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Topic: The Koopalings promote misogyny?

Posts 101 to 120 of 167

AceDefective

foodmetaphors wrote:

How is changing mostly cosmetic things about a character disrespectful? How does it "make sense" for one character to be gay and another not? That doesn't even mean anything.

For me, it's all about relevance. In story/game where sexuality isn't really all that important, why even bother writing about a character's sexuality in the first place or at least unsubtly bringing it up? I'm not saying don't, I'm saying don't bring too much attention to it if it's not important. Good story telling has all of it's elements mean something in the long run, which isn't entirely realistic but that's an acceptable break. Having a character who has shown zero interest in anything remotely sexual suddenly, with no indication beforehand, be interested in sex is off putting and a complete pace breaker.
The same goes for race; if the character is the sole/rare example of a race and there's no explanation as to why, it becomes off putting. "Why is there one random cat dude in a town filled with dog people?" "Why is he playing it off like it's not a big deal while providing zero reasoning for his appearance?" Then it becomes clear the creator(s) are just trying to pander and while providing no proof of caring. Trans is a bit touchy subject, but the way I'll put it is that unless the game/story makes a big deal about this character gender identity vs physical sex then there is no point in being obvious about that. I believe you should respect people's wishes about being addressed/seen as what they say they are rather than trying to fling their dirt everywhere. That's just how I feel though, I can understand if you don't process this the same way I do.

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foodmetaphors

shaneoh wrote:

You're assuming a lot. Look up tokenism and you will see the problem.

Being diverse doesn't necessitate that there only be tokens.

everything's good and it'll be that way forever!

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martinskrtel37

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA

who the **** pays attention to anything said by some american teenage girl with a youtube channel called "feminist frequency"?

Edited on by martinskrtel37

Octane wrote:

everyone needs to relax and enjoy the games that are released today and stop worrying what Nintendo will do in a year or two from now.

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foodmetaphors

I'll just say, I don't have the time to stay in this thread all night, but I'll try to come back tomorrow. One thing I've found interesting however, is that we demand so much from our game developers, but when it comes to social inclusiveness, suddenly it's okay for them to be lazy.

everything's good and it'll be that way forever!

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AceDefective

foodmetaphors wrote:

I'll just say, I don't have the time to stay in this thread all night, but I'll try to come back tomorrow. One thing I've found interesting however, is that we demand so much from our game developers, but when it comes to social inclusiveness, suddenly it's okay for them to be lazy.

Please don't strawman or put words in people's mouths that were never said, this is a VERY controversial topic as is.
Please try to be civil, or else this thread will probably be locked hard.

Just some random loser who loves a variety of things.
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Electricmastro

If anything, they promote music:

Untitled

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skywake

ZeroZX-Dev wrote:

foodmetaphors wrote:

How is changing mostly cosmetic things about a character disrespectful? How does it "make sense" for one character to be gay and another not? That doesn't even mean anything.

For me, it's all about relevance. In story/game where sexuality isn't really all that important, why even bother writing about a character's sexuality in the first place or at least unsubtly bringing it up? I'm not saying don't, I'm saying don't bring too much attention to it if it's not important.

The interesting thing about it is that when I think of friends of mine who are gay for most of them if you didn't know they were gay you wouldn't think they were gay. They also don't have much in common other than the fact that they are gay and none of them are particularly camp. I don't speak for the community because I'm not gay but I think it would be a mistake to make a point of having a gay character just for the novelty of it. IMO if there is a way to have a gay character in a story I think it'd be better to do it in the way Harry Potter did with Dumbledore. Just a character that has a decent story who happens to be gay.

That said when it comes to the way women have been represented in fiction it is pretty average. To a lesser extent it's also often true of the way men are represented in fiction. There's is too much emphasis on the damsel/hero split, that's a thing. But it's increasingly less of a thing. People whine about Bayonetta but I know of more women like Bayonetta than I do like Peach. I also look at the Tomb Raider reboot and think the same. TBH I reckon most of the great games I've played recently have, if anything, done a better job representing women than they have men.

Edited on by skywake

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"Don't stir the pot" is a nice way of saying "they're too dumb to reason with"

Sean_Aaron

CaviarMeths wrote:

Sean_Aaron wrote:

I cannot see how the word "fraud" can be applied to her.

Paying herself about $70,000 out of the funds raised on Kickstarter sounds like a good start.

Full article for context, please.

@Geonjaha I'm all for criticism of her points, the problem is I'm not seeing any. Mostly people say "what about depictions of men?" (she's not taking about that, but feel free to start your own campaign) or talk about things that are not actually about her central points like details in games. So, yes I do think if you're missing the big picture and getting wound up about a specific game depiction like she wants to take away your toys then you're not being very clever about how your listening and no, I'm not going to take what you have to say seriously.

