British teaching unions say sexism is culturally maintained by women themselves.
184 replies, posted
[QUOTE=NoDachi;40126517]Breaking news: You can't be critical on how females have been presented if they're given some positive attributes as well.
Source: Pretty Obscure.[/QUOTE]
Breaking news: Cornered poster with no argument begins flaming.
[QUOTE=Lachz0r;40126528]HOW CAN YOU NOT FOCUS ON SEXUALIZATION IF THAT IS THE THING YOU ARE CRITICIZING ABOUT A CHARACTER???? far out![/QUOTE]
I never said that, I never endorsed or defended the over-sexualization of the chararacer, and I never demonized those who posed legitimate reasons for not liking the character other than "My own percieved sexual bias has determined that tight clothes and cleavage makes the entire character sexist even though I know literally nothing about her other than that"
you want to rescue alyx because not only has she rescued you, she's your best friends daughter and a key member of the resistance. also i never had to protect alyx i found she was always real useful in gun fights and her pistol is awesome
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126574]Breaking news: Cornered poster with no argument begins flaming.
I never said that, I never endorsed or defended the over-sexualization of the chararacer, and I never demonized those who posed legitimate reasons for not liking the character other than "My own percieved sexual bias has determined that tight clothes and cleavage makes the entire character sexist even though I know literally nothing about her other than that"[/QUOTE]
So the amount of sexualisation becomes more acceptable the more you 'know about her'.
And the problem isn't with how the art directors decided to present her visually if we looked beyond that?
[QUOTE=NoDachi;40126595]So the amount of sexualisation becomes more acceptable the more you 'know about her'.[/QUOTE]
Never said that either, keep strawmanning.
First and foremost in the understanding of my argument is the simple realization that I was not defending Bayonetta's sexualization, nor is that even the focus of mt argument any longer. My argument is about your perceived bias based solely on looks which you use to demonize those on the opposite side as though you yourself are entirely inoocent.
See in this thread; applying double standards based on sex, deciding the worth of a character based on looks.
[QUOTE=Aredbomb;40126544]That's not the point. Valve is fucking bad at making characters appear useful because their usefulness comes from the linear level design. Valve HAS to take control out of the players hands in order for the NPCs to do something for the player, and even then its usually done with some simple device that Gordon's not allowed to use (sometimes for good reasons, others times for really dumb ones). In cutscenes Alyx is usually helpful by having a device that allows her to open doors, and going ahead of the player, causing her to narrowly avoid some obstacle that appears to inconvenience the player who was forced to lag behind, or not being trapped inside/under heavy junk. Her best display was fighting two distracted CPs unarmed (probably taking the stunstick from one). On the other hand many roadblocks and setbacks come from her being prioritized over Gordon in important situations for ambiguous reasons, and needing protection due to her refusal to use a better weapon than the one she has. EP2 stands out most, however, due to the fact that your extremely critical mission where the only important thing is getting some data to a certian location gets sidetracked because she, who is not needed to peform this task, nearly dies. The Gman doesn't even tell you to protect her until after she's healed, you literally do it because some vortigaunt that doesn't know what's going on told you and you're supposed to care enough to set aside your extremely important task where time is of the essence.
There'as a reason why people don't feel remorse for killing video game characters unless the game tells you that you should: Video game characters don't resemble human beings. They can only influence gameplay through basic intellectual function, when they're using higher intelligence it only influences story. Valve has frequently tried to mix the two levels of intelligence together, but to do so they need to take control away from the player. In a typical cutscene the protagonist can still be compared to NPCs through their scripted interactions, but since Gordon is basically a non-person in HL2's cutscenes that means this never happens.
But hey, she's wearing a jacket, so she must be progressive, right?[/QUOTE]
It's a video game. Of [I]fucking course[/I] the player character is going to do more than the AI character. If Alyx was able to just kill all the enemies and leap over everything without issue, she'd be useless as a story tool and as a character. Believe it or not, [I]all[/I] characters in any video game, film, or book exist to move the story along. In a book written in first-person, you don't know what anyone else is thinking. They all exist to move the person holding the perspective through the story. It doesn't matter if they're the focus of the entire book, that's their point. The same goes for video games.
From what we can see of her character, yes, she is a good character. Her characterization is mature and her dialogue is realistic. I don't know what else you want from her as a character. You're complaining about a staple of storytelling since books could be written.
