Anita Sarkeesian: Lingerie != Armor

[lpetrich]

Feminist FrequencyLingerie is not Armor «

This episode explores the ways in which female characters are frequently placed in wildly impractical, sexualizing outfits specifically designed to objectify them for the titillation of the presumed straight male player. We then discuss the problems inherent in linking the sexualization of female characters to notions of female empowerment, and examine what positive depictions of female sexuality and sexual desire in games might look like.

That's the "metal bikini" stereotype, and I agree that it's a Bad Thing.

AS mentioned a few cases of appropriately-dressed women in video games, but she didn't go into much detail. I'd like to see her take on Lara Croft some time. Though her outfits are sometimes too scanty, like shorts instead of full-length pants, they are nevertheless often at least halfway appropriate. Like wearing hiking boots.

This issue reminds me of the silliness of Star Trek Original Series women's uniforms. TOS got it right in the two pilots, with women wearing pants, and the movies and later series all had women wearing pants.

 

[zorq]

Feminist FrequencyLingerie is not Armor «

This episode explores the ways in which female characters are frequently placed in wildly impractical, sexualizing outfits specifically designed to objectify them for the titillation of the presumed straight male player. We then discuss the problems inherent in linking the sexualization of female characters to notions of female empowerment, and examine what positive depictions of female sexuality and sexual desire in games might look like.

That's the "metal bikini" stereotype, and I agree that it's a Bad Thing.

AS mentioned a few cases of appropriately-dressed women in video games, but she didn't go into much detail. I'd like to see her take on Lara Croft some time. Though her outfits are sometimes too scanty, like shorts instead of full-length pants, they are nevertheless often at least halfway appropriate. Like wearing hiking boots.

This issue reminds me of the silliness of Star Trek Original Series women's uniforms. TOS got it right in the two pilots, with women wearing pants, and the movies and later series all had women wearing pants.

Are Conan the Barbarian, or Tarzan bad characters because they run around wearing loin cloths during their adventures?

Why is she disparaging what these female characters choose to wear? Women deserve to go about their day without being criticized for their trivial life choices.

 

[Juma]

Are Conan the Barbarian, or Tarzan bad characters because they run around wearing loin cloths during their adventures?

Conan and Tarzan are not typical examples.

 

[zorq]

Are Conan the Barbarian, or Tarzan bad characters because they run around wearing loin cloths during their adventures?

Conan and Tarzan are not typical examples.

Why not?

This is one of the few Conan cover arts that I could find that didn't ALSO feature a hypersexualized female character on the cover. Seriously, Conan is usually draped in a (at least one) mostly naked woman which is almost exactly what that video is complaining about.



Conan presumably CAN find some armor that would fit him, but he chooses not to. Whether that's a choice of function or fashion or even fetish may be up to the interpretation of the author writing him at the time, but it is a choice that character always makes.

The point of this is that both genders are ROUTINELY overly sexualized, especially in fantasy media, but really in ALL media.

Real life people make clothing choices like Conan every day. Some actual people (of all genders) choose to wear tube-tops and miniskirts every day without any outside coercion forcing them to. Are people like this so freakish that there should be a prohibition on any fictional characters who make similar life choices? Should there be a quota system so that the sexuality doesn't get out of hand? Equal numbers of "overly" sexualized female and male characters must be maintained? And the number of "overly" sexualized characters must not exceed the number of "realistically" sexualized characters?

No, that's stupid. If someone's art wants to have overly sexualized stuff that's their choice. Your choice comes in when you get to decided if you want to buy that stuff or not. If you think Cortana in Halo is too sexy for you or your children, then don't buy Halo stuff.

Complaining that too many people are buying too much sexy stuff is stupid. Arguing that something needs to be done to prevent people from seeing so many powerful sexy characters because they might give some people the wrong idea about sex, or power, or objectification, or gender roles, or whatever else is stupid. We live in a free society where people get to make choices about what they can consume.