@foodmetaphors That seems like a fair comment in light of nonsense like the (successful) campaign to re-write the ending to Mass Effect 3 and countless other nonsense we've seen over the past few years.

Edited on by Sean_Aaron

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Geonjaha

> Try to convince people that a problem exists in video games.
> Provide evidence of it to show people that there's a problem.
> All evidence gets pointed out as either falsely represented to fit your narrative, untrue, or unproblematic as no real connection to anything to it is established, only assumed.
> Pretend evidence doesn't matter and that everyone who isn't believing you is stupid.

Sounds like a healthy way to think.

You want people to argue against her point rather than whether or not it is true, which is a ridiculous expectation when people watching it aren't convinced that it is true.

It's like If I started a video telling you that racism was bad, and then proceeded to show you pictures/video of video games starring black leads, and claimed racism against white people was a problem in video games. You'd call me out and say that it wasn't a problem, that I cherry picked my evidence and that it wasn't representative. I suddenly tell you that you should stop focusing on the evidence and instead the big picture, forcing you to have to explain to me "Why racism against white people is good" despite the fact that you know its not, but that its not even occurring in the first place, so it's irrelevant.

Edited on by Geonjaha

Geonjaha

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CrazyOtto

Both sides of the debate have good and bad points.

CrazyOtto

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Dezzy

Aviator wrote:

The gender binary is an entirely artificial and socially constructed division of male and female into two distinctly separate and opposing classes of human being. The gender binary also erases the continuum of gender presentations and identities that fall outside of the rigid masculine/feminine false dichotomy.

Well part of the problem is that there's this idea that gender is entirely socially constructed. Which isn't exactly what you said, but is fairly close. This is what a huge number of feminists have been basing their various social "theories" on. If you do a gender studies class, this is pretty much what you'll be told. Unfortunately it doesn't entirely match the evidence. It's a hugely controversial position in biology and psychology to this day and the answer you get will change quite a lot depending on who you ask. And a lot of people won't even answer it after the Larry Summers incident.
This is actually a really important point to get right because it has huge implications further down the line. If you think gender is entirely socially constructed, you're far more likely to see gender imbalances in various industries as some kind of institutional prejudice and maybe the fact that so few women play FPSs is because they're put off by the sexism that undoubtedly exists in those communities.
Whereas, if you think gender is mostly based on biology, but culture then either emphasises or downplays certain aspects of it, you're far more likely to think that maybe men will just tend to prefer shooting games more than women. And you just accept that as an a fact of nature.
The incredibly annoying part of this issue is that the people who criticise the second interpretation don't understand what is and isn't being said. It's not the same as claiming that having a culture that forces men and women into this binary is a good thing.

Edited on by Dezzy

It's dangerous to go alone! Stay at home.

kkslider5552000

I can understand both sides but you can't really say biology is ENTIRELY irrelevant. Anyone who thinks that is just wrong. No amount of gender bias would've made things as lopsided so many times in sports and the like as they still are at times, quite frankly. Which is unfortunate in a way and hopefully I'm at least partially wrong somehow but...yeah not everything is a social issue. Way too many things at times, but not everything.

I do think the best solution is a very long-term and far beyond video games idea of changing what society thinks younger people (especially teenagers) need to act like depending on gender. Otherwise millions of girls are probably not gonna suddenly decide FPS are the best ever just because there's a few more non-sexy female characters (though it might help...)

Non-binary, demiguy, making LPs, still alive

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LeT's PlAy MEGAMAN LEGENDS 2 < Link to LP

Aviator

Dezzy wrote:

Aviator wrote:

The gender binary is an entirely artificial and socially constructed division of male and female into two distinctly separate and opposing classes of human being. The gender binary also erases the continuum of gender presentations and identities that fall outside of the rigid masculine/feminine false dichotomy.

Well part of the problem is that there's this idea that gender is entirely socially constructed. Which isn't exactly what you said, but is fairly close. This is what a huge number of feminists have been basing their various social "theories" on. If you do a gender studies class, this is pretty much what you'll be told. Unfortunately it doesn't entirely match the evidence. It's a hugely controversial position in biology and psychology to this day and the answer you get will change quite a lot depending on who you ask. And a lot of people won't even answer it after the Larry Summers incident.
This is actually a really important point to get right because it has huge implications further down the line. If you think gender is entirely socially constructed, you're far more likely to see gender imbalances in various industries as some kind of institutional prejudice and maybe the fact that so few women play FPSs is because they're put off by the sexism that undoubtedly exists in those communities.
Whereas, if you think gender is mostly based on biology, but culture then either emphasises or downplays certain aspects of it, you're far more likely to think that maybe men will just tend to prefer shooting games more than women. And you just accept that as an a fact of nature.
The incredibly annoying part of this issue is that the people who criticise the second interpretation don't understand what is and isn't being said. It's not the same as claiming that having a culture that forces men and women into this binary is a good thing.

