Anita Sarkeesian: Lingerie != Armor

[GenesisNemesis]

Why not?
.

Because the overwhelming majority of male heros does not run in nothing but a loincloth.

Why does it matter?

 

[Juma]

Because the overwhelming majority of male heros does not run in nothing but a loincloth.

Why does it matter?

Because it shows, and perpetuates, the sexist image of women.

 

[zorq]

Why not?
.

Because the overwhelming majority of male heros does not run in nothing but a loincloth.

And the majority of female heroes don't run around wearing nothing but lingerie. Anita Sarkeesian picked out some of the more extreme examples but didn't offer anything close to a typical sampling of heroes. The fact that I can pick out some extreme male examples too means something. But let's look at a better sampling of characters.

For example here's is a picture showing the roster of playable characters in the fighting game Tekken (5).

If I'm counting correctly 10 of the 23 male humanoid characters are topless and of the 9 female characters, only Christine and Anna are definately NOT wearing a sports bra. But even then, Anna's dress covers her more than some of the more practically dressed female characters.

That makes about 43% of the male characters running around with thier nips to the wind and 22% of the female characters are running around without "realistic" chest support.

Besides, If this informal poll on the sexiest male characters is worth anything, Lee, Lars, Miguel, Hworang, and Jin are considered the top 5 sexiest male characters in this game and all them except for Jin usually wear shirts.

This tells me that some of these characters are wearing a lot more than lingerie and yet their creators are still able to convey sexiness better than some of the other characters who wear a lot less clothes.

But something else to note is that ALL of the characters except for the creatures (and maybe Wang) are designed with SOME sex appeal in mind.

 

[bilby]

...

...

But something else to note is that ALL of the characters except for the creatures (and maybe Wang) are designed with SOME sex appeal in mind.

Obviously you are a youngster - Wang Jinrei is the closest character in appearance to ME - and trust me, the chicks go WILD for the 'old guy with a beard' look.

Sometimes.

 

[Juma]

Because the overwhelming majority of male heros does not run in nothing but a loincloth.

And the majority of female heroes don't run around wearing nothing but lingerie. Anita Sarkeesian picked out some of the more extreme examples but didn't offer anything close to a typical sampling of heroes. The fact that I can pick out some extreme male examples too means something. But let's look at a better sampling of characters.

For example here's is a picture showing the roster of playable characters in the fighting game Tekken (5).

If I'm counting correctly 10 of the 23 male humanoid characters are topless and of the 9 female characters, only Christine and Anna are definately NOT wearing a sports bra. But even then, Anna's dress covers her more than some of the more practically dressed female characters.

That makes about 43% of the male characters running around with thier nips to the wind and 22% of the female characters are running around without "realistic" chest support.

Besides, If this informal poll on the sexist male characters is worth anything, Lee, Lars, Miguel, Hworang, and Jin are considered the top 5 sexiest male characters in this game and all them except for Jin usually wear shirts.

This tells me that some of these characters are wearing a lot more than lingerie and yet their creators are still able to convey sexiness better than some of the other characters who wear a lot less clothes.

But something else to note is that ALL of the characters except for the creatures (and maybe Wang) are designed with SOME sex appeal in mind.

And how many men have bare legs? How many female have big muscles?
That you dont realize how sexistic those characters are shows howblind you've become.

 

[zorq]

And the majority of female heroes don't run around wearing nothing but lingerie. Anita Sarkeesian picked out some of the more extreme examples but didn't offer anything close to a typical sampling of heroes. The fact that I can pick out some extreme male examples too means something. But let's look at a better sampling of characters.

For example here's is a picture showing the roster of playable characters in the fighting game Tekken (5).

If I'm counting correctly 10 of the 23 male humanoid characters are topless and of the 9 female characters, only Christine and Anna are definately NOT wearing a sports bra. But even then, Anna's dress covers her more than some of the more practically dressed female characters.

That makes about 43% of the male characters running around with thier nips to the wind and 22% of the female characters are running around without "realistic" chest support.

Besides, If this informal poll on the sexist male characters is worth anything, Lee, Lars, Miguel, Hworang, and Jin are considered the top 5 sexiest male characters in this game and all them except for Jin usually wear shirts.

This tells me that some of these characters are wearing a lot more than lingerie and yet their creators are still able to convey sexiness better than some of the other characters who wear a lot less clothes.

But something else to note is that ALL of the characters except for the creatures (and maybe Wang) are designed with SOME sex appeal in mind.

And how many men have bare legs? How many female have big muscles?
That you dont realize how sexistic those characters are shows howblind you've become.

Your response tells me that you are resisting the idea that these male characters are JUST as over-sexualized as their female counterparts. How many men do you see walking around who look like these sexy male characters? Is it possible that that is the same number as the amount of women you see walking around who look like these sexy female characters?

