So I picked a Female GTA Online Character

Ugh.

Whoa dere, you're going to get the politically correct police on you with statements like that

It will never not be aggravating to me how feminist types continue insisting that they're not meaning to take issue with individual games and their individual narratives, worlds, and context, just trying to highlight a trend in the overall industry they find unfortunate. And the way they do this is by mercilessly and incessantly sounding the alarm over individual games, with their individual narratives, worlds, and context.

Isn't analysis of media compulsory in schools anymore? If a media features a sexist character or world it's sexist unless it makes a statement to the contrary. GTA's statement is anemic at best, and never once anti-sexism.

Anyway, the problem at hand isn't really an issue of sexism.

Where did you get that? There are many movies that feature incredible sexist or racist characters with no statements at all. Games do that as well. For example the whole RPG genre with the conflict between dwarves and elves or how human are treating elves. It is just how the world is written and set in and of course GTAV is not anti sexism. It is anti America or a satire of the american way of life and the people who live there.

In fact I bet my life that there are people like Lamar in our world and a lot of them.

@darji: Name a recent movie with a racist character that isn't shown to be a deplorable human being in many other ways (in the context of the world), or enacts that racism on the protagonist; two examples of ways of making statements about that behaviour.

Guy tries to have sex with woman. News at 11.

That argument gets you in a bit of a double bind though because it is very difficult to argue in general terms about something without pointing to specific examples. If then you are told that it is unfair to point out specific worlds, games or contexts you are left with nowhere to go. I don't think that is really a fair restriction to place on people's arguments. If people think a specific game or whatever is troubling they should point that out. Also I don't think feminist types (whatever they are) have ever argued that they are not meaning to take issue with specific games, they have argued that they are not trying to censor any games, maybe that is what you meant.

To the point of the OP, while I think there are worse things in the world it sounds disappointing that as a male you get welcomed into GTA with a hearty bro-hug but a woman gets a come-on. I know that you can say that this is just Lammar's character etc, and that's fair, but it is also Rockstar introducing you to their world and it is disappointing to me that even when playing as a woman you can't escape from their relentlessly straight-male perspective. But then its Rockstar - what else should we expect. I still love the game, even though the attitude and the humour are about as subtle and sharp as a sledgehammer to the balls.

I do not really watch TV or movies anymore. But I can name you a game what should fit into it if I understand you correctly.. The Witcher 1 and especially 2. The world it is set in is very sexist and racist and you not only see it by talking with people but also looking at things, hear other conversations and so on. And most of that is not in a judge able tone but rather normal conversations. It is just how the world was created. In a fantasy world everything should be fair game.

@hashy said:

Uh, I don't think that's how anything works.

This post makes you sound like quite the diva.

Fucking dumb.

@leebmx said:

That's sort of what I meant, but not exactly.

It's difficult for me to articulate this precisely, but the gist of what I was getting at was that I don't understand why we keep having arguments over these specific, out of context things, when everyone always just comes around to admitting that they are not, inherently, in and of themselves, bad. In this case, Lamar is just a scummy character. There's no deeper, hidden, sexist meaning other than that. Everyone seems to recognize this, but oh wait, we're still bickering.

I guess the best way I can approximate what I'm talking about is by saying that I feel as if it's sort of a feminist version of concern trolling. We get posters that come in talking about how it's a shame, and how they feel it raises concerns, and how even if they don't think it's really outright sexist, isn't it such a gosh-golly shame that developers can't do a little better? I just read threads like these and think "Oh fuck off, you think it's sexist, and you wish it hadn't happened, and you want it to go away. Stop beating around the bush and just admit it outright, already."

At some point, why do we still have these arguments over things people claim to think are not sexist or claim to not want to snuff out? At a certain point, these discussions reek of insincerity.

I don't thinks that's fair at all. There are plenty of threads were people call out things for being sexist. I think this is sexist really, its no good saying Lamar is a scummy character, because Rockstar chose to put him there and say those things. He didn't turn up at the beginning of his own accord. He is their character and they chose him to be there. They could have opened the game in anyway but they chose to do it in one which expresses their straight male viewpoint.

I don't really understand what your point is to be honest. As far as I can tell you are using the fact that anyone with a feminist viewpoint has been beaten round the head with cries of 'you want to ban this!' and 'Its censorship!' to the point where they have moderated their speech and now you are accusing them of hiding their real meaning. I don't see how they can win. They can't call for censorship or be forthright but they can't be moderate and express concern either, and they can't talk about it in a general sense without examples, and when they talk about examples it's wrong to pick out individual games. You are closing down people's avenues for debate rather than just addressing the issues which I think is unfair.

