In the context of games, both sexes appearances are geared to suit only men’s fantasies. Women are made to look super fuckable, while men are made to look how the male gamer wishes he looked. One is an object meant to be used, the other is an object to subsume oneself into. Either way they’re both only really serving male preference.
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On a pure sexual attraction basis, I don’t think women are that into super roided dudes, so no.
The beefy power muscle message seems uniquely targeted to dudes there, whereas Barbie type sexualization is expressly designed to appeal to (and does appeal to) most men.
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IMO, disabling all YouTube comments would be a step forward for the human race.
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Are said 'roiders aware of it?
Or, what he considers (not necessarily in accordance with the reality) super-fuckable?
…can’t we invest the effort wasted on pointless rhetorics on making mods for said games instead? Then everybody will have whatever they want, nobody will get anybody else’s will imposed on, and peace will fall upon the land.
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Not to be confused with Boob Lift Matters.
But at the end of the day, All Lift Matters.
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Most women I know are indeed not into the super roided dudes. The big muscle stereotype is not a “sexual fantasy” body type for women. It’s a “sexual fantasy” for men.
That said, I’m a little sad that the video uses the old Tomb Raider games without really pointing out that the Tomb Raider reboot and Rise of the Tomb Raider have some of the best examples of non-sexualized strong female characters. It makes light of a studio seeing that there is a problem and fixing it. Especially since there are enough recent games to show as examples.
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And to add on to that, lots of men do engage in controlling behaviour as a result of social pressures.
The problem with this approach is that the main target of the rhetoric is the culture around video games that encourages the hypersexualised content in the first place; modding it out does nothing to address that.
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I’m not sure that the new games are standouts in terms of good female characters - there’s effort there, to be sure, but there’s lots of other weird undertones, at least in TR 2013, that undermine it to an extent.
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Not a big video gamer, but I agree there’s a double standard. Would it be possible to at least use that as a teaching experience?
I’m just imagining a video game where if you’re staring at the character’s butt you don’t notice she’s about to kill you. Don’t stare … You live.
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Well… There’s… An element of that in the game SCP Containment Breach. One of the SCPs (an SCP is a monster, object or even an idea that has… rather paranormal powers) is a menacing concrete statue that doesn’t move if it’s in your field of vision. As soon as you look away though it moves very quickly. It’ll be in a different spot every time you look back, and before you know it, it’s right behind you and breaks your neck, since you can’t see it when it happens.
That sort of mechanic might work in your game idea. Except the other way around.
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I’ve recently finished Rise of the Tomb Raider and have to say this: Lara is the strongest, best written, female character in video games.
Besides that, the main characters are divided like this:
Main good guys: 1 male, 1 female (with the female role being the lead)
Main bad guys: 1 male, 1 female (with the female role being the stronger character)
Secondary characters: 1 male, 1 female (with the female getting more screentime)
It is clear that Rise of the Tomb Raider is showing the industry that great games can be carried by strong non-sexualized female characters and I’m hoping that the big studio’s are taking note.
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How about instead of pissing and moaning on a public forum she starts a company and make game’s that fit her standards?
Oh yea… pissing and moaning is the easier route.
/Eye-Roll
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What, so you’re driving trollies? Cuz, that’s the mission statement of a trolley, if I’ve ever heard it. Enjoy your flags if you keep that up.
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As one of the early rabbinical comments says of mankind, “They have given him into the hands of his evil imagination, since every thought of his heart was evil from the beginning”
Nowadays after more than 60 years on this planet I’m afraid my reaction is a little different: What does it matter if they are old enough to know what they are doing, agree to what they are doing, and nobody else gets hurt?
Sexual fetishes, nudity and contraception don’t even register on my list of things to get upset about. Putting down women (or indeed any group), however, does.
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but it is fun to watch all Indiana Jones movies in a row with a bunch of drunken archaeologists!
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Ooh, that sounds like a hell of a lot of fun. I’m gonna have to figure out a way to make that happen. I wonder if the University of Washington has people in field archaeology. I’m sure does…
What do archaeologists like to drink?
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I can only speak of “my” archaeologists: beer and wine. But archeology is only a profession, not some kind of different type of being. So everything the people you invite to binge-watch prefer?
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What makes it something of a difficult issue is that if you look at athletic women - I don’t mean steroid laden weightlifters but runners, climbers, and in fact all participants in track and field events - they do tend to conform to the body type that signals reproductive fitness to the lower levels of the male brain. It is, as the article suggests, mainly about clothing. And in Western societies at least, women tend to wear less of it for a whole lot of reasons most of which are social pressure related,
I think one of the reasons Muslim women seem to attract so much opposition is because their behavior is seen as containing an implicit criticism of Western female clothing. But until we live in a society where it’s equally acceptable to walk down the street naked or in a hijab - and the same woman might do either at different times - it’s going to be difficult to disentangle video games from our confused and complex society.
Not that we shouldn’t be doing it - to be clear, I’m a Sarkeesian supporter.
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Ah, I listen to a geology and paleontology podcast with hosts and regular panelists in Colorado, Wyoming and Washington, and they feature a “what are we drinking” segment every episode. I never knew there were so many geologically and paleontologically themed beers before I started listening to it. There’s a ton of microbrewerys that like to name beers off of obscure extinct animals, and geological eras.
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Yeah, and I could have chosen better language.
