Males of Games

For some reason, I doubt that. From what I can tell, just from base speculation, whether or not violence is considered heinous or depraved depends on how much a "victim" the receiving end is. Mortal Kombat, for example, practically codified videogame violence and no one really cared that you could kill Sonya as gruesomely as anyone else. Or the other women later on. It was pretty much equal across the board, with the exception that women were immune to Cage's nut-cracker.

Horror stories tend to kill off women just as gruesomely and just as horribly as men also.

However, when the writers want a character you're supposed to "feel sorry for", they choose women and/or children. Take, for example, this scene in Assassins Creed Revelations. Lots of people dying left and right, but the characters it focuses on to demonstrate YES, THIS IS A HORRIBLE TRAGEDY! PEOPLE DIED! DO YOU GET THAT?! DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT PEOPLE ARE DEAD?! was a woman and child. You have to ask if a man, alone, would have worked as well. Or a man with a child.

What needs to change is the "True Man/Worthless Man" divide. A true man is tough, strong, and badass. Being a badass means risking life and limb. Risking life and limb supports survival of the fittest.

The idea that women are off-limits in violence has existed far longer than feminism.

edited 2nd Dec '12 8:33:31 AM by KingZeal

Free healing. Or at least, instant-refund healing.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the good(?) people at Rockstar sat down and said "You know what this game needs? More dead hookers." I think they just decided to make it as sleazy as they thought they could get away with, for shock value, and then included some actual mechanics based on those narratives. It just wound up looking really bad.

The frequent sexualization of violence against female sprites (as opposed to more generic violence against male sprites) isn't the only factor, but I think it exacerbates the situation. It makes people more nervous about the prospect of violence against female sprites at all. It's easier to see something when you expect it (whether it's there or not), and easier to expect it when you've gotten used to seeing it.

Stuff what I do.

Can we not talk about sexualized violence in this topic? That actually is straying away from misandry.

It's reasonable for people to find that controversial...and to be wary of new games that allow violence against female sprites in case they turn out to be more of the same.

I'd like to point out that not all games that allow violence against women end up with any sort of controversy whatsoever.

I've never seen anyone upset about boss fights against female villains in Kingdom Hearts (which is pretty casual about Would Hit a Girl in general) or the not-at-all-uncommon female generic soldiers in Final Fantasy XIII. I'd imagine that games that treat the whole thing as matter-of-fact and don't lean too far towards anything that could be considered torture porn aren't all that likely to get into trouble for making half of their (gendered) enemies female.

edited 2nd Dec '12 8:47:13 AM by Ikkin

That goes back to what I was saying earlier about programmers lazily using "male" and "female" as shorthand for "resilient" and "vulnerable," respectively. It seems to be an easier trap to fall into when dealing with period settings, because we have this view of The Past as a time of strong Manly Men fighting, and delicate Womanly Women staying out of it and being protected from the fighting. Modern settings seem to be a little better about it.

Lots of things need to change. That's certainly one of them.

I won't dwell on it. I just wanted to point out that violence against women is not deplored solely because of Men Are the Expendable Gender.

edited 2nd Dec '12 10:25:28 AM by Karalora

Stuff what I do.

I Don't think a more feminine male is seen as "worthless male"

Instead people want HEROIC males.

And there have been characters with feminine traits (or I should say "seen as feminine") and are still heroic.

First, I never said "feminine" above.

Second, just because there are some exceptions doesn't mean the pattern doesn't happen. As was said in the other topic, the director of Silent Hill removed Harry Mason as protagonist because he couldn't see a man being that determined to save his child. And you've got characters like Al Bundy who supposed to be losers because they let marriage ruin their lives.

And then, you've got the page quote on Henpecked Husband: "A man can either be a happy rabbit or a lonely lion." In other words, there's a memetic thought that domestication is supposedly Badass Decay.

Indeed, but to combat violence against men, that's the core thinking that has to change. It would also partially help fix other misandrist problems, such as men being the default badass (or "HEROIC", as Thorn put it) gender, men being seen as perverts, and men being seen as meal tickets.

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:09:58 AM by KingZeal

I Don't think a more feminine male is seen as "worthless male"

Instead people want HEROIC males.

And there have been characters with feminine traits (or I should say "seen as feminine") and are still heroic.

There are definitely parts of the audience that seems to equate "seen as feminine" with "weak" no matter how put together a character is personality-wise. Just look at how any discussion of Final Fantasy in the comments section of a dudebro-friendly site turns to disgust at how they characters are all weak pretty-boys. =P

Not to mention, "heroic" in its most standard form tends to idolize certain hyper-masculine traits at the expense of the character's humanity. Men, like women, often need to be written as humans rather than as paragons of their gender.

Just because its a proverb doesn't make it right.

Lee from The Walking Dead and The Last Of Us will have good protector roles.

Also where did I imply that heroic = manly?

Here, to clear things up, can I hear what you would consider "feminine traits" and "masculine traits"? in a male character?

