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[penguinofhonor]

If we could get a representative population of women in programming this would really be a non-issue. As it stands game design and programming is a mainly male dominated (I want to say somewhere around 90% from what I've heard in the past but don't have sources) field and if we had something near a 50/50 split then women could sexualize themselves as much as they want, much as it's their right to be a part of other forms of sexualized media.

Until we get to that point, however, we have to accept that gaming is an industry dominated by younger male consumers, and that companies will cater to their wants. We can't nitpick and say that this or that isn't equal when society gives an incentive to promote inequality

And yet one of the games that is brought up reeeeeeeally often in this discussion and complained about, the new Tomb Raider, has a female writer. So it doesn't seem like more representation among creators -> better representation in the end product.

I'd say that means it doesn't guarantee better representation.

[Shinotsa]

If we could get a representative population of women in programming this would really be a non-issue. As it stands game design and programming is a mainly male dominated (I want to say somewhere around 90% from what I've heard in the past but don't have sources) field and if we had something near a 50/50 split then women could sexualize themselves as much as they want, much as it's their right to be a part of other forms of sexualized media.

Until we get to that point, however, we have to accept that gaming is an industry dominated by younger male consumers, and that companies will cater to their wants. We can't nitpick and say that this or that isn't equal when society gives an incentive to promote inequality

And yet one of the games that is brought up reeeeeeeally often in this discussion and complained about, the new Tomb Raider, has a female writer. So it doesn't seem like more representation among creators -> better representation in the end product.

Sure, a female writer. But if you look at the development team what was the % of male vs female developers? How much pressure was there on her from ideas from others? If it were 50/50 and she were still sexualized then I wouldn't have much of a problem. How much unattractive or asexual males are there in media? Looks and sex appeal apply to both sexes, I just feel it's fair for that sex to make the decision.

[Neonivek]

It is simple Smeeprocket.

Female abuse in real life is considered so terrible that it is taboo to even talk about it. A abuse victim's pain is built up to incredible degrees to the point where people have romanticized versions of their torment in their head.

As well the system will always be built on punishing the victim over the perpetrator because that is how our justice system functions and it cannot change.

In fact honestly... The world would probably be better off making Female abuse lighter. That way people could talk about it more and victims of abuse could have an expectation of recovery instead of being treated as damaged goods.

Though I guess it is more that we need to have a realistic outlook and not to project our feelings onto the people who experience these things.

And yet one of the games that is brought up reeeeeeeally often in this discussion and complained about, the new Tomb Raider, has a female writer. So it doesn't seem like more representation among creators -> better representation in the end product

To admit, I think the other people had their hands in that pot.

The New Tomb Raider falls into the same category of "Weak woman needs to be strong"... which oddly enough Other M did a similar thing...

Why are female character reimagining taking characters who were previously strong characters through and through and give them this initial period of emotional fragility to make them weak so they can overcome it later?

I understand the appeal and it isn't like there aren't male characters who have gone through that.

But what is it about the "Break the Weak Woman" narrative that appeals to both men and women?

[smeeprocket]

The problem with the new tomb raider or lara croft in general was never her sexualization, until the new one she still came across as a strong female character, regardless of the intent.

[smeeprocket]

It is simple Smeeprocket.

Female abuse in real life is considered so terrible that it is taboo to even talk about it. A abuse victim's pain is built up to incredible degrees to the point where people have romanticized versions of their torment in their head.

As well the system will always be built on punishing the victim over the perpetrator because that is how our justice system functions and it cannot change.

In fact honestly... The world would probably be better off making Female abuse lighter. That way people could talk about it more and victims of abuse could have an expectation of recovery instead of being treated as damaged goods.

And yet one of the games that is brought up reeeeeeeally often in this discussion and complained about, the new Tomb Raider, has a female writer. So it doesn't seem like more representation among creators -> better representation in the end product

To admit, I think the other people had their hands in that pot.

The New Tomb Raider falls into the same category of "Weak woman needs to be strong"... which oddly enough Other M did a similar thing...

Why are female character reimagining taking characters who were previously strong characters through and through and give them this initial period of emotional fragility to make them weak so they can overcome it later?

I understand the appeal and it isn't like there aren't male characters who have gone through that.

But what is it about the "Break the Weak Woman" narrative that appeals to both men and women?

I feel like you don't quite understand the cause of victims being silent and the cycle of abuse. That is not why any of that happens.

[Neonivek]

Are you saying it is because women in that situation feel that it is normal to be abused?

Because, while that is true... it should be stated that is because in their mental states they intentionally warp their perceptions in order to normalize the situation.

As well when you look at the "Violence against women" charts... You will see that videogames, movies, and television is not a contributing factor.

[Reelya]

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet%28National%29.pdf

A quick reference to why violence against women by men in video games is unsettling and troublesome.

