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Roderick

Feminism

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Man, something you guys should check out: The Killing (danish one) and The Bridge. Both Danish thriller shows, and both with awesome female protagonists. Not only are they intelligent, strong, likeable and complex characters, but they've also cast women who are not the typical sort of television-show generic mid-20s blank-canvass-face... they've cast normal-looking women who are attractive because of their on-screen personalities. It's something you see in male characters on television a lot, but not often women, and it is hugely pleasing to me. Their gender is never an issue and is never questioned, there is never a male/female divide or sexism or sleaze or gratuitous female nudity (I think there's more male nudity in both shows than female). They are just awesome female protagonists living in a world where their gender is not challenged or questioned. Lund and Saga are heroes.

Also worth watching because it highlights how underrepresented this sort of woman is in media.

sarah-lund.jpg

Christ I love her so much. I want that jumper so bad.

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Check it out, science!

Turns out the 1948 experiment that decided that males are naturally promiscuous and females choosy had a very important flaw, and recent studies point towards that conclusion being false.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120626092714.htm

Wikipedia Brown, that is an excellent article. I'm glad these sort of writings are becoming more common in gaming media.

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What about the infamous 1982 campus study?

Imagine this scenario: It's 1982. You're a student at Florida State University. You're good looking. And you're male.

An average-looking female student approaches you on campus and says, "I've been noticing you around campus lately and find you very attractive. Would you like to go to bed with me tonight?"

You respond in which of the following ways?

a) "I'm flattered, but no thanks."

B) "Your question offends my moral sensibilities. Absolutely not!"

c) "Yes, please...Why wait till tonight?"

This was precisely the scenario that Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield set up in their now-famous study. It turns out that 75% of those male students who were propositioned said "yes".

These researchers set up the same scenario again, except this time the students who were approached were female, and the students doing the propositioning were male. How many women do you think said yes? (Keep in mind that this involved average-looking male students approaching good-looking female students.)

None of them did.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/insight/201009/how-college-students-respond-being-propositioned-sex

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Well, if it isn't biological, then the cause is external. There are many reasons not to accept that proposal, such as fear for one's own safety and fear that one's reputation will be slandered (because promiscuity in women is still very much frowned upon, and the internet makes it super easy to divulge images/video and information to a large population in a relatively short amount of time).

There are also a lot of deeply ingrained societal pressures or repressions that are very difficult to break out of, even when you rationally know better.

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That's a fair point (although I'm pretty sure the Internet wasn't an issue in 1982). What about the other part of the article? Or the common argument that a human female would have to raise a child for 18 years, and so it would make sense, genetically speaking, for them to choose a partner that would help with that process?

It would surely increase the gene's chance of survival if the mother chose wisely with regards to a provider?

Of course, I believe humans are nothing if not adaptable, so men and women may well have changed since our beginnings. But does the average woman really want 60 sexual partners in their lifetime? As a guy, that much meaningless, no strings attached, sex sounds appealing. I'm not sure I know many women who feel the same.

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Raising a child for 18 years is also a societal thing, it's an expectation born of the fact that a child isn't considered an adult able to get a job and function in society until that age. This is not set in our biology, we are not physically incapable of doing anything but that. And sure, it would help if the dad was around, but that's a rational choice and not a hardwired biological one; there are societies, like the Mosuo, where the child is raised by a group of people that doesn't include the father. What this discovery does is basically destroy the biological grounding that gives weight to ideas that men should be excused for or expected to be promiscuous, and women being desirous of many partners is unnatural. This is simply not the case.

Hell yeah I'd love to have lots of NSA sex if pregnancy, fear of potential violence, blackmail, STDs or the judgement of my peers weren't problems. Which they are, but they don't have to be because we're not irremediably wired that way, and society's outlook re: promiscuous women can be changed.

This is not to say that all society-created ideas about sex are harmful, but this one is.

Addendum: I do personally know several intelligent women who have cheerfully had 30+ sexual partners in less than 30 years of life, as well as men who aren't interested in that sort of thing. This doesn't make any of them defective in any way.

