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Fair enough. I should just watch the video...I'll watch the video at some point and report back. If she really wants to say that Mario is toxic sexist bullshit even in a magical fantasy land where Damsel in Distress isn't a trope and women and men are perfectly equal, I think I'd have to disagree. As far as I can tell, the problem with Mario isn't that Peach is a woman. The problem is that Peach is a stereotypical Damsel in Distress (and she is lots of other stereotypes too, which doesn't help things at all).

 

Wait, you haven't actually watched the video that's being discussed...?

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I thought saying it three or four times in the thread would be enough but I suppose we've already established that you don't really read this thread, so...

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Aw, that's the best!

 

And I think it highlights well the importance of using examples from games otherwise considered untouchable, apolitical classics. The problem with ubiquitous male-centric game tropes isn't unique to those games that explicitly objectify woman in an obvious and disgusting way, it's that the whole goddamn thing is rigged from the start. It's very often not even considered that a woman or a lgbt person or a person of color or a disabled person would want to see themselves represented in a game narrative (and not necessarily via character creation screens). Partially it's because the people writing these stories tend to be straight white men. But that's who the industry has primarily been catering to thus far.

 

When that guy's daughter enjoyed so thoroughly the ability to role play as an ass kicking turnip tossing princess she asked her dad if there were other games within that universe that allowed her to do the same and he had to go to the extreme lengths of hacking another game simply to allow her the joy that so many little boys expect without even having to think twice about it. This is why it's important to consider and analyse the gendered POV of game history (not just the easy examples) when we think about what to do going forward.

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And I think it highlights well the importance of using examples from games otherwise considered untouchable, apolitical classics. The problem with ubiquitous male-centric game tropes isn't unique to those games that explicitly objectify woman in an obvious and disgusting way, it's that the whole goddamn thing is rigged from the start. It's very often not even considered that a woman or a lgbt person or a person of color or a disabled person would want to see themselves represented in a game narrative (and not necessarily via character creation screens). Partially it's because the people writing these stories tend to be straight white men. But that's who the industry has primarily been catering to thus far.

 

When that guy's daughter enjoyed so thoroughly the ability to role play as an ass kicking turnip tossing princess she asked her dad if there were other games within that universe that allowed her to do the same and he had to go to the extreme lengths of hacking another game simply to allow her the joy that so many little boys expect without even having to think twice about it. This is why it's important to consider and analyse the gendered POV of game history (not just the easy examples) when we think about what to do going forward.

 

Agree completely. Especially when you realize how soul-crushingly sad it is for little girls who like video games to realize that their gender precludes them from ever being the hero in their own story.

 

I remember being very upset as a kid when I discovered that the character I was playing in a Zelda game wasn't actually the titular princess, but some guy named Link (seriously, it was very confusing to my child brain. I could not understand why I wasn't playing as the girl, when it's her name that's on the box of the game.) That kind of stuff has an effect on the way people deal with the world and their societal expectations. It certainly taught me, at least while I was growing up, that if I wanted to be the hero, I would always have to be a guy.

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I should just watch the video...I'll watch the video at some point and report back. If she really wants to say that Mario is toxic sexist bullshit even in a magical fantasy land where Damsel in Distress isn't a trope and women and men are perfectly equal, I think I'd have to disagree. As far as I can tell, the problem with Mario isn't that Peach is a woman. The problem is that Peach is a stereotypical Damsel in Distress (and she is lots of other stereotypes too, which doesn't help things at all).

Fwiw I just rewatched and I didn't necessarilly get that impression. It's just that I am sure some people would classify Mario that way and at this point of the series it is hard to judge for me if that is the basis it operates on. Which is why I'm seeking the discussion to figure out, if I am at least in consensus with the community and where my stance on the topic is. It seems like we're in agreement.

 

 

And I think it highlights well the importance of using examples from games otherwise considered untouchable, apolitical classics. The problem with ubiquitous male-centric game tropes isn't unique to those games that explicitly objectify woman in an obvious and disgusting way, it's that the whole goddamn thing is rigged from the start. It's very often not even considered that a woman or a lgbt person or a person of color or a disabled person would want to see themselves represented in a game narrative (and not necessarily via character creation screens). Partially it's because the people writing these stories tend to be straight white men. But that's who the industry has primarily been catering to thus far.

