Nintendo quite specifically called Samus a male in the instruction manual to the first game. Clearly you didn't read the post where Navi copy/ pasted that.

Also just because every industry is guilty of it doesn't make it OK. In fact, in this very tread (if you had bothered to read the serious conversation from a few pages back) you would have seen that I took a crack at the film industry for objectifying women in The Avengers movie. "Sex sells" is a horribly cynical way of pulling in eyeballs, and I can only hope that we as a global culture get to the point where we educate kids enough that they don't just accept this and pretend it's not a problem. The last 18 pages of this thread proves there is a long, long way to go with that dream though.

And no, there is "winning" with me (not sure how I became the sole spokesperson for the feminist movement, but thanks I guess). A freaking cheerleader character "won" with me. It is clearly not that hard for a corporation to come up with a genuinely empowered female character without pretending she's a man first and dressing her up like a man.

The problem here, and none of you seem to get this - the Japanese society doesn't have the same interest in gender studies that we have in the west. In fact, the old way, where women are the housekeepers and men are the breadwinners? That is still a cultural trait in Japan.

It amazes me that I had to be the one to come up with this "defense" for sexism in Japanese games - this is one of the less pleasant culture quirks in Japan. But there you go. I just gave you the first genuine counter to my argument in this thread so far.

According to English language rules, the correct singular pronoun to use in a situation where you don't know the correct gender to specify for whatever reason, is in fact "he". And to make matter worse, Japanese doesn't really have gender-specific pronouns that would have been used in the context of a game manual. So you can blame all of this on translation issues, I'll bet. Heh.

No, no no. The only time it was ever considered acceptable to use "he" as the gendered neutral term since the feminist movement began was when its use was disclaimered at some stage. Which is isn't in this particular manual.

Further to that, how is it so hard to look at the original sprite for Metroid and not realise that there was no indication, whatsoever, that it was a woman under that armour? Nintendo did nothing, whatsoever, to indicate that the hero of this game was a woman. THAT IS THE PROBLEM.

everything after this is white noise to me

This is an important point and something that shouldn't be brushed over. I don't think we should avoid criticism of Japanese media on the grounds that there is a cultural gap on this sort of thing. Having Peach be kidnapped constantly, having her bake a cake Paper Mario or having Zelda panic at the sight of a mouse in Spirit Tracks is nothing compared to the sort of trash that exists.

Complaining about the way women are portrayed in Zelda, which has actually been pretty damn good in recent years, is like complaining about a party going "out of control" in Syria. You could argue it's a problem but it's probably a better use of time to be worried about the snipers, tanks and planes dropping explosives.

Further to that, how is it so hard to look at the original sprite for Metroid and not realise that there was no indication, whatsoever, that it was a woman under that armour? Nintendo did nothing, whatsoever, to indicate that the hero of this game was a woman.

Why does it matter? Would we not have this discussion if the suit was pink with high heels?

You don't need to explain that to anyone here. We've all seen Metroid: Other M.

This is an important point and something that shouldn't be brushed over. I don't think we should avoid criticism of Japanese media on the grounds that there is a cultural gap on this sort of thing. Having Peach be kidnapped constantly, having her bake a cake Paper Mario or having Zelda panic at the sight of a mouse in Spirit Tracks is nothing compared to the sort of trash that exists.

Complaining about the way women are portrayed in Zelda, which has actually been pretty damn good in recent years, is like complaining about a party going "out of control" in Syria. You could argue it's a problem but it's probably a better use of time to be worried about the snipers, tanks and planes dropping explosives.

There are plenty of examples of cultural traits that are historic in the sense that the same culture has had the same approach to something for centuries for decades or centuries, but it is still, universally, something worth criticising.

Wand an easy example? Female circumcision. There we go. We don't (and shouldn't) accept part of many middle eastern/ African cultures as "just part of the culture." As someone who has spent a lot of time in Japan and is very familiar with Japanese culture, I'm comfortable when I say this : Japan is in desperate need of a rethink when it comes to gender politics.

That was a very roundabout way of getting to my point in relevance to your statement - one of the most efficient ways of getting a message through to the population is through the mass media. That is why the dictatorships around the world try and censor the popular media channels. Gaming, especially in Japan, is a very, very mainstream media, and therefore it could be used to great effect to affect a change in Japanese attitudes towards gender.

skywake I think you botched your quotes, not a big deal but it's confusing.

Yea that's true too, but I think our discussion was fruitful without taking that side path.

@All: I think Waltz gave a good summary of his points, if you want the blow by blow just read back some pages.

I noticed before you posted and I don't know how it happened... but I've fixed it now

@skywake Okay...? Well if you don't bother to read what I post then you don't even know what I said. I said I could care less if Link was a girl.

@Treverend
It's a pet peeve of mine second only to people saying "an holiday" or "an horrible" aloud without a very strong cockney accent..........

Why single out female circumcision? Male circumcision is just as bad and it's practiced here in the States as part of OUR culture (assuming you're from the US, I'm not really sure how it is in other countries).

Honestly I can kind of see a reason for why gender politics are the way they are in Japan. If it's legal, but not culturally acceptable for a woman to work after having a child, then there's always someone at home taking care of the kid, and the economy can be geared towards families with a single breadwinner. This is as opposed to how it is in the states where you have to have both parents working high paying jobs to afford a middle class home, and hire a babysitter or take your child to daycare. Just imagine the rush of women joining the workforce in Japan if it was suddenly culturally acceptable for them to work all the time. Their economy is bad enough as it is. It's even harder over there to find a job than it is here in the States. No need to double the problem by doubling the workforce. Not to mention, do they really need more incentive to stop reproducing when their country is aging itself into oblivion because no one seems to be making babies? Yeah, it's unfair. But at the same time it makes perfect sense...

No, it's really not. Not even close.

@Neoproteus: Male circumcision is also practiced in the world and viewed but The_Fox is right — no, it's not on the same level as female circumcision, not by a long shot. I can't go into details as to why exactly because this is a family-friendly site, but you can figure it out for yourself if you do the research on what exactly is removed during female circumcision, the process and tools normally used, and the people who usually perform the 'operation'.

I'm going to go ahead and end this topic here. it's been a swell trip, guys, and hopefully some eyes have been opened by the arguments presented herein, but we've gotten too far away from the original topic if this is the route we're going, I'm afraid. :3