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[Brentai]

Agreed.  At the very worst, she's provided a series of object examples of pitfalls to avoid.

I'd hesitate to actually congratulate someone for failing in an illuminating manner, but it does actually seem like a net positive when you put it that way.

[A²]

See also: Sigmund Freud.

[Mongrel]

Which situation was Sargasso one again?

When Anita started the kickstarter, it got swarmed with Redditors and their ilk, complete with "fuckin whore" and the like. It helped increase the money it was getting several hundredfold.

Oh. That I know. I don't know what "Sargasso" referred to specifically. I thought for a second that it referred to some other woman.

[Brentai]

Ah, normality has been restored.

[Bongo Bill]

You want alternatives? I'll give you alternatives.

Cara Ellison and John Walker (and the others, but mainly them) over at Rock Paper Shotgun often write insightful stuff about this topic and cover relevant issues, but it's unfair comparing anybody to RPS (the only game news site that does actual journalism sometimes instead of never). They're not doing huge academic treatments or anything but it's a common theme of their articles.

The meta-blog Critical Distance updates once a week with links to good game writing, with a particular eye for social issues, which means the portrayal of women in games and the prevalence of sexism among its producers and consumers is a frequent topic. Following links there might lead you to some good stuff.

That's just a couple. You could also prove how cool you are by thinking about this on your own.

----------------------------

My initial appraisal of Sarkeesian was that TV Tropes-level commentary, simply enumerating as many instances as possible of incidents that are germane to the normalization of problematic portrayals of women in games, wasn't going to cut the mustard for me. I mean, look, it's right there in the title. But I figured that, even if I couldn't, there were still people out there still ignorant enough to learn something from such a superficial treatment.

I think that you don't need to have actually played a game in order to just mark it on a thematically tone-deaf Checklist of Trope Adherence. For instance, I think it is relevant to point out that Eversion makes use of save-the-princess imagery: that Nehema is the goal, even though by the fiction of the game Zee Tee is just going to visit her. The next question to ask would be "So what?" which has several potentially interesting answers that there's apparently no room for in Tropes Versus Women.

On the other hand, plagiarism is a serious offense. Conversations about plagiarism are necessarily about the plagiarist, because the whole point is that the research ostensibly stands on its own. Misrepresenting one's research is the ultimate credibility-destroyer.

[Classic]

Eversion makes use of save-the-princess imagery: that Nehema is the goal, even though by the fiction of the game Zee Tee is just going to visit her.

Given that the forms Nehema takes are presented as flower people (which are hermaphroditic) and spoiler[spoiler]terrifying tooth and tentacle monsters[/spoiler] the only stuff that's actually "gendered" about them is that Nehema wears a dress?
I'm just saying, that it's abstract tot he point where Zara could probably claim they're both from hermaphroditic species and I'd think, "Yeah it is fucked up that the trope is so pervasive that whenever I see a rescuer and a rescuee I assign male and female sex to them (respectively)." I might even believe it if I didn't know any better.

[Zaratustra]

If I recall correctly, the joke was that the female of the species always has a humanoid shape.

see: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanoidFemaleAnimal

But sarcasm is dead.

[Bongo Bill]

On the Steam store page, it says, "The Princess of the Flower Kingdom has vanished! She was taken by the Ghulibas of the north, and it is up to brave Zee Tee to rescue her. On his quest, he - and you - will discover the hidden lands behind the peaceful kingdom, and come face to face with secrets that will set you on edge!"

So even if that's outdated or deliberately incorrect, and even if the dress weren't a big enough giveaway, we're still dealing with clear evocation of the woman-as-objective motif. (There are interesting things to say about what's done with that motif in the particular case of Eversion, and I'd happily discuss them, but maybe not in this thread, and also Zara may have to admit that he is dead.) The socially conscientious benefit from acknowledging its prevalence, even if that's as far as they go.

[Mongrel]

You know, I know TV Tropes is generally horrible, but the page Men are generic, Women are special page actually has a lot of little references that show just how deep and how far back this phenomenon goes.

In a way it reminds us all that this is about more than just protagonists in video games.

