Tropes vs. Women in Video Games Controversy

[Cosmin]

~stuff~

TL;DR fish swim and I'm so tired that I might miss points in my reply, I'm already seeing a comma where there should've been a point.

Are you actually suggesting that the Internet should be monitored and laws passed about behaviour there? Really? Seriously? I smell a trolling bait here, but allow me to retortİ.

As I've always hated the pseudoscience that psychology is for cuddling people that can't deal with their problems because of :effort: - whilst admiring how effective psychiatry is with people that have real problems, I have a passion dismantling any ideology that tends to run with scissors by going to extremes.

First of all, feminism, lexically, indicates a tipping balance towards women. I love and respect the women in my life and my doctor let me out of the cage last week... err. Why call the hand a foot? Why call feminism an ideology that promotes men and women being equal? Isn't equality a better word? In my profession, I am kicked in the balls by the patient and the whole hospital if I say the patient must have his wrist operated when the problem is in his knee.

By explaining feminism as a "normal" movement and extremist feminism as a "radical" movement there's a strange mindbending tendency of getting to call things what they aren't and thus creating a bit of confusion.

Thus we arrive... here...

Someone is making a video blog on sexism video games, ...

Congratulations to all the haters of this thing, without all the slerging this would've just been another circle-jerk video talking about shit everyone already knows and nobody would remember it in a few months time. Now she gets $150,000 and all this publicity, wouldn't be at all surprised if she ends up on Oprah or Helen or something.

Basically it's all about publicity. It's all about being an attention boson because of reasons. It's because a normal discourse doesn't stand out. It's because the news on TV nowadays must start with "Shocking...", "An astonishing turn-around in the X case today" and so on and so forth.

It doesn't matter whether the idea behind the stuff is valid or not. To be pushed through it needs that tabloid spark that will get it read by masses that are more than happy of chipping in 0.99$ as a donation for a "good fight" with "the ebil system".

I do agree on the thing that sexism is a problem. But it's a freaking video game. It's the same with banning Tom & Jerry because they're violent to each other and children might pick up a hammer and smash it into their neighbour's kid head. Image explaining:



Ok now we got that out of the way, time to draw a conclusion, as I'm way too tired to expand on this. Men and women are equal. There is no need to name the women "bearers of our unborn children" because that would cause a ridiculous amount of chuckle, Captain Obvious. Mutual respect should be something normal and it usually is, although it does depend on social, family and education background.

To expand on women in video games not wearing enough body armour for example is just begging for attention and I don't mean any good attention. It is well known that the internet is the internet, where men are men, women are men and little gurls are FBI agentsİ, but also that there are a lot of psychotic people that simply don't have anything better to do than ruin stuff. When going out on a limb into a soon to be war, you don't go in without *cough* body armour.

Trolling and joking on the internet withing certain limits that are defineable only by a certain community that the said person is a part of are certainly tolerable. The rest goes under some laws that define "cyberbullying" and other stuff, which are more or less absurd, depending on perspective and social, family and education background (common sense tells us that someone certainly lacks common sense to insert pornographic stuff on a wikipedia page, no matter which one is that, but it also tells us that the wikipedia owners need to upgrade some of their protocols on accepting articles and/or materials on their site, although they would have to work a bit for that).


I don't want to live on this planet anymore. Bring me my Mach

[Frug]

As I've always hated the pseudoscience that psychology is for cuddling people that can't deal with their problems because of :effort:

*golf clap*

[Chrien]

Why couldn't your first post be like this? You came across as much more reasonable here than in your previous posts, in which I almost subconsciously placed you in the subcategory "intent on living without ever engaging the brain".

Because as I mentioned in my first paragraph, Lallente's opening post undermined any pretense of serious discussion. I like how now hes just going along with the idea that he set it up to troll. He basically sets it up so he can't lose whilst sitting on his high horse lauding it over everyone. I regret now actually wasting my time posting those two paragraphs, I should have stuck to sniping from the edges like Lallente normally does in most threads.

