

Why it’s important to talk about Tropes vs. Women In Video Games - MikeCapone
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/19/why-its-important-to-talk-about-tropes-vs-women-in-video-games/

======
revelation
_“The reality is this trope is being used in a real world context where
backwards sexist attitudes are already rampant. It’s a sad fact that a large
percentage of the world’s population still clings to the deeply sexist belief
that women, as a group, need to be sheltered, protected and taken care of by
men.”_

Did she really just generalize about double-digit percentages of the whole
world population?

~~~
lowboy
Maybe there's a source for it and it's not generalization. I'd believe that a
"large" percentage (not the majority, but double digits) of the population
thinks that women need some level of care/consideration by men, and that there
would be quite a few women in that group.

~~~
a_bonobo
It's a fairly large research area, the effect in question is called
"benevolent sexism", in which women are portrayed as being "weaker" (where the
definition of weak is NOT purely physical strength) and need help to get along
in life.

The interesting thing is that benevolent sexism is also widely spread in women
themselves.

Here's a fairly recent paper about the spread of benevolent/hostile sexism in
university undergrads, where benevolent sexism was relatively evenly spread
between male and females: <http://pwq.sagepub.com/content/36/4/432.full>

------
rayiner
"The backlash is less surprising if you remember Tropes vs. Women In Video
Games as the Kickstarter campaign that incensed some gamers so much that they
targeted Sarkeesian with extreme online harassment, much of which is
chronicled by Helen Lewis at The New Statesman. (Warning: It’s pretty vile.)
To cite a few examples: there were malicious edits on her Wikipedia page,
violent and sexist comments made about her on YouTube (and just about
everywhere else online), rape and death threats sent her way, and someone even
made a game on Newgrounds in which you could punch her in the face until she
was bruised and bloody."

Stuff like this makes me think that we're probably not much better than the
people in the middle east/south asia who have these kinds of attitudes towards
women. One wonders what it is about our society that at least keeps these
sorts of attitudes from boiling over into the physical violence you see over
there. Maybe we can build on that.

~~~
Cushman
What is your cutoff for "boiling over"? Rape and violence against women is not
exactly unheard of in America.

~~~
sliverstorm
I think he's speaking of degree, not frequency. Surely you've heard some of
the stories coming out of India and Egypt in the past year?

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bcoates
Does Sarkeesian give any credit to tvtropes.org in this project? The whole
video seems to be a recitation of
[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DamselInDistress/Video...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DamselInDistress/VideoGames)
but without the context and analysis.

------
mrigor
Thunderf00t rebuttals this quite well
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJeX6F-Q63I>

~~~
hudibras
Wow, that video does exactly the opposite of what you say it does.

~~~
scotty79
What do you mean? I think that Thunderf00t very elegantly shows that she
picked one poor example for her video. Then, that her conclusions from her
examples are non sequitur because you could draw completely opposite
conclusions by the same reasoning.

But for me most powerful blow is him showing that she contradicts her own
masters thesis. Her masters thesis was all about criticizing something that
she gave as positive counterexample in the video.

That said I enjoy videos by feministfrequency (especially the one about Lego)
as well as girlwriteswhat that present completely opposite point of view.

Thunderf00t has my utmost respect for confronting religions (Islam included)
and for his "Why do people laugh at creationists?" series and for being actual
scientist.

~~~
pifflesnort
"Thunderf00t"'s rhetoric reminds of Glenn Beck. It's heavy on emotive language
and expression, while relying on extreme leaps of rationalization and logic
that withstand only the most superficial scrutiny.

Anita's video covered the existence of the "Damsel in Distress" trope. It
exists, it's wide spread, and it's a fact.

I don't even remotely identify myself as feminist, and in fact, I'm usually on
the complete opposite side of the political room from liberal feminists, and I
don't agree with a lot of what Anita has to say.

Despite all that, the barely masked misogyny around Anita's work disgusts me.

