Retreading "feminism"

Here is another angle:

As the author of a story (even if it's just the bio of your ingame avatar) why create a character that is NOT sexually attractive to you?

Sexuality is orthogonal to the competence or empathic qualities of a character, so why not include it, unless some other aspect of the character specifically calls for them not to be attractive, or for them to be asexual? Even if just so that they can contrast with the more attractive characters?

On a related note, it is possible to divide all stories/protagonists into a few buckets:

1: "This Happened"-type stories that are intended to evoke a feeling of realism. Many Horror movies are this, along with most Historical. Most protagonists in most stories are intended to appeal to the audience, but these are least likely to do so via sexualization. If a character is attractive, it's just a quality, not the point of the character (unless it is also the point of the story).

2: Empowerment Fantasies, such as most action-adventure and fantasy pieces. These characters are usually ideals/icons that the author aspires to, or projects that their demographic wants to aspire to. These characters are usually sexy (however the author or the Meddling Executives paying for the media define that) and there are often ancillary characters around just to provide them and the audience with sex of one form or another.

3: "You Too"-type stories, where the protagonist is the object of an Empowerment Fantasy, but is specifically singled out to be some kind of Everyperson, or even handicapped or isolated in some way. These characters are almost never conventionally sexy, but are almost always attached to someone who is. Even Shrek could be seen as an example of this.

It all comes down to the type of story you are telling and on what level(s) you want the characters to appeal. I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with choosing to make the way a character appeals to be a sexual way.

Once you decide to make a character sexy, however, that's when you enter some interesting territory. "This character is going to be sexy. But to whom? To me? To my target audience? Only to in-story characters?"

I think that where a lot of authors fall down (or are knocked down by those pesky meddling executives) is when they decide to make a character sexy without thinking up the to whom and why, as if there was a universal set of values that was held up as sexy to everyone 'normal'.

And recursively over time, that undefined, unspoken set of values becomes indeed true.

A thought for perspective:

Roughly 200 years ago we were in the Victorian Age. At that time, men were not sexy. What I mean by that is, by the standards of that age, it was (outwardly) considered immoral to want to have sex with a man, regardless of whether you were male or female.

The current fixation with a supermodel body type, chainmail bikinis, and such? Dust in the wind.

Want what you want. It's like a corrolary to Sturgeon's Law: no matter what it is you want, there are at least a million people on this planet who will beleive you crazy and dangerous for wanting it.

As it happens, not all of my characters are sexually attractive to me (although they are all appealing to me in some way) but that isn't my point.

Part of your question seems to be a variation of: "Is there something wrong with wanting characters to be appealing in a certain way that may detract from their mainstream sexuality?"

My short answer is a resounding NO.

But your question brings me back around to the question of 'why is being sexy looked at as a negative so often? Why, in the case of female characters, is it often to some extent in opposition to their appearing strong?'

When I look at anime, I see a whole group of sub-genres built around male characters that are physically less intimidating than the females around them, or that are willful, effective, intimidating characters in spite of being physically small, soft, and emotionally sensitive.

I don't see nearly as much of that in the West.

In the West, it still seems to boil down to the idea (which may only exist in the collective heads of the Meddling Executives) that in order to be attractive, a woman must at least pay lip service to the idea of needing a male protector (in a soft appearance, if nothing else). The corrolary being that to be attractive, a male character must be sexy/cute (semi-optional) and must at least pay lip service to the idea of being able to protect a female partner.

The only Western movies that spring to mind that counter my own argument are Geena Davis movies of all things: The Long Kiss Goodnight and Cutthroat Island. The first one that came to mind was Terminator 2, and that had The Arnold. I suppose you could make a case for the Alien movies.

[QUOTE=Eva Destruction;3912228]They would, since we can't make a butt to match.



The arms are still too puny though. No matter how much of a muscular texture you put on them, they still can't be anything more than "wiry." While this would be better than what we have now, it's much prefer the ability to thicken them up a bit....or in the case of male avatars, thin them out.