It really doesn't help when you attack people's motives and intentions rather than the points they are making.

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

This thread actually works against the movement towards better treatment of women, its so dumb. Stop defending things OP, you're not helping.

I can name one, GTAV.

@alexw00d: Which character was that again?

@leebmx said:

But you could say this about anything. All characters in games are, to whatever extent, created by the developers and put there because they felt like that's the way it worked. If you read that deep into every single thing, you're going to find sexism, racism, homophobia, and any other kind of bigotry you're attuned to looking for everywhere.

I don't really understand what your point is to be honest. As far as I can tell you are using the fact that anyone with a feminist viewpoint has been beaten round the head with cries of 'you want to ban this!' and 'Its censorship!' to the point where they have moderated their speech and now you are accusing them of hiding their real meaning. I don't see how they can win. They can't call for censorship or be forthright but they can't be moderate and express concern either, and they can't talk about it in a general sense without examples, and when they talk about examples it's wrong to pick out individual games. You are closing down people's avenues for debate rather than just addressing the issues which I think is unfair.

I didn't mean to suggest it's not fair to point out individual games as part of a broader conversation about trends, because that's the only way you can have that conversation to begin with. What I meant was that in each and every one of these conversations, they're framed a certain way from the very beginning; as if they are ethically bad. That's what makes coming into these threads such a schizophrenic experience in the last month or so. If the consensus always ends up being that these individual characters and moments are justified by context and artistic intention, then it would seem to completely undermine the point of singling them out for controversy, yet this is what keeps happening. It's like trying to argue against a phantom.

The conversation about including more women in video games gets presented in a lot angrier of a tone than the explicit words would seem to imply, which is why I guess I am, yeah, questioning whether or not some individuals are softening their actual intentions. To deny that such a thing could happen is basically denying all of politics. Feminists seem like they're trying to talk past their immediate detractors to win over the mainstream and hope to win by sheer outnumbering, but when the same arguments are used in any one-on-one conversation, the temperature gets turned down awfully quick and we fall back to "well, I wouldn't dare imply that anything be censored, and of course these individual moments aren't sexist in an of themselves, it's just the unfortunate trend. I'm sure we can all get along." But feminists aren't playing to those people; they're playing to those who only listen, and don't talk back. Who only see the headlines and the controversy, not the caveats.

That's why I mentioned the comparison to concern trolling. It's not meant to win any sort of argument, because "Lamar said something skeezy, therefore the game is sexist" is not an argument that holds up for most people under direct scrutiny. Instead, these controversies are meant to stir up enough FUD that it pressures developers in a roundabout way into conforming more to their way of thinking and sidestepping the more in-depth commentariat altogether. That's why I feel like some of these discussions and controversies feel so disingenuous. At least when Anita Sarkeesian came out and said she thought Bayonetta was a "patriarchal choose your own adventure male porno fantasy" she wasn't messing around.

As long as I can punch him in the dick when he says it, it's cool with me.

This is how my hardened criminal lady will roleplay this situation, obviously. I am not advocating dick punching as a conflict resolution tactic, just for my GTA lady in the GTA universe.

I like Lamar a ton, he is a funny character, but he needs to realize that my lady won't take any skeevy crap. :)

Replace the racism part of that quote with 'sexism' and it describes Lamar fairly perfectly. Not entirely sure what point that user was even trying to make.

This is a thing i can agree with .It would be a great move to do so.

@alexw00d: I just made a female character and Lamar called me "baby" (CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?!!), I was so offended and was about to write an angry e-mail to R* (and even make my own topic here on GB) but then Lamar said he meant baby in the most non-sexual sense of the word.

I should also note, I am offended when I pick up prostitutes for company and all they want to do is have sexual relations with me and for money no less. What? A guy can't pick up a nice lady to spend some time with, without anyone expecting him to pay for intimacy? Now THAT'S sexist.

Your poor attempt at satire is so misplaced I'm even not sure what you're trying to get at.

ITT: children afraid of cooties.

By the way does the female character also have the "Jerk off" gesture or was it replaced with something else?

