to react if your back is against the wall. it doesn't mean that is going to help the cause, or create a dialogue men are going to want to partake in, i just think its a perfectly natural reaction.
i don't think this is the problem at all. i honestly believe there would be no issue with men portraying women they way they want if that wasn't the ONLY way they were ever portrayed. Guys are never going to get tired of looking at boobies and scantily clad women, or being the hero that saves the poor damsel in distress. the problem is women have no choice in how they are portrayed, and never have. women have had no chance to even define their role for themselves, only to serve one of the premade roles created for them by a man. Men get to be portrayed as the bad ass heros that kill predator, save the world from a robot attack or alien infestation, race car driver, jet pilot top gun bad ass, what guy doesn't want to be those things? he still gets the opportunity to be portrayed that way even if sometimes he is portrayed as a child molester or wife beater.
women only get to see themselves has housewives or sluts, prostitutes or man servants. think if every movie ever made that has a man in it was like a lifetime channel movie. where men are always the bad, beating, raping, murdering psychopaths? and think if there was nothing you could really do about but bitch about how that's not how you like to be seen by the rest of the world, or how you don't want you son to grow up thinking that's how your suppose to act to be a real man.
"Only" is a bit strong.
Not all movies, not even a majority will enforce those ancient roles, most movies will feature a wide array of female roles, but sometimes we'll get the occational hysterical woman or housewife, and sometimes we'll get the nearly always male pedophile or rapist,
mostly because these things exist, but we're quick to shout "oh no the woman was portrayed as a housewife", and some excuse for a human might think "that's how women should be"
Maybe I'm lucky in my taste in series and movies, and exposing myself to cinema other than just the regular hollywood stuff though.
If anything we could use more female lead, not because it is sexist to not have a female lead, but because the variety could be good, and we occationally get good movies with good female leads, even in a male-dominated industry.
Which brings me to use mass effect as an example, wouldn't this series have been a pretty male-dominated series unless you were given the choice to create a female character with the exact same events and choices but from a females perspective?
Things like this is good, more variation but with the same old recipe.
i don't think any feminist is really attacking your freedom of speech to tell the stories and scenarios of your fantasies, i think they are reacting to the lack of freedom they have to be portrayed in a way they would like. and i think getting pissed off and grinding an axe is a perfectly acceptable way to react if your back is against the wall. it doesn't mean that is going to help the cause, or create a dialogue men are going to want to partake in, i just think its a perfectly natural reaction.
Oh no, I'm not worried about my freedom of speech, I'm more worried about other females getting the side-effect of *some* of the feminism, such as the ones who *do* want to be the princess, or the object of her partner, or someones muse, or don't mind the occational housewife portrayal, or might even find joy in one of the less harmful stereotypes.
Or she might be looked down on by other women for being close to "unrealistic idealistic physique" for being naturally thin and being called a skinny bitch, a result of the campaign against the man-created ideals = big is beautiful, skinny is ugly.
I'm highly for equality with the full freedom of being unequal, without anyone being treated less than human.
I find it the most important to grind in the aspect of equal rights into every human early on in life, so that we *do* have the freedom to play around with stereotypes, flawed characters or sexy hyper-idealistic ones without anyone feeling any less about any person.
Not all movies, not even a majority will enforce those ancient roles, most movies will feature a wide array of female roles, but sometimes we'll get the occational hysterical woman or housewife, and sometimes we'll get the nearly always male pedophile or rapist.
Well first, the reason rapists are almost always portrayed as males is because the vast majority of real life rape cases are male on female rape. Wasn't it you that claim we need to stick to real life and what works in cinema or we'd have arty farty flicks? Someone said in this thread anyway. A female rapist or pedophile* would be fresh, but wouldn't be able to really pluck upon most people's fear, since the stories we get hammered into our heads to watch out for are men in the bushes, not roving women popping out from under our car to drag us off into the park.
*of which there has been one, I forget the movie, but it was a 30 some year old woman, with the Judie Dench (who plays a possible lesbian obsessed with the female lead), and a 16 year old boy, set in britain I believe, it was quite good.
And second, Yes plenty of movies have women in them, but going back to the original videos, they are often used more as plot support rather than written as full characters with agency. Even when they are written as full people, they will often be alone in an otherwise all male cast. Not even Sex in the City has the reverse true of a sole man in an otherwise all female cast.
So really I think "only" is quite an appropriate word. Yes you might watch more well rounded non-hollywood movies, but does the average 8 year old girl?
Well first, the reason rapists are almost always portrayed as males is because the vast majority of real life rape cases are male on female rape. Wasn't it you that claim we need to stick to real life and what works in cinema or we'd have arty farty flicks? Someone said in this thread anyway. A female rapist or pedophile* would be fresh, but wouldn't be able to really pluck upon most people's fear, since the stories we get hammered into our heads to watch out for are men in the bushes, not roving women popping out from under our car to drag us off into the park.
*of which there has been one, I forget the movie, but it was a 30 some year old woman, with the Judie Dench (who plays a possible lesbian obsessed with the female lead), and a 16 year old boy, set in britain I believe, it was quite good.
I don't see every old man as being a pedophile just like I don't see every female being a housewife or a damsel in distress, but if the movie is good and it happens to be about a pedophile or a damsel in distress I don't mind it at all.
And second, Yes plenty of movies have women in them, but going back to the original videos, they are often used more as plot support rather than written as full characters with agency. Even when they are written as full people, they will often be alone in an otherwise all male cast. Not even Sex in the City has the reverse true of a sole man in an otherwise all female cast.
Again, that is not a bad thing, it's just not varied, most secondary characters will end up quite dull in a bad movie, and the main character will end up being a male in most cases.
I praise the lord'ah every day for the fact that women are not like in sex in the city, but then again, that series rapes you with stereotypes from every direction.
So really I think "only" is quite an appropriate word. Yes you might watch more well rounded non-hollywood movies, but does the average 8 year old girl?
Probably not, but if she's fortunate she'll have parents there to teach her good values.
Which again is the core of just about everything I've said, people are the problem, not the media that they get skewed by, as the very clear weakness in people to be so easily skewed shows a bigger issue than just this, they'll be skewed by anything.
Which again is the core of just about everything I've said, people are the problem, not the media that they get skewed by, as the very clear weakness in people to be so easily skewed shows a bigger issue than just this, they'll be skewed by anything.
Do you actually have a kid yet? I don't either, but am preparing to foster, and the number one fear I have, and that current parents I ask, is how to prepare them for life. You can give them the best instruction ever, perfect ideas of justice, equality, fairness, sharing, blah blah, but they leave your walls, they see TV, they watch movies, read comics, go to school with little shits from bad parents, etc.
Yes, upbringing is infinitely important, but this idea that we can fix societies injustices with just good parenting, rather than also concurrently making positive adjustments to how our media is made (and really, aren't we game artists at least partially in control of how we portray men/women in games?), these issues are not going to go away or get fixed.
Also this idea that *anyone* who absorbs media on a daily basis is somehow immune from it's affects is a bit naive. There have been myriad of studies, showing that advertisements, movies, comics, etc all affect us, they get in our brain, we think about them, and as a whole, they can shift our ideas of what reality is like. If the vast majority of media and popular culture depicts women as sexual objects and lesser than men, it will affect all of us, even those conscious of it and trying to avoid it.
Could you clarify this? I'm not near as invested in this and i still read your post as saying 'but what about the men?';
ie:
Women ARE the only ones who get the short end of the stick -- the short end of the stick is widespread societal discrimination. Both sides have some discomfort, but one is SIGNIFICANTLY better off.
If I am actually saying, "what about the men", how does that automatically mean that A:My intent was solely to "Derail" And that B:I automatically believe and am therefore stating that prejudice against men is exactly equal to and thus cancels out prejudice against women?
In this thread alone, it would seem the only people who want to marginalize and state that one gender has no prejudices against them worth talking about, and pretty much do not exist, are those fighting so hard to tell us that people like this woman know what they're talking about.
I think your "there's only one stick" analogy is a great example. By stating that there is only one stick, and that women are the only ones who get the short end of this stick of "widespread societal discrimination", you're automatically eliminating anyone else from being compared, discussed, or thought about in any way other than "privileged".
Does anyone not see how weighting a scale with only the problems of only one gender group, coming to the conclusion that this one group is the only one who's getting the short end of any stick, is inherently flawed? You do understand that the point of view of people like the women in this video do not actually consider how sexist her own opinions and conclusions are? Many of her conclusions and solutions end up on the side of prejudice against men.
Don't like that there are more than average amount of women being killed off in what you feel is a "meaningless" death?
Solution: Don't ever kill a woman off to serve a male storyline.
Don't like the fact that women are an inspiration or meaningful to men as creative inspiration?
Solution: Get on youtube and tell everyone how it makes you want to puke.
(This very idea in and of itself is sexist, not just the solution.)
Don't like the fact that the term "femi-nazi" is being used to describe elements of your movement who are extreme?
Solution: Explain to everyone that the only reason this term exist and that anyone who sees feminists as extreme exist solely because of lies spread by mainstream media influenced solely by conservative, chauvinistic men. Also, anyone who uses the term or believes that there is such a group as "feminist zealots" is also a chauvinist.