Would just like to point out that is from the transcript of the episode, not my personal thoughts.

QUEEN OF SASS

It's like, I just love a cowboy
You know
I'm just like, I just, I know, it's bad
But I'm just like
Can I just like, hang off the back of your horse
And can you go a little faster?!

Rexcalibr

The biggest issue I have with her is the fact that in that video, she goes on record and says she "doesn't play video games" and that she had to do a lot of research to make these videos. It's obvious she isn't a fan of video games at all and it makes the entire thing seem so inauthentic and just made for the sake of being problematic and controversial. It makes me question what her motive is and what kind of person she is.

Otherwise, I could actually, to some extent, respect what she's doing because it's an interesting insight.

Rexcalibr

kkslider5552000

The thing is, the only Mario game where the story is even worth caring about are the Mario RPGs, and in those games, she actually does things. Super Mario RPG and the Paper Mario games are actually some of the better examples of doing the overly girly princess tropes well because she still has that personality without it being super 2 dimensional and making her useless(though I think the best example from Nintendo is, of all games, Spirit Tracks).

Edited on by kkslider5552000

Non-binary, demiguy, making LPs, still alive

Megaman Legends 2 Let's Play!:
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Sean_Aaron

Geonjaha wrote:

> Try to convince people that a problem exists in video games.
> Provide evidence of it to show people that there's a problem.
> All evidence gets pointed out as either falsely represented to fit your narrative, untrue, or unproblematic as no real connection to anything to it is established, only assumed.
> Pretend evidence doesn't matter and that everyone who isn't believing you is stupid.

Sounds like a healthy way to think.

You want people to argue against her point rather than whether or not it is true, which is a ridiculous expectation when people watching it aren't convinced that it is true.

It's like If I started a video telling you that racism was bad, and then proceeded to show you pictures/video of video games starring black leads, and claimed racism against white people was a problem in video games. You'd call me out and say that it wasn't a problem, that I cherry picked my evidence and that it wasn't representative. I suddenly tell you that you should stop focusing on the evidence and instead the big picture, forcing you to have to explain to me "Why racism against white people is good" despite the fact that you know its not, but that its not even occurring in the first place, so it's irrelevant.

Except again, that's not what's happening. For example in one (rather excruciating) "rebuttle" video, refuting a recent Double Dragon game as not counting for the "Damsel" trope came down to a final scene after the end credits showing the rescued character kicking the baddie in the balls or some other nonsense. I'm sorry but that's beneath response. You show me someone who actually put in some effort and have sound arguments and I'll watch their vid; mostly they sound like the stuff I read in YouTube comments sections, which is why I don't regard this topic as a real debate.

@Joshua179 One character in a bow and heels isn't a big deal; the fact that this kind of gender marking is so pervasive is. Again it's not about saying "all women wear pink," it's about creating worlds in which all characters are assumed to be male unless you send a message they're not by giving them bows. Now if you don't see a problem with that, that's fine, but other people do because it's kind of like saying women don't really exist unless they're needed for some purpose and if they do exist it's not necessary to do anything with them beyond the barest stereotypes because they're not very important anyway.

As to the biology arguement, yes there are differences between men and women, but their roles in society are mostly social constructs. Biological differences doesn't explain the stuff laid out in any of the tropes videos - unless you want to tell me that men are somehow mentally inferior and that's why sexism exists.

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Haru17

The issue of female representation in games is one of quality and quantity. Not as many games have as many well thought out female characters as male characters and not as many games have as many female characters period (esp. protagonists).

It's not a huge issue when Monster Hunter has some bikini armor and dresses, because there are more conservative dress options and the female player characters are exactly as capable of downing giant beasts as the men. Equality.

Don't hate me because I'm bnahabulous.

Eel

And those armor sets are usually just as embarrassing if used on male characters.

Edited on by Eel

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Aviator

Joshua179 wrote:

At the end of the day it's nothing

Well, no, it's not nothing. And the fact that you're trying to sweep this whole matter under the rug like it's of no importance is one of the reasons why it is a big deal. You're part of the problem.

QUEEN OF SASS

It's like, I just love a cowboy
You know
I'm just like, I just, I know, it's bad
But I'm just like
Can I just like, hang off the back of your horse
And can you go a little faster?!

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