Rereading is helpful when you've failed to grasp the argument in the first place
You should do what I do, and fail constantly, which is try to say what you been trying to say in different ways with hopes that people catch on.
Ironically trying to make that point (that people aren't addressing the actual argument) I am repeating myself over and over again until people start catching on. It is very anger inducing...
if I was making a highly violent action game I might be tempted to put exactly zero female characters in it, to avoid any accusation of fostering violence against women, for the same reason you don't see many little kids in shooters. I have to wonder if this is one reason you don't see more female antagonists in shooters.
I think that's a valid observation, and it might part of the reason you don't see so many female characters in shooters. when they are there, there's controversy. As I listed in a previous post, there are many virtually identical situations with male characters to the ones Anita identified as misogynistic violence, even in the very same games she cited, there are males killed off in similar fashions to the "sexist" deaths. so this shows it's not purely about portraying males and females in the same manner, (if it was, God Of War II wouldn't have been an example) it's about not portraying females in overly-violent situations.
Which is to say she doesn't want violence against women portrayed to the same level that is acceptable for violence against men, but she makes the case that violence against women in games is especially and uniquely screwed up, without mentioning (or maybe without knowing) that there are extremely similar examples of male death in many games. i have no trouble with whatever she wants to promote, but i do have a problem with promoting your agenda in a misleading fashion.
As I said before, the actual situations the male and female characters are engaged in are only superficially similar in a lot of cases, and that point will probably need to wait until Part 3 to be fully addressed. I've already agreed with you that for it to be a strong point she'll need statistical evidence by then if she wants to show the tropes prevalence, but preemptively attacking her argument as fallacious before fully understanding what it is is at best careless. I will add a criticism that she probably should've have released all parts simultaneously to avoid these kinds of arguments.
Stories can't help but focus on the protagonist but the way male characters are used in paving the hero's quest is different than the way women are used. As Anita specifically says when describing what she objects to and how she defines 'Violence against women' in her videos is:
Since what we are really talking about here are depictions of violence against women it might be useful to quickly define what I mean by that term. When I say Violence Against Women I’m primarily referring to images of women being victimized or when violence is specifically linked to a character’s gender or sexuality. Female characters who happen to be involved in violent or combat situations on relatively equal footing with their opponents are typically be exempt them from this category because they are usually not framed as victims.
And while it's possible that some people would object to women in any capacity being targets of violence that has little to do with Anita's own argument. They can choose to listen or not, either way I'm sure the worst that will happen is some people call them doodyheads or avoid the game for either lack of interest or outright refusal to buy their games anymore. If they feel it is safer to avoid the issue all together because they can't handle it then it's very likely that they're right, since it's rather simple to avoid a snafu like overly sexualized assassin nuns by treating the antagonists as antagonists
first instead of drawing more attention to her gender, and in some egregious cases adding a sexually-charged humiliating defeat.
When women are used as victims she objects to how they're portrayed in the manner of possessions, much like the story of Job when God merely "replaced" Job's family or how certain cultures consider wives their chattel. A mentor or father figure is usually not reduced entirely to that of an object in the narrative, even if something bad happens to them. Being the mother or lover who dies for shock value is very different role in a story than being the master who must be replaced by the apprentice. There's also a greater sense that it is the fallen figure who must be avenged instead of the protagonist who has been wronged.
This is seen here:
Women shouldn’t be mere disposable objects or symbolic pawns in stories about men and their own struggles with patriarchal expectations and inadequacies.
As she had just explained, the stories of vengeance that surround a Fridge story are typically done in a manner that suggests women really are just possessions of the male character which must be either recovered or their vandalism punished. This context and a few others simply cannot be equated to similar situations with men because there's also an element of the surrounding cultural images (meme, tropes, whatever) which shape our perceptions of these events. Men (as a class) don't have a history of being seen as a possession based on their gender. Even soldiers who are used as pawns by the Elite class, the cultural image which emerges from that isn't one of men being objects but rather actors fighting for family and nation. It's manipulation of a foul sort, but not sexism (classism would probably define it though).
These are ultimately stories about men for men, and in her perspective these dominate the market to the point they cut out what should be a far more inclusive environment if game developers want to draw more female gamers towards their sections of the industry. This male-dominance applies even when looking at the emergence of RPGS or multiplayer shooters which allow gender selection, but in those situations it's not really the same as the story is going to play out mostly oblivious to the character's gender anyway (and developers often cut corners with that story as it is). When one looks at the sub-set of games where diversity of protagonists would matter, those of a single-player set character story, I don't think it's unreasonable to say games featuring a white male protagonist are far more common than any other combination. These stories reach for emotional stakes in well-established tropes without taking a moment to consider a more respectful portrayal in place of sheer shock value. Recently it's seeing push with more variety in both protagonists and how these situations are treated but that doesn't mean the matter has already vanished.
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Topic: Re: Only two posts on 'Tropes vs Women in Video Games' (Read 312366 times)