This is real, this is rarely actually addressed, and it should be handled in fiction with kid gloves.

A lot of studies find gender-symmetry in domestic violence rates, but assymetry in injuries and police action. The assymetry (women being injured a lot more) is best explained purely by physical strength differences rather than belief differences: women and men hit their partners just as often, but men do more damage. e.g. there is no less violence in lesbian relationships (in fact it's slightly higher), and bisexual women in many studies actually report more assaults by their female partners than their male partners. These are real statistics, as are yours, it's not either/or, it's about looking at the big picture and not picking out just the survey responses from women - that's plain cherry picking.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V71-Straus_Thirty-Years-Denying-Evidence-PV_10.pdf

The answer of course is to moderate how men treat women: I'd argue that the traditional "don't hit girls" that every boy is taught from a young age attempts to do this, rather than being intended to "harm" women somehow. I know girls who used to hit boys all the time in grade school because they knew boys wouldn't hit back because of the ingrained conditioning.

Here's a source about female sexual aggression:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2013/09/04/the-startling-facts-on-female-sexual-aggression/
It turns out using the same survey questions on male college students etc, as female ones gives roughly the same data on which gender is most "rapey":

Anderson 1998 – Survey of 461 women (general population) 43% secured sexual acts by verbal coercion; 36.5% by getting a man intoxicated; threat of force – 27.8%, use of force – 20%;  By threatening a man with a weapon – 8.9%.

Anderson, 1999 – 43% of college women admitted to using verbal or physical pressure to obtain sex

Fiebert & Tucci (1998) – 70% of male college students reported experiencing some type of harassment, pressuring, or coercion by a female

Hannon, Kunetz, Van Laar, & Williams (1996) – 10% of surveyed male college students reported experiencing a completed sexual assault perpetrated by a female intimate partner

Hogben, Byrne & Hamburger (1996) Lifetime prevalence of 24% for women having made a man engage in sexual activity against his will.

Larimer, Lydum, Anderson and Turner (1999) 20.7% of male respondents had been the recipients of unwanted sexual contact in the year prior to the survey. Verbal pressure was experienced by 7.9%, physical force by 0.6% and intoxication through alcohol or drugs by 3.6%.

Sisco, Becker, Figueredo, & Sales (2005) – A third of women reported that they had verbally harassed a person or pressured the person into performing a sexual act that the person felt uncomfortable with while roughly one in ten performed a coercive sexual act that would be considered illegal (e.g., sexual acts that involved a person who was unable or unwilling to consent)

So, the comparable survey results are pretty much gender neutral, and differences in rates can be largely explained by ability to get away with it (physical strength differences) rather than some inculcated male-only cultural artefact.

Pretty much everyone does shitty stuff to each other, there is no significant gender difference here, people do whatever they can get away with.

[smeeprocket]

Are you saying it is because women in that situation feel that it is normal to be abused?

Because, while that is true... it should be stated that is because in their mental states they intentionally warp their perceptions in order to normalize the situation.

I'm saying I don't even know what you are on about.

What do you even mean women romanticize versions of their abuse in their head?

The subject of women being abused isn't taboo because it's so awful, it's taboo because people don't care, they don't want to hear about it. They generally have responses like "why don't you leave?" or "how much did you have to drink?"

If you speak out about it, your life and safety will be threatened and you will be demeaned and humiliated in every way humanly possible. The justice system rarely prosecutes abusers and if you kill your abuser while fighting back, you will get a longer sentence than he would.

Currently there is a WOC in prison, that is serving 30xs the sentence of her abuser for failing to protect her children.

And trying to give the justice system a pass for this, saying it can not change is... detestable.

The point being without derailing everything into a domestic violence debate, it is a serious issue and a serious threat to all women and shouldn't be used as a plot device to appeal to male gamers' hero fantasy.

[smeeprocket]

http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet%28National%29.pdf

A quick reference to why violence against women by men in video games is unsettling and troublesome.

This is real, this is rarely actually addressed, and it should be handled in fiction with kid gloves.

A lot of studies find gender-symmetry in domestic violence rates, but assymetry in injuries and police action. The assymetry (women being injured a lot more) is best explained purely by physical strength differences rather than belief differences: women and men hit their partners just as often, but men do more damage. e.g. there is no less violence in lesbian relationships (in fact it's slightly higher), and bisexual women actually report more assaults by their female partners than their male partners. These are real statistics, as are yours, it's not either/or, it's about looking at the big picture and not picking out just the survey responses from women - that's plain cherry picking.

http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V71-Straus_Thirty-Years-Denying-Evidence-PV_10.pdf

The answer of course is to moderate how men treat women: I'd argue that the traditional "don't hit girls" that every boy is taught from a young age attempts to do this, rather than being intended to "harm" women somehow. I know girls who used to hit boys all the time in grade school because they knew boys wouldn't hit back because of the ingrained conditioning.