This is why I accused you of not having researched this kind of stuff
Now, if I am a complete noob to the thought of issues that affect women as you say, was it not your intent by starting the thread to "educate" me?
And if I am the one who's never done any research, why is it that I was able to see that this woman does nothing more than parrot people that she's heard, and by extension you parrot the things that she said?
I've shown you evidence that this woman, and the women before her, don't actually stack evidence against evidence, and use examples that they themselves couldn't have read, or simply misread because of their bias. Yet, you state that this is irrelevant, and has no negative impact on your or her arguments, because somehow if you're fighting for womens "equality", you don't really have to have any facts or real statistics.
I sincerely believe that women in the video, and people like yourself who subscribe to Her thought process have a sexist bias. The idea that women are the only ones slighted in any way worth discussing(you consistently insinuate chauvinism on anyone who might not agree with this woman or yourself, as well as marginalize any problem caused by sexist ideas like those put forth by the women in the video, by using phrases like"few select outliers") But somehow me attempting to expose that is unacceptable.
Nowhere have I stated that issues that effect women negatively do not exist. Nowhere have I stated that issues that affect women and men are equal. I have simply pointed out that this this person is not even close to being impartial or unbiased. You yourself have attacked me in ways that have shown that you yourself are biased by your consistent insinuation that if I disagree that I am a chauvinist, or simply uneducated.
Why is this important to me? Why should it be the most important thing to anyone who considers themselves an activist for women? It is nothing more that the highest form of hypocrisy to be running around pointing the finger at men and how sexist they are, while simultaneously pushing sexist ideals yourself. Claiming to be for equality, while saying things like:
"For centuries male filmmakers, writers, painters, artists of all kinds have often cited women as the inspiration for their brilliant masterpieces.
I swear if I hear one more story like this Im going to scream. Or puke. Or both.
Women are not here for mens inspiration or celebration or whatever else."[/b]
Now, I didn't start a thread toting the sexist bias of video games against men, nor did I make a video on youtube "educating" people with "facts". All I have done is point out how biased and sexist people like this can be. Why? because she is the one who is running around yelling "Sexist" at the top of her lungs.
Something stands out that I don't understand. It keeps being brought up but I am not getting it :
i don't think any feminist is really attacking your freedom of speech to tell the stories and scenarios of your fantasies, i think they are reacting to the lack of freedom they have to be portrayed in a way they would like. and i think getting pissed off and grinding an axe is a perfectly acceptable way to react if your back is against the wall.
This doesn't make sense to me. I don't think there is any law (at least in western societies) preventing Sofia Coppola to make great movies, or any woman to enter a film school or an advertising firm.
Now of course one can always argue that in some companies or studios still stuck in a middle ages mindsets and/or run by stupid CEOs, there can be some plain stupid pressure and prejudices towards women. But I think that stating that women today are stuck against the wall is risky. It basically ignores the great progresses of our society in terms of gender equity, accomplished thanks to the dedication of strong men and women fighting for our rights over the years. I am not saying we are totally there yet, far from it. But when it comes to the fields of creative medias like music, movies or games, (the ones that shape our rich culture - advertising is a whole other subject ...), I think it's safe to say that a talented woman with something to say, paint or sing has the same tools and opportunities as any man with something to say, paint or sing.
Now a very interesting point to look at is, how come that in fields that most likely to accept women just as much men, there are not as many female artists as males ?
First one could think that there might be a gender-dependant affinity behind it. After all, who knows ? But even with the (rather obvious) differences between men and women, we have no way to know whether or not there are fondamental hard coded differences of personality between the two. I personally don't believe there are, since I think that a major part of a person's personality comes from his or her environmental development. (genes are not as deterministic as they seem to be). It's quite great actually ! It makes everyone equal, with nothing bound by physiology.
Then, there is environnement (the education we receive from our parents, and the influence of society around us). Gender equity is evolving, but current parents can be "a generation behind" in that matter. Especially in the US, there is a strong tradition of "marrying ones daughter". I think this is bullshit, and many parts of the world left that kind of stuff behind a while ago. But it's safe to assume than many great potentially creative women artists never got "into it" simply because they never lived in an environment in favor of creativity ... because their parents gave them an outdated "women are supposed to do this, not that" restricting environment to grow in.
On the plus side, I do believe that things are changing for the best nowadays. It is, however, a slow process. Still, to me, the angry girl from the video is not going in the right direction. I think she would get her point across better (and would become a great example herself) if she was less sex-obsessed and more productive. Again, no need to rant about bad stories - just tell me a good story instead!
Maybe this is her first step towards a personal change ? breaking out from a mold she was forced in (maybe a family with a messed up tradition of "our sons are all lawyers, our daughters marry rich men"). Anyways, that's just a wild guess haha
I've watched the first two and while they are extremely well done, her thoughts and arguments are laid out clearly and concisely, I can't help but think in certain cases she is stretching her points too far which consequently diminish their effect.
I watched them all and felt the same. Its a shame because folks will latch onto these things and use them to cling onto their existing views.
so i read this amazing artical some time ago, about how the amount of effort you put into something happening, is directly proportional to how much you want it to happen.
Well first, the reason rapists are almost always portrayed as males is because the vast majority of real life rape cases are male on female rape.
the amount of female on male rape is actually more common than you think. The problem with it though is society dosn't really want to admit it exists. In Britain I think it wasn't till 1994 that it actually became illegal, and even now when it exists the laws almost always in favour of the woman, normally arguing 'well the guy must have wanted it (due to evidence of an entire automatic and coercable bodily function)' and due to the social gender role of men having to 'shut up, put up and man up' most men don't go on to report anything and even when they do a lot of the times its 'missed' out of the statistics because its not 'real rape'. I'd still say there is more cases of male on female rape but it certainly isn't as one sided as media/society would like to believe
so i read this amazing artical some time ago, about how the amount of effort you put into something happening, is directly proportional to how much you want it to happen.
(and in case you're slow, what I was attempting to do is present feminist ideas and harmful stereotypes that content creators keep using over and over to a group of... content creators in games)
I think it's safe to say that a talented woman with something to say, paint or sing has the same tools and opportunities as any man with something to say, paint or sing.
On the plus side, I do believe that things are changing for the best nowadays. It is, however, a slow process. Still, to me, the angry girl from the video is not going in the right direction. I think she would get her point across better (and would become a great example herself) if she was less sex-obsessed and more productive. Again, no need to rant about bad stories - just tell me a good story instead!
Dude, what are you basing the first sentence of yours I quoted on? It's total bullshit. You have zero clue or research as to why there has been only a single female director nominated for best picture... ever. Or why there are so few (any?) female studio heads in games. You're just claiming with no evidence whatsoever that there is no barrier. How do you know? Tell me. Because it comes across as you just *feeling* that it must be so, and there is no way that the boy's club could extend to all the important aspects of being put in control of a project, essentially eliminating women, legalities aside. It's functionally a ban, just like a law would be.
And, on the 2nd, the girl is anything but angry, stop saying that. I'm angry that you and others keep painting her as angry, trying to make her point less. It's sexist to imply that women must always be calm about everything, even when describing incredibly harmful ways that culture portrays them. And there is plenty of room for people who critique. Are you telling me the only person who can ever critique something is someone who can also create? She has in another video, stated her mission; to make feminist 101 level ideas accessible to youtube viewers, and simplify them so they aren't so locked up in academia. She's done an incredible job, despite the chauvinist naysayers. You'll be hard pressed to find any woman anywhere who has focused on gender studies who will say, "nope she's totally wrong, and angry! what a bitch!"
And things are not changing. The numbers of women in boardrooms, parliaments, management positions, hedge fund investments, hasn't moved since 2001. Ten years of zero change in gender makeup at the top level of any industry or government. Within advertisement, the video I linked earlier shows that if anything, advertisement is even more sexist and objectifying toward women than it was in the 70s! Again this shows you just do not know what you are talking about and are just *so sure* that it must be equal, or nearly so. It's not, you're wrong, maybe you should think more on these subjects before hand waving away the points in the original video, or hell even actually research a few, and maybe you can better your craft in narrative treatment of men vs women.
the amount of female on male rape is actually more common than you think. The problem with it though is society dosn't really want to admit it exists. In Britain I think it wasn't till 1994 that it actually became illegal, and even now when it exists the laws almost always in favour of the woman, normally arguing 'well the guy must have wanted it (due to evidence of an entire automatic and coercable bodily function)' and due to the social gender role of men having to 'shut up, put up and man up' most men don't go on to report anything and even when they do a lot of the times its 'missed' out of the statistics because its not 'real rape'.
Tell me, is all this canceled out by the fact it is still, to this very day in 2012, impossible to rape your wife in several states?
Your point on "well he/she must have wanted it" is used all the fucking time on women as well.
And female rape is vastly under-reported as well.
I have no doubt it is more common than I might think, but it is nowhere even approaching parity. That, and even if it was 50/50, if you want a "go-to" scary badguy, based on all of cinematic history and modern day news, a male rapist is your trope. I'm sure making a female rapist would make for an engaging antagonist in a movie, but at this point you'd need to be an incredible director and focus hard on that part of the story to make it scary, since it's just not inbred in our collective psych to go "oooooooh" /shudder like we do with male rapist characters.
