Why, IMO, it's hard finding a game to like as a female gamer

[papillon]

The answer is to change society, not laws

Which is exactly why we should be arguing loudly for the creation of more and better games.

Trying to police content through laws creates a mess. Sometimes with positive output - enforced moral codes and restrictions occasionally provide opportunities for creativity. But that's not enough reason to do it. I don't want anyone censoring things with laws - but reacting to them with opinions is not only correct but necessary.

If you want freedom of speech, that comes with the right to say offensive things, and the right to be offended by them!

[Dollywitch]

Where did the Feminism 101 page call you a bigot?

The part where it calls Republicans bigots. I'm a registered Republican.

It's unfair and form arguments with you, you're more moderate and reasonable than many I've come across. But it's also reasonable to see where it's coming from since in general republicans do take a stance against women's issues. I wouldn't ignore everything else on the site because of that. For example, I don't like what Frank Zappa has to say about socialism etc. but it doesn't stop me reading more of what he said and finding it clever.

This page doesn't have arguments on it - at least, not the sort of arguments that have a whelk's chance in a supernova of convincing anyone who isn't already leaning towards her position. What you mostly have is someone stating her position, and then expanding on it.

The feminist 101 is full of arguments. I'm curious as to what an argument that can convince someone actually looks like. Generally, people don't want to be convinced of anything. It's there as a resource for those who want to learn.

A line like "Any highly privileged white man in a public career can literally talk about women on a daily basis as nothing but fuckholes ... without any fear of consequence in his professional life." is so far from reality that I can't take anything that site says seriously. (There's a huge elide of a run-on sentence there, but I don't think I changed the meaning at all.)

How is this untrue? Do men in high flying careers regularly get fired for sexism? I can't think of any examples that comes to mind. The fact is people act like women can say anything about men now, but not women men, yet the very fact that you hear that bullshit *non stop* shows that's not quite true. Perhaps it should be *many* rather than *any*. But you can still get away with rampant sexism as a successful male, whereas it's vastly more difficult to do so as a female.

Also, again, that's totally fallacious reasoning. You can't ignore everything else it says because you don't like the sound of one line. I'm pretty sure whatever feminist blog I give you will get shot down since nothing can be perfect.

[Dollywitch]

@PyTom: I can definitely realize why you might not want to read or believe what you read on that page, because it had several triggering things, including political bias. While politics and religion definitely can influence feminism, since they very easily influence society and the way we think, this thread is still speaking of video games, specifically. Yet, if you want to use your political stance as an explanation of your mental state, that's okay, but I disagree with your stance, no matter what label you care to put with it. If you want to use your political association as a shield to justify refusal to believe "the radical notion that women are people," then it's not helpful to the discussion at all.

For the first link, yes it was insulting and Counter Arts pointed that out to me and I edited my post, and I apologize. I had hoped the page would link to the FAQs, not chiding commentary. So far you have done well in not derailing, but are just denying there is a problem.

Something I don't get - is there something about women that makes their opinion the one I must listen to?

No, there is nothing about men or women that men you must listen to them. That's basically what equality is about, not dismissing or ignoring anyone based on their gender. That's why choosing "hey, let's not listen to WOMEN" would be sexist. The point about not listening is not that it's the absence of an action - it's that when it's brought up that it should happen, and that's ignored, it's now a conscious decision. This entire thread is women saying "listen to us!!" and being told no: Hey, can we participate instead of being tokenized? No. Can I get some pants over here? No. Why? You're a girl. Why does that matter? Because this game isn't for you. Can the game be for me? No. Why not? Because girl things are stupid. Why? Because they're not man things.

In case of privileged vs marginalized, however, women are the marginalized group. It would be the same with a disabled person, or a person of color. You cannot assume to know more about their life or their oppressions more than they do, or decide for them if they're oppressed at all. That's not your decision, as it's not your experience or life you must live.

As far as this listening goes, is the affirmative mandate just to listen, or does it extend to actually implementing those ideas? If it doesn't, how can you tell? If it does, how do you reconcile conflicting ideas - and how do you maintain artistic vision?