Maybe some people shouldn't eat potato chips because they are at increased risk of developing serious medical conditions. Does that mean we need to do something about the availability of potato chips? No. The same applies to overly sexualized media.

 

[Underseer]

I can't wait to hear what arguments the radical woman-haters use to argue that the fact that Sarkeesian used this argument somehow counts as "persecution" of men and evidence that women are "privileged."

 

[KeepTalking]

Feminist FrequencyLingerie is not Armor «

This episode explores the ways in which female characters are frequently placed in wildly impractical, sexualizing outfits specifically designed to objectify them for the titillation of the presumed straight male player. We then discuss the problems inherent in linking the sexualization of female characters to notions of female empowerment, and examine what positive depictions of female sexuality and sexual desire in games might look like.

That's the "metal bikini" stereotype, and I agree that it's a Bad Thing.

The problem with the above quote is that you don't have to imagine what female empowerment without overt sexuality in games might look like, there are plenty of examples of it, they are just ignored by Sarkeesian. The metal bikini is not really a stereotype at all, it is an option that an artist can choose to use, or not. Just like some women choose to wear bikinis to the beach, a female character in a game (or any other media) can make the same choice. As previously noted, male characters are often portrayed in just as skimpy costumes. The reason is often as simply as the artist showing off their chops in portraying strong musculature, which would otherwise be covered by clothing. Red Sonja comes to mind with the chain mail bikini reference, her character has typically been portrayed that way for decades, but in the most recent comic depiction of her, she wears a full chain mail shirt and pants. It was the artists choice, but they even built the reasoning into the story itself. There are also other female characters in the book who emulate Sonja, but the Sonja before she changed her look, and they all wear the bikini outfit (they also end up trying to kill Sonja for unrelated reasons).

AS mentioned a few cases of appropriately-dressed women in video games, but she didn't go into much detail.

Well, she wouldn't, would she? That just might invalidate her entire premise.

I'd like to see her take on Lara Croft some time. Though her outfits are sometimes too scanty, like shorts instead of full-length pants, they are nevertheless often at least halfway appropriate. Like wearing hiking boots.

Do archaeologists in the field never wear shorts? I am relatively sure that they do, both men and women. I'm not even an archaeologist, or a woman, and I wear shorts as often as possible (except in the winter).

This issue reminds me of the silliness of Star Trek Original Series women's uniforms. TOS got it right in the two pilots, with women wearing pants, and the movies and later series all had women wearing pants.

Except that's not quite the case. In the pilot for Star Trek TNG, Counselor Troi wore a miniskirt dress not much different from those in TOS.

 

[Sarpedon]

My contention is that just as video game violence doesn't cause real life violence, sexualization in video games doesn't cause real life sexual discrimination. In other words, leave people alone who have different tastes in art than you do.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Feminist FrequencyLingerie is not Armor «

That's the "metal bikini" stereotype, and I agree that it's a Bad Thing.

AS mentioned a few cases of appropriately-dressed women in video games, but she didn't go into much detail. I'd like to see her take on Lara Croft some time. Though her outfits are sometimes too scanty, like shorts instead of full-length pants, they are nevertheless often at least halfway appropriate. Like wearing hiking boots.

This issue reminds me of the silliness of Star Trek Original Series women's uniforms. TOS got it right in the two pilots, with women wearing pants, and the movies and later series all had women wearing pants.

Are Conan the Barbarian, or Tarzan bad characters because they run around wearing loin cloths during their adventures?

Why is she disparaging what these female characters choose to wear? Women deserve to go about their day without being criticized for their trivial life choices.

How about John Carter?



or, another version of the cover:



Admittedly, with a scantily-clad female--but since the book is "A Princess of Mars" it wouldn't make sense to leave Dejah Thoris out.