Here's a source about female sexual aggression:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/hetpat/2013/09/04/the-startling-facts-on-female-sexual-aggression/
It turns out using the same survey questions on male college students etc, as female ones gives roughly the same data on which gender is most "rapey":

Anderson 1998 – Survey of 461 women (general population) 43% secured sexual acts by verbal coercion; 36.5% by getting a man intoxicated; threat of force – 27.8%, use of force – 20%;  By threatening a man with a weapon – 8.9%.

Anderson, 1999 – 43% of college women admitted to using verbal or physical pressure to obtain sex

Fiebert & Tucci (1998) – 70% of male college students reported experiencing some type of harassment, pressuring, or coercion by a female

Hannon, Kunetz, Van Laar, & Williams (1996) – 10% of surveyed male college students reported experiencing a completed sexual assault perpetrated by a female intimate partner

Hogben, Byrne & Hamburger (1996) Lifetime prevalence of 24% for women having made a man engage in sexual activity against his will.

Larimer, Lydum, Anderson and Turner (1999) 20.7% of male respondents had been the recipients of unwanted sexual contact in the year prior to the survey. Verbal pressure was experienced by 7.9%, physical force by 0.6% and intoxication through alcohol or drugs by 3.6%.

Sisco, Becker, Figueredo, & Sales (2005) – A third of women reported that they had verbally harassed a person or pressured the person into performing a sexual act that the person felt uncomfortable with while roughly one in ten performed a coercive sexual act that would be considered illegal (e.g., sexual acts that involved a person who was unable or unwilling to consent)

So, the comparable survey results are pretty much gender neutral, and differences in rates can be largely explained by ability to get away with it (physical strength differences) rather than some inculcated male-only cultural artefact.

...

You're joking. Are you really trying to say college age women, 1 in 4 of which will be raped and almost none of which will be taken seriously (3% of reported rapes, and most aren't reported) are convicted.

Men do get raped, women do rape, but it's just insulting to try and argue that the epidemic of rape in college is perpetrated by women against men instead of the reverse. Especially in a society where we already try to force the victims to be quiet.

[Gentlefish]

Are you saying it is because women in that situation feel that it is normal to be abused?

Because, while that is true... it should be stated that is because in their mental states they intentionally warp their perceptions in order to normalize the situation.

As well when you look at the "Violence against women" charts... You will see that videogames, movies, and television is not a contributing factor.

What the hell are you going on about? Women who feel abused don't feel it's normal to be abused.

-stuff-

Smeep has this right.

There's another who's serving life for killing her abuser. In self-defense.


Some google-fu turned up an article that states society molded women away from personal computers and, in turn, CS majors when the PC became a thing. So the male-dominated society is because society felt computers should be a male-dominated subject. Which in turn led into anything software becoming male dominated.

We starved women out of the gaming industry early, literally. And men are complaining that there's no problem and women are in arms over nothing?

[LordBucket]

once again the problem is that the number of games that appeal to women, or preferably, that appeal
to everyone (which should be the standard) are not there.

What is it you want that you don't feel is being catered to? If you're unable to answer that, then nobody will be able to give it to you.

"Make games that I'll like" is not enough information for even a person who is in good faith genuinely trying their hardest to give you want you want.

the number of women in the industry is also abysmally low.

Why is this a problem? the majority of nurses are women. Is that a problem? The majority of teachers are women. Is that a problem? The majority of accountants are women. Is that a problem? Shall we cry out and rally against the unfair sexism that clearly must therefore exist? Of course not. Trends exist. If women tend to gravitate towards some positions and men tend to gravitate towards others, that doesn't need to be a problem.

If your goal is to have everything be 50/50, you're unlikely to ever be satisfied.

If we could get a representative population of women in programming this would really be a non-issue. As it stands game design and programming is a mainly male dominated (I want to say somewhere around 90% from what I've heard in the past but don't have sources) field and if we had something near a 50/50 split then women could sexualize themselves as much as they want, much as it's their right to be a part of other forms of sexualized media.

And how exactly do you intend to accomplish that? In my entire life I've known exactly zero women who wanted to be programmers and didn't succeed in becoming programmers. Let's not assume it's some sort of inherent unfairness in the system if the reality is that it just happens to not be something that large numbers of women want to do.

And in all honesty, on the relative importance of social problems, "equal representation in gaming development" seems very low on the priority list to me.

MMOs have a 41% female gaming audience for example. Hardly 30/70

And MMOs are an entire genre that's notorious for having complete character customization where anybody can play any gender and no gender has any in-game advantage.


