Giant Bomb Presents: The Bumpy Road Towards Games for Everyone

I'm not demanding a Samantha Fisher, and I'm not sure you even believe i'm suggesting that. I just chose those two names off the cuff because they are easily changeable to women's names. No-one is forcing existing franchises to change sex or race change they are just expressing their disappointment that so many of them present the same characters over and over again. Speak to anyone who wants more diversity in gaming and they will ask for exactly what you have outlined in your post, new games, new characters who are more representative of the gamers who play them.

To the GTA 5 point, I would have been even more excited (if that is possible) for this game if one of the 3 main characters was a woman because this would be something new and interesting from a company who does tend to portray the same gangster sterotype in each game. I think the idea that people are infringing on Rockstar or other game company's rights as artists is a big red herring. They are just contributing to the debate which surrounds all games. I don't see how hankering after a woman protagonist in GTA is any different to complaining because you want the body building system in San Andreas to come back. No-one's rights are being infringed upon, it's just part of the same discussion which goes on about every game. Surely Rockstar want to make games which appeal to as many people as possible? How are they to know what people want from their games if everyone just meekly accepts what they release and don't argue for the game they want?

It seems as if we both want the same thing - more diversity in games. The only way I can see for publishers and developers to realise this is if they get feedback from their audience. You seem to want to place some restrictions on how gamers should be allowed to give this feedback which seems strange. I really don't think anyones is trampling on artistic freedoms unless they start intimidating or physically stopping devs create the games they want and this is clearly not happening.

Developers need this feedback, because who knows - maybe Rockstar were thinking of including a woman as one of the three characters but were worried it wouldn't sell? If their audience doesn't tell them this is something they want it's hard for change to be made. I think your idea of games developers as artists commited to the purity of their vision is a bit idealistic. There are very few games which are not altered by outside pressures, be them financial, time or political; people talking about the sex, race whatever of their characters is probably the least of their worries.

@leebmx: You never know with GTA5....there's always DLC. Rockstar's got a decent track record with good female and minority characters.

Hell, a DLC campaign based on the antics of Rachel Lee and Alexis Neiers would be AWESOME.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bling_Ring#Rachel_Lee

Rolling around Vinewood looking for celebrities to rob? How cool would that be?

@leebmx: I don't believe you're asking for that, but people have demanded that kind of stuff, and it's really frustrating to see. It's way different to ask them to bring back a gameplay system from an older game than it is to ask them to force a character change and the story ramifications of doing that. Totally different things. If Dan Houser at Rockstar really enjoys writing quality stories around male protagonists and is really good at it and has no interest in writing a female protagonist ever, then that's totally fine by me. I really like the female and gay characters that have populated Rockstar games for a long time.

We do want the same thing--more diversity in gaming--and I was using your argument to talk about people less reasonable than you. I should have made it more clear I wasn't talking about you. My apologies.

Just noticed you posted this.

I think it's exclusionary because "Gamers vs. Gaymers" makes it sound like two clashing groups, like people who are gay but like video games are not and will never be "gamers," but "gaymers." But yes, it is also super cringeworthy.

(I listened to the interview while cleaning, so sorry if I missed some nuance in it! Don't read this as an attack, just a few light observations.)

A lot of people aren't interested in having their consciousnesses raised by games, and that doesn't mean they're bad people. Americans (and I'm generalizing, of course -- you're not all the same!) can forget that homosexuality isn't the same cultural flashpoint in most other parts of the video-game-playing world. Sexual orientation (and, for that matter, the equality of women) has simply never been something I've seen treated like a big deal, both growing up around Toronto and living in Montreal. I'll be at a party, a guy mentions his boyfriend or something, and that's that. I think a lot of what Americans read as anti-gay pushback is really just people being sick of Americans assuming we all need to be trained to accept something we never had a problem with. My consciousness is fine the way it is, so when a game seems to be trying to teach me that homosexuality is normal, it feels as pointless and forced as a game trying to teach me that being black is normal.

I can't speak for DA2, but I found Cortez's character in ME3 mildly annoying not because he was gay, but because his gayness wasn't treated in a believable way. My Shepard had been clearly straight for as long as I'd played him, and his relationship with Tali was common knowledge, yet near the end of the game Cortez made a pass at Shepard in the nightclub on the Citadel in which my only way out was to say something dumb like "hey man, I'm looking at the ladies!". There were points in the game where I remember reading dialogue options with an eye to making sure I didn't accidentally trigger a "gay" switch, and that's not a problem I've ever had in real life. There were other aspects of Cortez's character that I thought were admirable, but that one scene felt gross to me, both because it was unrealistic and because it played into the unfortunate "predatory" gay stereotype that I think fuels a lot of casual homophobia.

