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[MetalSlimeHunt]

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/13/7745847-fact-check-no-evidence-to-suggest-hpv-vaccine-causes-mental-retardation
Seems Bachmann may be jumping on the anti-vaxxer wagon.

Good. It's better that she exposes all of her insane ideas to the public now, rather than after having been elected. Rick Perry is a psychopath, have no doubt, but at least he isn't part of the anti-vaccination movement.

[fqllve]

Isn't this legal with the patriot act and whatnot?

I'm not too versed on the details so I could be wrong.

As far as I know.

[Bauglir]

On a slightly more ridiculous note- random blogger 98723569081235 notes: Warhammer Space Marine: Most Feminist game of the year? for portraying a woman in a leader's role in the army without sexualising her.

I don't know how to feel about this one. On the other hand it's good to see that they're not sexualizing women this time. On the other hand, they did this by just giving a man a model swap instead of taking the time to write a real woman.

Hm... I'd have to see the details of her characterization to be sure, but I will say that they get points if they didn't call attention to it; it seems to me to be one thing if they have a character who is portrayed as not giving a crap about gender, and one who goes, "Hey, look at how awesome and stereotype-breaking I am, even though I'm a woman!" The former seems like a valid character concept, and I'm glad to see female characters moving into it (you see plenty of male characters for whom it's the case, where being a dude just isn't relevant and they have other defining traits). The latter is really just subtle reinforcement of the stereotypes.

[alway]

Here's the most concerning thing about the aircraft incident which, from what I can tell hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread.

An agent thanked her for being cooperative, she wrote. "'It's 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren't there.' He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like. He said there had been 50 other similar incidents across the country that day."

[Vector]

Guilt through algorithmic association.

Curious.

[Leafsnail]

Well I do get "hacker" as a suggestion after typing my name.

[GlyphGryph]

I don't know how to feel about this one. On the other hand it's good to see that they're not sexualizing women this time. On the other hand, they did this by just giving a man a model swap instead of taking the time to write a real woman.

A Space Marine is a Space Marine. Regardless of gender, I expect them to carry themselves mostly the same way and act mostly the same way. Fuck, they're barely even human anymore in many ways, regardless of gender, and they are pretty much built to be what they are.

All that said, I haven't played the game yet, so I don't know how it handles it. But "just like a 'guy' but happens to be female" is really the only way I could see it being handled in a fair manner considering.

[kaijyuu]

The less skin tight space suits, the better.

[GlyphGryph]

Huh, okay, the woman isn't even a Space Marine (which I could see people arguing against for fluff reasons, though the fluff changes often enough). She's a member of the Imperial Guard, which has always been equal opportunity regardless of gender. It does negate my argument about her not being human anymore.

I don't know, though, I still support women in roles that essentially act like "men", especially in situations like this where the men in the role aren't acting like "men" so much as acting like however someone in that role should act. Any differences based on gender would probably be subtle - people aren't really that different.

Obviously, not all women in video games should be like this, just like that isn't the situation in real life, but it's nice to see them represented.

[Bauglir]

Her armor doesn't have exterior cups, that's a good step.

[Duke 2.0]

 This kinda exemplifies my issues with writing strong female characters. You can't make them dealing or rejecting stereotypes too intensely because they are stereotypes. Making them just a man with a different chromosome seems pointless and means nothing to women in general. The character could be a monkey and mean the same thing. For the sake of interesting characters I think female characters need to be aware of their sex and have interactions influenced by that. Their character can't be based entirely on the fact that they are a girl, but it is something that needs to tie into their character arc in some way.

 Of course there is the flipside of male characters not necessarily being tied into their sex, although there are a lot of characters that emphasize strength, endurance, dealing with an issue and parental issues unique to males. Perhaps the baseline for a character is built around a male, so such avenues don't have to be specifically explored because it's already inherent in other attributes of the story.

 It's a great big weird thing, yeah. I want to see strong female characters, but I don't want to see what is essentially a guy as a girl because the story is a sausagefest and needs girls to balance it out. Being female should be a part of their character, and if gender isn't that important to the character knowing why they are like that grants a great deal of strength to them.

[Vector]

Thank you.

[GlyphGryph]

Making them just a man with a different chromosome seems pointless and means nothing to women in general.

It means they aren't invisible any more. And I actually find it kind of insulting to assume that any generic "traditionally male" template they are built from is inherently that of a "man" - I've most often heard that sort of reasoning used to reinforce gender roles I disagree with, and I'm not really sure its valid. Just because a certain behaviour, demeanor, or personality is traditionally given to men does not mean it is invalid for women.

I think character's like that are super important, but I ALSO think its important to sometimes have men and women casually fill the same role without gender being an important part of their identity (and in a game, if it is not an important part of their identity, it probably won't come up).

[Aqizzar]

The problem I think is that male is so ingrained as the "default" gender of a fictional character.  A woman who displays no womanly characteristics is seen as a man with a different chromosome, while displaying any womanly characteristics immediately makes her gender a defining element of the character, even though both of them are effectively stereotypes.  Whereas there are many things a male character can do in which his gender is essentially a non-issue.  In the case of the Warhammer example, it's only because we consider no-nonsense military leadership a male enterprise that the character is seen as rejecting female stereotypes, even though gender has by any rational measure nothing to do with the activity.

Although I do give the game credit, as the blogger did, for not shoehorning in romantic tension or passion where none need exist.  That's my biggest gripe against almost any media outlet - the downright necessity of having male and female leads react to each other like there's romance somewhere.  You want gender neutrality?  Have male and female leads, no matter how stereotypical or reverse stereotypical of their genders, react and deal with each other in a purely platonic fashion.


Which leads me to my partial praise of the sequel to National Treasure, just to make a tangent.  The first movie was utterly rote in it's establishment of romantic tension and payoff with the main characters.  How does the sequel establish itself?  By starting with the entirely realistic and foreseeable divorce and enmity of the main characters, since protagonists drawn into a relationship by circumstance can easily have no reason to like each other once that circumstance is over.  The start of the movie blew a giant hole in the "happily ever after" ending of the first, which I thought was fantastic.  (I don't know how the movie ends, and I don't want to be abused of this praise, so nobody tell me.)

[Bauglir]

It's a great big weird thing, yeah. I want to see strong female characters, but I don't want to see what is essentially a guy as a girl because the story is a sausagefest and needs girls to balance it out. Being female should be a part of their character, and if gender isn't that important to the character knowing why they are like that grants a great deal of strength to them.

This is true. Part of my response probably has to do with, "Wait, there's a woman in a game called "Space Marine" who isn't wearing a bikini (chainmail or otherwise), captured by the BBEG and whose rescue (at any cost) is the driving plot point, or demurely waiting at home for the hero to return? That's pretty surprising!" I also don't think I'd be as happy with the result in a context that wasn't a grimdark warfest, where it's readily apparent (at least to me, it might be less intuitive to others) why her gender isn't that important to her. A standard JRPG, for instance, would have a different bar, especially if there's any romantic subplot whatsoever with any of the other characters.

I guess what I'm saying is, the trend of "women who are just men, but without the penises" is irritating, and maybe it was the thinking process that resulted in the character, but if that's the case they stumbled into one of the situations where it actually works really well. All of that deserves to be struck through, though, if there's ever a scene designed to make you go, "Oh, wow, the woman saved the hero! What a step for gender equality!", for reasons that have already been addressed a couple of times. Or if there are scenes that play up the male characters' sexuality, leaving hers noticeably absent.