I would like to answer this, since I'm comfortable speaking about affirmative action, but I'm not too sure where you're going with this, since your question is heavily tied in with the "listening" motif. Can you clarify what you're asking?

In regards to "maintaining artist vision" ... Are you going to justify sexism as art or something? This has been debated before, with child pornography. Yes. Everyone is entitled to create whatever art they want. But if you make and release "The Birth of a Nation," for example, you're going to realize real quick that certain people don't like it, or you, because of it. And that's their right. But it would also be super great if you weren't okay with being a flaming racist.

Do video games have social responsibility? Does any media? I say yes.

The second one - it seems like a way to tell people how to change to make their opinions acceptable to feminists. I don't have a desire to do that. I'm willing to be convinced that I'm wrong. I like to know when I'm making people uncomfortable, to see if there's something I can do to lessen the offense. But if I'm going to give up the freedom to do whatever the heck I want, there needs to be a good reason.

No, sir, if I truly had my way, that site wouldn't exist, because this entire conversation wouldn't exist. I wouldn't change your opinions to merely be acceptable, I would change them completely! Mwahahahaaa! *over-exaggerating*

Just as you have no desire to be "acceptable" to the other side, neither do I. Every time a feminist is called hostile, aggressive, too angry, too loud, too whatever, I don't particularly care. I will vehemently disagree when you, or others, tell me that the best way to get change is to be passive, or the right way to protest is to be really quiet about it and why are we talking about this again why do we need feminism anymore people are starving in africa? All of that is so that the people in power don't have to change their status quo, and I guess to avoid feeling any guilt (you don't have to, you know, it's not personal) or obligation (you don't have to do anything right now, just maybe be more considerate in the future). If you don't want change, period, then don't dance around it - just say it. If you don't mind change, or you do want change, then stop putting roadblocks up against the fight.

Oh, and the good reason why you can't do whatever you want? Me. And her. And him. And everyone that is not you. We all kinda live in this same world together.

Further, I'm not sure why you think you're being stripped of your free will to begin with?

My problem is that, in the links you're giving, I'm not seeing people saying things other than what they believe, or what they want. I believe that liberty should be the default position - people should be free to do what they want, absent a compelling reason otherwise. I'm not seeing that reason given in these links.

Isn't your position just what you want, too? What you believe? Isn't "your girlyness will ruin my game" not a fact, but opinion? Do you believe in the liberty of murder? Of course you don't. You don't think others have the right to hurt others, correct? Wouldn't you say that sexist, racism, ableism, etc is hurtful?

I think it's not a big jump from healer to nurturer - and men are biologically attracted to nurturing women.

We both know that people other than healers can be nurturing, and that not all men like blahblahblah. I find this statement as proof as why sexism needs to exist in video games is a huge jump from comparing political factions, to "what is art?" to "but I like women as healers!" Finally, we get to the crux of the matter. Here's where I think we're miscommunicating: you can give the silly feminists what they want and still keep women healers, sexy babe armor, sex scenes, butt shots, porn, male protagonists, and games target specifically to men. We're not trying to knock that out of your hands and shame you. Because, frankly, I want sexy men in my games as much as you want sexy women. We're very much the same. I want #3:

(posting in full, because simply linking has obviously not gotten it seen - sorry for size!)

I think you've dealth with my points better than I did, apologies to Renpytom for dragging the argument back to an earlier point.

I agree with most points in this posts but would like to addend something about the final image, as it doesn't give the full picture:

http://borderhouseblog.com/?p=6970

It ignores the difference between portraying a character as a figure of power(overly muscly man) and an object of sex. Some of the comments there are a good read too.

[Dollywitch]

I'm going to have to disagree and say that just because something isn't real doesn't mean it isn't, or can't be, hurtful. You don't see how so many negative images of women (or pretty much any group) can be hurtful towards them?

Isn't this the same thing as saying violent games cause violence? People are expected to make a separation between the game world and reality. When a person can't do that, that's a problem with the person, rather than the game.

