[MP-Ryan]

-snip-

Nobody is saying that there should be quotas or that there hasn't been progress.  Read what I wrote.  Games are still far more likely to make three-dimensional male characters than female ones.  Male is still the default protagonist state.  The fact that there is progress on this front does not mean the present situation is acceptable.

Did you watch Manveer Heir's lecture?  You should: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020420/Misogyny-Racism-and-Homophobia-Where

[TrashMan]

The fact that there is progress on this front does not mean the present situation is acceptable.

Except it is.
Of all the "issues" in the world, this one is probably the least important of all.

And yelling like a moron at the people building a bridge won't urge them to make the bridge any faster.

Which reminds me...which well-defined 3D character are we talking about here?

[MP-Ryan]

-snip-

-snip-

Women in Croatia gained the vote in 1945.  Women in Italy gained full voting rights in 1946.

Moreover, Croatia's population in 1941 (closest I see in a quick search to universal suffrage date) was about 7 million.  Italy had about 45 million in 1946.

Compare to the US at over 106 million when women gained the vote in 1920, Canada at over 8 million in 1919, Australia at 3 million in 1902, and the UK at over 45 million in 1928.  I haven't included France (comparable to Italy) or Germany (comparable to UK, slightly earlier though) because I'm tired of looking up numbers.

Even if Crotia and Italy, to name two, were bastion's of democratic freedom and rights for women (which they were not), they were much smaller and gained universal voting for women much later than the larger collection of English-speaking democracies that advanced democratic rights generally in the early 20th century.  There is anecdotal evidence all over the world that women in some places were treated nearly as equals in social situations and occupied highly respected roles in society (true, for example, of all the English-speaking countries I just listed), but there is also much greater actual demographic and statistical evidence that women have generally been treated as socially and legally inferior to men in most societies until the 20th century, and still are in many societies today.

[MP-Ryan]

Except it is.
Of all the "issues" in the world, this one is probably the least important of all.

And yelling like a moron at the people building a bridge won't urge them to make the bridge any faster.

This is a thread about gender objectification in games.  If you feel this topic is unimportant, you are welcome to leave it at any time.  There are much greater issues that concern gender equality, I agree (I have argued that in response to GenDisc threads about various eruptions in the games industry myself), but the fact of the matter is that this thread exists solely to discuss this issue, and no one is forcing you to continue to post in it.

Which reminds me...which well-defined 3D character are we talking about here?

I'll make you a deal.  You spend an hour of your day watching Manveer Heir's video first, and then I'll answer that question, since he actually talks about this in his lecture and I don't feel like repeating a exercise in writing that you can simply watch.

[Grizzly]

"Why are you concentrating on X when Y is so much more important?"

[Luis Dias]

It's called "Whattaboutery".

I fully agree with the recent postings by MP Ryan, except for one small detail, when MP tries to share this idea that women fought in battles "too". It's ridiculous, and all the shenanigans we were exposed this month about how many viking women were also soldiers reek of how mind-bogglingly idiotic feminism can be in discussing any sort of scientific or historical knowledge, always skewing and parsing any miniscule flair of a scent of some kind of narrative on how some women were possibly warriors as well as sudden evidence that women were as much soldiers as men. It's completely ridiculous to suggest women beared the same kind of burden in providing their blood and lives to the war machinery of thousands of years of struggle as men did. Yes, there were women soldiers in history. They are called the *exception* for a bloody good reason.

[TrashMan]

*snip*

Exactly what are you trying to prove here? That your country is better than my country?
Don't care about any wikipedia data you dig up (funny how you forget how long slavery was A.O.K. in both US and UK). It is irrelevant and it's only a small piece of the puzzle.

Much greater evidence?
"Much greater" means diddly squat to me, as simply saying it doesn't make it true. Especially given how everything is further filtered and biased.

Oh, the "there's the door" routine?
Cute, but try something better next time.
Yes, I do think the issue is over-inflated, but that is all that I meant by it. If you want to read more into it (stop discussing this right now!) be my guest, but at that point you might as well have an argument with your immaginary friend.

[MP-Ryan]

TrashMan, you are welcome to post some actual evidence that refutes the notion that women have enjoyed fewer rights and protections than men, a premise which you started along in the first place and still haven't actually backed up except for a weak appeal to anecdotal evidence and a statement that the law doesn't/didn't really matter in practice.  Your bland assertions don't cut it.  I posted the voting data to show a clear picture of one particular legal right in which women were long considered inferior to men, and emphasized country data to demonstrate that despite yours and Mobius' anecdotal assertions, legal rights are important and the broad international trend was not one of equality, with a few exceptions.  This is all in direct response to your continued unsupported assertions that women weren't and aren't treated differently than men in any real and broad manner.

As for your comment about "much greater evidence," considering the evidence you've now posted for any of your assertions - for the record, that would be none - I would suggest you stop blustering and actually come up with a coherent fact-based argument.