The "he's gay, but he's just a normal guy!" angle rang hollow to me. It's a palatable, unthreatening way of portraying a gay character, but in my experience, gay guys are usually noticeably different. It's hard for me to convey exactly how, and I'm not at all saying he should have been "fabulous" or something, but Cortez's character didn't feel gay to me. He felt like a straight guy who was reading a gay script -- an artificial parable of a character. I think that's problematic in the same way many argue the "man with boobs" style of female character isn't progressive.

I happen to think I know plenty about the Japanese game industry. If you think that's dis-proven by my admission that I'm not that familiar with those smattering of games, well, that's up to you. I would still say that they're a bunch of randomly chosen examples that aren't particularly illustrative of trends in the Japanese industry. And I have, in fact, played about half of them (all of them in the RE series save 6).

And I don't recall saying that Japanese women aren't free to pursue their interests - that's very much not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the portrayal of the sex in the popular culture, and specifically how that dynamic plays out in video games. I'm sure there are a HUGE number of Japanese people whose ideals are not reflected in that popular culture, just like everywhere else, but again, that's not the discussion we were having.

We'll probably have to agree to disagree here, since this discussion could get incredibly long, but I genuinely don't understand how you could look at Japanese video games and say that they turn out more genuine portrayals of women than the West does. Maybe I'm just not seeing it because, obviously, I'm not from there, but it seems to me we have been HAVING this conversation, whereas they have not been at all.

I just want to express my appreciation for content like this. Keep it up Patrick. This is fucking fantastic work.

I don't want to question your experience with gay people, or anything, but speaking as a person who lives and works in and around West Hollywood, and who subsequently spends a lot of time around gay folks of all shapes and colors, I have to say I've never seen any consistency between the personalities of homosexual people besides the obvious one. I've met people that I've known were gay before they did (or at least before they stopped publicly having heterosexual sex, who knows what they were really thinking), and I've known people who I would never guessed were gay. I've known people who came out as gay in their 40's, and one guy in his 70's! I mean, there are definitely common affectations that you see, but they're not ingrained behaviors - they're adaptations that signify that they're part of a group. They're like wearing leather and spikes and having a mohawk if you think of yourself as punk. A lot of the gay people I've met have adopted some of these things [addendum: identifying as gay has the benefit of making it ok to admit to liking some things that are "gay" signifiers in our culture (I could tell a lot more people I enjoy musicals without them laughing at me)] - BUT -and it's a large but- many don't adopt ANY of these shared "traits." They're just people, with one different preference.

Just to be clear, I'm not trying to imply that you're prejudiced, or anything. Just wanted to share my perspective on the issue, since it differs from yours.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that. I think both of them are just asking for changes to the game. One might be more significant than the other but they are both versions of the same thing in my opinion. No need to apologise by the way, I kind of knew what you meant. It can be a bit tricky posting in threads like these because you are talking to the individual and the whole thread at the same time.

Yeah maybe we are saying the same thing in different ways, It bothered me cos it was cringeworthy and it seemed to put two groups in opposition to each other, creating a conflict where we should be looking for harmony I believe there is a post from the creator of the title in this thread, and she says she could have phrased it better.

Thanks for the input. I forgot to mention that I'm talking about a fairly small sample size.

I'm not even sure what I'm talking about is "personality" per se. To put it another way, I don't think I've ever been surprised by learning that someone was gay. More often, I'm surprised someone isn't. I lack the vocabulary and real knowledge to say this with real confidence, but it's been my experience that there are signifiers, and not the obvious stereotypical stuff.

I don't think Cortez read as explicitly not gay, but he didn't read gay to me, at least not in a way that jived with the way the game had him express it. His identity felt very deliberate in a way that wasn't consistent with the enlightened world the game seemed to want to convey, and the way he came at Shepard wasn't consistent with the way he was developed. It felt like they'd written his backstory to ensure he'd be able to say "husband" as many times as possible. He felt less like a character and more like a vessel for a message. Some of his scenes (and my memory of the game is hazy, so I could be misremembering) felt borderline gross to me, because they seemed to imply Cortez wasn't able to read plainly obvious facts about Shepard's orientation in a way I could never imagine happening in real life.

Again, just my experience -- just wanted to put it out there because I think Cortez gets too much of a free pass for being "progressive" in a kind of facile way.