You should watch this some time:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episod ... anda-games

Or Extra Credits in general, I recommend it.

People will section off things which are obviously limited to the realm of escapism. It's unrealistic to say media doesn't influence people at all. There are a lot of people who seem to have gotten their politics from Matt & Trey Parker (disappointingly). There are ways to influence people's ways of thinking and it's actually a pretty big industry(in terms of marketing).

[Dollywitch]

@PyTom: Liberty is important, then why place so many restrictions in the WIP forum? Because you wanted to see a better system. You were doing it for the better of the games, of the developers, and of the players. Most likely, right? Not just for selfish reasons

So does that mean that protection of feelings is more important than liberty? That one must walk on eggshells and spend one's life in a state of neurotic behavior because anyone can undoubtedly be offended by anything? Things like freedom of speech exist to protect people from that. And sometimes you have to defend a Neo-Nazi's right to say the most evil things imaginable in order to defend someone's right to protest against actual injustice by people in power, to defend you from the government. And yes, that does mean protecting a misogynist's right to say misogynistic things. And it protects your right to defend yourself from those kind of people. The answer is to change society, not laws. Create awareness and not pile law after law that restrict and bind you until free thought ceases to exist and you unable to say or do anything without being fined, sued or arrested.

Taosym; only a privileged person could say that first thing.

The reason I'm so sceptical of Libertarianism(at least the modern right leaning american version, a little less so the Noam Chomsky version) is that it ignores the concept of privilege. The freedom to not be brutally beaten for being transgendered is a valid freedom. Or at least a valid privilege. It's not not just about what rights you are given from the government, and it's not just the government that can persecute.

You have to measure the overall life experience of one group compared to another, not bullshitting things away saying "oh well that's because of X and Y" because chances are it won't hold up. If women have it harder than men - that's an issue.

I'm curious if you don't advocate the promotion of art that deals fairly with women's issues, nor any kind of legislation how can you hope to change society? How do you change people's minds? Nobody seems to care about the feminism 101s either.

To be honest I don't think you even remotely care about privilege, or women's rights. You have your lot and that's it.

You can't really go on about what it is morally right and wrong to do when you don't really care about the end result. The last thing is a slippery slope, I don't think anyone is advocating thought control. However having some measures in place to prevent discrimination should be a given. I think only a truly privileged person or those who have heavily internalised discrimination agains them can say that with an honest face.

Why is the positive life experience of the bigot more important than the marginalised person? You are at the end of the day, advocating a system where this is the case, and only have a ridiculous slippery slope to defend it.

Also, freedom to speech does not mean -

1) The right to a platform.

In Ireland, Nick Griffin was going to come to a "debate" in Trinity College Dublin. People protested, and it was retracted. The usual idiots went on their "cracking down on free speech" bandwagon, and ironically, we heard about it constantly. The UCC politics society decided to invite him because hurp durp he was denied free speech(despite having a political party, website, regular media coverage, etc.)

He is not being censored in any way or form. Being offered the platform was a privilege, one that could be revoked for any reason. People did not consider it appropriate, given his history of poor debating and the violent entourage he tends to take with him; it was not an appropriate platform and having college funds pay for that is insulting.

There are so many people who never get an opportunity to speak out, and most of them are probably more relevant and eloquent than Nick Griffin. Is it denying free speech if we don't allow everyone who wants to speak a chance?

2) The right to go unchallenged.

This came up in particular with my Dad commenting on the radio. There was a local mayor that decided he wasn't going to take requests from african americans, as he found them too demanding and (ironically) they supposedly accused him of racism. I commented that he sounded like a bit of a smart arse, and my Dad said part of the problem was you can't talk about it anymore. DESPITE THE FACT THEY WERE TALKING ABOUT IT ON NATIONAL RADIO.

He has had more opportunity than most to say his piece. He is not entitled to have people accept his reasoning. Some people are going to consider some things sexist or racist, and it's your duty to show otherwise. You do not have a right to say things without consequence. That is not how free speech works.