While I'm on the subject of blustering, saying there are much greater issues, being reminded of the topic of the thread and the fact that your participation in it is voluntary, then blustering and complaining about that reminder is dangerously close to arguing in bad faith.

[MP-Ryan]

I fully agree with the recent postings by MP Ryan, except for one small detail, when MP tries to share this idea that women fought in battles "too". It's ridiculous, and all the shenanigans we were exposed this month about how many viking women were also soldiers reek of how mind-bogglingly idiotic feminism can be in discussing any sort of scientific or historical knowledge, always skewing and parsing any miniscule flair of a scent of some kind of narrative on how some women were possibly warriors as well as sudden evidence that women were as much soldiers as men. It's completely ridiculous to suggest women beared the same kind of burden in providing their blood and lives to the war machinery of thousands of years of struggle as men did. Yes, there were women soldiers in history. They are called the *exception* for a bloody good reason.

You'll note I never actually said they participated on anywhere near the same scale as men, Luis.  However, there is a mountain of historical evidence that women have not been sheltered delicate flowers throughout history, but have fully participated in war and defensive violence in their own right as well, if on a much smaller scale.

[Luis Dias]

In a kind of scale where it would be completely ignored by feminists if it was the other way around (like say men babysitting, men being oppressed by women in the job, etc., etc., etc.). Saying "delicate flowers" is a grave deception. Life was a lot harder for everyone, women included. The sheer pain and suffering our great grandfathers and great grandmothers went through in no way should ever be depicted as "delicate flowers".

This kind of #notallwomen is a distraction to the conversation. I'm also baffled when people make huge walls of text (not you MP) to hammer home the point that women "were scientists too", and then point and discuss the lives and discoveries of some 4 or 5 women scientists wherein I bet only one of those is common knowledge around here. All this in evidence that women's role in Science has been "silenced" in history, as if there's a great conspiracy of historians who forgot to pay attention to women scientists... who were obviously as great as men. The kind of truly bizarre lack of the most basic mathematical intuition in all of these ideas annoys me. /rant

[Grizzly]

Are you by essence talking about these two articles Luis? I noticed your ranting before on the climate debate, where you started ranting about things that were not being discussed in the topic and about people which I have never heard of. Please provide context for your rantings so atleast I can better understand them - it's difficult to reply to otherwise. And at the moment I would actually love to reply.

EDIT: The latter of the two, "We have always fought", is perhaps the most interesting as it directly adresses some of your points. Consider it my reply.

[MP-Ryan]

In a kind of scale where it would be completely ignored by feminists if it was the other way around (like say men babysitting, men being oppressed by women in the job, etc., etc., etc.). Saying "delicate flowers" is a grave deception. Life was a lot harder for everyone, women included. The sheer pain and suffering our great grandfathers and great grandmothers went through in no way should ever be depicted as "delicate flowers".

Whether or not certain feminists would ignore the scale were it men acting in traditionally female roles is irrelevant; small scale still indicates some participation, which was the point I was making to rail against the notion of women as 'delicate flowers' who were coddled and protected from responsibility at home while men were expected to fight and die for their countries/families/etc.

There is a notion among the so-called Mens' Rights groups - some of the ideology of which both Trashman and SkycladGuardian have espoused, be it unintentional or not - that women want more rights than men but are unwilling to shoulder the same responsibilities as men in society, a narrative that is often linked to one or more of (1) military service, (2) defense of home and hearth by violence, or (3) hard labour.

[Luis Dias]

Are you by essence talking about these two articles Luis?

That article is fine insofar as it tries to qwell the idea that certain roles cannot be portrayed by women because that was "impossible". I agree with that assessment, and furthermore, "women in games" is something that is fictional to a point, so all those arguments regarding "verissimilitude" and so on fall absolutely flat on me. Why can't we have pirate women, viking women, etc. in all of our games? I certainly support that kind of inclusivity. Jessh, I still remember that I would mostly play Quake3 as a woman avatar because I felt it kinda expressed my "way of playing" better (that is, flexibility over strength, wild gymnastics over raw power, railgun over shotgun, etc.).

That was not the article I was railing against, but my memory fails me now where I saw it. It certainly linked to this one, however.

No, mostly my rails go against all those feminist articles that heralded a 2011 finding (but only now they got into it?) wherein dead women were found with swords in some british grave. Therefore, women were as much soldiers as men were, 50:50, they all said. It's ****ing facepalmworthy. Here's a video Sargon put up on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9vcRzerT2E

[Luis Dias]

There is a notion among the so-called Mens' Rights groups - some of the ideology of which both Trashman and SkycladGuardian have espoused, be it unintentional or not - that women want more rights than men but are unwilling to shoulder the same responsibilities as men in society, a narrative that is often linked to one or more of (1) military service, (2) defense of home and hearth by violence, or (3) hard labour.

