White Privilege

@Snarka: I find it somewhat amusing that you have stag for your avatar.

What a lame topper...

edited 29th Apr '12 3:28:06 PM by joeyjojo

The stag is the animal in my family crest and I couldn't find a photograph of my family crest small enough to make my avatar.

Just to the spelt out the humorous angle: a stag has always been a symbol of male virility, and you're taking a sex positive political stance.

It's also pink with the sig line 'hello gorgeous'.

Again, Dude, "not your fault" doesn't mean "you shouldn't have to do anything about it". Lots of problems are no one's fault, but they're not going away until the people who can do something about them (in this case, straight white men) do.

^

If I can just grab something off the shelf, I will. If grabbing stuff off the shelf means that I lose an inch of height every time until I'm the same height as everyone else, then they can grab a ladder.

In your opinion. I, for one, am perfectly happy with my decisions thus far. Partly because the path I took is a path that the majority of men or women of differing races could have taken. While it has its rough edges, the military is one of the most diverse equal opportunity organizations in the world in many ways.

I won't encourage things like sexism and racism, but I'm not about to spend my own personal time picketing on a street corner for it to end. I don't have a dog in that fight. I'll watch the movies I like or don't like, regardless of political merit, because if I think I'll like it then I'll watch it. I vote with my money for the things that entertain me in that regard.(And as a given, I'm actually a huge fan of deep female lead characters)

edited 29th Apr '12 4:01:57 PM by Barkey

It's actually not my fault that stag is queer as a three-dollar bill (it was the only one the right size), but so am I so I thought the tag line was appropriate. But yes I would say that I approve of sex politically, although that sounds like a weird way of putting it to me.

I really think all this stuff about eyecandy demeaning women is just a small section of the female population complaining really loudly about nothing. When they start pointing out how "demeaning" it is that all the men in romance novels are just stunt cocks with no real character development or motives other than to fuck the protagonist silly, I'll believe in their good faith about combating the evils of sexism.

Until then, it seems to me that they're just complaining about movies they don't like rather than addressing any sort of sexual inequality.

Needless to say, I don't have a problem with romance novel stunt-cocks or Hollywood hotties who don't do anything but wink and giggle. It's a nonsense issue that would be resolved if people would just realize that sex for its own sake is just fine and dandy.

@Barkey: is this anything like what the military is like?

edited 29th Apr '12 4:07:12 PM by Sarkastique

The problem isn't that the eye-candy women exist. There's nothing wrong with characters or media that are just there to titilate existing.

The problem is when there is no other type of woman in those media. They are either eye candy or nothing. When men have the same problem, when the majority of men you see on the screen are eye-candy, then you can say men have it just as badly.

If you really think those are the only kind of women in movies then you really are just talking out of your ass and you're reason that people roll their eyes at the word "feminism."

@Loni Jay: they are lots of women in media who aren't intended to be eye candy. 

For example there is... 

Umm... 

Okay you might have a point. >_<

No, I realise that there are good, strong female characters in movies. I've seen several relatively recent movies, that I enjoyed, which had good female characters. But those characters are only memorable and are only made a big deal of because they are 'special'. Because they are the exception to the rules, not an equal half of the population.

You know why nobody talks about 'strong male characters'? They aren't special. Most male leads would count as a 'stong male character' by the standards of the work. Being strong is the default, not the exception. For women this isn't so.

Find me five video games with a male main character who is not sexualised. Now find me five video games with a female main character who is not sexualised.

Reverse it; find me ten non-sexualised female leads, and ten non-sexualised male leads.

I can tell you which ones will be easier.

edited 29th Apr '12 4:14:46 PM by LoniJay

Yeah, that's just about exactly what it's like.

If you're combat arms or a mechanic or something. Not so much if you fly a desk. Civilians just don't understand that we don't mean any of that stuff, we're just clowning eachother.

I can list some good females in media...

Aeryn Sun from Farscape.. Pretty much all the female leads in Babylon 5.. Female characters in Serenity.. Females in Supernatural the TV show.. Lots and lots of Cop shows out there have strong female characters..

