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[chaoticag]

I suppose it is in the bibliography, though I only did say that I couldn't find it. At the same time though, I'm not sure if there are adequate studies on the matter to take the study at face value. No society, not even the most cut off societies are found in test tubes. Not saying the research doesn't have any merit or anything, just it's best to be cautious if it's all the information we have on the subject.

[Reelya]

Well you have all the neuroscience too, that backs up there being real biological differences in brain organization, correlated with gender (of course it's correlation and not an on / off thing), whereas the "identical gender" people just have "because I said so".

[GlyphGryph]

Why does DJ keep going on about a well-written game that isn't really sexist and doesn't seem to use any sexist tropes, as some sort of example?

DJ, what tropes did the game create that are, in your opinion, relevant to the topic? What conventions and traditions did it use that are in someway acting in opposition to the sexist tropes that dominate the (admittedly lazy) games industry?

Because we aren't talking about sexist games here. We're talking about a culture that employs a large number of heavily sexist cross-industry motiffs as an accepted and conventional narration team. We aren't talking about individual games, we are talking about trends and conventions and traditions and patterns.

I honestly just don't understand the POINT of anything you've posted. Yes, the folks who made Balder's Gate were pretty cool, and managed to make a decidedly non-sexist game. This doesn't really reflect industry standards though, anymore than Mass Effect generally handling things well does.

But it doesn't matter if the game is sexist. From the 1-dimensional argument made earlier, Mario isn't even sexist. Every single game ever released could be justified as non-sexist, but the industry convention could still be sexist. Tropes are a systemic, cross-game problem about guiding the cultural narrative through media norms. It isn't sexist for the woman to need to be rescued by the man. It is sexist for that to be seen as the "way to make the game".

Yes, well written games will avoid resonating tropes and cliches, or subvert them, in a fit of well written originality. But the games industry isn't dominated by these games. These games are starting to create some tropes, it seems, and its pretty nice that none of them are outright sexist. But it's not really relevant to the topic at hand, because the sexist tropes we are discussing aren't going away yet. You can talk about how we are making progress, about how more and more games are utilizing new, non-sexist tropes in place of the old ones, and that would be productive for the sort of argument you seem to be trying to make - but that isn't what you're doing, at all.

So... maybe give that a try?

[palsch]

Well you have all the neuroscience too, that backs up there being differences correlated with gender, whereas the "identical gender" people just have "because I said so".

Erm, what?

For starters, the science far from supports such strong innate gender differences. While there have been some bodies of work that make such suggestions, they nearly all start from the assumption that such differences exist. I'd strongly recommend this paper on the issues with assuming 'hardwiring' in neuroscience. It's actually a great paper beyond that, because it explores the unethical effects of using such assumed innate differences;

Hardwiring is an unethical metaphor because it says 'what is, must be'. That would be scientifically unsatisfying even if sex/gender were simply a domain of difference, rather than a domain of power relations and marked inequalities. But the continued existence of sex/gender inequalities adds an additional problem. The hardwiring paradigm erases the effect of the social world in producing sex/gender differences, so that sex/gender hierarchies appear natural. Neuroscientific explanations of sex/gender differences have added a new allure to an old fashioned sexism

There is also a citation of this paper which looks at a wide range of studies examining gender differences. It finds that the vast majority show either close-to-zero difference (30%) or a small difference (48%). Again, these are mostly involving studies where such a difference was assumed, so I'd actually expect there to be a strong bias towards showing even differences that don't exist, although I feel the analysis nicely accounts for this.

[DJ]

I thought I already covered that. My theory is that the apparent sexism is merely a symptom. I'm sure that vast majority of game writers don't think that real women are less capable, it's just that they're not capable of writing realistic characters so they resort to making piles of cliches, and it just so happens that a lot of pop culture cliches are sexist. But women aren't the only group slighted by these cliche piles, as I said portraying men as meathead psychopaths with Messiah complex isn't exactly flattering either. And then there's all sorts of horrible stereotyping of various subcultures and ethnic groups.