~~~
scotty79
Thunderf00t is a bit snarky with his commentary but I don't really see the
leaps in his logic. I also don't see misogyny. I think his voice here is
motivated not by his (nonexistent) veiled hatred of women but rather his
really obvious hatred for what he sees as bullshit.

~~~
sliverstorm
I haven't finished the video yet, but bear in mind that (at least as far as I
have seen) challenging feminism is frequently labeled misogyny, in good old-
fashioned "If you aren't with us you are against us" form.

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anabis
There is also an aspect of technical limitation.

Satisfactory modelling flowing hair on current hardware is still difficult.

------
VeejayRampay
Women make up 48% of the game buyers demographic according to the Wikipedia
article:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Female_ga...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_video_games#Female_gamers_as_a_demographic)
(note that there aren't any sources cited there, so to be taken with a grain
of salt). The solution to the women / video games is quite simple from there.
Women should stop buying video games that don't portray women in a good way /
reinforce stereotypes / try to typecast characters.

Video game companies are capitalist companies by nature, they understand the
concept of offer and demand.

~~~
Cushman
> Women should stop buying video games that don't portray women in a good way
> / reinforce stereotypes / try to typecast characters.

Women? _Everyone_ should stop buying them.

~~~
scotty79
Also books and movies about princesses and princes.

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jacques_chester
There is no version of this genre of discussion that does not end in a mess.
And internet-stalking misogyny is squick raised to the power of wtf.

But even the trope-busters are, themselves, tropes (cf. Joss Whedon's parade
of badass waifs).

I have one personal nitpick, though:

> _The messages these popular characterizations send — women are weak and need
> men to protect them;_

Taking a very narrow of definition of "weak", strength sports demonstrate that
actually, men are generally physically stronger than women. (I leave emotional
strength to another discussion).

Granted, a female strength athlete will generally drastically outperform Joe Q
Couchmaster on something like a snatch or a bench press. But compare like with
like -- powerlifters with powerlifters, weightlifters with weightlifters --
and men lift more than women in every weight class.

~~~
nness
I've noticed that any time we hear "strong" or "weak" (in discussions such as
these) we always assume the definitions to mean physical attributes and
abilities, and then it is ultimately comes down to performance, agility, pain
tolerance, etc.

This is dangerous as it looks to add credence to the concept that it is okay
to portray women as weaker because under some averaged metrics they perform
less than the average man.

However, the "women are weak" quote isn't exclusively, or sometimes at all,
related to physical ability. I would say that weak would be any situation or
scenario where a person is not able to escape or solve (Princess Peach may not
be able to defeat Bowser physically, but the writer's haven't had her try and
out-smart him either.)

"Women are weak" isn't exclusively in their ability to win in combat, its
their ability to outsmart, to plan and problem-solve, and ultimately to look
out for their safety. Very few games show female characters doing even that...

~~~
jacques_chester
> _This is dangerous as it looks to add credence to the concept that it is
> okay to portray women as weaker because under some averaged metrics they
> perform less than the average man._

I'm not trying to add credence to anything. It's objectively verifiable that
on physical tests of strength, men outperform women on average and at the
elite level.

> _"Women are weak" isn't exclusively in their ability to win in combat, its
> their ability to outsmart, to plan and problem-solve, and ultimately to look
> out for their safety._

I agree with you. It sucks.

But to me, "... and need men to protect them" implies pretty clearly that the
article was talking about physical strength and/or personal harm.

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michaelochurch
Without all the stereotyping, it's impossible to tell which one is the healer
and which one is the offense mage by hair color alone. It gets really annoying
when a level-10 death knight comes into your office and starts fucking up your
shit.

~~~
nness
Because that makes it right...

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barotto
It's important to talk about it because it shows, once again, that feminists
are batshit insane. Some people apparently still don't get it.

~~~
illuminate
"Some people apparently still don't get it"

Hrm, yes.

