Beelzebud Posted October 18, 2014 If you don't like feminism, you're either a man afraid of losing your privileged position in society, or you have glorious misconceptions about what feminism is. Agreed. Sometimes I wonder when people started thinking that if your a feminist, you don't give a shit about anyone but women. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Problem Machine Posted October 19, 2014 Douchebag: The White Racial Slur We’ve All Been Waiting For Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
sclpls Posted October 20, 2014 Really long, but fascinating look into the history of women participating in war games & RPGs. https://medium.com/@increment/the-first-female-gamers-c784fbe3ff37 The author of the piece also wrote an incredible (and incredibly long) book about the history of war gaming. They interviewed him about his book on an episode of Three Moves Ahead. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
clyde Posted October 20, 2014 Douchebag: The White Racial Slur We’ve All Been Waiting For I really enjoyed this. I love it when the author keeps saying "useless, sexist tool". Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
tegan Posted October 21, 2014 Really great look at something that's bugged me for a while: the "sameface syndrome" that every female animated character in the past decade or so seems to suffer from. Also briefly touches on the weird initialization inherent to the de facto "female" design. One thing I've actually been considering doing for the last few months is gathering up the character sheets from the entire Bruce Timm era of the DCAU and seeing if anyone besides Amanda Waller, Big Barda, and Red Claw were even identifiable if you just stacked them all and set layers to multiply. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SuperBiasedMan Posted October 21, 2014 The worst thing about that syndrome is how blind some character designers to it are, when they're so used to optimising to the default pretty female that they forget there is actually the option to do other designs. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bolegium Posted October 21, 2014 I immediately thought of Frozen before reading that, no suprise she brings that up. Does anyone have examples of animation/comics etc. with a good variety of female faces? Off the top of my head I would say Satoshi Kon's work has diverse female character designs, Paranoia Agent being a good example with a large cast. Having said that, the designs still don't seem as diverse as those for his male characters. Coraline also comes to mind as a good example. (*Just checked and the female characters all have a bit of that annoying 'tiny nose' design unfortunately) It's hard enough trying to come up with examples of animation with a roughly equal ratio of female/male characters to even compare. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Problem Machine Posted October 21, 2014 One Piece is pretty good about that, at least later on (some of the early women look pretty identical) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Bjorn Posted October 21, 2014 Planet Money story: When women stopped coding Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Argobot Posted October 21, 2014 I listened to that story when Chris shared it on Twitter a few days ago and was so disheartened. It's good that CS departments are actively working to address the issue raised in the episode, but it's still so sad thinking of all the women who were pushed out of CS between 1984-today. It also reminded me of this great essay by Ellen Ullman. (She wrote By Blood, one of the Idle Book club picks, and is a long time computer programmer.) http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/how-to-be-a-woman-programmer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
JonCole Posted October 21, 2014 That reminds me of an article I read yesterday that I unfortunately can't find in my Twitter favorites titled something like "I need horrible female developers". The gist of the piece was that women in the gaming industry are expected to be shining examples of innovative skill and design. Sure, it's good that a Jade Raymond can be a role model for women looking to get into the space, but not every female needs to be her to be valuable. The article quoted this from Nicki Minaj - “When you’re a girl, you have to be everything. You have to be dope at what you do but you have to be super sweet and you have to be sexy and you have to be this, you have to be that, and you have to be nice … it’s like, ‘I can’t be all those things at once. I’m a human being.’ “ The writer was equating this same strange cultural demand that we have on women to be everything to how women shouldn't be expected to do everything perfectly well in the gaming industry to be valuable. And for what it's worth, it was not pushing affirmative action ie "You should hire horrible female developers". It was more saying that equality is valuable and even if you have a merit-based hiring practice you'd still have more women in the space than there are now. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