So attacking gaming industry for sexism is misguided, instead people should be attacking the root of the issue - abysmally low quality standards in game writing. I'm bringing Baldur's Gate up to illustrate how sexism magically disappears when writing quality improves.

[GlyphGryph]

So we shouldn't worry about it, because men are discriminated too and maybe some impossible magic will happen someday that fixes everything?

(Unseating the dominance of sexist tropes is something that has happened elsewhere - it's possible. Turning every developer into a good writer is... not.)

That is... pretty atrocious attitude to take in my opinion. You're trying to trivialize a legitimate problem (simply LOOK at the reaction this video series kickstarter got if you don't understand why), and doing so rather weakly.

[10ebbor10]

What are you going to do? Censorship won't help, as it would be a bureaucratic and financial nightmare to get it done, and will probably only serve to worsen the issue.

The problems here will diminish and dissappears rapidly, just like their sociological basis.

[palsch]

What are you going to do?

Maybe public education and awareness building around the issues? Try to get those who create such media to be more concious of the sexist tropes and issues so that they can avoid them? To do the same for those who consume such media?

[Reelya]

Well you have all the neuroscience too, that backs up there being differences correlated with gender, whereas the "identical gender" people just have "because I said so".

Erm, what?

For starters, the science far from supports such strong innate gender differences. While there have been some bodies of work that make such suggestions, they nearly all start from the assumption that such differences exist. I'd strongly recommend this paper on the issues with assuming 'hardwiring' in neuroscience. It's actually a great paper beyond that, because it explores the unethical effects of using such assumed innate differences;

Hardwiring is an unethical metaphor because it says 'what is, must be'. That would be scientifically unsatisfying even if sex/gender were simply a domain of difference, rather than a domain of power relations and marked inequalities. But the continued existence of sex/gender inequalities adds an additional problem. The hardwiring paradigm erases the effect of the social world in producing sex/gender differences, so that sex/gender hierarchies appear natural. Neuroscientific explanations of sex/gender differences have added a new allure to an old fashioned sexism

There is also a citation of this paper which looks at a wide range of studies examining gender differences. It finds that the vast majority show either close-to-zero difference (30%) or a small difference (48%). Again, these are mostly involving studies where such a difference was assumed, so I'd actually expect there to be a strong bias towards showing even differences that don't exist, although I feel the analysis nicely accounts for this.

I see a couple of problems with that line of argument - first, that any correlation between biology and behavior must be "hard-wiring" that is an "unethical metaphor". It's more than "unethical" it's a complete straw-man argument, since "hard-wiring" was a term that author used themselves which demonizes those studying real, tangible factors by saying they're biological-determinism zealots (e.g. accusing them of being 100% on the 'nature' side). Which is clearly a false statement. Nobody out there is saying there are ZERO social constructs, just that there's an interplay between biology and environment. Of course this straw man is "scientifically unsatisfying" because, you know, nobody is proposing it. It's the 100% Nurture people who are the ideological zealots, not accepting any possible biological influences. Also illogical - supporting a 100% firewall between mind and body, rather than a holistic view. Anyway, what does nature know of this "ethics"? Ethics is a human construct, and thus truth, whether we like the sound of it or not, cannot be "unethical".

Next, it's throwing out science based purely on SOCIO-POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS. Hardly a convincing avenue to overturn research. Science doesn't care about sensibilities or being politically correct. "Upsetting the apple cart" isn't an argument against science. "Neuroscientific explanations of sex/gender differences have added a new allure to an old fashioned sexism" is not a scientific argument. The neuroscience also says females tend to be better at certain tasks. Is that sexist too? Arguing against the research because it might validate some people's bad attitudes is like saying atheism can't be true because people might not feel bad about committing crimes if they think God doesn't exist. Negative social implications doesn't invalidate a theory. Plenty of terrible things were perpetrated in the name of Darwinism. Should we therefore reject the evolution theory?

Third, there are many studies which found a small difference in particular characteristics, and you can thus debunk a "range" of studies. But there are many studies which have found statistically significant differences. "guilt by association" is a poor argument, too. There's also the fact that a small difference can influence many small decisions in a whole life-time. Compound effects etc, lead to big differences at a later stage. Like the butterfly effect.