Actually, all you've shown to this point is that you're an incredible xenophobe and know very little about Japanese society, pop culture, or the role of Japanese women in game development. It might shock you to know that there are women in high-level game development positions that do actually design games like Neptunia, or Animal Crossing: New Leaf, or Pandora's Tower (a not entirely traditional damsel-in-distress story).

Anyway...

@patrickklepek: I have to echo the sentiment that Dragon Age II really is a poor example. Yes, it does feature homosexual characters, but they're not well written. Compare Anders in DAII to his original appearance in the Awakening expansion of Dragon Age: Origins; the difference in the writing is night and day. And while I am not adverse to the game featuring homosexual relationships, one thing I found off-putting was the frequency with which the game threw romance dialogue options at the player. It seemed like I couldn't go a conversation with Anders without the heart icon appearing in the middle of the dialogue wheel. Like the game was very insistent that the player should romance him. (Almost as if they were trying desperately to get the player to form a bond with him before his poorly written church bombing later in the game.)

Someone earlier in the thread mentioned Persona 4, and that's actually not a bad game to bring up. The game confronts ideas like sexuality and orientation by pitting the characters against their Shadows, which, while twisted, at times reflect their darker desires in a sexual context. (i.e.: Chie's desire for control reflected as a dominatrix, the stripper design of Rise's Shadow, the over-the-top effeminate way Kanji's Shadow acts.) These aren't who the characters are in whole (they are only slices of each character, twisted severely out of proportion), but in the cases of some characters, specifically Kanji and Naoto, their gender identities and lifestyles do play a role in their whole selves. Kanji is a confused teenager that's probably not actually gay, but also maybe not entirely straight, while Naoto feels more at home in masculine clothing; she's not gay, she just prefers dressing that way.

These are the sorts of gender identities and relationships that gaming could use more of. Characters that aren't necessarily overtly hetero or homosexual, but that represent that broad spectrum in between, and in different ways. Maybe they're gay, or bi, or hetero, but sexuality is only one facet of a whole personality; one that doesn't need to be thrown in the player's face to make some sort of statement.

@hailinel: I said it to the gentleman that I was talking to before, but I don't really see what women being in development positions has to do with anything. What's important is the content they produce - that's what I experience, not their work environments.

Also, again, I don't think I've expressed any "xenophobia," although I was critical of another country's popular culture, particularly as expressed by video games. I never said anything negative about Japanese people, or about the country itself, and I don't intend it. I'm am sure most Japanese are lovely, non-sexist people. If you are personally so tied to the perception of their popular culture that I offended you, then I apologize, as that was not my intention.

I just don't see how you could look at the sheer volume of really lazy anime stereotypes and fetishized tropes that characterize the vast majority of Japanese games and say, "yep, that's fine.". Even ones I nominally like! I'm not talking about Sengoku Rance any more - I'm not even talking about, say, Code of Princess - but games like Etrian Odyssey. Those games are old-school dungeon crawlers in every other aspect than that they let you make a loli harem as your party if you feel like it. The fact that "loli harem" isn't necessarily a term that I have to EXPLAIN to people is the crux of what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying this stuff should be banned or anything, far from it. But I can't say it makes me think Japan is a bastion of progressive attitudes in popular culture.

You don't think that you're being xenophobic when you say ignorant things like this?

Hey - I totally agree with you about Cortez. But then, I think the writing in that game around all of the "big button issue" stuff is kind of clumsy, as is most of the dialogue around anything vaguely romance-related.

That's not xenophobia. It's criticism. I would have a lot of negative things to say about America's popular culture, if asked, but I still love lots of it, too. Japanese people are not Japanese popular culture. I would actually love to visit Japan some day, if I ever were financially able - and I would still enjoy the vast majority of their culture, and participate in it. I still play Japanese video games, even, and enjoy them. I think you're being a little over sensitive. Perhaps it was my choice of words.

At this point, I'm going to stop defending myself, but I will say this - if you'd like to actually have a discussion, I'd suggest that you explain to me what I'm "ignorant" of, or at least address what I've said directly, instead of implying things about my character. It's neither offending me or furthering a conversation.

You do realize that racism, sexism and homophobia are institutionalized at a government level in Japan, right? That they're an incredibly homogeneous society that is 99% Japanese and that their laws are set up in a way that is designed to prevent that from ever changing? It's not xenophobic to call out a nation with immigration laws that make the United States' plans for electrified anti-Mexican fences seem calm and rational by comparison.

I'm not saying that Japan doesn't have their share of issues, but painting an entire culture as backwards and homophobic is no different than saying that Americans are dithering, warmongering cowboys that think gays are weird.

