Tropes Vs. Women in Video Games Ep1

I think her point at this stage is simply these sexist tropes exist in these old games. We have to accept that we were subjected to this inequality of the sexes and learn from it. Otherwise, I might play Mario when I'm a child and think all women need to be defended by men.

So two comments out of the last three I read use the terms cunt and whore.

Awesome, keep it classy. Makes me really want to post this, someone will probably call the 3 year old girl a slut or something.

http://kotaku.com/5989753/cool-dad-hacks-donkey-kong-so-his-daughter-can-play-it-as-pauline?post=58156560

This is why talking about this kind of stuff is important to me. I am not saying she's right or wrong in the video, though I found 90% of the content completely innocuous and certainly nothing to call someone a cunt over. This is stuff that someone who has taken a college level course in literary or film analysis and interpretation would be pretty familiar with. This is just those tools of interpretation applied to video games. And I found it interesting while not agreeing with everything. Imagine that, watching something and seeing value in it while still being able to disagree and critically think about the content.

@jadegl:

I flagged them. They add nothing to this and make this site, the users here, and men in general look like absolute assholes. I'm glad there are other people here who can speak to this issue like adults.

spoken like a well reasoned and respectful individual.

you're a credit to us all.

Most men are assholes, welcome to reality. Perhaps in your little liberal world of magic this isn't the case... it is... sorry. The reason woman dress like hookers in games and are portrayed as weak sex objects is because the people putting out the games are well aware this is the reality of what most of the audience (males) want and exploit it... as indeed they should. It makes money. Thats the point of making a game.

Do you think if Lara Croft looked like a middle age soccer mom she would be where she is now? Or if all the adverts on tv used fairly normal, unattractive woman shit would sell better? Or your avatar for example... would something like Voyager be more or less popular is if didnt have a blond borg babe dressed in a tight cat suit? Of course not.

Just remember, the more people who use words like cunt and whore, the easier it will be to lump them together with the rest of her detractors, including the ones who use logical, polite, and well-reasoned arguments to criticize her work, which will continue to be both unanswered and ignored.

Keep proving my point. Say something else. Dig your hole deeper.

what? can you explain how using incendiary language makes it "easier" to treat those who are respectful as being disrespectful?

You complained I was adding nothing. I made a valid argument back. Now you have no argument other than "I am right" statements. Nice work.

No, I'm saying that it makes it easier to treat those who are respectful--or neither respectful or disrespectful--as WRONG, by grouping them together with the assholes who are also WRONG.

I said this dude;

...in response to the jerks. If people can't separate assholes who disagree with reasonable people who disagree then hope is already lost for those people and nothing any of us do will help them realize why they are wrong.

who's doing that?

I don't even know what kind of crusade you are on anymore, I was just pointing out your hero is clearly a crazy women who thinks domestic violence is ok, and now you are on this tirade trying to make her seem less insane. Violence against women is terrible, violence against men is terrible they both constitute domestic violence, so please tell me what point are you trying to make?

EDIT: Also if you are actually going to use the quote button, don't edit what I say. thank you.

@spaceinsomniac: I think most people who are reading the thread know the difference between people being reasonable and making good points and those who are just saying things to say things. (I would point to some of the conversations I had earlier in this very thread where I think the debate was much more based on content and methodology than what I was pointing out just a few minutes ago)

Believe me, I know that there are things and points to disagree with, but attacking the person instead of the ideas is when my brain decides to file the post in my mind dumpster. You can disagree with stuff without polluting the pool. And I think people have made good points, especially concerning methodology concerns and if the focus, at least as it is presented in the first video, is on things that are too basic and limited versus newer games with more complex ideas/plots at work. But that's something that we'll have to wait and see what she does with the next few entries in the series. I am taking a wait and see approach, but I thought the first entry was interesting if a little unsurprising in what it focused on.

I would have like to seen Michael Winner debate with her. Too bad he's dead.

Ok finally this shit is getting interesting. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask the mods not to clean this thread up. It's way more entertaining this way.

@jadegl: I just wanted to say you're saying everything I would say if I actually kept up with all this... drama, so keep posting

I kept getting dragged into defending her even though I wasn't really the hugest fan of earlier videos (some were a little extreme), enough so that getting dragged into this argument again isn't something I'm really into, so thanks :D

I'm saying in general. It's basic human nature.

If a person is undecided about a subject, and they perceive that a great deal of people on one side of an issue are complete assholes, what do you think that's going to do to their opinion?

When I see Princess Toadstool I understand it to be the character Princess Toadstool. She's a mascot, an emblem, primarily she makes me think Super Mario Bros.

I think that there's a clear divide in our ways of thinking about this. I think of Peach as a specific, individual character from a particular series of videogames who has been utilized in a variety of roles in different instances and I associate her accordingly with the experiences I've had with those games. Based on the examples and comparisons that you've given, I guess that you view Peach as a more abstract, non-specific entity.

