Scantily clad female characters

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I'm just going to quote an edited version of my previous post because you literally added nothing new to your argument.

i'm sorry, i didn't even know i was arguing.

What is it that you wanted me to argue?

Do you not like boys looking at 3d tits?

What I don't like is women being threatened with rape and violence when the topic of sexism in video games is brought up.

And what, exactly, may influence some male gamers to look at women with significantly less respect? Hmm...

I haven't seen any of that in real life personally..

Have you seen it in real life?

Or just on the internet? because if it's the internet, it's a totally different subject.

Are you seriously resorting to the "if I didn't see it, it didn't happen" argument? Or that online harassment is somehow less valid or damaging? I'm sure Anita Sarkeesian, Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn - whose respective sexist harassment required law enforcement intervention and restraining orders - would be relieved to hear that.

"I haven't seen any of that in real life personally.." is one of the most inherently cowardly things someone can say about sexism (or racism or any form of prejudice or discrimination).

If someone is going to look at real-life females with less respect because they played some video games that had scantily-clad girls in it, well.... let's just say, it's not the game's doing. That individual already has problems. Dont get me wrong, that makes them even more likely to grab said game, but the game isnt the cause of it; in the case of that type of individual, the purchase is just a further a manifestation of it.

Many people though can buy into such a game, and enjoy the characters based on appearance without it having any effect at all on how they view actual, real-life people. Like I said, I can get into some of that stuff myself, but as far as IRL people go... I really dont give a flying fart what they look like. I myself dont exactly look like a fully "normal" male (kinda feminine/androgynous in appearance & body shape) and have been bullied a bit in the past based on that; I'm certainly in no position to judge others, and would not do so. Or consider them as objects. Or disrespect them. There's just no correlation between "wanting to look at anime nudity / near-nudity" and "viewing real-life people as objects" or whatever. Or I guess I could say, the first one does not simply cause the other.

It's like that whole "Grand Theft Auto makes you into a killer in real life!" idea. It's bloody stupid, untrue, and mostly just the sort of thing that exists because the media likes to scream about it to garner attention.

I'm aware and I agree; I'm not the type who, for instance, would blame 'Catcher in the Rye' for Mark David Chapman shooting John Lennon. Everything from kids' shows to TV commercials have influenced unstable people to commit crimes, but that's not the issue surrounding video games here.

This isn't a "lone wolf" situation. Gaming culture as a whole tends to perpetuate and abet sexism and misogyny. The impact of "Gamergate" cannot be understated: there were women - from video game bloggers to developers - who merely brought up the sexualized depiction of women in video games and they received threats of rape and violence, not from one or two unstable individuals but from scores of people in organized protest. Gamergaters posted these women's addresses online and actively encouraged harassment against them. One of them was driven out of their home by police for their safety. This is less about the sexualized depiction of women in video games (though, really, is there something so objectionable about saying "hey, maybe the vast majority of women in video games shouldn't be depicted as sex objects"?) and more about the prevalence of sexism in the gaming community, of which such objectification is the product of.

Gamer culture seems perfectly content with allowing - and in some cases accepting - violent misogyny. True, sexual objectification is present in many forms of media, but there has never been an equivalent to "Gamergate". There's no subjective way of looking at this: you can't formulate a coherent defense in favor of sexist harassment. That this was even an issue to begin with, let alone a massive headline-making debate at that, is astounding to me.

Hmm, I have a hard time with that last bit about accepting/allowing. As a rule, gamers that I've met/seen/heard are not exactly the violent-wacko sort. Most, regardless of their ideas on that bloody stupid debate, are your typical geeks and such. Pretty normal people.