(and in case you're slow, what I was attempting to do is present feminist ideas and harmful stereotypes that content creators keep using over and over to a group of... content creators in games)
so essentially, you're trying to educate, or enlighten, or just raise awareness of an issue, to a group of people who're already aware of that issue, but choose to ignore it because of a number of determining factors.
those being:
the people in charge of them call the shots
those people are making decisions based on income
that income is determined by people buying their product
you're doing it wrong. you're preaching to people who have little to no control over what they're told to make, even department leads take their orders, that includes lead writers.
and again, you're not ACTUALLY doing anything yourself, other than spreading a bunch of videos that people either already agree with, or sympathise with.
so put your money where your mouth is, start your own LGBT studio and break the trend dude. make the games you want to make, the way you want to make them.
If your idea of "largely agreeing" is the sentiment expressed in this thread, you need to check your reading comprehension, because it has had several very antagonistic posters implying these aren't real problems.
And I know there is little control on our end, but that doesn't mean zero. There is still some modicum of creative control, and there are several people on polycount, myself included, working on indie games that can roll in these ideas. To paint every person as a helpless 3d drone is insulting.
But that's the thing Ben - I cannot tell for sure as a whole, but I can certainly speak from experience.
I do not claim to be an expert on any subject, but I know what I witnessed! I see hundreds of women singers, writers, and so on. I saw women in charge of top positions at companies I worked at, saw women classmates being the most brillant students and later on being part of the most successful professionals in my school days.
I did not bury myself in studies to back myself up with numbers, but I do know for certain that at least in some fields, things are progressing, and in others, things are actually quite good! I never claimed that the situation is good everywhere tho. I was simply referring to the "back against the wall" argument. In the situations I witnessed first hand, in the countries I lived in (which are not representative of the whole world, and also quite different from the media-based, corrupt US of A), it simply wasn't the case - I did witness full equity more often than not. You might not believe it, but that won't change what I saw
I put advertising and media aside in my previous post because it is, indeed, a very different matter (lowest denominator), and something I know close to nothing about since I am lucky to have lived in conditions quite free of advertisement background noise. (eiher by luck, or by consciously shielding myself from it because that's something I truly dislike wasting my time with - therefore no TV, and so on)
Also, chill out! No need to get all worked up on this man, this is simply an interesting discussion, not some kind of heated debate on TV. There's no need to be that aggressive, as it tends to play against your points and that's a shame! It's the same about saying that this girl is angry. I never implied that since she is a woman therefore she must be calm (where did you get that from ?). I am just saying that in order to present a point of view, being calm and articulated is more effective than name calling and being bitter (I am basing this observation on the movie tropes and the Bayonetta video. I did not watch any others, simply because I do not appreciate her delivery as a speaker.)
My point about low numbers not moving in governments and top companies is just as true in France as in the US, it was a global statistic that it hasn't moved since 2001. Of course there are talented women in all fields. The point is that they are not given the creative reins of any projects with money or likelihood to be distributed at a global level.
Feminism and the Disposable Male - YouTube < Interesting 'argument' from the flip side of the coin (not really directly related to comic books but does have an interesting take on gender stereotypes for men)
I didn't really feel comfortable saying this woman is wrong on issues of gender, though she is talking about men, whatever. I ran it by a few friends with a better understanding of this, and one woman in particular had a good response I'm pasting here.
The video you linked (ugh, I didn't relaly want to sit through all of it) hinges on the notion that sexist ideas like "women and children first" and "male disposibility" aren't created out of sexist culture already. Men have always valued women and children as inherent property (emotional or literal) that they own and control, and so therefore patriarchal, benevolent sexism has come out of that ("Such pretty women need protecting.") The idea that women have made men disposable some how plays into the fear that men should matter all the time, when in reality, they should matter as human beings, not as the sole arbitors of opinion, power or influence. MRAs and anti-feminists don't handle societal deconstruction very well and take feminist movements to be identical to what men have actually, literally been doing to women since the "dawn of time."
i guess the decision is whether or not the idea of 'man protecting women/children' comes from what the woman in the video is saying 'ie back in tribal times if you lost half of your women folk it was game over but you could afford to pretty much lose all but one man', therefore women get 'smothered' and men get the 'dangerous jobs'. This then moves forwards and becomes part of the social norm, even in an era where the rules don't apply anymore. The position your friend is suggesting is that men have inherently made this practice up for their own advantages, which to me always sounds a bit extremist. Sentances such as 'Men have ALWAYS valued women and children as inherent property' just sounds alarmist and is bound to cause offence when directed at men who don't believe this way. Sure some men are complete assholes (same goes for women) but I disagree with the idea that this social structure was set up because men essentially wanted to be assholes to women. Seems much more likely to me that its inherited from an age where a pregnant lady was pretty much the most precious thing on earth and the benefit of the group surviving was put in front of the individuals rights. Unfortuantly those times are long gone but the social forms still exist. I think their going as we put more stock in the individuals rights over that of say family rights, and I think thats a good thing, but in order for things to move on we need to accept that we're all really the same and listen to one another, and if men in the interest of fairness want to point out that some things are unfair towards them, actually listen to them instead of pointing that finger saying 'your privalaged, you can never understand'
ah, but men have quite comfortably lived in their role for the last centuries, change has only begun to take effect through "angry women with axes to grind" (such a clich
I massive part of the male social construct is the 'big boys don't cry' idea. Essentially you have to be a stoic wall, and if you ever complain or ask for help your not a real man. This concept is massively damaging to men, but unfortunatly its self repeating, how can you complain about the idea that your not aloud to complain. It takes some real courage to stand out against social norms, and I can't say enough for the women who originally did this. I'm just saying that I think its two ways, and both men and women have to recognise each others problems and work together to make things right. Unfortunatly the vast majority of articals/debates/videos i see coming from a 'feminist' sight are downright accusatory towards men, essentially saying 'men are the reason for this, they have everything their way'. And if a guy or even a sympathetic girl trys to start a two way discussion they get called privalaged (which is the argument equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to listen to the other person) and in the case of the girl 'brain washed'. When it comes down to it all I pretty much want the same thing as these feminist blogs do, deconstruction of social roles, but I want to see it done with both sexes listening and working together and not an argument over 'who has it worse and who's fault it is'.
Anyway, god damn. Do any of you guys have girlfriends or wives or sisters or female friends or ANYTHING? Women, just like men, are tough, capable, and able to overcome a lot of hardship. Obviously women can succeed in any field. But society down to the most basic level makes it tougher for them, at least in the parts of america I live in. Few women I know are feminists or would complain about it, but it's pretty self evident that girls are talked to a different way about their futures and expected to act a different way. Women are not raised, even today, to be conquerers or leaders. They are reminded every day what they are; that is a kind of oppression.
The point ben is overzealously trying to make her is that there IS a difference in how women are VIEWED in society, that difference effects how they're treated day to day and growing up, and that's a bad thing! We all ought to agree on that! Anything beyond that is subject to debate.
the main takeaway why I'm posting it is this experiment she talks about. Someone took a very successfull female investor, duplicated her resume a ton of times, but made half with one alteration, changed her name from Helen to Howard. They gave all the Helen resumes to one group of people and asked for their opinions of Helen, and gave the Howard resumes to another group and asked them their opinion of Howard.
The good news is that both groups evaluation of competency was the same, but the bad news, is while the Howard group said he sounded like a good guy to work with, the Helen group said she sounded like a total bitch. Same resumes, same fucking person, the only difference was whether people thought the person was a man or a woman. This shows that culturally we do not value the traits required to succeed in women. This goes back to people accusing the original woman of being "angry". A man taking the same tone and irritation at the right time as she did would be seen as a passionate or righteously angry, rather than "disrespectful to themselves".
I have another quote from a woman that I thought was poignant to this point.
Women, in the world right now, the one we live in, are almost never taken as "individuals." They're taken as women. They are never, ever divorced from their gender. If you're bad at something, it's because you're a girl. If you're upset about something, you're just being oversensitive because you're a woman and your emotions are getting the best of you. If you're in a foul mood, oh man, watch out, PMS!!!! Know about a subject? Not as much as this man! Don't know about a subject? Oh, it's just because it's not a girl thing,sweetheart.
It must be so hard to have your gender related to the things you say and do this one single time. It's not like it happens to women with literally everything they do.
Jesus christ, we get it. We know not all men are like that, or not all men do a thing, or some men are really hurt by the patriarchy. We knew this before, and we've known it's an issue for a long time. But we have also been told it fifty million fucking times. By, guess who, men! Who feel like they just need to really let women know what they should be doing with feminism. Because clearly, who knows better about a woman's struggles than a man?
fuck right off. to everything "righteous" said. fuck off.
i'm an artist, a musician, and ex-military. in all three of those areas of my "expertise" i can hand on heart say that there are females who're better. not because of their gender, or because of mine, but just because they are.
there are also plenty of girls i know who're bad at things. just because they are. their gender has nothing to do with it. they just suck.
when women are in bad moods, no it's not always PMS. however you're honestly going to tell me that a cyclic fluctuation of hormones isn't going to be the cause of at least some of it? my girlfriend will be the first to call you on that one... hell, she tells other women at work to stop PMSing (because she actually can tell when someone is "on").
i'd never profess to know more about a womans "struggles" than a man. but at the same time, women are equally guilty of this double standard.
a man and a woman start an argument, the girl is the first one to make it physical, throw that first punch. regardless of what the law says, if the guy hits her back, just ONCE. who is the one going to jail? which group of activists are going to use it as an example of gender inequality?
when a man and woman get divorced, and they have children, in over 90% of cases WORLDWIDE who gets full time custody of the children? and which group of activists is actually IGNORED ACTIVELY in trying to right the wrong?
anyway. i'm now done with this thread. Ben, you're off on a rhetoric that is as redundant as trying to reinvent the wheel. you're spouting the same shit over and over, with no basis other than what appears to be a minor gripe with the system.
and it only appears to be a minor gripe, because you're not doing shit about it yourself other than "spreading awareness".
we're all aware, and now after this thread, i honestly couldn't give a fuck either.
i'm an artist, a musician, and ex-military. in all three of those areas of my "expertise" i can hand on heart say that there are females who're better.