Ok. I don't think I said all Japanese are homophobic. I said their sexual politics is stuck in the 1950's. But I don't think I can get you to hear this any other way, so... have a good evening.

You say that Japan's sexual politics are stuck in the 1950s without making any distinction that you aren't talking about all of Japan. You basically argued that the entirety of the country is still stuck in their cultural equivalent of Leave it to Beaver.

I... just made that distinction several times, though. Are you mad at me for not being clearer in that original post? I don't think we have anything more to discuss, at any rate.

For sure. I cringe a bit when he's mentioned an admirable example, because it says to me that many are happy with feel-good tokenism over genuinely believable and challenging (in the sense of not being the most palatable to heterosexuals) gay characters. If we want games to actually get more inclusive, we have to be prepared to criticise games that swing and miss.

You haven't established why it's morally bad to not accept immigration. It may be bad policy, especially considering where they're at demographically, and it may (speculating, to be clear!) be politically motivated in a way that appeals to racist tendencies, but homogeneity is not in and of itself immoral, and has its advantages. It's a whole other can of worms not related to the topic at hand, so I'll leave it at that.

Statements like "their sexual politics are firmly stuck in 1950" are over-simplistic and hyperbolic. Japan's got its issues, which in aggregate could be worse (I don't know enough to say), but to act like they haven't changed in 60 years is idiotic. This kind of stuff is always complicated, and understanding it to some degree requires cultural context most of us don't have -- treating it like its simple is a surefire way to make yourself look like a fool.

The culture Japan exports does tend to portray women as subservient pastry conjurers who's job is to be under duress with shiny eyes. Now, that's the culture they export, that doesn't mean the racial/gender politics that dominate a lot of their media are the personal belief systems held by all Japanese. But in fairness to the discussion at hand, when you combine the success of Japan's exclusionary (And let's be clear here, they're exclusionary to the point of bigotry) political platforms with a lot of the media they produce, it isn't entirely unfair for one to assume that such beliefs and practices are commonplace in Japan. That doesn't mean a Japanese man vacationing to the US that I happen to meet is automatically a patriarchal klan member. It just means I'm conscious of the fact that there's a high chance said dude might hold a belief that I find to be extremely offensive.

It's something I'm also keenly aware of when I play a Japanese produced video game like Metal Gear Solid, where Meryl's sole function in the video game is to get shot at while bleeding sexily to serve as motivation for me to get a PSG1 and save her despite my character insisting he didn't care about her when he met her five minutes ago.

Lay off the hyperbole. It's not helping. And it's grossly inaccurate.

Also, "bleeding sexily?" Are you being serious? Because I seriously hope that not what you actually took away from that scene. I mean, really.

Point out the hyperbole I used please, and why what I wrote is inaccurate. Because I'm not seeing it. What I wrote seems fairly rational and apropos.

And what exactly was I supposed to take a way from an extremely cliche scene where the handsome rugged hero has to rescue the woman in peril? You're not going to tell me that scene wasn't using an incredibly played out trope, are you? As far as the character goes, the woman is supposed to be a trained soldier, yet she's written and treated like an inept child just to establish how skilled/badass/superior the man in the scene is. Please explain where I'm missing something here, because this example seems to fit perfectly with the point I made above.

All right:

"The culture Japan exports does tend to portray women as subservient pastry conjurers who's job is to be under duress with shiny eyes."

There you go.

And What I took away from that scene in MGS was that "OH SHIT MERYL'S BEEN SHOT AND THERE'S A SNIPER OH FUCK GOTTA GET A SNIPER RIFLE." Not "Ooh, she's bleeding out. That shit is hot."

The point of Meryl's character, at least in this scene, is that while she has training, she doesn't have the experience that Snake has, and thus she walks right into Sniper Wolf's trap. She's, as Snake might say, still green. Snake himself was the same way at one point in his life. You get to MGS4, and Meryl is more experienced and more capable, hindered mostly by the insane nanomachine plot device.

We're digressing pretty wildly from the topic at hand here, but given that this is tangibly related to the broader point, why not I suppose.