And yes, I would absolutely contest that fictional characters can claim to belong to a gender in the same sense as an actual person. I would not say that Peach is literally a woman, or that Yoshi is literally a dinosaur or that Bowser is literally a giant fire-breathing turtle-thing. In fact, in the case of the latter two, I am deeply doubtful that their characterization is truly representative of dinosaurs or giant fire-breathing turtle-things, respectively. I suspect that they might be entirely fictionalized and bear little to no relation to potential real-world counterparts.

well- if the "undecided" person aspires to also be a reasonable person, they won't assume those perceived as assholes are representative of the entire school of thought. but at the same time, i do wish those who have a tendency to use colorful language would bear the phrase 'one bad apple spoils the bunch' in mind...i don't happen to believe that phrase to be true, but you don't do your case or argument any credit by being inflammatory.

simple solution to all of this: don't talk like a jerk. we thereby avoid all discussions of who is and who isn't being an asshole.

Actually, that's exactly the point that I'm trying to make. It's also the point that she is trying to make. That's all there is to it.

@animasta: Yeah, I dropped out for a while, but I got dragged back in. :)

Mainly I just don't get the vitriol based on the content of the video. The video seems very basic, like it is setting the table for things to come. I view that as a positive, but if the series goes nowhere or becomes too much of soapbox unsupported by the content, then yeah I will say that it is a missed opportunity. Right now it's too soon to pass judgment, at least for me, especially when I found most of the first video interesting. Certainly not a waste of time but certainly not worth the anger that it is getting heaped on it by a segment of the gaming community.

sexism isn't one way

women arent the special case to which sexism only applies

if you want to defeat sexism you must completely remove it, which includes both sides the male and female.

Sitting on the sideline claiming only females are subjected to sexism will never accomplish anything, and claiming women are the victims in everything is the very definition of sexism (the woman is demonstrating sexism, not the men).

I think a lot of the problem is where nobody who has actually researched the concept of sexism are commenting on it, including that woman who has now a career in activism and playing the victim for the rest of her life.

of course peach is not literally a woman. anyone who believes so has a severely distorted view of reality.

but please don't take offense when i say i don't believe you. i don't believe you aren't also seeing her to be a representation of a woman, implicit or otherwise. in your very quote above, you're using the personal pronoun "she." there's an acknowledgement of the feminine there, intended or not.

I would have been impressed if she took the 150k and hired some people to make a good game. I'm so tired of people just talking. No one cares. Lead by example. It's so frustrating that she collected enough attention and money to actually make a difference but didn't do anything constructive with it.

You are so frustrating to talk to, my original comment was "hey this women you keep quoting advocates domestic violence", so no that is not the point she is trying to make at all.

She said women involved in domestic violence have the best sex ever, which is a ludicrous crazy thing to say.

You then said hey men get hit by their partners to, so is that okay? No it is not OK, I never said it was, you were putting words into my mouth at this point, which is clearly a losing way to debate as well as you editing down what I was saying to make it sound more simpler and make me sound more like a fool, you edit what I say and yet leave every single word you said before.

So pretty much everything you have replied to me with are in fact nothing to do what I said and pretty much just make you sound like a moron that has lost the origin of my argument in the first place and just keep throwing questions at me for me at for the hell of it, like "but women are allowed to hit men so is that alright", No it is not alright, I seem to have to repeat myself to get it through your thick head that I said she advocated domestic violence, that includes both sexes. So really as you just understood in your previous post all of this has been pointless, you must feel pretty silly right?

Peach is a female character, she is not a woman. Birdo is a male character but he is not a man. Birdo is pink and has a bow on his head but he is not a woman. Or he might be female and her name might be Catherine, or his name might be Ostro. He thinks he is a girl and spits eggs from his mouth. Your interpretation may very much depend on when, where and how you encounter him/her/it. Regardless, Birdo doesn't really have a gender, Birdo doesn't really belong to a species, so at some point you have to accept that the idea that Birdo could be a male or could be a female is complete nonsense.

Where does that leave Poison? She, at least, is depicted as belonging to the human race. Still, it must be difficult to be a pre-op, post-op transgendered or female character depending on where you are in the world or whose ire you've drawn lately.

I was always told in writing classes to "Write what you know" and this is what this person is doing, creating videos about these issues, so far as I can tell. It is what she said she would do, a lot of people supported her, and she is fulfilling that promise. My view is that maybe people will watch this, including younger programmers or storytellers, and they may be inspired to try something new with the game they are making. Instead of a game with a cliche plot we may get something amazing and fresh where a trope is turned on it's head or we may get a totally new story that we've never seen before, all because someone saw this and said "yeah, that is an overused story device, let's try something new."

Of course, we'll have to see what she says in the next videos as well. I'm certainly interested and always enjoy a good academic approach to things, even pop culture like video games and movies.

well, this is where our fundamental disagreement is then. with this particular character, i don't believe anyone can make that distinction. there's too many signifiers going on there- long blonde hair, a bright pink ballroom dress, rosy red lips, seemingly caucasian skin, accentuated eyelashes- it's a design language that's used to denote something akin to a human female across a variety of media. and even if you could, her cognate is clearly a princess- which is a woman. i just did a google image search for the word "princess," and this was the third image:

notice any similarities? they're all women, aren't they?