So by having a character in their game who is an unintelligent, brutish criminal who is skeevy, they are promoting that this character is representative of the ethics of their game. Much like how they have crackjob conspiracy theorists in their game, that means that they support crackjob conspiracy theorists, that's just them 'expressing their straight male viewpoint'. Which is a statement more sexist than anything Lamar says. Do you see all characters as merely being there to express the gender of the creator? Or only characters written by men? When Christine Love writes a female character, is that her expressing her female viewpoint, or is that Christine Love writing a character? What happens when a single creator is writing two characters with opposing personalities? What are they expressing there?

Furthermore, if it's clearly negative to 'express a straight male viewpoint', even in the guise of a character, wouldn't it be necessary that it be negative to express a gay male viewpoint, or a straight female viewpoint, or a black male viewpoint, or anything else? Or are we just going to stop beating around the bushes and just admit that whatever it is that straight men do, it's therefore negative.

Unbelievable. I told myself I was going to stop coming in these threads. I'll return to doing that.

By the way, I'm playing a black criminal lady. Her name's Michelle D and she gets respect. Your cash and your jewelry is what she expects. I'll be sure to inform her that Lamar's shitty come-on victimized her.

I'm sure there's overlap but I think the reddit communtiy is actually less intolerable than the Giant Bomb community at this point.

Here is my take as a female who has watched my husband play many many hours of GTA V. I am also responding as someone who really wants to play the online component, but not really the single player game.

I could understand, if someone came to the game completely cold, how they would find Lamar's introduction in multiplayer to be a turn off, no joke intended. As someone who has seen hours of Lamar interacting with the main characters in the single player, it seems totally par for the course for his character. He's a thug, but he's super funny, and he is never played as really serious, but more for laughs. I think he is very honest, but that also makes him very annoying in some cases. Franklin is always telling him to not run off and do something stupid and tries to elevate their status, as it is, in the GTA storyline.

I am not saying that Lamar's characterization doesn't have problems and couldn't be critiqued, but him being sexist would be last on a pretty long list. And his being the way he is doesn't make me think that the people creating the game think that way. With the online component, I intend to roleplay a hardened criminal who just happens to be female. She will take no crap, have no issues with killing, stealing, carjacking, and mayhem. I assume she will go from the streets to a penthouse. Her initial introduction to this world will be seedy and maybe a bit shitty, but she'll come out on top as the baddest criminal in LS. I think some people may be losing sight of that aspect, and focusing too much on a few lines of dialogue or a brief interaction and trying to extrapolate it out to paint a bigger picture, accuracy be damned.

@alexw00d: I see, sexism is only when it's against women. I'm also going to throw out there that I'm offended when people call me white or caucasian, I'm Italian-American. Get it right you racists!

A man tries to have sex with a woman? I am sick to my stomach.

It's still the jerk off gesture. I'm using it on my female character to be ironic XDD

Women aren't well represented in the career-criminal world either. So GTA5 is quite realistic in that aspect. Men and women are different, you just have to accept it. Video games are geared towards males because the majority of the consumers are males.(Don't believe the studies that say "50% of Women play video games", which should be aptly renamed "50% of women play video games on their cellphone, 20% actually play real games") Now lay off this fucking 'Sexism in muh video game' shit and play the game.

Some characters are just written to be assholes. Imagine how fucking dull a game would be if everyone were as PC as your average thumblr whiteknight. I'd take up cricket as a hobby if that ever happened.

this is a good post

a 10/10

i am glad that you took the time out of your day to make this post :^)

See this is lazy. Why not have some dumb sexual female gesture^^

@astromarine welcome to the world of GTA where everyone is a total dick^^

@jadegl Yeah totally agree

@carousel: you want clarification? fine. It's perfectly fine to look at that scene and not be offended. Hell, I'm not offended. I can look at it and believe it to be generally problematic but not be offended, especially because penis. What's pathetic is that the SECOND someone *is*, for whatever reason, these threads always devolve into a bunch of manchildren shouting him (or heaven forbid, her) down with stridency and volume, screaming "BUT WAT ABOUT THE MENZ!!!!!" and "MISANDRY!!!!" and other inanities, and as a whole poisoning the discourse for regular human beings that would be interested in having an adult discussion about this topic.

Clearer now?

Because someone would make a thread about it.

Creepy guys hitting on you when they get the chance? Wow this is so inaccurate to the female experience!

RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE

Wait, a man wanting to have sex with a woman?

Sexism.

My sister who is 23 and female if you need to be so precise, completed and loved GTA 5. She had to be the first one on the buggy GTA online so I watched her set up her character (which was 30 minutes of her futzing around.) then started.