[Wall]

Moving beyond comics, if you consider the typical tv show and what characters they put on you often get a fat guy and a totally hot wife, or a nerdy unattractive guy and a totally hot assistant, etc etc. It's ok to be a guy and be ugly, but not if you're a girl.

Hahaha, what?

Al Bundy : ugly wife
Homer : ugly wife
Philip Banks (Fresh Prince) : ugly wife
Peter Griffin : ugly wife
Tony Soprano : ugly wife

Shall I go on? There are so many examples that I think you're exaggerating when you use the word "often".

[Tyrus Tenebros]

As I've always hated the pseudoscience that psychology is for cuddling people that can't deal with their problems because of :effort:

*golf clap*

didn't read the rest of his sentence then eh?

edit: Not that the animation really reflects this per se, but isn't Lois more or less implied to be the "hot wife" given Quagmire's chasing after her, etc.?

[Frug]

didn't read the rest of his sentence then eh?

It seems some big words you don't know much about have dazzled you. Do tell how you think I missed the second part. This should be good.

[Tyrus Tenebros]

didn't read the rest of his sentence then eh?

It seems some big words you don't know much about have dazzled you. Do tell how you think I missed the second part. This should be good.

I read it as him stating that he thought there's an overabundance of "pop psychology" (such as the endless stream of self-help books and not-quite-scientific life advice types) which was unfortunate, but that practitioners who were able to correctly diagnose and treat actual problems were fine.

I didn't read much more in to it than that. To be fair yes I suppose the way i read it might be a bit of a loose interpretation, but it read fine the way i was looking at it *shrug*

[Loire]

Moving beyond comics, if you consider the typical tv show and what characters they put on you often get a fat guy and a totally hot wife, or a nerdy unattractive guy and a totally hot assistant, etc etc. It's ok to be a guy and be ugly, but not if you're a girl.

Hahaha, what?

Al Bundy : ugly wife
Homer : ugly wife
Philip Banks (Fresh Prince) : ugly wife
Peter Griffin : ugly wife
Tony Soprano : ugly wife

Shall I go on? There are so many examples that I think you're exaggerating when you use the word "often".

Rosy O'Donnell, Reba, Whoopie Goldberg. Ugly is found often in the comedy general but if.you look at television as a whole you'd be hard pressed to find ugly. This isn't a feminist issue though, as it occurs to both male and.female characters.

[Frug]

I read it as him stating that he thought there's an overabundance of "pop psychology" (such as the endless stream of self-help books and not-quite-scientific life advice types) which was unfortunate, but that practitioners who were able to correctly diagnose and treat actual problems were fine.

I didn't read much more in to it than that. To be fair yes I suppose the way i read it might be a bit of a loose interpretation, but it read fine the way i was looking at it *shrug*

So basically you aren't aware of the distinction between psychology and psychiatry. Or you didn't notice the letters, which I guess would be fair. It's an old debate. One I'm a little touchy about. His post is actually good and he's not le dumb but I immediately want to shit all over people who call psychology a pseudoscience because the only part of psychology they're exposed to is stuff they hear on the news or hear from a friend, when it's a big field with a lot of disciplines in it.
Psychology and psychiatry are supposed to overlap a lot. Saying one is a pseudoscience and the other works miracles is an extreme regardless of which one you're promoting. You shouldn't pump people full of drugs just because you think Freud is dumb, and you shouldn't spend all day analyzing the dreams of someone who wants to cut his own skin off with a scalpel.

[Frug]

Moving beyond comics, if you consider the typical tv show and what characters they put on you often get a fat guy and a totally hot wife, or a nerdy unattractive guy and a totally hot assistant, etc etc. It's ok to be a guy and be ugly, but not if you're a girl.

Hahaha, what?

