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[Reelya]

No, I'm not straw-manning.  I'm just honestly asking what your position is, because there seems to be absolutely no piece of evidence you agree with.  I want to know what you think.

Sure, there are issues, but blindly jumping on a single article by someone who talks only about film-school experiences, to show that the failing Bechdel test is enforced as an actual law in Hollywood, seems like fairly thin evidence. Remember, the point i was asking for evidence on was that Hollywood actively enforces failure of the Bechdel Test (Willfor's specific claim).

Are there women inside the film industry who back up that claim?

[MaximumZero]

And how about things like this?  They aren't rare.

Now I want to join a fighting game tourney, wear my gloves to the tourney, and get disqualified mid-game for smacking the shit out of someone because they won't shut their stupid face. Sometimes, people need sportsmanship beaten into them. In the martial arts community, we call this "discipline".

The fact that people are defending stupidity and hate of any kind is disgusting.

[Loud Whispers]

Possibly because "you fight like a boy, you dick" doesn't quite have the same ring as "you fight like a girl, you bitch/c***/t***"

"You fight like a bitch, asshole/dickhead." There, rather easy.

Why does it affect women more?  Because, I don't know, their body parts and gendered characteristics are constantly used as insults?  Because pictures of their bodies are demanded?  Because they receive rape threats and are disproportionately more likely to have been raped?

• Same with males.
• Same with males.
• Same with males + family + rape (not even taking into account under-reporting, quote wiki).

Take a look at this.

And how about things like this?  They aren't rare.

And for males in the same situation, these insults are common.

And they aren't the majority either. So for some reason we have male gamers enduring wanton bullshit whilst the stoic female gamers are few in number.
What makes even less sense is the lack of female representation in games where communities are great. This does not exist in chess and starcraft, yet why are the f:m ratios so disproportionate? There is an even bigger factor at work here. If you got a larger female community input you could more easily get rid of this in the communities fraught with knobheads or even just add to the nicer communities at the very least.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

What? please don't straw man. I'm talking about some clarification of exactly when these experiences occurred.

It seems to be how this thread works. Get with the times!

First one side presents and arguement, the other strawmans, and you strawman back.

Vector is asking what Reelya's opinion on this matter is. Reelya's asking when Jennifer's supposed encounter with the director bloke was supposed to have ever happened. I don't see the strawmen.

[Vector]

"I'm going to rape your family" is not quite the same thing as "I'm going to rape you."

Also, men ask other men for pictures of their genitals and chests online?  I had no idea.

[Neonivek]

Yeah, Reelya was just trying to present how the author could be wrong within her own logic.

That it was a protagonist focused storylines that could be resulting.

Also I think the author of that article is pretty stupid given that the author should have completed schooling and built a reputation and done proper plots using female characters.

Not drop out of school and use your time to complain a whole bunch. A lot of people who thought African Americans were not represented in history and gone on to write the history books, still went through the schooling.

It just makes the author look like someone who dropped out and is making excusses as to why they dropped out.

Vector is asking what Reelya's opinion on this matter is

Indeed but with a "What so you are saying there is no such thing as sexism? what do you mean?" which is "presenting one's arguement in a way in which it is weaker".

[Reelya]

At this point I don't really understand your position.

Sexism doesn't exist?  Female protagonists would ruin games forever?  There's no issue with the industry as-is, so why is this woman screeching, the harpy?

^ this is the strawman i referred to. That i was calling the writer a "screeching harpy" and saying "Female protagonists would ruin games forever" because i asked how prevalent the anti-Bechdel thing is in hollywood. And i never said "Sexism doesn't exist" or "There's no issue with the industry as-is"

That's 4 strawmen in 1 line of text!

1. No man may question any detail in the writings of any woman without him being a sexist asshole automatically? Really?

2. I was replying purely to a specific point about the bechdel test in movies, and stay on that topic, but this is the games thread, so i'm auomatically a sexist asshole gamer who hates all female protagonists in games? Again, really?

3. I question whether there's really such a thing as a "bechdel test committee" who only exist to cut out scenes of women chatting, in every studio (as willfor basically claimed), so therefore i'm automatically claiming that there's no sexism of any type at all in Hollywood (despite explicitly mentioning sexism in my posts).

What, do peoples brains shut down as soon as someone says "it's sexism" and we can't ask for clarification on the specific matter, or we're monsters who want to Destroy Women Forever?

[Reelya]

Yeah, Reelya was just trying to present how the author could be wrong within her own logic.

That it was a protagonist focused storylines that could be resulting.

That's exactly what i was saying, and i even admitted that there being too many males as protagonists itself was an issue - but a separate issue than the bechdel thing. Some of the things I've written in this batch of posts include:

"I always thought it was passive sexism" - clearly i'm admitting there are sexism issues here, ok???

"It's much more likely a by-product of the way scripts and characters are crafted " <= this is more structural issues I was alluding to, remember it was in response to the claim that execs specifically sit down to chop scenes that pass the bechdel test, PURELY because they pass the bechdel test.

"Makes me feel that the criticisms were actually about keeping the narrative focused on the protagonist, and the "talk about the men" bit is more a consequence of the mostly-male leads, and teaching the young writers to keep the narrative focused on the protagonist's story." <= here, i'm saying that the focus on a single protagonist (a structural issue) combined with most protagonists being male (this is the sexism I was alluding to), and villains probably, combine to cause many movies to fail the bechdel test. what makes it "passive sexism" is that failing the bechdel test isn't some conscious conspiracy to prevent females chatting on screen, but an indirect consequence of the other factors.

"Sure, there are issues". Nowhere did i state approval of the excess of male leads in film.