When lemar started hitting on her and her character rejected him, you know what my sister did?! She shouted sexist and switch off the game....no that would be a lie.

She laughed.

She laughed at Lemar because thats what Lemar is there for....to be laughed at in his clumsy and terrible ways, the second funny part is how the female character just picks up the rose throws it away and without out a word with just body language puts Lamar down and rejects him.

Now if the first scene was her getting off the plane being kidnapped and smuggled into the sex trade...no one would be laughing...that did not happen and yet people act like it did.

This is way more interaction than the male charcter has. He is just standing there when Lamar tells you that you look a lot smaller than on Liveinvader. I like the Rose part much more.

See this is why your shitty satire is misplaced, noone said that. At all.

^ He's spot on, actually. The mocking sarcasm about "sexism" (noone arguing the issue is problematic has called it sexist yet) and "privilege" and the like are exactly as he described.

Also EASILY my favourite entries into discussions like this are the anecdotal arguments about REAL ACTUAL FEMALE acquaintances that say nothing at all about the wider issue.

Have you heard Lamar's voicemail? I mean I think that sums up his attitudes towards genders in general. I mean it's a character thing in my opinion.

Every time something like this comes up I think I'm some sort of scumbag for not being offended or getting the perspective. Which could be true.

My wife plans to give GTA Online a try as a girl, and now I'm super curious as to how it plays out. Although I suppose it's just a canned cut scene so not much to anticipate.

Every time something like this comes up people talk about characters and worlds like they're real and not entirely penned start to finish by human beings with all associated intent, responsibility and consequence. I know this is surprising but they could have just not had Lamar be attracted to your character, or not written "sleezeball" on Lamar's character guide, or not have Lamar pick you up at all if they can't fucking help but have him make an advance on the first female character with agency in a Grand Theft Auto game.

Guy here called me a "feminist type" indirectly. I don't know that's how I self identify myself. I agree with Patrick Klepek and the articles he writes and links to on the topic of sexism often times. Does that make me a feminist? Here I was thinking that made me a reasonable person. I saw an intro that set the tone with my female character being treated like a sexual object which I correctly assumed was not the case for male characters who were treated like human beings during the same scene. I found that choice troublesome and thought I could have a go at it and come out with a reasonably funny tweet. I adapted that tweet into a topic.

It's disappointing so many people have taken issue with my observations because, in their heads, this isn't about my female character but about Lamar's dumbass. Of course Lamar said that, he's a dumbass! Yeah, but why was his dumbass the first thing I had to see? His dumbass appearing wasn't a coincidence, it didn't just happen. A person (or a team of people) decided his dumbass should be the first thing you see. They wrote that scene. Like, with keyboards and time to think about what they were doing. They decided that was the best way to welcome the player to the world. It's not like Lamar just volunteered because Lamar isn't a real person. He only exists in your mind and on Wiki pages.

I think it's a bad welcome to the world setting you off on entirely the wrong foot if you decided to pick a woman instead of a man. I think that's bad. I also think it's worth having a go at. Is that not correct?

@themasterds: I think it is interesting in a game about brutal murder, theft, drug dealing, and so on you take issue with a "sleazy" line from a "scumbag" character. Torturing people, burning them while alive, blowing up cars, running over innocent pedestrians, stealing, drug dealing, fucking prostitutes. All that is a-okay. Someone hitting on your avatar though? Fuck that shit.

Main thing that offends me is that Lamar doesn't hit on the male characters. After playing Saints Row 4 I expect at least the majority of NPCs to want to fuck me. Anything less is unacceptable.

Or every character in a fiction is supposed to be a "good guy"? What is your point?

In reality there are creeps and in fiction there are creeps. Are people really going to be offended now everytime there is a fictional character that isn't upstanding morally? What is going on? This is insane.

@themasterds:

The entire game Lamar goes on and on about women, no one should be surprised that he would hit on a female character. Ever.

Why was he the first person to welcome you to the online game? Now that's a good question. But who else could it have been? Lester would never pick someone up in person, Wade's too stupid and Jimmy would be the same as Lamar, furthermore they would have no reason to be picking you up in the first place seeing as how one is in the desert and the other is a wannabe. To be fair, you do start out as just a thug and Lamar seems like the perfect transition for that.

@amikron: I agree, I kicked so many dogs to death in this game. I'm surprised there isn't a thread about that with 600 posts.