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126604]Never said that either, keep strawmanning.[/QUOTE]
you're not saying anything. literally the only thing anyone has said was their problem with bayonetta and why they perceived her as a sexist character was due to her redonkulous outfits ok everything else is just you putting words in everyones mouth because you're getting overly defensive about a character i'm assuming you like
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126604]Never said that either, keep strawmanning.[/QUOTE]
You literally said to have a complaint about how the character is constructed visually isn't legitimate unless you [I]know more about her[/I].
She doesn't exist bro. The character is a device, a mirror to be projected upon.
They could have gotten a good script writer to make her one charming mother fucker, but it doesn't stop the fact they wanted to draw her with massive tits and unrealistic curves and clothings to pander to hypersexual demands.
[QUOTE=DinoJesus;40125697]Let me ask you something. Why is it that when a game features an attractive man, it's a power fantasy, but when it's an attractive women it's a piece of eyecandy?
When an attractive male character saves the day, it's considered acceptable. When an attractive female character does the exact same thing, it's labeled demeaning. If you're pushing for equality, why are you so against games staring attractive women? How do you see a female character kicking ass and getting shit done as a negative portrayal? Would you rather she be portrayed as ugly and incapable? Or is that also sexist too?
I feel like you don't even know what you want. Games are featuring women more now than ever. You guys seem to find problems in every single role though. If a female character is weak you guys consider her a damsel. If she's strong she's a demeaning power fantasy. If she's attractive she's eyecandy.
Honestly, it's like your requirements can never be satisfied.[/QUOTE]
There's a big difference between heroes and heroines in games and the difference is that while the male heroes are plausible the female heroines are caricatures.
You rarely, if ever, see men with a massive cock bulge featured prominently on the screen for the entirety of the playthrough but with a female character you get to see their ass highlighted the whole time and their breasts swinging around in every cutscene
[QUOTE=NoDachi;40126626]You literally said to have a complaint amount how the character is constructed visually isn't legitimate unless you [I]know more about her[/I].
She doesn't exist bro. The character is a device, a mirror to be projected upon.[/QUOTE]
By your double standard soaked logic, it is illogical to be mad about the appearance of any and all videogame characters because they are not real.
That is literally the very opposite of your proposed sexism argument, and exactly what I have been saying.
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126655]By your double standard soaked logic, it is illogical to be mad about the appearance of any and all videogame characters because they are not real.
That is literally the very opposite of your proposed sexism argument, and exactly what I have been saying.[/QUOTE]
Golliwogs aren't real.
Are complaints against them illogical?
you guys don't understand
you can't criticize a character's outfit for being sexist if you don't know anything about the character
[url=http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311]that skimpy outfit is part of her heritage[/url]
[QUOTE=Lachz0r;40126581]you want to rescue alyx because not only has she rescued you, she's your best friends daughter and a key member of the resistance.[/QUOTE]
Which is a story reason, not a gameplay reason. It's also heavily influenced by emotion rather than desire to achieve one's goals, which in EP2's case is only achievable in a matter of hours (in universe).
[QUOTE=NoDachi;40126681]Golliwogs aren't real.
Are complaints against them illogical?[/QUOTE]
You just deflected my pointing out your double standard and turned it into a triple standard aimed at demonizing me for pointing out the flaw in your double standard logic.
Are you trying to open a rift in the space-time continuum?
If you're interested in a more on topic analysis (after all this news piece isn't about games) this is called internalised misogyny and is a coping mechanism
This article is a good place to start:
[url]www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/06/why_are_women_s[/url]
[QUOTE=Aredbomb;40126712]Which is a story reason, not a gameplay reason. It's also heavily influenced by emotion rather than desire to achieve one's goals, which in EP2's case is only achievable in a matter of hours (in universe).[/QUOTE]
well we are talking about characters and stories and shit aren't we? if we're judging good characters based only on gameplay then there's never been a decent NPC outside of rpg's that let you control all the other characters actions
[QUOTE=Last or First;40126710]you guys don't understand
you can't criticize a character's outfit for being sexist if you don't know anything about the character
[url=http://harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=311]that skimpy outfit is part of her heritage[/url][/QUOTE]
If you want to get technical it's not an outfit at all, it's her hair.
Again, I am not defending the character. That is no longer the argument, and technically wasn't from the start. As I have said more than once, I used that character to give myself a disadvantage on purpose so that I could get you all to expose your bias via sex based double standards and character appearance, which I did. Flawlessly.
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126720]You just deflected my pointing out your double standard and turned it into a triple standard aimed at demonizing me for pointing out the flaw in your double standard logic.
Are you trying to open a rift in the space-time continuum?[/QUOTE]
You going to answer the question though - with explanation though?
[editline]2nd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126750]If you want to get technical it's not an outfit at all, it's her hair.