Vector chose to take that all out of context and paint me as a frothing anti-female-protagonist neanderthal, and draw a long line to a bunch of conclusions that are not even hinted at in anything I've written. The need to cartoonishly demonize anyone who "thinks out of line" is a worrying trend, that people have to express "group think" or they're ideologically suspect.

[kaijyuu]

My solution to oversexualized female characters is to also oversexualize the male ones.


No seriously, I pop into this thread every once in a while to determine whether my decision to not post in it was a good one, and every single time I feel I made a wise decision. Ya'll need to stop debating semantics, get real statistics, and all around lighten up.

[Loud Whispers]

"I'm going to rape your family" is not quite the same thing as "I'm going to rape you."

Also, men ask other men for pictures of their genitals and chests online?  I had no idea.

No, I meant it as the threats going more along "I'm going to rape you AND your family."

As for the nudes, yes, it is not rare. It usually leads to doxxing and blackmail, and in extreme (more extreme than nudes) cases sexual molestation or rape.



There is a reason why I keep trying to focus on this question:

• What is stopping females from playing any other game?

The second one is the most important question. For example the Chess or Starcraft scene, both with wonderful communities have an astoundingly poor female representation.

Because quite a few gaming communities like Microsoft's have grown so large and putrid that even the Mods are harassed. If you can have a positive influence on other gaming communities in the mainstream light such as Starcraft - you can do more good than trying to eliminate all the BM from the other lot, instead driving them into other communities and making things worse.

So why is the female representation in good communities so poor?!

Seriously. I do not know. I was hoping one of you lot had at least a good idea of where to start.

[Neonivek]

My solution to oversexualized female characters is to also oversexualize the male ones.

As I said before the vast majority of oversexualised female characters are unsexual characters (or less sexual characters) with forced sexualisation.

Forcing sexualisation onto males isn't going to fix things it is just going to make them worse.

I want fair treatment of both sides not terrible treatment of everyone.

[Reelya]

Actually there was some research in the 1990's into how a large number female movie action-heroes were written as uni-sexual roles in the plot. They often have "gender-neutral" names like Alex, Toni, Chris, Sam etc., and in these particular category of films the protagonist also never has sex / romance written in. Hence, what you say about females in unsexual roles, Neonivek.

This seems to be the trick with how the scriptwriters are doing the scripts - the director can then pretty much cast anyone male or female in the lead role, and there won't be plot issues. So it's partly flowing from the way scripts are bought and sold. There's better market potential for scripts that are just a basic template you can throw any actor into.

"sexing them up" is then the director's decision, probably because they can then have some poster art which combines guns'n'girls to pull in male audiences.

[Neonivek]

While I was doing stuff I thought about a what if adventure game series that just every game had a different female protagonist and each would be different and many falling under female steriotypes...

But the difference would instead be how the game itself treats them. With the Princess character being kidnapped and freeing herself not by becoming a fighter (which a lot of people seem to imply that those characters become) but rather by using the skills she already knows and her own wits. A series based around basically saying that there is no "one girl to rule them all" and that they are all heros in their own right.

Which I'd never make myself because of Talent and because I don't think I can write good female characters that wouldn't offend anyone.

I find it weird when a show or movie just suddenly goes "Whelp, now I have to defy gender steriotype by making the Princess character suddenly become a martial artist with no lead up".

It is why I can at least respect their decision not to let Peach be playable (almost at all) because at least there is an excuse that she is a non-violent character and having her suddenly beat people up could be odd. I don't agree with it (because the ship where she can pretend to not be able to kick butt has sailed) but I can respect it on that level.

Mind you I have a love for those roles people seem to hate. Quiet kind hearted individual who is so gentle that they wouldn't harm anyone even if they were themselves attacked? I actually consider that heroic. Heck it is one reason I like point and clicks, it is dangerous life threatening situations where the usual solution is non-violent, a much more difficult solution then the usual "Lets just kill them all" most games employ.

[Reelya]

Actually, through research on this thread i found out about "Super Princess Peach" which came out in 2005 for the DS where you play Peach, and she has to rescue a "Damselled" Mario from Bowser (i've never owned any Nintendo gear, so excuse my ignorance!). Anita alluded to this in the video i think: "She is the star of only one adventure and we will get to that a little later."

But it looks like that's going to be in a "Part II", so we can't really even comment on the overall narrative related to "damsels" in the video yet, i guess.

[Vector]

No, Reelya, I was asking that because your main contribution to the thread thus far has not been statements along the order of "this is what I think" but "I say you're wrong."  I was trying to say that I hadn't gotten a good handle on what you thought and felt, because of your lack of concrete statements and tendency to criticize other people's argumentation (which is, I think, a bit hypocritical in light of what you've said about Sarkheesian, though I may be pinning the position on the wrong person).

I'm sorry if you feel jumped on.  That wasn't the intent.


I guess the first question I'd ask about Starcraft and Chess is: "Are the 'good' communities actually good for women, or are they just somewhat less putrid?"  I say this because a lot of environments that may seem fine to dudes (like the math community *cough cough*) are full of subtle devaluations of women, and I suspect similar things could apply to chess.


Honestly, Neonivek, I really loved Paper Mario because it let you play as Peach and do stealth/puzzle segments, and also help out Mario with his journey.  I thought that was just the coolest.

[Neonivek]

Honestly, Neonivek, I really loved Paper Mario because it let you play as Peach and do stealth/puzzle segments, and also help out Mario with his journey.  I thought that was just the coolest.

Hey as I said, awsome Princess Peach is awsome.

But I can at least understand why they might not like her to be all action hero.

Which is a shame because she has proven herself to be pretty awsome.