I have no idea if that is a fair representation of what MRAs say, nor do I care that much. I merely think there's an obvious sexual dymorphism that has contributed immensely to what we refer to as "gender roles" throughout history, and that there's something to say about how the perceived privilege of men might not have been the outright abhorrent thing we take them to have been, considering that men's fate was a lot more dangerous and in many ways, fatal. If the idea is to paint women as "delicate flowers" count me out of it, at least personally. I do think that privileges and duties were a lot more assymetrical in many respects and that nowadays a lot of those ideas feel so alien to us that we cling to the most simple idea we have to explain them: sexism, mysoginy, women's oppression.

But I do wonder if this oppression was coming from the patriarchal ideology itself or just the material realities at hand, or at least I wonder how much we should attribute to the ideological answer. I don't think it is 100%, but if you ask me where I should put a percentage I am genuinely clueless at that.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Breaking news: some people misinterpreted a scientific study! On the internet! Since none of them seem to be on HLP, though, bringing it up reeks of declaring war on straw.

[SkycladGuardian]

There is a notion among the so-called Mens' Rights groups - some of the ideology of which both Trashman and SkycladGuardian have espoused, be it unintentional or not - that women want more rights than men but are unwilling to shoulder the same responsibilities as men in society, a narrative that is often linked to one or more of (1) military service, (2) defense of home and hearth by violence, or (3) hard labour.

Not all women. But some. And what's wrong about the MRA?

On an earlier note on suffrage. It was indeed connected to military service, though indirectly by the right to own land, since in the Middle Ages every free man owning land had to render military service to his liege, or pay him an approbriate sum. Though the reason behind suffrage for land owners was that only these would pay taxes (property tax).  In revolutionary France, men who did not have suffrage could even be drafted.

[666maslo666]

There is a notion among the so-called Mens' Rights groups - some of the ideology of which both Trashman and SkycladGuardian have espoused, be it unintentional or not - that women want more rights than men but are unwilling to shoulder the same responsibilities as men in society, a narrative that is often linked to one or more of (1) military service, (2) defense of home and hearth by violence, or (3) hard labour.

There is also the opposite and just as wrong notion among certain feminist circles, which love to argue how men allegedly had it better or have it better overall than women, basically pointless and subjective opression olympics, or so called male privilege (while in reality the privilege very much varies based on the matter in question). This toxic notion devalues the male perspective and the considerable suffering of men over the course of history. Symptoms include putting undue weight on voting rights etc. while ignoring the things you mentioned or other systemic disadvantages males faced, or dismissing them as the fault of "the patriarchy" (as if that makes them any less acute even if true).

I guess the bottom line is, reasonable people, feminists or not, tend to focus on individual issues (everyone should have equal voting rights, property rights, equal military service laws etc) while not making broad inflammatory statements about who had it better which are entirely subjective and serve no good purpose whatsoever.

[Luis Dias]

Breaking news: some people misinterpreted a scientific study! On the internet! Since none of them seem to be on HLP, though, bringing it up reeks of declaring war on straw.

The viking idea was caught on every feminist circles, especially those who are worried about gaming. On twitter, Anita started a discussion surrounding one of her "harrassers" who was telling her that women weren't soldiers back then, and immediatelly you could see the barrage of her followers mocking the guy (which I actually think is fair, that dude had a really wrong idea to tweet femfreq, period) but simultaneously referencing these "news" and how ignorant this moron was, how history is actually showing women were soldiers, how it was 50:50, etc.

[Grizzly]

That is actually true up untill the last part - There are quite a few armies which have employed women in the field troughout the ages (Israelis, Russians, Persians, and I would say Vikings as well - you don't get buried with your sword if you don't own a sword and you don't own a sword if you don't know how to use it)- not so sure about the 50:50 ratios.

[SkycladGuardian]

There is a notion among the so-called Mens' Rights groups - some of the ideology of which both Trashman and SkycladGuardian have espoused, be it unintentional or not - that women want more rights than men but are unwilling to shoulder the same responsibilities as men in society, a narrative that is often linked to one or more of (1) military service, (2) defense of home and hearth by violence, or (3) hard labour.

There is also the opposite and just as wrong notion among certain feminist circles, which love to argue how men allegedly had it better or have it better overall than women, basically pointless and subjective opression olympics, or so called male privilege (while in reality the privilege very much varies based on the matter in question). This toxic notion devalues the male perspective and the considerable suffering of men over the course of history. Symptoms include putting undue weight on voting rights etc. while ignoring the things you mentioned or other systemic disadvantages males faced, or dismissing them as the fault of "the patriarchy" (as if that makes them any less acute even if true).

I guess the bottom line is, reasonable people, feminists or not, tend to focus on individual issues (everyone should have equal voting rights, property rights, equal military service laws etc) while not making broad inflammatory statements about who had it better which are entirely subjective and serve no good purpose whatsoever.

Couldn't have said it better. Though I got entangled in the voting rights argument...