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Not to interrupt your interesting discussion, but I found this article on Kotaku Australia, linked to in the Gamasutra-piece mentioned before, well written, interesting and quite anger inducing.

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Raising a child for 18 years is also a societal thing, it's an expectation born of the fact that a child isn't considered an adult able to get a job and function in society until that age. This is not set in our biology, we are not physically incapable of doing anything but that. And sure, it would help if the dad was around, but that's a rational choice and not a hardwired biological one; there are societies, like the Mosuo, where the child is raised by a group of people that doesn't include the father. What this discovery does is basically destroy the biological grounding that gives weight to ideas that men should be excused for or expected to be promiscuous, and women being desirous of many partners is unnatural. This is simply not the case.

A couple of things: Yep, you're right, 18 was a random number I plucked out of the air. But never the less, we're talking about Darwinism here. The survival of the fittest (or most able to adapt). The selfish gene inside us wants to survive, and in caveman/cavewoman times their would surely be a much greater chance of survival if there was someone else to help take care of the offspring... Someone who perhaps cares about it as much as the mother?

Sex with a guy would result in an offspring that would mean years of dedication... Bummer! Especially if the caveguy isn't going to be around. You can certainly see why a woman would be incredibly judicious about her choice of partners in such a situation... Even if she wanted sex really, really badly.

There's a whole other part of this, too: Newborn babies are designed (by nature) to resemble their father. And parents of the mother are programmed to say things backing this up, to the father ("Oh look! She's got her father's eyes!"). The insane rage that men can find themselves in if they learn they've been cheated on is presumed to be connected to this, too: Their selfish gene doesn't want to help raise a selfish gene that isn't theirs, so the male reaction is a throwback to times before contraception.

There's some great lectures about this whole thing I listened to several years ago, but sadly I can't find the exact ones. Still some great stuff to be found here, though:

http://webcast.berkeley.edu

Hell yeah I'd love to have lots of NSA sex if pregnancy, fear of potential violence, blackmail, STDs or the judgement of my peers weren't problems. Which they are, but they don't have to be because we're not irremediably wired that way, and society's outlook re: promiscuous women can be changed.

This is not to say that all society-created ideas about sex are harmful, but this one is.

Addendum: I do personally know several intelligent women who have cheerfully had 30+ sexual partners in less than 30 years of life, as well as men who aren't interested in that sort of thing. This doesn't make any of them defective in any way.

I totally agree. I'm definitely NOT arguing that anyone who falls outside of "the norm" (whatever that may be) is a freak or wrong or bad. And, of course, there's weird societal issues/double standards regarding promiscuous women and promiscuous men. That's not cool in my books. I'm just talking about The Science™.

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Brandon Sheffield wrote a nice article about the portrayal of women in games on Gamasutra: http://gamasutra.com...men_or_boys.php

I was not familiar with the term "Male Gaze". It's very interesting, and describes the problem with a lot of stuff that some people have difficulty seeing the problem with (often the kind of people who think that ladies going around in metal bikinis are strong female characters because they can kill things really well).

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Of course, I believe humans are nothing if not adaptable, so men and women may well have changed since our beginnings. But does the average woman really want 60 sexual partners in their lifetime? As a guy, that much meaningless, no strings attached, sex sounds appealing. I'm not sure I know many women who feel the same.

Funny you should precede that statement with 'as a guy'... of my friends, who are mostly guys, I can't think of one who enjoys no-strings-attached sex. All who have tried either become emotionally involved quickly, or have had 'awkward, failed one night stands' that they never want to repeat. A handful of my male friends have even been at the mercy of a woman who has insisted on a 'friends-with-benefits' scenario while they desperately want more. I know one person who likes one-night-stands and that's a woman. EDIT: actually I did just think of one other one who is, admittedly, a guy. But a guy who goes on holidays on his own to places like The Czech Republic, in order to treat himself to some 'high-grade' prostitutes. So I don't know if he counts.

I don't think the lust for loads of no-strings-attached sex with different people is actually something that most people really want, male or female. Certainly not for most people I know. I don't think it takes people long to realise that sex is best with people you have a good connection with and understanding of.