Again, I am not defending the character. That is no longer the argument, and technically wasn't from the start. As I have said more than once, I used that character to give myself a disadvantage on purpose so that I could get you all to expose your bias via sex based double standards and character appearance, which I did. Flawlessly.[/QUOTE]
I see you have a firm grasp on reality.
A shame its a reality that no one else inhabits.
I'm just not seeing your [I]Coup de grâce[/I] sorry.
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40126750]If you want to get technical it's not an outfit at all, it's her hair.
Again, I am not defending the character. That is no longer the argument, and technically wasn't from the start. As I have said more than once, I used that character to give myself a disadvantage on purpose so that I could get you all to expose your bias via sex based double standards and character appearance, which I did. Flawlessly.[/QUOTE]
"I am the puppet master, and you are all my puppets! Mwahahahaha, you all played into my trap flawlessly! I purposefully made a bad argument so that you could all expose your bias! You're biased in thinking that an action hero girl with breasts the size of large watermelons wearing a skimpy bikini in a warzone is sexist! You've exposed your triple- no, QUADRUPLE- standards!
I have won the debate!
Ignore the fact that nothing I'm saying makes any sense!
I HAVE WON THE DEBATE
MWAHAHAHAHA"
[QUOTE=.Isak.;40126609]It's a video game. Of [I]fucking course[/I] the player character is going to do more than the AI character. If Alyx was able to just kill all the enemies and leap over everything without issue, she'd be useless as a story tool and as a character. Believe it or not, [I]all[/I] characters in any video game, film, or book exist to move the story along. In a book written in first-person, you don't know what anyone else is thinking. They all exist to move the person holding the perspective through the story. It doesn't matter if they're the focus of the entire book, that's their point. The same goes for video games.[/QUOTE]
Trying to apply the same rules to a character in story and a character in gameplay is ridiculous.
As I said, higher intelligence does not influence gameplay, but it does influence story. In books, movies, and television gameplay does not exist, allowing story to encompass the entire universe. In video games story usually only encompasses a very small part of the universe, with gameplay usually taking up the larger part. This is not an accident or a limitation, some video games just don't have stories, so they don't need humanlike "actors".
My point is not that Alyx is a bad character (though she could be better), it's that she's not special. From a gameplay standpoint neither she nor anyone else is even human. The story portrays her as a slightly unusual person and the gameplay portrays her as an NPC with a unique weapon and regenerating health. She's helpful in the same way that Generic Soldier is useful in the modern shooters FP hates. She open doors that you can't open because doing it yourself would be breaking away from the intended path. If you care about her then that's fine. But there's nothing groundbreaking about her as a character or a gameplay object. She's often compared to characters that don't even have everything needed to be characters. And that's okay, because not every video game is about the story or the characters, nor do they need to be. But compared to those that do have everything needed to be a character, there's nothing spectacular about her.
[QUOTE=Aredbomb;40126982]Trying to apply the same rules to a character in story and a character in gameplay is ridiculous.
As I said, higher intelligence does not influence gameplay, but it does influence story. In books, movies, and television gameplay does not exist, allowing story to encompass the entire universe. In video games story usually only encompasses a very small part of the universe, with gameplay usually taking up the larger part. This is not an accident or a limitation, some video games just don't have stories, so they don't need humanlike "actors".
My point is not that Alyx is a bad character (though she could be better), it's that she's not special. From a gameplay standpoint neither she nor anyone else is even human. The story portrays her as a slightly unusual person and the gameplay portrays her as an NPC with a unique weapon and regenerating health. She's helpful in the same way that Generic Soldier is useful in the modern shooters FP hates. She open doors that you can't open because doing it yourself would be breaking away from the intended path. If you care about her then that's fine. But there's nothing groundbreaking about her as a character or a gameplay object. She's often compared to characters that don't even have everything needed to be characters. And that's okay, because not every video game is about the story or the characters, nor do they need to be. But compared to those that do have everything needed to be a character, there's nothing spectacular about her.[/QUOTE]
What would you define as spectacular then? Is there one character you have in mind that [I]is[/I] spectacular? Because all I'm seeing is you complaining that we aren't simulating humans.
[QUOTE=Pretty Obscure;40124823]I'm just going to leave off with this, sexualization isn't always sexism.
Take Bayonetta for example. She is undisputably sexualized, but nothing about the character is necessarily sexist. She is a strong, intelligent, well liked protagonist in her own right.
The problem of sexualization stems from those who see something they don't like, such as cleavage, which is [B]not[/B] objectively sexist and then self righteously deem it sexist because they disagree with it.