It entirely depends on the context. Are you talking about a walking blow-up doll, or are you talking about a person who also happens to be sexually appealing? In other words, are you saying "she's competent and smart and sexy" or are you just saying "she's got a great body?" In certain contexts the second is acceptable. But we are playing a teen-rated game and most of those contexts have no place here. We are here to punch bad guys or good guys in the face. If we want to look good while doing it, great, but the primary concern here should still be the face-punching.

That is my objection to Sister Psyche's portrayal, especially as it contrasts with BAB on the tutorial splash page and pretty much everyone else on the SSA splash page. If I'm a civilian having my purse stolen, I wouldn't expect her to save me. I wouldn't expect her to do much of anything teen-rated. BAB can save me, she can go stand over there and look pretty. That is objectification, and no, it is never a good thing.
[QUOTE]

Context for TEEN Rating? Teen Rating is all about graphic details.

Why they can have avatars running around with almost nothing on, because as long as certain parts of the body aren't shown, it's able to be rated as TEEN.

In fact, the only they you can't get away with in a TEEN rating is excessive swearing.

Mention of sex, raep, murder, incest, racism, just about anything, can fit into the TEEN rating, if you avoid actual detailed accounts of all of it.

They can easily have said Tyrant and Dominatrix are in a relationship/dating with each other, kept it a TEEN rating, as long as we didn't get an erotic novel about it.

Lots of killing? Well then, don't show blood!

What? You think movies got more violent? Watch an old John Wayne movie. Lots of deaths! It just wasn't graphic. The bad guys (and good guys) were shot and fell over, versus today's "Oh look! We see his spleen and brain matter all over the pavement!"

As for Sister Psyche's portrayal on the splash page...she's looking on in horror as meteors strike down on galaxy City destroying everything. The "Oooh my gawd..." look. While Babs is showing the after effect look of it all of "Gonna kick these Shivan #&%#!"

Maybe the problem is less of how Sister Psyche is drawn, and more of a problem with people thinking a hero can't have an "Oh no!" look or perhaps the artist couldn't draw an "Oh no!" look, or perhaps other things went through people's minds because they see sexy Sister Psyche in a pose with her mouth open!

Obviously I seem to be in the minority, but when I first say the splash page, I didn't think any sexual about it, and though that was her in a stunned look as meteors are falling around GC.

Who is the upskirt shot you cannot unsee?
Who is the ROCK and the CHAIN and the LIGHTNING?

Quote:

Darkseid IS.

Having seen you quote me, I suddenly realise that I should have proofread my own post. My spelling is atrocious! And I can't even edit it now that you've quoted it

Quote:

Originally Posted by Basilisk But herein lies the question: if this division between skirts and no skirts exists in any game, what causes it? Is it the reinforcement of gender roles? Is it because it just plain looks bad? Is it because the developers want to shy away from potential controversy and/or harassment among their playerbase? Is it because the expectation among the devs is that the number of people using males skirts would be too low to justify the manpower involved in adding it? Is it all of the above?

Slight preface: I didn't mean to imply men not wearing skirts proper was somehow a sign of sexism or such, and that I insist men be given this. I'm just using it as one easy example of things men traditionally simply don't wear because men traditionally simply don't wear. It's also an article of clothing men traditionally use to insult each other, such as "Fine! Go put on a skirt, ya sissy!"

When you see men insult each other through skirts, you have to acknowledge there's something more than just pure fashion and convenience going on there. When men demonise women's clothing as something that would shame them for wearing it, there has to be a deeper to it than the fact that - and I agree with this - it just looks goofy. This returns me to the issue of what a MAN is supposed to be and how shameful it is to not conform to that image of a MAN, and how in turn this feeds into some men's obsession with demonstrating masculinity, even at the price of looking like a complete prat.

To return to your question, I think the reason few games give men skirts are pretty well summarised in the Big Blue Dress: "So why I ask, this doesn't make much sense, that a man of my stature should have to wear a dress? I mean what, may I inquire, were you thinking on that day, when you conjured up for a man like me a robe? I look so gaaay!" I know this song is purely done for parody, but it encapsulates the entirety of the problem of perception in one single verse.