"Who Are" is not a word you can or even want to abbreviate. I had to re-read your post because I first read it as, "females whore better" that's your argument!? WOW... oh wait who-are.
Now back to reading and hopefully more meaningful discussions about videogame tropes.
a man and a woman start an argument, the girl is the first one to make it physical, throw that first punch. regardless of what the law says, if the guy hits her back, just ONCE. who is the one going to jail? which group of activists are going to use it as an example of gender inequality?
when a man and woman get divorced, and they have children, in over 90% of cases WORLDWIDE who gets full time custody of the children? and which group of activists is actually IGNORED ACTIVELY in trying to right the wrong?
not exactly the best points there Gir, both those cases demonstrate how fucked up the law is towards both men and women.
All they are saying is women are defenseless weak little flowers who are wonderful mothers.. not something the majority of women want to be presented as.
on the flip side its 'men are evil violent barbarians who cant care for their children'
Up until those 2 things I'm with you. Women are slowly gaining a more equal place in society. Where I work (animation) we're seeing more and more talented women getting jobs and progressing, this is in-turn challenging peoples preconceptions. It's certainly making me question my ideas.
Not to mention that domestic abuse is incredibly one sided in severity. How many men have been hospitalized over the years from abuse at the hands of their wives? Abuse is never ok, but to suggest that physical violence is an area where men lose out and women win is simply absurd.
*edit* I take back all of the above. I wanted to find an iceburn by looking up australian domestic abuse rates, and found that while women do receive both more frequent and more severe abuse than men, it wasn't "incredibly one-sided" like I originally said. In fact reading the study made me feel really sympathetic to the men of Australia who go through this abuse because it seems they have little care available within the health system, as well as few social outlets because of social ideas of masculinity. (the link: http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/Men_as_Victims.pdf)
I still assert that women get the worst end of it, and that fixing the idea of women as weak and men as strong would also help men to receive less abuse as well has have more outlets for venting after, but I learned it's actually a lot similar levels than I had previously thought.
not exactly the best points there Gir, both those cases demonstrate how fucked up the law is towards both men and women.
All they are saying is women are defenseless weak little flowers who are wonderful mothers.. not something the majority of women want to be presented as.
on the flip side its 'men are evil violent barbarians who cant care for their children'
Thought experiment:
How many people have you met who SERIOUSLY BELIEVE one or both of these?
How many people have you met who SERIOUSLY BELIEVE one or both of these?
Which one?
I know people men and women both who believe those archetypes are correct.
I think we all do to some degree, its beaten into us from the moment we are conscious. You idealise your mother and father for the roles they played in raising you, and if they're already part of the current gender role system then your basis is set from the get go.
I know people men and women both who believe those archetypes are correct.
I think we all do to some degree, its beaten into us from the moment we are conscious. You idealise your mother and father for the roles they played in raising you, and if they're already part of the current gender role system then your basis is set from the get go.
Yes, that's exactly the point I (i dont precisely know about ben) have been trying to make. This is the kind of thing that can only be changed by discussion and youtube videos and debate. Awareness is the cure to this, not new laws or mandates. Even if the videos in OP are a bit reactionary and excessive, if they generate discussion and debate then that's rad, the woman who made them should be proud of herself.
By and large, people aren't subtly sexist because they're evil or hate women or anything... They just don't carefully look at these issues. It requires serious conscious thought to identify and stop these kinds of things from taking place.
As an aside, women can further sexism just as well as men can, naturally.
Addendum: I mentioned on IRC, i want to say in here, I dont think feminism should be placed on some pedestal and treated with reverence... But I DO think women's rights should be placed on some pedestal and treated with reverence. All human rights, in fact, there are just certain classes of people that need more help than others in our society. (White, middle class) women dont have the worst of it... But it could definitely get a lot better.
This is what I was saying earlier Ben. Cases of rape and abuse by women towards men are a lot more rampant than people like to believe. The percentage of accounts that this happens is not as high as men on women abuse, but that dosn't make it any less important. It shows both men and women have the capacity to objectify the other, and we're actually all the same and should act on the person and not point fingers at gender groups. Although there's obviously no way to prove anything (and i do realise that a lot of men-female rapes go unacounted for) the fact that there is absolutly no help for male rape victims in the form of groups/helplines and the fact that the law almost always sides with the women in cases like this suggests to me that female-male rape almost always goes unreported and is a lot more common than its known about, just society dosn't want to know about it cause if your a man 'you should be able to handle yourself'
All they are saying is women are defenseless weak little flowers who are wonderful mothers.. not something the majority of women want to be presented as.
really?
if 2 people are fighting in the court for rights to take their kids with them, then they both must each think that they are a better parent.
or they want those kids so badly that they fail to see that other person is a better parent.
or they hate the other person so much that they don't want him/her to be seeing kids, out of pure viciousness.
or they want the other person to pay alimony.
saying that in such cases woman is as fucked as man cos courts typically portray mother as a better parent is bizarre.
I'm going to think aloud here for a moment. Maybe it'll add something to the discussion.
I'm going to assume here that men and women are actually at least a bit physiologically distinct. Not to make too much of this but I think it's well supported that women tend to be more empathetic and nurturing and men tend to be more aggressive and less empathetic.
I wonder is there isn't a subtle but pervasive form of sexism in the way these distinct sets of traits are valuated by society.
Since men have historically dominated society, society has naturally overvalued the masculine traits and undervalued the feminine traits.
Consequently video-games, comic books and movies underrepresent women because from the very beginning they were set up to highlight skills that males are generally better at: violence, cut-throat behavior, etc.
I wonder if a large part of the problem isn't just that there's no real emphasis on using the more feminine set of characteristics to resolve conflict as opposed to violence.
(and in case you're slow, what I was attempting to do is present feminist ideas and harmful stereotypes that content creators keep using over and over to a group of... content creators in games)
Dude, what are you basing the first sentence of yours I quoted on? It's total bullshit. You have zero clue or research as to why there has been only a single female director nominated for best picture... ever.
And, on the 2nd, the girl is anything but angry, stop saying that. I'm angry that you and others keep painting her as angry, trying to make her point less. It's sexist to imply that women must always be calm about everything
She's done an incredible job, despite the chauvinist naysayers. You'll be hard pressed to find any woman anywhere who has focused on gender studies who will say, "nope she's totally wrong, and angry! what a bitch!"
And things are not changing.
....Again this shows you just do not know what you are talking about and are just *so sure* that it must be equal, or nearly so. It's not, you're wrong, maybe you should think more on these subjects before hand waving away the points in the original video, or hell even actually research a few, and maybe you can better your craft in narrative treatment of men vs women.
Why is it that you're the only one who seems angry and is name calling and assuming that anyone who disagrees is automatically an uneducated Neanderthal?
Why is it that you consistently put words in other peoples mouths, like "angry", and imply that anyone who says she has an ax to grind is calling her a "bitch".
I am only posting this because you do seem like someone who is at least self checking a little bit, if perhaps only as a result of researching to attempt to prove others wrong.
Statements like the following really do make me feel that you in fact do have it in you to change your attitude, provided you read, research and listen.
Major props to you for admitting this.
Not to mention that domestic abuse is incredibly one sided in severity. How many men have been hospitalized over the years from abuse at the hands of their wives? Abuse is never ok, but to suggest that physical violence is an area where men lose out and women win is simply absurd.
*edit* I take back all of the above. I wanted to find an iceburn by looking up australian domestic abuse rates, and found that while women do receive both more frequent and more severe abuse than men, it wasn't "incredibly one-sided" like I originally said. In fact reading the study made me feel really sympathetic to the men of Australia who go through this abuse because it seems they have little care available within the health system, as well as few social outlets because of social ideas of masculinity. (the link: http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/Men_as_Victims.pdf)
I still assert that women get the worst end of it, and that fixing the idea of women as weak and men as strong would also help men to receive less abuse as well has have more outlets for venting after, but I learned it's actually a lot similar levels than I had previously thought.
I think it's awesome that this is really the only thing that people have been saying in this thread, and that when you actually do take the effort to go and look, you will understand that anyone who disagrees with extreme feminism is not actually a chauvinist, but simply aware and able to see the world around them.
I still assert that women get the worst end of it. . .