And sexualization will really always be an issue considering people are sexually triggered by many different things. CFNM is a pretty common fetish, and at it's focus it is based off of fully clothed, arguably non-sexualized women.[/QUOTE]
Are you trying to say [B][I]Bayonetta[/I][/B] isn't sexualized? A game I even lost interest in on sight because the character made me feel like I'd be some sort of pervert just for owning it?
[I]Really?[/I]
We're seeing the trend of shitty female characters die out.
Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite is literally the best game character i've ever encountered and she doesn't exist in a sexualized role in anyway, and women and men both worked on her character so you can't claim "men made her therefore it's sexist".
I don't get why anyone wanted to talk about bayonetta that much
We're always going to have issues in society and sexualisation along with low self-esteem is pretty good considering. On Maslow's hierarchy we're sitting at esteem, better than being at safety so while we're not perfect, no-one male or female is, but we're getting better so no need to turn everything around.
[QUOTE=MaxOfS2D;40126723]If you're interested in a more on topic analysis (after all this news piece isn't about games) this is called internalised misogyny and is a coping mechanism
This article is a good place to start:
[url]www.thefword.org.uk/features/2008/06/why_are_women_s[/url][/QUOTE]
This is so unbelievably stupid I think it gave me cancer. It attributes everything from disputes, jealousy, scarcity, attention seeking and even doing things for survival to misogyny with no idea that it might occur outside of its narrative. It makes completely arbitrary statements not only about what is and isn't misogyny with all criticism as other people being misogynist to her, it makes absurd claims on what women are with all the nice things being naturally feminine and all the bitchiness just a result of patriarchy. It misunderstands everything about human nature and psychology choosing instead to make antirationalist claims that sound nice and fit what they already think.
It does nothing but dictate a ridiculous narrative with no basis in anything but its own ideology and makes claims that are laughably bad. If this is where you started then no wonder you can't even read the OP and figure out what's actually going on.
[QUOTE=Devodiere;40127635]This is so unbelievably stupid I think it gave me cancer. It attributes everything from disputes, jealousy, scarcity, attention seeking and even doing things for survival to misogyny with no idea that it might occur outside of its narrative. It makes completely arbitrary statements not only about what is and isn't misogyny with all criticism as other people being misogynist to her, it makes absurd claims on what women are with all the nice things being naturally feminine and all the bitchiness just a result of patriarchy. It misunderstands everything about human nature and psychology choosing instead to make antirationalist claims that sound nice and fit what they already think.[/QUOTE]
Ok yeah my bad, I skimmed through the article while half asleep and seemed like a good explanation to me at the time, but reading through it again it's pretty dumb. My apologies for that.
[editline]2nd April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;40127529]We're seeing the trend of shitty female characters die out.
Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite is literally the best game character i've ever encountered and she doesn't exist in a sexualized role in anyway, and women and men both worked on her character so you can't claim "men made her therefore it's sexist".[/QUOTE]
Elizabeth (and BSI) was some of the most well-written stuff to come out of the AAA game industry in a [I]long[/I] while
[QUOTE=Vodkavia;40123904]There's no doubt some women hold sexist beliefs, Blaming things like pole dancing and clubs is like blaming McDonald's for Obesity.[/QUOTE]
The average stripclub regulars are p. fucking creepy, so no surprise.
elizabeth is a great example of how you can take a trope and develop something meaningful from it
[editline]1st April 2013[/editline]
[QUOTE=Zeke129;40124886]To see if a fictional female character is sexist is to just ask yourself, "does this empower women or exploit them?"
I never played Bayonetta and my experience with the game is watching gamegrumps play it so I can't answer that question. It seems Jon and Arin tried to answer it but Jon started singing instead and then made some loud noises.
CFNM is also interesting but it starts to get into my own biases so I won't run my mouth about it
thisispain, help, you talk about it for a while thanks[/QUOTE]
sexualisation doesnt have anything to with how much clothing you wear
a fetish is a sexualisation by definition idk how "cfnm" can be said to have non-sexualised women when it sexualises clothed women
[quote]Teachers will warn that pole dancing clubs and beauty pageants are turning back the clock on decades of campaigning for sexual equality.[/quote]
So how about gay strip clubs???
When you think about these two forms of sexism (the old fashioned one in which women must cover up all areas of their body and act modest, and the new one where women wear all but nothing), they are really expressions of the same over-sexualization of women based on "what lies beneath". To quote Slavoj Zizek:
[quote]Another Lesson to be learned at school: Not only under our dress are we all naked - we are truly naked [I]only[/I] under our clothes. If we are simply without dress, we are not really naked - there is nothing less erotic than nudism[/quote]
