DudeSean wrote:
WhiteKnight wrote:
Because you seemed to think that when I say "Samus is a man" you think I'm being literal.
She's a male character. Having a couple of digital polygons in the chest and long hair doesn't magically make her a she. The characterisation is male. If the film industry has discovered ways to create strong female characters that are still recognisably female, I see no reason that the games industry can't do the same.
This discussion is going to all kinds of silly places, as is usual when you've got people without any learning in gender studies trying to argue the topic. It reminds me of the time that I had an argument with a dude that thought that a chainmail bikini on a female barbarian in a RPG is totally appropriate and feminist because the female is a "strong character."
How do you figuratively be a man? I don't see how she's masculine.
She's a female character. Nintendo never said she was a male. If anything, Nintendo was pointing out how stupid people are for assuming that Samus was a man. At least, that's how I thought of it back when I was a kid and beat Metroid.
There's no winning with you. If they make the female too much of a stereotypical female then you call it sexist. If they don't make her enough like a stereotypical female then you call that sexist. When it comes to movies, it's a lot easier to convey the characteristics of the character. When it comes to a video game, it depends more on your own perception. Whatever the game doesn't tell you, you fill in with your own thoughts. You want the games to be sexist, so they are. To people who don't want the game to be sexist, it's not.
It doesn't help your case when you resort to condescending to others to try to prove your point. Being condescending doesn't actually make you better than anyone else.
As far as attire for women, it's just a fact that sex sells. Every industry is guilty of it.
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.