Pointing out that vast amount of Japan's exported media relegates women to subordinate roles where they are more often than not used as plot devices versus organically expressed human beings is not a hyperbole. How much of said media do you think passes the Bechtel Test (which is just a rudimentary measurent of a media's gender politics climate and doesn't even begin to dig at what makes a good character to begin with)? I'll give you a hint: proportionately speaking very little, and it's mostly limited to the anime category which, surprise, most Japanese adults couldn't care less about cartoons. Even when you take a critical look at some of their most celebrated works from the likes of Akira Kurosawa or Kobayashi, you find that the presence of women is contained almost entirely within the sphere male servitude. Kurosawa rarely made films involving women who weren't in a brothel, in peril needing to be rescued or pining for a knight in shining armor to come whisk them away. They almost never have agency of their own. Why didn't Kurosawa or Kobayashi make any films focusing on the tales of women as their center plots? If you were to point out that they were directors who were mostly concerned with shooting period pieces regarding feudal Japan, you'd be nailing my point right on the head: just because women weren't the dominating force of Japanese culture during said time period does not mean they weren't individuals with their own important stories to tell. They still had agency. They weren't background characters, they were people.

As far as the Meryl thing goes, if you were emotionally engaged by that scene, then the trope served its purpose. Use some critical thinking here, man. Why do you think the endangered woman plot device is so overused? It's to MAKE you do something in response. The trope in itself does not automatically make a story 'bad' or unworthy of telling, but over-reliance upon it in popular culture has done people watching/reading/playing it a huge disservice by lazily assuming that such a simple motivational device is good enough content in lieu of sturdily constructed emotionally engaging material. It's why The Walking Dead gets away with it but X-Men Origins: Wolverine doesn't.

So again, using some critical thinking, do you see how a female character that your character overtly sexualizes after seeing her do bottomless push-ups while spying on her from an air vent before telling her she's an idiot and should hide in the closet being blown to bits as emotionally engaging material for player motivation is the sort of low hanging fruit that applies to what I said above?

First, can you provide statistical facts regarding the "vast amount of Japan's exported media relegates women to subordinate roles where they are more often than not used as plot devices versus organically expressed human beings?" Because that is hyperbole. You're relegating a large chunk of female characters in Japanese media to the level of objects, when I can think of numerous, numerous examples where female characters are not only not portrayed in such a way, but are well-written, well portrayed people, whether they take a more "subservient" role in the story or not.

In regards to Meryl, because it's a common trope, I shouldn't allow myself to be entertained by it? You are a bizarre one. I can use critical thinking on Metal Gear Solid, and I have. You come off as this overcritical obsessive of the sort that absolutely can't stand it if a well-worn trope is used, as if somehow being taken in by that trope makes me small-minded or ignorant. There's really nothing more I need say to you because it's evident that we're not going to get anywhere and you apparently refuse to even acknowledge the ignorance you're spewing.

Just out of curiosity here, how much of your knowledge of Japanese popular culture is anime/video game based? Because I just brought up the example of Japanese cinema and I was wondering what female characters in Japanese films you're talking about. As far as statistical facts regarding women's roles in Japanese films........I'm not sure how you expect that data to be presented. What sort of categories would you need to see to support my point?

In regards to your second point, you also seemed to either miss or ignored this part:

@tonetta777: When you tell me to use critical thinking not once, but twice, as though I am a child that needs to be told what to do rather than a rational, thinking adult, what makes you think I should listen to what you have to say?

And as a matter of fact, I have seen plenty of Japanese movies, from Kurosawa and Ozu to Beat Takeshi to Takeshi Miike. And while not all of the above do much with female characters, those that do paint a variety, whether they be the domestic, old mother of Tokyo Story and her loving daughter-in-law, the vindictive wife of the oldest son in Ran, the complete, over the top lunacy of live-action anime characters like Cutey Honey, or the quiet resignation and appreciative attitude of the terminally ill wife in Fireworks.

Then there are characters such as the lead actress in The Ring; a single mother separated from her ex-husband forced to contend with the supernatural on her own for much of the film, or similarly the mother in Dark Water. On the other hand, there are the teen girls in House, each a paper-thin archetype that falls victim to the macabre (in a story conceived by the director's young daughter), and in which the one male character of any prominence unceremoniously loses his mind and turns into a pile of bananas. (I am fucking serious.)

If you want to go older still, there's Onibaba; the old horror film in which a mother and her daughter-in-law murder samurai to sell off their wares for a meager existence, only to be undone by their own means of "hunting."

These are just a few examples, but they indicate a pretty wide variety in terms of the way that female characters are depicted in Japanese live-action cinema.

@hailinel: That's a really really short list of outliers, and it seems you do not understand what systemic critique is. It's almost like the general overarching sociopolitical system has an emergent behavior of bigotry that we can describe, with not every single person in said system propagating each individual bigotry, let alone to the same extent as any other person. Weird.