Things like "A smiley face is recognised as male by default, and has to be given female features to be seen as female". Whats funny is that that's true even in places that have no discriminatory intent and no great history of discrimination. Look at Legos. Up until recent years Lego was pretty damned gender neutral* and all minifigs had plain smiley faces. Yet the same phenomenon holds up there: You wouldn't recognise a minifig as female unless it had the "woman hair". This wasn't something imposed by evil patriarchical Danes, it's a deeply rooted phenomenon.

It raises the question of how deep those tendencies go and whether or not they can ever be fully overcome. Not that that means we shouldn't try for more parity in various forms of media. The points raised about unequal treatment are for the most part just and relevent. But how much are we fighting against cues and triggers shaped in our brains not by some culture of patriarchy but by actual gender-specific biology?

That's not meant to be a leading question. I think we as a species really don't have the answer to that question yet. The idea of gender equilibrium is something relatively new - for both genders - and not enough time has yet passed for there to be much proper research on gender as it relates to brain chemistry and vice-versa.

_{* Unless maybe you want to argue that "building toys are inherently male" but I recall marketing and catalogues throughout the 70's, 80's, and 90's that always had girls. Certainly I don't think the manufacturer tried to push gender roles at all until maybe the late 80's, probably first in the medieval line. Nowadays of course they have all kinds of male and female-specific heads.}

[Classic]

Joke: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumanoidFemaleAnimal

God dammit. You've made me lose another hour of my life to TVTropes.

[Beat Bandit]

Things like "A smiley face is recognised as male by default, and has to be given female features to be seen as female".

This doesn't stand much of a chance of going anywhere until we get to a point where actual human females will be recognized as female without 'adding female features'. Such as make-up, stylized hair and big, hooped earrings.

[Mongrel]

Things like "A smiley face is recognised as male by default, and has to be given female features to be seen as female".

This doesn't stand much of a chance of going anywhere until we get to a point where actual human females will be recognized as female without 'adding female features'. Such as make-up, stylized hair and big, hooped earrings.

One of the most interesting things about gender is that males and females actually look much closer to each other than is generally credited, especially around the face and that in regular society, BOTH genders do things that specifically enhance the few distinguishing facial features between the two.

This is at least partially out of a simple practial need for clear communication and not inherently as any sort of dominance code. Modern discussions on gender have added additional factors that complicate the binary historical norms, but a large proportion of people still feels the need for clear and instant visual recognition, even on a non-sexual level.

While certain markers are changable over time through learned social behaviours or are even just the fashions of the day (e.g. those big ole' hoop earings or whalebone corsets. Or men with long flowing hair and tights that show their calves) I expect that's not just a purely social construct and that there are biological components to such behaviour that transcend most societies (e.g. feminine eyes, a feminine jawline, or male facial hair).

[Zaratustra]

Certainly I don't think the manufacturer tried to push gender roles at all until maybe the late 80's

Sets of 1970: Steam locomotive, front-end loader, castle, car, truck, truck, tow truck, fire truck, fire station, jumbo jet, ambulance.
Sets of 1975: Family, Hospital, Farm, Windmill, car car car car car wild west space airplane train rescue helicopter, dragster that turns into tractor. Figures either have hats, or girl hair. I sincerely can't tell if the kids in the box are male or female.
Sets of 1980: car car car car train train train train space, grocery store, town square, nursery school, farm, and then a bizarre set of lego rings and picture frame with mirror.

So basically, Lego until 1980 would appeal to girls that liked cars, until the kids themselves shamed them into hating it.

[Mongrel]

Honestly unsure if you're being sarcastic with that last line?

Well, I was just going by my childhood for that footnote. I don't remember thinking of Lego as a "boys" toy and the company copy on the issue did seem to have both girls and boys (next year's Lego catalogue was one of the biggest highlights of my life, for like 10 years).

I would not of course recall any actual sets from the 70's AT THE TIME, given I was only 1 year old during that decade, but I did later acquire a handful of the older sets, so I did have some experience of them.

Anyway, the Lego thing is just a footnote.

[R^2]

Tangentially related to the subject at hand: Boob Jam. The challenge: Design a game about boobs in any other context than as fetish objects for straight men to drool over.

[Roger]

Luckily, Japan turned in their entry twelve years ago. 

[Zaratustra]

every day is more retarded than the last

http://sarkeesiancanbestopped.tumblr.com/

[Friday]

hahahahahahahahaha

[Mothra]

pfffthahahahaha

[Brentai]

She'll never stoooop

She wants seeeeexual cultural roles to be recognized