Also, Voltaire did make that quote about dying for someone else's "right to say it", yet the armchair liberals always come out with that one, which is great for me since it means you can quickly flag those who are talking out of their hole and have probably never really experienced serious racism first hand.

[Dollywitch]

dwwtpi.jpg

Finally, I recognize that not every possibility in this chart exists - and I think that's a problem. But I think it's a problem that the audience for that type of game has to solve themselves - requiring people to fund or create games that do not appeal to them is not a good solution to the problem.

(More later - it's 2am, and I think it's time to go to bed.)

The problem is you're taking a ridiculously post modern approach and saying "Whatever the market decides". There's no moral right or wrong, no logic in that. There are companies out there that chose to actually do the right thing, and more need to do that so we don't end up with these archetypes. Once more gender balanced games start to sell, they'll have no excuses. Of course people are going to judge games companies they perceive as engaging in immoral practices like encouraging sexism, even if it makes them money. I don't understand why in Libertarianism "personal responsibility" seems to apply to those with the least power.

How else are you going to change these misconceptions, really?

[Mink]

You do not have a right to say things without consequence. That is not how free speech works.

You know, no matter how much I try to explain that to people, it never seems to make any sort of difference.

Also, I'm glad this thread isn't about race, because I think I'd have had an apoplectic fit by now. There's still time, though.

Edit: after that recent link Dollywitch posted, I ended up watching this. 1) that was rather refreshing and slightly lowered my disdain for humanity, and 2), OMG I'm not the only one who played Beyond Good and Evil.

[Ramidel]

If you want freedom of speech, that comes with the right to say offensive things, and the right to be offended by them!

The corollary to that, however, is that there's the right to ignore people being offended by you. The ability to let people shout in the wind so long as cash keeps coming, or to stir up controversy and make a boodle off of it (Rockstar, I salute you!).

[Auro-Cyanide]

I know that we are onlt meant to be talking about females and games, but I think since the general concenus with the guys is if we want to change things it's as simple as making games, I think you're missing the bigger picture.

Games are an effect, not a cause.

Games, in and of themselves, are not the problem and so changing them by ourselves will not change anything. Why? Because we are talking about a social problem that effects all of us that for some reason we are not questioning. And yes, I mean the guys too.

You talk about freedom when freedom is but an illusion created by sets of indoctrinated parameters created by society. (Yes, I realise I sound like a crazy person, bear with me).

We are all socially indoctrinated whether we like it or not. Sometimes they are good. Stealing is bad, murder is bad, these exist because they protect people and stop everything tumbling in chaos where the strong rule the weak by force. Sometimes they are horribly outdated and serve no purpose at all apart from to apparently make everyone's life hard. The fact is that we, as humans, are in control of social rules, not the other way round. We have the power to change what needs to be changes and this is one of those cases and there are more. This is why we bring up the issues and don't silently try to fix them. This problem is bigger than just us! I want people to think about what they are doing and whether they have a bloody good reason for doing it. 'Because we like it' is not good enough, you are not thinking hard enough.

What we usually do is get feedback from some people at this point, and the women looked at these and went, ‘I'm not sure about that guy. He's got a giant red mark on his face and he’s creepy.’ And we were like, ‘what he looks cool.’ So we went back to the drawing board."

I'm very thankful the guys at Bioware actually turned around and asked what women thought because Mass Effect would have been a very different game without it. What this showed me was that the designers were not originally thinking about women when they were designing Thane, they were think about what they thought was cool. Why? They knew he was going to be a love interest and yet they stumbled at the very first hurdle of considering their audience. Why? Because men usually don't have to think about it, and not only that, they are told it is wrong to think about it.

Women are shown every single day what is attractive in a female from a male point of view. Every. Single. Day. Any female concept artist worth her salt could turn around and draw a sexual attractive women aimed at men, and could probably make her respectable to women to boot. Because we have been told what is attractive, we are shown it everywhere. And we also know what is attractive from a female perspective because we get women. Men have not had this, and it isn't really their fault directly (though continuing to ignore it might very well be). Men only see positive male attributes as attractive in other men, and only then if they relate back to them. Look at male main characters in Western games. They are full with attributes that males think are positive, which they would like to see in themselves. Women apparently are not allowed to have the same thing. Why?