Or perhaps I was just providing a short list of examples regarding characters outside of what Tonetta describes as some sort of vast supermajority. My larger point is that there are female characters of all types in the medium, and so to paint it in broad strokes by saying "most characters of a specific gender are this way" is short-sighted, particularly when such assertions are made without statistical backing.

I already asked you how you'd like me to verify that statistically. What sort of information would you need to see? Like I said, the Bechdel Test serves as a rudimentary thermometer of the climate of gender politics of a medium, so while I could use that on an extensive list of Japanese films and show you whether they pass or fail, I don't know what you'd be expecting me to present.

Well, that's really up to you, since you're the one the onus is on, here. Though the Bechdel Test has certain limitations to its usefulness.

You've provided no statistical information that disproves what Tonetta says. You've shown that some amount of non-patriarchal depictions of women exist, but you cannot claim that they are anywhere near the majority. There are a few non-patriarchal representations in Western video games, but that does not disprove the overwhelming majority of patriarchal depictions. Could you provide statistics, or are you just going to use this as a way to dismiss an argument outside your lived experiences? I'm sure Japanese feminist critiques exist for Japanese media, but I do not have access to them. Like what Samantha was asking in the clip, you could listen to lived experiences, instead of expecting extensive excel sheets. And then we'd spend forever arguing semantics of classifications.

Can't you just accept that you don't know what you're talking about when minorities are claiming that their experiences with media and video games are far from sufficient at providing positive representations they can identify with?

If there's statistical fact to be found, it's not my job to find them. Tonetta made the assertions without statistics. I provided anecdotal evidence to refute him. If he wants to convince me of his point of view, he has to provide some solid, factual information. And you're certainly not helping in either case by diving in and saying I'm wrong without providing any statistical evidence of your own.

What information do you want me to provide? What do you want me to use to support the point I made?

@hailinel: You do know that you could crack a basic sociology book, like Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks, instead of asking to be dragged kicking and screaming into knowledge. Oh look it's free, too. You're asking for metrics that tons of sociologically ignorant people have asked for time and again, and then proceed into a long derail and dismissal by diluting definitions completely out of sociological context. Like Tonetta said, any metrics that currently exist can only show basic representation and cannot objectively encapsulate the overall nature of liberating or oppressive representations, because, again, the sociologically ignorant will endless derail on semantic lines they cannot comprehend.

You really expect a patriarchal culture of male directors, male writers, male every-position to really encapsulate true-to-life representations of diverse women in a way that provides an overwhelming number of positive role models? Really? You don't think that not actually living as a woman gives a man better insight into a woman's character or experiences? That's what I'm getting from your insistence on seemingly arbitrary data points devoid of context.

@catte_doctor: Well, judging from this response, I can tell that you're not exactly what I would classify as neutral. You obviously have a side to favor, what with telling me to read an overtly feminist text book and dismissing the so-called patriarchy in favor of requesting that the person making the original assertions actually provide data to back up his claims.

Don't get me wrong. I am a feminist, in that I support equal rights for both genders. But the way you're presenting yourself, I'm not entirely certain that what you're promoting actually supports that egalitarianism. And your rudeness certainly isn't helping matters.

You're the one trying to make the argument. What data can you find that supports it? I shouldn't have to keep repeating myself.

@hailinel:

Since I have a well-researched opinion, that means no one should believe me, while your perpetual pollyanna act should naturally have more weight? Ok. With that tone policing and complete refusal to read a basic feminist text, you can't call yourself a feminist, especially when you're toeing the patriarchal status quo in favor of perpetual disbelief. Your reactionary stance makes me think you're an MRA.

I'm sorry new ideas are so absolutely frightening to you that you would refuse to read a short and well-regarded feminist text. I think you protest too much in trying to assert your knowledge of a subject you immediately betray with your unwillingness to even grapple with a basic text from that subject. It isn't helping matters that you remain petulantly skeptical against feminist critiques so much so that you refuse to even expand your understanding of it, while simultaneously expecting feminists to educate you about feminist critiques.

What exactly do you hope to gain by asking for evidence or to be taught about a subject, when you categorically refuse to look at anything provided to you?

No, I am specifically asking you what sort of data you would need to see because you are intentionally attempting to invalidate what I said by demanding statistical information that you are pretty confident cannot be measured. You're asking me to present subjective media in raw database format, and I'm asking you what parameters would satisfy your need, as knowing specifically what data you require is the only way to provide you with it. If your response is "I don't know", then in turn you would be saying "I don't know what I want you to prove to me, but prove it".

That is not how the burden of onus works when making a claim. If your anecdotal evidence is enough to invalidate my point, then my own earlier anecdotal evidence should be sufficient support for my point, no? Why would anecdotal evidence function for you, but not for me? This is known as 'moving the goal posts'.

