Something Needs to be said about the sexism in this game

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Again:

As a man, I spend most of my life cupping both of my nuts in fear that Samus will hit them, for no reason at all

And how is it wrong for it to be Adam in particular? How does it irreparably damage Samus' character beyond repair? How does Adam represent abuse against women? What I was saying he could represent is the power of "the man" keeping her down, but that is not the same thing. Her having looked for a familial father figure in him while he is instead a CO first, is not the same thing as it being an inherently abusive relationship. The real reason he makes her keep back all her firepower, it is because she is an outsider for the operation, of course he would personally trust her, but it would damage the authority of his position in the Federation if he just let her do whatever she wanted in the top secret facility that he was now responsible for. So not only is he keeping Samus from going into areas she should not, by having her only use approved tools he can show that he had proper command of her just like the other soldiers on his team, to even try and compare with Samus' suit the Federation has to create big bulky suits that pretty much make them walking tanks, her Chozo tech is not anything to be taken so lightly.

And even so, Samus does not eve wait to be told to use her heat shield for the fire area before she decides to run through it. Is that Samus being tortured by Adam, or is that doing whatever she wants within the restraints she has been given. Indeed it is a weird part of the game, but really the point of it all was to was as a game mechanic was really to make her feel strong that she could go from being so damaged to being there no problem, the other soldiers would have been burning up like she was, yet using the full power of her suit allowed he to traverse there. And there is the complaint that another person under the circumstances of say using her suit, well that is void as not just any other person could use it, Samus is especially trained in its use, she is the one who has the fortitude to use it efficiently and probably limit the damage it could use if wielded incorrectly. And even she has moments where she struggles to properly keep it when in highly stressful situations that are more than being in combat. In the situation, Anthony being killed in the fight with Ridley was more than Samus failing to save someone it, it was something that filled her with rage which she could then focus to overcome her fear, rage she had let run its course previously.

Adam is not just some representation of Samus being abused and being told to take it. Despite even one of his last moments could be taken as him telling her shut up and do what he says. What he is really doing to stop Samus' from doing the same old act within the restrictions she has been given, that the Metroid in Sector Zero would even be tough for her. His higher ups would want the Metroid in that sector as samples, yet he decides to blow the whole sector up.

The Varia Suit is not firepower!
Adam also apparently thinks that Samus would be stupid enough to let off a Power Bomb without checking for people first.

One of the worst things is that Samus would literally prefer to burn to death than defy Adam's orders.

He abuses her! He is cold and abrasive towards her, treats her like a tool to be used or a child to be ignored, manipulates her emotions, forces her to follow his orders to the letter, yells in her ear while Ridley is roaring at her, shoots her in the back, physically restrains her, slams a door in her face while she's emotionally distraught, and kills himself to wound her further.

Adam just guesses and 'thinks so' that the Metroid that nearly killed Samus was freezable because it was a hatching. He guesses!

I'm sorry for being so passionate about this, but this is one thing that can legitimately fill me with rage. In all other situations I'm usually the sweetest and gentlest person around.

You really think he goes: "I am a big tough man, so I am slamming a door in Samus' face while she is sad, then I am going to kill myself to make her feel really hurt"? No he is not doing that, and thinking so is just projecting some idea of how a man thinks without looking at it from his perspective.

He is not cold and abrasive 'just' towards her, he is a professional. There is no case of him going out of his way to manipulate her emotions for something. Rather than singling her out to forces he to follow his orders to the, he treats her like all the other people in his team that have to follow his judgement. When he is yelling at Samus over Ridley it is the case that she is essentially having a PTSD episode, similar to say a soldier suddenly recalling the time their friend blew up right next to them, he does not know how to handle the situation other than try and be commanding. When Adam shoots her, has her restrained, closes the door, and sacrifices himself, he is disabling Samus in a distracted moment, and stopping her from doing something really dangerous which is the fault of the sins of the Federation, which Samus probably wrongly thinks is her fault because that is where they got the samples from. It is the Federation's fault, and Adam takes responsibility.