I put to you, that the very problem you are suddenly so sympathetic to the Australian males over(that you were completely unaware of and were so sure could not exist), was caused by that very attitude. Once you go down a road of marginalizing anyone, it is so easy to completely eliminate a group from receiving equal consideration.
fixing the idea of women as weak and men as strong would also help men to receive less abuse as well has have more outlets for venting after, but I learned it's actually a lot similar levels than I had previously thought.
The idea that women are weak and men are strong is not some idea with no basis, concocted by male chauvinists(not saying that you are indicating this, but some feminists would have you believe that).
Anyone who's lived a little, will understand that women are not seen as weak simply because men want to dominate them, but as a result of sexual dimorphism.
Now, no one with a brain would argue that female spiders being overwhelmingly larger and more powerful than their male counterparts means that if you were to accept and admit that males of the a spider species are as a whole are weaker in strength and size than their female counterparts as sexist and biased. No one with much of a capacity for understanding and logical thought would make the assumption that the angler fish Photocorynus spiniceps is somehow run by female sexists, and that's why the male is so small.
While the attitude that women as a whole are weak and smaller might be influential in the fact female abuse against men is unrecognized, it's also something that can not be simple "purged" from peoples minds, and also can be very helpful to women.
I have sisters, and my knowledge and understanding that while I am 6ft 180lbs, and they are 5'3 120 lbs, with smaller bone structure, and weaker muscle mass gives me the knowledge that it would be foolish and irresponsible of me to interact with them in the same physical manner that I might with one of my male friends who is 6ft 180 lbs.
My knowledge that there is a fragile life growing inside of a woman who is pregnant, and that her body is in a more fragile state automatically dictates that I do not attempt to tackle this woman in a game of football. It's quite simple, and absolutely the opposite of degrading or sexist logic.
Now, if I were to take the stance that because sexual dimorphism exists, that women are "inferior to males", that certainly would be degrading and sexist.
No one complains that in boxing their are weight classes, simply because a featherweight would probably get killed by a heavyweight boxer. (I'm not a fan of boxing, or a proponent of violence, but I think it makes a point).
Abuse against men is not overlooked because people understand sexual dimorphism, it because of the fact that people like yourself assumed it couldn't exist in any form worth worrying about.
I just started reading the thread from the back forward and I just had to weigh in on one thing."Who Are" is not a word you can or even want to abbreviate. I had to re-read your post because I first read it as, "females whore better" that's your argument!? WOW... oh wait who-are.
Now back to reading and hopefully more meaningful discussions about videogame tropes.
i have worked with and know/known many females in many positions (lol) WHO'RE both amazing at their jobs and have a veriety of personalities.
some of the are flat out bitches, regardless of their job. that's just who they are and/or how they act. some of them are nice as pie, again regardless of their job.
if you don't want to be perceived as a bitch, don't be a bitch. it's got fuck all to do with your job.
that said, if you want to make it to the top level of ANY buseness, you pretty much have to be a ruthless cut-throat asshole. and that is NOT gender specific. so when a guy makes it into that position, he's an asshole. when a girl makes it into that position, she's a bitch. but it's by necessity of the role they're performing, and who they are as a person in order to make it there.
that said, if you want to make it to the top level of ANY buseness, you pretty much have to be a ruthless cut-throat asshole. and that is NOT gender specific. so when a guy makes it into that position, he's an asshole. when a girl makes it into that position, she's a bitch. but it's by necessity of the role they're performing, and who they are as a person in order to make it there.
again, fuck all to do with their gender.
Is this in relation to the TEdtalk I posted? Because it doesn't address the point *at all* that when people reading the resume and evaluations of a person they thought was a man, they described all of his attributes as positives. IE *not* an asshole. But as soon as that same person was presented as female, people made her out to be a bitch. So yes, it has tons of fuck alls to do with gender. This is called a study, instead of an opinion, which is what you presented.
well, over here you don't need to put down your gender, or age, or race, or anything on your resume. you don't have to put down anything other than your qualifications, training, and experience.
and as someone who's done the hiring in the past, there are a few things which are common within british employment:
shortlistings for interviews are based solely on resume.
the interview itself is to decide if you like a person.
you can tell whether you like a person within ~10 seconds.
so again. if you don't want to be perceived as a bitch. don't be a bitch.
and don't even think of trying to say that ANY of the studies you present aren't in the least bit biased in their presentations. EVERY post you've made in this thread is biased.
Interesting small bit for people who may not read any of my posts due to their verbosity.
How many people notice that "chauvinist" is so embedded in our minds as being exclusively male, that the "male" part of "male chauvinist" is dropped.
Does anyone consider that the only reason that people end up using the term "femi-nazi" is because we have all been led to believe that no such thing as a female chauvinist could ever exist?
The reason anyone uses 'femminazi´ as a term is because it is specifically supposed to sound like feminist. The first two syllables are the same and the third starts with the same letters.
Feminazi is a term popularized by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. Feminazi is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi. The term is used pejoratively by some U.S. conservatives to criticize feminists that they perceive as extreme.
Interesting small bit for people who may not read any of my posts due to their verbosity.
How many people notice that "chauvinist" is so embedded in our minds as being exclusively male, that the "male" part of "male chauvinist" is dropped.
Does anyone consider that the only reason that people end up using the term "femi-nazi" is because we have all been led to believe that no such thing as a female chauvinist could ever exist?
However, there is no entry for "Female chauvinist".
nope, its used to bunch feminists into the same boat as mental cases like Valerie Solanas(yeah Ben I know that's not a simple case). If a womans being chauvinist then call them a chauvinist.
The term is used pejoratively by some U.S. conservatives to criticize feminists that they perceive as extreme.
And, you'd be incorrect in your thinking. My close friend is a perfect example. She is nowhere close to a "U.S. conservative" and she uses the term. Classic example of this kind of misinformed thinking.
Where it originated is irrelevant. Why people use it isn't. I can guarantee you that if went onto the street and asked if they thought a list of women were "chauvinist", I'd get quizzical looks and statements like, "No, she's a feminist". Which in many peoples mind excludes someone from being a chauvinist, which is automatically associated as male.
I'd just like to weigh in. Australia (where I live and was born) is a pretty sexist and racist society when you really look into it. Sure we are much better than we were 30 years ago, when you could call someone a fag or a wog right on national TV.
Though I have noticed that Australian women are much more 'macho' than what I have observed in other countries. A fact that poop confirmed with that finding son domestic violence by women in Australia. You don't fuck with the aussie ladies here!
Though because the women's movement was only 1 to 2 generations ago, you can still feel a slight working of the social expectations of women. Look after your husband, look after the house, look after the kids, ect.
House isn't clean when one comes over? Instant blame of the women, not the man that also lives there
Anyway about tropes in video games and media...
Things like this take generations to move out of society. I can already see in younger kids that these issues are much, much less. The things we need to do is make sure that the older generations of creators, directors and entertainment people remove these ever so slight tropes and clich
Replies
That'll require a whole other thread.
we could name it "the gaming elitism" or "why my taste is better than yours"
i don't think this is the problem at all. i honestly believe there would be no issue with men portraying women they way they want if that wasn't the ONLY way they were ever portrayed. Guys are never going to get tired of looking at boobies and scantily clad women, or being the hero that saves the poor damsel in distress. the problem is women have no choice in how they are portrayed, and never have. women have had no chance to even define their role for themselves, only to serve one of the premade roles created for them by a man. Men get to be portrayed as the bad ass heros that kill predator, save the world from a robot attack or alien infestation, race car driver, jet pilot top gun bad ass, what guy doesn't want to be those things? he still gets the opportunity to be portrayed that way even if sometimes he is portrayed as a child molester or wife beater.
women only get to see themselves has housewives or sluts, prostitutes or man servants. think if every movie ever made that has a man in it was like a lifetime channel movie. where men are always the bad, beating, raping, murdering psychopaths? and think if there was nothing you could really do about but bitch about how that's not how you like to be seen by the rest of the world, or how you don't want you son to grow up thinking that's how your suppose to act to be a real man.
i don't think any feminist is really attacking your freedom of speech to tell the stories and scenarios of your fantasies, i think they are reacting to the lack of freedom they have to be portrayed in a way they would like. and i think getting pissed off and grinding an axe is a perfectly acceptable way to react if your back is against the wall. it doesn't mean that is going to help the cause, or create a dialogue men are going to want to partake in, i just think its a perfectly natural reaction.
"Only" is a bit strong.
Not all movies, not even a majority will enforce those ancient roles, most movies will feature a wide array of female roles, but sometimes we'll get the occational hysterical woman or housewife, and sometimes we'll get the nearly always male pedophile or rapist,
mostly because these things exist, but we're quick to shout "oh no the woman was portrayed as a housewife", and some excuse for a human might think "that's how women should be"
Maybe I'm lucky in my taste in series and movies, and exposing myself to cinema other than just the regular hollywood stuff though.
If anything we could use more female lead, not because it is sexist to not have a female lead, but because the variety could be good, and we occationally get good movies with good female leads, even in a male-dominated industry.
Which brings me to use mass effect as an example, wouldn't this series have been a pretty male-dominated series unless you were given the choice to create a female character with the exact same events and choices but from a females perspective?
Things like this is good, more variation but with the same old recipe.