EDIT: my first edit made me think... I actually know about 5 guys who've been to see prostitutes. They're not the sort of people you expect them to be, either. It's weird, I always assumed growing up that prostitution was some weird thing that was growing out of our society, but now I... yeah. Loads of people do that shit.

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Prostitutes qua prostitutes, or the "girlfriend experience" kind?

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A couple of things: Yep, you're right, 18 was a random number I plucked out of the air. But never the less, we're talking about Darwinism here. The survival of the fittest (or most able to adapt). The selfish gene inside us wants to survive, and in caveman/cavewoman times their would surely be a much greater chance of survival if there was someone else to help take care of the offspring... Someone who perhaps cares about it as much as the mother?

Sex with a guy would result in an offspring that would mean years of dedication... Bummer! Especially if the caveguy isn't going to be around. You can certainly see why a woman would be incredibly judicious about her choice of partners in such a situation... Even if she wanted sex really, really badly.

Sure, but while this fits nicely into our preconceived ideas of how things should be, it doesn't have any actual scientific backing.

If men were socially expected and perceived as just as monogamous as women (again I have anecdotes here but anecdotes are not any kind of evidence), one could just as easily say that it's because offspring has a much better chance of survival and thriving if the father is present and bla bla bla. In the animal world, there are tons of examples of this sort of thing - penguins, seahorses, keas, red foxes, owls, etc.

If most of society instead were more like the Mosuo tribe I mentioned, where babies are taken care of by all the women, you also have a lot of animal examples; hyenas, lions, elephants, etc. You could even go the exact opposite way and say something like, women are too unstable or careless or promiscuous to care for kids, that's a father's job, and you could recur to the many species of animal mothers that eat or abandon their young.

For any of these situations, we would have no problem making up a sensible narrative about why things are as they are, but so long as there aren't any actual scientific studies proving it, it's no more than a just-so story. That is what the problem is, here. The study that "proved" that men are just naturally more promiscuous than women was flawed and most likely wrong.

There's a whole other part of this, too: Newborn babies are designed (by nature) to resemble their father.

I'd actually never heard about this so I looked it up, and it seems Scientific American disagrees. The article's got links to several studies occurring after the one you reference, with the most recent one being from 2007.

And parents of the mother are programmed to say things backing this up, to the father ("Oh look! She's got her father's eyes!"). The insane rage that men can find themselves in if they learn they've been cheated on is presumed to be connected to this, too: Their selfish gene doesn't want to help raise a selfish gene that isn't theirs, so the male reaction is a throwback to times before contraception.

But women get super mad about being cheated on too, even if there's no baby involved? And I think this, also, depends on the person -- what about adoption, or marrying a single mother, or finding out 15 years later that your babies were switched at birth at the hospital?

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Yufster, I said that 'NSA' sex SOUNDS appealing. The REALITY is that there isn't such a thing as 'no strings attached' sex (at least in my meagre experience - someone generally gets too involved), or at least it's not very common, but I wasn't talking about that.

If you read the article I linked to, you'll see that both men and women want the same number of ideal partners: One.

General tangent:

But I still think that men DO want meaningless sex, if they could really have it. (If only there were more men on this forum who could express an opinion on the matter.)

I feel compelled to just point out: I've never used a woman for sex (although I have been used BY women for sex), and I've never gone back to an ex just to sleep with her (I've seen the damage that can do).

But I still believe that men want meaningless sex more than women (generally speaking). I can't imagine a lesbian bar where one woman sat at one end of a room while other women lined up to have their clits licked until they reached an orgasm, one after the other. Yet that sort of thing isn't difficult for a gay man to find (or so my gay friends tell me, I haven't witnessed it first hand).

Is there a female version of the phone app that shows you where other women are who want meaningless sex right now?

These women already live outside of society's idea of the "norm", so I don't think societal constraints can be blamed.

To say there's no difference between men and women when it comes to sex, generally speaking, just seems to fly in the face of every bit of anecdotal evidence I can think of.

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I'm not saying that there is no difference, only that it's not biological in nature and therefore the factors that make it thus are external.