I am sure the allusions fill you with rage, but something that fills me with rage is when people make assumptions just because they are male. Not to get too personal, although I have not had it as bad as some, something that deeply affected me when I was a child was when I played a game of tag in class, and I happened to tag a female classmate on the chest. It was an innocent act had absolutely no ill intent on my part that I had no idea of any problems and I don't even think I touched anywhere in particular, but the girl took it to the teacher and she took it no argument to put me as a little pervert who tried to feel up my classmate. The teacher assumed something of a little boy, and I was just made the bad guy, males are predatory and if a situation looks like a man is trying to hurt a woman, then that is what it is. It hurt me a lot as I am always trying to be respectful and do the right thing. And also hurt in high school when I heard some girl who was salty about her boyfriend saying that all boys are a***holes, like I was inherently bad, and despite the assumption I was the one sexually harassed in High school where a few girls thought it funny to squeeze my butt. But I don't hold any of that as being some inherent part of girls.

I am otherwise the first to call out sexism, I actively stand against abuse in all forms, and actively seek out female characters who can hold power beyond what males might have. I am disgusted by a lot of media where women are turned into just a pretty face with no dimensions, and I hate situations where female characters are strongarmed by male characters with their agency removed to make them some prize to be won, tied up as some man stands over them to show them how weak they are so some man can come in to complete a power fantasy. But Other M does not actually do that, and it is people who go in try to find those things that they find those sorts of reasoning, Samus was a badass in the game, and although I think the same game could have been done with Samus as a dude, I am happy that I got to play such a strong female character.

I am sorry if it looks like I am trying to pressure you into feeling a certain way. I am sure you have your own reasons of why you may be more sensitive to situations that look like what the game has. It might just plain be a fact that we both interpret it in a different way, and it feels like a betrayal to who we consider ourselves to be to bend over to accept the other point of view to be true in this case. I know that my opinion in regards to the game is actually the unpopular one, and was something that stopped me from personally experiencing it for years.

And you sticking up for your opinion, Kuraudo7777, shows how much you look up to Samus as a Heroine, that we have all too few examples of.

Abuse.
From the Latin ab ['from'] and uti; plural form usus ['to use'].
Definition: to use wrongly; to treat badly; bad treatment; insulting words; to intentionally harm another person.

Adam does all of those things and more, and one of the worst parts is that he does not receive any backlash from his actions, and is instead treated like a hero at near worshipful-levels by both Samus and the game itself. Case in point, even after Adam's death, he still shoves Samus aside: the final bonus level is retrieving his helmet. HIS. HELMET.

I guess we have reached the point where we either need someone else's opinion on the matter, or we need to take these words into consideration: 'Would you rather be right, or would you rather be happy?'

The real only time he caused harm to her was when he stopped her from entering the area where she would be in bigger danger, that he sees it as the bigger harm to her to let her continue on into the area. Samus' aim against collateral damage would have meant she would have gone in and probably got herself killed, the only answer was to cause enough damage to have it ejected. And it was more than taking the achievement of a goal, it was him taking responsibility of the team leader after he had lost all of his men.

A good character actually has a weakness somewhere of something they are not, and for Samus it is a leader, if Samus was tallied up as a D&D character her charisma would be bellow average while her other stats are high. And is a part of why I think Samus fits so well into lone wolf, or being able to follow orders even to the detriment of herself, but not herself being a leader. But to Samus this is what makes Adam a big deal to her, he is a leader she wants to show worth to, probably thinking higher than the man he was, because that is the sort of person she is. My only logical understanding of the it taking so long to put heat shields up is that Samus does not wait for him to give instructions, she runs into the area and ridiculously does put shields on because she sees that is what she was told, not the given permission to go there in the first place. Adam is probably taken aback that she did that and did not activate it herself as a reason he needed to physically step in. It was not Adam abusing power over her to make himself feel stronger.