So, if you want information provided to you, please tell me what format of information you would like me to demonstrate.

[ @hailinel said: Well, judging from this response, I can tell that you're not exactly what I would classify as neutral. You obviously have a side to favor, what with telling me to read an overtly feminist text book and dismissing the so-called patriarchy in favor of requesting that the person making the original assertions actually provide data to back up his claims.

Don't get me wrong. I am a feminist, in that I support equal rights for both genders. But the way you're presenting yourself, I'm not entirely certain that what you're promoting actually supports that egalitarianism. And your rudeness certainly isn't helping matters. ]

Here you are conflating neutrality with objectivity or "truthiness". That is intellectually lazy, just as it would be to call you a japanophile and say your opinion is not coming from a neutral position and therefore is wrong. Somebody does not need to be neutral in order to make a valid argument, and indeed many arguments don't function when framed neutrally. I can be vehemently against eugenics from a moral perspective and still be objectively correct in debunking it.

You also go on to call yourself a feminist yet proceed to openly dismiss a feminist text because of its "non-neutrality", much in the same spirit that the first person to comment on this interview refused to even listen to it because of the title alone. I have to ask, how familiar with feminist theory are you? How much material have you familiarized yourself with? Have you done your protofeminism homework and that's why you're so confident in openly dismissing "Feminism for Everybody" which can essentially be considered a remedial text on the subject?

What makes you a feminist, and confident enough of one to trash another feminist's ideas at that?

@tonetta777: You have no clue what you're talking about, that's clear. You seem to think that just because Japan doesn't have the polarising feminists America does, that it's socially backward. This seems to be the assertion that @catte_doctor makes too, but this is incredibly self-centric and intolerant. Japanese culture is unique and if not respected, should at least be understood before you dismiss it, plus its population of over a hundred million, as 'socially inferior.' I doubt you'd see women in America playing huge roles in designing games like Neptunia, because they'd be shamed by other women (feminists) for creating a game that appeals more to men. There are many ways in which Japanese women are more free than American women because of the social stigma created by feminism. There is equal value to all cultures, unless you are an ignorant jingoistic bigot.

Japan has a rather well documented feminist movement, I don't know why you think they don't. Most developed countries of the western world do. Also......you do know there are women playing big roles in game development here in the United States, right? The argument is that it would be wonderful to have more of them so that we can have some female perspective interjected into our male dominated medium.

Anywho, I never said anything about Japan that isn't applicable to the United States, so I feel it's pretty evident that I don't believe the US to be homehow socially superior. Please try not to derail the conversation like that. I'd also appreciate it if you would stop using the word feminist as if it is somehow a pejorative term.

@tonetta777: Giant Bomb ate my post the first time, annoying.

I never stated Japan has no feminist movement, only that Japanese women are not ashamed to make video games that appeal to men, which is one example. This is anecdotal, obviously, but you have failed to come up with any statistics whatsoever to back yourself up, you have no clue as to what the percentage of female designers is in the industry in Japan, versus percentage of applicants. That you retreat into that pathetic semantic argument about me 'derailing' the discussion after making a baseless claim like I pointed out at the start of this paragraph, only highlights your sophomoric approach to discussion. Did I hit a nerve pointing out your kneejerk xenophobia? I hope you didn't really expect to be taken seriously when you come up with unsupported, incredibly offensive claims like this one:

"You do realize that racism, sexism and homophobia are institutionalized at a government level in Japan, right?"

You can stop with the heated rhetoric. There isn't any need for it.

You said that women in Japan are inherently more free to develop video games because they lack an internal feminist infrastructure to shame them for doing so. I pointed out that this is not true: Japanese feminism saw a rise in activity on a national level in the late 60's and early 70's, much of which mirrored the core principals of their western counterparts. So why is it that you're asserting that American women in game development feel restricted in creating content due to feminist groups? Can you support that notion in any way? Why would feminist groups stifle women from representing themselves in media? And you're right, I have no idea how many women are active in the game design industry in Japan. How many are there? Would you care to tell me? Because I cannot find any solid information on that (and frankly am unsure why you brought that up). In fact, all I get if I google it is a handful of tiny lists with women's names on them and a Wikipedia link discussing the exact issue in the medium that I'm talking about. It would seem as though the disparity in female consumer vs representation in both Japan and the west is prevalent enough to have its own article.