But all in all, this happened on the Net. The Net, by default, is filled with deranged maniacs and trolls. The sorts of people just WAITING for things like this to happen so they can do stuff "for teh lulz", or so they can act without restraint; showing who they REALLY are, which can be worse. I very honestly cant believe for a second that there wasnt a good chunk of the "lulz" behind the whole thing. And you cant really STOP that sort of thing... it doesnt happen. You can type words at them, but to what end? Usually, with crazed idiots like that, it just encourages them and pushes things further. And there just arent any other options. For alot of people, this didnt result in "acceptance" but more a sense of "Yeah, it's happening. What do you expect ME to do about it?" followed by trying not to think about it, which is pretty much how I felt about the whole thing. I sure didnt LIKE that the damn stupid event was happening, or any of the crap behind it, but... I saw little point in jumping into that whole stupid fight, so as there was no other option, I did nothing. Which was the case for many. Yes, I could have hopped onto the keyboard and typed blazing judgement at them, but this would have accomplished nothing at all. So.... ignored it. It would play itself out one way or another regardless of anything I may think about it. And then of course there were those, LOTS of those, that had no idea what it even was. I had to explain the whole thing to every single one of my friends except for one... as they werent forum goers and such, they didnt know what in the hell it was. There was no acceptance or allowance there, as you cant exactly be in a state of accepting something that you dont even know exists.

People arguing against the whole "scantily clad girls" bit are, most of the time, not saying "sure, that also means we can be absolute asshats towards women in real life!!1". Chances are... most of them are just thinking that they like these characters the way they are, and they dont want it changed, and blah blah blah. They're not defending violent sexism (mostly.... obviously, there are your deranged maniac exceptions). Hell, again, wether alot of them are even AWARE of it is often in question. They see someone poking at something they like, in this case those styles of character designs, and go "HULK SMASH!!!11". And yes, believe me, it's way more than possible to be aware of all the arguing about scantily-clad characters while at the same time having not the foggiest damn clue what Gamersgate is. I know there tends to be this idea that, with something like that, EVERYONE knows about it, but that couldnt be further from the truth in most cases. Even despite the apparent size of the event and the coverage of it.

All in all, most gamers as a whole seem fine to me. But just like in any large group, you'll get these random bubbling pools of crazed jerkbags that'll pop up and find some excuse to try to screw things over. That, though, doesnt really reflect much on the group as a whole... though annoyingly, most people seem to see it otherwise.

I'm not sure if much of that made a whole lot of sense... it's nearly time for bed for me here, but it probably at least somewhat gives the idea I wanted it to, maybe. Either way though, I dont think for a second that worrying about the character designs is going to do a damn thing towards solving the overall problem here. All it'll do is cause alot of pointless arguing that'll attract yet more damn trolls. Were it up to me, both sides would shut the hell up, since I get tired of hearing about the whole thing over and over and over, and go have a big discussion about the ACTUAL issue, which is frequent bad treatment of women by men as a whole. Instead of waving flaming pitchforks at fictional characters, scantily-clad or not. I mean, really. May as well go throw sandwiches at bees, for all the good it'll do.

....I just typed that last sentence, didnt I? I'm more tired than I thought.

no.. i'm just saying I've never personally seen it and I was asking you if you have... cuz you're obviously upset about it.. It seems that you HAVE seen it.. if not, i don't know why you would be so upset about it. and if so, i'd like to hear about it.

I think you just took it the wrong way, and went a little too far with it.

Because my original point for saying that(which you never touched on) is that it is much more likely to happen on the internet which makes for a totally different situation. Everyone makes their own internet persona.. I'm sure a lot of people here with aspergers or what-have you, wouldn't even be able to talk to random people like this if it weren't for the internet. Now put that into perspective with people that let out their sexual frustrations. It's a different thing, it's a different subject from real life.

and just for your information, i've spent about a decade posting on sexuality forums on dating websites as a.. umm.. time-wasting hobby for the lulz.. I've seen all kinds of stuff on the internet dealing with sexuality. and we can end up talking about this all day, but i'm getting kind of sleepy and tired of the subject tbqh.

I try not to be too offensive on the internet, but I have to deal with tightwads and jerks in multitudes every time i'm on it.
It just comes with the territory I guess..

I'm known to make a joke or two at someone's expense, but it's not like i have no remorse...I don't want anyone to get hurt.