 

When that guy's daughter enjoyed so thoroughly the ability to role play as an ass kicking turnip tossing princess she asked her dad if there were other games within that universe that allowed her to do the same and he had to go to the extreme lengths of hacking another game simply to allow her the joy that so many little boys expect without even having to think twice about it. This is why it's important to consider and analyse the gendered POV of game history (not just the easy examples) when we think about what to do going forward.

That video was indeed the best. I was catching myself thinking "does the protagonist's gender really matter?" at some point, which is quite curious. Since it obviously mattered to the girl. Quite some cause for reflection. Great video, great points. Also great dad.

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I just thought Zelda was a dude's name for years until I heard it in another context and my mind was blown.

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I just thought Zelda was a dude's name for years until I heard it in another context and my mind was blown.

 

As a kid I dressed up as Link for halloween or something and everything kept calling me Zelda. Fuck that right in the neck.

 

It's very often not even considered that a woman or a lgbt person or a person of color or a disabled person would want to see themselves represented in a game narrative (and not necessarily via character creation screens). Partially it's because the people writing these stories tend to be straight white men. But that's who the industry has primarily been catering to thus far.

 

Maybe I'm the minority on this, but when I play games seeing myself represented is something that I really don't give a damn about at all. I want more diverse characters in games, but only because it'd make games more diverse and interesting as a whole.

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As a kid I dressed up as Link for halloween or something and everything kept calling me Zelda. Fuck that right in the neck.

Hah! Best.

 

When I play video games, I don't give a shit who I'm represented by, as long as it's either a mute or an interesting character. THERE IS NO IN BETWEEN. I really like the latest Lara Croft. (I've disliked every previous incarnation that I played.) U:

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As a kid I dressed up as Link for halloween or something and everything kept calling me Zelda. Fuck that right in the neck.

 

To date, my friend, who's a huge fan of the Uncharted series, still calls the main character "Drake Fortune". To be fair, it's a great soap opera/porn star name.

 

But yeah, people tend to assume that the title of a work refers to the main character. If that's not the case, the results are tragicomic.

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MRA posits a systemic solution to a systemic problem that doesn't exist: men are not oppressed as a result of their masculinity, any more than white people in America are oppressed as a result of their whiteness. And that is why people object to it. 

Then you're objecting to something I also disagree with, which also happens not to be what I'm talking about or what the concept even means by any definitions I've found so far.

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Finally got around to watching this. Anyone who disagrees with a single word she said needs to reevaluate their life, basically. The "regressive crap" comment that people seem to be getting up in arms about was a guy sucker punching a scantily clad women so he could abduct her and provide an excuse for the player to beat hundreds of thugs up, and in the latest incarnation this was done in the presence of one of the fellow gang members, a woman dressed like someone's fantasy of a stripper dressed as a cop. If that's not "regressive crap" then nothing in the world is. The video was about as boring and dry as I was expecting (20 minutes of stuff that should be obvious to anyone who's payed any attention to video games gets pretty old when there are barely any jokes) but there's absolutely nothing in it to disagree with unless you think that the system is trying to keep to oppress the poor, defenseless white man. Like Luftmensch seems to think.

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Actually, DDN is kind of a weird example to use since that game was specifically made to ruthlessly make fun of its source material for being so moronic.

 

Hah yeah, I was thinking about why the original is like that, and it's most likely because the designers did not care to do any other kind of unique animations outside of the punch for a kidnapping, since just walking slowly over to someone and picking up their girlfriend in front of them is probably a just slightly more ridiculous than the whole intro as it is. It appears Wayforward felt it was suitable to be just as "lazy." :)

 

Also I don't want any more episodes, because this thread is too fucking long as it is.

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Finally got around to watching this. Anyone who disagrees with a single word she said needs to reevaluate their life, basically. The "regressive crap" comment that people seem to be getting up in arms about was a guy sucker punching a scantily clad women so he could abduct her and provide an excuse for the player to beat hundreds of thugs up, and in the latest incarnation this was done in the presence of one of the fellow gang members, a woman dressed like someone's fantasy of a stripper dressed as a cop. If that's not "regressive crap" then nothing in the world is.