You bring up muscle size but that goes to prove another point. The female characters are actually MORE realistically depicted than the male characters from a body image point of view. There are a handful of chiseled male body builders out there who could match up to some of these male characters, but there are millions of women out there with the same body builds as ALL of women in this game.

 

[Juma]

And how many men have bare legs? How many female have big muscles?
That you dont realize how sexistic those characters are shows howblind you've become.

Your response tells me that you are resisting the idea that these male characters are JUST as over-sexualized as their female counterparts. How many men do you see walking around who look like these sexy male characters? Is it possible that that is the same number as the amount of women you see walking around who look like these sexy female characters?

You bring up muscle size but that goes to prove another point. The female characters are actually MORE realistically depicted than the male characters from a body image point of view. There are a handful of chiseled male body builders out there who could match up to some of these male characters, but there are millions of women out there with the same body builds as ALL of women in this game.

First: i havent said anything about the men. Of course this is sexistic at both genders! But this isnt the thread for discussing that.

Second: What i say is that it is obvious that not one of the men is depicted as cute but several women are and that none of the women are muscular but the guys are.

 

[zorq]

Your response tells me that you are resisting the idea that these male characters are JUST as over-sexualized as their female counterparts. How many men do you see walking around who look like these sexy male characters? Is it possible that that is the same number as the amount of women you see walking around who look like these sexy female characters?

You bring up muscle size but that goes to prove another point. The female characters are actually MORE realistically depicted than the male characters from a body image point of view. There are a handful of chiseled male body builders out there who could match up to some of these male characters, but there are millions of women out there with the same body builds as ALL of women in this game.

First: i havent said anything about the men. Of course this is sexistic at both genders! But this isnt the thread for discussing that.

This is a thread about discussing the alleged oversexualization of women in media and how that's a problem. But if men are just as over-sexualized in media then that means that oversexualized women isn't actually the problem. Oversexualization of PEOPLE would be the alleged problem.

Second: What i say is that it is obvious that not one of the men is depicted as cute but several women are and that none of the women are muscular but the guys are.

I think the cuteness of some of the guys is definitely subjective.

 

[repoman]

Come on Juma,

When it comes to gender portrayals and gender relations I would rather get information from the blue collar worker class than educated and indoctrinated crybaby liberals. You want a world where gender distinctions are abolished. Fuck that!

Where is the happy medium between wacko genders studies professors and women wearing the burka? I contend that it is the blue collar class.

Cute is bad for women to be!?!? are you fucking serious?!?

This thread needs some Chris Rock to balance out Anita:

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Why does it matter?

Because it shows, and perpetuates, the sexist image of women.

Can you demonstrate that video games are causing any type of harm whatsoever? I'm talking hard evidence, not mere suspicion.

 

[repoman]

How much gender role "destruction" indoctrination have you had in formal schooling, Juma?

Do gender roles have any use in society, in our deep past or at present?

In my opinion, gender roles should be set by healthy and happy heterosexual people with a lot of room for gays and transgenders to fit in. Because gays and transgenders don't fit in perfectly does not mean we should dismantle gender roles. That is like the mirror image of the Taliban.

 

[ronburgundy]

And men are more willing to pay to see boobies than women are not to see them.

i said this in another thread a while back, and then mentioned it to several women i know who generally seemed to find the idea reasonable, but there's a very simple economic breakdown:
men like looking at women's bodies, so sexualizing women makes perfect sense in a consumer/product sense.
women don't really give a shit either way about looking at men's bodies, so sexualizing men doesn't matter.
women also don't really give a shit either way about looking at women's bodies.
BUT...
men have a viscerally ingrained negative reaction to looking at men's bodies, exponentially more so the more sexualized they become.
most straight men have an intense aversion to seeing the male body, it causes the same kind of "OH GOD NO!!" response where you hide your eyes behind your hands until the awful thing goes away that is normally ascribed to women and children watching horror movies, but not in a fun way.

so if hot women makes your male consumers interested and your female consumers indifferent, but hot males make your female consumers indifferent and your male consumers utterly freaked out, where is the impetus to have hot males or not-hot females?
this is all a consumer driven practice, and that's what i think people like anita don't grasp - it's not a conspiracy by a cabal of game developers to force boobs on the populace, it's simply the market reacting to the demands on the consumers.

That is all largely true, though probably more important than how women feel about it is the fact that men play far more of these high cost, console based, action games that portray human characters than women do, so the men's interests matter more to the developers. This fact is often denied by people who bring out irrelevant stats, such as surveys of "gamers" that include people who play only very low cost or free puzzle/word games on their phone.

63% of all games sold are shooter, action, or sport games played overwhelmingly by men. The top 5 selling video games in 2014 were Call of Duty, NFL Madden, Grand Theft Auto, Destiny (another first person shooter), and Minecraft. Also, watch the televised gamer competitions that focus on these top selling action games. It is almost entirely young men playing.