Online harassment isn't a symptom of video game culture, look at the comment section on literally almost any Youtube video and see how people talk to each other. Go play online on some FPS and listen to how people talk to each other. When you're anonymous and not accountable, you tend to say things you wouldn't say in real life and this can be applied good or bad ways. I don't think the harassment aimed at Anita Sarkeesian is any worse than the harassment being aimed at that Walter Palmer guy right now, I'd say he's probably facing a lot worse to be honest. I don't equate it to the same as harassment in real life, there is no genuine danger and so lets stop pretending that some 14 year old boy in parents basement doing it for the lulz is some real threat. They might send a bunch of pizzas to their house, oh the humanity!

It's all irrelevant to the point anyway, harassment doesn't automatically lead credence to your opinion. You can have a dumb opinion and being harassed too. They're just a**hole and you're still wrong.

Now this might sound a little off topic, but stay with me. There is actually this current airing short anime called Bikini Warriors, it totally looks like this exact problem of kind of lack of respect of women, but the entire first episode is devoted entirely of this issue of game characters with miniscule clothes with no protection being ridiculous, and from there it has been paroding all sorts of silly things from video games, in particular RPGs. For that reason it has been kind of funny.

The scantily clad female characters is a problem, the way I see it is that it kind of perpetuating some silly notions about genders that is wrong. It is awesome when a female character can be as well armoured as any male character. From my own discussions on this topic, largely on Youtube comments, you get a lot of people getting upset thinking that it is not video games fault, or saying they have every right for it to be that way for the target audience. From my own opinion I don't think the topic is quite saying that games are ruining equality, but it is part of a system that is really not changing like it should.

How big it maybe goes right back to the first big heroine of gaming, Samus Aran, who is revealed as a women at the end of Metroid where depending on success has different attire, from my understanding a partial product of its inspiration, the movie Alien. Now there is all sorts of hoo-ha about the sexualisation of this icon, I have been playing the games myself, and it has given me some thoughts on the topic. At the very least Samus is fully armoured when needed, it shows some practicality that other game examples should follow. But I also that I think in particular sexuality is not entirely the issue, another specific character I think relevant to the topic is Bayonetta. Now Bayonetta's clothes may technically be her hair, her clothes largely disappear for more powerful attacks, and in general she is often in some sort of sexual charged position, but I think there is a difference for her. Her look has a valid explanation, really she is often quite clothed, she is a strong character beyond just physical, and really the hammy nature totally makes up for it that she is not some plaything.

Some fantasy games just are not right with the lack of clothes thing. There are some different places that might have undue influences. One game that games that comes to mind is the 3DS game Bravely Default, which saw some censorship in having some outfits made a little more modest, which is far as I am aware actually has many people agree that it is better. So it is not lost that people want some changes where it might be needed. Sexuality is not bad, we can have some where needed, have beefcakes too, but there can be more important things than straight up bikinis in different areas.

For the third time, let me reiterate what happened:

Women spoke openly about sexism in the video game industry. Literal hundreds of men spoke out against them derisively, with several dozen sending them online threats of rape and violence. These womens' addresses were publicly leaked by these people. Then they received dozens of physical threats in their mail. Zoe Quinn was forced to leave her house after she received death threats in her mail. Anita Sarkeesian received drawings of her being raped by video game characters. Somebody actually developed a video game where you beat Sarkeesian to a bloody pulp. These are actions that take far more time and motivation than sending a simple Tweet. And they're only the most notable recipients of such harassment.

This was all because they said "hey, women aren't treated fairly or equally in the industry".

It doesn't matter what the intention was. Words and actions have consequences. In this case, they had very real-life consequences. If somebody sends another person a message, be it through e-mail or physical letter, saying "I'm going to rape you" or "I'm going to beat you to death" and you dismiss it based on your assumption that it was done as a joke, you are effectively part of the problem. When you dismiss the active presence of violent misogyny in our culture by saying "Well, I personally don't know anybody like that", you are effectively part of the problem. When you dismiss the issues of sexism or discrimination as a whole based on the fact that only a (not insignificant) minority are engaged in it, you are effectively part of the problem. I mean, it's not you specifically which is the problem, but it's that exact mentality which cultivates sexism in our society. "Rape culture" is the term. The fact that we come up with excuses as to why we shouldn't take threats of rape or threats of death seriously is a clear indicator that something is horrifically skewed in our perception of what sexism and discrimination entails, and, ironically, does far more to highlight the issues the aforementioned women spoke of.