No, they're all drawings of fictional characters.

One of them is half-fish.

I don't know what my fellow womyn crusaders expect from a site where the two misogynistic male founders laughed at the very concept of a feminist website back when Fat Princess released. Ever since it's only become more hateful, especially when Patrick Klepek joined. It's no coincidence he has three K's in his name.

The bad language is unpleasant, but that's just a natural reaction some may have to the video.

well, ok then. i think you know i don't mean literal human beings with two X chromosomes. but if you don't think those characters are intended to evoke women, i guess we're done here.

I'm trying to figure out where exactly this thread stopped using the english language, but it's giving me a headache so I think I'm just gonna go watch an episode of Bunheads because fuck all y'all.

It's pretty clear that they are intended to invoke femininity, an idealized, westernized form of femininity at that. Just as anthropomorphized animals are meant to invoke human characteristics. Just as, say, the cast of Cars are meant to invoke cars - their characterization isn't true to the reality of an automobile and you don't expect it to be. One does not react to a talking cartoon car as one would react to a real car which suddenly displayed sentience. One does not hold a cartoon car to the build standards or performance requirements of an actual automobile. Though they are anthropomorphized, one does not expect them to express the feelings and views of a human being nor create a realistic portrayal of the human experience as viewed through the lens of a cartoon car. It is a fiction.

true, but we're not talking about talking cars here. we're talking about cartoonish figures with 2 eyes, a nose, five fingers, breasts, lips, skin, long hair, dresses, and feminine figures. i see the argument you're making, but i don't think it's based in reality. just because something is fiction doesn't mean it does not evoke aspects of reality.

Conversely, because something evokes aspects of reality does not mean that we hold it to the standards or expectations of realism. A cartoon car and a cartoon Princess are functionally the same thing, why would we need different standards for interpreting them? It would be very difficult to be taken seriously if one were deeply invested in the social implications of cartoonish portrayals of automobiles, I'm sure.

Jesus tapdancing Christ. Someone shut down this shitshow already.

But if we reduce all things in that way and say that it is "just fiction" then doesn't everything lose meaning? Novels are just wrds on a page, not the actual lives and adventures of real people, so i guess we can just write off Hamlet, The Sun Also Rises and The Lord of the Rings as just fiction with no meanings to be found in the text. Or movies are just actors playing roles, so why talk about them in any critical way. Again, Citizen Kane, The Godfather and Toy story are just fiction, so why bother looking any deeper? Art? Just paint or pencil on a canvas. But we're humans with experiences that view pieces of fiction and art made by people with their own experiences. I don't think that can be reduced to just saying it is fiction. I know the people who made Journey and Amnesia wanted me to feel and experience something beyond just liking it as a piece of fiction. That's the maturation of video games as an art form.

a cartoon car and a cartoon princess are functionally the same thing, but only if your view and interpretation is myopic. sure, they're both fictional representations of characters- but if you're going to stop there and only analyze them on that base level, this discussion isn't even worth having. if peach isn't representative of a woman because she's fictional, then what does that mean for lara croft, femshep, alyx vance, chun li, or kerrigan? if you don't perceive them as fictional women (those terms aren't mutually exclusive), i would wager you have an extremely rare perspective on the world.

absolutely- i don't think anyone has or had the expectation for peach to be a fully realized human being. there are limits. but within those limits are choices being made (consciously or subconsciously). and it's those choices that are worthy of analyzing.

@paulwade1984: hey you're an asshole and intensely delusional, just a heads up!

also I neither agree with everything she says or donated to her, so, ya know, before you accuse me of being one of her sycophants.

AHAHHAHAHAHA. Kind of like you've been doing this whole time? You know the part where you keep saying that girlsayswhat said domestic violence is okay? She never actually said that. You wouldn't be able to find a quote because you're making it up and "putting words into her mouth". As a matter of fact, almost any logical counter-argument given to you has been completely twisted in your mind and return out as the most insane word jumble that tried to fit your fantasy world that I've ever seen. Give up @spaceinsomniac you have a better chance convincing a wet bag of hammers that it was a unicorn.

Wow , oh wow this going off the rails pretty fast

pretty simple why that happens in my opinion.

People had a preconceived notion they didn't like her and she is terrible person etc and were looking to confirm said beliefs. Happens all the time in just about well....everything. Climate Change is another conversation topic that gets vitriolic this quickly.

Throw in some male cultural panic about our place in the ever changing American society an well some pent up frustrations pour out on a convenient target.

Personally I thought her video was a little simplistic and pretty dull, but I'm willing to see if she is taking this series somewhere insightful. Maybe I wouldn't if I knew more about her, but I really know very little about her or her work other than it's controversial.

The fact that you don't bother to think critically of the entertainment you consume shouldn't be presented as evidence that it's harmless.

@pretentioushack: Harrowing nihilism doesn't constitute a "valid argument", no matter how many words you use. Sorry buddy.

It is a valid argument. Nothing to be sorry about.