I think my real problem with this discussion is that it's something I've been hearing people complain about for years, but it's terribly difficult to get anyone to give a straight answer about what exactly they want to be different without it being something that's not about making them happy...but rather simply taking away something that other people want.

Why should you get the bulk of the games catering to you?

Like that. The complaint there isn't that "I'm not being catered to." It's that somebody else is being catered to more. It's like asking for a chocolate cake, and being given a chocolate cake, and then complaining that the two people at the table next to you both got vanilla because they wanted vanilla.

"Why should there be two vanilla cakes when I only get one?"

It's not reasonable.


Also, this conversation is developing so quickly it's difficult to keep up.

[itisnotlogical]

How much unattractive or asexual males are there in media? Looks and sex appeal apply to both sexes, I just feel it's fair for that sex to make the decision.

How many unattractive or asexual people have you seen in popular media? In Game of Thrones they needed to find an ugly, mannish woman to play Brienne, and this is what they came up with:

Spoiler: Gwendoline Christie (click to show/hide)

Maybe not everybody's "very definition of beauty", but certainly not unattractive. Since every actor/actress needs to be visually appealing by the very nature of their job, I don't think it's the fault of the writers that their pool of talent ranges from "above average" to "god/goddess".

[smeeprocket]

once again the problem is that the number of games that appeal to women, or preferably, that appeal
to everyone (which should be the standard) are not there.

What is it you want that you don't feel is being catered to? If you're unable to answer that, then nobody will be able to give it to you.

"Make games that I'll like" is not enough information for even a person who is in good faith genuinely trying their hardest to give you want you want.

the number of women in the industry is also abysmally low.

Why is this a problem? the majority of nurses are women. Is that a problem? The majority of teachers are women. Is that a problem? The majority of accountants are women. Is that a problem? Shall we cry out and rally against the unfair sexism that clearly must therefore exist? Of course not. Trends exist. If women tend to gravitate towards some positions and men tend to gravitate towards others, that doesn't need to be a problem.

If your goal is to have everything be 50/50, you're unlikely to ever be satisfied.

If we could get a representative population of women in programming this would really be a non-issue. As it stands game design and programming is a mainly male dominated (I want to say somewhere around 90% from what I've heard in the past but don't have sources) field and if we had something near a 50/50 split then women could sexualize themselves as much as they want, much as it's their right to be a part of other forms of sexualized media.

And how exactly do you intend to accomplish that? In my entire life I've known exactly zero women who wanted to be programmers and didn't succeed in becoming programmers. Let's not assume it's some sort of inherent unfairness in the system if the reality is that it just happens to not be something that large numbers of women want to do.

And in all honesty, on the relative importance of social problems, "equal representation in gaming development" seems very low on the priority list to me.

MMOs have a 41% female gaming audience for example. Hardly 30/70

And MMOs are an entire genre that's notorious for having complete character customization where anybody can play any gender and no gender has any in-game advantage.


I think my real problem with this discussion is that it's something I've been hearing people complain about for years, but it's terribly difficult to get anyone to give a straight answer about what exactly they want to be different without it being something that's not about making them happy...but rather simply taking away something that other people want.

Why should you get the bulk of the games catering to you?

Like that. The complaint there isn't that "I'm not being catered to." It's that somebody else is being catered to more. It's like asking for a chocolate cake, and being given a chocolate cake, and then complaining that the two people at the table next to you both got vanilla because they wanted vanilla.

"Why should there be two vanilla cakes when I only get one?"

It's not reasonable.


Also, this conversation is developing so quickly it's difficult to keep up.

This is a lot of words to say "I don't think this is a problem, so shut up."

People have repeatedly and continually are stating what they want. Maybe read the other posts.

You are expending a lot of energy not to make a counter argument, but to argue that the other side has no argument at all.

[Neonivek]

Are you saying it is because women in that situation feel that it is normal to be abused?

Because, while that is true... it should be stated that is because in their mental states they intentionally warp their perceptions in order to normalize the situation.

As well when you look at the "Violence against women" charts... You will see that videogames, movies, and television is not a contributing factor.

What the hell are you going on about? Women who feel abused don't feel it's normal to be abused.

No, it is pretty common. Women who stay in abusive relationships will do that.

Often shoving the blame of their own abuse onto themselves.

This is a lot of words to say "I don't think this is a problem, so shut up."

I don't know smeeprocket... People are allowed to have different viewpoints. LordBucket isn't saying abuse doesn't happen or that sexism doesn't happen.

LordBucket is saying that the existence of a gender discrepancy in it of itself does not imply sexism.

[Reelya]

I think it would be worthwhile if there was some research as to what effect showing DV in a game from an NPC had on the viewer's perception of domestic violence in real life. If it makes it less socially acceptable, then that could in fact be a good thing. It would probably correlate heavily with the effects of showing it in a movie, as long as it's not a player-initiated action or rewarded.