As far as "backing myself up" with statistics goes, what Hailinel asked me to do was provide objective statistical data proving that a very large percentage of pop culture media exported from Japan suffers from said problem, and that more often than not women are objectified in the mediums of animation, video games and film. When asked how he would like a quasi-subjective statement such as that provided in a hard, analytic format, he refused to tell me what sort of data he needed to see to feel satisfied in agreeing with my point. He was provided with a free text that documents this exact disparity in some detail, but outright refused to acknowledge it because it is not a 'neutral source'. So, if you would like me to provide statistical data supporting my idea that women are more often tropes and plot devices than fully formed, multidimensional characters, I'd need to ask you the same question: what sort of data would you need to see in order to agree with me?

Lastly, what is offensive about criticizing a nation that harbors laws barring naturalized citizens and those not of Japanese blood from voting, including Korean immigrants who have lived there their entire lives, didn't provide the female population with suffrage until 1946, enforces lax laws regarding spousal rape and sexual harrasment, has laws that blur the age of consent and therefore statutory rape above age 13 and has laws specifically targeting same sex couples by defining the age of consent for them higher than those of heterosexual couples? Are you saying it's offensive to assert that institutionalized segregation exists at the state level in Japan? How is that an offensive claim to make? It's like saying there are laws specifically targeted towards the segregation of homosexuals in the United States. It's just factual observation that is relevant to my point. I already touched on the idea of government and pop culture of a country not explicitly reflecting the beliefs of every individual, but you did not read that.

As I said earlier, this mirrors a lot issues present in the United States, so I don't understand how you would label my dialogue as being xenophobic when it is applicable both nations simultaneously.

@tonetta777: I appreciate you went out of your way to support your claims this time.

I never said that Japan has no feminists or feminism, there is clearly American feminism and Japanese feminism. Much like there is American and Japanese culture. And that leads me on to your claims and evidence... morals are not objective, a few cherry-picked laws do not a homophobic, sexist, racist state make. If that were true, every state on the planet would be guilty of these things. Maybe you think that's true, but I do not, so it's strictly in the realm of opinion. If you wanted to make a stronger argument for why Japan is these things (and more) it is obviously completely unnecessary in a comment section to do so, which is why levelling such a harsh and seemingly bigoted dismissal was unneeded in the first place. I also can't help but feel it's back-pedalling to acquit yourself of xenophobia by saying your country is guilty of it as well, or that you don't mean all Japanese people, or that the link between the supposed extreme prejudice and the people / culture is only nebulous,. Like saying, "well, blacks are x, but I have a black friend, so it's okay for me to make generalisations."

Back-pedalling would be if I didn't say

@tonetta777 said: " Now, that's the culture they export, that doesn't mean the racial/gender politics that dominate a lot of their media are the personal belief systems held by all Japanese"

More than a dozen posts before you joined in the discussion. I never said anything near as absurd as the black friends cliche. I pointed out that a nation's institutionalized discrimination is reflected partly in their popular culture, as is evident in the prevalence of fat shaming and objectification of women in their media (before an absolutely irrelevant derail happened we arrived to me having to point out to you the questionable ethics of Japan's human rights doctrine). You'll also notice that it's extremely relevant that I compared them to the United States in this regard: this is a thread about queer representation in video games, and where the climate for such is at in this country presently. Most of the people making comments in this thread are people labeling the desire to have such in incredibly unfair ways, and are people who have no experience as a minority lacking representation in media. A lot of dudes in here are saying things like "I don't understand all the people who need to see characters who are just like them, I never feel that need at all" and that's because the overwhelming majority of video game media is specifically designed with a white heterosexual player already in mind as a constant. You don't crave representation because you ALREADY have it. As Catte Doctor and Samantha have both already pointed out, perhaps people in this thread would benefit from listening to the lived experiences of others rather than attempting to speak over them and insisting they don't need to be heard?

The very first comment in this thread was just plain infuriating, and set the course for people blatantly exercising their privilege by labeling the desire of minority peoples to obtain cultural representation as "pandering and whining", abusing another person with transphobic language and rubbing the word "feminism" into the dirt as if it is some sort of swear word.

So, to return full circle to my ORIGINAL point I was making: You really have to question the motivations of those in this comment thread (or rather, they should really be questioning their own) who openly dismiss the idea of elevated female representation in the medium and the inclusion of gender and sexual identity into the zeitgeist. It isn't as if a a bunch of flash games and a handful of bigger releases featuring people of color/queer or genderqueer/handicaps is going to somehow detract from the average 18-35 year old white cis-male heterosexual dude's ability to play Gears of War 4, now is it? So why in the world would it be anything but a benefit to consider these aspects of human identity?