Also just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, or that the opposite is that common. If there were a female version of that app I wouldn't use it simply because there's too much danger involved in advertising yourself as sexually available to anonymous men that may also have that app.

Regarding women who like sex for sex: just because you live outside of the norm doesn't mean that you are completely over every single societal pressure! It's not just about a desire to conform, it's about things you have been raised your entire life to believe that are true, that are validated constantly in mainstream media and generally by existing in public, and that if you step out of too much you may be putting yourself in actual physical danger. A lot of guys don't just think "oh hey this lady wants to have sex and so do I, awesome let's do it", sometimes you get scary bros who decide that if you're sexually available you are a slut, and therefore unworthy of respect, and that your boundaries must not be real.

Anecdotes aren't gonna get us anywhere, I might have one to counter every one you do and they don't mean anything other than "none of these statements are ALWAYS true", which is what the crux of my point is. That we're not hardwired that way. It's not biology.

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of my friends, who are mostly guys, I can't think of one who enjoys no-strings-attached sex. All who have tried either become emotionally involved quickly, or have had 'awkward, failed one night stands' that they never want to repeat.

Exactly my experience too. Crap sex for everyone, or one person/both start to want deeper involvement. By no means saying this is an absolute trait or that I don't sometimes sleep with people casually myself, but the men I've known who really seem to get on with casual sex have tended to be shit people who see fucking women as conquering them, and don't care how good the sex is or how happy the other person is: just bragging rights.

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I'd actually never heard about this so I looked it up, and it seems Scientific American disagrees. The article's got links to several studies occurring after the one you reference, with the most recent one being from 2007.

This is (yet another) example of a journalist taking studies and (deliberately?) distorting them to make an exciting news story. Most studies referenced in that article conclude that babies DO look like their father, they also just resemble their mother equally. (I never said that babies resemble their father more.) I also pointed out that parents of the child are programmed to make statements regarding the similarity of the baby to the father. I got that slightly wrong, because (according to that article) the MOTHER is programmed (or conditioned) to say things like that... even if it's not true.

Even the studies that had contradictory findings (saying that the baby looked more like the mother than the father for the first three days) offer the following evolutionary explanation: "Evolutionary pressures may have actually reduced the amount of paternal resemblance in newborns, thus ensuring that a putative father will care for a child even if the father has been cuckolded." Which means they still put the same pressure on the woman to raise a child that I did when I first brought this up... I.e. Our ancestors were much more likely to have survived if they had a father to help out, which takes us back to square one: Mothers who were pickier about who they had a child with, would have had more chance of having their genes survive.

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Hot from the press the gangrenous guts of the internet: now ex-Destructoid contributor Ryan Perez made some drunken, sexist remarks at Felicia Day on Twitter yesterday, wondering:

Does Felicia Day matter at all? I mean does she actually contribute anything useful to this industry, besides retaining a geek persona?
I keep seeing everywhere. Question: Do you matter at all? Do you even provide anything useful to gaming, besides "personality?"

and

could you be considered nothing more than a glorified booth babe? You don't seem to add anything creative to the medium.

In a spasm of internet justice, things quickly turned against him and he now no longer works for Destructoid. Typically, his apology sounded insincere, Twitter posts strongly implying that he was more sorry that he got caught than that he did something wrong. I'd frankly be surprised if he has actually understood why what he said was so misogynistic. Most likely, in his head his tweets were still a fair question, and not at all the unfairly singling out and placing under extra scrutiny of one of the few female personalities in gaming.

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A personality, as in celebrity, who is also female? Don't twist my words.

Or, you don't know Felicia Day? She's quite well-known because of her work on The Guild and Dragon Age.

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I'm not saying that there is no difference, only that it's not biological in nature and therefore the factors that make it thus are external.

Also just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, or that the opposite is that common. If there were a female version of that app I wouldn't use it simply because there's too much danger involved in advertising yourself as sexually available to anonymous men that may also have that app.