Once you take this attitude under consideration, it just doesn't make sense to develop skirts for men from a developer's perspective. Why raise a controversy and waste resources to create a costume piece that most men would be to ashamed or weirded out to wear? And, mind you, I'm not defending this train of thought, but I'm saying I get it. Sure, muscular women, tall women, big women - those might be concepts not many will specifically want, but things like skirts and heels and fishnets for men are likely to go beyond that and cause a huge mess of backlash.

While I'm completely sympathetic towards the problems of female sexual objectification and would strongly support granting more diversity to female characters, I also understand that backwards as it is, society has at least grown up enough to if not accept, then at least tolerate women who diverge from the norm. Society has not yet grown up enough to really comprehend men who diverge, however, and I can guarantee that the day something like this comes out, someone's going to make a transvestite just to be a dick, someone else is going to take a screenshot and come make an angry rant and we'll tumble over backwards into "Won't somebody think of the children!" territory.

Would I be against skirts and heels and such for men? Of course not. Would I use them? Eh, probably not, but if this thread has taught me one thing, it's that exploring the depths of sexuality is rarely a bad thing, even if you're exploring in places you're not comfortable with. I know I'll at least TRY to use and see what comes of it. I've made a career out of pulling off weird and questionable designs, and that's just one more thing to experiment with

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

It was difficult for me to isolate a specific quote to reply to, so I'm going to try to respond to the gist of the conversation.


RE: The main message about the way men should look in society

IMO it is a bit too simple to say that men (or women) are "told" to look or behave a certain way. While there is a mainstream message about powerful men, that is just one of many available messages. I think that there are multiple channels that people are able to tune in to and that people change these channels depending on mood or environment.

While on the one hand there is an idealized male image as a rugged provider, there are other equally powerful images, such as man as immoral predator (any serial killer or gangster movie), man as incompetent loser (many comedies), and perhaps most prolifically man as too self absorbed and needing to get back in touch with his wife/kids/dreams/what really matters in life. To be recursive for a second, it could be argued that what we are doing in this thread is not combating commoditized images of men but reinforcing the commoditized version of men where men are fighting another form of commoditization. Hollywood protests its own images frequently.

In the 1950s and 60s, horror movies were defined by men always succeeding in protecting women. In modern horror, they are defined by men almost always failing and the woman surviving on her own. I'm not saying this means women are necessarily empowered by this shift, because what follows is usually 20 to 30 minutes of camera time devoted solely to the final girl being chased by her tormentor. What I am saying is that the message is murky, and it is murky precisely because straight men are not Neathanderthals completely unaware of or unsympathetic to criticism. The 1970s exploitation flick I Spit on Your Grave is a revenge picture about a woman enacting violent retribution on her rapists. But this is a movie primarily for men. What do men get out of this movie? According to some film critics, they get to not see themselves as the monsters women want revenge on. The fact that this movie features an extremely graphic and lengthy scene of sexual assault to set up of this dynamic complicates matters further.

The movie Showgirls is a true conundrum. It's a T&A movie that for 110 minutes forces the viewer to endure a stripper-ific vision of Las Vegas that is clearly aimed at a particular audience, then in the final 10 minutes tries to make up for it by preaching a message about how its important to find oneself. As it turns out, this movie is an enormous hit with the gay male community. It's not just because the movie is badly made, but because it is badly made in such a particular way.



RE: Is Sister Psyche too sexualized?

My take on this is that it's just one picture, and IMO one picture is not enough to de-rail a character. I also did not get "sex doll" from that image. I got "shocked/stunned with a little bit of sexiness thrown in." I don't think BAB looks ready to fight either and in fact even looks a little overwhelmed. In any case I don't really want to see either of these characters as strong. I want them to get out of the way so the real heroes (the players) can do what they failed to. It's too bad only one of them will die.

As for the picture of Sister P clinging to Manticore, I actually like this picture because it is only sensitive picture we have of any character in this game. It will make me feel a little more sympathic if she is the one who bites it.