Al Bundy : ugly wife
Homer : ugly wife
Philip Banks (Fresh Prince) : ugly wife
Peter Griffin : ugly wife
Tony Soprano : ugly wife

Shall I go on? There are so many examples that I think you're exaggerating when you use the word "often".

Rosy O'Donnell, Reba, Whoopie Goldberg. Ugly is found often in the comedy general but if.you look at television as a whole you'd be hard pressed to find ugly. This isn't a feminist issue though, as it occurs to both male and.female characters.

Maybe it's just because i'm extremely heterosexual and/or desperate, but I don't think any of the women in those examples reach the levels of fat or ugly as their husbands. Especially Lois. Lois is attractive and they play on it all the time. Marge... yeah I dunno... and the others are okay. Seriously, that's not a counter argument. I think your standards for male physical beauty are startlingly skewed! Then again it's another Wall post.

[Tyrus Tenebros]

I read it as him stating that he thought there's an overabundance of "pop psychology" (such as the endless stream of self-help books and not-quite-scientific life advice types) which was unfortunate, but that practitioners who were able to correctly diagnose and treat actual problems were fine.

I didn't read much more in to it than that. To be fair yes I suppose the way i read it might be a bit of a loose interpretation, but it read fine the way i was looking at it *shrug*

So basically you aren't aware of the distinction between psychology and psychiatry. Or you didn't notice the letters, which I guess would be fair. It's an old debate. One I'm a little touchy about. His post is actually good and he's not le dumb but I immediately want to shit all over people who call psychology a pseudoscience because the only part of psychology they're exposed to is stuff they hear on the news or hear from a friend, when it's a big field with a lot of disciplines in it.
Psychology and psychiatry are supposed to overlap a lot. Saying one is a pseudoscience and the other works miracles is an extreme regardless of which one you're promoting. You shouldn't pump people full of drugs just because you think Freud is dumb, and you shouldn't spend all day analyzing the dreams of someone who wants to cut his own skin off with a scalpel.

I am aware, I was giving him a bit too much benefit of the doubt I suppose, but yes having re-read the way he worded it exactly I can see why the flip... you probably should have quoted the whole passage though

I'm rather more fond of cognitive behavioral therapy (and it's derivation from cognitive psychology) than prescribing drugs as it happens.

edit:

specifically aware psychiatrists are authorized to prescribe drugs while psychologists are not, as my uncle is a psychologist but -not- a psychiatrist (prison psychology, as it happens, and he has quite a few interesting stories)

[Paradox]

Moving beyond comics, if you consider the typical tv show and what characters they put on you often get a fat guy and a totally hot wife, or a nerdy unattractive guy and a totally hot assistant, etc etc. It's ok to be a guy and be ugly, but not if you're a girl.

Hahaha, what?

Al Bundy : ugly wife
Homer : ugly wife
Philip Banks (Fresh Prince) : ugly wife
Peter Griffin : ugly wife
Tony Soprano : ugly wife

Shall I go on? There are so many examples that I think you're exaggerating when you use the word "often".

Rosy O'Donnell, Reba, Whoopie Goldberg. Ugly is found often in the comedy general but if.you look at television as a whole you'd be hard pressed to find ugly. This isn't a feminist issue though, as it occurs to both male and.female characters.

Maybe it's just because i'm extremely heterosexual and/or desperate, but I don't think any of the women in those examples reach the levels of fat or ugly as their husbands. Especially Lois. Lois is attractive and they play on it all the time. Marge... yeah I dunno... and the others are okay. Seriously, that's not a counter argument. I think your standards for male physical beauty are startlingly skewed! Then again it's another Wall post.

I tend to agree, I can't think of very many women in popular culture that aren't somewhat attractive. I suppose exceptions like Oprah or Judy from Richard and Judy exist but they're pretty few and far between. Even female newsreaders tend to be pretty hot.

[Frug]

I tend to agree, I can't think of very many women in popular culture that aren't somewhat attractive. I suppose exceptions like Oprah or Judy from Richard and Judy exist but they're pretty few and far between. Even female newsreaders tend to be pretty hot.