There's lots of examples out there. It's just that Action and War movies aren't places you find many females, so they always shoehorn some chick in there to be the girlfriend or love interest of the hero. To be completely honest, if it's a movie about war or action, it ain't a love story, it doesn't need a love interest. But for some reason producers feel like it needs to be in there somewhere.

edited 29th Apr '12 4:17:09 PM by Barkey

First of all, the whole "strong female character" bullshit is only true (even then, I still think you're exaggerating) if you get all your cinema entertainment from Hollywood. Hollywood is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to cinema, and there's a wealth of movies with "strong female characters" if you step out of the bubble of L.A. megacorp-produced garbage. Calling Hollywood practices representative of film in general is just ignorant of everything else out there. I'm not saying you are ignorant of this; you may well know all this already and radically disagree, but I can't tell because people's tendency to criticize Hollywood specifically and pretend like they represent the cinematic experience is so strong.

In any case, "strong female characters" aren't remembered because they're "strong female characters," they're remembered because they're good characters who happen to be female. An occurance nowhere near as rare as you make it sound.

Now, as for video games, I think that is a good example of a gender-segregated form of media. Video game companies haven't caught up to the fact that lots of women play video games now (although I still think they're in the minority, not sure about that though), and the way men and women are portrayed sort of matches that failure to modernize.

That said, video games are interactive, and the person playing a video game is meant to affiliate with the playable characters to some extent, because they really are the player's avatar in the game world. So, it makes sense that people catering to a mostly male audience would make mostly male, badass characters. That's how men want to fantasize about themself when they play video games, for the most part. Not as a deadly, bad to the bone badass... with breasts. Breasts just aren't manly.

Since the characters that get developed are usually the ones you either play as or who immediately surround you, I don't think think you can really chalk it up to some kind of male privilege. It's just good business to appeal to your customers in that way.

Not to mention there are a lot of games where it would just be silly to have female characters like the kind you want. It would be silly to have a female protagonist in Call of Duty seeing as women don't really feature prominently in combat. Given how saturated the market is with military-themed games, situations like this are part of why video games are so male-centric. Video games aren't a case of men not wanting to see women doing important things, it's a case of men not wanting to imagine themselves doing things as women.

Nothing sexist about that. I like watching women have sex, but I would not want to play a video game where I have sex as a woman.

Why don't you want to imagine yourself doing things as a woman (excluding sex)? I am expected to imagine myself doing things as a man all the time. It doesn't detract from my enjoyment in the slightest.

Nor does reading, watching or playing fiction in which I put myself in the place of a man make me less womanly. As long as I like the character and feel immersed in the story, why should I care that their genitals don't match mine? Why does it make a man 'sissy' or 'unmanly' to play as a woman, but women playing as men is just fine?

Even the female characters that I consider to be good (yes, I know they exist) in fiction that I enjoy that is produced for the general public have a very high chance of wearing scanty clothes, having undue focus placed on their breasts and ass, etcetera. And also, you never see women who are unattractive. Men can be ugly and still be heroes, but women have to be pretty if they want to be heroic. It's like, OK, you can be heroic. But show everybody your breasts while you're at it or people will get bored.

I admit that I have been exaggerating for effect part of the time here. But these issues do exist, even in movies and videogames that are otherwise good, and you cannot say that there is no sexism in fiction.

What you seem to be saying is "well, yeah, there's sexism in fiction. But it's sexism that I like, so that means it's a good thing!"

This is exactly what people have a problem with. This is what people mean when they say 'white male privilege'. The expectation that something is pleasing to you, therefore it must be pleasing to everybody, and anyone who disagrees just isn't important. The dismissal of unfairness as 'unimportant' or 'nitpicky' because you're happy with things as they are.

edited 29th Apr '12 4:52:25 PM by LoniJay

They are not catering to a mostly male audience. They are catering to an audience that they think is mostly male.