Oh no, I'm not worried about my freedom of speech, I'm more worried about other females getting the side-effect of *some* of the feminism, such as the ones who *do* want to be the princess, or the object of her partner, or someones muse, or don't mind the occational housewife portrayal, or might even find joy in one of the less harmful stereotypes.
Or she might be looked down on by other women for being close to "unrealistic idealistic physique" for being naturally thin and being called a skinny bitch, a result of the campaign against the man-created ideals = big is beautiful, skinny is ugly.
I'm highly for equality with the full freedom of being unequal, without anyone being treated less than human.
I find it the most important to grind in the aspect of equal rights into every human early on in life, so that we *do* have the freedom to play around with stereotypes, flawed characters or sexy hyper-idealistic ones without anyone feeling any less about any person.
Well first, the reason rapists are almost always portrayed as males is because the vast majority of real life rape cases are male on female rape. Wasn't it you that claim we need to stick to real life and what works in cinema or we'd have arty farty flicks? Someone said in this thread anyway. A female rapist or pedophile* would be fresh, but wouldn't be able to really pluck upon most people's fear, since the stories we get hammered into our heads to watch out for are men in the bushes, not roving women popping out from under our car to drag us off into the park.
*of which there has been one, I forget the movie, but it was a 30 some year old woman, with the Judie Dench (who plays a possible lesbian obsessed with the female lead), and a 16 year old boy, set in britain I believe, it was quite good.
And second, Yes plenty of movies have women in them, but going back to the original videos, they are often used more as plot support rather than written as full characters with agency. Even when they are written as full people, they will often be alone in an otherwise all male cast. Not even Sex in the City has the reverse true of a sole man in an otherwise all female cast.
So really I think "only" is quite an appropriate word. Yes you might watch more well rounded non-hollywood movies, but does the average 8 year old girl?
I don't see every old man as being a pedophile just like I don't see every female being a housewife or a damsel in distress, but if the movie is good and it happens to be about a pedophile or a damsel in distress I don't mind it at all.
Again, that is not a bad thing, it's just not varied, most secondary characters will end up quite dull in a bad movie, and the main character will end up being a male in most cases.
I praise the lord'ah every day for the fact that women are not like in sex in the city, but then again, that series rapes you with stereotypes from every direction.
Probably not, but if she's fortunate she'll have parents there to teach her good values.
Which again is the core of just about everything I've said, people are the problem, not the media that they get skewed by, as the very clear weakness in people to be so easily skewed shows a bigger issue than just this, they'll be skewed by anything.
Do you actually have a kid yet? I don't either, but am preparing to foster, and the number one fear I have, and that current parents I ask, is how to prepare them for life. You can give them the best instruction ever, perfect ideas of justice, equality, fairness, sharing, blah blah, but they leave your walls, they see TV, they watch movies, read comics, go to school with little shits from bad parents, etc.
Yes, upbringing is infinitely important, but this idea that we can fix societies injustices with just good parenting, rather than also concurrently making positive adjustments to how our media is made (and really, aren't we game artists at least partially in control of how we portray men/women in games?), these issues are not going to go away or get fixed.
Also this idea that *anyone* who absorbs media on a daily basis is somehow immune from it's affects is a bit naive. There have been myriad of studies, showing that advertisements, movies, comics, etc all affect us, they get in our brain, we think about them, and as a whole, they can shift our ideas of what reality is like. If the vast majority of media and popular culture depicts women as sexual objects and lesser than men, it will affect all of us, even those conscious of it and trying to avoid it.
If I am actually saying, "what about the men", how does that automatically mean that A:My intent was solely to "Derail" And that B:I automatically believe and am therefore stating that prejudice against men is exactly equal to and thus cancels out prejudice against women?
In this thread alone, it would seem the only people who want to marginalize and state that one gender has no prejudices against them worth talking about, and pretty much do not exist, are those fighting so hard to tell us that people like this woman know what they're talking about.
I think your "there's only one stick" analogy is a great example. By stating that there is only one stick, and that women are the only ones who get the short end of this stick of "widespread societal discrimination", you're automatically eliminating anyone else from being compared, discussed, or thought about in any way other than "privileged".
Does anyone not see how weighting a scale with only the problems of only one gender group, coming to the conclusion that this one group is the only one who's getting the short end of any stick, is inherently flawed? You do understand that the point of view of people like the women in this video do not actually consider how sexist her own opinions and conclusions are? Many of her conclusions and solutions end up on the side of prejudice against men.
Don't like that there are more than average amount of women being killed off in what you feel is a "meaningless" death?
Solution: Don't ever kill a woman off to serve a male storyline.
Don't like the fact that women are an inspiration or meaningful to men as creative inspiration?
Solution: Get on youtube and tell everyone how it makes you want to puke.
(This very idea in and of itself is sexist, not just the solution.)
Don't like the fact that the term "femi-nazi" is being used to describe elements of your movement who are extreme?
Solution: Explain to everyone that the only reason this term exist and that anyone who sees feminists as extreme exist solely because of lies spread by mainstream media influenced solely by conservative, chauvinistic men. Also, anyone who uses the term or believes that there is such a group as "feminist zealots" is also a chauvinist.
Now, if I am a complete noob to the thought of issues that affect women as you say, was it not your intent by starting the thread to "educate" me?
And if I am the one who's never done any research, why is it that I was able to see that this woman does nothing more than parrot people that she's heard, and by extension you parrot the things that she said?
I've shown you evidence that this woman, and the women before her, don't actually stack evidence against evidence, and use examples that they themselves couldn't have read, or simply misread because of their bias. Yet, you state that this is irrelevant, and has no negative impact on your or her arguments, because somehow if you're fighting for womens "equality", you don't really have to have any facts or real statistics.
I sincerely believe that women in the video, and people like yourself who subscribe to Her thought process have a sexist bias. The idea that women are the only ones slighted in any way worth discussing(you consistently insinuate chauvinism on anyone who might not agree with this woman or yourself, as well as marginalize any problem caused by sexist ideas like those put forth by the women in the video, by using phrases like"few select outliers") But somehow me attempting to expose that is unacceptable.
Nowhere have I stated that issues that effect women negatively do not exist. Nowhere have I stated that issues that affect women and men are equal. I have simply pointed out that this this person is not even close to being impartial or unbiased. You yourself have attacked me in ways that have shown that you yourself are biased by your consistent insinuation that if I disagree that I am a chauvinist, or simply uneducated.
Why is this important to me? Why should it be the most important thing to anyone who considers themselves an activist for women? It is nothing more that the highest form of hypocrisy to be running around pointing the finger at men and how sexist they are, while simultaneously pushing sexist ideals yourself. Claiming to be for equality, while saying things like:
Now, I didn't start a thread toting the sexist bias of video games against men, nor did I make a video on youtube "educating" people with "facts". All I have done is point out how biased and sexist people like this can be. Why? because she is the one who is running around yelling "Sexist" at the top of her lungs.
This doesn't make sense to me. I don't think there is any law (at least in western societies) preventing Sofia Coppola to make great movies, or any woman to enter a film school or an advertising firm.
Now of course one can always argue that in some companies or studios still stuck in a middle ages mindsets and/or run by stupid CEOs, there can be some plain stupid pressure and prejudices towards women. But I think that stating that women today are stuck against the wall is risky. It basically ignores the great progresses of our society in terms of gender equity, accomplished thanks to the dedication of strong men and women fighting for our rights over the years. I am not saying we are totally there yet, far from it. But when it comes to the fields of creative medias like music, movies or games, (the ones that shape our rich culture - advertising is a whole other subject ...), I think it's safe to say that a talented woman with something to say, paint or sing has the same tools and opportunities as any man with something to say, paint or sing.
Now a very interesting point to look at is, how come that in fields that most likely to accept women just as much men, there are not as many female artists as males ?
First one could think that there might be a gender-dependant affinity behind it. After all, who knows ? But even with the (rather obvious) differences between men and women, we have no way to know whether or not there are fondamental hard coded differences of personality between the two. I personally don't believe there are, since I think that a major part of a person's personality comes from his or her environmental development. (genes are not as deterministic as they seem to be). It's quite great actually ! It makes everyone equal, with nothing bound by physiology.
Then, there is environnement (the education we receive from our parents, and the influence of society around us). Gender equity is evolving, but current parents can be "a generation behind" in that matter. Especially in the US, there is a strong tradition of "marrying ones daughter". I think this is bullshit, and many parts of the world left that kind of stuff behind a while ago. But it's safe to assume than many great potentially creative women artists never got "into it" simply because they never lived in an environment in favor of creativity ... because their parents gave them an outdated "women are supposed to do this, not that" restricting environment to grow in.
On the plus side, I do believe that things are changing for the best nowadays. It is, however, a slow process. Still, to me, the angry girl from the video is not going in the right direction. I think she would get her point across better (and would become a great example herself) if she was less sex-obsessed and more productive. Again, no need to rant about bad stories - just tell me a good story instead!