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:12:08 AM by Thorn14

Yes, and Lee dies. Part of the stereotype is that men are expendable, remember? Besides that, being a good father doesn't just mean being a good "protector". For example, John Mc Clane of Die Hard is a great protector and a shitty father. That's the stereotype.

The proverb is only one example. We also have the reference of wives as "the old ball and chain", the stag/bachelor party as the "last night of 'freedom'", the nagging housewife, the Gold Digger, etc, etc.

All of these tropes serve the same purpose of making marriage look like Badass Decay.

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:14:25 AM by KingZeal

Probably because Marriage is often culturally about settling down (hence the phrase)

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:14:06 AM by Thorn14

Well, why can't we have women in "torture porn" and let them suffer the same way men do? As long as that divide exists there will always be an underlying assumption that "it's ok when violence happens to women, as long as it doesn't get too much". Which naturally leads to men being the only ones who suffer from the most extreme cases. More female victims of "light" violence would be a nice start, but until society considers male victimhood as more acceptable we still have a long way to go.

That's exactly the point. Marriage is seen as the end of life and not the start of it.

I'm pretty sure Saw and Hostel demonstrated very graphic violence and suffering for both women and men.

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:17:05 AM by KingZeal

Yep, and Hostel 2 (or maybe a later part, I'm not sure) got heavily criticized because it showed the same kind of violence that happened to men in the previous part(s) to women, too.

I'll just avoid all the gory shit wholesale, thanks.

Bleye knows Sabers.

Good thing for you. But I would have thought when other people complain about people being treated equally (or more equal than usual), you would still heavily criticize them.

I'd heavily criticize anyone for enjoying Saw regardless of any other opinions they have on it.

Bleye knows Sabers.

How about people who don't enjoy Hostel and still criticize Hostel 2 for having female victims of violence?

Also where did I imply that heroic = manly?

You didn't, but traditional hero traits tend to also be hyper-masculine. A lot of the time, "he isn't heroic enough" tends to be code for "he's overly emotional like a girl." =/

Here, to clear things up, can I hear what you would consider "feminine traits" and "masculine traits"? in a male character?

Well, there are two sorts of traits to talk about here.

First, you have the external gendered traits that could make a character "more feminine" — looking pretty, wearing makeup/flowy clothes, physical softness — which don't really do anything to make them less heroic even in the traditional sense unless you're really into gender-essentialism.

There are also internal gendered traits, though, and that's what causes problems with the need for male characters to be "heroic." Emotional vulnerability, difficulty in coping with whatever manner of horrible things that get foisted on oneself, focusing on community efforts over the individual, passivity/subtle manipulation instead of actively beating the problem with a hammer... stuff like that gets coded as both "feminine" and "non-heroic," so it's hard to make a male character with those traits without making them "less heroic."

Well, why can't we have women in "torture porn" and let them suffer the same way men do? As long as that divide exists there will always be an underlying assumption that "it's ok when violence happens to women, as long as it doesn't get too much". Which naturally leads to men being the only ones who suffer from the most extreme cases. More female victims of "light" violence would be a nice start, but until society considers male victimhood as more acceptable we still have a long way to go.

"Torture porn" isn't exactly the same thing as extreme violence. It's not so much that there should be limits to how far you can go with female characters as that it tends to feel super-skeevy if someone seems to be turned on by people getting horribly murdered.

Stuff like "kill cams" that follow the path of the bullet from the player's gun through the enemy's brain is pretty uncomfortable in general, but when the audience is mainly male and the one getting killed horrifically is female, it's hard not to see it as intentionally appealing to Ryona fetishists, which hardly seems appropriate for anything even slightly mainstream.

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:38:38 AM by Ikkin

By whom?

edited 2nd Dec '12 9:48:12 AM by KingZeal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostel:_Part_II

Under controversy.

Regarding torture porn, I still stay by my initial statement that violence against women shouldn't be treated any different than violence against men, even if the violence reaches fetishistic levels. I file that under "artistic freedom", not that I like such forms of media anyway.

It shows one person, who hadn't even seen the film, who said that. At the risk of Moving the Goalposts, I think we can safely tuck that under Complaing About Movies You Dont Watch.

And wait, wait, wait. Fetishized violence is rather different that normal violence. For example, a movie about a group of women who mutilate a man's genitals, sodomize him, and berate him for "deserving it" because he's a man would be just as heinous as sexualized violence against women. It's something you don't see often.

edited 2nd Dec '12 10:08:42 AM by KingZeal

Is there really a lack of female characters in torture porn?

Because I'm noticing, on the trope page, that a good chunk of the examples are female ones.

edited 2nd Dec '12 10:18:09 AM by JotunofBoredom

Umbran Climax◊

Moving the Goalposts is exactly what you do though. You ask for an example, I give you an example and then this example somehow isn't enough. There was more debate about this and more than one person saying it than that one politician and he would never have said it, if he didn't at least thought he had some kind of support behind him for that statement. Hell, he specifically mentioned how other people had backed him up on this. We've already established that Men Are the Expendable Gender, why is it so hard for you to acknowledge that some people actively work to maintain that trope?

edited 2nd Dec '12 10:22:22 AM by Besserwisser