It’s dreadfully sad, and true. If you had the equivalent on TV, shows’d get canned pronto.
These women are added to provide pseudo-porn, and it works. I played Tomb Raider (version … I don’t know) a couple of times, and found, along with my brother, I’d fall over stuff and lose because I was watching her rear all the time.
It’s deliberate, and exploitative, and sad, and a sorry state of affairs.
The game Unreal had male and female playable characters, and that was developed about 15 years ago.
Indeed! And yet here we are.
I was generally fine with the term “mansplaining” when I thought it just meant that I should shut up because I’m an insufferable idiot and my opinion isn’t as valuable as I think it is. I don’t like being told “shut up because you are a man” but I don’t have to like it and I realize that my feelings don’t matter. If it’s meant to express anything more that then I think it matters that it doesn’t, or that it doesn’t to the people to which it refers.
It’s like everytime someone says, “that’s a strawman” without clarifying what the real argument is (which upsets me more than “mansplaining” ever has). I appreciate people pointing out bad behaviour when their audience can understand what they are pointing out. Pointing out bad behaviour with jargon seems clique-y and unproductive (maybe the point isn’t to be productive - maybe no one ever listens to criticism anyway).
If someone else tells me my word choice is offensive and I’m inclined to defend those words I try to be very suspicious of my motives for doing so.
At any rate, I understand why @euchronos says this is a paralyzing discussion and I promise I’ll say no more about it.
I was agreeing with you, and I was saying it kind of sucks that we need to plead with people to stop treating women like objects at all!
But that’s not the point, to tell a guy he’s a bad person… the point is that women are being told that how they feel about being sexual harrassed, objectified, and belitted is wrong. That’s the point of the word. They are told that their feelings don’t matter, and “this is how it really is…” Do you see what I mean?
Mansplaining doesn’t mean “shut up because you’re a man.” It means “you’re dismissing a woman’s lived experiences because they don’t align with yours, or you believe that a woman isn’t capable of being an expert in whatever topic is being discussed, stop it.” It’s a short-hand for pointing out bad behavior, perhaps a little crude, but it can certainly stop some men from carrying on like a fool. It’s meant to sting a little, it’s meant to make you stop and think about what you’re saying and whom you’re saying it to, it’s meant to coerce you into checking your privilege. If use of the term is touching a nerve, then good, the intended effect has been achieved.
And it feels very much like someone dismissing my own lived experiences- Based on what they assume my experiences to have been, without knowing what they actually were.
I’m not going to go into details of my personal life, but suffice to say that growing up a poor kid in a rich town, following a minority religion, and having gone through various traumas, I can confidently say that I do not personally benefit from many of the privileges that I’m supposed to have.
I totally support feminism, I totally understand what people like Sarkeesian are saying, and agree with most of it. But being a guy, I also understand the way that guys tend to think, and get where a lot of this stuff comes from in the first place.
NOTHING gets solved without both sides FIRST understanding what the other is actually saying and why- And any time I’ve heard the term “mansplaining”, it’s come from somebody who seems to have a very one-sided interest in that part of the process.
That’s just it. I don’t look at the content or characters of my games to find something wrong. I accept them for how the artist(s) wanted to make them. Cliche or not, it’s not like the old TV shows where the woman was always portrayed as a housewife. That’s just the reality of that time period.
I would really hate if there ended up being some sort of deal to “fix” these “problems” with existing games. It would really ruin it. I have the same view for music. Edited and especially “clean” versions make absolutely NO sense to me. It’s like putting pasties on the Venus de Milo.
White male privilege doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed a life on easy street, it just means you generally have fewer social barriers than non-white, non-males in similar circumstances.
An impoverished straight white male might not have all the opportunities afforded to a gay black female billionaire, but he’s still going to have significant advantages over an impoverished gay black female.
Maybe it is a much better use of money to pull clips from YouTube instead of spending hours playing games to get them? I don’t think that comes close to being a con artist, unless the clips have been doctored. Or if you think that a mechanic is a con artist for not making all their own tools by hand?
You did make some good points, but that one was a real head scratcher.
So how do you think the “reality of that time period” became the reality of this time period, where we have women on TV shows as cops, and scientists, and supergenius villains? People wanted something other than one-note cliches and adjusted accordingly.
No one is suggesting that existing games be changed, just as no one’s suggesting we go back into old episodes of “Leave it to Beaver” and make June Cleaver a Chilean mercenary/demolitions expert.
I wonder, though, if you’d have as high a tolerance for the status quo if the status quo were that your particular gender flavor was always getting murdered in order to advance the plot of someone else. If you appeared in stories as little more than a prop without agency and often didn’t even have the option to make or see a leading character that looked like you.
Everybody’s situation is unique.
I scored 32 on the "How Privileged Are You quiz- I’m not saying that I’m any better or worse off than anyone else, I’m just saying that I’ve lived through some stuff and I really don’t like when people make assumptions about me.
I also try not to presume what anyone else has or hasn’t been through.
Diaappointing, only 73!
I need to check off a few more. Not sure how to answer the religion ones without an N/A option.
I’m sure I can get that number higher.
I guess I need to stay out of most conversations. 
I don’t presume to know how much privilege you have. Maybe you’re a blind impoverished quadriplegic orphan wiccan with a gluten intolerance. That’s not the point.
The point is that as a group, we straight white males have certain unearned advantages even if you as an individual face disadvantages that vastly outweigh those advantages.
What I’ve been waiting for!
How can I load mods?
Where are the servers?
Needs chat.
srsly, that’s awesome!
funny, but still true. I’m not threatened in the least.
Its called poisoning the well, btw.
So some porn and some video games gives straight white males what they like in terms of sexual fantasy and entertainment.
what establishes that this is detrimental to women?