 

I sorta disagree with that. It's crude and silly, sure, but I think it's a valid plot element for a crude and silly game. Considering the game consists pretty much entirely of beating up every thug in the world forever, punching and kidnapping a questionably dressed woman is no more "regressive" than the rest of the game.

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Meta-awareness of something being sexist, doesn't somehow make it not sexist. You can try to excuse Double Dragon Neon for reusing that intro by saying that they know it's stupid, but that doesn't make it OK; in fact, I think it actually makes it worse, since they knew that the intro is stupid and sexist, but they still used it anyway.

 

Maybe this kind of 'wink, wink we know sexism is bad, we're just using it ironically/humorlessly' attitude wouldn't be so problematic, if unironic sexism wasn't still a very real issue. But since it is, this retro, jokey sexism comes off as exceedingly tone-deaf and juvenile. 

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This may just be a difference of opinions (or maybe I'm just an asshole), but I don't equate objectification of a fictional character with objectification of an actual person or sexism directed at an actual person. Similarly (this may be a bit of a leap), I don't equate violence in video games with violence in real life. Ripping a dudes head off or shooting at ambiguously brown terrorists forever is just as gross and crude, but I don't find it morally objectionable because it's being inflicted on a fictional character.

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I sorta disagree with that. It's crude and silly, sure, but I think it's a valid plot element for a crude and silly game. Considering the game consists pretty much entirely of beating up every thug in the world forever, punching and kidnapping a questionably dressed woman is no more "regressive" than the rest of the game.

Yes, but the rest of the game is crude and silly and consists pretty much entirely of being up every thug in the world forever...

This may just be a difference of opinions (or maybe I'm just an asshole), but I don't equate objectification of a fictional character with objectification of an actual person or sexism directed at an actual person. Similarly (this may be a bit of a leap), I don't equate violence in video games with violence in real life. Ripping a dudes head off or shooting at ambiguously brown terrorists forever is just as gross and crude, but I don't find it morally objectionable because it's being inflicted on a fictional character.

Nobody equates the two in that they are the same thing. Obviously they are different. It's not morally objectionable to do anything to a fictional character because they are fictional. What it is morally objectionable to do is to feed into a culture where certain established tropes about women exist, tropes that lead people to do actual, legitimate real life bad things to women on a daily basis. These games aren't bad because punching a virtual lady is like punching a real lady. These games are full of problematic examples of narratives that lead to tangible bad effects. Nobody is saying that violence in games needs to be outlawed because violence in real life needs to be outlawed or that sexism in games is as bad as real life. We're saying that sexism in games leads to sexism in real life just like sexism in the rest of culture leads to sexism in real life.

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We're saying that sexism in games leads to sexism in real life just like sexism in the rest of culture leads to sexism in real life.

 

Does it though? That same statement doesn't really hold up for violence or anything else. That sounds that a problem in broader society than a problem with video games.

 

That said, this is coming from someone who has experienced next to no violence or sexism in their life, so my view may be somewhat skewed.

 

I would also like some sources for things like the "tangible bad effects" you talked about.

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I don't even think you need to go as far and say that sexism in games is a direct corollary with sexism in real life, but sexism in games certainly feeds into and normalizes this kind of attitude towards women. It might not be a direct 1 to 1 correlation but it's still incredibly harmful.

 

I completely understand that most people can probably look at this isolated issue with DDN and not immediately go out and assault a woman. But this game doesn't exist in a vacuum and it is just one in a list of many examples (as highlighted in Sarkeesian's video!) that show we are generally used to seeing women treated this way in games to the point where it doesn't really shock us, or we can look at is as 'humorous' in a wink, wink kind of way. It definitely is a part of a broader problem with society, but breaking that problem down to its discrete parts is how we can show and explain exactly what that problem is and hopefully work to fix it.

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To me (and again I may be wrong and stupid), that says that there is an accepted culture of sexism to some degree and that influences the amount of sexism in games, not the other way around. I don't think that sexism in video games feeds back into society and therefore it is harmless, much like violence in video games. I don't think it normalizes actual sexism any more than it normalizes actual violence.

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Does it though? That same statement doesn't really hold up for violence or anything else. That sounds that a problem in broader society than a problem with video games.

 

That said, this is coming from someone who has experienced next to no violence or sexism in their life, so my view may be somewhat skewed.