Take your standard female character. She looks the way she does because of sexual cues that males find attractive. Fair enough. Most of these are biologically built in. What about her lack of personality? How is that excused by what males like? How about variation in character design? Rounded female characters? Attractive male characters (because surely a straight male would show no interest and would therefore not care whether a guy was attractive to a female or not)? If someone could give me decent reasons why adding in these elements would make a game worse, please enlighten me. Oh, and if the answer is you would like it less, I want you to look deep inside yourself and figure out why. Because there in lies our problem. We have articualted exactly what it is about games that makes us feel excluded. It would be nice to hear why changes would directly effect you and why.

*I would also like to add on this because it is relevent. This is from David Gaider, the head writer at Bioware in relation to Dragon Age 2 and he very succinctly sums up a number of arguments as well as demonstrates that, why yes, there is a market outisde straight male gamers. This guy, one of the major creators, gives a damn about what others want outside of just himself or the majority. If he is actually putting this into action, why can't others make the effort to at least consider their actions and the messages they send as well?

The romances in the game are not for "the straight male gamer". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. We have good numbers, after all, on the number of people who actually used similar sorts of content in DAO and thus don't need to resort to anecdotal evidence to support our idea that their numbers are not insignificant... and that's ignoring the idea that they don't have just as much right to play the kind of game they wish as anyone else. The "rights" of anyone with regards to a game are murky at best, but anyone who takes that stance must apply it equally to both the minority as well as the majority. The majority has no inherent "right" to get more options than anyone else.

More than that, I would question anyone deciding they speak for "the straight male gamer" just as much as someone claiming they speak for "all RPG fans", "all female fans" or even "all gay fans". You don't. If you wish to express your personal desires, then do so. I have no doubt that any opinion expressed on these forums is shared by many others, but since none of them have elected a spokesperson you're better off not trying to be one. If your attempt is to convince BioWare developers, I can tell you that you do in fact make your opinion less convincing by doing so.

And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as "political correctness" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance. They don't see anything wrong with having things set up to suit them, what's everyone's fuss all about? That's the way it should be, any everyone else should be used to not getting what they want.

The truth is that making a romance available for both genders is far less costly than creating an entirely new one. Does it create some issues of implementation? Sure-- but anything you try on this front is going to have its issues, and inevitably you'll always leave someone out in the cold. In this case, are all straight males left out in the cold? Not at all. There are romances available for them just the same as anyone else. Not all straight males require that their content be exclusive, after all, and you can see that even on this thread.

Would I do it again? I don't know. I doubt I would have Anders make the first move again-- at the time, I thought that requiring all romances to have Hawke initiate everything was the unrealistic part. Even if someone decides that this makes everyone "unrealistically" bisexual, however, or they can't handle the idea that the character might be bisexual if they were another PC... I don't see that as a big concern, to be honest. Romances are never one-size-fits-all, and even for those who don't mind the sexuality issue there's no guarantee they'll find a character they even want to romance. That's why romances are optional content. It's such a personal issue that we'll never be able to please everyone. The very best we can do is give everyone a little bit of choice, and that's what we tried here.

And the person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least. And that's my opinion, expressed as politely as possible.

I like that last bit the most.

[PyTom]

Either way, I don't think that saying, "Well, people should be able to distinguish fiction from reality" frees something from any criticism that it's sexist/racist/whatever, and why said -ism is bad and shouldn't be there, regardless of whether or not it's fictional.

Sure, but it does limit the range of valid criticism. If we thought behavior in a game caused similar behavior in the real world, then violence in games would be problematic - since it would cause actual people to be hurt by it. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence of this.

That means such criticism becomes a matter of taste, and hence much less important.

@PyTom: Liberty is important, then why place so many restrictions in the WIP forum?