[DJ]

Like I said, attack the root of the problem, ie low quality standards in game writing. You can't turn bad writers into good writers, sure, which is why you need to apply your wallet to pressuring developers into firing them and hiring good writers. Focusing on just one bad aspect of bad writing like misogyny sends a message that others aren't important, such as racism (and I've seen some really racist shit in games).

[palsch]

I'm on my phone so can't do a full response now, but a couple things that jumped out at me;

1) You misrepresent both the paper and the general position of those who reject the difference model. It isn't that both genders are biologically identical, it's that the differences are small to vanishing compared to social factors.

2) The ethics come into matters twice. Firstly, basing your studies on an unsuitable model will colour your results. In this case assuming a gender binary with significant cognitive differences as the default and seeking to measure those differences. The paper goes into the problems with this nicely. Secondly is the social application of such 'findings', as in this thread, to dismiss attempts to point out or address cultural problems as results of innate differences.

3) The second study isn't guilt by association. It's an attempt to make an accurate measurement of actual effect sizes of different innate gender differences as measured in the existing literature. It found most such differences are small to vanishing.

And DJ, in what way is education and awareness raising about sexist tropes not an attempt to address low quality writing? People can't demand better if they aren't aware of the problem. The same goes for writers and executives.

[Reelya]

The second paper is actually misleadingly simplified because it only looks at average performance, not the distribution of performance. And even with identical mean scores, the spread of performance levels for males is very different from females. As you get to the high and low ends of the graph, the differences become very important and have quite high social implications (high scoring males outnumber high scoring females by a greater % the higher you go (or the lower you go) - and not just in a few tests, in numerous different types of tests. The shape of the distributions is very different, and dismissing this based purely on a simple average is misleading.

Plus, it's quite dated so it doesn't take any of the testosterone stuff into account, which has shown pretty high variation in individuals based on the level of exposure. There are also personality differences - Susan Pinker looks at data of males / females which identical grades, and how they make very different choices for college. Many more females with the "Right Stuff" for engineering choose to study other things - and they would laugh if you told them they'd meekly been scared away from Engineering because they'd been indoctrinated that it's "boys stuff".

[Glowcat]

So instead of being sensible and going to sleep I decided to look into Reelya's links by cross referencing Wikipedia with study searches.

The Kibbutz claim in Susan Pinker's book is not only flawed in that it ignores possible cultural baggage brought into these communes but fails to mention that women were still primarily expected to be caregivers in these communes and men were never encouraged to fill traditionally female roles. i.e. it talks up the egalitarian nature of the communes to conclude that only brain differences can explain the social results.

Here's a free article I found of changes in the Kibbutz lifestyle. Gender equality was never a primary goal of the system. The only real attempt came about by a group of feminists who were fighting against existing sexist attitudes.

The brain differences discussed in the Times article are harder to track down but I did find the Wikipedia article on Baron-Cohen's E-S theory of mind. This is how he determines a person's score:

Females on average score higher on measures of empathy and males on average score higher on measures of systemizing. This has been found using the child and adolescent versions of the Empathy Quotient (EQ) and the Systemizing Quotient (SQ), which are completed by parents about their child/adolescent,[6] and on the self-report version of the EQ and SQ in adults.[7]

So, first the parents determine what their child is, and then people who've been socialized answer this test about how they see themselves. I could be wrong but I'm tired as fuck and don't really want to continue trying to find a free version of the article where he investigates 285 mothers/children. Somehow I doubt he's using another method.

There are certainly some brain differences caused by hormones, but you've a damn long way to go before you can claim that's what causes a demographics disparity.

[Loud Whispers]

A simple case where symmetry of characters and plot elements makes gender selection irrelevant to the story, and doesn't marginalize anyone but horrible blue pigmonsters.

But blue is good colour 

The general concensus of this thread seems to be that the ubiquity of the weak female character in the gaming industry is what is sexist.

Why is this sexist?

[Neonivek]

Why is this sexist?

To be honest "Sexist" is probably not the right word.