Besides that, those genres of video game that do have a mostly male audience have it because they do shit like that that chases women away from their games.

Well, first of all, you aren't "expected" to do anything. You are free to consume or not consume whatever kind of media you see fit.

You may not have a problem imagining yourself as a man, but I do prefer my avatars in games to be male, because I am male. Not because I hate women, not even because it feels unmanly (not something I personally care about much), but because I often view characters as extensions of the self and my "self" is male. I'm not wholly unwilling to play as a female characters (I liked playing the "45" stealth missions in SOCOM 4 quite a bit), but when it comes to immersing myself in a game, its easier when I'm playing as a character that at least has their gender in common with me. I'd have a hard time playing, say, the rebooted Tomb Raider because I just wouldn't be able to stop noticing the fact that Lara Croft is a woman and I am not. It's an immersion-breaker. That's what I meant when I said "breasts are just not manly." It was a poor choice of words because manliness really isn't the point, it's immersion.

So, to address the criticism at the end of your post. I don't think that what you're describing is really sexism at all. It's just men preferring a protagonist they can relate to more easily. That's a wholly different thing.

I think that's also attributable to the kind of market game companies think they're dealing with. Men are, for the most part, straight. Even a lot of the men who aren't straight are bisexual, so it's obvious why even good female characters are attractive and not wearing much in the way of fabric. I don't see what's wrong with that. If a female character can be well-developed and hot at the same time, why not? Unless it interferes with the story (Charlize Theron in Monster being hot in it would be sort of silly given what Wuornos looked like, even though that's a movie example), I don't see what the issue is. Hot people with no clothes on are just better to look at, and video games are a visual medium.

If the gaming industry though their market was mostly gay men, you'd see a lot more loincloths and gorgeous twinks.

As I mentioned in the post you may or not have read carefully, I recognize that women play games in numbers, and that gaming companies have largely failed to recognize this.

That said, I'm still pretty sure men are the majority of videogame players, although the margin is thinning.

edited 29th Apr '12 5:15:04 PM by Sarkastique

Sorry to butt in, but the Call Of Duty series has had one female protagonist in the past, so that's not entirely true.

Take one look at the search results for any given video game title on Deviant Art and say that again.

Also, the question isn't the fact that most women characters are sexualised or "hot": the question is about balance.

How many significant male characters that are outright ugly can you name that are portrayed as "heroes" or sympathetically at least? And how many significant female characters that are outright ugly can you name that are portrayed in the same way? There seems to be a perceived imbalance between those two groups in media in general (as always, I prefer to actually have a good look and count before I make a judgment on whether there is an imbalance).

That is exactly the problem. You say I have the choice to not consume media with male main characters. But then, when I complain that there aren't enough media with good female characters, you say "that's what the audience wants". So either I imagine myself in the shoes of a man, or I just don't consume as much media as I would like to.

"Take this or take nothing" is not really a choice.

edited 29th Apr '12 5:32:01 PM by LoniJay

Currently the only ugly heroic woman I can think of right now is Brienne of Tarth (don't tell me if she's not heroic, I haven't finished reading yet), and a big deal is made out of her ugliness.

I think there's a pretty decent gap between being an actual gamer and being an obsessed fangirl who makes fanart and fanfics on DA.

That being said, I guess I could be considered a relatively masculine/manly guy, and I'm about to go boot up Skyrim and play on my female protagonist. Ta.

Sorry to butt in, but the Call of Duty series has had one female protagonist in the past, so that's not entirely true.

yes the russaian spiper chick was pretty bad ass[1]

Russian female combat troops is also historically sensible, though.

Anyway, I sort of forgot about this thread and I'll take you guys in turn when I'm done entertaining family.

I will just point out that people aren't entitled to have movies and games they want to play exist. It sucks for you, I'm sure, but it's not like your right to a selection of games you want to play is enshrined in the constitution, or that it should be.

" between being an actual gamer and being an obsessed fangirl who makes fanart and fanfics on DA."

They both play the games, so not really.