First of all, you used romance covers as an example. That still bothers me. First of all, again, its smut. But not even that. Women are more objectified (and typically written worse) than men, not just in media at large*, but in books, already a negligible share of the entertainment industry. You took the one portion of an already small medium in which the normal objectification is reversed, and used that to argue that women and men are objectified equally. Its a dishonest debating strategy because it picks an exception and an extreme and presents it as the norm.
Well if I were to have done my post proper it would have been to say that female and male standards of beauty and attraction are on the same level; that everyone is saying characterization is not only not for the character's sake but instead for a sex's sake, irregardless of both genders idealizing the same things for both genders.
This is literally just dismissing the people who make the argument without acknowledging the argument. People aren't saying "change video games because I don't like them." They're saying "change video games because they have problems".
Well if it's because I'm dismissing them, it's because I'm dismissing them and haven't been convinced at all it's a problem.
As to who cares: feminists, female gamers, all the people who sent death and rape threats to Anita.
In my inbox I got one guy talking about Yoda, one guy calling me an asshole, one guy calling me gay, one guy calling me a muslim infidel, one guy calling me a criminal, three guys giving me death threats but alas, no rape threats. I usually have to check my mail for those. That's today.
Trolls don't really represent anyone.
"There is always media otherwise for those who wish"
No, there isn't.
'-and always the opportunities to make media otherwise.'
Women are given shitty treatment and shoehorned into crappy archetypes in the majority of media.
No, characters are.
Media of all genres defaults to male focused fanservice, female characters of all roles default to the object of male desire.
To ignore that the overwhelming majority of our species is attracted to the opposite sex is to ignore the meaning of life.
This is what's at stake here. Most female characters everywhere are handled badly, offensively, or in a way that is otherwise off-putting to a female audience. The reasons could be financial, they could be because the creators of media tend to be men.
No, it's because the executives in charge of the design teams are often the people who honestly don't care about games or stories. But no, of course, men did it. Men stand at the apex. Everyone aim for their shins.
That doesn't change the fact that these are solvable problems that need to be fixed.
I've not actually seen problems brought up by Anita that were problems of sexism.
You know Loud Whispers, you post everywhere and I lurk everywhere and I generally find your posts to be entertaining or insightful. But in this one thread the way you're arguing is bothering me.
Maybe because as of right now I'm not arguing, not in the strictest sense. Though I do try my best.