Do I have the solution? Admittedly, no. And I don't expect anyone to wave their magic wands and make it all disappear, but by refusing to even acknowledge that sexism and misogyny are visible problems in any facet of culture, apathy is just as bad as acceptance.

first of all, i never saw you claim any of that in this thread as fact. the way you talked about it seemed more like an assumption you made that could happen.

and second of all, are you really accusing me of being a part of a problem that the majority of people have no ability to control the matter? You admitted yourself you do not have a solution. so what? ARE YOU A PART OF THE PROBLEM TOO then?

I certainly don't agree with it, and in fact, I've SPENT YEARS of my life trying to deal with misogynists in sexuality forums.(like I've said I've been posting in them for over a decade)

At this point, if you still think I'm a problem, that's on you bud. I have no qualms with myself on the matter. I know what I can and can't do.
I do what I can every time the opportunity presents itself. So don't act like you have some superiority over me when you admittedly have no solution yourself.

I have a hard time rectifying this idea women are so much more oversexualized in video games when you compare it to the rest of popular culture or even real life. Women are active participants in their culture, they compete with each other sexually which is why when I go down to the college there is a bunch of girls with yogo pants, exposed midriffs, tank tops, and short shorts and usually the people that hate them are other women who feel threatened sexually which is why we always have this obsession with "realistic portrayals" which is primarily about elevating their own status. Nobody is forcing anybody to dress that way but they still do.

Video games are probably the most undersexualized medium there is right now, like I said we're basically arguing over video game cleavage which is insane compared to near grotesque sexualization specifically aimed at children particularly young girls. Who do you think is listening to Miley Cyrus and Iggy Azalea? We're not living a wholesome family orientated time, this is the world we live in. The media companies use to have a lot more control over movies/tv/music but consumer demand and the artists themselves no longer tolerated moralistic censorship, they've maintained this control in the video game industry and we have a very narrow moralistic standard of rating video games. Nobody criticizes an R rated movie for sexuality or violence, the type of stuff we see on HBO is not even allowed in video games.

You can argue against this but you're taking the side of religious conservatives and essentially are drawing a connection between seeing and doing which has already been thoroughly rejected by the video game community over the issue of violence which also is of course no where near realistic. That's why these arguments are dismissed out of hand, they're the exact same one whether or not they admit it. Video games are not suppose to realistic, believe it or not most people don't want a dumpy looking heroine dressed up as a man and this includes little girls. People want to escape into fantasy, there might be a reality for gritty reality based stuff and I'm all for it since I believe in free expression and the marketplace of ideas. What this ultimately comes down to for most tho is control, to push their own morals on the rest of populace particularly children.

Last edited by Jacoby on 30 Jul 2015, 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

I was not aware video game characters in general necessarily wore 'normal clothes' in the first place. And IDK ask the artists/video game designers why they decided to go with more scantly clad dress i couldn't say why they designed them that way. On the game I play Leauge of Legends there are female characters more scantly clad, but then some aren't as for male characters you could say some of them are scantly clad as well. I know yes part of it is the female figure with the boobs and what not is attractive so I guess its visually appealing to have female characters with clothing that shows off their figure...But also artists/graphic video game designers make up and draw/design these characters so they may have their own individual reasons for why the character dresses they way they do or just be trying to bring a concept to life...I mean video game characters don't have to be realistic, normal or have any kind of normal dress style video games would be boring if they were all just roll playing of normal every day life, normal clad people.

Also in retrospect normally clad females probably wouldn't have made the game lose all its sales or anything I mean anyone who's playing just for the 'bewbs' probably isn't a very good player and wont progress very far, most people who like Final Fantasy like the story line and the game play more than any other feature.