The thing is - liberty is the right to do what you want with your own resources. It's not the right to do what you want with other people's resources. We have the right to add rules to the forum on which we run, but it would be horrible for us to come in from the outside and limited what you could write in other places.

You're failing to understand what I'm calling sexist. I am calling the things you are saying sexist, not only the games you are defending.

In that case, could you give some examples of things that I am saying that are wrong? (Either incorrect, or wrong from the right and wrong angle.) I can't defend myself against the charge of sexism, since all the arguments being made are definitional - but I believe my point of view is defensible on its own merits.

Believe it or not, Tom, I'm a real person, being actually hurt by this. I know it seems like I'm just words on a page, but I'm actually a person.

I think we're all people here. I'm genuinely trying to find a way around this that benefits everyone - that prevents you from being hurt, while still preserving everyone's freedom. It may be that that is impossible, but I think we can try.

Which is exactly why we should be arguing loudly for the creation of more and better games.

I argue for more games. The idea of "better" games scares me, since it implies that some third party force is getting to judge what games are better and worse. If there are more games and efficient markets, we will get better games, at least according to any group with the will and resources to support them.

It's unfair and form arguments with you, you're more moderate and reasonable than many I've come across. But it's also reasonable to see where it's coming from since in general republicans do take a stance against women's issues.

This is only true if you accept the liberal party-line on what is a woman's issue. For example, are shall-carry laws a women's issue? They probably should be, since a small woman carrying a pistol is way more powerful than her attacker.

I'm curious as to what an argument that can convince someone actually looks like.

In this area, a good argument starts with premises that pretty much everyone agrees with. "Free speech is important." "Liberty is important." "All men are created equal, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It then builds from those premises to reach a conclusion.

If it's easy to impeach the premises, then it's not a good argument.

How is this untrue? Do men in high flying careers regularly get fired for sexism? I can't think of any examples that comes to mind.

Hermain Cain is the first to come to mind, although he isn't white. Mark Hurd and Don Imus come to mind. At the lab where some friends of mine work, discovery of pornography on a computer is grounds for a user's firing, and also triggers the group that person is in to be sent to sensitivity training. Similar policies were in place at places where I worked, back before i worked from home.

I just don't find it credible, given my life experience.

Also, again, that's totally fallacious reasoning. You can't ignore everything else it says because you don't like the sound of one line. I'm pretty sure whatever feminist blog I give you will get shot down since nothing can be perfect.

Honestly, it didn't even really make an attempt to convince people of what it was stating. It seems to be there to "preach to the choir" - for people who already accept it's premises. (I'm not sure how good it is at that.) It's not a good site for those of us who are unconvinced.

The reason I'm so sceptical of Libertarianism(at least the modern right leaning american version, a little less so the Noam Chomsky version) is that it ignores the concept of privilege. The freedom to not be brutally beaten for being transgendered is a valid freedom.

I disagree with this. The freedom to not be brutally beaten is a right. Full stop. Rights accrue to individuals, not groups.

The problem is you're taking a ridiculously post modern approach and saying "Whatever the market decides". There's no moral right or wrong, no logic in that. There are companies out there that chose to actually do the right thing, and more need to do that so we don't end up with these archetypes. Once more gender balanced games start to sell, they'll have no excuses. Of course people are going to judge games companies they perceive as engaging in immoral practices like encouraging sexism, even if it makes them money. I don't understand why in Libertarianism "personal responsibility" seems to apply to those with the least power.?

Actually, you're wrong. The beauty of a market is that it means that we don't have to decide. Instead of someone deciding between option A where you're happy, and option B where I'm happy, we can have _both_ option A and option B, where we are both happy.

You can judge companies if you want - and other people can judge those judgements, and judge the judging of the judgements. I'm not sure if that accomplishes much, however - working for change is different than talking about change.

From a libertarian point of view, personal responsibility applies to everyone. People who assert it tend to be more successful than those who don't. I'm not sure if success is the same thing as power, however - by running a forum like this one, am I asserting power over you?

[Mink]

Either way, I don't think that saying, "Well, people should be able to distinguish fiction from reality" frees something from any criticism that it's sexist/racist/whatever, and why said -ism is bad and shouldn't be there, regardless of whether or not it's fictional.