 

I would also like some sources for things like the "tangible bad effects" you talked about.

So unfortunately for someone who sometimes gets into Internet conversations with people who are blissfully unaware of what I take to be the fairly obvious fact that culture can have an influence on how people behave, I don't really walk around with citations for this sort of thing. It's not a field of study that I engage in and I don't know the literature at all. Back during the whole Dead Island disembodied torso statue, thing, I did post in a thread on another forum that talked about a lot of this stuff, so I went and combed through that for a few minutes to find some links to maybe get you started. At other points in my life I've often just thrown up my hands at stuff like "prove to me that sexism is bad" because honestly anyone asking for that kind of proof probably hasn't done enough reading on their own to have any business talking about sexism in the first place, but since I'm slightly less grumpy, here are your links, a few of which are directly helpful but most of which are useful largely because they link to other stuff (I'm not doing to do all the work for you!):

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103108001005

http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/06/02/penny-arcade-vs-rape-culture/

http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/rape-culture-in-gaming/

http://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/rape-culture-in-gaming-redux/

pdf warning!

http://fozmeadows.tumblr.com/post/40949301446/sexism-in-gaming-a-response-to-gabrielle-toledano

a video only tangentially relevant but worth watching to get an idea for what kind of people we turn into when we play video games!

And that's all I've got for now.

edit:

To me (and again I may be wrong and stupid), that says that there is an accepted culture of sexism to some degree and that influences the amount of sexism in games, not the other way around. I don't think that sexism in video games feeds back into society and therefore it is harmless, much like violence in video games. I don't think it normalizes actual sexism any more than it normalizes actual violence.

"Culture is a one way street" strikes me as a very silly hypothesis. It's clearly untrue when it comes to things like how people dress, talk, eat, fuck, dance, and drive. I don't see why it would be untrue when it comes to how people treat women.

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To me (and again I may be wrong and stupid), that says that there is an accepted culture of sexism to some degree and that influences the amount of sexism in games, not the other way around. I don't think that sexism in video games feeds back into society and therefore it is harmless, much like violence in video games. I don't think it normalizes actual sexism any more than it normalizes actual violence.

I wouldn't go that far, but I would agree that video game sexism exists largely because sexism exists. That's a pretty obvious and useless statement to make, though, so I'll be crawling back into my corner now.

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I wouldn't go that far, but I would agree that video game sexism exists largely because sexism exists. That's a pretty obvious and useless statement to make, though, so I'll be crawling back into my corner now.

 

Completely agree, and I think it's worth pointing out.

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edit:"Culture is a one way street" strikes me as a very silly hypothesis. It's clearly untrue when it comes to things like how people dress, talk, eat, fuck, dance, and drive. I don't see why it would be untrue when it comes to how people treat women.

 

I'm naive and would like to think that the majority of people have at least some basic common decency.

 

I'll read the links in the mean time.

 

Edit: Not doing much for me I'm afraid. The fozmeadows stuff to me seems extremely opinionated and subjective to me and at times completely silly bordering slightly insane. I still don't know what "rape culture" is supposed to be.

The advertising stuff I mostly agree with, it is kinda gross, but for the for most part doesn't really exist inside a work of fiction and thus isn't entirely relevant.

The science direct thing looked promising but I have to buy it to actually read it apparently, which is a shame.

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"Rape culture" is usually defined in my head as the world telling women "don't get raped" while not bothering to tell men "don't rape." The "she got raped? What was she wearing?" argument, in a nutshell. I haven't read the articles linked by Tycho, but hopefully that helps a bit. Honestly, when this thread went from 2 pages to 12 while I was away from my computer for a day, I gave up on trying to follow the conversation and at this point I just read things now and then and get sad. Count me on the "backed the series and feel happy with what I got" side, as well as on the "MRA is bullshit, pretty much any complaint of theirs that I'd consider legitimate stems from gender norms that feminism is trying to break down" team (if the topic was raised in this thread, which I gather from recent posts it was). I may not speak up much though, as others seem to be saying what I would in a much more eloquent fashion.

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"Rape culture" is usually defined in my head as the world telling women "don't get raped" while not bothering to tell men "don't rape."

 

What in the actual fuck? That seems completely insane to me; I've never been told not to get raped, literally or metaphorically.

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