Women play games, but most of the online puzzle or social game sorts that don't depict human characters at all, so how they feel about the attire in character games is of little concern to developers.

 

[Shadowy Man]

How much gender role "destruction" indoctrination have you had in formal schooling, Juma?

Do gender roles have any use in society, in our deep past or at present?

In my opinion, gender roles should be set by healthy and happy heterosexual people with a lot of room for gays and transgenders to fit in. Because gays and transgenders don't fit in perfectly does not mean we should dismantle gender roles. That is like the mirror image of the Taliban.

The problem isn't with having gender roles, the problem is limiting people to those roles based on their gender. If a person of one gender would like to be in a role that is typically partaken by another, they shouldn't be actively discouraged from or denigrated for wanting to do so.

 

[ronburgundy]

How much gender role "destruction" indoctrination have you had in formal schooling, Juma?

Do gender roles have any use in society, in our deep past or at present?

In my opinion, gender roles should be set by healthy and happy heterosexual people with a lot of room for gays and transgenders to fit in. Because gays and transgenders don't fit in perfectly does not mean we should dismantle gender roles. That is like the mirror image of the Taliban.

The problem isn't with having gender roles, the problem is limiting people to those roles based on their gender. If a person of one gender would like to be in a role that is typically partaken by another, they shouldn't be actively discouraged from or denigrated for wanting to do so.

Then there isn't any problem with these games, because they don't actively discourage or denigrate deviations from gender roles. If anything, the games that have female fighters, treasure hunters, etc., are actively encouraging gender role violation, despite the characters looking sexy while doing it.
The problem is with those obsessed with gender politics falsely asserting that any portrayal of X, is saying "You have no choice but to be X."

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I was playing Mortal Kombat yesterday and Liu Kang was wandering around shirtless with all his rippling muscles and that distracted me so much that I didn't block his flying bicycle kick and I died.

So ya, oversexualization of video game characters kills.

 

[bigfield]

I just smashed a Super Mutant's head clean off it's shoulders using a rocket-powered sledgehammer when I realised that my character's figure was unattainable for many women.

 

[Juma]

How much gender role "destruction" indoctrination have you had in formal schooling, Juma?

None.

Do gender roles have any use in society, in our deep past or at present?

No, there is no use for gender specific roles (other than purely biological, but that is not what useally ment by genderroles)

 

[Terrell]

Anita, stop slut-shaming my Dunmer. What her mage robes look like are none of your business. 2 good mods and your Altmer, Bosmer, or Dunmer will look hot in those mage robes while she walks around Skyrim killing things, making things, interacting with the locals, & picking flowers.

While you're at it, leave my Lone Wanderer, Courier, and Sole Survivor alone too.

This is just another example of a moral scold trying to police other people's leisure time, without being able to demonstrate how it harms any innocent person. Why should she get to decide what gamers do in the privacy of their own homes?

 

[ronburgundy]

Do gender roles have any use in society, in our deep past or at present?

No, there is no use for gender specific roles (other than purely biological, but that is not what useally ment by genderroles)

Actually, that is the question. How do biological differences relate to practical issues around the social roles people perform. For nearly all of human history, woman of child bearing years were either pregnant and/or providing breast milk to infants a large % of the time. That greatly limited what they could or would be wise to do, how far and for how long they were away from "home" on a hunt, raid, etc.
They also were notably less strong in the kinds of upper body strength critical for hunting and war.

Those basic differences meant tens of thousands of years of highly differential evolutionary selection pressures on men and women related to various physical and psychological tendencies that are involved with the kinds of tasks those more definitional gender differences promoted.

For example, the skill of tracking moving objects was more critical for men than women. In contrast, if men were hunting game, then women would need to perform more of the non-meat gathering, requiring a highly sensitive sense of smell. Such selection pressures predict that males would have greater spatial skills on average, while women a stronger sense of smell. A mountain of science supports such differences. In fact, not only do many studies show that women are more sensitive to various odors, but they have about 50% more neurons in their olfactory regions of the brain. Countless other differences in skills and tendency would be likely, and many have emprirical support, such as women being better at discriminating different emotions in facial expressions (something critical in protecting/caring for children), women having better recall of highly similar objects within the same category.

The need for hunting skills and need to be able to give breast milk are far less important today. However, the evoutionary impact of these pressures on countless other skills and psychological tendencies would still persist, and are still relevant to countless jobs, behaviors, hobbies, and interests. It would be miraculous if men and women didn't have biologically rooted differences that continue to be relevant to many aspects of "gender roles".

Now, none of that means that people who want to and can do things that are more associated with one gender should be prohibited or attacked for doing so. It just means that the claim that such gender associations are purely imposed by useless cultural norms is utter anti-science nonsense.

 

[repoman]

not tens of thousands, more like several hundred thousands of years of evolution.