Does anyone else feel courageous enough to offer their own opinion [or have enough free time to read through all three pages]?

Bradleigh just stop. Your a man youll never understand sexism like Karudo does. When a lady complains about sexism its not your place to argue. just apologize for what shes going thru.

^Thank you and I appreciate the effort, but there's no need to be so blunt.

The only solution I can see is to find a pair of mating snakes, and have Bradleigh separate them, and let him live as a woman for awhile [this is, of course, is a reference to the rather humorous Greek myth of the man who did just that and was stuck as a woman for ten years].

CF, men don't have the same experience of sexism as women do, but in a situation with an open invitation to give an opinion, they may justifiably consider it rude to have their opinion requested and then dismissed as irrelevant.

K doesn't seem like in need of a shield here. Read the thread.

This makes me really kind of sad, and flies in the face of a lot that I stand for. Indeed from my own personal experience it is hard to relate to the troubles faced by women personally. But I am going to put in every effort I can to try and understand, because that is what I as a human being want to do, be able to understand something that I should not be able to do. And if I can help retain the strength of a strong character.

Taking this a little off topic I want, I want to bring up one of my favourite anime, Kill la Kill. The reason being that early on I considered it very sexist because the strong female main character is forced into skimpy clothes, often perved on, in general put in some embarrassing situations, and there is something that could be taken as rape like. But these impressions are totally undone by the main rival/early villain who exudes a strength in who she far beyond any lame expectations anyone would have because she is female, Satski Kiryuin

The true power to fight sexist subjects is not to have its absence, that is just ignoring the subject. If a character is able to have strength that goes beyond those petty expectations that they will let themselves be held back, that for example they would be weak because they showed skin or something similar an outfit. The anime has all the ingredients that perhaps female characters be reduced and disempowered, but it actually becomes an exercise of how women can keep their power in the face of such themes.

Whether something is sexist should not be left up alone to the struggles they face, but how a character can keep their power in the face of it, even if they have that power occasionally taken from them. And I think Samus stayed empowered.

I have lots of thoughts on this topic, if we're going beyond Metroid. I disliked the handling of parental abuse in Your Lie In April, but I didn't feel invested in the character, so I didn't feel betrayed. I just thought about the motivation of the author.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

Applying the Bechdel Test to anime yields interesting results. The female characters usually have a relationship that doesn't involve the male characters, even in harems.

I haven't played many first person games with storylines that lend themselves to this type of critique. Rockstar games typically depict scenarios where women get treated badly, but also feature women behaving as badly as men with as much agency.

I've recently noticed a rather disturbing trend in Natsuki Takaya's three manga, Fruits Basket, Twinkle Stars, and Liselotte & Witch's Forest. The main heroines [Tohru, Sakuya, and Lise] are always sweet, gentle, puts everyone first, denies their own needs or feelings, has suppressed trauma/abuse of some sort, and is unfailingly kind to everyone. The main love interests [Kyo, Chihiro, and En] are verbally, emotionally abusive/acts like a jerk to everyone [Kyo], outright states hatred of the main heroine and treats her coldly [Chihiro], or after losing memories, acts rudely and undermines the heroine's efforts [En]. While the lover interests do soften and become kinder after awhile, the fact that they treat the heroines so terribly to begin with is quite disturbing and seems to send the message that 'love redeems, so stay in a relationship no matter what and everything will be fine'.

Perhaps love can conquer some anger. Should writing ignore that? When it comes to priests or officials, I don't want them to advise that in cases of abuse. I allow authors greater latitude. I support the first amendment as written, so if someone writes and someone complains, and they talk, I expect success.

Notably, women who write games which offend some male feelings get worse abuse than men who write games that offend female feelings. I've read stories from both, and the women tend to write more balanced critiques, imo, and get worse abuse by far.