Roseanne. SHE was the kind of fat and ugly that the male examples are. She made her career out of being that way and not giving a fuck, and it was unique. And man she got made fun of for it a lot.

[Wall]

"I tend to agree, I can't think of very many women in popular culture that aren't somewhat attractive"
"you often get a fat guy and a totally hot wife"

I like these shifting goalposts. 'Somewhat attractive' and 'totally hot' are not the same thing.

But I suppose saying "you often get a fat guy and a somewhat attractive wife" doesn't have that same ring of female oppression does it?

[Pacefalm]

Am a bit drunk but will try to make sense.

The people who are offended by this project are irrational. Most of the project-targeted hate boils down to: "she will say x" or "she will suggest y", which is an odd claim to make since the thing isnt even produced yet. However, most of the posts in this thread are unrelated (often trolling) "feminism vs world" type posts which have little to nothing to do with the project.

Contentwise I would be surprised if she actually found significantly more "female only" tropes than "male only". While it is true women are often one-dimensional in games, the same holds for men. Case in point: all shooters with very few exceptions have one dimensional male leads, just to name a genre. Basically I think all videogame characters are cliches but it is more noticable for females because there are fewer counterexamples (since women are generally under-represented in games).

Re: feminism in general, I agree on principle with trying to equalize genders, but I believe that at the end of the day differences in treatment must be maintained. There is nothing more unfair than equal treatment of unequals. I don't mean unequals in the sense that one is "better" than the other, but in the litteral sense that they are not identical. For example you can imagine maternity leave being longer than the male counterpart, you can demand more physically taxing work from males, etc. The genders are not identical and in some cases females are better suited for the job than males and in some cases it is vice versa. Unfortunately there is a taboo on speaking of these differences mainly because of the misogynist viewpoints that are often held alongside...

On the other hand, there is much that can be done still, and there are areas that can still see a lot of improvement (eg. a woman gets paid less for doing the exact same thing). Videogames could be one of those areas, but I think the girl-targeted tabloids and magazines are a much bigger and more important cause of the objectification of women in the mainstream media than games or even porn. I've heard girls who weigh 50 kg call themselves fat. Why? They didn't get the idea from playing too many games or watching too much porn, that is for sure. There's chemistry students in my year who would rather be Kim Kardashian than Marie Curie... It boggles my mind.

Am interested in what the results of the study are. I hope there won't be as much of a shitstorm when it is released.

[erichkknaar]

ITT: People (and I use the term loosely) complaining about ugly girls, who will never even get one of those.

Treat her as you would like to be treated, or make love to your hand, basically.

[Wall]

ITT: People (and I use the term loosely) complaining about ugly girls, who will never even get one of those.

Treat her as you would like to be treated, or make love to your hand, basically.

Hey now, don't worry, it just means more ugly fat white girls for you!

[erichkknaar]

ITT: People (and I use the term loosely) complaining about ugly girls, who will never even get one of those.

Treat her as you would like to be treated, or make love to your hand, basically.

Hey now, don't worry, it just means more ugly fat white girls for you!

I'm not worried bra, I've been married to a feminazi for 13 years.

EDIT: I support her in her humiliation of men campaign.

EDIT2: She's like Attila the Nun.

EDIT3: It's fun watching her shoot down idiots. I can see their brains hurting. WE have a healthy relationship.

[filingo]

sometimes lallantes trolling annoys me, but then i realise that he is single handedly preventing any genuine white knighting from happening as the forum is already resistant to that strain of virus

wp

[Wall]

I'm not worried bra, I've been married to a feminazi for 13 years.

EDIT: I support her in her humiliation of men campaign.
EDIT2: She's like Attila the Nun.
EDIT3: It's fun watching her shoot down idiots. I can see their brains hurting. WE have a healthy relationship.

Yea she sounds awesome.