Maybe this is her first step towards a personal change ? breaking out from a mold she was forced in (maybe a family with a messed up tradition of "our sons are all lawyers, our daughters marry rich men"). Anyways, that's just a wild guess haha
I watched them all and felt the same. Its a shame because folks will latch onto these things and use them to cling onto their existing views.
i think it directly applies to the subject of this thread:
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/money_mouth.htm
you're talking the talk here Ben, but what are you ACTUALLY doing to change things?
the amount of female on male rape is actually more common than you think. The problem with it though is society dosn't really want to admit it exists. In Britain I think it wasn't till 1994 that it actually became illegal, and even now when it exists the laws almost always in favour of the woman, normally arguing 'well the guy must have wanted it (due to evidence of an entire automatic and coercable bodily function)' and due to the social gender role of men having to 'shut up, put up and man up' most men don't go on to report anything and even when they do a lot of the times its 'missed' out of the statistics because its not 'real rape'. I'd still say there is more cases of male on female rape but it certainly isn't as one sided as media/society would like to believe
Why the term "Slacktivism" is conceptually misleading: http://technosociology.org/?p=904
(and in case you're slow, what I was attempting to do is present feminist ideas and harmful stereotypes that content creators keep using over and over to a group of... content creators in games)
Dude, what are you basing the first sentence of yours I quoted on? It's total bullshit. You have zero clue or research as to why there has been only a single female director nominated for best picture... ever. Or why there are so few (any?) female studio heads in games. You're just claiming with no evidence whatsoever that there is no barrier. How do you know? Tell me. Because it comes across as you just *feeling* that it must be so, and there is no way that the boy's club could extend to all the important aspects of being put in control of a project, essentially eliminating women, legalities aside. It's functionally a ban, just like a law would be.
And, on the 2nd, the girl is anything but angry, stop saying that. I'm angry that you and others keep painting her as angry, trying to make her point less. It's sexist to imply that women must always be calm about everything, even when describing incredibly harmful ways that culture portrays them. And there is plenty of room for people who critique. Are you telling me the only person who can ever critique something is someone who can also create? She has in another video, stated her mission; to make feminist 101 level ideas accessible to youtube viewers, and simplify them so they aren't so locked up in academia. She's done an incredible job, despite the chauvinist naysayers. You'll be hard pressed to find any woman anywhere who has focused on gender studies who will say, "nope she's totally wrong, and angry! what a bitch!"
And things are not changing. The numbers of women in boardrooms, parliaments, management positions, hedge fund investments, hasn't moved since 2001. Ten years of zero change in gender makeup at the top level of any industry or government. Within advertisement, the video I linked earlier shows that if anything, advertisement is even more sexist and objectifying toward women than it was in the 70s! Again this shows you just do not know what you are talking about and are just *so sure* that it must be equal, or nearly so. It's not, you're wrong, maybe you should think more on these subjects before hand waving away the points in the original video, or hell even actually research a few, and maybe you can better your craft in narrative treatment of men vs women.
Tell me, is all this canceled out by the fact it is still, to this very day in 2012, impossible to rape your wife in several states?
Your point on "well he/she must have wanted it" is used all the fucking time on women as well.
And female rape is vastly under-reported as well.
I have no doubt it is more common than I might think, but it is nowhere even approaching parity. That, and even if it was 50/50, if you want a "go-to" scary badguy, based on all of cinematic history and modern day news, a male rapist is your trope. I'm sure making a female rapist would make for an engaging antagonist in a movie, but at this point you'd need to be an incredible director and focus hard on that part of the story to make it scary, since it's just not inbred in our collective psych to go "oooooooh" /shudder like we do with male rapist characters.
so essentially, you're trying to educate, or enlighten, or just raise awareness of an issue, to a group of people who're already aware of that issue, but choose to ignore it because of a number of determining factors.
those being:
- the people in charge of them call the shots
- those people are making decisions based on income
- that income is determined by people buying their product
you're doing it wrong. you're preaching to people who have little to no control over what they're told to make, even department leads take their orders, that includes lead writers.and again, you're not ACTUALLY doing anything yourself, other than spreading a bunch of videos that people either already agree with, or sympathise with.
so put your money where your mouth is, start your own LGBT studio and break the trend dude. make the games you want to make, the way you want to make them.
or... is it not that easy?
And I know there is little control on our end, but that doesn't mean zero. There is still some modicum of creative control, and there are several people on polycount, myself included, working on indie games that can roll in these ideas. To paint every person as a helpless 3d drone is insulting.
I do not claim to be an expert on any subject, but I know what I witnessed! I see hundreds of women singers, writers, and so on. I saw women in charge of top positions at companies I worked at, saw women classmates being the most brillant students and later on being part of the most successful professionals in my school days.
I did not bury myself in studies to back myself up with numbers, but I do know for certain that at least in some fields, things are progressing, and in others, things are actually quite good! I never claimed that the situation is good everywhere tho. I was simply referring to the "back against the wall" argument. In the situations I witnessed first hand, in the countries I lived in (which are not representative of the whole world, and also quite different from the media-based, corrupt US of A), it simply wasn't the case - I did witness full equity more often than not. You might not believe it, but that won't change what I saw
I put advertising and media aside in my previous post because it is, indeed, a very different matter (lowest denominator), and something I know close to nothing about since I am lucky to have lived in conditions quite free of advertisement background noise. (eiher by luck, or by consciously shielding myself from it because that's something I truly dislike wasting my time with - therefore no TV, and so on)
Also, chill out! No need to get all worked up on this man, this is simply an interesting discussion, not some kind of heated debate on TV. There's no need to be that aggressive, as it tends to play against your points and that's a shame! It's the same about saying that this girl is angry. I never implied that since she is a woman therefore she must be calm (where did you get that from ?). I am just saying that in order to present a point of view, being calm and articulated is more effective than name calling and being bitter (I am basing this observation on the movie tropes and the Bayonetta video. I did not watch any others, simply because I do not appreciate her delivery as a speaker.)
I didn't really feel comfortable saying this woman is wrong on issues of gender, though she is talking about men, whatever. I ran it by a few friends with a better understanding of this, and one woman in particular had a good response I'm pasting here.
The creative director of the Uncharted series is a woman. (And her older games are awesome too!)
Anyway, god damn. Do any of you guys have girlfriends or wives or sisters or female friends or ANYTHING? Women, just like men, are tough, capable, and able to overcome a lot of hardship. Obviously women can succeed in any field. But society down to the most basic level makes it tougher for them, at least in the parts of america I live in. Few women I know are feminists or would complain about it, but it's pretty self evident that girls are talked to a different way about their futures and expected to act a different way. Women are not raised, even today, to be conquerers or leaders. They are reminded every day what they are; that is a kind of oppression.
The point ben is overzealously trying to make her is that there IS a difference in how women are VIEWED in society, that difference effects how they're treated day to day and growing up, and that's a bad thing! We all ought to agree on that! Anything beyond that is subject to debate.
[ame="
the main takeaway why I'm posting it is this experiment she talks about. Someone took a very successfull female investor, duplicated her resume a ton of times, but made half with one alteration, changed her name from Helen to Howard. They gave all the Helen resumes to one group of people and asked for their opinions of Helen, and gave the Howard resumes to another group and asked them their opinion of Howard.
The good news is that both groups evaluation of competency was the same, but the bad news, is while the Howard group said he sounded like a good guy to work with, the Helen group said she sounded like a total bitch. Same resumes, same fucking person, the only difference was whether people thought the person was a man or a woman. This shows that culturally we do not value the traits required to succeed in women. This goes back to people accusing the original woman of being "angry". A man taking the same tone and irritation at the right time as she did would be seen as a passionate or righteously angry, rather than "disrespectful to themselves".
I have another quote from a woman that I thought was poignant to this point.
fuck right off. to everything "righteous" said. fuck off.
i'm an artist, a musician, and ex-military. in all three of those areas of my "expertise" i can hand on heart say that there are females who're better. not because of their gender, or because of mine, but just because they are.
there are also plenty of girls i know who're bad at things. just because they are. their gender has nothing to do with it. they just suck.
when women are in bad moods, no it's not always PMS. however you're honestly going to tell me that a cyclic fluctuation of hormones isn't going to be the cause of at least some of it? my girlfriend will be the first to call you on that one... hell, she tells other women at work to stop PMSing (because she actually can tell when someone is "on").
i'd never profess to know more about a womans "struggles" than a man. but at the same time, women are equally guilty of this double standard.
a man and a woman start an argument, the girl is the first one to make it physical, throw that first punch. regardless of what the law says, if the guy hits her back, just ONCE. who is the one going to jail? which group of activists are going to use it as an example of gender inequality?
when a man and woman get divorced, and they have children, in over 90% of cases WORLDWIDE who gets full time custody of the children? and which group of activists is actually IGNORED ACTIVELY in trying to right the wrong?
anyway. i'm now done with this thread. Ben, you're off on a rhetoric that is as redundant as trying to reinvent the wheel. you're spouting the same shit over and over, with no basis other than what appears to be a minor gripe with the system.
and it only appears to be a minor gripe, because you're not doing shit about it yourself other than "spreading awareness".
we're all aware, and now after this thread, i honestly couldn't give a fuck either.
Now back to reading and hopefully more meaningful discussions about videogame tropes.
not exactly the best points there Gir, both those cases demonstrate how fucked up the law is towards both men and women.
All they are saying is women are defenseless weak little flowers who are wonderful mothers.. not something the majority of women want to be presented as.
on the flip side its 'men are evil violent barbarians who cant care for their children'
Up until those 2 things I'm with you. Women are slowly gaining a more equal place in society. Where I work (animation) we're seeing more and more talented women getting jobs and progressing, this is in-turn challenging peoples preconceptions. It's certainly making me question my ideas.