Regarding women who like sex for sex: just because you live outside of the norm doesn't mean that you are completely over every single societal pressure! It's not just about a desire to conform, it's about things you have been raised your entire life to believe that are true, that are validated constantly in mainstream media and generally by existing in public, and that if you step out of too much you may be putting yourself in actual physical danger. A lot of guys don't just think "oh hey this lady wants to have sex and so do I, awesome let's do it", sometimes you get scary bros who decide that if you're sexually available you are a slut, and therefore unworthy of respect, and that your boundaries must not be real.

Anecdotes aren't gonna get us anywhere, I might have one to counter every one you do and they don't mean anything other than "none of these statements are ALWAYS true", which is what the crux of my point is. That we're not hardwired that way. It's not biology.

I guess I've done a poor job of explaining my position. I never meant to argue that women don't like sex for sex! (That's a pretty silly argument, if you ask me. Anyone who's had a girlfriend would surely attest to the opposite. Right?) The only argument I've made is that women desire security, too, whereas men don't. And yes, I think that's biological for all the arguments (both scientific and anecdotal) that I've mentioned.

Do you really believe that the gay man experience I mentioned (people lining up for blow jobs) is common in lesbian bars? No gay woman has EVER related a story to me like that, but I've heard plenty of similar ones from gay men.

In my own limited experience, it appears to me (and this is just my opinion now -- so I could be very wrong), that women want sex for sex's sake, but that they tend to want to feel secure with who they're with, too. There are exceptions (of course), like one night stands with strangers, but I think women generally have to ignore their internal warnings when they do that, having to convince themselves that they're not really is as much danger as part of them wants them to believe they are.

And here's the sad thing: The women I've seen who regularly engage in one night stands with strangers (important distinction!) are usually doing it for reasons of low self-esteem. They want to feel attractive and desirable. Again, this is just my own personal experience from seeing friends and watching their behaviour. To be honest, the same might well be true for men who complusively womanize, too, I don't know.

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In a spasm of internet justice, things quickly turned against him and he now no longer works for Destructoid. Typically, his apology sounded insincere, Twitter posts strongly implying that he was more sorry that he got caught than that he did something wrong. I'd frankly be surprised if he has actually understood why what he said was so misogynistic. Most likely, in his head his tweets were still a fair question, and not at all the unfairly singling out and placing under extra scrutiny of one of the few female personalities in gaming.

I'm going to throw another hat of mine into the ring here and say that I'm not entirely convinced his Tweets were the product of a deeper misogyny. I think they were rude, obnoxious, insulting, ignorant, horrible, and anger-inducing (Felicia Day is a personal hero of mine), but I'm not sure if I could say the worst thing about them was sexism. If anything, saying they were sexist is surely... sexist? I'm sure plenty of male gaming personalities get the same sort of Tweets from similar abhorrent assholes, so was she really being singled out for her sex?

If you can't see the superb contributions made by Day, not just to gaming culture, but to culture in general, then I'm flabbergasted. But I'm not sure I'd call you sexist.

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To be certain, his willingness to comment on people he knows nothing about is nothing short of stupid, but the point is that he singled her out, choosing to scrutinize her rather than the gazillions of male gaming 'celebs' on the internet. Why single her out? It's hard not to reason that it must be because to Perez, she's in a special category.

Then, of course, he opines that if you are a known female in the gaming industry and you are not 'adding anything creative', you must be a 'glorified booth babe'.

[ADDED] I'm not saying Perez is a conscious misogynist, but these tweets strike me as the product of the typical sexist culture prevalent in the gaming world. Hence my earlier suspicion that he doesn't actually know why he did a bad thing.

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But... What's wrong with singling her out? He can have an opinion on her, as much as he can have an opinion on anybody. That's what I mean about saying he's sexist could actually be a little... sexist. It seems to be saying that you can't criticize or put her under scrutinity because she's a woman.

Also, calling her a "glorified booth babe" is ignorant and insulting, but there ARE such things as "booth babes" (to use that term), and there are women who would fall into the category of being a "glorified booth babe" -- like the stream of models who played Lara Croft at trade shows, for example. I'm also not entirely sure Perez was saying "you must be a gorlified booth babe" just because you don't add anything creative, but I could be wrong.

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Well, there is a margin of error here, but also enough reason for a healthy dose of suspicion.

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