Sure, but it does limit the range of valid criticism. If we thought behavior in a game caused similar behavior in the real world, then violence in games would be problematic - since it would cause actual people to be hurt by it. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence of this.

That means such criticism becomes a matter of taste, and hence much less important.

...I'm going to assume you mean the criticism is less valid because a work is fictional, and not that saying something is sexist/racist/etc. is not a valid criticism to a work.

That being said, it was stated earlier about it not causing it. I said it could possibly normalize attitudes/behaviors that are present. Is that arguable? Sure.

And now, sarcasm mode:

Sure, but it does limit the range of valid criticism. If we thought behavior in a game caused similar behavior in the real world, then violence in games would be problematic - since it would cause actual people to be hurt by it. But there doesn't seem to be any evidence of this.

That means such criticism becomes a matter of taste, and hence much less important.

It's a good thing that's true, because otherwise, reading this, I may start to think H.P. Lovercraft was kind of racist and have a bit of a problem with this depictions of anyone who's not white in his books/stories. But hey, even if he was, it doesn't matter all that much, because that right there is fictional, and racism in fictional media cannot possibly hurt me or negatively affect me in any way, shape, or form.

Sarcasm mode off.

I know the discussion is of women and games, but 1) I'm blackish and a woman, so I'm going to say it kind of counts, 2) I couldn't think of any examples of sexism like that. Well, fictional examples, anyway, and 3) I enjoy making fun of Lovecraft.

This is where people telling he was a great writer and that he was a product of his time, so it's totes okay.

[LVUER]

@Taosym:
OK, this is completely OOT, but I can't send you PM or emails so I just post in this thread. I want to read that comic "Me Harmony" that you're talking about. It seems I've read that in DA once in the past (only one page though)... I've tried looking it again but no avail. Where did you read that? Could you give me a link?

[PyTom]

Mink:

I have to admit, that's a pretty convincing rebuttal.

[Counter Arts]

A line like "Any highly privileged white man in a public career can literally talk about women on a daily basis as nothing but fuckholes ... without any fear of consequence in his professional life." is so far from reality that I can't take anything that site says seriously. (There's a huge elide of a run-on sentence there, but I don't think I changed the meaning at all.)

How is this untrue? Do men in high flying careers regularly get fired for sexism? I can't think of any examples that comes to mind. The fact is people act like women can say anything about men now, but not women men, yet the very fact that you hear that bullshit *non stop* shows that's not quite true. Perhaps it should be *many* rather than *any*. But you can still get away with rampant sexism as a successful male, whereas it's vastly more difficult to do so as a female.

In my previous job there were 2 women on the programming R&D team out of 6. You really really have to rely on each other to understand what the heck you're adding new features to. If I went around acting like women are just things with two holes then I would have a royally hard time and miss deadlines since I rely on their help on modifying their code.

And I think the entire work environment would turn hostile on me if I did that.

@PyTom
About the effects of games (and media in general)...

I think when something becomes a "requirement" or "standard" to include in some genre it may become an issue. Like how male protagonists must always be spineless in bishoujo games. How Uke and Seme is standard in BL books/media despite totally misrepresenting gay men. So the question is how many people know better to understand this isn't how real gay men are?

I've also heard in my women studies class that long before the internet real lesbians went to a particular city just because all the lesbian novels took place in that city.

So there is definitely an effect media has.

What I think is needed is something with different views with the same levels of exposure. Parodies would be especially useful here.

It could also be something like a "Tyranny of small decisions" by the marketers that gives birth to stuff like this. Especially if the marketing people try to blindly copy a success and each other.

[Taosym]

Taosym; only a privileged person could say that first thing.

I stopped reading right there.

If you're going to make personal attacks rather than face the argument, then there's no point in arguing with you. I've had as far from a privileged life as one can get. But you never bothered to inquire. You make assumptions about men, then tell people assuming things about women is sexist. You're as biased and unreasonable as they come.