*edit* I take back all of the above. I wanted to find an iceburn by looking up australian domestic abuse rates, and found that while women do receive both more frequent and more severe abuse than men, it wasn't "incredibly one-sided" like I originally said. In fact reading the study made me feel really sympathetic to the men of Australia who go through this abuse because it seems they have little care available within the health system, as well as few social outlets because of social ideas of masculinity. (the link: http://www.adfvc.unsw.edu.au/PDF%20files/Men_as_Victims.pdf)
I still assert that women get the worst end of it, and that fixing the idea of women as weak and men as strong would also help men to receive less abuse as well has have more outlets for venting after, but I learned it's actually a lot similar levels than I had previously thought.
Thought experiment:
How many people have you met who SERIOUSLY BELIEVE one or both of these?
Which one?
I know people men and women both who believe those archetypes are correct.
I think we all do to some degree, its beaten into us from the moment we are conscious. You idealise your mother and father for the roles they played in raising you, and if they're already part of the current gender role system then your basis is set from the get go.
Yes, that's exactly the point I (i dont precisely know about ben) have been trying to make. This is the kind of thing that can only be changed by discussion and youtube videos and debate. Awareness is the cure to this, not new laws or mandates. Even if the videos in OP are a bit reactionary and excessive, if they generate discussion and debate then that's rad, the woman who made them should be proud of herself.
By and large, people aren't subtly sexist because they're evil or hate women or anything... They just don't carefully look at these issues. It requires serious conscious thought to identify and stop these kinds of things from taking place.
As an aside, women can further sexism just as well as men can, naturally.
Addendum: I mentioned on IRC, i want to say in here, I dont think feminism should be placed on some pedestal and treated with reverence... But I DO think women's rights should be placed on some pedestal and treated with reverence. All human rights, in fact, there are just certain classes of people that need more help than others in our society. (White, middle class) women dont have the worst of it... But it could definitely get a lot better.
if 2 people are fighting in the court for rights to take their kids with them, then they both must each think that they are a better parent.
or they want those kids so badly that they fail to see that other person is a better parent.
or they hate the other person so much that they don't want him/her to be seeing kids, out of pure viciousness.
or they want the other person to pay alimony.
saying that in such cases woman is as fucked as man cos courts typically portray mother as a better parent is bizarre.
I'm going to assume here that men and women are actually at least a bit physiologically distinct. Not to make too much of this but I think it's well supported that women tend to be more empathetic and nurturing and men tend to be more aggressive and less empathetic.
I wonder is there isn't a subtle but pervasive form of sexism in the way these distinct sets of traits are valuated by society.
Since men have historically dominated society, society has naturally overvalued the masculine traits and undervalued the feminine traits.
Consequently video-games, comic books and movies underrepresent women because from the very beginning they were set up to highlight skills that males are generally better at: violence, cut-throat behavior, etc.
I wonder if a large part of the problem isn't just that there's no real emphasis on using the more feminine set of characteristics to resolve conflict as opposed to violence.
Maybe that made sense.
A lot of women like playing the sims because it is a nurturing game.
Why is it that you're the only one who seems angry and is name calling and assuming that anyone who disagrees is automatically an uneducated Neanderthal?
Why is it that you consistently put words in other peoples mouths, like "angry", and imply that anyone who says she has an ax to grind is calling her a "bitch".
I am only posting this because you do seem like someone who is at least self checking a little bit, if perhaps only as a result of researching to attempt to prove others wrong.
Statements like the following really do make me feel that you in fact do have it in you to change your attitude, provided you read, research and listen.
Major props to you for admitting this.
I think it's awesome that this is really the only thing that people have been saying in this thread, and that when you actually do take the effort to go and look, you will understand that anyone who disagrees with extreme feminism is not actually a chauvinist, but simply aware and able to see the world around them.
I put to you, that the very problem you are suddenly so sympathetic to the Australian males over(that you were completely unaware of and were so sure could not exist), was caused by that very attitude. Once you go down a road of marginalizing anyone, it is so easy to completely eliminate a group from receiving equal consideration.
The idea that women are weak and men are strong is not some idea with no basis, concocted by male chauvinists(not saying that you are indicating this, but some feminists would have you believe that).
Anyone who's lived a little, will understand that women are not seen as weak simply because men want to dominate them, but as a result of sexual dimorphism.
Now, no one with a brain would argue that female spiders being overwhelmingly larger and more powerful than their male counterparts means that if you were to accept and admit that males of the a spider species are as a whole are weaker in strength and size than their female counterparts as sexist and biased. No one with much of a capacity for understanding and logical thought would make the assumption that the angler fish Photocorynus spiniceps is somehow run by female sexists, and that's why the male is so small.
While the attitude that women as a whole are weak and smaller might be influential in the fact female abuse against men is unrecognized, it's also something that can not be simple "purged" from peoples minds, and also can be very helpful to women.
I have sisters, and my knowledge and understanding that while I am 6ft 180lbs, and they are 5'3 120 lbs, with smaller bone structure, and weaker muscle mass gives me the knowledge that it would be foolish and irresponsible of me to interact with them in the same physical manner that I might with one of my male friends who is 6ft 180 lbs.
My knowledge that there is a fragile life growing inside of a woman who is pregnant, and that her body is in a more fragile state automatically dictates that I do not attempt to tackle this woman in a game of football. It's quite simple, and absolutely the opposite of degrading or sexist logic.
Now, if I were to take the stance that because sexual dimorphism exists, that women are "inferior to males", that certainly would be degrading and sexist.
No one complains that in boxing their are weight classes, simply because a featherweight would probably get killed by a heavyweight boxer. (I'm not a fan of boxing, or a proponent of violence, but I think it makes a point).
Abuse against men is not overlooked because people understand sexual dimorphism, it because of the fact that people like yourself assumed it couldn't exist in any form worth worrying about.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/who%27re
gtfo.
i have worked with and know/known many females in many positions (lol) WHO'RE both amazing at their jobs and have a veriety of personalities.
some of the are flat out bitches, regardless of their job. that's just who they are and/or how they act. some of them are nice as pie, again regardless of their job.
if you don't want to be perceived as a bitch, don't be a bitch. it's got fuck all to do with your job.
that said, if you want to make it to the top level of ANY buseness, you pretty much have to be a ruthless cut-throat asshole. and that is NOT gender specific. so when a guy makes it into that position, he's an asshole. when a girl makes it into that position, she's a bitch. but it's by necessity of the role they're performing, and who they are as a person in order to make it there.
again, fuck all to do with their gender.
Is this in relation to the TEdtalk I posted? Because it doesn't address the point *at all* that when people reading the resume and evaluations of a person they thought was a man, they described all of his attributes as positives. IE *not* an asshole. But as soon as that same person was presented as female, people made her out to be a bitch. So yes, it has tons of fuck alls to do with gender. This is called a study, instead of an opinion, which is what you presented.
and as someone who's done the hiring in the past, there are a few things which are common within british employment:
shortlistings for interviews are based solely on resume.
the interview itself is to decide if you like a person.
you can tell whether you like a person within ~10 seconds.
so again. if you don't want to be perceived as a bitch. don't be a bitch.
and don't even think of trying to say that ANY of the studies you present aren't in the least bit biased in their presentations. EVERY post you've made in this thread is biased.
How many people notice that "chauvinist" is so embedded in our minds as being exclusively male, that the "male" part of "male chauvinist" is dropped.
Does anyone consider that the only reason that people end up using the term "femi-nazi" is because we have all been led to believe that no such thing as a female chauvinist could ever exist?
Read the definition of chauvinist.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chauvinism
There is actually an entry for "Male chauvinist".
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/male+chauvinism
However, there is no entry for "Female chauvinist".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminazi
Feminazi is a term popularized by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. Feminazi is a portmanteau of the nouns feminist and Nazi. The term is used pejoratively by some U.S. conservatives to criticize feminists that they perceive as extreme.
nope, its used to bunch feminists into the same boat as mental cases like Valerie Solanas(yeah Ben I know that's not a simple case). If a womans being chauvinist then call them a chauvinist.
And, you'd be incorrect in your thinking. My close friend is a perfect example. She is nowhere close to a "U.S. conservative" and she uses the term. Classic example of this kind of misinformed thinking.
Where it originated is irrelevant. Why people use it isn't. I can guarantee you that if went onto the street and asked if they thought a list of women were "chauvinist", I'd get quizzical looks and statements like, "No, she's a feminist". Which in many peoples mind excludes someone from being a chauvinist, which is automatically associated as male.
Though I have noticed that Australian women are much more 'macho' than what I have observed in other countries. A fact that poop confirmed with that finding son domestic violence by women in Australia. You don't fuck with the aussie ladies here!
Though because the women's movement was only 1 to 2 generations ago, you can still feel a slight working of the social expectations of women. Look after your husband, look after the house, look after the kids, ect.
House isn't clean when one comes over? Instant blame of the women, not the man that also lives there
Anyway about tropes in video games and media...
Things like this take generations to move out of society. I can already see in younger kids that these issues are much, much less. The things we need to do is make sure that the older generations of creators, directors and entertainment people remove these ever so slight tropes and clich