Going through the rest of the series I find the books named after a female character mostly have a female on the cover--scantily clad but actually less revealing than they are portrayed in the series. On the flip side, there's only one book not named after a female character that has a woman on the cover. (Clothes for the purpose of modesty do not exist on Barsoom. Everything is either decorative or practical and armor is not used.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

My contention is that just as video game violence doesn't cause real life violence, sexualization in video games doesn't cause real life sexual discrimination. In other words, leave people alone who have different tastes in art than you do.

I don't even think it's a matter of a taste in art. The typical straight male enjoys looking at attractive and scantily-clad women. The presence of such scantily-clad women in games is simply eye candy. It will attract more male players than it puts off female players.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, growing up, my dad hated most doctor or hospital shows because he worked in a hospital and they never got it right.
A cop friend of his had a similar reaction to most cop shows.
His lawyer skiing buddy actually got a kick out of how most lawyers were portrayed in the media. Until his kids got old enough to ask if he was really a scum-sucking asshole.

And i find most submarine movies are laughably inaccurate. Crimson Tide was the worst, though Down Periscope did catch the general feeling quite well. Locked in a tin can with 140 people you wouldn't let piss on your lawn at a barbecue...

And now women don't like how women are portrayed in certain media.

Can we just declare it a social law that people are going to be sensitive about how they see themselves shown on big and little screens?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Can we just declare it a social law that people are going to be sensitive about how they see themselves shown on big and little screens?

I agree. The last time I saw myself portrayed on screen, Russell Crowe just kept bitching at me for flooding the planet. It was really annoying. That's why I just gave Russell Crowe cancer.

 

[prideandfall]

Can we just declare it a social law that people are going to be sensitive about how they see themselves shown on big and little screens?

can we just declare it social law that what's on the big and little screens isn't talking about you personally and jesus fuck shut the hell up about it because it's god damn TV?

 

[Keith&Co.]

Can we just declare it a social law that people are going to be sensitive about how they see themselves shown on big and little screens?

can we just declare it social law that what's on the big and little screens isn't talking about you personally and jesus fuck shut the hell up about it because it's god damn TV?

Well, by 'themselves' I wasn't speaking of individuals so much as groups. A lawyer portrayed as a slimeball isn't necessarily you, as much as it reflects how society comes to see you and will judge you when they find out what your profession is.

 

[prideandfall]

can we just declare it social law that what's on the big and little screens isn't talking about you personally and jesus fuck shut the hell up about it because it's god damn TV?

Well, by 'themselves' I wasn't speaking of individuals so much as groups. A lawyer portrayed as a slimeball isn't necessarily you, as much as it reflects how society comes to see you and will judge you when they find out what your profession is.

as both a career IT professional and 20 year long goth i can assure you that i am very well aware of what it's like having both your career and personal life grievously and insultingly misportrayed in basically every conceivable facet of media.
i still say that anyone who looks at TV and gets butt hurt over how a job is portrayed or how a lifestyle is played out is an idiot who is contributing to the problem of people thinking TV is real.

 

[ronburgundy]

IOW, males like boobies, and corporations like money.

 

[Sarpedon]

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

 

[prideandfall]

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.

 

[bilby]

Whatever I choose to do is my choice. Nobody should be allowed to criticize me for it under any circumstances.

What I see you doing is something I cannot imagine doing by choice. Therefore, you must have been forced, coerced or brainwashed into doing it. It is my duty to criticize it, and to defend you from the people who are forcing, coercing and/or brainwashing you. Even if there is no other evidence that these evildoers actually exist.

It's easy to square one's self image as a good person with a desire to impose our will upon others, as long as we avoid allowing our imagination to encompass people who differ from ourselves.

 

[bigfield]

as both a career IT professional and 20 year long goth i can assure you that i am very well aware of what it's like having both your career and personal life grievously and insultingly misportrayed in basically every conceivable facet of media.

 

[Juma]

Conan and Tarzan are not typical examples.

Why not?
.

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