syntheticgerbil Posted October 22, 2014 Hah, I really wish Nicki Minaj would do less, so much less, but yeah she's right. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Patrick R Posted October 22, 2014 That Nicki Minaj quote really loses something when you can't hear her say "I'm a human beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeinggggggg". Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BadHat Posted October 23, 2014 Good lord this thread is not helping my unhealthy habit of opening Far Too Many Tabs. Just recently, however, a new creative team took over the comic and gave Batgirl's outfit a much-needed overhaul.. So this was forever pages ago but I was just catching up on the thread and this image was bothering the christ out of me. I finally realised why and was compelled to make this. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Larsen B Posted October 23, 2014 Yeah but the jacket is leather not spandex. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Twig Posted October 23, 2014 Goddamnit BadHat I used to like that drawing. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Ozzie Posted October 23, 2014 Yeah, I guess the picture is not well done, but people like it less for its execution than for the fact that it isn't gross anyway... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SuperBiasedMan Posted October 23, 2014 Bad (inconsistent) art in superhero comics is certainly nothing new. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BobbyBesar Posted October 23, 2014 Her bat-helmet needs a chinstrap if it isn't going to be an attached cowl. Also, despite the good intentions here, I wonder how long it will be before somebody ignores or screws up the style guide and shes drawn in a comic with the "X - not spandex" look. Unfortunately, it's probably inevitable. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Cyborg771 Posted October 23, 2014 That reminds me of an article I read yesterday that I unfortunately can't find in my Twitter favorites titled something like "I need horrible female developers". The gist of the piece was that women in the gaming industry are expected to be shining examples of innovative skill and design. Sure, it's good that a Jade Raymond can be a role model for women looking to get into the space, but not every female needs to be her to be valuable. I was thinking this the other day when I was reading some post or another thanking female developers for their bravery and encouraging more to become role models. I mean I'm sure it was well intentioned but all I could think was "Not every woman has to be a role model, some of them just want to do their part and not butt heads, it's unfair to ask somebody to be a symbol if they aren't comfortable with it." I'm probably overthinking things but yeah, it seems like female ANYTHING in this industry aren't just allowed to be that thing, they also have to be a spokesperson for their gender. Probably another barrier to entry honestly. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
twmac Posted October 24, 2014 Did she purport to be solving something by retweeting that? Also, what qualifies you to be an arbiter of what is appropriate for her to retweet? This just reminds me of this Amy Poehler moment. Gringor being the Fallon in this case http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/777682-amy-poehler-was-new-to-snl-and-we-were-all Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
CollegeBaby Posted October 28, 2014 I don't have anything meaningful to add, and this has probably been pointed out by someone far smarter than me somewhere else in the world over 15 years ago, but I just needed to vent. As a kid one of my favourite movies was The Fifth Element, but I had not seen it since I was about 13 years old. Well I decided to watch it again recently and was kind of horrified to be reminded of what it was as an adult. Throughout the movie Mila Jovovich's character is described as this "perfect being", created from a superior race of aliens, the person who will save the world from evil and destruction, so on and so forth. However as a character she does almost nothing for the entire movie. She makes no choices, doesn't affect change on the plot by her actions, and apart from a 2-ish minute fight scene she can't even defend herself without the help of Big Strong White Man Bruce Willis to save her. She is basically a human MacGuffin. So what does the movie actually do to portray her supposed perfection, other than being told so by every character? By men constantly remarking upon how good looking she is and what a perfect example of the female form she is. Nude scenes are played for comedy by men being shocked by how good looking she is. She is instantly the love interest of the main character when they meet, and the film climaxes with a kiss between them and ends with a sex scene. On top of this there is no single positive female character in the rest of the movie. Women fall into one of two categories of either being a dim-witted object for the desire and servitude of men such as the flight attendants, McDonald's workers and so on. Or they are completely sexless and undesirable such as the butch female military officer or Bruce's nagging mother. The female alien opera singer looks like she might go somewhere interesting, however... it is soon revealed her only importance is to deliver the plot device and then she is simply killed. Obviously this is nothing special about films and there are worse examples, but I was just kind of embarrassed for having liked this movie so much as a kid while being completely oblivious to the kind of ideas it was portraying. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
SecretAsianMan Posted October 28, 2014 I was actually thinking about that movie recently as well. It was prompted by the discussion of the Baby Got Backstory trope thread. I don't want to get into detail about it here since the other thread is much more appropriate for it but basically I think the movie is an example of it for a lot of the reasons you mention. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites