Armor designs for females?

[Max_Killjoy]

Here's an example of something that objectively just serves no purpose, and detracts from the depiction.


https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/005/425/462/large/t-j-geisen-mechanic-concept8.jpg?1490909006


What actual purpose does that gap serve?

And the saddest part is that she'd be JUST as attractive without it, and JUST as intriguing as a character / "fictional person".

[Donnadogsoth]

your spewing bull on how we're making "war" on male stuff, yeah thats says more about you, that you hurl the accusation than it does about me. and as well as bull about "how we're saying women don't protecting." and men do not need protecting? that somehow all men are born warriors? do you know that its ok for men to not be strong all the time? that its ok that a man is not a warrior, that they don't fight? there are many men that don't ever fight anyone, and I imagine they live happy lives not being strong or a warrior. fighting is for the trained, not for people with penises. a penis does not inherently mean your fit for the training or for going into combat. there are men who are pacifists, who genuinely stand by their code to never harm another, are they denying their "rightful role"?

and what "monsters" do you speak of? other men? what separates one from the other? how can anyone tell what is "good" or "bad" "male energy"? everyone makes decisions, and the thing separating a good person from a bad person is their decisions not some imaginary energy. its more bull to cover up your own issues. get over it. there is more to your identity than how strong you are, more to men than what you romanticize them to be, and more to women than your worries for them.

Because men ain't all macho badasses who protect everyone ever.

Men being the disposable sex are more suited to combat than women. Lose 90% of the men in a tribe, the tribe can replenish itself relatively soon. Lose 90% of the women, and the tribe is crippled for generations.

Men are also usually more aggressive than women due to higher testosterone levels, and naturally tend toward gang structures that value warrior virtues, viz., strength, courage, honour, mastery. Women tend to be less aggressive and to be hangers-on to a gang rather than form gangs themselves. And given their dithers far fewer women will enter jobs that are brutal, dirty, and nasty than will men.

I don't recall saying all men are suited to combat, nor that no women are so suited. But, overall, historically and at present, armies are largely male provinces, and the prize they are fighting for is territory and the women that come with that territory. Expanding on that into the modern era with specifics would lock the thread, so I'll leave it to your imagination.

[1337 b4k4]

I'll be honest, that entire image is a hot mess of artistically questionable choices.

In addition to the gap you pointed out (hereafter referred to as "The Crushinator", with apologies to the female readers who just winced at that mental image)

1) Why are her legs at completely opposite angles from each other, and from her body as a whole?
2) How are her legs twisting the clearly solid steel framing of the exo-suit that way?
3) What's the deal with the drool catcher?
4) How is a tool belt that loose being supported by hips that thin?
5) Why a hard steel plate over her abdomen completely eliminating any forward flex she might need?
6) Why is one hip plat on the exo-suit higher than the other?

I'm sure there's more, but that image is one of those ones that just gets worse the longer you stare at it.

Edit:
--------

All that said, I would have no problem with that image in a TTRPG book, faults and all. Not everyone is a master artist, and bad art or not, it's not offensive (to me). Silly, yes. Questionable, absolutely. But nothing that would turn me off of a game it was included in.

[Ashiel]

I do not appreciate you putting words in my mouth. With this single post I'm highly doubting your honesty in this discussion. I made a post talking about the value of one thing and you ask why I believe that opposite when thats clearly not the case. That is not something some one does debating in good faith.
Perhaps there's some confusion. I don't get why you mentioned lots of things that are irrelevant to the sexual dimorphism of humans and one sex's predisposition towards physical strength in relation to the other. You said what unites us is more important than what divides us, but I don't see why it would divide us. If anything it seems contrary to the notion of division.


My emotional makeup has nothing to do with this discussion. Again you make me suspicious of whether or not your engaging me honestly with this discussion by attempting emotional manipulation.
I don't know what your emotional makeup is. People are often seen differently in these settings than they are in a face to face setting. I was noting the appearance as I saw it, not making a comment on your emotional state. Rather, you seemed to think there was some sort of animosity between you and others, and I'm pointing out the only thing I can see that makes it so.

(People have animosity towards me because I'm a jerk.)

As to being suspicious, good. I dislike dishonesty but I don't expect you to take my word for it. Life's filled with people who will try to use you for their own ends, or pretend to care to get something. You don't know me from Eve, so it won't hurt my feelings if you're cautious. EDIT: And if it did, I'd get over it.


I do not appreciate this and I have seen someone try this on me in the past, mentioning various traits as if they are faults, trying to get me to focus on myself, perhaps react in a way they desire to be beneficial to their side of the argument, I am not falling for it.
I'd advise not projecting your insecurities. Be on guard. If it makes you feel any better, I don't have a "side" of the argument. I'm just some jerk that thinks people should be able to like what they like without people dogging them for it. Am I a snide jackass? Yeah, I can be. The more zealous someone gets, the less I take them seriously. Side effects of being involved in these things too long.

I just don't care much for the authoritative overtones. The harder anyone presses, the harder I'll press back. Soft presses make for soft pushes.


I suggest you don't continue this line of discussion.
It doesn't really matter to me beyond getting an idea as to try to relate to the person I'm responding to, as opposed to seeing you as whatever you happen to be projecting right now. It's worked in a sense. I know a little more about you now, and that suffices for the time being. In any case, best wishes.

[scalyfreak]

Men are also usually more aggressive than women due to higher testosterone levels, and naturally tend toward gang structures that value warrior virtues, viz., strength, courage, honour, mastery. Women tend to be less aggressive and to be hangers-on to a gang rather than form gangs themselves. And given their dithers far fewer women will enter jobs that are brutal, dirty, and nasty than will men.

...

That description doesn't really fit the world around us. In anyway.

[Max_Killjoy]

I do not appreciate you putting words in my mouth. With this single post I'm highly doubting your honesty in this discussion. I made a post talking about the value of one thing and you ask why I believe that opposite when thats clearly not the case. That is not something some one does debating in good faith.

My emotional makeup has nothing to do with this discussion. Again you make me suspicious of whether or not your engaging me honestly with this discussion by attempting emotional manipulation. I do not appreciate this and I have seen someone try this on me in the past, mentioning various traits as if they are faults, trying to get me to focus on myself, perhaps react in a way they desire to be beneficial to their side of the argument, I am not falling for it.

I suggest you don't continue this line of discussion.

Ah, you're starting to see the same pattern I picked up on, there.

[Max_Killjoy]

Men being the disposable sex are more suited to combat than women. Lose 90% of the men in a tribe, the tribe can replenish itself relatively soon. Lose 90% of the women, and the tribe is crippled for generations.

Men are also usually more aggressive than women due to higher testosterone levels, and naturally tend toward gang structures that value warrior virtues, viz., strength, courage, honour, mastery. Women tend to be less aggressive and to be hangers-on to a gang rather than form gangs themselves. And given their dithers far fewer women will enter jobs that are brutal, dirty, and nasty than will men.

I don't recall saying all men are suited to combat, nor that no women are so suited. But, overall, historically and at present, armies are largely male provinces, and the prize they are fighting for is territory and the women that come with that territory. Expanding on that into the modern era with specifics would lock the thread, so I'll leave it to your imagination.

Wow.

That is a very interesting neo-Victorian just-so view of the subject.

[Max_Killjoy]

Scalyfreak -- I apologize for trying to bite your head off last night... I was in full defense mode at that point, due to being deliberately misread and misrepresented, and frankly insulted, by multiple other parties.

[Donnadogsoth]

...

That description doesn't really fit the world around us. In anyway.

Boys aren't aggressive? Feral boys (inner city youth) don't form gangs? What parents are there that complain of how aggressive their girls are compared with the boys, how much they roughhouse, how interested they are in tackle football (does such a thing still exist?)? I know a man who as a child stuffed his sister's doll full of firecrackers and lit them. A girl would do such a thing? Girls play war? Perhaps you have answers to some of these questions but guaranteed your answers are not par.

[scalyfreak]

Scalyfreak -- I apologize for trying to bite your head off last night... I was in full defense mode at that point, due to being deliberately misread and misrepresented, and frankly insulted, by multiple other parties.

Tempers flare all the time online, particularly in discussions about controversial topics. No harm done, let's move on.

Besides, you missed. :smallwink:

[scalyfreak]

Boys aren't aggressive? Feral boys (inner city youth) don't form gangs? What parents are there that complain of how aggressive their girls are compared with the boys, how much they roughhouse, how interested they are in tackle football (does such a thing still exist?)? I know a man who as a child stuffed his sister's doll full of firecrackers and lit them. A girl would do such a thing? Girls play war? Perhaps you have answers to some of these questions but guaranteed your answers are not par.

1. No more than girls, really
2. As do the girls. Look it up.
3. "Good girls don't act like that, sweetie"
3. Abso-bleeping-utely yes.
4. Yes, of course.

If you've never seen girls to any of the above, you either have no girls in your life, they have all been on their best behavior around you, or -and this is worst of all - they have learned the hard way that to be overly aggressive (or was that "assertive"?) makes them badwrong people, and if they ever want to be accepted they have to stop doing that.

[Ashiel]

@Lord Raziere
I was thinking about it for a bit. I wanted to take a moment to apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable, or said something that hurt your feelings. I had a 14 hour workday today and I tend to be grumpier and less patient when I'm tired. Not an excuse, just something I've noticed and I'm working on.

I want you to know that I agree with you on a lot, I think. Maybe not to the same conclusions, but it's easy to dig in and butt heads for the sake of butting in these things and I'd rather not do that. In any case, I'm going to go get some rest and wanted to part amiably. We're all here for fun after all.

[Max_Killjoy]

Boys aren't aggressive? Feral boys (inner city youth) don't form gangs? What parents are there that complain of how aggressive their girls are compared with the boys, how much they roughhouse, how interested they are in tackle football (does such a thing still exist?)? I know a man who as a child stuffed his sister's doll full of firecrackers and lit them. A girl would do such a thing? Girls play war? Perhaps you have answers to some of these questions but guaranteed your answers are not par.


1) There are relatively small differences on average, that are exaggerated by the cultural feedback loop in many (some?) cultures, and exaggerated again by selective perception.

2) I've known girls who were plenty aggressive and destructive and "wild" and interested in outrunning and running over other kids. Some of them had that browbeaten out of them by the expectations and messages that they had to "swim in", some didn't.

3) "Feral boys" = "inner city youth"... really?

4) That a thing is "natural" does not automatically make it good, or desirable, or efficient, or workable in the modern world. There are many things that are perfectly natural, that we rightly seek to avoid. Death by disease. Death by parasites. Death by carnivores. Death in childbirth. Etc.

[Lord Raziere]

Wow.

That is a very interesting neo-Victorian just-so view of the subject.

and completely ignores that people are more than the content of their pants. we are human, not beasts.

by donnadogsoth's logic, all gay people, eunuchs, asexuals and so on are all useless for reproduction and therefore should be sent to the front lines to die. I cannot condone such a thing given the conclusion.

that and question becomes which 90% of men do you send out? What ten percent do you leave behind? that becomes problematic by itself because then you picking favorites and thus playing eugenicist by choosing which 10% gets to live. you could draw lots and do it randomly, but then whats the point? you might as well go with the army system we have now.

also in the current modern era, the total number of the world's population that actually works as soldiers is......less than 1%, according tot he source I've looked up. hardly near extinction level combat.

[Donnadogsoth]

1. No more than girls, really
2. As do the girls. Look it up.
3. "Good girls don't act like that, sweetie"
3. Abso-bleeping-utely yes.
4. Yes, of course.

If you've never seen girls to any of the above, you either have no girls in your life, they have all been on their best behavior around you, or -and this is worst of all - they have learned the hard way that to be overly aggressive (or was that "assertive"?) makes them badwrong people, and if they ever want to be accepted they have to stop doing that.

If you have any documentation describing your assertion that boys and girls are absolutely psychologically identical, I would like to read it. I've talked to enough parents to be sceptical of your claims.

[Max_Killjoy]

If you have any documentation describing your assertion that boys and girls are absolutely psychologically identical, I would like to read it. I've talked to enough parents to be sceptical of your claims.

It appears that having failed to establish a significant fundamental difference as you claimed existed, you're now demanding proof that there's no difference at all.

Not sure if that's a false dichotomy, moving the goalposts, or both.

[scalyfreak]

If you have any documentation describing your assertion that boys and girls are absolutely psychologically identical, I would like to read it. I've talked to enough parents to be sceptical of your claims.

I don't. I have observations suggesting that boys and girls both are humans, and unique individuals, and when left to their own devices they do whatever they want. If you had discreetly observed the children instead of talking to their parents, you might have noticed that.

Two boys would not be psychologically identical, any more than two girls are. Genitalia do not determine personality.

As for the rest of your woefully uninformed notions, I leave that to the others who replied to your post. A post which, for the record, was one of the most prejudiced and narrow-minded statements posted in this entire thread so far. I sincerely hope you have no daughters, if that is how you would raise them.

[scalyfreak]

It appears that having failed to establish a significant fundamental difference as you claimed existed, you're now demanding proof that there's no difference at all.

Not sure if that's a false dichotomy, moving the goalposts, or both.

I believe the belief that a negative can be proven is called "a fallacy"...?

[Arbane]

And now I see we're on to "Biotruths" explaining why women should have -4 Strength. I'd ask how that happened, but hey, topic drift is a thing. :smallconfused:



that and question becomes which 90% of men do you send out? What ten percent do you leave behind?

If you think about the question for a few seconds, the historical answer should become obvious. We're not supposed to talk politics on this forum, though.

It occurred to me a while ago that the Fantasy Clothing/Armor version of "But DRAGONS!" is "But BOOBIES!"

[Donnadogsoth]

and completely ignores that people are more than the content of their pants. we are human, not beasts.

by donnadogsoth's logic, all gay people, eunuchs, asexuals and so on are all useless for reproduction and therefore should be sent to the front lines to die. I cannot condone such a thing given the conclusion.

that and question becomes which 90% of men do you send out? What ten percent do you leave behind? that becomes problematic by itself because then you picking favorites and thus playing eugenicist by choosing which 10% gets to live. you could draw lots and do it randomly, but then whats the point? you might as well go with the army system we have now.

also in the current modern era, the total number of the world's population that actually works as soldiers is......less than 1%, according tot he source I've looked up. hardly near extinction level combat.

We haven't had a real war in a long time.

And you forgot old folks. And cats--war cats!

[Donnadogsoth]

I don't. I have observations suggesting that boys and girls both are humans, and unique individuals, and when left to their own devices they do whatever they want. If you had discreetly observed the children instead of talking to their parents, you might have noticed that.

Two boys would not be psychologically identical, any more than two girls are. Genitalia do not determine personality.

As for the rest of your woefully uninformed notions, I leave that to the others who replied to your post. A post which, for the record, was one of the most prejudiced and narrow-minded statements posted in this entire thread so far. I sincerely hope you have no daughters, if that is how you would raise them.

Ah, you don't. So we have your life experience versus my life experience. Also, parents are clueless and were never children once themselves; and higher testosterone levels in male brains have no effect on personality; nor is there any difference in male brains in terms of higher spatial ability, single-mindedness, and being sexually attracted to women. All people are bisexual until brainwashed by tv.

[scalyfreak]

Ah, you don't. So we have your life experience versus my life experience. Also, parents are clueless and were never children once themselves; and higher testosterone levels in male brains have no effect on personality; nor is there any difference in male brains in terms of higher spatial ability, single-mindedness, and being sexually attracted to women. All people are bisexual until brainwashed by tv.

Your life experience is obviously very different from mine, which is fine The difference between us is that I'm not trying to claim that my observations and experience are facts about the rest of the human race.

But please don't try to claim you got any of that out of my post. That is as far-fetched as your initial statement - which you still have to back with links to documented evidence, by the way. If you're going to demand that of others, you need to be able to provide it yourself as well. Alternatively, if you're going to toss out something that patently ludicrous and try to present it as a fact, at least have the courtesy not to turn into a passive-aggressive martyr when you're mocked for it.

[Dragonexx]

On the other hand, wasn't there a troll thread about this exact topic a not too long ago?

[Donnadogsoth]

Your life experience is obviously very different from mine, which is fine The difference between us is that I'm not trying to claim that my observations and experience are facts about the rest of the human race.

Yes you are. Don't pull that crap. You're claiming that my experience does not apply to the rest of the human race, which by default means that your counter-experience does.


But please don't try to claim you got any of that out of my post. That is as far-fetched as your initial statement - which you still have to back with links to documented evidence, by the way. If you're going to demand that of others, you need to be able to provide it yourself as well. Alternatively, if you're going to toss out something that patently ludicrous and try to present it as a fact, at least have the courtesy not to turn into a passive-aggressive martyr when you're mocked for it.

I recommend "Why men don't listen & women can't read maps" by Allan & Barbara Pease. Do you have a counter-recommendation? I await your numbers on male spatial ability and natural human bisexuality.

[scalyfreak]

Yes you are. Don't pull that crap. You're claiming that my experience does not apply to the rest of the human race, which by default means that your counter-experience does.

No, it doesn't.

And actually, what I am claiming is that my counter-experience proves that your claim does not apply to 100% of the human race. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Mendicant]

Yes you are. Don't pull that crap. You're claiming that my experience does not apply to the rest of the human race, which by default means that your counter-experience does.

That is not how logic works.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes you are. Don't pull that crap. You're claiming that my experience does not apply to the rest of the human race, which by default means that your counter-experience does..


No, it just demonstrates that your bioessentialist "absolutes" aren't nearly so absolute.

[2D8HP]

I don't. I have observations suggesting that boys and girls both are humans....



Ah, you don't. So we have your life experience versus my life experience.....


So now the thread topic has drifted to how men and women are and are not different?

Okay, that changes the topic from Dungeons & Dragons, to another topic that's dear to me hart, complaining about work, so I'll bite.

In my experience the men in County Jail #4 on Bryant Street, and the women in County Jail #2 on 7th Street both flush blankets and yell and scream about the same, but the men's voices carry farther thus making them more annoying.

Women using the public restrooms by the courts stuff the toilets with clothing more than the men using the public restrooms, the men stuff the sinks with paper, and leave the water running way more than the women.

Policemen are much worse on the plumbing than policewoman. Most of the plumbing problems that are in the policewomen's locker room restrooms are due to hair in the shower drains, whereas a policeman flushed some underwear, clogging the drain (like inmates, and the women public), and a policeman has broken a sink drain (lost ring?), which the policewomen have never done (but a women going to her probation officer has).

District Attorney and Public Defender women clog toilets much more than the men, but the men clog the sinks more (coffee grounds).

So in general both public and attorney men clog sinks more, but public and attorney women clog toilets more.

Policemen are much harder on the plumbing than policewoman, except for shower drains.

Both men and women inmates flush blankets, and annoy me.

I think that covers how men and women are most different.

Your welcome.

[Satinavian]

And now I see we're on to "Biotruths" explaining why women should have -4 Strength. I'd ask how that happened, but hey, topic drift is a thing. :smallconfused:
I honestly never expected to see that kind of stuff taken seriously by anyone in this thread.

But if there really exist people believing those "biotruths" i can better understand some of the strange opinions so far.

Obviously what kind of art people believe to be realistic is linked to how they believe the world to be.


I can attribute way more to cultural differences as a subsection of environmental influence on a complex trait. Specifically, women are often encouraged to eat less, stay thin, and, as noted, not engage in activity that would result in hypertrophy, coordination, or most forms of independent action. Moreover, in the past, women were also the first to be denied food and resources, and more likely to be victims of infanticide. The veneer that you take for granted as a "rule of nature" was manufactured by a long sequence of cultural drives, and you seem hell bent on not questioning it.
OTOH i think you are overestimating cultural stuff a bit. Last time i checked, science (for my country at least) found height, weight and strength of girls and boys to be nearly equal up until puperty with girls even having a small lead. If the differences really start to show that late, they would likely not be cultural.

Of course diet and activity does have an immense impact. But both would show pretty early if the culture in question did actually treat boys and girls vastly different. But near equal numbers for most of the groth period suggest that such an unequal treatment is quite unlikely and the different numbers in adults are linked to other reasons.


Of course that men are on average stronger and bigger than women and that this seems to be biological, not cultural, does say basically nothing about personality. And an average healthy women is not what would be considered very weak. She would be certainly strong enough to use every actually functioning armor type and certainly most weapon types.


Boys aren't aggressive? Feral boys (inner city youth) don't form gangs? What parents are there that complain of how aggressive their girls are compared with the boys, how much they roughhouse, how interested they are in tackle football (does such a thing still exist?)? I know a man who as a child stuffed his sister's doll full of firecrackers and lit them. A girl would do such a thing? Girls play war? Perhaps you have answers to some of these questions but guaranteed your answers are not par.
1. Girl gangs are a thing and not even a tiny bit less violent than boy gangs or (the even more common) mixed gangs. That street violence is seen as male has something to do with the cultural notion of women staying at home and man being outside looking for money/work. In modern, more equal societies, where young people of both sexes more and more share freedoms and expectations, they end up sharing behavior too.

2. We don't have "tackle football", whatever that is, we are a soccer sountry. But when i went to university, all of the martial art clubs had nearly parity as as far as femal students were concerned. In the more violent ones (Krav Maga, Kickboxing), women were the majority. That is a pattern which didn't change in the years after university. Even today i know 4 women wo learned German style swordfencing living nearby but not a single man. As soon as culture does not hold women back from violent sports, they are happy to engange in them.

3. "Would a girl do such a thing?" Yes.

4. "Girls play war ?" Yes. Not actually any less than boys play war, to be honest. Also wargames tend to be mixed anyway because the more participants the better.

All of those things are cultural however. If parents forbid girls playing war, they rarely do. If boys are encouraged to go outside and girls stay inside, the gangs forming outside will be boy gangs. If violent sports are not befitting a women, less of them will try.

So... considering our huge differences in experience, from what backward part of the world are you coming ?

[Floret]

This isn't the same thing as endogenous hormone production or response. I can't really talk for trans people, but I will note that taking thyroid pills every day doesn't seem to bring me very near where having an actual thyroid gland would. I can't really say, because I've never had a thyroid gland, but it was a total pain to deal with inflexible responses of physicians sticking to standard dose response curves of people with proper endocrine systems.

Since I can kinda talk about hormone therapy for trans people: No, in effect that's pretty much the same as inherent hormone production. The effects take a while to set in, but after about a year to three even most sports assossiations agree that the person on hormone therapy is equal in performance to one of the gender they transitioned to. The hormone doses are specifically chosen so they are on par with normal values of cis people of the same gender (Though in most cases for trans women on a sort of "average" of a full cycle, not actually cycling).
Also I do agree with the rest of the post. Inspired by it I would add that while there is a difference in average of strength (And especially the part about "physical strength isn't actually the go-to measure for combat efficiency anyways) the overlap between the categories "male" and "female" is much larger than that difference. Talking about it as two distinct categories really doesn't represent reality.


I'll be honest, this reads to me like "Satanic Panic" dressed up in new clothes and with a different target. And frankly making decisions about how your game will be put together because of the possibilities that some bad people might do bad things with that game is no way to make a game. If these creeps and predators are feeling that the TTRPG community is welcoming to them, that's a failure of the community to enforce basic human decency standards. And TTRPGs should not feel hamstrung in their artistic endeavors just because some terrible person might take it the wrong way.

I find the parrallel to be rather misplaced. "This will attract a certain group of people" is way off of "This will turn everyone into satanists". It doesn't attribute massive power to change personalities to media, at any rate.
I never said "do something about this now, and what you do is cut out the cake". What I said (or meant to say) is "Game developers should think about the social responsibilty of how they make their products, and consider possible sideeffects", while pointing out one of them. How I would deal with that responsibility has little bearing on that note. Maybe I added a sprinkle of "I think having largely cheesecake art might just be a sign that you aren't thinking about your responsibilities as a creator of media" through context.
(Sidenote: Yes, media that is consumed does influence opinion and perceptions of the world; no, it is not simple cause-and effect, and a rather small factor alltogether.)


And this reads like an argument that the only viable option is to not have cheese/beefcake picture at all. Either everyone is welcome at the table of TTRPGs or no one is. Any individual game is of course free to make whatever decisions they want to make, and any individual gamer, group and table are free to make their own decisions about what they will or won't buy or tolerate. But the argument that we should reduce the range of artwork in TTRPGs because some people might not like it is a non-starter for me. Pick your favorite and least offensive fantasy artwork you can think of and I bet you you could find someone who takes issue with it. There is ALWAYS someone who can get more offended or turned off, and trying to avoid offending anyone is a road that leads to madness.

Oh, I wasn't actually talking about all games having no pictures of cake. While I wouldn't actually mind if pictures of impractical armor more suited to sexy than to fighting disappeared, I wasn't arguing for that to happen - that is personal taste, certainly. What I was doing was disputing a point from much earlier in the discussion that there is plenty of both to go around, and so everyone can be happy with their own products. On the basis that, no, even if there is a product where 90% of pictures are sensible, the fact that 10% are not makes it unsuited to satisfy the needs of the people who don't wanna witness these sorts of armor.
A viable option for that would be to have some games that do indeed not have it at all, but leave the rest of the games intact. So far I have not found a game that actually includes women and still qualifies. (Though it might be that Symbaroum does, I can't quite remember - the artstyle does not lend itself well to tittilation though, and "women actually appearing in the art" might get a debatable point for at least the core book)


I don't recall saying all men are suited to combat, nor that no women are so suited. But, overall, historically and at present, armies are largely male provinces, and the prize they are fighting for is territory and the women that come with that territory. Expanding on that into the modern era with specifics would lock the thread, so I'll leave it to your imagination.

"But this has been so historically" is not a good argument against people saying "This has more to do with culture than with nature". Or much of an argument at all.
Talking about women as prizes to be fought over is also very unlikely to convince anyone that you are not, in fact, thinking about women as objects in at least some capacity.

[Tobtor]

Also, parents are clueless and were never children once themselves


O ff course they have, but studies show that adults perception of small children relates more to the percieves/imagined gender, than the childs sex (giving girls dolls, pink things while boys get things that "go" or make noises etc).


and higher testosterone levels in male brains have no effect on personality;

Some yes. But not as much as percieved.



nor is there any difference in male brains in terms of higher spatial ability

Not really enough to matter no.

I know it is a widespread "truth". The thing is in the studies performed to proove this, while signifcant in that the test for very small differences is not very clear on what that mean: if you take a 200 people (100 male and 100 female) then you should get something like 52 of the best will be male, the 48 women (or 53-47 or similar). So sure that indicate men is slightly better on average, but it still suggest that 47% or so women where just as good as the "best men".

This is then used to explain a 90-10% differens in the favour of men.

I saw one study (cannot find it at the moment) where they made the women play a "spetial-demanding" game the day before. The interesting part was that the test then showed that then women was as good as the men. This might suggest that on average women are 1hour behind the men in spatial ability. Great for us men, not something that really matters. In practical reasons we might say "1 hour the day before is very recent training", but it shows that the test does not prove that the men are naturally better, they might just have (slightly) more experience with spatial task (of the sort that is tested). Such as team sports or computergames.

By the way, my daugthers first word where "en garde" (before "mom" and "dad", and before "food"), since she just loved swordfigthing with her older siblings. I really hope that the future brings a world with more sensible women roles in RPGs, movies and computer games.

[Max_Killjoy]

My nieces' favorite toys are building blocks (Legos, or for the younger one still the giant equivalent), and they build cars and planes and buildings and stuff out of them.

Along with painting stuff, and clay, and stuffed animals, and anything they can do outdoors.

[Ashiel]

My nieces' favorite toys are building blocks (Legos, or for the younger one still the giant equivalent), and they build cars and planes and buildings and stuff out of them.

Along with painting stuff, and clay, and stuffed animals, and anything they can do outdoors.
My sister and I played with dolls and action figures. They used to make 12 inch versions of the five inch Marvel comics action figures (like the X-Men), which incidentally are about the same size as Barbie Dolls, so they worked well together. We played with them interchangeably. She was especially fond of Gambit, but then how could you watch X-Men and not love Gambit? :smallamused:

For the record, that barbie camper set was the shiz (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Le3Byp7Gc).

[Max_Killjoy]

Look up video of Tobin Heath with a soccer ball, and compare with some of the men who've played for the men's US national team.

Love watching her play the game, and wish more of the men's player pool had her technical skill, flair, and instincts for soccer.

[1337 b4k4]

She was especially fond of Gambit, but then how could you watch X-Men and not love Gambit? :smallamused:.

I think everyone in this thread can agree on this.

[Frozen_Feet]

@Satinavian & SaurOps: the difference is average size between men and women is primarily genetically and hormonally driven. Height, in particular, is hard-capped by genetics for each individual. If it was possible for culture, nutrition etc. to even that out, we would've seen it in places like Scandinavia already. This is extremely well-researched area and it's easy to find statistics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide) on the matter.

What's more interesting are the differences between sub-populations. For example, the average Vietnamese man is proportionately about as much bigger than the average Vietnamese woman, as the average Finnish man is bigger than the average Finnish woman. But the average Finnish woman is about as big as the average Vietnamese man.

As armor and clothes need to be fitted to the body and ill-fitting equipment is bad for a soldier's health, this has severe implications for logistics, especially for mass armies. An army might reject majority of women simply on the basis that it would cost too much to stock all sizes of armor and clothing; likewise, subpopulations of smaller men would be barred from service. On the individual level, if you're a viking who ends up fighting samurai (or vice versa), a lot of the leftover equipment will be unusable (either too small or too cumbersome). RPGs often gloss over this because it would be too inconvenient if those Boots of Speed you got from your enemy are five sizes too big for you. Hilariously, at the same time, RPGs often feature far more extreme size differences than seen among humans in reality.

If you can find distribution curves for height among a population, you can estimate upper limit of the proportion of women to men in armed forces, precisely because of equipment logistics. Find out the ideal height and weight for given military task, and then look at how many women pass that bar compared to men.

[SaurOps]

@Satinavian & SaurOps: the difference is average size between men and women is primarily genetically and hormonally driven. Height, in particular, is hard-capped by genetics for each individual. If it was possible for culture, nutrition etc. to even that out, we would've seen it in places like Scandinavia already. This is extremely well-researched area and it's easy to find statistics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_human_height_worldwide) on the matter.

What's more interesting are the differences between sub-populations. For example, the average Vietnamese man is proportionately about as much bigger than the average Vietnamese woman, as the average Finnish man is bigger than the average Finnish woman. But the average Finnish woman is about as big as the average Vietnamese man.

As armor and clothes need to be fitted to the body and ill-fitting equipment is bad for a soldier's health, this has severe implications for logistics, especially for mass armies. An army might reject majority of women simply on the basis that it would cost too much to stock all sizes of armor and clothing; likewise, subpopulations of smaller men would be barred from service. On the individual level, if you're a viking who ends up fighting samurai (or vice versa), a lot of the leftover equipment will be unusable (either too small or too cumbersome). RPGs often gloss over this because it would be too inconvenient if those Boots of Speed you got from your enemy are five sizes too big for you. Hilariously, at the same time, RPGs often feature far more extreme size differences than seen among humans in reality.

If you can find distribution curves for height among a population, you can estimate upper limit of the proportion of women to men in armed forces, precisely because of equipment logistics. Find out the ideal height and weight for given military task, and then look at how many women pass that bar compared to men.

You haven't sufficiently controlled for every notable environmental variable. You can't make these claims without doing that and expect them to stand as evidence. The "proof" you want comes with an extremely high price tag just for testing, as it involves wide-scale lifetime studies of nutrition and genetics. Good luck securing that funding for sufficient test size.

[SaurOps]

Since I can kinda talk about hormone therapy for trans people: No, in effect that's pretty much the same as inherent hormone production. The effects take a while to set in, but after about a year to three even most sports assossiations agree that the person on hormone therapy is equal in performance to one of the gender they transitioned to. The hormone doses are specifically chosen so they are on par with normal values of cis people of the same gender (Though in most cases for trans women on a sort of "average" of a full cycle, not actually cycling).
Also I do agree with the rest of the post. Inspired by it I would add that while there is a difference in average of strength (And especially the part about "physical strength isn't actually the go-to measure for combat efficiency anyways) the overlap between the categories "male" and "female" is much larger than that difference. Talking about it as two distinct categories really doesn't represent reality.


Okay, but one caveat, sports associations are overly-concerned with hormones over every other factor that could provide advantages in competition, even if it doesn't make much sense. Extreme variability of leg length in women runners? Sure, go ahead. Someone naturally has a testosterone concentration they deem too high? Disqualified!

[Max_Killjoy]

(This is not directed at you, Frozen, you just dropped in with data.)

I find it amusing that some of the same people who were angrily citing "but it's fantasy!" to justify dysfunctional armor and impractical-for-situation clothing, and were reacting to trying for even the semblance of reality as just absolutely ridiculous and hypocritical and an infringement of their goodfuntimes...

...are now trying to cite "reality" (or rather their peculiar just-so version of it) and appeal to supposed "natural" and therefore "proper" gender roles as a defense of certain gender-divergent tropes in art and fiction.

[Ashiel]

You haven't sufficiently controlled for every notable environmental variable. You can't make these claims without doing that and expect them to stand as evidence. The "proof" you want comes with an extremely high price tag just for testing, as it involves wide-scale lifetime studies of nutrition and genetics. Good luck securing that funding for sufficient test size.
I don't think "look at the trends" is a particularly hard claim. If anything, I'd think it would be more critical for you to prove (I'd accept a strong argument) that it wasn't due to human dimorphic norms since your claim goes against not only conventional wisdom, but is actively damaged by the accounts of male to female transexuals, sports teams, military training programs, etc.

That's one of the cool things about fantasy. We can have fire breathing lizards who are suplexed by women who can lift a truck because they got pissed. :smallamused:

[Ashiel]

(This is not directed at you, Frozen, you just dropped in with data.)

I find it amusing that some of the same people who were angrily citing "but it's fantasy!" to justify dysfunctional armor and impractical-for-situation clothing, and were reacting to trying for even the semblance of reality as just absolutely ridiculous and hypocritical and an infringement of their goodfuntimes...

...are now trying to cite "reality" (or rather their peculiar just-so version of it) and appeal to supposed "natural" and therefore "proper" roles gender roles as a defense of certain gender-divergent tropes in art and fiction.

And who would that be, exactly? :smallamused:

[Max_Killjoy]

You haven't sufficiently controlled for every notable environmental variable. You can't make these claims without doing that and expect them to stand as evidence. The "proof" you want comes with an extremely high price tag just for testing, as it involves wide-scale lifetime studies of nutrition and genetics. Good luck securing that funding for sufficient test size.

Honestly, I think it's fairly unimportant to this discussion and really doesn't make much difference to anyone's point either way.

No matter where you go, regardless of nutrition and genetics and culture, even the women who had intense physical activity and the best possible nutrition from the womb to age 21, tend to be at least a bit shorter on average than men with the same background. Again, to use soccer as an example, look at the US men's and women's national teams -- we're in an era when these are all people who grew up playing soccer from a young age, with good nutrition and typically blessed with highly advantageous genetics for athletic endeavor -- and across the board, the women are a bit shorter.

I just don't see where this is controversial, or important to any point being made in this thread. All the women on the national team are all far far better soccer players than I ever could have been, and it has nothing to do anyone's physical gender.

[Frozen_Feet]

You haven't sufficiently controlled for every notable environmental variable. You can't make these claims without doing that and expect them to stand as evidence. The "proof" you want comes with an extremely high price tag just for testing, as it involves wide-scale lifetime studies of nutrition and genetics. Good luck securing that funding for sufficient test size.
Pardon?

That lists contains countries from all over the world. What cultural, nutritional etc. constants are you proposing over genetics, which would explain the similarity in proportionate heigh difference Scandinavia, East Asia and Mid Africa?

Also, there's a reason why I singled out Scandinavia. In Finland alone, we've had free schooling accompanied with free meals and health-check-ups for decades. The military routinely tests majority of each male age cohort on top. Add to that all data we have from sports, and let me tell you: we have all the size, the money and the control you could imagine and then some. And just to rub it in more, Finland regularly ranks among the most culturally egalitarian countries in the world. Again: if there was some simple cultural or nutritional factor which would even the height difference between sexes, we'd know it by now.

[CharonsHelper]

I just don't see where this is controversial, or important to any point being made in this thread. All the women on the national team are all far far better soccer players than I ever could have been, and it has nothing to do anyone's physical gender.

While I 100% agree that the women's team members are all better than you or I will ever be, you seem to be implying (I could be misreading you) that there is no difference between the men's and women's teams. Sorry - but the men's soccer team would almost certainly wipe the floor with the women's team, and that DOES have to do with gender. (And I don't see how that's controversial either - though it seems to be with some people.)

[Talakeal]

If anyone wants an opinion from the peanut gallery:

My father believes that women should not be allowed to be protagonists in games, be they tabletop or video games, because women are so inferior to men in every way that it would break suspension of belief to have them be the equal of male protagonists, and a game would be both un-fun and unfair if there were such massive differences associated with gender.

So yeah, these ideas (which I do not agree with at all for the record) seem to be pretty strong in the older generation.

[Floret]

I find it amusing that some of the same people who were angrily citing "but it's fantasy!" to justify dysfunctional armor and impractical-for-situation clothing, and were reacting to trying for even the semblance of reality as just absolutely ridiculous and hypocritical and an infringement of their goodfuntimes...

...are now trying to cite "reality" (or rather their peculiar just-so version of it) and appeal to supposed "natural" and therefore "proper" gender roles as a defense of certain gender-divergent tropes in art and fiction.

Very interesting point and observation.
One caveat, though: While in both cases I am on the utterly other side of the discussion... Well, that's kinda the point. Calling for realism in one area does not necessarily mean one wants perfect realism in another. So, just as I can say I want armor in my games to be functional and realistic, yet sexual dimorphism amongst humans (however weak or strong it might be IRL) to be ignored fully. Sure, the common thread here is "have women be equal by the rules of the gameworld", something I value as a general baseline.
Why someone would have the directly opposing views in both areas, with the treatment of women being the unifying angle, well.

(Always sticking to traditional gender roles in Fantasy media strikes me more as a point of lack in creativity rather than desire for realism, though.)


Again: if there was some simple cultural or nutritional factor which would even the height difference between sexes, we'd know it by now.

We kinda know it even more specifically: The difference in average between women and men is in Hormone levels during puberty.
But I don't think anyone has debated that there actually IS a difference; just that, again, treating this as two distinct categories does some disservice when there is, for the most part, a giant area of overlap far greater than the difference in average or peaks. Both for size, as well as for strength. And in the case of the latter, cultural gender roles DO serve as a giant intervening factor for measuring how large the difference in average would be on an equally-trained population (And even for the difference in peak the fact male athletes get paid way more might work to make the difference appear a bit larger than it actually is. Mind you, a bit; not make a difference appear out of thin air.).

To determine the actual difference in strength due to sex one would have to have a representative sample of people in all aspects; but have this sample be equally trained at least between the two groups. Never in all of discussions like these have I come across a study that managed to do this.

[Max_Killjoy]

While I 100% agree that the women's team members are all better than you or I will ever be, you seem to be implying (I could be misreading you) that there is no difference between the men's and women's teams. Sorry - but the men's soccer team would almost certainly wipe the floor with the women's team, and that DOES have to do with gender. (And I don't see how that's controversial either - though it seems to be with some people.)

My point was generally that the women's team is better at soccer than 99% of the men on the planet. The differences in size and strength and speed caused by sexual dimorphism are swamped by those particular women's superior training, talent, experience, etc. That is, looking at entire populations, other things matter quite a bit more than the differences of dimorphism.

[Frozen_Feet]

Speaking of sports, looking at differences in contact sport body armor would give a basis on what sort of differences to expect in combat armor. Kendo and Ice Hockey come to mind as particularly good comparison points. To my knowledge, design does not differ between sexes, other than women's armor being on average of smaller size, due to aforementioned average size differences.

In barehanded martial arts, women occasionally wear a chest plate while men forego it. The reason for the difference is the same why women wear bras and men don't.

However, it isn't unheard of for armor and equipment to be gender-differentiated in other ways. In heraldry, some colors carried gendered associations. In Japan, the naginata was seen as a woman's weapon, while swords were manly. So in fantasy, a woman warrior might be set apart by their banner, what color the highlights in their armor are, and what weapons they prefer. However, these tend to be rather arbitrary cultural traits. For example, red has gone from a masculine color to feminine. Pink used to be considered a lighter red, and was associated with young boys; now it is a girly color.

Of course, you could use these to set up interesting cultural conflicts in a fantastic setting. For example, imagine a short population who consider blue a manly color, coming in contact with a population with really tall women who take part in war and paint their faces with berserker-style blue stripes.

[Honest Tiefling]

Boys aren't aggressive? Feral boys (inner city youth) don't form gangs? What parents are there that complain of how aggressive their girls are compared with the boys, how much they roughhouse, how interested they are in tackle football (does such a thing still exist?)? I know a man who as a child stuffed his sister's doll full of firecrackers and lit them. A girl would do such a thing? Girls play war? Perhaps you have answers to some of these questions but guaranteed your answers are not par.

Comparing inner city youth to dogs aside (wtf?), studies have shown that men and women are equally likely to be aggressive. Until the age that cultural norms and socialization hits, both young boys and girls exhibit aggressive tendencies. Once they start to absorb cultural ideals, women tend to go for social aggression (Blackmail, rumor mongering, spying, harassment) while men go solely for physical aggression. In a society without gender roles, it would be quite interesting to see how the different types of aggression play out. (especially in the modern age, where it's a whole heck of a lot easier to commit social aggression rather than physical in some cases. People are going to commit what they can get away with).

Women HAVE formed gangs and military groups in the past. Viking and Mongol raiders did at times, have female membership. Much information on female combatants and criminals has been lost or simply never studied. Even research from the 1980's is probably tainted by views of sexuality and gender of the times.

[Frozen_Feet]

One situation where you'd be likely to see female soldiers being superior to males: a setting where child soldiers are prominent in warfare.

Reason: boys and girls are quite alike up to 10 years of age, but puberty for girls begins on average 1,5 years earlier than for boys, and they reach their full height as much sooner. So there's a window of about two years (ages 12 to 14, roughly) when girls are physically and mentally superior to boys.

There's a really depressing real life example of this on the tip of my tongue, but the nation where it happened eludes me. Somewhere in Africa. Of course, given the disposable nature of child soldiers and the conditions which give rise to such warfare, it is unlikely they would have much in the way of armor.

[Ashiel]

If anyone wants an opinion from the peanut gallery:

My father believes that women should not be allowed to be protagonists in games, be they tabletop or video games, because women are so inferior to men in every way that it would break suspension of belief to have them be the equal of male protagonists, and a game would be both un-fun and unfair if there were such massive differences associated with gender.

So yeah, these ideas (which I do not agree with at all for the record) seem to be pretty strong in the older generation.

Eh, I wouldn't lump entire generations into anything like that. I know lots of folks that are 80 and younger who would disagree.

As someone who plays female characters exclusively, I'd probably wreck his verisimilitude pretty hard at the gaming table. :smallannoyed:

[Donnadogsoth]

No, it doesn't.

And actually, what I am claiming is that my counter-experience proves that your claim does not apply to 100% of the human race. Nothing more, nothing less.

And, there are only two options, either what I am saying is correct, that there tends to be a brain difference between men and women (I don't believe I used the number 100% at all anywhere in this thread, though please prove me wrong), or you are correct, that there isn't.

[Max_Killjoy]

And, there are only two options, either what I am saying is correct, that there tends to be a brain difference between men and women (I don't believe I used the number 100% at all anywhere in this thread, though please prove me wrong), or you are correct, that there isn't.

There's another option, the middle you appear to be trying to exclude... that there does exist a difference of some sort/degree, but your previous posts had greatly overstated that difference.

[Ashiel]

My point was generally that the women's team is better at soccer than 99% of the men on the planet. The differences in size and strength and speed caused by sexual dimorphism are swamped by those particular women's superior training, talent, experience, etc. That is, looking at entire populations, other things matter quite a bit more than the differences of dimorphism.
A dishonest and foolish point.

Anyone who practices and trains to be better at something will advance themselves beyond their natural untrained ability. At some point, that means outpacing people who've had no practice at all. However, with similar levels of training, the person with the natural edge will outpace the person.

This isn't even complicated. It's just flat out dishonest. I mean, let's review.

1. You said that not wearing armor was assured death.
A. I pointed out many heroes that don't wear armor and face the same perils (swords and stuff).
2. You then said it was about setting norms.
A. I then corrected that if that were the case, you agree that it's aesthetics since the former wasn't true if the latter wasn't.

You then sqawked "apples to lugnuts!"

3. Now you're comparing the elitest of a group with the average of another group, specializing in something the other group has no specialization in.
A. I'm calling BS. Compare it strait, just like I did. If you're comparing professional soccer players then compare them to professional soccer players. Are male professional soccer players on average larger and stronger than female professional soccer players, despite both being the upper echelons of their fields?

And all of this coming from some person who's regularly insulted fans, artists, and authors for their shirking of realism for not catering to your aesthetics and verisimilitude, and condemning those of us who say "It doesn't matter, it's fantasy, just enjoy what you like and have fun", only to pull this crap and then complain that we're trying to be hyper realistic in fantasy, WHILE WE'RE STILL SAYING IT'S FANTASY, DO WHAT YOU WANT.

God the dishonesty is thick here. :smallannoyed:

[Lord Raziere]

The only one who is dishonest here is you Ashiel, Max has been completely consistent and honest about his position, while every time I talk to you, your evading everything you said in your post last time pretending as if you didn't say anything I don't agree with, while apparently attacking his character and emotional buttons like you did me, so apparently both me and him notice the same pattern that your using in communication.

oh and you claim to work on a 14 hour workday and yet your constantly posting in this thread. so. thats suspicious of how you got the time to argue on the internet throughout the day.

and your still putting words in his mouth because I'm pretty sure your not stating Max's position, but a warped strawman parody of it.

[Lemmy]

oh and you claim to work on a 14 hour workday and yet your constantly posting in this thread. so. thats suspicious of how you got the time to argue on the internet throughout the day. It's almost as if Ashiel had some sort of portable device that can access the internet... I wonder what kind of sorcery that could be...

Whatever that witchcraft may be, I'm uncertain how that affects any of the points Ashiel has made.

- - -

On a separate note... If anyone is trying to say that there's no difference between men and women (or that said difference is too small to matter), then Picking soccer as your example might not be a good idea (http://www.dailywire.com/news/6072/australias-national-womens-soccer-team-lose-7-0-amanda-prestigiacomo#).

I honestly don't understand this need to deny obvious biological facts... What is so bad about acknowledging the fact that men are stronger than women? If you don't like... Well... Too bad! Doesn't stop it being true. I dislike that fact that I'll probably grow bald (even though both my sisters get to keep their hair). Doesn't change anything. You won't see me saying that male pattern baldness is a social construct or that we don't really know if baldness affects men far more often than it does women.

There's a difference between wanting both sexes to be respected/given the same opportunities/rights... And pretending they are equal. The former is a noble sentiment and goal... The latter is just childish denial of reality.

[Donnadogsoth]

Comparing inner city youth to dogs aside (wtf?), studies have shown that men and women are equally likely to be aggressive. Until the age that cultural norms and socialization hits, both young boys and girls exhibit aggressive tendencies. Once they start to absorb cultural ideals, women tend to go for social aggression (Blackmail, rumor mongering, spying, harassment) while men go solely for physical aggression. In a society without gender roles, it would be quite interesting to see how the different types of aggression play out. (especially in the modern age, where it's a whole heck of a lot easier to commit social aggression rather than physical in some cases. People are going to commit what they can get away with).

I would care to read more about these studies people here talk about. Do you have any links to articles summarising their findings?


Women HAVE formed gangs and military groups in the past. Viking and Mongol raiders did at times, have female membership. Much information on female combatants and criminals has been lost or simply never studied. Even research from the 1980's is probably tainted by views of sexuality and gender of the times.

Yes, I grasp that women have at times historically been involved as combatants. Nowhere did I doubt that. Nor do I doubt that women, when filtered through the same standards as men, can perform well as combatants. On the other hand, the vast majority of combatants throughout recorded history have been men, and I think, though have not found any study to prove, that men are more likely to make effective combatants than women are. I'm not saying all men make better combatants, or that all men are born soldiers, I'm saying that a higher % of men than women will likely make effective combatants, no matter how equal their upbringing.

But this is skewed by factors of preference. A woman who could make an effective combatant may well not want to. I think that the ratio of women to men employed in physically dangerous and/or dirty jobs suggests that this is the case, the women to a larger degree than men do not gravitate towards such jobs. The same goes for the STEM fields. Women largely don't like math-intensive fields like engineering, to a larger degree than men. Once again, for the crowd, I'm not saying all men are born engineers, just that more men than women are and as far as I can tell, will always be, interested in engineering.

But back to the cheesecake debate. The relevance of all this is that there is a strong evolutionary and historical reason for the trope of a damsel in distress. Women are traditionally not soldiers, for the good reason that mothers or potential mothers are not to be wasted on the battlefield when disposable men will do. Thus, if the enemy wins the war, the enemy gets the women. Whether this is like the Israelites keeping the virgin Midianite girls for themselves to absorb into the tribe after slaughtering everyone else, or whether it's a total rape-and-murder fest like the fall of Constantinople, the damsel in distress would benefit from being called not a trope but an archetype, one that motivates men to heroic deeds.

If in modern times we acknowledge the potentials of women fairly, and this reflects into our entertainment and art as well, so much to the better. The problem isn't that woman aren't being, or shouldn't be, allowed to play the game, and be reflected into the artwork. The problem is that playing a zero-sum-game with the art erases meaningful stuff that has a very real psychological grounding, and is fun as well. Cheesecake-haters should lighten up and take it as funny that this stuff exists, while cheesecake-lovers can appreciate the humour whilst at the same time the value of male fantasy. And if women want their female fantasy as well, they're welcome to it, bring it on, maybe it will appeal to men as well, just don't tell us we're badwrong fans because we refuse to censor the cover of our DMG.

[Donnadogsoth]

The only one who is dishonest here is you Ashiel, Max has been completely consistent and honest about his position, while every time I talk to you, your evading everything you said in your post last time pretending as if you didn't say anything I don't agree with, while apparently attacking his character and emotional buttons like you did me, so apparently both me and him notice the same pattern that your using in communication.

oh and you claim to work on a 14 hour workday and yet your constantly posting in this thread. so. thats suspicious of how you got the time to argue on the internet throughout the day.

and your still putting words in his mouth because I'm pretty sure your not stating Max's position, but a warped strawman parody of it.

If Max thinks men and women soccer players are equal then why doesn't he advocate for the fusion of men's and women's teams and competitions into a single FIFA Co-Ed World Cup? Is he building up to that argument?

[Max_Killjoy]

If Max thinks men and women soccer players are equal then why doesn't he advocate for the fusion of men's and women's teams and competitions into a single FIFA Co-Ed World Cup? Is he building up to that argument?

I challenge anyone to find where I claimed that male and female soccer players are equal once differences in talent, training, experience, etc, have been accounted for.

What I said was that the women on the US national team are better than 99% of the men on the planet at soccer.

I did not say that the players on the US women's and men's national team were interchangeable.

But this wouldn't be even close to the first time -- in this thread, even -- that someone has tried ascribe to me a position I have not taken.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, I grasp that women have at times historically been involved as combatants. Nowhere did I doubt that. Nor do I doubt that women, when filtered through the same standards as men, can perform well as combatants. On the other hand, the vast majority of combatants throughout recorded history have been men, and I think, though have not found any study to prove, that men are more likely to make effective combatants than women are. I'm not saying all men make better combatants, or that all men are born soldiers, I'm saying that a higher % of men than women will likely make effective combatants, no matter how equal their upbringing.

But this is skewed by factors of preference. A woman who could make an effective combatant may well not want to. I think that the ratio of women to men employed in physically dangerous and/or dirty jobs suggests that this is the case, the women to a larger degree than men do not gravitate towards such jobs. The same goes for the STEM fields. Women largely don't like math-intensive fields like engineering, to a larger degree than men. Once again, for the crowd, I'm not saying all men are born engineers, just that more men than women are and as far as I can tell, will always be, interested in engineering.


Perhaps expand your reading on this general topic outside whatever combination of evolutionary psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology) and other things you're reading.

You appear to be assuming that because these differences exist, they're simply natural normal differences that are innate to physical gender, rather than leaving the door open to other explanations... "women don't like" almost always turns out to be a matter of nurture rather than the essentialist nature that you're assuming, once the feedback cycle of culture enforcing its norms is accounted for in studying those issues.

Your entire position here is coming across as nothing more than a collection of interlocking just-so stories, that things are naturally the way they are because that's just the way they are. Evolutionary psychology turns out to be rife with that sort of essentialist nonsense.

Stop reading garbage like The Lucifer Principle with its trite half-informed faerie-tale explanations.




But back to the cheesecake debate. The relevance of all this is that there is a strong evolutionary and historical reason for the trope of a damsel in distress. Women are traditionally not soldiers, for the good reason that mothers or potential mothers are not to be wasted on the battlefield when disposable men will do. Thus, if the enemy wins the war, the enemy gets the women. Whether this is like the Israelites keeping the virgin Midianite girls for themselves to absorb into the tribe after slaughtering everyone else, or whether it's a total rape-and-murder fest like the fall of Constantinople, the damsel in distress would benefit from being called not a trope but an archetype, one that motivates men to heroic deeds.


Oh, it's a pile of tired old tropes, to be sure.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DamselInDistress
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenActWomenAre
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreStrongWomenArePretty
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LivingMacGuffin
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDulcineaEffect
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple

[CharonsHelper]

I challenge anyone to find where I claimed that male and female soccer players are equal once differences in talent, training, experience, etc, have been accounted for.

What I said was that the women on the US national team are better than 99% of the men on the planet at soccer.

I did not say that the players on the US women's and men's national team were interchangeable.

But this wouldn't be even close to the first time that someone has tried ascribe to me a position I have not taken.

No you didn't say that. But I'm still scratching my head wondering what the point of your bringing up soccer in the first place was (others seem to be guessing at your motive). 99% of the world doesn't play/train much at soccer either.

[Max_Killjoy]

No you didn't say that. But I'm still scratching my head wondering what the point of your bringing up soccer in the first place was (others seem to be guessing at your motive). 99% of the world doesn't play/train much at soccer either.

I was trying to find an example I was familiar with, that would demonstrate that training, talent, experience, etc, can easily overshadow the "mean difference" between male and female humans even in highly demanding athletic endeavors.

[Lord Raziere]

1. Its almost as if playing with such devices while working would be a huge distraction that would you get fired. its almost as if she brought it up as an excuse for why she put words in my mouth and I'm calling her on her bull, because it almost as if people have done that to excuse their behavior before while manipulating me and pushing my emotional buttons.

2. By all means call the other person debating you childish, that will persuade people to agree with you. No wait it isn't working. Guess insults don't work for that after all. *Cough*Projecting*cough*

And why talk about this difference so much? there are one armed people, paraplegics, and so on who I am sure are far more important in strength differentiation than male and female. unless your saying that women have a disability compared to men in terms of strength and need help to become as strong? like, is this a problem with such a serious difference that its worth pointing out? what is so important that women are unable to do a thing because of this? If your so concerned about this strength difference, what are the difficulties worth solving? what instances are they so weak
that its important to address this problem? in many jobs, from farms to factories, machines do most of the heavy lifting, sure soldiers need be fit, but much of military matters are handled by vehicles, cars, missiles, and the more important skills are proper aim and working as a unit., and sports? are not important to anything, they're entertainment, which I don't care about and don't do myself, so anyone with any sports skills are going to defeat me.

so is it relevant? No. might as well say men and women are equal. and thats what I'm gonna do. a one-armed man has more problems lifting things than a woman with two arms, I'd be more concerned about one-armed people.

[CharonsHelper]

I was trying to find an example I was familiar with, that would demonstrate that training, talent, experience, etc, can easily overshadow the "mean difference" between male and female humans even in highly demanding athletic endeavors.

But - I didn't read anyone saying that that wasn't true in the first place. *shrug* Maybe I missed it or your read intent someplace differently than I did.

[Max_Killjoy]

But - I didn't read anyone saying that that wasn't true in the first place. *shrug* Maybe I missed it or your read intent someplace differently than I did.


It certainly seemed to be (paraphrasing) "these differences exist, and they're big, and they mean big things, and tell us how women and men should be depicted differently and in different roles in art, and it's good and fine that they are".

If that was never anyone's assertion, then I'll retract.

[Max_Killjoy]

From the Tropes page... lays out where "damsel in distress" and "women's armor needs to make them pretty" overlap and hit home.



"For women the implication is that your actions are irrelevant to your attractiveness to the opposite sex. As long as you're beautiful, even if you're 105 lbs of useless deadweight or a complete and utter b***h you're still desirable. And if you're not born beautiful enough, no matter what you do, Failure Is the Only Option for you.

The Unfortunate Implications for men are that men are shallow and only after one thing, thus they don't care if a woman is a dynamic, active character, and that women have no worth beyond their looks. Also, male characters will end up pulling more than their own weight, emotionally and physically, in works where this trope is in effect."



Both tropes are insulting to everyone, with the details of why and how shifting about.


~~~~


And really, "we don't send women to war" is a bit of a distraction from the issues at hand. Plenty of cultures that didn't send their women to war still trained their women to fight, to defend themselves and their homes and those to young or too old to fight. It was common for women in these cultures to have their own arms, daggers they carried and spears by the front door, or something, to take up and fight with. There's a lot more to being about to fight, than marching off to war. If these women put on armor, they didn't put on special women's armor to make them as "feminine and sexy" as possible, they put on a helmet and whatever else they could manage, focused on how it would protect them, because they didn't want to die and they didn't want to fail their families and neighbors -- same as with the men.

And when the men (and in some cases some of the women) were away at war? Then the ability of the women left behind to fend off raiders and wild animals and the lot became all the more important.

Much of what we "know" about past cultures and how "things have always been" regarding women and fighting has been filtered through a handful of cultures that did largely denigrate/idealize women as fragile pretty baby makers and kitchen staff -- the Athenians, the Romans, the Victorians. The "damsel in distress" trope seems to gain prominence not in the art and stories of an existing culture about themselves, but rather in the art and stories a culture creates to venerate its own idealized past and justify their own present pacified social structure. Chivalry, the Samurai ideal, a certain version of the American Old West, are all more fiction than fact.. later cultures trying to lay a foundation under their own beliefs and power structure, and yearning for something that never really was in a more pacified and rarefied time.

[Lord Torath]

1. Its almost as if playing with such devices while working would be a huge distraction that would you get fired. its almost as if she brought it up as an excuse for why she put words in my mouth and I'm calling her on her bull, because it almost as if people have done that to excuse their behavior before while manipulating me and pushing my emotional buttons.So, because Ashiel may have posted her comments while at work, her (his? No gender is specified) arguments have less validity?

Let's leave the ad hominem attacks to the other forums. Here at Giant in the Playground, we hold ourselves to higher standards1. And that goes to both sides of the argument here, not just Lord Raziere. If someone slips an insult into their argument, ignore it. Let's keep things respectful. :smallamused:

1. Okay, the mods hold us to higher standards, but we should hold ourselves to those standards anyway.

[Lord Raziere]

It certainly seemed to be (paraphrasing) "these differences exist, and they're big, and they mean big things, and tell us how women and men should be depicted differently and in different roles in art, and it's good and fine that they are".

If that was never anyone's assertion, then I'll retract.

if that is true of them, perhaps they should learn not to point out insignificant truths that aren't their beliefs while someone like donnadogsoth is digging their hole deeper.

really nerds in general need to learn when something is not worth arguing- important beliefs, yes, little details to bring up that are technically true but really just confuse the issue and the goal at hand? probably not.

[Donnadogsoth]

Perhaps expand your reading on this general topic outside whatever combination of evolutionary psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology) and other things you're reading.

You appear to be assuming that because these differences exist, they're simply natural normal differences that are innate to physical gender, rather than leaving the door open to other explanations... "women don't like" almost always turns out to be a matter of nurture rather than the essentialist nature that you're assuming, once the feedback cycle of culture enforcing its norms is accounted for in studying those issues.

Your entire position here is coming across as nothing more than a collection of interlocking just-so stories, that things are naturally the way they are because that's just the way they are. Evolutionary psychology turns out to be rife with that sort of essentialist nonsense.

Why, I wonder, would male and females have different brain chemistry at all, if it has zero effect on their psychology? I remember an outspoken MTF transsexual by the name of Zinnia Jones remarked once that going on female hormones opened up "symphonies of emotions" for her. But more to the point:

I in my "essentialism" look towards the differences in the sexes with regards to their romantic relationships. It seems a "way they are" that most people look for their sexual complement, and I don't just mean in terms of physical shape. Finding someone romantically who is virtually identical psychologically might be initially thrilling, but must wear. The homosexual experience attests to this; there is an instability in couples who are too close psychologically. So, most heterosexual men, whatever their grumbles about the opposite sex, are attracted in large measure not merely to people with the right "jiggly bits" as if that were the last word in heterosexual attraction; they're attracted to a complementary personality that the female form is a metaphor for. Sort of like what you attempted to lampoon by linking to various tropes. Yes, women are in large measure attracted to power; men to beauty. Men want feminine women by and large, and the present, ongoing campaign to convince people that men and women are intrinsically psychologically identical, as by people such as yourself, brings ill.


Stop reading garbage like The Lucifer Principle with its trite half-informed faerie-tale explanations.

Stop telling people what to do. Including what art to make, print, and enjoy.


Oh, it's a pile of tired old tropes, to be sure.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreTheExpendableGender
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreGenericWomenAreSpecial
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DamselInDistress
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenActWomenAre
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MenAreStrongWomenArePretty
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LivingMacGuffin
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheDulcineaEffect
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheSmurfettePrinciple

The first thing I thought upon encountering your list was, "Fresh templates for gaming plots!".

[Dragonexx]

I find it amusing that some of the same people who were angrily citing "but it's fantasy!" to justify dysfunctional armor and impractical-for-situation clothing, and were reacting to trying for even the semblance of reality as just absolutely ridiculous and hypocritical and an infringement of their goodfuntimes...

...are now trying to cite "reality" (or rather their peculiar just-so version of it) and appeal to supposed "natural" and therefore "proper" gender roles as a defense of certain gender-divergent tropes in art and fiction.

I'm not one of those people. "It's fantasy!" means you can go all out and create the world you want to create. Even if women weren't historically warriors (which is bull****), you can totally make whatever gender roles you want or have no roles at all.

Also, where the **** is this thread going? I drop out for a while, and then comeback to find some completely weird (and kinda disturbing) arguements.

(for the record, I'm on the side of Do What Thou Wilt. I prefer aesthetically pleasing designs and rule of cool. But whatever. Have cheese/beefcake or don't or mix it or whatever if it's fun for you and your playgroup. D&D is flexible enough to do so.)

[Lemmy]

1. Its almost as if playing with such devices while working would be a huge distraction that would you get fired. its almost as if she brought it up as an excuse for why she put words in my mouth and I'm calling her on her bull, because it almost as if people have done that to excuse their behavior before while manipulating me and pushing my emotional buttons.You didn't "call her on her bull"... You just disagreed vehemently with her. That doesn't make her argument BS.


2. By all means call the other person debating you childish, that will persuade people to agree with you. No wait it isn't working. Guess insults don't work for that after all. *Cough*Projecting*cough*
That's one word I'd use to describe denial of reality... So I used it. You'll notice I didn't call anyone "childish", only gave that description to a certain behavior. I didn't even say everyone who takes part in said behabehav is childish... Just like smart people can do dumb stuff, I'm sure mature people can be childish on occasion.


And why talk about this difference so much?Uh... Because it's the subject being discussed? What did you expect? That people joining the discussion start talking about trains?


there are one armed people, paraplegics, and so on who I am sure are far more important in strength differentiation than male and female. unless your saying that women have a disability compared to men in terms of strength and need help to become as strong? like, is this a problem with such a serious difference that its worth pointing out? what is so important that women are unable to do a thing because of this? If your so concerned about this strength difference, what are the difficulties worth solving? what instances are they so weak
that its important to address this problem? in many jobs, from farms to factories, machines do most of the heavy lifting, sure soldiers need be fit, but much of military matters are handled by vehicles, cars, missiles, and the more important skills are proper aim and working as a unit., and sports? are not important to anything, they're entertainment, which I don't care about and don't do myself, so anyone with any sports skills are going to defeat me.

so is it relevant? No. might as well say men and women are equal. and thats what I'm gonna do. a one-armed man has more problems lifting things than a woman with two arms, I'd be more concerned about one-armed people.Well... So?

Paraplegic people can lead a perfectly normal life and contribute just as much to society as any able-bodied person... That doesn't mean they're as physically capable as people with functional legs. Height also doesn't matter at all in 99% of activities... But if you tell short people they reach just as high (physically speaking) as tall people, I'll disagree. Not because I'm prejudiced against short people or intimidated by them... But simply because the statement isn't true. And the fact that ladders exist doesn't change that.

Certain physical and psychological traits are far more common in one sex or the other. This is due to both nurture AND nature.

That's the truth... So what?

[Max_Killjoy]

Why, I wonder, would male and females have different brain chemistry at all, if it has zero effect on their psychology? I remember an outspoken MTF transsexual by the name of Zinnia Jones remarked once that going on female hormones opened up "symphonies of emotions" for her. But more to the point:

I in my "essentialism" look towards the differences in the sexes with regards to their romantic relationships. It seems a "way they are" that most people look for their sexual complement, and I don't just mean in terms of physical shape. Finding someone romantically who is virtually identical psychologically might be initially thrilling, but must wear. The homosexual experience attests to this; there is an instability in couples who are too close psychologically. So, most heterosexual men, whatever their grumbles about the opposite sex, are attracted in large measure not merely to people with the right "jiggly bits" as if that were the last word in heterosexual attraction; they're attracted to a complementary personality that the female form is a metaphor for. Sort of like what you attempted to lampoon by linking to various tropes. Yes, women are in large measure attracted to power; men to beauty. Men want feminine women by and large, and the present, ongoing campaign to convince people that men and women are intrinsically psychologically identical, as by people such as yourself, brings ill.


Do you have anything to actually back up those statements, or are they just more self-reinforcing truisms garnered from men's rights garbage and pop-culture relationship-advice articles?

"Men are attracted to," "men want," "women are attracted to," "women want."

For someone who demands that other people's tastes be respected, you certainly seem to have a habit of treating anything that doesn't fit your narrative as nonexistent.




Stop telling people what to do. Including what art to make, print, and enjoy.


It's ironic that someone touting 1950s gender-truisms would make such a statement.




The first thing I thought upon encountering your list was, "Fresh templates for gaming plots!".


More's the pity.


~~~~




Certain physical and psychological traits are far more common in one sex or the other. This is due to both nurture AND nature.


The problem is that certain posters are exaggerating both the degree and the relevance of the small differences in that regard, and asserting that these differences, as inflated and exaggerated by the cultural feedback loop of expectations and pressures and perception bias, are "natural" and "proper" and "healthy".

They are then using that to argue that it's good and normal and desirable that artwork and fiction depict male characters such as to make them strong and active, and female characters as attractive and waiting to be acted upon.

But at least when it comes to the activity of those posters in this discussion, we've gotten past their smokescreen of "how dare judge other people's tastes?!" and "this is all symbolic!", and right down to the dirty heart of the matter.

[Dragonexx]

I find it amusing that some of the same people who were angrily citing "but it's fantasy!" to justify dysfunctional armor and impractical-for-situation clothing, and were reacting to trying for even the semblance of reality as just absolutely ridiculous and hypocritical and an infringement of their goodfuntimes...

...are now trying to cite "reality" (or rather their peculiar just-so version of it) and appeal to supposed "natural" and therefore "proper" gender roles as a defense of certain gender-divergent tropes in art and fiction.

I'm not one of those people. "It's fantasy!" means you can go all out and create the world you want to create. Even if women weren't historically warriors (which is bull****), you can totally make whatever gender roles you want or have no roles at all.

Also, where the **** is this thread going? I drop out for a while, and then comeback to find some completely weird (and kinda disturbing) arguements.

(for the record, I'm on the side of Do What Thou Wilt. I prefer aesthetically pleasing designs and rule of cool. But whatever. Have cheese/beefcake or don't or mix it or whatever if it's fun for you and your playgroup. D&D is flexible enough to do so.)

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm not one of those people. "It's fantasy!" means you can go all out and create the world you want to create. Even if women weren't historically warriors (which is bull****), you can totally make whatever gender roles you want or have no roles at all.

Also, where the **** is this thread going? I drop out for a while, and then comeback to find some completely weird (and kinda disturbing) arguements.

(for the record, I'm on the side of Do What Thou Wilt. I prefer aesthetically pleasing designs and rule of cool. But whatever. Have cheese/beefcake or don't or mix it or whatever if it's fun for you and your playgroup. D&D is flexible enough to do so.)

No, from what I've noticed here, I wouldn't put your arguments in that category... you seem to be genuinely in the "whatever you have fun with" category, and not using that as a smokescreen for something else.

Your "it's fantasy" appears honest, and doesn't do a 180 and appeal to a quasi-realism of 1950s/Victorian/Roman/Athenian gender mythology and pseudo-scientific bioessentialism as soon as it's challenged.

[Callos_DeTerran]

My stance?

I'm playing games with super powers, magic, many ton flying reptiles that breath fire, entities composed of raw evil and good, reincarnated shards of godlike power, starlight, laser swords, animal mutants after the apocalypse, and the ability to produce large explosions by flinging bat poop and wiggling your fingers.

What shape armor actually takes is completely irrelevant to me cause it doesn't matter. I make it look however I think fits the concept I have in mind. If that's a Hawaiian shirt and jorts, cool. If that's accurate heavy plate and kite shield, awesome. If its a chainmail bikini/spiked plate vodpiece, that's my choice.

Cause I don't give two damns about how 'realistic' something is in fantasy/super hero/sci-to games...I care about looking damn good.

[Max_Killjoy]

Women Have Always Fought (http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/)

And so there have been women who've looked for armor, and they've worn armor that worked, not armor that made them look "feminine" or "pretty" -- unless that "armor" was just for show, and wasn't for fighting in at all.

[Floret]

Why, I wonder, would male and females have different brain chemistry at all, if it has zero effect on their psychology? I remember an outspoken MTF transsexual by the name of Zinnia Jones remarked once that going on female hormones opened up "symphonies of emotions" for her. But more to the point

Sure, hormones change the way you feel. Acting like this fundamentally changes your psychology into two distinct groups... is difficult, especially before the background of men and women both having (somewhat fluctuating, and differing from person to person) natural levels of testosterone and estrogen.
Drawing on the difference of trans people's emotions pre and post hormone therapy might also not be as representative as you'd like, their impressions will be severely coloured by their decrease in gender dysphoria, and not necessarily be the cause of immutable brain chemistry.

And, again, to reiterate: Whatever differences there are in the averages are far trumped by the amount of overlap between different male and female experiences, and should therefor not be treated as two non-interacting monoliths.


I in my "essentialism" look towards the differences in the sexes with regards to their romantic relationships. It seems a "way they are" that most people look for their sexual complement, and I don't just mean in terms of physical shape. Finding someone romantically who is virtually identical psychologically might be initially thrilling, but must wear. The homosexual experience attests to this; there is an instability in couples who are too close psychologically. So, most heterosexual men, whatever their grumbles about the opposite sex, are attracted in large measure not merely to people with the right "jiggly bits" as if that were the last word in heterosexual attraction; they're attracted to a complementary personality that the female form is a metaphor for. Sort of like what you attempted to lampoon by linking to various tropes. Yes, women are in large measure attracted to power; men to beauty. Men want feminine women by and large, and the present, ongoing campaign to convince people that men and women are intrinsically psychologically identical, as by people such as yourself, brings ill.

Can you... can you hear yourself talk?
..."The homosexual experience"? Couples that are similar to each other are bound to fail? Men and women are (near)-monolithic groups? "The female form is a metaphor for"...
...I shall join Max in his statement of "Sources, please", and will only add: This is not how, in my experience, the world, or well... anything, really, works.


The first thing I thought upon encountering your list was, "Fresh templates for gaming plots!".

If that is your reaction to a collection of the oldest and most sexist tropes in fiction, then I suggest that you both widen your horizon immensely (If they seem new to you, it at least suggests you haven't been exposed to much fiction at all), as well as take a long, hard look at yourself and your choices.

[Max_Killjoy]

My stance?

I'm playing games with super powers, magic, many ton flying reptiles that breath fire, entities composed of raw evil and good, reincarnated shards of godlike power, starlight, laser swords, animal mutants after the apocalypse, and the ability to produce large explosions by flinging bat poop and wiggling your fingers.

What shape armor actually takes is completely irrelevant to me cause it doesn't matter. I make it look however I think fits the concept I have in mind. If that's a Hawaiian shirt and jorts, cool. If that's accurate heavy plate and kite shield, awesome. If its a chainmail bikini/spiked plate vodpiece, that's my choice.

Cause I don't give two damns about how 'realistic' something is in fantasy/super hero/sci-to games...I care about looking damn good.

Cool.

Please understand that (at least for some of us) there's a space in there in which "looking good" and "looks like it could be real, and functional, and practical" are really close to matching sets. For some of us, it's hard to look at something that's clearly not functional, and think "that looks awesome", when what we're really thinking is "that looks like it's going to fail".

And it irks some of us when someone says "I don't care if it's 'realistic' as long as it looks awesome" with an implication, quite clear in the context, that verisimilitude can't be awesome and there's something wrong with caring about it. (I don't think that's where you're going, but it's where many who say similar things to what you said are going.)

And for some of us, the idea that one fantastic element must automatically open the door to all fantastic elements is utterly foreign to how and why we write, and build worlds, and play RPGs.

[Ashiel]

The only one who is dishonest here is you Ashiel,
Try again.

Max has been completely consistent
In being inconsistent.

and honest about his position,
Except when it's inconvenient.

while every time I talk to you, your evading everything you said in your post last time pretending as if you didn't say anything I don't agree with
Such as?


while apparently attacking his character and emotional buttons like you did me
Prove it. Go do some quoting. I'll wait. My posts are still here. I've consistently pointed out the inconsistencies in his reasoning. I've also called him out on his insulting authors, artists, and fans of aesthetics as ignorant and idiots for liking things differently than him. I don't have to attack his character because he does that himself.

As for your emotional buttons, you're projecting. I apologized because after thinking about it, I don't know what you've been through. I don't know you, I don't know why you reacted the way you did, or why you thought people disagreeing with you meant that they have some sort of ire towards you, but maybe it was connected.


so apparently both me and him notice the same pattern that your using in communication.
I'll make it really easy.
Pattern...
1. Ashiel: "Everyone either doesn't like it due to some offense to their moral preferences, or aesthetically".
2. Someone remarks that it's not personal morals nor aesthetics, it's about realism and that they'd all die if dressed like this.
3. Ashiel: "Here are plenty of adventurers in dangerous situations with swords and stuff in little to no armor. Why are they not a problem?"
3. Someone remarks that it's because they fit in the setting and don't mess with their personal immersion.
4. Ashiel: "Okay, so it's aesthetics then."
5. *MELTDOWN / IGNORE / BAD PERSON / SEXIST / IGNORANT / RAAAAAAGH*
6. Ashiel: "It's okay, you can like what you want and everyone else can like what they want. Everybody wins. It's all cool."
7. *Passive aggressive insults / strawmen / responses to things unsaid.*
8. Ashiel: "Still aesthetics. Also it's fantasy. We can have women suplexing ogres (and that's awesome)."
9. Repeat with something about sexist tropes and biology


oh and you claim to work on a 14 hour workday and yet your constantly posting in this thread. so. thats suspicious of how you got the time to argue on the internet throughout the day.
Hold up there, I'm gonna let you finish but...
This post right here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22229876&postcount=462) from yesterday was posted as I left my home for work. It was posted at 2:28 AM. My very next post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22231258&postcount=477) was at 2:21 PM, which was during a break, and I made one other post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22231294&postcount=478) before I had to go back to work. No further posts were made until this one (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22231701&postcount=480) at 4:53 PM. My exchanges with you began at 8:18 PM (18 hours after my first post yesterday) and I was still posting in good spirits. As were the next several posts (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232464&postcount=489) moving on through 9:04 PM. Your post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232500&postcount=490) that confused me was at 9:15 PM.

My response (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232572&postcount=495) was at 9:38 PM, followed by my questioning the post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232577&postcount=496) that confused me exactly 1 minute later. Still, no hostility as of 9:47 PM when I continued to be consistent (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232597&postcount=497) about defending people's right to enjoy what they will.

I didn't post again (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232699&postcount=504) until 10:24 PM. At this point I have been up for more than 20 hours strait, including the 14 hour shift. I'm still trying to be positive, but the negativity and what felt like (though perhaps wasn't) you being unnecessarily antagonistic was beginning to get to me. I said we had a misunderstanding, accepted that you shat on my earlier attempts at an olive branch and decided that was fine, you got your own issues to deal with an it's no skin off my back if you wanna be a porcupine. Finally, at 10:47 PM, I had taken some time to think about it (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=22232767&postcount=512)and thought that maybe you were acting the way you were because of some personal issues and your feelings were hurt. That was the last thing I posted, and a more direct attempt at extending an olive branch.

That's 21 hours from the point I got up that morning. All of the posting was done during my time over the course of the single day. Say what you will, but I want the record to be strait for everyone involved. I'm an honest person and I also respect my employers. I do not have time to post on forums while I'm working, which is one of the reasons my posting has been so much less frequent than it used to be (increased responsibilities at work). I'm off today, which is why I've been posting throughout the day, but I've also had to do things like go grocery shopping, cook, and spend time with my little brother.


and your still putting words in his mouth because I'm pretty sure your not stating Max's position, but a warped strawman parody of it.
Given that I quoted him when I was refuting him, I don't think so. I was making apples to apples comparisons. It's not even a complex comparison. He got mad and started flinging insults. I'll go back through the thread and perform a quote dump if you insist. As you can see, I'm not so arrogant as to consider myself above retracing pages deep through the thread.

[Ashiel]

Paraplegic people can lead a perfectly normal life and contribute just as much to society as any able-bodied person... That doesn't mean they're as physically capable as people with functional legs. Height also doesn't matter at all in 99% of activities... But if you tell short people they reach just as high (physically speaking) as tall people, I'll disagree. Not because I'm prejudiced against short people or intimidated by them... But simply because the statement isn't true. And the fact that ladders exist doesn't change that.

Certain physical and psychological traits are far more common in one sex or the other. This is due to both nurture AND nature.

That's the truth... So what?

Oh, Lemmy! Lemme show you a cool thing. :smallbiggrin:
This guy's probably better at Street Fighter than 99% (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1MYSgy4QMw) of the population and shows that you can do some amazing things if you try. :smallamused:

Inspirational. :smallbiggrin:

[Lemmy]

Oh, Lemmy! Lemme show you a cool thing. :smallbiggrin:
This guy's probably better at Street Fighter than 99% (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1MYSgy4QMw) of the population and shows that you can do some amazing things if you try. :smallamused:

Inspirational. :smallbiggrin:Ah... Yes. Brollylegs is awesome! I've known of him for a while. I even met him once in... Some event... I don't really remember which one.

It always amazes me how he pulls some of the most complex and demanding combos that'd I wouldn't be capable of doing even if I had four hands.

[Ashiel]

Ah... Yes. Brollylegs is awesome! I've known of him for a while. I event met him once in... Some event... I don't really remember which one.

It always amazes me how he pulls some of the most complex and demanding combos that'd I wouldn't be capable of doing even if I had fout hands.

Man I'd love to be able to play GG vs a Marilith (before or after asking for all six hands in marriage). lol

[1337 b4k4]

Cool.
And it irks some of us when someone says "I don't care if it's 'realistic' as long as it looks awesome" with an implication, quite clear in the context, that verisimilitude can't be awesome and there's something wrong with caring about it. (I don't think that's where you're going, but it's where many who say similar things to what you said are going.)


Has anyone actually implied that realism can't be awesome in this thread? Because I certainly haven't (in fact, again pointing to what I said in the very first pages of this thread, one of my favorite D&D party images is completely "versimilitudious") and I can't recall anyone who has.

[Max_Killjoy]

Has anyone actually implied that realism can't be awesome in this thread? Because I certainly haven't (in fact, again pointing to what I said in the very first pages of this thread, one of my favorite D&D party images is completely "versimilitudious") and I can't recall anyone who has.

Yes, at least as far as I'm concerned.

I'll see if I can find the specific instances again... if they're not behind the ignore blocks.

[Lemmy]

Kinda funny see someone claiming others are being intolerant of their tastes... Not long after saying the other person's aesthetic tastes "only belong in spoofs, farces, and a certain sort of DeviantArt posting".

[Donnadogsoth]

Do you have anything to actually back up those statements, or are they just more self-reinforcing truisms garnered from men's rights garbage and pop-culture relationship-advice articles?

"Men are attracted to," "men want," "women are attracted to," "women want."

My paragraph was based on patent truths. I don't need a scientific paper for that. But fill me in:

Most heterosexual men are not attracted to female minds but only female bodies? And vice versa? Heterosexuality is therefore just a curious and superficial attraction to bodies—but why should that be essential? Heterosexuality must be literally a construct and so we are all naturally bisexual—or pansexual, attracted to water buffalo or cacti or whatever.

Men aren't attracted to femininity?--they want neuter or masculine women?

Women aren't attracted to manly strength?--they want neuter or weak men?

{And because this is the Internet I have to say, again, that I do not mean 100% of men or women are X, only here the majority of them, just as if I had said that men are taller than women.)


For someone who demands that other people's tastes be respected, you certainly seem to have a habit of treating anything that doesn't fit your narrative as nonexistent.

Narratives ≠ tastes. If you think narratives are a matter of taste, you should have no problem with mine, just as if you really believed that fantasy cheesecake was a matter of taste, you would have the dignity to heed the countervailing voices here and go on your way without continuing to be a hypercritical busybody.



Stop telling people what to do. Including what art to make, print, and enjoy.
It's ironic that someone touting 1950s gender-truisms would make such a statement.

You got me there! I do believe there are cases where we should tell people what to do. But fantasy art isn't one of them unless it becomes outright pornographic.

[Max_Killjoy]

My paragraph was based on patent truths. I don't need a scientific paper for that.


And there we have it, folks. :biggrin:

[Donnadogsoth]

Can you... can you hear yourself talk?
..."The homosexual experience"? Couples that are similar to each other are bound to fail? Men and women are (near)-monolithic groups? "The female form is a metaphor for"...
...I shall join Max in his statement of "Sources, please", and will only add: This is not how, in my experience, the world, or well... anything, really, works.

Can you? You seem to be affected by the vapours. You're telling me that your significant other's physical form doesn't serve as a metaphor for their mind? What planet are you on?

Do men and women have different brains? (http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/men-women-different-brains.htm)

Men and women have different brains in a variety of ways, including grey:white matter ratio, vulnerability to various drugs, and susceptibility to various diseases. You will dismiss this as fluff, the same way Max_Killjoy and others dismiss heterosexuality as fluff--just a superficial trait bearing no relationship to actual personality. But of course this makes no sense: if men and women are the same psychologically, and humans are more than rutting, mindless animals, then hetero- and homosexuality should be viewed as diseases and bisexuality should rule.

On the lighter side (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BxckAMaTDc)

But this is just pop culture irrelevancy, people like this are ignoramuses.

The sad case of David Reimer (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer)

Men's and women's brains are identical, right? So why would a man raised as a woman be so desperate to become a man? He should have been perfectly socialised and brainwashed into his assigned gender--but he wasn't! He felt this innate urge to become a man. It turned out badly, he suicided, and that's a shame, but the point remains: if "man" can be so compelling for a man raised as a woman to become, why should heterosexuality be any different? Why should it not be a case that heterosexuals are attracted to the whole package that is the opposite sex, both physical and mental?--which means those opposites must be psychologically different. If those differences weren't there, then the only explanation there could be for heterosexuality would be brainwashing!


If that is your reaction to a collection of the oldest and most sexist tropes in fiction, then I suggest that you both widen your horizon immensely (If they seem new to you, it at least suggests you haven't been exposed to much fiction at all), as well as take a long, hard look at yourself and your choices.

Got any reading suggestions?

[Donnadogsoth]

And there we have it, folks. :biggrin:

And your counter-evidence aside from a "nah ahh" about evolutionary psychology is...?

[Max_Killjoy]

Kinda funny see someone claiming others are being intolerant of their tastes... Not long after saying the other person's aesthetic tastes "only belong in spoofs, farces, and a certain sort of DeviantArt posting".


The exact post: Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXIII (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?518251-Got-a-Real-World-Weapon-Armor-or-Tactics-Question-Mk-XXIII&p=22038088#post22038088)

The discussion there has nothing to do with "taste", and everything to do with exactly what's on the tin thread title.

And in that context, it's a bluntly factual comment. The sort of armor that was being asked about has zero place in a discussion of real functional armor.

[Max_Killjoy]

And your counter-evidence aside from a "nah ahh" about evolutionary psychology is...?

Asked and answered.

Plus, the burden of proof (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_burden_of_proof) is on the party making the claim -- you made the claim and then flatly refused even the idea of giving any evidence, citing "patent truth (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/212/Appeal-to-Self-evident-Truth)" as your only support.

Turning around and demanding counter-evidence against your claim isn't exactly intellectually kosher.


Based on what you just told us --
My paragraph was based on patent truths. I don't need a scientific paper for that. -- I doubt you'll take any of this seriously, but...


https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201412/how-valid-is-evolutionary-psychology (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201412/how-valid-is-evolutionary-psychology)
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/problems.html (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/problems.html)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology)
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2005/08/cave_thinkers.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2005/08/cave_thinkers.html)
https://psychologyinseattle.squarespace.com/a-critique-of-evolutionary-psychology/ (https://psychologyinseattle.squarespace.com/a-critique-of-evolutionary-psychology/)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/four-fallacies-of-pop-evolutionary-2012-12-07/ (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/four-fallacies-of-pop-evolutionary-2012-12-07/)
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/fallacy.html (http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/fallacy.html)
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/10/ep-the-fundamental-failure-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-premise/ (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/10/ep-the-fundamental-failure-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-premise/)

etc...







Can you? You seem to be affected by the vapours.


I see you've traded in your shovel for a backhoe, when what you might want to do instead is stop digging that hole you're already up to your neck in.

You seriously just accused a woman disagreeing with you of "having the vapours".




Men's and women's brains are identical, right?


How about directing your responses at things that people have actually said here, instead of against convenient stand-ins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)?

[2D8HP]

If anyone wants an opinion from the peanut gallery:

My father believes that women should not be allowed to be protagonists in games, be they tabletop or video games, because women are so inferior to men in every way that it would break suspension of belief to have them be the equal of male protagonists, and a game would be both un-fun and unfair if there were such massive differences associated with gender.

So yeah, these ideas (which I do not agree with at all for the record) seem to be pretty strong in the older generation.


Eh, I wouldn't lump entire generations into anything like that. I know lots of folks that are 80 and younger who would disagree.

As someone who plays female characters exclusively, I'd probably wreck his verisimilitude pretty hard at the gaming table. :smallannoyed:


In my experience it's young men (in their 30's) who seem to me to be more likely to be mouthy exclusionary misogynists.

The first two people I knew who were old enough to vote (in 1979) and played D&D were women, and they were most definitely not "hangers on", they knew their stuff! I still remember them explaining the difference between character level, and dungeon level to me. Yes they were more boys than girls playing the game in the 1970's and 80's, but I have no recollection of anyone idiotic enough to think that was a good thing, leave this member of the older generation (I'm 49) out of that mess please!

[scalyfreak]

You seriously just accused a woman disagreeing with you of "having the vapours".

It does provide a legitimate reason to dismiss everything that woman says. Or at the very least conclude that what she says is a result of that difference in brain chemistry that makes us prefer to be passive, afraid of getting even the tiniest bit dirty, and so very challenged when it comes to math and other difficult things that require a sharp intellect and the ability to concentrate. (Do we have an eye-rolling emoji here?)

Donnadogsoth live in a very different world than the rest of us, I think. I find myself rapidly tired of being forced to visit it every time he states his opinions as if they are facts, so I'll leave it to you and others to try and explain to him that just because you disagree with everything he says doesn't mean you're the ones who are wrong.

[Donnadogsoth]

Asked and answered.

That being your cornucopian list of anti-evo-psych resources, I suppose.


Plus, the burden of proof (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_burden_of_proof) is on the party making the claim -- you made the claim and then flatly refused even the idea of giving any evidence, citing "patent truth (https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/212/Appeal-to-Self-evident-Truth)" as your only support.

Turning around and demanding counter-evidence against your claim isn't exactly intellectually kosher.

You are willing to ignore the fact that in terms of replenishing the tribe after war deaths it makes no demographic sense to get mothers killed on the battlefield alongside fathers. That's a patent fact that doesn't require a shred of scientific evidence. And when it comes to burden of proof, I'd say that anyone who wants to overturn 6,000 years of recorded history and culture documenting humans acting as though they were neuropsychologically different according to sex--all the wisdom of the ages--is the one suffering the burden of proof.


Based on what you just told us -- -- I doubt you'll take any of this seriously, but...

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201412/how-valid-is-evolutionary-psychology (https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201412/how-valid-is-evolutionary-psychology)
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/problems.html (http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/epfaq/problems.html)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology)
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2005/08/cave_thinkers.html (http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2005/08/cave_thinkers.html)
https://psychologyinseattle.squarespace.com/a-critique-of-evolutionary-psychology/ (https://psychologyinseattle.squarespace.com/a-critique-of-evolutionary-psychology/)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/four-fallacies-of-pop-evolutionary-2012-12-07/ (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/four-fallacies-of-pop-evolutionary-2012-12-07/)
http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/fallacy.html (http://www.kenanmalik.com/essays/fallacy.html)
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/10/ep-the-fundamental-failure-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-premise/ (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/10/ep-the-fundamental-failure-of-the-evolutionary-psychology-premise/)

etc...



Interesting, I'll take a look at it, thank you.


I see you've traded in your shovel for a backhoe, when what you might want to do instead is stop digging that hole you're already up to your neck in.

You seriously just accused a woman disagreeing with you of "having the vapours".

Floret is a woman? I am gender-neutral in my ripostes to people who...challenge me...to see...if I can hear myself talk.


How about directing your responses at things that people have actually said here, instead of against convenient stand-ins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)?

Your implication is that male and female brains are identical, or so close as to make no significant psychological difference.

[Max_Killjoy]

It does provide a legitimate reason to dismiss everything that woman says. Or at the very least conclude that what she says is a result of that difference in brain chemistry that makes us prefer to be passive, afraid of getting even the tiniest bit dirty, and so very challenged when it comes to math and other difficult things that require a sharp intellect and the ability to concentrate. (Do we have an eye-rolling emoji here?)


I hope I didn't presume anything when I made that statement you quoted, I just realized I was going by the avatar and not a symbol underneath, combined with reacting to the outlandish comment I was seeing... hopefully I didn't blunder.




Donnadogsoth live in a very different world than the rest of us, I think. I find myself rapidly tired of being forced to visit it every time he states his opinions as if they are facts, so I'll leave it to you and others to try and explain to him that just because you disagree with everything he says doesn't mean you're the ones who are wrong.


The temptation is there to keep him talking because of the damage he does to his own position every time he posts.

[Ashiel]

Your implication is that male and female brains are identical, or so close as to make no significant psychological difference.
It would be nice if they were, since then it would stand to reason that there'd be no difference. Fence sitting gets old after a while, 'cause it starts to hurt. :smallsigh:

[Max_Killjoy]

That being your cornucopian list of anti-evo-psych resources, I suppose.


Just a link to a summary of all the ways that evolutionary psychology is flawed... you appear to have missed it.




You are willing to ignore the fact that in terms of replenishing the tribe after war deaths it makes no demographic sense to get mothers killed on the battlefield alongside fathers. That's a patent fact that doesn't require a shred of scientific evidence. And when it comes to burden of proof, I'd say that anyone who wants to overturn 6,000 years of recorded history and culture documenting humans acting as though they were neuropsychologically different according to sex--all the wisdom of the ages--is the one suffering the burden of proof.


You don't even see all the unfounded assumptions and unquestioned tautologies and self-reinforcing platitudes buried in that paragraph, do you? Your position is based on myths and pop-history. Even your nonsense about "replenishing the tribe" ignores so much of what's actually known about warfare going back to that 6000 year mark you cite. The keep stating with confidence that this is a "neuropsychological" issue while ignoring any possibility of cultural factors or reinforcement -- when the actual science points to a far more complex interplay between nature and nurture that you're allowing for.

In other words... history doesn't say what what you claim it does. Neither does the archaeology, or the anthropology, or the neuroscience. What you keep claiming sounds not like the science, but like a mashup of pop-science and fringe hokum.


And deeper than that, you keep referring to women as "mothers" and "wives" and "damsels"... and nothing else. There's this undercurrent of "women exist to make babies" in each of your comments.




Your implication is that male and female brains are identical, or so close as to make no significant psychological difference.


That's your eager inference.

The direct statement made by multiple people is that the range of variability in human brains/minds overwhelms the gender-linked mean variations in human brains/minds.

[Mike_G]

OK, I'm just posting to say chill out.

This has gotten waaaay too nasty, and I think we went off topic a while ago.

There are some people here I genuinely like and respect, and some I'm kinda stunned by. I think some of the attacks are getting unfair and bordering on abusive. Particularly the attacks on Ashiel, who has consistently voiced an opinion that I can understand even when I disagree with parts of it. I don't think Max has been as incionsistent as he's being accused of either.

The sexism that reared its ugly head over the last few pages is shocking to me in this day and age.

[Lord Raziere]

Make that three along with Mike and scalyfreak. I've made my point and I'm getting out, I'm not going to waste time arguing with people when its not worth it and some people seem to be determined to harp on these things for no reason.

[Ashiel]

OK, I'm just posting to say chill out.

This has gotten waaaay too nasty, and I think we went off topic a while ago.

There are some people here I genuinely like and respect, and some I'm kinda stunned by. I think some of the attacks are getting unfair and bordering on abusive. Particularly the attacks on Ashiel, who has consistently voiced an opinion that I can understand even when I disagree with parts of it. I don't think Max has been as incionsistent as he's being accused of either.

The sexism that reared its ugly head over the last few pages is shocking to me in this day and age.

Yeah, seems to be the wise thing. There are probably greener pastures. I realized I wasn't long for this thread after my response to Lord Raziere but was checking back mostly to see her response. In any case, I appreciate the support. On an unrelated note, I absolutely adore your avatar. I can't help but laugh every time I see it.

[Donnadogsoth]

Just a link to a summary of all the ways that evolutionary psychology is flawed... you appear to have missed it.

You don't even see all the unfounded assumptions and unquestioned tautologies and self-reinforcing platitudes buried in that paragraph, do you? Your position is based on myths and pop-history. Even your nonsense about "replenishing the tribe" ignores so much of what's actually known about warfare going back to that 6000 year mark you cite. The keep stating with confidence that this is a "neuropsychological" issue while ignoring any possibility of cultural factors or reinforcement -- when the actual science points to a far more complex interplay between nature and nurture that you're allowing for.

In other words... history doesn't say what what you claim it does. Neither does the archaeology, or the anthropology, or the neuroscience. What you keep claiming sounds not like the science, but like a mashup of pop-science and fringe hokum.

And deeper than that, you keep referring to women as "mothers" and "wives" and "damsels"... and nothing else. There's this undercurrent of "women exist to make babies" in each of your comments.

That's your eager inference.

The direct statement made by multiple people is that the range of variability in human brains/minds overwhelms the gender-linked mean variations in human brains/minds.

What it comes down to is you ignore and discredit the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of the culture, and the evidence of your own senses, in favour of anti-Traditionalism based on half-baked scientific analyses. You are a culture wrecker in the real world, every bit as you are trying to wreck fantasy cheesecake. If I believed in luck I might be tempted to say "good luck with that," but I won't. Tradition will triumph in the end and all these fashionable theories of sexual psychological identity will be flushed away in the river of history.

And, at last, a TED talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqib7eheO1I) (more popular hokum?) that is relevant. Interesting though how the speaker talks about the need for corporate women to "be like men" in a "male designed workspace" as if that's a bad thing--almost as if the sexes were not naturally identical! If women and men were the same, why shouldn't the old ways continue and women can just be like men?

Good day, sir.

[Max_Killjoy]

What it comes down to is you ignore and discredit the wisdom of the ages, the wisdom of the culture, and the evidence of your own senses, in favour of anti-Traditionalism based on half-baked scientific analyses. You are a culture wrecker in the real world, every bit as you are trying to wreck fantasy cheesecake. If I believed in luck I might be tempted to say "good luck with that," but I won't. Tradition will triumph in the end and all these fashionable theories of sexual psychological identity will be flushed away in the river of history.


The appeal to "tradition" as if it were a thing with power of its own, and not a human construct, is telling. The description of science as "half-baked" is telling.

This "wisdom of the ages" you cite is nothing more than fairly modern mythology, of a kind with the myth of Chivalry (http://origins.osu.edu/review/knighthood-it-was-not-we-wish-it-were), the myth of Bushido (https://www.tofugu.com/japan/bushido/), the myth of a wholesome past (http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/articles/article27.htm), the myths of a moral and simpler 1950s... it looks to a past that never existed and a history that never happened.

Your stated conclusions are based on a narrative of history that was never true (http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/), and interpreting history to fit that narrative -- you are drawing your unfacts backwards, from the very conclusions you expect them to support. (http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0002716298560001002?journalCode=anna)


"This article explores the manner in which culturally prevalent narratives lead us not only to interpret facts in a particular way
but also to generate those very facts through the acts we perform in consonance with these narratives."






And, at last, a TED talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqib7eheO1I) (more popular hokum?) that is relevant.


TED is pretty much pop-culture at this point, with drek and quality in equal measures. Go through the list of speakers and topics sometime.




Interesting though how the speaker talks about the need for corporate women to "be like men" in a "male designed workspace" as if that's a bad thing--almost as if the sexes were not naturally identical! If women and men were the same, why shouldn't the old ways continue and women can just be like men?


Does the speaker talk about whether or to what degree those differences are innate vs cultural?

You keep presenting these examples of difference, and proceeding on your own unquestioned assumption that they prove that the difference is innate -- while entire skipping the question of whether they are innate, or cultural, or some mutually-reinforcing combination of both.


And no one is claiming that there are no differences, or even that here are no innate differences. What they're telling you is that those differences are an order of magnitude narrower in scope and depth than the overall variation in the human species. We're human beings first and foremost, not "males" and "females" who just happen to be of the same species.


Without realizing it, you keep telling me that people I know and care about don't exist, that they can't exist, because they break your assertions of what it is to be "male" or "female" -- that the women I know who weld, and fix their own cars, and do metal sculpting in furnaces that can kill if you're careless, and brew their own beer, and hunt, and fish, and "know kung fu", and run marathons and compete in triathlons, and drive motorcycles, and work in science and engineering and electronics and carpentry and so forth, and fix their own houses, and manage their own investments... you're telling me that they can't exist, or maybe worse that they "shouldn't" exist, at least according to your view of women as soft pretty things that need saving and protecting by strong powerful men, because they're under threat from other strong powerful men.

And "yet somehow" many of these women are loving wives, and even terrific mothers (who would kill you in a heartbeat to protect their children, or die to save them).

[Talakeal]

OK, I'm just posting to say chill out.

This has gotten waaaay too nasty, and I think we went off topic a while ago.

There are some people here I genuinely like and respect, and some I'm kinda stunned by. I think some of the attacks are getting unfair and bordering on abusive. Particularly the attacks on Ashiel, who has consistently voiced an opinion that I can understand even when I disagree with parts of it. I don't think Max has been as incionsistent as he's being accused of either.

The sexism that reared its ugly head over the last few pages is shocking to me in this day and age.

Agreed.

I like to think of myself as a middle of the road guy on this complex issue, although my strong anti-censorship views and appreciation of the beauty of the human form tends to put me on the "pro chainmail bikini" camp more often than not, but the rhetoric on both sides has gotten a bit too heated for my comfort.

On the plus side, I think this is the longest I have ever seen a debate on this topic go without being locked.

[scalyfreak]

I hope I didn't presume anything when I made that statement you quoted, I just realized I was going by the avatar and not a symbol underneath, combined with reacting to the outlandish comment I was seeing... hopefully I didn't blunder.

As was I, and in that case it's my blunder as well.

This thread went downhill surprisingly fast, at least for a forum that is normally most civilized than most.

[Max_Killjoy]

The sexism that reared its ugly head over the last few pages is shocking to me in this day and age.


It is pretty shocking, but to me it was obvious the moment the "damsel in distress" trope was cited as some sort of supposedly positive narrative force, and "male energy" was referenced in seriousness.

[CharonsHelper]

Agreed.

I like to think of myself as a middle of the road guy on this complex issue, although my strong anti-censorship views and appreciation of the beauty of the human form tends to put me on the "pro chainmail bikini" camp more often than not, but the rhetoric on both sides has gotten a bit too heated for my comfort.

On the plus side, I think this is the longest I have ever seen a debate on this topic go without being locked.

I'll +1 this.

I actually wrote several rather snarky posts aimed at both sides of the debate, but I ended up deleting them rather than jumping into the fray. Discretion, valor, and all that. :elan: ("Use, use, use my common sense to avoid being a snarky ass.")

[scalyfreak]

The sexism that reared its ugly head over the last few pages is shocking to me in this day and age.


It is pretty shocking.

I truly wish I could say the same.

While on the subject, I apologize to any innocent bystanders who were inadvertently sprayed with the vitriol overflow from some of my posts. Discovering that an attitude I encounter depressingly often outside the internet, was alive and well in what I believed was my sexism-free sanctuary, may have caused an over-reaction or two. Or three.

Expectations have been adjusted, which hopefully will prevent vitriolic outbursts in future threads on similar topics.

[Max_Killjoy]

I truly wish I could say the same.

While on the subject, I apologize to any innocent bystanders who were inadvertently sprayed with the vitriol overflow from some of my posts. Discovering that an attitude I encounter depressingly often outside the internet, was alive and well in what I believed was my sexism-free sanctuary, may have caused an over-reaction or two. Or three.

Expectations have been adjusted, which hopefully will prevent vitriolic outbursts in future threads on similar topics.

I hope it's of some consolation that people also stood up and spoke against it.

Maybe it was shocking to me because I figured in a place full of people who pride themselves on imagination, we'd all be able to "imagine" that women are people and get our heads around the idea. Or maybe because in forum for discussion of putting ourselves in other people's shoes, we'd all have considered what it might be like to be on the receiving end of that sort of belittling, demeaning paternalism, and found the wisdom to reject it.

[Satinavian]

I truly wish I could say the same.

While on the subject, I apologize to any innocent bystanders who were inadvertently sprayed with the vitriol overflow from some of my posts. Discovering that an attitude I encounter depressingly often outside the internet, was alive and well in what I believed was my sexism-free sanctuary, may have caused an over-reaction or two. Or three.

Expectations have been adjusted, which hopefully will prevent vitriolic outbursts in future threads on similar topics.
I am nearly 40 and i have never encountered such ideas uttered in earnest in real life. The closest i came was reading such stuff in really old books. I was very surprised to see it here.

Where on earth is such thinking still alive ?

[scalyfreak]

Where on earth is such thinking still alive ?

A female software engineer friend of mine overheard a (male) manager at work telling another manager that he shouldn't expect too much of the female engineers, because once they start wanting babies they won't be as focused on the job anymore, and their productivity will start to decline.

This was last year. At a very large company that has been praised and acknowledged for its inclusiveness and commitment to diversity in the workplace.

But yes, I was as surprised as you are to see these ideas here, of all places. :smallsmile:

[RedMage125]

Ill be honest, I couldn't slog through all the pages of this thread, but I'd like to chime in and say a few things.

For anyone who finds females attractive (in my case, I am a heterosexual male), there is NOTHING WRONG with enjoying artwork that combines your love of fantasy gaming with attractive females in revealing outfits (e.g., the "chainmail bikini" and other examples). In fact, it would be weird if you didn't. It doesn't make you a sexist, it doesn't make you misogynist, it doesn't make you a pervert, and I PROMISE YOU there are females in this gaming community who also like that artwork.

HOWEVER...

It is important to recognize that there are people who find that kind of artwork demeaning to women. They don't want to see females in fantasy art depicted that way. Artwork, however is protected under freedom of expression, and the default solution, unfortunately, is "if you don't like it, don't look at it".

It's an important distinction, I feel, in what constitutes "official" game art (that is, the artwork published in official books like Dungeons & Dragons sourcebooks), and what constitutes other, purely artistic fantasy art. I think the "if you don't like it, don't look at it" tag only belongs with the latter. Official artwork for RPGs should be respectful to ALL potential players of that game (or, if you want to be completely realistic, customers. We are discussing catering to CUSTOMERS who buy a PRODUCT).

In the days of yesteryear, D&D art was chock-full of scantily clad women, because most of the people playing the game, statistically, were males. That doesn't really make the blatant sexism okay, but that's the reason. When 3rd edition came out, there was a revolution in the art style. Most of the females actually LOOKED like they were professional adventurers, not Medieval Playboy Bunnies. Vadania the Druid and Lidda the Rogue were wearing leather armor that LOOKED like actual armor. Ember the Monk wasn't wearing a lot to cover, but neither were most depictions of male monks. Monks didn't wear armor. But she was beefy as hell and LOOKED like a badass. Her clothing may not have been a lot of material, but neither was she sexualized. Alahandra the Paladin...okay I don't know what was up with the dangly sheet of scale mail "shirt", because it didn't look like realistic protection, but she wasn't depicted "sexy", either. She looked like a tough chick (later depictions sometimes showed her in plate armor). And THAT'S what was good. Female gamers should be able to look at the artwork of female characters and see the same things that we males expect when we see male characters. It should inspire a reaction of "that character looks cool! I'd like to be playing a character like that!".

Then 4th edition came along...with a GIANT step backwards in the art department. Don't get me wrong, I was intrigued by the design goals for some of the artwork (as found in the 4e preview book, Races & Classes), for example, they wanted to find a way to make dwarven women look beautiful, even sexy, while still retaining the aesthetic of strong and tough, which they nailed. But the point is, almost every female character in the 4e PHB had exposed cleavage (not just décolletage) and/or bare midriff (usually "and"). I'm a straight male, and not to sound like a cliché, but even I was put off. I've played D&D with lots of women over the years, and the artwork depictions of females wasn't something I really focused on. Not until 4e. Not until I saw the giant step back. That was when I really realized that 3e had done such a good job of NOT sexualizing the female characters. 3e had done such a good job that I wasn't even thinking about the female characters' armor choices as something that "could be sexier". I just thought "man, that female human paladin in plate armor looks like a total BAMF smiting that demon!". Don't get me wrong, 4e DID have some depictions of female armor that were not all cleavage and bare midriff. But the overwhelming majority of the artwork, ESPECIALLY in the first PHB, were just that. And first impressions are important.

5th edition, so far, has been a grab-bag, leaning slightly to the "functional female armor" side. It's still fairly new, with not as many books, so it remains to be seen.

Ultimately, the point is that artwork in official RPG books should NOT be depicting female adventures as "porny slave girls" or in "chainmail bikinis". I know some of the readers (of all genders) may like it, but it's better to have more positive image-enforcing artwork. Gamers of any gender should be able to look at the artwork and think the character looks awesome and playable, and not only in some kind of adult-rated manner.

But while I STRONGLY advocate for the "female armor should LOOK like it protects them" group, I also don't find anything wrong with armor that is CLEARLY for a female. People criticize "armor boobs", for example, when sometimes there are actually practical reasons for it. Leather armor has to be boiled in oil until it is a hard shell, a bustier female might actually need that shaping, so it won't be loose everywhere else. And full-plate is actually custom-made for each wearer, so...same thing applies. I think having some females in unisex armor and some in armor that-while still looking like real armor-is still "feminine" in shape is a good compromise.

And for all that, I believe there is STILL a place for the "Red Sonja" style of art. It can be fan art, it can be professional art sold in gaming stores, or at conventions. It can be hanging up in your gaming den, or a life-size poster over your bed. Doesn't matter. And there is NOTHING WRONG with enjoying the view. But I think we should all be able to agree that artwork like that doesn't belong in the rulebooks for the RPGs we play. Yes, some of the women who play might like it, but a lot more do not. We all, as gamers, face a certain amount of social stigma, if not outright ostracism, in our lives. We should never do it to each other.

[Vitruviansquid]

ITT: People act very rudely to drive the moderate positions and the opposition out of the argument, and then pat themselves on the back for "apologizing" in the same rude and condescending manner.

[Floret]

Can you? You seem to be affected by the vapours. You're telling me that your significant other's physical form doesn't serve as a metaphor for their mind? What planet are you on?

No, neither my boyfriend's, nor my girlfriend's, nor any previous partners' form serves to me as a metaphor for their mind, nor ever has.
To be quite fair, I don't even know how it COULD, or what that is even supposed to mean. What are you TALKING about?


Men's and women's brains are identical, right? So why would a man raised as a woman be so desperate to become a man? He should have been perfectly socialised and brainwashed into his assigned gender--but he wasn't! He felt this innate urge to become a man. It turned out badly, he suicided, and that's a shame, but the point remains: if "man" can be so compelling for a man raised as a woman to become, why should heterosexuality be any different? Why should it not be a case that heterosexuals are attracted to the whole package that is the opposite sex, both physical and mental?--which means those opposites must be psychologically different. If those differences weren't there, then the only explanation there could be for heterosexuality would be brainwashing!

Noone claimed they are identical, Donna. Max said most of what needs to be said in response already, but to add on a few points:
1. Noone actually knows, at the current state of science, what causes the desire in people to be a certain gender. This is probably more readily exemplified in trans people's desire to transition, rather than such fringe cases as you linked. Since I have more experience with those, and the underlying points are pretty much the same, I shall focus on them. Yes, there is some innate urge that drives them to seek out the respective treatments, be it medical or social. Sure. But to take from the fact that there is some innate possibility for people to feel like a man or a woman that there is any large difference beyond that is dishonest, and drawing conclusions one cannot from that fact. Even if (And that's a big if) there is a hard-coded bit in the brain that says "I need to run on an estrogen/testosterone-dominant hormone system", this does not, in fact, sayanything more than that.
Sure there is SOMETHING in most people, trans or cis, that makes them desire a certain type of body (Cis people just... have that already, mostly). But even here the differences even within the transgender community are so staggering (Considering what treatments to actually go for; but also how they interact with gender roles) that it isn't really possible to draw their existance as an example that there is an innate difference between men and women that determines everything, even IF we assume transness is actually inert in the brain, and not caused some other way. Which, honestly, noone knows.
(Disclaimer: Even if transness was somehow caused by nurture (or a combination of nurture and nature), that doesn't mean there is any other possibility to treat it than them transitioning and everyone else supporting them on their way. I firmly believe trans people are the gender they say they are, just not that the cause for WHY is known. Or that it even is the same cause in all of them, considering how different their experiences are.)
2. The leap in logic from "some people HAVE to be men, otherwise they kill themselves" to "therefore heterosexuality is about mental and physical characteristics both" is... staggering. I might suggest to you that there are different kinds of attraction - sexual, romantic, or even just aesthetic. One can feel any or all seperately, or together, for the same people. Some people don't feel some of those at all. But even if we lump this all together, what exactly triggers the attraction is so different between people that even "heterosexual men" can be well differentiated. Because what exactly triggers the "this is a woman, and therefor a potential target for my attraction"? Where are the lines drawn, how much of this attraction is cause by phsyical appearance, how much by how the people are acting?
Human attraction is way more complicated than you make it out to be.
3. "There must be a mental difference, otherwise heterosexuality makes no sense" leaves out the fact that even IF brains are similar, there is still a difference in body that might explain differing sexual attraction. Your line of reasoning here is sketchy at best.
4. The explanation for the utter prevalence of heterosexuality is indeed, to some part, cultural; which might be jokingly considered brainwashing. I firmly believe that without any social pressure, there would still be straight and gay people left, but much more bisexual people than there are today. (Though I do not have any real reason to believe that beyond "it seems sensible to me" and "my life experience suggests so".)


Got any reading suggestions?

On those tropes? No. I do try to avoid these tropes, after all. (Hard enough as it is, but I mostly meet them in videogames. Those sometimes appear to be lagging behind when the possibilities of storytelling are concerned.) As for the opposite? The First Law series doesn't do perfectly, but is trying and the books do get much better over time in regards to women (And are great the whole way through if you enjoy Dark and Gritty Fantasy). If you are familiar with German, the novels for the Dark Eye, though I have not read all of them at least all take place in a world of full gender equality, and might showcase the possibilities of allowing for such things in fiction.


I hope I didn't presume anything when I made that statement you quoted, I just realized I was going by the avatar and not a symbol underneath, combined with reacting to the outlandish comment I was seeing... hopefully I didn't blunder.

As was I, and in that case it's my blunder as well.

You did not, in fact, blunder. I'm indeed a woman. (I think I stated it in other threads, too... one you were part of, Max, so maybe that was memory creeping in?^^)


Ill be honest, I couldn't slog through all the pages of this thread, but I'd like to chime in and say a few things.

For anyone who finds females attractive (in my case, I am a heterosexual male), there is NOTHING WRONG with enjoying artwork that combines your love of fantasy gaming with attractive females in revealing outfits (e.g., the "chainmail bikini" and other examples). In fact, it would be weird if you didn't. It doesn't make you a sexist, it doesn't make you misogynist, it doesn't make you a pervert, and I PROMISE YOU there are females in this gaming community who also like that artwork.

Is it weird? Cause I do like women, and very much so, and I find this artwork and design to be tired at best, and never quite managed to see it as sexy.
(Also, real life experience tells me chainmail bikinis do look mostly weird on people, and really don't do a good job at being sexy. Maybe that ruined them for me.)

I will pretty much sign the rest of your post, though. Contains many things I agree with, especially the careful differentiation of where to put this artwork, and that not liking it does not inherently come with a wish to censor.

[Frozen_Feet]

As a general comment on one of the above tangents: railing against evolutionary psychology in response to Donnadogsoth, is homologous to arguing that modern psychology is quackery in response to someone who believes in Freudianism. It's fighting strawmen with strawmen, a misrepresentation of a thing that's already being misrepresented by the opposition.

---

Back to the main topic, I didn't see a lot of discussion on Aleena the Cleric, the iconic mentor figure in BECMI tutorial? It seems strange to omit her in a discussion of past artwork of the hobby. Especially since she, to paraphrase a certain funny net personality (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2014/08/can-you-engage-with-someone-who-thinks.html), could only be more covered if she wore a burqa.

[RedMage125]

Is it weird? Cause I do like women, and very much so, and I find this artwork and design to be tired at best, and never quite managed to see it as sexy.
(Also, real life experience tells me chainmail bikinis do look mostly weird on people, and really don't do a good job at being sexy. Maybe that ruined them for me.)

I will pretty much sign the rest of your post, though. Contains many things I agree with, especially the careful differentiation of where to put this artwork, and that not liking it does not inherently come with a wish to censor.

Everyone has their own tastes. There's nothing wrong with NOT liking it, either.

And I agree that in real life, chainmail bikinis look very odd. Been to enough conventions to have seen MANY.

[Max_Killjoy]

As a general comment on one of the above tangents: railing against evolutionary psychology in response to Donnadogsoth, is homologous to arguing that modern psychology is quackery in response to someone who believes in Freudianism. It's fighting strawmen with strawmen, a misrepresentation of a thing that's already being misrepresented by the opposition.


Based on everything I've read previously, I already thought evolutionary psychology was 90% hokum before this thread -- that's why I recognized the specious claims as soon as they were made.

(See links previously posted and any number of other articles on why.)

[Tobtor]

Based on everything I've read previously, I already thought evolutionary psychology was 90% hokum before this thread -- that's why I recognized the specious claims as soon as they were made.

I totally agree with Max. I havnt seen any good evolutionay psychology studies. They usually fails in both basic understanding of culture, biology, statistics, and not least how our past looked like (that is they invoke a prehistoric past that never existed). Some don't fail all four though.

[Max_Killjoy]

I totally agree with Max. I havnt seen any good evolutionay psychology studies. They usually fails in both basic understanding of culture, biology, statistics, and not least how our past looked like (that is they invoke a prehistoric past that never existed). Some don't fail all four though.

The 10% I give them credit for is the basic concept that the human brain is part of a living creature and therefore had to have evolved, and as the human mind is in the human brain, evolution has had some impact on the human mind.

They just don't seem to be able to go much of anywhere scientific with it -- instead coming up with a series of just-so stories and "anecdotal theories" based on things that aren't actually true, as you say, about culture, biology, history, statistics, or actual human beings.

[1337 b4k4]

In the days of yesteryear, D&D art was chock-full of scantily clad women, because most of the people playing the game, statistically, were males. ... When 3rd edition came out, there was a revolution in the art style.

Sigh... except it was demonstrated in the first couple of pages of this thread (by me for Basic and by another poster for AD&D) that this isn't true at all. Far and away the vast majority of women were clad in armor and gear perfectly well suited for adventure with minimal skin showing. So as I've been beating on this entire thread unless you or someone else has evidence that either 2e or the majority of the supplements around Basic and 1e had radically different art styles from that found in the core books, it would be a great service to our hobby is we stopped acting like early D&D was a cesspit of sexist artwork.

[CharonsHelper]

Back to the main topic, I didn't see a lot of discussion on Aleena the Cleric, the iconic mentor figure in BECMI tutorial? It seems strange to omit her in a discussion of past artwork of the hobby. Especially since she, to paraphrase a certain funny net personality (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2014/08/can-you-engage-with-someone-who-thinks.html), could only be more covered if she wore a burqa.

Interesting read.

I tend to find RPGPundit a bit too conspiracy-theory-ish a lot of the time, but I pretty much agree with him there.

[Max_Killjoy]

Sigh... except it was demonstrated in the first couple of pages of this thread (by me for Basic and by another poster for AD&D) that this isn't true at all. Far and away the vast majority of women were clad in armor and gear perfectly well suited for adventure with minimal skin showing. So as I've been beating on this entire thread unless you or someone else has evidence that either 2e or the majority of the supplements around Basic and 1e had radically different art styles from that found in the core books, it would be a great service to our hobby is we stopped acting like early D&D was a cesspit of sexist artwork.

Decades later, maybe it's mental mashup with some of the monster art, which was at times a bit more "risque" at times as I recall. And there was ancillary material that was certainly a lot more racy and/or unfortunate.

Some of the art, as with the cover shown earlier, did have issues. A lot of it didn't.

[Frozen_Feet]

To wit, I'm not interested in particulars of Pundit's argument. I just found the lack of mentions of Aleena curious, because she was meant as an introduction to what D&D is even about - and factually achieved that, as "Red box" D&D was arguably more popular and widespread than all other editions of D&D.

So a fully-armored woman was the first image of what a cleric is meant to be like to millions of roleplayers, but no-one ever seems to argue that this had any lasting impact on anything.

---

@L33t b4k4: I think the reason is that people are conflating general trends in superhero comics and pulp art with what was in RPG books. Actual RPG books from 70s and 80s were light on illustrations and rarely had anything really racy on them. Genre art outside RPGs was much more common and much more pin-uppy. Illustrations grew in number and raciness during the 90s, but this was hardly limited to RPGs: for example, comic books also went through a "dark age".

In general, I suspect comic book art was a greater trend setter for RPG artwork than anything D&D did.

---

@Max & Tobtor: way to miss the point.

Here, let me quote something from Wikipedia's "criticisms" page (actually criticism of criticism): "Buller (2005) makes the point that the entire field of evolutionary psychology is never confirmed or falsified; only specific hypotheses, motivated by the general assumptions of evolutionary psychology, are testable."

EvPsych is not a single hypothesis, it's not a theory, it's not a collection of those either. No matter how many faulty claims, studies etc. technically fall under that term, you can't "debunk" evolutionary psychology or label it "pseudoscience" anymore than you can debunk psychology on the basis that Freudianism is wrong, or debunk physics on the basis that Aether theory is wrong.

To Max in particular, many of the criticisms you posted are already obsolete because the edge of research moved past the theories they refer to. At least one stuck out to me as admitting it is targeting "Pop EvoPsych", that is, popular misconceptions and beliefs that stemmed from the field, rather than individual or recent studies... and used other, newer EvPsych findings to support its criticism, similar to how modern critiques of Freudianism use contemporary psychological theories and findings to support theirs.

The idea that Donna's ideas are the right place and time for criticism of EvPsych, is equivalent to the idea of a some layman's appropriation of Freud's terminology being the right place and time to cry "psychology isn't a real science", or to the idea that some mystic's mangling of quantum theory is right time and place to cry "physics can't explain everything!" Donna's ideas may lack substance, but that's more on Donna than any inspiration behind their views.

---

EDIT: oh yeah, about more recent artwork:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has gained quite a bit of notability and notorierity recently. Based on my personal meetings with Raggi as well as general quality and quantity of products he's putting out, his business is quite healthy and well-received. However, based on Zak Smith's blog, there's supposedly a vocal hatedom for LotFP... somewhere. But outside of one Something Awful thread lampooning the art in the corebooks and Zak's snippets, this crowd is generally invisible to me. Where are they?

Also, what's your opinion of LotFP's art when it comes to topic at hand? Pictures of the iconics are easy to find on the net. I personally admit to having initially bought the game because I thought the cover was so cool (the one with the titular red head fighting the naked marilith).

[Max_Killjoy]

@Max & Tobtor: way to miss the point.

Here, let me quote something from Wikipedia's "criticisms" page (actually criticism of criticism): "Buller (2005) makes the point that the entire field of evolutionary psychology is never confirmed or falsified; only specific hypotheses, motivated by the general assumptions of evolutionary psychology, are testable."

EvPsych is not a single hypothesis, it's not a theory, it's not a collection of those either. No matter how many faulty claims, studies etc. technically fall under that term, you can't "debunk" evolutionary psychology or label it "pseudoscience" anymore than you can debunk psychology on the basis that Freudianism is wrong, or debunk physics on the basis that Aether theory is wrong.

To Max in particular, many of the criticisms you posted are already obsolete because the edge of research moved past the theories they refer to. At least one stuck out to me as admitting it is targeting "Pop EvoPsych", that is, popular misconceptions and beliefs that stemmed from the field, rather than individual or recent studies... and used other, newer EvPsych findings to support its criticism, similar to how modern critiques of Freudianism use contemporary psychological theories and findings to support theirs.

The idea that Donna's ideas are the right place and time for criticism of EvPsych, is equivalent to the idea of a some layman's appropriation of Freud's terminology being the right place and time to cry "psychology isn't a real science", or to the idea that some mystic's mangling of quantum theory is right time and place to cry "physics can't explain everything!" Donna's ideas may lack substance, but that's more on Donna than any inspiration behind their views.


I'm going by the exposure I've had to that subdiscipline (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology#Principles) of psychology -- the posts here did nothing to shape my view of it, I already had that view. Its basic principles (modularity of the mind, etc) are... odd, and largely unsupported by evidence.

If you have references to something that sheds a different light on the topic, I'd be happy to read it.





EDIT: oh yeah, about more recent artwork:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has gained quite a bit of notability and notorierity recently. Based on my personal meetings with Raggi as well as general quality and quantity of products he's putting out, his business is quite healthy and well-received. However, based on Zak Smith's blog, there's supposedly a vocal hatedom for LotFP... somewhere. But outside of one Something Awful thread lampooning the art in the corebooks and Zak's snippets, this crowd is generally invisible to me. Where are they?

Also, what's your opinion of LotFP's art when it comes to topic at hand? Pictures of the iconics are easy to find on the net. I personally admit to having initially bought the game because I thought the cover was so cool (the one with the titular red head fighting the naked marilith).


What are some character names I should be looking for? Or sites I should look at?

From what I've seen poking around, most of the art "with a lot of skin" is more about invoking horror or weirdness, than being "titillating".

[2D8HP]

...This thread went downhill surprisingly fast...


Too bad, I was looking forward to more of Ashiel's art, and Max_Killjoy's words, but as a grumpy old coot who dislikes change, I really dislike regression to "the wisdom of the ages" (it dishonors the real past, and its struggles).


...in what I believed was my sexism-free sanctuary...

...Expectations have been adjusted....


I am nearly 40 and i have never encountered such ideas uttered in earnest in real life. The closest i came was reading such stuff in really old books. I was very surprised to see it here.

Where on earth is such thinking still alive ?



....But yes, I was as surprised as you are to see these ideas here, of all places. :smallsmile:


Curious that your friend heard sexist remarks at a "diverse company", but you found that the male weight lifters at the gym welcoming. Any kind of pattern?


Also, I'm puzzled by what's the point of alienating half the population from your hobby?

Are there really so many males eager to play "pretend to be an Elf games" that a "no wimmen's allowed" attitude makes any sense?

What's the benefit?

Similarly the fantasy fiction that I've most enjoyed reading lately has all been written by women younger than me, and if they'd been told "these stories aren't for girls", while growing up, they wouldn't have written in the genre, and my reading would have suffered.

I don't get it.

Anyway, I just so happened to have picked up a game supplement yesterday:

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/images/622/209936-thumb140.jpg

Which has AWESOME setting info, and I noticed in the introduction something that may be relevant:

"I'm going to tell this story in two parts, just like the NATIONS OF THÉAH books are in two parts. The first part is how I fell in love with 7TH SEA. When I was in college, a friend of mine suggested we play a pirate game.I read through the 7TH SEA core book and immediately fell in love with Montague, and wanted to make a daring, Panache-filled, Montaigne Marketeer. Normally, when I played games with any kind of historical bent, historical accuracy was the bane of my existence."Women didn't do those things," my friends would say. No one told me women didn't do the things I wanted my Montaignoise Hero to do, because it was right there in the book, women do these things too. This was my first experience with a game that stressed inculsivity, and I'll never forget it...."

So a little bit of effort was made to welcome women characters and I, a man, benefit because a women than wrote some great game content, that I enjoy reading (I haven't noticed any cooties yet).




...In the days of yesteryear, D&D art was chock-full of scantily clad women, because most of the people playing the game, statistically, were males. That doesn't really make the blatant sexism okay, but that's the reason. When 3rd edition came out, there was a revolution in the art style. Most of the females actually LOOKED like they were professional adventurers, not Medieval Playboy Bunnies. ...

I must've missed any of that, but I've mostly bought pre '83 stuff ('78 to '85 were the years I played the most), some post '98 stuff, and all of post '13 (so. 0e, 1e, and 5e).
The 3e-4e stuff seems "racier' to me (with the possible exception of the Monster Manual and Deities & Demi-Gods).


For AD&D? Here you go:

https://panzerleader.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/1e-races.jpg?w=245&h=300

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uK1_voHccFg/VZ3Vwbeu8QI/AAAAAAAAEdA/la5lsXwulUg/s1600/PHB%2Bart.png

That's pretty much it (unless you're looking for post '81 stuff, which I really didn't get)

The few "racy" images until Deities & Demi-Gods were mostly of monsters, with things like horns, wing, the lower half of the body being that of a snake, etc. which were a clue, even Deities didn't have images more um.. inspiring than many illustrated books of mythology (BTW Hecate was way cooler than Aphrodite, just sayin').

"Google": "art by gygax and arneson Blog of Holding" if you really want to see early D&D art without buying the books your dang selves cheapskates
Why haven't you bought the books? These games don't play themselves you know!


...but in '70's D&D I can only remember one "chainmail bikini" https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8c/DungeonMasterGuide4Cover.jpg/200px-DungeonMasterGuide4Cover.jpg.



...about more recent artwork:

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has gained quite a bit of notability and notorierity recently...

....what's your opinion of LotFP's art when it comes to topic at hand? Pictures of the iconics are easy to find on the net. I personally admit to having initially bought the game because I thought the cover was so cool (the one with the titular red head fighting the naked marilith).


I find a lot of LotFP's art a bit "squicky", and some of what I've seen as "old school revival" "what is old school" that's been published under the LotFP's umbrella doesn't actually fit what I remember of D&D in the late 1970's and early 80's (in Berkeley, California).

Otherwise the rules and adventures seem alright, and I've bought some.

[Max_Killjoy]

I find a lot of LotFP's art a bit "squicky", and some of what I've seen as "old school revival" "what is old school" that's been published under the LotFP's umbrella doesn't actually fit what I remember of D&D in the late 1970's and early 80's (in Berkeley, California).

Otherwise the rules and adventures seem alright, and I've bought some.


Hmmm...looking up the subject of LotFP artwork, as always online, I end up somewhere other than my destination. Evidently the self-appointed Forge God went after James Raggi in an OSR 'zine article at one point... for capitulating to "Victorian societal values". :smallconfused: I find that a bit funny given the rather unflinching approach to artwork and subject matter in Raggi's products.

http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/09/ritual-purity.html
http://lotfp.blogspot.com/2009/08/dear-mr-ron-edwards.html?zx=e4d04efea2a75028

[Floret]

Everyone has their own tastes. There's nothing wrong with NOT liking it, either.

It was a rather tongue-in cheek response to a detail in your comment ;) I apologize if that wasn't clear enough.


Sigh... except it was demonstrated in the first couple of pages of this thread (by me for Basic and by another poster for AD&D) that this isn't true at all. Far and away the vast majority of women were clad in armor and gear perfectly well suited for adventure with minimal skin showing. So as I've been beating on this entire thread unless you or someone else has evidence that either 2e or the majority of the supplements around Basic and 1e had radically different art styles from that found in the core books, it would be a great service to our hobby is we stopped acting like early D&D was a cesspit of sexist artwork.

Decades later, maybe it's mental mashup with some of the monster art, which was at times a bit more "risque" at times as I recall. And there was ancillary material that was certainly a lot more racy and/or unfortunate.

Some of the art, as with the cover shown earlier, did have issues. A lot of it didn't.

Since I didn't grow up on DnD, and my socialisation for RPGs was in Germany... have some early Dark Eye artwork. I don't think its doing all that great (Many not-so clothed men, too, but at least there are fully clothed men to be found. Hard to find much linkable non-coverart.)
http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/4/49/RB_AAS.jpg
http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/8/8a/AB_B19.jpg
http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/6/69/AB_B17.jpg
(All from the mid-80s)

From my perspective at least it is doing pretty well these days, though.
Now I'm curious, what do our proponents of realistic armor say about this (http://www.ulisses-spiele.de/media/images/ThorwalerinMC%281%29.jpg)? (One of the pictures I consider evidence of the current state of The Dark Eye.)


Back to the main topic, I didn't see a lot of discussion on Aleena the Cleric, the iconic mentor figure in BECMI tutorial? It seems strange to omit her in a discussion of past artwork of the hobby. Especially since she, to paraphrase a certain funny net personality (http://therpgpundit.blogspot.com/2014/08/can-you-engage-with-someone-who-thinks.html), could only be more covered if she wore a burqa.

Gonna bite the bullet here - to be completely honest, I can kinda understand the critique of the picture (Though it is really nitpicky and at certain points at least a bit reaching) Sure, it's generally pretty good; functional armor (Though when nitpicking, open flowing hair and chainmail don't mix well. At all. The Tabard is far as I can see a bit long and thin; but that might just be me heavily favouring those closed at the sides. The chainmail looks a bit skin-tight as well. And what's with those weird leather straps around the breasts?). But just because a person is fully covered, doesn't mean they cannot be sexualized - after all, a catsuit fully covers a person, but I hope noone would argue that isn't somewhat sexualized? The posing did strike me a bit strange at first glance, it looks weirdly contortionist and, yeah, somewhat emphasizing her feminine features. That in combination with the skin-tight chainmain creating an effect similar to a catsuit and the weirdly flowing, thin tabard... No, while that picture is really quite good and certainly ways off cliches about art from that time, it is definitely not perfect in regards to its portrayal of a female character as non-sexualized. Sure, nitpicks. But the devil is in the details.
The (quoted) critique is overblown, but so is the response linked.


Lamentations of the Flame Princess has gained quite a bit of notability and notorierity recently. Based on my personal meetings with Raggi as well as general quality and quantity of products he's putting out, his business is quite healthy and well-received. However, based on Zak Smith's blog, there's supposedly a vocal hatedom for LotFP... somewhere. But outside of one Something Awful thread lampooning the art in the corebooks and Zak's snippets, this crowd is generally invisible to me. Where are they?

Also, what's your opinion of LotFP's art when it comes to topic at hand? Pictures of the iconics are easy to find on the net. I personally admit to having initially bought the game because I thought the cover was so cool (the one with the titular red head fighting the naked marilith).

From what I could see from a quick google search the general trend seems to be doing quite well, though it does seem to have a tendency to take female nudity in monsters as an element to add to the "disturbingness", which is... questionable. (The often-found connotation of "uncontrolled" female sexuality with villany or monsters is not a hill I'd die on debating, but a trend with certain unfortunate implications)
As for the cover art I am questioning the necessity to put boobs on a snake. Personally I'd find the monstrousness to be much better portrayed with a more reptiloid body. Or maybe keep the breasts, but put them in scales. This way its a sexy woman attached to a snake, which... meh. Seen that, not particularly threatened or disturbed by a sexy woman.

[Max_Killjoy]

Since I didn't grow up on DnD, and my socialisation for RPGs was in Germany... have some early Dark Eye artwork. I don't think its doing all that great (Many not-so clothed men, too, but at least there are fully clothed men to be found. Hard to find much linkable non-coverart.)
http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/4/49/RB_AAS.jpg
http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/8/8a/AB_B19.jpg
http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/6/69/AB_B17.jpg
(All from the mid-80s)


It's the pattern that gets me. It's not that one woman in one picture is incongruously clad compared to her male comrades... it's that all three of them are, one on each cover.




From my perspective at least it is doing pretty well these days, though.
Now I'm curious, what do our proponents of realistic armor say about this (http://www.ulisses-spiele.de/media/images/ThorwalerinMC%281%29.jpg)? (One of the pictures I consider evidence of the current state of The Dark Eye.)


They're trying. They've tried to depict a female character in what's supposed to be functional armor.

It has some issues... scale-mail acting like cloth and hugging her form, with a tank-top cut leaving upper chest, neck, shoulders, and underarms all unprotected... but at least she's wearing what attempts to be full torso armor. I'd like to see some indication that she has a helm even if she hasn't had a chance to put it on, but I'm willing to overlook that since it's just the character and not a full scene.

[Floret]

It's the pattern that gets me. It's not that one woman in one picture is incongruously clad compared to her male comrades... it's that all three of them are, one on each cover.

To be fair, I did select a bit. Mostly for pictures with women and men on them, though - after going through stuff for the second edition, maybe some more (With quite some scantily clad men, now.):
1 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/3/35/RS_DB.jpg); 2 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/0/0d/AB_A22.jpg); 3 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/8/88/RS_DO.jpg); 4 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/c/c0/AB_A18.jpg); 5 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/a/a6/AB_A35.jpg); 6 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/0/0c/AB_A8.jpg); 7 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/0/03/AB_B23.jpg); 8 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/6/6a/RB_GdSA.jpg); 9 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/7/71/RB_HdSA.jpg); 10 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/b/ba/AB_B12.jpg); 11 (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/a/aa/AB_B15.jpg)

And sure, some of that is okay. And DnD might have been doing alright as well. But most of that... really isn't, and DnD wasn't alone on the market for long. So from my experiences - yeah, portraials of female armor/Adventuring clothing have improved greatly over the years, even in RPGs, where there WAS a certain "need" for improvement. To act as if there were only bad examples is dishonest, sure, but to act as if there wasn't (or isn't still) a certain problem is as well.
...Unless, of course, one doesn't consider non-equal representation of men and women to be a problem. But I do.


They're trying. They've tried to depict a female character in what's supposed to be functional armor.

It has some issues... scale-mail acting like cloth and hugging her form, with a tank-top cut leaving upper chest, neck, shoulders, and underarms all unprotected... but at least she's wearing what attempts to be full torso armor. I'd like to see some indication that she has a helm even if she hasn't had a chance to put it on, but I'm willing to overlook that since it's just the character and not a full scene.

Pretty close to my take. I just really love the character and the fact that this is amongst the iconics now - a woman defined mostly by her muscles and strength, not her prettyness.
(Depicting especially iconic characters in helmets is not the strong suit of the illustrations, sadly; at least not better than in most media. So, no, she never wears one.)

For better depictions of armor:
Maybe this? My second favourite picture of an armored woman from the current edition - the favourite isn't findable by google, sadly (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/06/cf/99/06cf99c2fe7f02e9e94bb92fec62442c.jpg)

Or, one of my favourite signs of "Hey, something is changing":
Rondra, the goddess of Honor, War and Storms... One time from 4th Edition (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8d/f3/de/8df3dea46e267827415aba05241de23a.jpg), one time from 5th (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/98/bf/5f/98bf5ff2476c5c7b2585545e555511e9.png).
...Dark Eye picdump over. (For now?)

[RedMage125]

Sigh... except it was demonstrated in the first couple of pages of this thread (by me for Basic and by another poster for AD&D) that this isn't true at all. Far and away the vast majority of women were clad in armor and gear perfectly well suited for adventure with minimal skin showing. So as I've been beating on this entire thread unless you or someone else has evidence that either 2e or the majority of the supplements around Basic and 1e had radically different art styles from that found in the core books, it would be a great service to our hobby is we stopped acting like early D&D was a cesspit of sexist artwork.




I must've missed any of that, but I've mostly bought pre '83 stuff ('78 to '85 were the years I played the most), some post '98 stuff, and all of post '13 (so. 0e, 1e, and 5e).
The 3e-4e stuff seems "racier' to me (with the possible exception of the Monster Manual and Deities & Demi-Gods).


My early D&D experience was in 2e. And 2e had a lot of chainmail or leather-and-fur bikini types as I remember.

[Frozen_Feet]

What are some character names I should be looking for? Or sites I should look at?

I don't remember names of the iconics, but a simple Google image search gets you a healthy share of the covers, and link to the homepage of the company.


Hmmm...looking up the subject of LotFP artwork, as always online, I end up somewhere other than my destination. Evidently the self-appointed Forge God went after James Raggi in an OSR 'zine article at one point... for capitulating to "Victorian societal values". :smallconfused: I find that a bit funny given the rather unflinching approach to artwork and subject matter in Raggi's products.

That's explained by looking at the date stamps. Edward's article and Raggi's response to it predate LotFP breaking out big. Eight years is a long time in the hobby.

---

@Floret: oh, Raggi is a fan of using male nudity for shock value just as well, Death Love Doom and **** for Satan being two examples. However, those images tend to be interior art, so they're not what you get to see when looking up the products on Google. Raggi's gone on record for idly wondering / advicing GMs to use male genitalia because it seems to upset people more.

Which brings me to the Marilith's boobs. My reaction to seeing the image was "that is a really cool Marilith!" I did not pay any attention to its exposed boobs. So when I eventually saw someone on Something Awfull placing a black censor bar over its nipples, I was like "why on Earth would anyone feel the need to censor that?"

The idea that an exposed female torso on a naked inhuman monstrosity is any more noteworthy than a naked male torso on a naked inhuman monstrosity in a similar arrangement, is literally foreign to me. But I do think such ideas warp the discussion on art, not the least because they impact visibility of images on the net. In a world where LotFP box cover is somehow "Not Safe For Work" by the virtue of nipples, how would you expect pictures using full male nudity to ever get past Google Safe Search? Meanwhile, partial male nudity is completely unnoteworthy, due to some strange double standard; evidence suggests that if we had Balor nipples or Satyr nipples on that cover, no-one would've cared, no matter how hunky the Balor or Satyr would've been.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Floret: oh, Raggi is a fan of using male nudity for shock value just as well, Death Love Doom and **** for Satan being two examples. However, those images tend to be interior art, so they're not what you get to see when looking up the products on Google. Raggi's gone on record for idly wondering / advicing GMs to use male genitalia because it seems to upset people more.


I don't see the need for shock and upset either way, regardless of whether the naked character is male or female.

But I do kinda get the "what's good for the goose is good for the gander" approach, and challenging some double-standards... it's sorta the flip side of saying "female characters" should working armor if a male character would in the same situation".




Which brings me to the Marilith's boobs. My reaction to seeing the image was "that is a really cool Marilith!" I did not pay any attention to its exposed boobs. So when I eventually saw someone on Something Awfull placing a black censor bar over its nipples, I was like "why on Earth would anyone feel the need to censor that?"

The idea that an exposed female torso on a naked inhuman monstrosity is any more noteworthy than a naked male torso on a naked inhuman monstrosity in a similar arrangement, is literally foreign to me. But I do think such ideas warp the discussion on art, not the least because they impact visibility of images on the net. In a world where LotFP box cover is somehow "Not Safe For Work" by the virtue of nipples, how would you expect pictures using full male nudity to ever get past Google Safe Search? Meanwhile, partial male nudity is completely unnoteworthy, due to some strange double standard; evidence suggests that if we had Balor nipples or Satyr nipples on that cover, no-one would've cared, no matter how hunky the Balor or Satyr would've been.


For whatever mix of the various reasons, a lot of people on this planet don't see male and female chests as equivalent body zones.

And while the image of a bare-chested male isn't going to trip a NSFW filter nearly as often, in many countries there are plenty of contexts in which it's considered inappropriate for a man to be bare-chested or shirtless.

It is what it is.

[Frozen_Feet]

I don't see the need for shock and upset either way...

It ought to be obvious why gross-out elements and violations of social taboos are necessary for shock horror genre. Now, you might ask what's the need for shock horror genre, period. But you might as well ask what's the need for RPGs to feature armor at all. There is no obvious correct answer and it might be the demand is solely created by supply.

[Max_Killjoy]

It ought to be obvious why gross-out elements and violations of social taboos are necessary for shock horror genre. Now, you might ask what's the need for shock horror genre, period. But you might as well ask what's the need for RPGs to feature armor at all. There is no obvious correct answer and it might be the demand is solely created by supply.

Fair enough, I didn't realize that shock-horror was the context.

[2D8HP]

My early D&D experience was in 2e. And 2e had a lot of chainmail or leather-and-fur bikini types as I remember.


Okay, now it's becoming clearer.

I largely skipped 2e to 4e. Most of my D&D playing was in the 0e/1e era, and some in the current 5e era.

I bought and read a lot of 3e, and some of 3.5, and I've glanced a bit at 2e, 4e and Pathfinder, which seem to me to be more "chainmail bikini-ish" than most of 0e and 1e, and almost all of 5e.

I have a bit of a communication problem in that I still classify 2e AD&D as "new D&D" (for me "old D&D" is what I played in the very late 1970's).

[scalyfreak]

Curious that your friend heard sexist remarks at a "diverse company", but you found that the male weight lifters at the gym welcoming. Any kind of pattern?

The only patterns I have noticed is that the guys at the gym seem to be younger, but that feels like a cheap shortcut to another stereotype.

[Callos_DeTerran]

And it irks some of us when someone says "I don't care if it's 'realistic' as long as it looks awesome" with an implication, quite clear in the context, that verisimilitude can't be awesome and there's something wrong with caring about it. (I don't think that's where you're going, but it's where many who say similar things to what you said are going.)

And for some of us, the idea that one fantastic element must automatically open the door to all fantastic elements is utterly foreign to how and why we write, and build worlds, and play RPGs.

Counterpoint, its just as irksome when the opposite is true and someone is telling you 'if it isn't realistic it can't be awesome' and its wrong to want something impractical even if it suits the look or feel you are going for.

Secondly, I am not saying one fantastic element opens the door to allother ones. I AM saying I find it a bit bizarre that say...super powers as perfectly fine but the accompanying spandex (for both genders) is wrong because it should be more practical. Why does the ability to turn into fire not break immersion but the fact they aren't dressed like a SWAT trooper when fighting does?

Especially in situations where magic is a thing...what, casting magic is perfectly fine but its somehow completely implausible that scant armor isn't somehow protective? Or that magic somehow makes said armor protective is wrong?

LEMME PLAY VLAD THE IMPALINATOR WITH HIS MIGHTY VORPAL CODPIECE DAMMIT! YOU BREAK REALITY BY TALKING TO IT BUT SOMEHOW MY ARMOR IS WHERE THE LINE IS DRAWN IN THE SAND FOR IMPLAUSIBILITY?!

Last comment made in jest, obviously, but still bizarrely relevant for one of the games I'm in IRL...

The line were people's immersion can be broken is different for everyone...no one is wrong, no one is right and you shouldn't (not saying you specifically, just in general) be forcing people to damper their fun just for vermisllitude...or the lack there of. Unless its super creepy and making your group uncomfortable, then you should politely take your leave or ask yourself if said idea is really worth it.

...or its borderline illegal.then just knock it off in general.

[Tobtor]

Especially in situations where magic is a thing...what, casting magic is perfectly fine but its somehow completely implausible that scant armor isn't somehow protective? Or that magic somehow makes said armor protective is wrong?

I have seen this point brought foreward several times, and of course there is some (very little) merit to it. If the system is build around "force"fields type magic armur then perhaps. But most system it doesnt actually make sense:
1. Normally you actually (rulewise) need armour to enchant armour (at least cloth armour or similar). Thus it seem the enchantment make the armour more durable/better at withstanding attacks, not actually creating a barrier around the person.

2. Similar most armour give a good "start" mundane AC (for DnD, isnert your system as apprpriate), which isnt "magic", and works outside magic zones etc. Even if the enchantment bonuses apply without actually wearing any armour (can you enchant "nude" with armour enchantments?), the normal armour should still be active (or people should forego armour altogether if it doesnt add anything).

3. Also armour have weight, suggesting the should cover people and include metal etc.

4. Also magic armour should work similar for men and women.

If there was a wolrd where the fluff statedd that wizards (or anyone really) coulds create deffensive forcefields around people, then yes said people dont need armour (though they might still prefer clothing that was actually suited for an active adventurer lifestyle). (slightly depending on cost of said forcefields). But that is usually not the situation (I havent played in any World where it was, other people meay "ususally" play in different Worlds).

[Bohandas]

I always wanted to someday play a psion who has the polar opposite of a caainmail bikini; like she's embeddec in a 3'x3'x7' slab of rebar concrete with iron cladding and some holes drilled in it for air

[Satinavian]

It's the pattern that gets me. It's not that one woman in one picture is incongruously clad compared to her male comrades... it's that all three of them are, one on each cover. Not really.
Early TDE tendet to depict light/no armor for PCs of both genders, but when armor was shown, it tended to be functional.

Clothing related for men they took a lot of inspiration various old eras, but for women they stuck more to contemporary fashion as the system stressed both equality and a society with sexual freedom at every single opportunity (writers were some old hippies)

They also had pretty soon an artist who did most of the cover illustrations : Ugurcan Yüce. Unfortunately he had no expericence with RPGs whatsoever and took his inspiration from movies and fairy tale illustrations. Which is where you get those Conan-lookalikes and those totally-not-Robin-Hood character. Both are far better than his dwarfs and elves though which show an illustrator with no prior experience of tolkieneske fantasy whatsoever.

He also really liked to draw women showing leg and men with large moustaches and helmets with wings. Oh, and bare-breasted men, which is the reason that on average his women wear better/more armor than the men. Just nothing heavy enough to actually cover upper legs. I don't know if he ever draw a full- or even a halfplate for either gender.

But i did find at least one bikini armor from him, even if it is for a video game :
http://guidohenkel.com/images/RIVA02.jpg
Also present in the foreground one of his typical elfs.

[coolAlias]

But i did find at least one bikini armor from him, even if it is for a video game :
http://guidohenkel.com/images/RIVA02.jpg
That woman is obviously a Barbarian with high Dex and Con plus Shield for an AC probably comparable to at least Chain Mail. Add in an enchanted bikini of protection and there you go. :smallamused:

[CharonsHelper]

But i did find at least one bikini armor from him, even if it is for a video game :

I don't think that's bikini armor. I think that it's just a bikini. (which at least wouldn't chafe)

Maybe she has monk levels.

[kraftcheese]

Wow, reading through threads like this always takes it out of me, but some of that "tradition and male energy and essentialism" garbage really blew me away...I sure am glad I don't have to interact with too many people like that on a daily basis.

[warty goblin]

Pretty close to my take. I just really love the character and the fact that this is amongst the iconics now - a woman defined mostly by her muscles and strength, not her prettyness.
(Depicting especially iconic characters in helmets is not the strong suit of the illustrations, sadly; at least not better than in most media. So, no, she never wears one.)

For better depictions of armor:
Maybe this? My second favourite picture of an armored woman from the current edition - the favourite isn't findable by google, sadly (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/06/cf/99/06cf99c2fe7f02e9e94bb92fec62442c.jpg)

Or, one of my favourite signs of "Hey, something is changing":
Rondra, the goddess of Honor, War and Storms... One time from 4th Edition (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/8d/f3/de/8df3dea46e267827415aba05241de23a.jpg), one time from 5th (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/98/bf/5f/98bf5ff2476c5c7b2585545e555511e9.png).
...Dark Eye picdump over. (For now?)
I really like the art in the 5th Edition TDE core book; I think it's the only RPG I own that has art I enjoy more than 5th Edition D&D, although it's really pretty close between the two. Some of the art for the witch professions is a bit unnecessarily sexified I suppose, but no more so than I actually see basically every day on the street, so eh I guess? But overall it presents a really excellent low fantasy but not grim'n'gritty aesthetic. There's only one case of literal boobplate in the thing, and that's for the gladiator, who's supposed to have impractically flashy armor.

(Now if there was just a snowball's chance in hell of finding somebody who actually wanted to play the thing, 'cause it's a beautiful, beautiful, rules-heavy beast.)
(And yes I've read 3rd Edition too, which is even more complicated. Who doesn't want to do quadratic equations to work out their encumbrance?)

[Ashiel]

I always wanted to someday play a psion who has the polar opposite of a caainmail bikini; like she's embeddec in a 3'x3'x7' slab of rebar concrete with iron cladding and some holes drilled in it for air

I didn't quite go that far, but I did have a female psion who walked around in full plate armor and carried a big shield and a spear. It was a bluff, of course. The hilarious irony is the party's monk dressed in wizard robes and carried a staff with glowing runes. So what generally happened was the enemies would avoid her and try to engage the monk. At which point she would drop magic bad times on them, and the monk would punch them. :smallamused:

[Max_Killjoy]

Not really.
Early TDE tendet to depict light/no armor for PCs of both genders, but when armor was shown, it tended to be functional.

Clothing related for men they took a lot of inspiration various old eras, but for women they stuck more to contemporary fashion as the system stressed both equality and a society with sexual freedom at every single opportunity (writers were some old hippies)

They also had pretty soon an artist who did most of the cover illustrations : Ugurcan Yüce. Unfortunately he had no expericence with RPGs whatsoever and took his inspiration from movies and fairy tale illustrations. Which is where you get those Conan-lookalikes and those totally-not-Robin-Hood character. Both are far better than his dwarfs and elves though which show an illustrator with no prior experience of tolkieneske fantasy whatsoever.

He also really liked to draw women showing leg and men with large moustaches and helmets with wings. Oh, and bare-breasted men, which is the reason that on average his women wear better/more armor than the men. Just nothing heavy enough to actually cover upper legs. I don't know if he ever draw a full- or even a halfplate for either gender.

But i did find at least one bikini armor from him, even if it is for a video game :

http://guidohenkel.com/images/RIVA02.jpg

Also present in the foreground one of his typical elfs.


So it was a combination of unintentional irony in the clothing guidelines (intention to show equality results in occasional sense of the opposite) and an artist who wasn't up to the task of accurately representing the subject matter and setting.

[CharonsHelper]

The hilarious irony is the party's monk dressed in wizard robes and carried a staff with glowing runes. So what generally happened was the enemies would avoid her and try to engage the monk. At which point she would drop magic bad times on them, and the monk would punch them. :smallamused:

Lol - I have a PFS monk who does that. He's scrawny (STR 7) and has super cheesy star & moon robes, and (being a drunken master/qinggong) opens up most fights with Scorching Ray.

[Satinavian]

So it was a combination of unintentional irony in the clothing guidelines (intention to show equality results in occasional sense of the opposite) and an artist who wasn't up to the task of accurately representing the subject matter and setting.
Yes, but at the time the pictures actually ending up problematic had little to do with female armor.

A TDE Ogre looks like in this background :
https://static.gameware.at/mirror/DerivedProductCovers/Zoomed/MAG-DSA5AK.jpg

When Yüce had to draw a cover for a module about an Ogre invasion depicting lots of them, it ended up like this
http://bilder.buecher.de/produkte/40/40217/40217679z.jpg

There was also a case where he was told to depict a group of orcs in the foreground and elfs in the background and the result was
https://rezensionen.nandurion.de/files/2012/09/A11-Elfenblut.jpg
This prompted so many player to inquire what the picture is supposed to be showing that they later introduced a group of stone age humans into the setting in some secluded valley

[Floret]

@Floret: oh, Raggi is a fan of using male nudity for shock value just as well, Death Love Doom and **** for Satan being two examples. However, those images tend to be interior art, so they're not what you get to see when looking up the products on Google. Raggi's gone on record for idly wondering / advicing GMs to use male genitalia because it seems to upset people more.

Which brings me to the Marilith's boobs. My reaction to seeing the image was "that is a really cool Marilith!" I did not pay any attention to its exposed boobs. So when I eventually saw someone on Something Awfull placing a black censor bar over its nipples, I was like "why on Earth would anyone feel the need to censor that?"

The idea that an exposed female torso on a naked inhuman monstrosity is any more noteworthy than a naked male torso on a naked inhuman monstrosity in a similar arrangement, is literally foreign to me. But I do think such ideas warp the discussion on art, not the least because they impact visibility of images on the net. In a world where LotFP box cover is somehow "Not Safe For Work" by the virtue of nipples, how would you expect pictures using full male nudity to ever get past Google Safe Search? Meanwhile, partial male nudity is completely unnoteworthy, due to some strange double standard; evidence suggests that if we had Balor nipples or Satyr nipples on that cover, no-one would've cared, no matter how hunky the Balor or Satyr would've been.

Googling those two yiedls me covers without people on them, and nothing much else, but, yeah, probably interior art.
And, my problem with it is not being exposed to female nipples, or a naked female chest. I do not mind those, and generally think the distinction between the two culturally is born from sexist double standards and society might be better off without, or at least without different laws concerning them.

What I was trying to get at, hits closer to archetypes like the Femme Fatale, or the concept of the madonna-whore complex - that is, female sexuality can be portrayed openly in works and is used, but only on the bad guys (Or, girls, in this case.). In a lot of fiction, heroes tend to dress more modestly, and showing the villains to be open with their sexuality is (a lot more in older stories, naturally) used to characterise them as "morally loose" and, well, evil.
My problem is not that I think the trope is true or has much merit, what I wanted to get at is that the usage of female nudeness for shock value works through an expression of that trope; and so (often subconciously, tropes are patterns of storytelling and thinking, after all, and most of the time not invoked intentionally) uses a pattern I think the world might be better off without. Sex and sexuality just... aren't shocking, to me, and using them in this way reeks a bit of somewhat old-timey morals.
And also that the sexualized aspect of this - for me - doesn't increase the shock value, or the horror factor, but rather diminishes it by making the creature still a lot more "recongnizable" and human, and less monstrous. That, in total, is why my reaction was "Why does this snake have boobs".


I really like the art in the 5th Edition TDE core book; I think it's the only RPG I own that has art I enjoy more than 5th Edition D&D, although it's really pretty close between the two. Some of the art for the witch professions is a bit unnecessarily sexified I suppose, but no more so than I actually see basically every day on the street, so eh I guess? But overall it presents a really excellent low fantasy but not grim'n'gritty aesthetic. There's only one case of literal boobplate in the thing, and that's for the gladiator, who's supposed to have impractically flashy armor.

(Now if there was just a snowball's chance in hell of finding somebody who actually wanted to play the thing, 'cause it's a beautiful, beautiful, rules-heavy beast.)
(And yes I've read 3rd Edition too, which is even more complicated. Who doesn't want to do quadratic equations to work out their encumbrance?)

Yeah, generally the art is really, really great at representing women. Some hickups still persist, sure (Most of them outside the core book, though, and in some supplements.), but then there are also some truly great ones like the Rondra priestess linked, and a priestess of the god of mercenaries that has just as shaved a head as her male colleagues, a chubby, muscular smith or an overweight, nerdy magician - maybe its a sign that I need to get exposed to more stuff that I enjoy it so much to see women in these kinds of roles usually given to men, but its great to have that nonetheless.
Witches were originally kinda... meant to be that, but especially the toadwitch... yeah... (Catwitches are STILL meant to be that. Playing with people, and all that...) I assume by your inability to find people you live outside of Germany?


Not really.
Early TDE tendet to depict light/no armor for PCs of both genders, but when armor was shown, it tended to be functional.

Clothing related for men they took a lot of inspiration various old eras, but for women they stuck more to contemporary fashion as the system stressed both equality and a society with sexual freedom at every single opportunity (writers were some old hippies)

They also had pretty soon an artist who did most of the cover illustrations : Ugurcan Yüce. Unfortunately he had no expericence with RPGs whatsoever and took his inspiration from movies and fairy tale illustrations. Which is where you get those Conan-lookalikes and those totally-not-Robin-Hood character. Both are far better than his dwarfs and elves though which show an illustrator with no prior experience of tolkieneske fantasy whatsoever.

He also really liked to draw women showing leg and men with large moustaches and helmets with wings. Oh, and bare-breasted men, which is the reason that on average his women wear better/more armor than the men. Just nothing heavy enough to actually cover upper legs. I don't know if he ever draw a full- or even a halfplate for either gender.

But i did find at least one bikini armor from him, even if it is for a video game :
http://guidohenkel.com/images/RIVA02.jpg
Also present in the foreground one of his typical elfs.

That picture you linked... REALLY doesn't do well on the "depict them equally" front - yes, many naked men alongside the women, but also quite some clothed men alongside pretty much no women that don't at least have their legs exposed. The presence of similarly dressed men does mitigate the effect a bit, but the portraial is not equivalent.
And have you actually looked at the pics I linked? I don't really see any armor that passes. Sure, the tendency for light/no armor is indeed present, but I am a bit beyond just armor, and on to general portrayal in my complaints - none of the pics in the first post even had armor, I think?)
(For me, at least, Boob armor doesn't qualify as "funtional".)

Arguing "They stressed sexual freedom" is, while a true fact about the setting, pretty much the "This women is so empowered through her sexuality" defense of sexualised clothes/armor. It just doesn't hold up when the men aren't nearly as sexualised, even if they end up naked sometimes, too. Compare this picture (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/0/0d/AB_A22.jpg)of pretty naked men to this (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/c/c0/AB_A18.jpg)of pretty naked women. (Only ones exclusively featuring both that I found). Or this (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/6/6a/RB_GdSA.jpg), of a man and women with similar amounts of clothing next to each other. Spindly arms on the warrior, while the smith gets the biceps of the century? Seriously? No matter how much the setting tried to represent equal rights, at least the art... kinda failed to make them equal. (And the setting still has some of the trappings of "Yeah, this isn't ACTUALLY equality, but it might be close enough, sure", in that it doesn't seem to think some things through.)

And, yes, Yüce hat... interesting ideas, certainly, and his depiction of Fantasy creatures doesn't fit the setting very well, or, really, does the Fantasy creatures justice. But can you really look at that picture you linked, and say with conviction that it isn't at least... kinda sexist? Can you look at it, and claim honestly that it depicts men and women equally?
Because sure, the Elf has exposed underarms, and one of the humans something around at least stomach, but nothing much else. But then we have a dwarf(?) in full mail, a magician in fully covering robes, and the only woman... In a bra, loincloth and (high heeled, no less!) boots. No matter how much the guy liked to draw bare-chested men, in the absence of female equivalents to the ones that aren't, this is still sexist.
The fact he was really bad at portraying Fantasy races anywhere near setting-accurate was a big problem with his art as well, possibly a bigger one, but there can be multiple problems with someone's work.

[Satinavian]

G
And, yes, Yüce hat... interesting ideas, certainly, and his depiction of Fantasy creatures doesn't fit the setting very well, or, really, does the Fantasy creatures justice. But can you really look at that picture you linked, and say with conviction that it isn't at least... kinda sexist?The picture i linked was meant to be a particularly bad example, not something common or average. I really didn't like it when i saw it many many yers ago for the same reasons you mention, that is why i remembered it as an outlier. Also it is video game art, not really tabletop RPG art.

And while i agree that the cover for this southsea-pirate adventure is also pretty bad, i don't have really a problem with the picture with the smith and the warrior, considering that the likely adventurer there is the woman.

[warty goblin]

Yeah, generally the art is really, really great at representing women. Some hickups still persist, sure (Most of them outside the core book, though, and in some supplements.), but then there are also some truly great ones like the Rondra priestess linked, and a priestess of the god of mercenaries that has just as shaved a head as her male colleagues, a chubby, muscular smith or an overweight, nerdy magician - maybe its a sign that I need to get exposed to more stuff that I enjoy it so much to see women in these kinds of roles usually given to men, but its great to have that nonetheless.
Witches were originally kinda... meant to be that, but especially the toadwitch... yeah... (Catwitches are STILL meant to be that. Playing with people, and all that...) I assume by your inability to find people you live outside of Germany?


Except for D&D 5E, I don't think there's another RPG in my giant RPG box that does a better job, and so far as I can tell it's basically a tossup between DSA and D&D for representation.

And yeah, not in Germany. Not being able to play DSA isn't a surprise - I bought the rules to read 'em, not because I thought I'd every actually play it. My social circle doesn't really do pen and paper RPGs, at least not unless I'd GM, and I really don't have the time. Even if they did, I doubt I could sell them on something as crazy crunch as DSA. I've got a longrunning freeform game with my girlfriend though, which is excellent.

[Arbane]

Since this is about art as much as actual 'armor' design, this article I just saw seems somewhat relevant: How To De-Objectify Women in Comics: A Guide (http://www.heroicgirls.com/de-objectify-women-comics-guide/).

[Talakeal]

Since this is about art as much as actual 'armor' design, this article I just saw seems somewhat relevant: How To De-Objectify Women in Comics: A Guide (http://www.heroicgirls.com/de-objectify-women-comics-guide/).

I kind of dont like these loaded terms. He does nothing in that list to demonstrate how these tropes actually serve to objectifyp women. Dont get me wrong, I agree with most of what he is saying about style choices, I just dont see how it changes the anount of objectification going on.

Similar to how the link several pages back talked about ratios of "sexist" art without ever actually defining sexist, and as best as I could tell just meant a woman who showed a lot of skin or looked attractive (not neccesarily both).

[Max_Killjoy]

I kind of dont like these loaded terms. He does nothing in that list to demonstrate how these tropes actually serve to objectifyp women. Dont get me wrong, I agree with most of what he is saying about style choices, I just dont see how it changes the anount of objectification going on.

Similar to how the link several pages back talked about ratios of "sexist" art without ever actually defining sexist, and as best as I could tell just meant a woman who showed a lot of skin or looked attractive (not neccesarily both).

I'm pretty sure that impossible poses, situationally incoherent or unlikely facial expressions and stances, incoherent body types (fights supervillains for a living, looks like a lingerie model), and odd costume choices, applied almost exclusively to characters of one sex and not the other, is pretty clearly sexist in outcome if not in intent. How often do you see male characters drawn in impossible poses and with faces that look like they got hit with a supervillain's Arousal RayTM ?

The Power Girl on the right is still an attractive woman, while also looking more appropriate to the character and situation. She doesn't look posed for showing off assets, she looks powerful.

[Talakeal]

I'm pretty sure that impossible poses, situationally incoherent or unlikely facial expressions and stances, incoherent body types (fights supervillains for a living, looks like a lingerie model), and odd costume choices, applied almost exclusively to characters of one sex and not the other, is pretty clearly sexist in outcome if not in intent. How often do you see male characters drawn in impossible poses and with faces that look like they got hit with a supervillain's Arousal RayTM ?

The Power Girl on the right is still an attractive woman, while also looking more appropriate to the character and situation. She doesn't look posed for showing off assets, she looks powerful.

I guess that a matter of taste (and art style) to me the second one looks less like power girl and more like an asian Doc Brown.

But either way, I agree that some of the features are sexist, but I dont agree that sexism and objectification are neccesarily linked.

[Floret]

The picture i linked was meant to be a particularly bad example, not something common or average. I really didn't like it when i saw it many many yers ago for the same reasons you mention, that is why i remembered it as an outlier. Also it is video game art, not really tabletop RPG art.

And while i agree that the cover for this southsea-pirate adventure is also pretty bad, i don't have really a problem with the picture with the smith and the warrior, considering that the likely adventurer there is the woman.

See, my problem is that looking at all the pictures I can find? Yes, it is particularly bad, but just because the situation could be worse does not mean it is good. The picture isn't THAT much off of the average of Dark Eye art, sadly (Despite it not being it, yeah).
You don't? Just because the woman is PC-coded and the man NPC-coded negates all the other stuff going on difference-wise?
Her pose? Posing herself for no appearant reason? Her armor, a not so pretty example of boobplate, combined with cleavage and naked arms and legs? The fact that her arms are so incredibly thin, looking almost anorexic, nowhere near appropriate for a warrior; while the man besides her clearly shows the lack of muscles is not a matter of a general art style? The naked arms, granted, the men in the background have those, too - but they, for some reason get muscles?
The picture very clearly applies very different standards to the depiction of women and men, reducing the realism in the depiction of a female warrior compared to her male counterparts for making her look... what? More like a bikini model?


I kind of dont like these loaded terms. He does nothing in that list to demonstrate how these tropes actually serve to objectifyp women. Dont get me wrong, I agree with most of what he is saying about style choices, I just dont see how it changes the anount of objectification going on.

Similar to how the link several pages back talked about ratios of "sexist" art without ever actually defining sexist, and as best as I could tell just meant a woman who showed a lot of skin or looked attractive (not neccesarily both).

One, I second everything Max wrote in response. Two, maybe as a case study, look at the picture I am talking about above, and my description of why the depiction irks me. And, maybe as a question to you: Can you think of any other reason for this discrepancy?

As Max alluded to, this is not to say that the piece is intentionally sexist, but it is very clearly informed by (maybe subconcious, growing up in a sexist society will ingrain some hard-to-get-rid-of assossiations and thinking patterns into a person) sexist patterns.


I guess that a matter of taste (and art style) to me the second one looks less like power girl and more like an asian Doc Brown.

But either way, I agree that some of the features are sexist, but I dont agree that sexism and objectification are neccesarily linked.

You don't? You really don't see how treating women as objects is sexist?
Or to be more articulate, as an things to be attracted to first, rather than characters to identify with?

[Talakeal]

See, my problem is that looking at all the pictures I can find? Yes, it is particularly bad, but just because the situation could be worse does not mean it is good. The picture isn't THAT much off of the average of Dark Eye art, sadly (Despite it not being it, yeah).
You don't? Just because the woman is PC-coded and the man NPC-coded negates all the other stuff going on difference-wise?
Her pose? Posing herself for no appearant reason? Her armor, a not so pretty example of boobplate, combined with cleavage and naked arms and legs? The fact that her arms are so incredibly thin, looking almost anorexic, nowhere near appropriate for a warrior; while the man besides her clearly shows the lack of muscles is not a matter of a general art style? The naked arms, granted, the men in the background have those, too - but they, for some reason get muscles?
The picture very clearly applies very different standards to the depiction of women and men, reducing the realism in the depiction of a female warrior compared to her male counterparts for making her look... what? More like a bikini model?



One, I second everything Max wrote in response. Two, maybe as a case study, look at the picture I am talking about above, and my description of why the depiction irks me. And, maybe as a question to you: Can you think of any other reason for this discrepancy?

As Max alluded to, this is not to say that the piece is intentionally sexist, but it is very clearly informed by (maybe subconcious, growing up in a sexist society will ingrain some hard-to-get-rid-of assossiations and thinking patterns into a person) sexist patterns.



You don't? You really don't see how treating women as objects is sexist?
Or to be more articulate, as an things to be attracted to first, rather than characters to identify with?

On my phone right now, detailed posts and searching for links is tough, so please forgive my likely incomplete and typo filled response.

Which pictures specifically? It looks like you are talking about the one with the three viking looking guys vs the one with a woman tied to the tree, but I dont really see PCs in either, and the woman in the latter is, imo, clearly a preistess in ceremonial garb rather than an actual warrior, so I am not sure if these are the ones you meant.


Anyway, I can see how objectification can be sexist and vice versa, but it isnt a direct correlation. Some things are objectification, some things are sexist, and some things are wrong. There is a lot of overlap, but you can easilly have one or two without the others.

For example, take the following scenarios:

All men are required to serve in the military.
A judge in a unisex body building competition decides the winner based on who has the best physique.
A straight man only dates straigt women.
A gay man only dates gay men.
A straight man goes to a stripclub on his birthday and gets a lap dance from the woman he finds most attractive.
A gay man goes to a club on his birthday and gets a lap dance from the man he finds most attractive.
A bisexual man goes to a club and gets a dance from the person he finds most attractive,
I want to make a good first impression so I spend two hours before my interview trying to pick out clothes and cosmetics to look my best rather than focusing on improving my resume.
I am casting a wonder woman movie and dont allow men to audition for the lead.


Imo all of these examples contain examples of either sexism or objectification, but not all of them contain both and not all of them are morally wrong.

[Floret]

On my phone right now, detailed posts and searching for links is tough, so please forgive my likely incomplete and typo filled response.

Which pictures specifically? It looks like you are talking about the one with the three viking looking guys vs the one with a woman tied to the tree, but I dont really see PCs in either, and the woman in the latter is, imo, clearly a preistess in ceremonial garb rather than an actual warrior, so I am not sure if these are the ones you meant.

Anyway, I can see how objectification can be sexist and vice versa, but it isnt a direct correlation. Some things are objectification, some things are sexist, and some things are wrong. There is a lot of overlap, but you can easilly have one or two without the others.

For example, take the following scenarios:

All men are required to serve in the military.
A judge in a unisex body building competition decides the winner based on who has the best physique.
A straight man only dates straigt women.
A gay man only dates gay men.
A straight man goes to a stripclub on his birthday and gets a lap dance from the woman he finds most attractive.
A gay man goes to a club on his birthday and gets a lap dance from the man he finds most attractive.
A bisexual man goes to a club and gets a dance from the person he finds most attractive,
I want to make a good first impression so I spend two hours before my interview trying to pick out clothes and cosmetics to look my best rather than focusing on improving my resume.
I am casting a wonder woman movie and dont allow men to audition for the lead.

Imo all of these examples contain examples of either sexism or objectification, but not all of them contain both and not all of them are morally wrong.

No, I was talking about the third from that same post - this one (http://de.wiki-aventurica.de/de/images/6/6a/RB_GdSA.jpg), to be specific.
The "PC-coded" was in reference to Satinavian pointing out it seems to be she is the adventurer here.

I think that the problem here is, as exemplified by your examples, that you are operating under at least somewhat different definitions of sexism and objectification as the rest of the discussion. I shall try to explain, but keep in mind I am not a native speaker so some details might get lost in translation.

Sexism is defined as discrimination based on sex/gender. Discrimination, in this case, is used in its modern meaning of "treating people worse because of certain (inherent/unchangable) attributes they possess"; not in the technical latin sense of "to make a difference". In its modern definition, the basis for that of sexism, it is an inherently negative thing.
Sexuality, for example, isn't sexist; not literally everyone that isn't bi is sexist (And bisexuals can be plenty sexist on the flipside). It is not discriminating based on it, but merely acting on ingrained attributes of oneself. Sure, sexuality can express itself in sexist ways (Both straight men treating women like prizes to be won as well as gay men acting as if female anatomy is the most disgusting thing in the world are sexist; as would any other person doing any of those two.).

As for objectification... Finding people attractive isn't the same as objectifying them. Treating people like people doesn't automatically end when they make you feel tingly in just the right ways; it is only objectification if you take that fact and reduce people to it - which might express itself in characters in art having their sexiness pronounced over logic, anatomy, etc. Sexy characters aren't inherently objectified, but when they are reduced to it at the expense of everything else, or when that becomes the most important (or only) defining trait, then it becomes a problem.
Since this is a problem really, really primarily targeting female characters, this is indeed mostly an issue of sexism. One somewhat exaggerated answer to this is the "sexy lamp test" for female characters in media: If the plot would work equally well with the character replaced by a sexy lamp, there definitely is some objectification going on.

On those scenarios:
1. Is sexist, yes
2. Might be objectification if you really stretch the definition of it (Mostly it focusses on the muscles of the people, but that doesn't mean you treat them like objects?)
3. That is somewhat biphobic, but not sexist.
4. Same as 3
5. Not inherently any of those, though there is a lot of potential for objectification here. But it is very possible to treat a person giving you a lapdance like a person. (Respecting boundaries and consent might be starter points, for example.)
6. See above
7. See above
8. Playing on the fact that attractive people do have better job chances, sure, but "goodlooking", even intentionally goodlooking and "object" are not synonymous. I mean, you are still trying for them to see you as a person, an employable person - not that they'd just employ a sexy paperweight if it only were sexy enough. Making them think of you as nothing but sexy would be actively conterproductive.
9. Having a woman played by a woman is not sexist.

[Talakeal]

When I get to a PC I will read and respond to your analysis of the picture in more detail, but for myself I dont really see a problem with it. I would personally prefer if the woman had a figure more like that of the blacksmith, but I dont see anything really wrong with it as is.

Also, I didnt mesn to imply biphobia in number three, I was straight to mean a woman who is attracted to men, not a woman who is not attracted to women.

I was intentionally using overly broad dictionary definitions of sexism and objectification. By those sstandards most of my examples included both, but were not, imo, "wrong", if done in the appropriate circumstances.

Gong by a more strcti definition, I dont see how art can ever be sexist or not objectifying. A picture is physically incapable of discriminating, although I suppose you could have a picture OF someone discriminating, and as it is merely an image it cant help but reduce everything it depicts down to its appearance.

But, yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Really, it seems to me that most of the time people label art sexist or objectification they are simply saying that society a: has different standards of beauty for men and women, b: society has different standards of fashion for men and women, and c: society places a higher value of female beauty than male beauty, and that our art represents our societal values.

[SaurOps]

Gong by a more strcti definition, I dont see how art can ever be sexist or not objectifying. A picture is physically incapable of discriminating, although I suppose you could have a picture OF someone discriminating, and as it is merely an image it cant help but reduce everything it depicts down to its appearance.

But, yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Really, it seems to me that most of the time people label art sexist or objectification they are simply saying that society a: has different standards of beauty for men and women, b: society has different standards of fashion for men and women, and c: society places a higher value of female beauty than male beauty, and that our art represents our societal values.

Because the picture didn't spring up by itself as a natural formation in a cave. Someone intentionally made it according to their desired parameters of aesthetics. This is related to how citing in-universe reasons for the same also fall flat; someone wrote the story and the setting it takes place in, they aren't neutrally chronicling an actual event. They made it up, it has their fingerprints all over it, it's a story entirely of the author's or authors' design, for good or for ill.

[Talakeal]

Because the picture didn't spring up by itself as a natural formation in a cave. Someone intentionally made it according to their desired parameters of aesthetics. This is related to how citing in-universe reasons for the same also fall flat; someone wrote the story and the setting it takes place in, they aren't neutrally chronicling an actual event. They made it up, it has their fingerprints all over it, it's a story entirely of the author's or authors' design, for good or for ill.

Right. But Florets definition of sexism involves descrimination against real people and objectification reducing people to nothing more than physical traits, things which it is literally impossible for a painting to do.

A broader definition of sexism or objectification can apply to art, but an extremely broad literal definition involves many totally benign or even positive aspects.

In short, if someone is going to label art sexist or cry objectification they really need to define their terms.

[Satinavian]

See, my problem is that looking at all the pictures I can find? Yes, it is particularly bad, but just because the situation could be worse does not mean it is good. The picture isn't THAT much off of the average of Dark Eye art, sadly (Despite it not being it, yeah).
You don't? Just because the woman is PC-coded and the man NPC-coded negates all the other stuff going on difference-wise?Good, let's discuss that.
Her pose? Posing herself for no appearant reason? [/quote]You think that is posing ? I don't. Seems to be a quite natural waiting position.

Her armor, a not so pretty example of boobplate, combined with cleavage and naked arms and legs?Most of that is leather, the style slightly reminiscent for ancient armor, not medieval one. Leather or cloth based torso armor with a small metal plate is something you will find numerous historical examples off. Boobplate is not actually a problem here. Unprotected upper arms and legs are not really a problem either. And she has lower arm protection. The only real problem with the armor is the exposed area above the boobplate which is usually covered in historical analogues. Otherwise the armor is completely fine.
Yes, those styles went out of fashion in Europe and the mediterranian areas when everyone started to use chain. But the kitchen sink setting of TDE still has both the lorica segmentata and the linothorax in use.
http://www.roma-victrix.com/images/armamentarium/loricae/linothorax/loricae_linothorax02b.jpg
Hoplite armor would have leg protection but they were more than enough more skirmish-inclined troop types like varios Peltast valiants skipping such things.

Yes, doen't fit into a medieval setting, but the mayority of Yüces armors don't fit in that period or area.

The fact that her arms are so incredibly thin, looking almost anorexic, nowhere near appropriate for a warrior;I would chalk that one up to lack of technical skill. Never said i thought of him as a great artist.

[Floret]

When I get to a PC I will read and respond to your analysis of the picture in more detail, but for myself I dont really see a problem with it. I would personally prefer if the woman had a figure more like that of the blacksmith, but I dont see anything really wrong with it as is.

Also, I didnt mesn to imply biphobia in number three, I was straight to mean a woman who is attracted to men, not a woman who is not attracted to women.


The figure is one of the problems, yes.

I didn't think you meant to imply it, but the exact wording did fall into the same direction as real-life attitudes I have heard one too many times to just let this slide without a bit of nitpicking ;)
(To clarify, the attitude I am talking about is probably best summed up as "Bi people will always cheat on me/leave me for the other gender so I don't date them, even if there is mutual attraction". Also it's bull**** and damn annoying to deal with.)


I was intentionally using overly broad dictionary definitions of sexism and objectification. By those sstandards most of my examples included both, but were not, imo, "wrong", if done in the appropriate circumstances.

Gong by a more strcti definition, I dont see how art can ever be sexist or not objectifying. A picture is physically incapable of discriminating, although I suppose you could have a picture OF someone discriminating, and as it is merely an image it cant help but reduce everything it depicts down to its appearance.

Media influences us. The media we consume changes our worldview, changes our outlook, opinions, values. (Just like pretty much everything does; and no, this does not mean if a piece of media presents something we immediately accept that as part of how we see the world. The effect size of a simple piece of media is incredibly small and might go any number of ways - but then again, over time, small effects accumulate, and most noone just consumes one piece. (Not the anime, lots of people watch that.))
So, just like (as you later write) art represents societal values, it can reaffirm them, or influence them.
Now, something I regretfully exempted from my definition last post: Discrimination CAN be distinct instances of treating people worse, but it can also be (and that tends to be a bigger problem, though generally born out of and expressing itself in these distinct instances) a general, societal framework that presents certain groups of people as lesser, worse; "this one, limited way" (or in the extreme "always chaotic evil" :P).
Due to part of medias function being communication of values, reinforcing a value framework that presents women as somewhat lesser; valued by their looks, a picture like that while not able to perform a distinct action of discrimination, reinforces said framework by reminding the people that follow it "your views of women/how you value women are correct" and those that don't "This is how it should be, accept it" or, more specifically for those marginalized groups also " this is how you should be/learn your place".
(Three annotations to that one: One, this happens subconsciously.
Two, again, please don't take this as a statement that one picture on its own can actually do much; effects of media are certainly way more complicated than that.
Three, this is not to say any (or even most) artists who do this do this intentionally, it just is, subconsciously, their framework for the world, and therefore flows into it. An artists framework will, subconsciously, influence their work and thereby communicate itself onward.)


Really, it seems to me that most of the time people label art sexist or objectification they are simply saying that society a: has different standards of beauty for men and women, b: society has different standards of fashion for men and women, and c: society places a higher value of female beauty than male beauty, and that our art represents our societal values.

And d), that this is a problem. If society treats women and men different in such a way; and makes an inherent qualifier of a woman's worth "looking good" in the process, that is, from the perspective of me and the people criticizing this, not something to simply shrug and accept.


Good, let's discuss that.
You think that is posing ? I don't. Seems to be a quite natural waiting position.
Most of that is leather, the style slightly reminiscent for ancient armor, not medieval one. Leather or cloth based torso armor with a small metal plate is something you will find numerous historical examples off. Boobplate is not actually a problem here. Unprotected upper arms and legs are not really a problem either. And she has lower arm protection. The only real problem with the armor is the exposed area above the boobplate which is usually covered in historical analogues. Otherwise the armor is completely fine.
Yes, those styles went out of fashion in Europe and the mediterranian areas when everyone started to use chain. But the kitchen sink setting of TDE still has both the lorica segmentata and the linothorax in use.
http://www.roma-victrix.com/images/armamentarium/loricae/linothorax/loricae_linothorax02b.jpg
Hoplite armor would have leg protection but they were more than enough more skirmish-inclined troop types like varios Peltast valiants skipping such things.

Yes, doen't fit into a medieval setting, but the mayority of Yüces armors don't fit in that period or area.
I would chalk that one up to lack of technical skill. Never said i thought of him as a great artist.

Natural waiting pose? Doesn't really seem like that for me. Most of it works, sure, but especially the way she's leaning forward is just uncomfortable. Try replicating it, I wouldn't wanna wait in that position.
Sure, my points about the armor itself and the level of coverage are somewhat sidelines, mostly. The setting CAN explain most of the exposed bits. And, okay, so that might be leather - didn't appear to me as such. But how does that make boobplate not a problem? Like, the reasons against boobplate still persist (Directing blows in weird ways might be mitigated somewhat? But if the armor is that flexible, then it doesn't do a good job at protecting). And... anyways, if the armor is indeed the way you describe, that still makes the boobplate metal, only now a metal bra on top of leather armor. I am doubtful on how this "isn't actually a problem here". Please qualify that statement.
On top of that, the cleavage is kind of a big deal when discussing "is this sexist". Showing cleavage in such a way fullfills all criteria of "sexy is more important than logic"; "looking sexy is most important" and so on.

As for the arms... "lack of technical skill" is all well and good until you come to the very next sentence I wrote as an answer, that you left out of your quote:

The fact that her arms are so incredibly thin, looking almost anorexic, nowhere near appropriate for a warrior; while the man besides her clearly shows the lack of muscles is not a matter of a general art style? The naked arms, granted, the men in the background have those, too - but they, for some reason get muscles?
I am willing to put the nakedness of arms up to artstyle, but not how thin they are and how they lack muscles (and by extension she as a whole).

[Satinavian]

Natural waiting pose? Doesn't really seem like that for me. Most of it works, sure, but especially the way she's leaning forward is just uncomfortable. Try replicating it, I wouldn't wanna wait in that position.I usually do such positions regularly. Basically it is supporting part of the weight via leg and arm instead of relying on your spine the whole time. Granted i actually do have backpain occassionally and you might not but switching stance often during waiting and using some of those seems pretty common to me.

But how does that make boobplate not a problem? Like, the reasons against boobplate still persist (Directing blows in weird ways might be mitigated somewhat? But if the armor is that flexible, then it doesn't do a good job at protecting). And... anyways, if the armor is indeed the way you describe, that still makes the boobplate metal, only now a metal bra on top of leather armor. I am doubtful on how this "isn't actually a problem here". Please qualify that statement.Yes, it is basically a metal bra on a leather armor. And that is fine.

This whole "directing blows" argument is correct. But historical torso plate armor only got actually good at directing blows into harmless directions from the 14th century onward and only in Europe. Before plate was too rare to really learn from experience and the forms were far more varied, aesthetics an important concern. Most common forms would be small circular or rectangular plates on other armor. Things like
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Antique_Indian_char-aina_%28chahar-aina%29%2C_kulah_khud_and_madu.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Antique_chainmail_armour_with_mirror.jpg/800px-Antique_chainmail_armour_with_mirror.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Byzantine_klivanium_%28%CE%9A%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE %AC%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%29.jpg/1280px-Byzantine_klivanium_%28%CE%9A%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE %AC%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%29.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Punic_gilded_bronze_cuirass_AvL.JPG/397px-Punic_gilded_bronze_cuirass_AvL.JPG

If that is the state of the art of plate armor, sophisticated ideas about guiding blows are out of question. A boob plate would not be seen as strange here. You actually can find Indian boob plates with similar designs and while those would have been mostly ceremonial, the technological skill to make boob plates did exist in all cultures the above examples are taken from. That is the level that "plate armor" had most of the time over most of the world.

I already wrote earlier in this thread : It strains my suspension of disbelieve to see a White armor o Maximilian plate as a boobplate version but any setting where a muscle cuirass is fine should be fine with a boobplate too.

That soft leather is not that protective and that cloth armor would be far better is something that was not well known outside of expert circles decades ago. Most RPGs still follow the myth that leather is so much better ruleswise. At least Gambesons have gotton some love recently in illustrations.
Really, that leather clothing is viable armor is a myth that has to die.


I am willing to put the nakedness of arms up to artstyle, but not how thin they are and how they lack muscles (and by extension she as a whole).And i just don't agree. It is just a picture where the proportions are a off. I don't think that is deliberately.

[Amazon]

Can someone explain to me why these girls are wearing sexy outfits, lingerie and high heels instead of more practical combat gear?

Something other than blatant sexism.

http://residenteviltudo.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/ada-re4-resident-evil-722331_464_658.jpg
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/soulcalibur/images/5/53/Soul-calibur-4-ivy.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/275?cb=20140820153200
https://www.fightersgeneration.com/np6/char2/sonya-mkvsdc-white.jpg
https://pipocacombacon.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/sonya-blade-character-render-mortal-kombat-2011-mk-9.jpg

[Calthropstu]

That's the thing -- when someone is going into a situation wearing an outfit that will get them killed, simply because said outfit is supposedly "sexy", then objectively, there's an issue.

Going into hard vacuum in a getup that offers no protection is stupid... objectively stupid.

Going into combat wearing a "sexy" getup that offers no protection from the weapons being used, no camouflage, no utility, nothing useful at all... objectively stupid.

When an artist show me a character who's doing objectively stupid things, they're not telling me the character sexy or confident or whatever... they're telling me that the character is an idiot, or ignorant, or insane, or has a death wish.

I honestly don't understand how "this character is going to die" is sexy to begin with.

Or so good they don't care about armor. Armor is a pain in the ass to upkeep, especially metal.
Also, earlier in the thread I mentioned magic. There was an anime called Bikini Warriors or something like that. It was quite amusing, but made a valid point. In a world with magic, "chain mail" is relative. If a set of bikinis can be made that provides the same protection, what's the problem?
As soon as magic gets involved, it's simply a matter of getting the right enchantments.

[Amazon]

Or so good they don't care about armor. Armor is a pain in the ass to upkeep, especially metal.
Also, earlier in the thread I mentioned magic. There was an anime called Bikini Warriors or something like that. It was quite amusing, but made a valid point. In a world with magic, "chain mail" is relative. If a set of bikinis can be made that provides the same protection, what's the problem?
As soon as magic gets involved, it's simply a matter of getting the right enchantments.

Can't magic be dispelled?

[SaurOps]

Right. But Florets definition of sexism involves descrimination against real people and objectification reducing people to nothing more than physical traits, things which it is literally impossible for a painting to do.

Take a look at Amazon's post with the art examples and try saying that again.



A broader definition of sexism or objectification can apply to art, but an extremely broad literal definition involves many totally benign or even positive aspects.

In short, if someone is going to label art sexist or cry objectification they really need to define their terms.

No, it's usually shorthand for reasonable suspicion in the motives of making the art and marketing it far and wide. Because marketing has to shoulder a good deal of the blame, here.

Here, I can offer you part of the same later path to understanding that I took - start reading Wundergeek's criticisms at this post (https://gomakemeasandwich.wordpress.com/2010/10/), and don't stop until the end.


Or so good they don't care about armor. Armor is a pain in the ass to upkeep, especially metal.
Also, earlier in the thread I mentioned magic. There was an anime called Bikini Warriors or something like that. It was quite amusing, but made a valid point. In a world with magic, "chain mail" is relative. If a set of bikinis can be made that provides the same protection, what's the problem?
As soon as magic gets involved, it's simply a matter of getting the right enchantments.

If you can make scraps of a mail shirt do that, you can make an entire suit even better. That, or you'll start an arms race with the magical weapons people, and then it'll take all the running you can do just to stay in place. Then you're back where you started.

[Calthropstu]

Can someone explain to me why these girls are wearing sexy outfits, lingerie and high heels instead of more practical combat gear?

Something other than blatant sexism.

http://residenteviltudo.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/ada-re4-resident-evil-722331_464_658.jpg
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/soulcalibur/images/5/53/Soul-calibur-4-ivy.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/275?cb=20140820153200
https://www.fightersgeneration.com/np6/char2/sonya-mkvsdc-white.jpg
https://pipocacombacon.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/sonya-blade-character-render-mortal-kombat-2011-mk-9.jpg
Some pure skill. Ivy, the second one, is from a game where most of the male characters don't really wear protective gear either. The woman with the gun, most spies don't really wear armor in real life as it is hard to conceal in a formal dress. To whit, I refer you to the show Burn Notice.
The third and forth ones look like modern street toughs... when was the last time you saw ANY one in modern day wearing armor?

Can't magic be dispelled?

Yes. Can't armor be broken?
In a fantasy setting, you are more likely to run into an armor shattering build than a dispelling build.

[Max_Killjoy]

The first one at least has some potential period-appropriate justification for the right character and circumstances, but with nothing but a white blank background and context, it's hard to say. (Woman in a speakeasy picks up a Thompson and fights back when rival gangsters try to bust the place up, perhaps).

The second one is evidently some sort of demonic character or whatever, and not an actual human being. The "clothes" are just part of how she manifests. That is the only way I can avoid saying rules-violating things about that "artwork".

The third and fourth are laughable... I'm sure someone thought "they're strong women who won't let any man tell them how to dress and who aren't afraid of their own bodies" or some crap that's used to "justify" professional women in dangerous jobs dressing like they're about to do a shift in a "gentleman's club".

[Calthropstu]

The first one at least has some potential period-appropriate justification for the right character and circumstances, but with nothing but a white blank background and context, it's hard to say. (Woman in a speakeasy picks up a Thompson and fights back when rival gangsters try to bust the place up, perhaps).

The second one is evidently some sort of demonic character or whatever, and not an actual human being. The "clothes" are just part of how she manifests. That is the only way I can avoid saying rules-violating things about that "artwork".

The third and fourth are laughable... I'm sure someone thought "they're strong women who won't let any man tell them how to dress and who aren't afraid of their own bodies" or some crap that's used to "justify" professional women in dangerous jobs dressing like they're about to do a shift in a "gentleman's club".

The second one is Ivy, a human woman from the game Soul Caliber.
Only a few characters in that game wear actual armor.
All three of the others are modern era characters... which wearing "protective gear" just isn't really a thing.

[Floret]

I usually do such positions regularly. Basically it is supporting part of the weight via leg and arm instead of relying on your spine the whole time. Granted i actually do have backpain occassionally and you might not but switching stance often during waiting and using some of those seems pretty common to me.
Yes, it is basically a metal bra on a leather armor. And that is fine.

This whole "directing blows" argument is correct. But historical torso plate armor only got actually good at directing blows into harmless directions from the 14th century onward and only in Europe. Before plate was too rare to really learn from experience and the forms were far more varied, aesthetics an important concern. Most common forms would be small circular or rectangular plates on other armor. Things like
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Antique_Indian_char-aina_%28chahar-aina%29%2C_kulah_khud_and_madu.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/40/Antique_chainmail_armour_with_mirror.jpg/800px-Antique_chainmail_armour_with_mirror.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a1/Byzantine_klivanium_%28%CE%9A%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE %AC%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%29.jpg/1280px-Byzantine_klivanium_%28%CE%9A%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%B2%CE %AC%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%29.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7e/Punic_gilded_bronze_cuirass_AvL.JPG/397px-Punic_gilded_bronze_cuirass_AvL.JPG

If that is the state of the art of plate armor, sophisticated ideas about guiding blows are out of question. A boob plate would not be seen as strange here. You actually can find Indian boob plates with similar designs and while those would have been mostly ceremonial, the technological skill to make boob plates did exist in all cultures the above examples are taken from. That is the level that "plate armor" had most of the time over most of the world.

I already wrote earlier in this thread : It strains my suspension of disbelieve to see a White armor o Maximilian plate as a boobplate version but any setting where a muscle cuirass is fine should be fine with a boobplate too.

That soft leather is not that protective and that cloth armor would be far better is something that was not well known outside of expert circles decades ago. Most RPGs still follow the myth that leather is so much better ruleswise. At least Gambesons have gotton some love recently in illustrations.
Really, that leather clothing is viable armor is a myth that has to die.

And i just don't agree. It is just a picture where the proportions are a off. I don't think that is deliberately.

1. The position of the arms and leg? Sure, that is doing what you describe. Her leaning forward isn't.
2. None of those examples are actually directing blows to dangerous ares (such as sternum or cleavage). And are worn ABOVE mail armor, not as the only layer leading directly towards skin. Thank you for trying to provide examples, but those are not equivalent.
3. While it might not be so utterly strange, as soon as it comes with cleavage, it is worse at protecting than a muscle cuirass, and no longer equivalent.
4. Yeah, thick, hardened leather might work as armor but is nowhere near as flexible as people like to imagine leather armor to be (About as flexible as wood, meaning... not really at all). I personally don't mind AS much (Like, I accept the "It's Fantasy" defense to some part. Just when it reinforces sexist tropes that I start having problems.), but having padded armor in games and illustrations is at least a nice touch.

Whether or not the artist thinks to himself "women should look pretty" while drawing is irrelevant to whether or not the painting communicates that effect. Art communicates, and what it communicates is in no way limited to what the author intended it to communicate.
And even though I know you're not gonna agree - the fact of the matter is that the picture ultimately applies a double standard when it comes to portrayal of female and male characters and warriors; being closer to realism/strength for the men, and closer to sexyness for the woman. Having such double standards is pretty much the textbook definition of the problem with sexist artwork.


Or so good they don't care about armor. Armor is a pain in the ass to upkeep, especially metal.
Also, earlier in the thread I mentioned magic. There was an anime called Bikini Warriors or something like that. It was quite amusing, but made a valid point. In a world with magic, "chain mail" is relative. If a set of bikinis can be made that provides the same protection, what's the problem?
As soon as magic gets involved, it's simply a matter of getting the right enchantments.

1. Not really that much of a pain, no. Sure, you invest a bit of time every now and then, but magic generally comes at costs as well, that would, by most rulesystems or settings way outclass the bit of oiling and scrubbing your armor needs.
2. Having looked at pictures from Bikini warriors, I have one quick question: How does the magic that protects against swords eliminate the use of clothes? Like, there are reasons people wear them. (Also, those outfits look way more uncomfortable than any proper armor I have worn or seen people wear. That has to chafe. Everywhere.)
And, 3. You do realise someone made that up, right? For every magic system that justifies it, someone, a real life human, came and drew the rules of the world precisely to allow for that. This is not a logical consequence drawn from any real examples or facts in a vacuum, this is constructed, intentionally. Which begs the question, why? Why design your setting in such a way that near- or somewhat naked women fighting is logical in it; while also men are fully (or at least better) clothed, or maybe suspicious in their absence as fighters as to not have to ask the question of what men would wear under the same rules?
And if the answer to that is anything other than "sexism" or maybe more specifically "I want my fighting women to still be jerkoff material", then I really, really wanna hear it. I mean, I would never argue for censorship, or to forbid people from creating their own porn. But just as I want to reserve their right to make this, I still reserve my right to call them out on the fact that it is sexist, and I think the world might just be better off if there was at least less of it.


Some pure skill. Ivy, the second one, is from a game where most of the male characters don't really wear protective gear either. The woman with the gun, most spies don't really wear armor in real life as it is hard to conceal in a formal dress. To whit, I refer you to the show Burn Notice.

Yes. Can't armor be broken?
In a fantasy setting, you are more likely to run into an armor shattering build than a dispelling build.

1. Yeah... maybe not protective gear, but somehow they managed to wear clothes. This is still not equivalent.
2. It can't really, no.
3. What you are more likely to run into is entirely depended on the rules of the setting you are in. There are no objective truths when it comes to magic. Everything is made up.
And, really? In all settings and RPGs I have seen so far? I have not come across any skills or effects to destroy armor (Some to circumvent it by direct-hit spells or sneak attacks, etc.; some effects to destroy shields or weapons, but never armor); and almost every setting has at least some sort of magic dispelling ability or effect (Most have multiple, ranging from "one spell's effect gone" to "anti-magic field"). So, no, you are not more likely to run into armor-shattering. Not by a long, long shot.

[Keltest]

The second one is Ivy, a human woman from the game Soul Caliber.
Only a few characters in that game wear actual armor.
All three of the others are modern era characters... which wearing "protective gear" just isn't really a thing.

Two of them appear to be in either paramilitary or local law enforcement roles of some sort (as much as they can be while half naked anyway). Protective gear is absolutely a thing in both of those jobs, which is why you don't usually see photographs of soldiers or police officers running around in a battlefield/crime scene without any clothes.

Even without that though, why the heck wouldn't you wear at least a shirt under your vest? Those things chafe.

[Max_Killjoy]

The second one is Ivy, a human woman from the game Soul Caliber.
Only a few characters in that game wear actual armor.


What does that have to do with the question at hand, and how does other characters "not wearing armor" make sense of that stripperiffic getup?




All three of the others are modern era characters... which wearing "protective gear" just isn't really a thing.


Which entirely evades the question at hand.

Why is it that when useless sexified armor is pointed out, the defense is "but what about all these characters not wearing any armor at all?" without any regard to context...

... but when characters wearing ridiculous stripperiffic clothing is pointed out, the defense is "no one in that setting wears armor" ? :smallconfused:


In the 3rd and 4th pictures, one of them appears to be "military" and the other "law enforcement"... as other noted, both professions where practical and often protective gear is the norm. Not tight pants, bandeaus, and leather vests with no shirt.

[ImNotTrevor]

What does that have to do with the question at hand, and how does other characters "not wearing armor" make sense of that stripperiffic getup?

Ivy is specifically designed to invoke Dominatrix images. She weilds a bladed whip, wears tight leather, speaks in a russian accent, and her moveset often looks rather dominatrix-y. She's usually an exception in the series rather than a rule.



Why is it that when useless sexified armor is pointed out, the defense is "but what about all these characters not wearing any armor at all?" without any regard to context...

... but when characters wearing ridiculous stripperiffic clothing is pointed out, the defense is "no one in that setting wears armor" ? :smallconfused:

a sports bra, jacket, and jeans combo isn't exactly stripper clothes unless you go to very boring stripclubs. >_>

I still have no dog in the fight, but at this point examples are being cherrypicked and are, unsurprisingly, almost entirely foreign games where market preferences are wildly different from those in the west.

Most of the art being accused of being evidence of sexism NOW is art from the 80's and early 90's, between 25 and 30 years out-of-date. Even some of the videogame characters picked are over 10 years old now.

When your biggest evidence of current sexism in the west is a picture from the 80's and some videogame characters mostly from the East (with no context, as Sonya Blade is just as effective a fighter as any other character in the game, and that's exactly one costume out of several and ignores several females in full armor from that game, hence the cherrypicking callout), if that's the best you have then I'm going to assume the problem is pretty much done. Either use more current art, less cherrypicked options, or stop harping on creations from a generation ago.

[Amazon]

Some pure skill. Ivy, the second one, is from a game where most of the male characters don't really wear protective gear either. The woman with the gun, most spies don't really wear armor in real life as it is hard to conceal in a formal dress. To whit, I refer you to the show Burn Notice.
The third and forth ones look like modern street toughs... when was the last time you saw ANY one in modern day wearing armor?

Yeah but they don't wear stuff out of a sex shop either.

She was hired to figth zombies in that game, on high heels! WTF?

Yeah bu they are not street toughs, they are female soldiers, member of Earthrealm's Special Forces unit known as Outer World Investigation Agency (OIA), you can even see her badge on her... Boob.

Beside in the same game there are two guys wearing modern day armor:

https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/mortalkombat/images/7/7e/Striker.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20140818005014&path-prefix=pt
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/08/ff/ac/08ffac47ac74dc39f3c07c4e241a59c8.jpg

Bonus points since the seocnd guy is from the same unit as her. -__-'

More questionable famale outfits:
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110820032753/finalfantasy/images/0/00/DC_Shalua_2.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/2d/ec/d6/2decd6653859ddc28e60ffe74367c595--cortana-halo-halo-game.jpg
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/residentevil/images/d/d3/Jessica_1_Diorama_Figure.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130303140309



The first one at least has some potential period-appropriate justification for the right character and circumstances, but with nothing but a white blank background and context, it's hard to say. (Woman in a speakeasy picks up a Thompson and fights back when rival gangsters try to bust the place up, perhaps).

The second one is evidently some sort of demonic character or whatever, and not an actual human being. The "clothes" are just part of how she manifests. That is the only way I can avoid saying rules-violating things about that "artwork".

The third and fourth are laughable... I'm sure someone thought "they're strong women who won't let any man tell them how to dress and who aren't afraid of their own bodies" or some crap that's used to "justify" professional women in dangerous jobs dressing like they're about to do a shift in a "gentleman's club".

Nope the game is on modern days, she is an agent hired to figth zombies in spain.

Nope she is human, an alchemist to be fair, but still her only magical thing is her sword that turns intro a whip.

Tell me about it. -_-'

[Max_Killjoy]

Here's one so bad it's funny, from a sequel that put a stinker ending on a good franchise...


http://thumbs.modthesims2.com/img/7/9/0/3/8/1/4/MTS_NF8977-1359445-kolbyjukes-mass-effect-3-edi2.jpg

[Max_Killjoy]

Nope the game is on modern days, she is an agent hired to figth zombies in spain.


So she knows she's going into combat, she's a professional agent, and yet she "chooses" to wear that outfit?

What, is she hoping the zombies won't recognize her? :smallconfused:




Nope she is human, an alchemist to be fair, but still her only magical thing is her sword that turns intro a whip.


So... no reason at all... she's just going to fight some dudes and decided her best bet is wearing bondage gear... right.

[Amazon]

So she knows she's going into combat, she's a professional agent, and yet she "chooses" to wear that outfit?

What, is she hoping the zombies won't recognize her? :smallconfused:




So... no reason at all... she's just going to fight some dudes and decided her best bet is wearing bondage gear... right.

You see the last one I sent? The one wearing a purple... Thing:

She is from the same game, Ada was doing more of a spy thing (Still with a lot of combat, in high heels) so I guess that could be used as an excuse, the other one? Jessica Sherawat? Member of the Bioterrorism Security Assessment Alliance(What's up with these organizations that want to have strippers as agents?). Direct combat with virus infected mutants and zombies, with all that skin showing. -_-'

Yes, fighting blades and swords with nothing at all.



Ivy is specifically designed to invoke Dominatrix images. She weilds a bladed whip, wears tight leather, speaks in a russian accent, and her moveset often looks rather dominatrix-y. She's usually an exception in the series rather than a rule.

A sports bra, jacket, and jeans combo isn't exactly stripper clothes unless you go to very boring stripclubs. >_>

I still have no dog in the fight, but at this point examples are being cherrypicked and are, unsurprisingly, almost entirely foreign games where market preferences are wildly different from those in the west.

Most of the art being accused of being evidence of sexism NOW is art from the 80's and early 90's, between 25 and 30 years out-of-date. Even some of the videogame characters picked are over 10 years old now.

When your biggest evidence of current sexism in the west is a picture from the 80's and some videogame characters mostly from the East (with no context, as Sonya Blade is just as effective a fighter as any other character in the game, and that's exactly one costume out of several and ignores several females in full armor from that game, hence the cherrypicking callout), if that's the best you have then I'm going to assume the problem is pretty much done. Either use more current art, less cherrypicked options, or stop harping on creations from a generation ago.

And why is she designed that way? Sexism?

Have you seen those pants? Do any of the girls you know wear such tight cloths? Specially to fight?

It's not cherrypicking those are just characters that made me drop the controller and yell, "WTF game?", they are all from the top of my head. Don't get me wrong I love those games but come on, the things the characters are wearing are ridiculous.

No they are not.

NO THEY ARE NOT!

Several females in full armor from that game??? Are you kidding me? Show me one Mortal kombat female character that is not Ashrah and that doesn't dress like that, YOU CAN'T!

I don't keep an encyclopedia of female characters in skimpy outfits but this are the ones I can remember that are somewhat recent, from games I play:

https://img.fireden.net/v/image/1455/91/1455916190472.png
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hoBYshKhDKU/maxresdefault.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3pg-kxeOWkE/VT5dwRfxDbI/AAAAAAAAAGI/S3HAb-Cq6N8/s1600/Mileena!.jpg
http://www.kissntale.com/uploads/2010/02/Miranda-Lawsons-Asset.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/cd/0a/b1/cd0ab17dbea8aeda0cde1d859fd3da2d--tight-suit-skin-tight.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-b3-oOA8lL3E/Tk4Dy4OxtrI/AAAAAAAAAy8/wuUyeePMcsg/s1600/Taki_SCII_Concept_01+c%25C3%25B3pia.png
http://i.imgur.com/hREKIs8.png
http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/vsbattles/images/e/e7/Cammy_White_render.png/revision/latest?cb=20160309063130
https://shoshanakessock.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/mgs5-quiet.jpg
http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2013/26/1372404202-1.jpg
https://hydra-media.cursecdn.com/smite.gamepedia.com/3/35/T_Isis_Default_Card.png?version=0602b0d6cd1ca943ea 7c3028c4614ead
https://www.smitefire.com/images/god/card/freya.png
http://a.top4top.net/p_281lip41.png
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/megamitensei/images/b/b4/Panther_render.png/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/260?cb=20161022221412
http://personacentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/P5-Shot-5.jpg
http://image-7.verycd.com/aba6b1e1f0f5c76145e54b2d8e886359602538/rachel.jpg

[Talakeal]

Can someone explain to me why these girls are wearing sexy outfits, lingerie and high heels instead of more practical combat gear?

Something other than blatant sexism.

http://residenteviltudo.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/ada-re4-resident-evil-722331_464_658.jpg
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/soulcalibur/images/5/53/Soul-calibur-4-ivy.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/275?cb=20140820153200
https://www.fightersgeneration.com/np6/char2/sonya-mkvsdc-white.jpg
https://pipocacombacon.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/sonya-blade-character-render-mortal-kombat-2011-mk-9.jpg

Ada is a spy and a classic femme fatale. Her mission is o seduce people to gain their trust and steal their secrets, not to fight. Ideally no one will ever realize she was anything other than their girlfriend.

Ivy, yeah, no idea. It is nice to see a representation for a girl who falls outside the traditional DD cup boundry for body types in action girls, but her outfit is just ninsense. Soul Calibur is one of the few games where I actually play a male character (seigfried) because he looks better than the females. Sophitias outfit was pretty cool before it got too fetishized thiugh, and I really like Tiras personality in 3.

Sonya is fighting in a martial arts tournament. She started out in basically a head band, sports brea, and workout pants, not too different from a real life female mma fighter. As the games went on her clothing became more and more fetishized and she started wearing it on combat missions as well as tournaments, so stupid cartoon logic combined with creepy marketing guy I would say. Sonya never really did it for me either as a character or a "sex object" I never cared for her personality and she has almost freakishly narrow hips in most incarnations.

[Max_Killjoy]

Ada is a spy and a classic femme fatale. Her mission is o seduce people to gain their trust and steal their secrets, not to fight. Ideally no one will ever realize she was anything other than their girlfriend.


Is she a "femme fatale" in some sort of noir / spy story... or is she fighting zombies and mutants? I'm very confused now.

[Tinkerer]

Is she a "femme fatale" in some sort of noir / spy story... or is she fighting zombies and mutants? I'm very confused now.

... Yes. She is both. She is a spy type character stuck in a zombie movie. It would make sense for her to show up like that if she was in the middle of a spy mission when a zombie mutant outbreak happened buuuuuut most of the time she is sent in to zombie areas dressed like that. So not smart.

I am inclined to let Ivy go because of the existence of Voldo who wears just as impractical of an outfit on the male side (although he is intended to horrify rather than titillate). Really pissed at what they did to Sophitia though.

Edit: Ada is an expert in avoidance of zombie mutants though so most of her threats come from human opponents in the area. Since her primary defense against those is pretending to be a civilian armour is right out. Might even excuse her wardrobe if the would STOP PUTTING HER IN HEELS!!!

[Ashiel]

Nope she is human, an alchemist to be fair, but still her only magical thing is her sword that turns intro a whip.

Well, the ability to wreath your weapon in fire and lightning by focusing your will is pretty magical (albeit something all the characters can do). There's also the fact she's essentially fifty years old. She's also an accomplished sorceress, which is how she eventually transformed her "snake sword" (which she created herself) into a living weapon. She later realized that it was an evil power that gave rise to her sword (IMHO, a reflection of her state of mind and desire for the sword initially), and after some pretty series soul searching (no pun intended) she re-emerged with the rather zealous intention of wiping Soul Edge and everyone tainted by it (including herself, eventually) from existence.

Her father, Cervantes who was corrupted by Soul Edge's taint also tried to consume her soul, and nearly did during his first attack on her where he devoured most of her soul. She fashioned a sort of pseudo-soul to merge with her own to avoid dying. She later confronted her corrupted father again, this time defeating and tearing him apart, regaining her full soul (plus all the souls her father had taken before).

Her story is one of abandonment, desire to honor a father she never knew, descent into darkness and bitterness, the discovery of that darkness and anger at her father, surviving her father's abuse, rising above it and finding new purpose, turning her mistakes and bitterness into a strength (particularly when she renamed Ivy Edge to "Valentine" honoring her adoptive house rather than the father who set her down this dark path, solidifying her identity as Ivy Valentine) and even defeating the father that tried to consume her, freeing herself and others from the nightmare.

They say beauty is only skin deep, but as a rule it seems deeper than moral busybodies.

[Amazon]

Well, the ability to wreath your weapon in fire and lightning by focusing your will is pretty magical (albeit something all the characters can do). There's also the fact she's essentially fifty years old. She's also an accomplished sorceress, which is how she eventually transformed her "snake sword" (which she created herself) into a living weapon. She later realized that it was an evil power that gave rise to her sword (IMHO, a reflection of her state of mind and desire for the sword initially), and after some pretty series soul searching (no pun intended) she re-emerged with the rather zealous intention of wiping Soul Edge and everyone tainted by it (including herself, eventually) from existence.

Her father, Cervantes who was corrupted by Soul Edge's taint also tried to consume her soul, and nearly did during his first attack on her where he devoured most of her soul. She fashioned a sort of pseudo-soul to merge with her own to avoid dying. She later confronted her corrupted father again, this time defeating and tearing him apart, regaining her full soul (plus all the souls her father had taken before).

Her story is one of abandonment, desire to honor a father she never knew, descent into darkness and bitterness, the discovery of that darkness and anger at her father, surviving her father's abuse, rising above it and finding new purpose, turning her mistakes and bitterness into a strength (particularly when she renamed Ivy Edge to "Valentine" honoring her adoptive house rather than the father who set her down this dark path, solidifying her identity as Ivy Valentine) and even defeating the father that tried to consume her, freeing herself and others from the nightmare.

They say beauty is only skin deep, but as a rule it seems deeper than moral busybodies.

As I said, I still love the characters.

Still, nothing on her backstory justify her to dress the way she does.

I used to play with her a lot in Soul calibur II, albeit with her alternate outfit.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/2d949006936534eb46781fd6cc8bb99b/tumblr_inline_nblnwj5PfB1rm26td.jpg

[Calthropstu]

For the people going off on the sexual clothes...
I HAVE SEEN WOMEN WEAR THOSE CLOTHES.
Literally seen very similar outfits. Go to a biker bar some time. There are women who really wear those exact t shirts.
As for Ivy, she IS a sado masochist so... yeah. And, in that game, multiple men go completely bare chested. Rock, for one. There were two more, forget their names. So, the argument for that game is invalid to be honest.
But the real reason they are dressed that way?
THE ARTISTS WANTED THEM THAT WAY.
So boo ****ing hoo... it offends your oh so delicate senses? Too bad. Seriously, grow up. Your complaints are all completely and utterly ridiculous to be frankly honest.Don't like it? Don't buy those games. It's simple enough really.

[Amazon]

And, in that game, multiple men go completely bare chested. Rock, for one. There were two more, forget their names. So, the argument for that game is invalid to be honest.

So this guy is supposed to be sexy and sexualized:
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/soulcalibur/images/9/90/Rock_SCIV.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20080516052850

Oooooook. Don't you think that's more like a power fantasy for men? Rather than sexualization? I can't even see his butt and face for god sake.

[Ashiel]

As I said, I still love the characters.

Still, nothing on her backstory justify her to dress the way she does.
Nothing in my backstory justifies the way I dress either. :smallannoyed:


I used to play with her a lot in Soul calibur II, albeit with her alternate outfit.
http://68.media.tumblr.com/2d949006936534eb46781fd6cc8bb99b/tumblr_inline_nblnwj5PfB1rm26td.jpg
Soul Caliber II was the best one, IMHO. And yeah, that outfit was sexy. :smallamused:

[Ashiel]

So this guy is supposed to be sexy and sexualized:
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/soulcalibur/images/9/90/Rock_SCIV.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/350?cb=20080516052850

Oooooook. Don't you think that's more like a power fantasy for men? Rather than sexualization? I can't even see his butt and face for god sake.What is this male power fantasy? Is that anything like wanting to be a ninja turtle?

[Keltest]

What is this male power fantasy? Is that anything like wanting to be a ninja turtle?

Apparently its more like wanting to be a Spider-Man villain.

[Amazon]

Being big, muscular and strong is something a lot of guys want.

[Max_Killjoy]

Being big, muscular and strong is something a lot of guys want.

IMO, it's not really that big a thing until it stands in contrast to the way female characters are often depicted for the same setting or in the same scene... because that contrast so often makes "man with lots of skin showing" a false equivalency with "woman with lots of skin showing" as shown in that art.

[Amazon]

IMO, it's not really that big a thing until it stands in contrast to the way female characters are often depicted for the same setting or in the same scene... because that contrast so often makes "man with lots of skin showing" a false equivalency with "woman with lots of skin showing" as shown in that art.

Yes, it's not about the skin showing, it's about how they are portrayed.

Just because the guy is half naked doesn't mean he is sexualized, it can be a fantasy for a guy, something he wants to be.

Shao Kahn, is a very muscular guy wearing half naked armor. But he is not supposed to be sexy, he doesn't show his face or is forced in a sexualized position.

This is an example of a sexualized dude:

http://humoncomics.com/art/skimpy-armor-for-dudes.jpg

This is a power fantasy:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/pt/thumb/7/7c/Shao_Kahn.png/200px-Shao_Kahn.png
http://img04.deviantart.net/1f6a/i/2011/153/6/9/shao_kahn_a_klassic_pimp_by_trilljacker6534-d3hwdyl.png

That slave next to him is his victory pose. Let's look at a female victory pose:

http://i.imgur.com/XQdaVPA.gif

[Ashiel]

Being big, muscular and strong is something a lot of guys want.
You mean like this?
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a5/62/b5/a562b5719c7202dcc500a8e55f6db49a--romance-novel-covers-romance-novels.jpg
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/simple-people-recreate-romance-novel-covers-2-593e3ebe008c7__880.jpg
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/simple-people-recreate-romance-novel-covers-4-593e3ec523fbe__880.jpg
https://bbs.boingboing.net/uploads/default/original/3X/9/8/9889958ce60401940ae3739f07282afddac7125f.png
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/72/0e/f4/720ef439361bb6d1b2b4f100216f5062--romance-books-reading-room.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/05/44/a3/0544a37fe8ff9a2c7ea3c34abf6467a4.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/23/4e/31/234e314c2552975617c031793e600863--romance-novel-covers-romance-novels.jpg
http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1357615233l/17226459.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/3c/3c/95/3c3c958e16ee2ba84ec1b4d8e13c66b8.png
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d2/4a/f4/d24af4e58648bcaba4e6c385dac32366--romance-novels-historical-romance-books.jpg

I think one or two of them might be pirates. If I've been paying attention, that makes it okay because being a sexy pirate isn't a fantasy...or something. :smallconfused:

EDIT: As an aside, being big, muscular, and strong is usually seen as being sexy.

[Satinavian]

Being big, muscular and strong is something a lot of guys want.I am not really sure about that.

I mean, yes, it is what the media tells what what men are supposed to want but i don't think it is really the case. Nearly all men i know couldn't care less as long as they feel healthy.
And while there are countries where many men try to build muscle and achieve abs there are other countries where that is extremely uncommon. So i think a lot of this male ideal is mainly cultural and has little to do with what men actually desire.

[Amazon]

I am not really sure about that.

I mean, yes, it is what the media tells what what men are supposed to want but i don't think it is really the case. Nearly all men i know couldn't care less as long as they feel healthy.
And while theree are countries where many men try to build muscle and achieve abs there are other countries where that is extremely uncommon. So i think a lot of this male ideal is mainly cultural and has little to do with what men actually desire.

Yeah, I agree.

[ImNotTrevor]

Also, it seems most videogame characters are idealized, as well as following the Recognizable Silhouette principles of illustration.

What is "ideal" varies by culture, and by individual. My proposal is thus:
If you have a problem with something, change it. If it falls flat, don't blame the audience. (Cough cough Ghostbusters remake cough cough) Instead figure out if maybe the product was bad (Cough cough same previous example cough cough) or if some other principles are at work before assuming the conclusion from whole cloth.

Essentially, sexy games for sexy people will be a thing always. Vote with your wallet. If someone is doing it right, or improving the situation, give them money for their product. We live in a capitalist society. If you can't change it, you may as well use it to your advantage.

[Ashiel]

Yeah, I agree.

You generally see male heroes in various types of sexy body.

https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/8/8b/Amazing_Spider-Man_Vol_2_30_Textless.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20091108170220
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c4/c2/a6/c4c2a6d44d831120e33615e3b356248c.jpg

Being the most common. You don't generally see male heroes who are short, fat, or particularly ugly. Usually if they are ugly, it's usually a character flaw that makes them more human, sympathetic, or serves as something they're not pleased with (such as wearing a mask because your face is horrifically scarred).

Male heroes tend to be drawn like strong, tough warriors, because that's sexy. Those traits are male ideals because it's sexy. Some guys want to be sexy. Being someone that is strong and can protect others is a desirable sexual characteristic. You don't really see heroic male characters that are lanky, with stumpy faces, and look like a treadmill is their worst nightmare.

If it falls outside of this sexy ideal, it's usually either played for laughs, or it's a negative trait, or it signifies them as less dangerous (like a friendly round jovial fellow).

I just find it rather hypocritical that what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. I don't really buy into feminist theory of the male gaze and all that garbage. I spend my time with men and women, and both tend to have an eye for the sexy. In my personal experience, the women tend to be more vocal about it (two of my co-workers for example would regularly make remarks about customers that were sexy, male and female, though the co-workers themselves were both female).

EDIT: Also casually relevant.

Cosplay, or costume-play, allows women to channel what is sexy and powerful and brilliant about their favorite heroes by dressing up as them. Cosplayers can find room to embrace their bodies and themselves — and in the process, they build a community.

[Ashiel]

Also, it seems most videogame characters are idealized, as well as following the Recognizable Silhouette principles of illustration.

What is "ideal" varies by culture, and by individual. My proposal is thus:
If you have a problem with something, change it. If it falls flat, don't blame the audience. (Cough cough Ghostbusters remake cough cough) Instead figure out if maybe the product was bad (Cough cough same previous example cough cough) or if some other principles are at work before assuming the conclusion from whole cloth.

Essentially, sexy games for sexy people will be a thing always. Vote with your wallet. If someone is doing it right, or improving the situation, give them money for their product. We live in a capitalist society. If you can't change it, you may as well use it to your advantage.

Amen. Create something. Rather than telling other people what trash the stuff they like is, make something better. If it's better, they will come. Or they won't, and someone else will. You get your own fans. A new thing is born. If you feel you cannot create something, then buy, consume, and support things that someone else is doing that you like. If you have a favorite artist who draws kickass fantasy art that you find tasteful, consider showcasing their works.

I mean, it's not like it's hard to find some truly stunning pieces with only the laziest of casual attempts.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/5f/b9/b5/5fb9b5ba8efb5131ba7e17b15127fcdc.jpg

[Max_Killjoy]

I am not really sure about that.

I mean, yes, it is what the media tells what what men are supposed to want but i don't think it is really the case. Nearly all men i know couldn't care less as long as they feel healthy.
And while there are countries where many men try to build muscle and achieve abs there are other countries where that is extremely uncommon. So i think a lot of this male ideal is mainly cultural and has little to do with what men actually desire.

It's an exaggeration of a "fit and strong" ideal, in the same way that the ultra-sexualized female characters are an exaggeration of something else.

Of course in both instances it can easily end up looking more like a caricature or a parody than anything actually desirable.

[Ashiel]

I'm just going to leave this here (http://www.businessinsider.com/science-male-attractiveness-sex-2015-10).

[Amazon]

You don't generally see male heroes who are short, fat, or particularly ugly.

I'm sorry what?
http://sm.ign.com/ign_pt/screenshot/default/ghostrider_dmhn.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/65/7d/c2/657dc2ef6e8022e571f72ae09bb035f5--hobbit-hole-the-hobbit.jpghttps://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/b/b6/The_Hobbit_wallpaper_48.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131112182330https://apollo2.dl.playstation.net/cdn/UP2154/CUSA03881_00/FREE_CONTENT7q1vv8cOxljDDDsSBJ8F/PREVIEW_SCREENSHOT1_117523.jpghttps://ap.imagensbrasil.org/images/crash.pnghttps://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/nier/images/a/a0/NierGestalt.png/revision/latest?cb=20120409124053http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbCYmhAcKYk/UTZSgLJ2KAI/AAAAAAAABFw/rsBnNhbTubU/s1600/Peter_Griffin.pnghttps://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459865136i/18666483._SY540_.jpghttps://selectstartgames.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/gears-of-war-20060714024932572.jpghttps://www.xboxachievements.com/images/screenshots/1897/med_860bed584edcfd87a204c0000183da5d_1280x720.jpgh ttps://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--NtGyKLBG--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/kzzexmcv3ah6njywjast.jpghttps://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/the-mask/images/1/1f/Lobo_Mask_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170130084014http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/b/ba/Martian_Manhunter_0003.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101215005015

Male characters in games and comics are allowed to be: short, tall, fat, ugly, muscular, slim, hairy, haryless, bald, naked, covered, musuclar, handsome, young, old.

Girls are mostly allowed to be pretty.

As I said it's not about skin and it's not about the bodies it's about how it's portrait.

If you have a famale character who is sexualied to the point of being ridiculous, dressing in Impractical outfits that make no sense what so ever, we have a problem, and that doesn't happen in a vacuum it helps to reiforce sexist ideas on the real world. That a woaman can only be relevant for her sexuality and beuty rather than her ideias and actions.

[Calthropstu]

This is an example of a sexualized dude:

http://humoncomics.com/art/skimpy-armor-for-dudes.jpg
Only if you are really gay or really wierd would you see that as sexual.
The art posted by Ashiel is sexualized. And you know what? I see nothing at all wrong with it. Not one bit. Nor is there anything wrong with Ivy, or Jade, or Mileena. You are talking about women who, in their game universe, have as much a chance at winning a martial arts battle as their male counterparts. You take them not for their sexuality, but their speed, power, agility and special attacks.
And wtf is wrong with a woman displaying sexuality anyways? Should we all become gender neutral? Should Mileena start wearing a pants suit? (Thoroughly impractical in a martial arts contest.)
The more I read from you, the more I become convinced you hate men and women both.

[Amazon]

Only if you are really gay or really wierd would you see that as sexual.
The art posted by Ashiel is sexualized. And you know what? I see nothing at all wrong with it. Not one bit. Nor is there anything wrong with Ivy, or Jade, or Mileena. You are talking about women who, in their game universe, have as much a chance at winning a martial arts battle as their male counterparts. You take them not for their sexuality, but their speed, power, agility and special attacks.
And wtf is wrong with a woman displaying sexuality anyways? Should we all become gender neutral? Should Mileena start wearing a pants suit? (Thoroughly impractical in a martial arts contest.)
The more I read from you, the more I become convinced you hate men and women both.

The author of that image is a girl, and what's wrong? A girl can like a bit of ass, what do we think a girl will be interested in?

I'm also fine with the art that Ashiel posted, you know why? It's on erotic books, I'm fine with sexualized characters in sexualized spaces but not on my games, would you be ok with characters like the ones Ashiel or I posted in a video game?

We are not talking about her fighting skills; we are talking about the way they dress.

You want to see how a real woman dress for a fighting a martial arts battle?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/61/09/e1/6109e17f66d3c6cb4f3415140fd6a00a--tae-kwon-do-kungfu.jpg

See? She is not naked, and her clothes are not too tight, that allows her to be agile and her movements to be accurate.

The problem is not the sexuality, the problem is the way it is p--- You know what? Forget it.

[Ashiel]

I'm sorry what?
http://sm.ign.com/ign_pt/screenshot/default/ghostrider_dmhn.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/65/7d/c2/657dc2ef6e8022e571f72ae09bb035f5--hobbit-hole-the-hobbit.jpghttps://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/b/b6/The_Hobbit_wallpaper_48.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131112182330https://apollo2.dl.playstation.net/cdn/UP2154/CUSA03881_00/FREE_CONTENT7q1vv8cOxljDDDsSBJ8F/PREVIEW_SCREENSHOT1_117523.jpghttps://ap.imagensbrasil.org/images/crash.pnghttps://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/nier/images/a/a0/NierGestalt.png/revision/latest?cb=20120409124053http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbCYmhAcKYk/UTZSgLJ2KAI/AAAAAAAABFw/rsBnNhbTubU/s1600/Peter_Griffin.pnghttps://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459865136i/18666483._SY540_.jpghttps://selectstartgames.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/gears-of-war-20060714024932572.jpghttps://www.xboxachievements.com/images/screenshots/1897/med_860bed584edcfd87a204c0000183da5d_1280x720.jpgh ttps://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--NtGyKLBG--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/kzzexmcv3ah6njywjast.jpghttps://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/the-mask/images/1/1f/Lobo_Mask_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170130084014http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/b/ba/Martian_Manhunter_0003.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101215005015


Okay, first...
You surely know what the word generally means, right? I'm going to take a moment to call you out on a double standard here. See, you'd probably feel it was pretty dishonest if I was to say "Hey look, I found some pictures with ladies in hazmats suits, so nobody can say that generally ladies are depicted as being sexy", right? Well, I'm going to say the same here. Generally, heroes look sexy. That includes male heroes. They are depicted as big, strong, powerful, and capable of being a protector (all sexually commonly sexually attractive traits in men). Does that mean that their aren't exceptions? Of course there are exceptions (I know guys who like tiny tits, or who like obese women, or women who are really androgynous, and by golly I would bet money there are women who have atypical attractions as well, because golly gee whiz, that would just make sense).

So when I'm talking about traditional fantasy heroes and you give me Crash Bandicoot, Peter Griffin, and a bunch of other characters that actually fit the description (wolverine's only thing is he's short rather than tall, but he's saturated in badboy animal sexiness to the point he was practically peeled off the cover of a romance novel), and a pair of hobbits (who were considered cute by ever girl I hung out with when the films came out, but it was Aragorn and Legolas who got their panties in a bunch).

Incidentally, you linked Deadpool, who is sexy as hell but wears a mask because...wait for it...

Being the most common. You don't generally see male heroes who are short, fat, or particularly ugly. Usually if they are ugly, it's usually a character flaw that makes them more human, sympathetic, or serves as something they're not pleased with (such as wearing a mask because your face is horrifically scarred).
I was literally thinking about Deadpool. I mean, when he got his own movie, the entire plot of the movie is basically "I love this girl, but I'm so ****ing UGLY, ugh!!". Great movie though. Many laughs. Much feels.

Also, while we're here...
Let's break it down. One is a skeleton, who's also got a nice physique. Growing up, all my girlfriends though the hobbits were cute and sweet, but it was Legolas and Aragorn that got their panties in a twist. I'm not sure what the next one is, but it's clearly not the typical "male fantasy hero", unless you're suggesting that being short and goblinlike is also a male power fantasy I guess. I mean, it's not like male power fantasy actually means anything from what I can tell, so maybe it is. Who knows? Ditto with Crash. Next guy is a beefy looking strong dude with a big sword (don't know who he is though, apologies).

Peter Griffin is on this list...why?

Wolverine basically belongs on the cover of a romance novel. He even has that whole dangerous guy, deep voice, and animal sexy thing going on. I guess he's kind of short? Which is kinda odd, 'cause he usually doesn't get depicted at his listed height (5'3) (examples here (https://images.moviepilot.com/images/c_limit,q_auto:good,w_600/yrm5t5akz2mxfoysape5/how-the-greatest-x-men-cartoon-just-got-even-greater.jpg) and here (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--KIaezOOUBg/TexQaWW7WkI/AAAAAAAAYsg/Tl-1LVwmi9s/s1600/Wolverine_Mystique_Heights_JIMSMASH.jpg)). The gears of war guy pretty much hits all the marks, unless you consider the scar to be something that makes him cross the line, in which case I suppose she's not sexy either (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/6a/66/ae/6a66ae34c63d91e764f1b69851a4ab4e.jpg) (she's hella sexy).

The last three images include one guy who fits all the criteria mentioned for being sexy, except he's green (an alien IIRC). Lobo is sexy if you find biker gang dudes sexy (some do), but I find him very off putting (and he's very clearly not your general hero depiction). Deadpool, as noted previously, is literally the poster boy for "I'm sexy, except I'm ugly too".


As I said it's not about skin and it's not about the bodies it's about how it's portrait.

If you have a famale character who is sexualied to the point of being ridiculous, dressing in Impractical outfits that make no sense what so ever, we have a problem, and that doesn't happen in a vacuum it helps to reiforce sexist ideas on the real world. That a woaman can only be relevant for her sexuality and beuty rather than her ideias and actions.
Call me skeptical. I just don't believe you and you haven't given me a reason to believe you yet.
As far as I can tell, you're just as full of hot air as all those people that told me video games were going to make people violent all my life. Or that video games are going to make you a misogynist. Or that roleplaying games will make you a satanist, or make you commit suicide, or murder your parents, or become a warlock or something.

Because damn it, none of those things are true. I'm still not a warlock and I'm kinda pissed about that.
http://maddox.xmission.com/spiderman_animated_ass.gif

[Ashiel]

I'm also fine with the art that Ashiel posted, you know why? It's on erotic books, I'm fine with sexualized characters in sexualized spaces but not on my games, would you be ok with characters like the ones Ashiel or I posted in a video game?

Well now that you mention it (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9-SInbWISpw/maxresdefault.jpg)...
I'm pretty sure (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nYzJ5zdPsZQ/SxMEpngbtqI/AAAAAAAAAfs/JDvMa5NFY-U/s1600/manlysp3.jpg) I've seen something (http://cdn.cheatcc.com/dispatches/large/SexyMen2.jpg) seen something somewhere (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/fe/ef/de/feefdeea5c3374af004a740416631860.jpg), that really kinda (http://att.3dmgame.com/att/forum/201311/03/180104exj9wzkqmxfxxe5q.jpg) looks like those guys (http://i.imgur.com/zszYXM1.jpg) from those romance novels (https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-073d71fcab77e09f58b44a9144516807-c), pretty frequently. It's almost like (http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2010/183/3/4/Chris_Redfield_Fanservice_1_by_favorites1.jpg) I've seen them (http://www.mobiletoones.com/downloads/wallpapers/game_wallpapers/preview/49/p18203-1227004566.jpg) somewhere before (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/79/0f/fd790f11b56d246cce00f1eeacec649d--woman-body-female-characters.jpg). Now where (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/29/72/6429724181737bc5003a266b4cf70379--fantasy-sword-fantasy-male.jpg) could that have (http://www.wallpaperup.com/uploads/wallpapers/2013/12/30/209335/big_thumb_f0d210508a85a419dff881c8312aacde.jpg) been, I wonder (https://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-fantasy-barbarian-22838119.jpg)...

[S@tanicoaldo]

Well now that you mention it (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9-SInbWISpw/maxresdefault.jpg)...
I'm pretty sure (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nYzJ5zdPsZQ/SxMEpngbtqI/AAAAAAAAAfs/JDvMa5NFY-U/s1600/manlysp3.jpg) I've seen something (http://cdn.cheatcc.com/dispatches/large/SexyMen2.jpg) seen something somewhere (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/fe/ef/de/feefdeea5c3374af004a740416631860.jpg), that really kinda (http://att.3dmgame.com/att/forum/201311/03/180104exj9wzkqmxfxxe5q.jpg) looks like those guys (http://i.imgur.com/zszYXM1.jpg) from those romance novels (https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-073d71fcab77e09f58b44a9144516807-c), pretty frequently. It's almost like (http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2010/183/3/4/Chris_Redfield_Fanservice_1_by_favorites1.jpg) I've seen them (http://www.mobiletoones.com/downloads/wallpapers/game_wallpapers/preview/49/p18203-1227004566.jpg) somewhere before (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/79/0f/fd790f11b56d246cce00f1eeacec649d--woman-body-female-characters.jpg). Now where (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/29/72/6429724181737bc5003a266b4cf70379--fantasy-sword-fantasy-male.jpg) could that have (http://www.wallpaperup.com/uploads/wallpapers/2013/12/30/209335/big_thumb_f0d210508a85a419dff881c8312aacde.jpg) been, I wonder (https://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-fantasy-barbarian-22838119.jpg)...

Didn't she just said that it's not about the amount of skin being shown it's the way it's done?

Besides, to be fair none of those characters are handsome or stay dressed like that, most of the characters you linked are from cutscenes and mods to be fair.

To me, the only real sexualized male character in video games is Solid Snake, have you seen that bun?
https://res.cloudinary.com/lmn/image/upload/fl_lossy,q_80/f_auto/v1/gameskinny/4b129512ec19f552d7dfe14d3015f577.jpg

[Ashiel]

Didn't she just said that it's not about the amount of skin being shown it's the way it's done?

Besides, to be fair none of those characters are handsome or stay dressed like that, most of the characters you linked are from cutscenes and mods to be fair.

To me, the only real sexualized male character in video games is Solid Snake, have you seen that bun?
https://res.cloudinary.com/lmn/image/upload/fl_lossy,q_80/f_auto/v1/gameskinny/4b129512ec19f552d7dfe14d3015f577.jpg
I like snake butts and I cannot lie. :smallamused:

EDIT: Also, while some mods were included (SKYRIM BELONGS TO THE NORDS MODS!) the spirit of fairness, quite a few of them were in fact in their game attire. :smallsmile:

[Floret]

Call me skeptical. I just don't believe you and you haven't given me a reason to believe you yet.
As far as I can tell, you're just as full of hot air as all those people that told me video games were going to make people violent all my life. Or that video games are going to make you a misogynist. Or that roleplaying games will make you a satanist, or make you commit suicide, or murder your parents, or become a warlock or something.

Ah, I see the problem. You had too much of a confrontation with people overexaggerating the influence of media, and the directness of effect to now believe media influences people's view, behavior and beliefs at all, is that it?

The problem is, media actually does have an influence.

And, to bite the bullet here, let's take video game induced violence as an example, shall we? (Mostly because that is the one case I have the most experience with the specifics) Because, the thing is... Time and time again has it been tested if violent video games increase aggression - and time and time again has the result been... "yeah, they do have a small impact". Of course, that has been widely misrepresented in the public sphere, combined with the traditional panic of a new medium that always follows them and turned into "play one shooter and you run amok".
Which, of course, isn't true, and ridiculous; and violent media seems to have its effect regardless of medium - films being just as bad as video games at the very least. Noone tested books, yet, to my knowlege. Competition is a far bigger contributor to agression, long-term effects are smaller than short-term effects, and even those aren't big, or even medium. But they are there - and to pretend they aren't isn't doing much good.

Are they big enough to call for censorship of media? Gods, no. There are way better ways to deal with the effects and limit their influence and what little damage they actually do, than limit artistic freedom that way. I mean, violent video games can be fun, I play them almost daily - but then again, they are VERY common, non-violent ones somewhat rare and what exactly does this say about society?
And the same perspective can be applied to other things media does. Does looking at pics of sexy women turn you into a sexist? Of course not. But sexist attitudes communicated by society might get solidified. The portrayal of women in video games might not make people with misogynistic attitudes out of the gamers who play them, but there is somewhat of a correlation between Gamer culture and misogynistic attitudes. This suggest the situation might deserve a closer look beyond just "yeah, artistic freedom, we shouldn't censor people".

So yeah, you can say "this is just the way society is", but... how is that an actual argument? Society was formed by humans, and can be shaped. It won't get shaped in ways I find more desirable by me shutting up about things. (It probably won't get shaped by me arguing these things here either, but it has a higher chance of working than doing nothing.)
As for "Vote with your wallets"... Sadly, that argument only works if there are options. In the current state of the market? Those are very, very limited. Say I want an MMO, but I also do not want overly sexualised female characters in it. Do you know any? Because I sure as hell don't. I know some that aren't as bad as others, but overall, the situation is not one where I COULD vote with my wallet.

Maybe one situation (https://mic.com/articles/179976/you-can-thank-anita-sarkeesian-for-being-able-to-play-emily-in-dishonored-2#.CzTdJ1m5k)of an example, for "pointing things out can lead to betterment", as well as "even though you might not mean to do it, your art can still communicate such things".
While the article does overexxagerate somewhat and the headline might be quite an overinterpretation, the general gist remains: Sometimes, you communicate questionable messages without meaning to; and being concious about why you do things the way you do might be a good thing for content creators. Sometimes making choices consciously might make for better art in general. And sometimes it takes having culturally ingrained, subconscious patters that you followed, without maybe meaning to, pointed out to you.

[ImNotTrevor]

Lemme just stop ya right there....

Studies have only shown a mild TEMPORARY increase in aggression from playing violent videogames.

Also, competitive non-violent videogames create more aggression than violent non-competitive games. Competition has a MUCH larger effect on short-term aggression than depicted violence. Meaning, in essence, that playing Monopoly will create more aggression than GTA will. (There are, by the way, an average of 2 Monopoly-related homicides per year in the US, and thus far I know of 0 homicides directly caused by GTA)

[Talakeal]

Is she a "femme fatale" in some sort of noir / spy story... or is she fighting zombies and mutants? I'm very confused now.

In her first appearance she was a spy caught in the middle of a zombie outbreak. In later games they just decided to keep going with the same look.

[Mendicant]

You surely know what the word generally means, right? I'm going to take a moment to call you out on a double standard here. See, you'd probably feel it was pretty dishonest if I was to say "Hey look, I found some pictures with ladies in hazmats suits, so nobody can say that generally ladies are depicted as being sexy", right? Well, I'm going to say the same here. Generally, heroes look sexy.

I could easily produce five ugly/short/"atypical" male heroes or protagonists for every heroine you produced who wasn't conventionally attractive. Hell, I could probably do that for every heroine who wasn't overtly sexualized. You're aggressively missing the point.

[Calthropstu]

The author of that image is a girl, and what's wrong? A girl can like a bit of ass, what do we think a girl will be interested in?

I'm also fine with the art that Ashiel posted, you know why? It's on erotic books, I'm fine with sexualized characters in sexualized spaces but not on my games, would you be ok with characters like the ones Ashiel or I posted in a video game?

We are not talking about her fighting skills; we are talking about the way they dress.

You want to see how a real woman dress for a fighting a martial arts battle?

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/61/09/e1/6109e17f66d3c6cb4f3415140fd6a00a--tae-kwon-do-kungfu.jpg

See? She is not naked, and her clothes are not too tight, that allows her to be agile and her movements to be accurate.

The problem is not the sexuality, the problem is the way it is p--- You know what? Forget it.

That picture is also so generic. Characters need to stand out. If I made a game with 50 different people wearing that, yeah... no. I don't care how good the mechanics were, it wouldn't sell.
You know what does sell? Hot buff guys and hot buff chicks wearing next to nothing beating the crap out of each other. Throw in a couple robots, maybe an old guy, and that game will sell every time.
And you know what? You bought those games. So it works. And you will continue to buy them despite your griping. So stuff your feminazi bs.

[Satinavian]

And you know what? You bought those games. So it works. And you will continue to buy them despite your griping. So stuff your feminazi bs.Personally i didn't "buy these games". Gamers i know don't "buy these games".

You are overestimating how good a strategy those oversexualized visuals actually are. Most games don't use them and certainly not only for censorship reasons. Nearly naked sexualized people in unrealistic outfits beating the crap out of each other is niche, not mainstream.

Yes, game protagonists tend to be attractive, same as movie stars, but this over the top sexualization in games is not exactly that common. People don't buy it and prefer the more towned down versions.

[Satinavian]

And, to bite the bullet here, let's take video game induced violence as an example, shall we? (Mostly because that is the one case I have the most experience with the specifics) Because, the thing is... Time and time again has it been tested if violent video games increase aggression - and time and time again has the result been... "yeah, they do have a small impact". Of course, that has been widely misrepresented in the public sphere, combined with the traditional panic of a new medium that always follows them and turned into "play one shooter and you run amok".
Which, of course, isn't true, and ridiculous; and violent media seems to have its effect regardless of medium - films being just as bad as video games at the very least. Noone tested books, yet, to my knowlege. Competition is a far bigger contributor to agression, long-term effects are smaller than short-term effects, and even those aren't big, or even medium. But they are there - and to pretend they aren't isn't doing much good.To my knowledge no long term effects have ever been found at all.

Are they big enough to call for censorship of media? Gods, no. There are way better ways to deal with the effects and limit their influence and what little damage they actually do, than limit artistic freedom that way. I mean, violent video games can be fun, I play them almost daily - but then again, they are VERY common, non-violent ones somewhat rare and what exactly does this say about society?Violence always comes with inherent high stake and also doesn't need much explaining. That is why violence is so common in videogames. And films. And books. And basically ever story medium ever used.
It is just harder to make anything else both easily understandable and not boring. Does not say much at all about our culture if all societies did the same thing here.

And the same perspective can be applied to other things media does. Does looking at pics of sexy women turn you into a sexist? Of course not. But sexist attitudes communicated by society might get solidified. The portrayal of women in video games might not make people with misogynistic attitudes out of the gamers who play them, but there is somewhat of a correlation between Gamer culture and misogynistic attitudes. This suggest the situation might deserve a closer look beyond just "yeah, artistic freedom, we shouldn't censor people".Personally i think, the reverse view has more merit : That portrayal is just a result and reflection of the view the society has but is vastly overestimated as possible propaganda tool. When people see a kind of portrayal in media that doesn't fit their opinion, they wont change their mind, instead they will think the media piece is unrealistic/flawed. In case of cognitive dissonance humans tend to dismiss the new information and keep their old notions if they have no real compelling reason to do otherwise.

Those are very, very limited. Say I want an MMO, but I also do not want overly sexualised female characters in it. Do you know any? Because I sure as hell don't. Stopped doing MMOs several years ago. But the one i played most, DDO, had basically all unisex costumes (which mostly meant to scale the same costume just on the other proportians with occasionally grating results) and neither men nor women are particularly sexualized. Yes, they eventually added "skimpy outfits for real money" but otherwise it is fine in this regard. You really have to go out of your way and dish out real cash to have your character look sexualized. They also are so old that they don't have anything in regards to body type customization, so you would never encounter those PCs with melon boobs you might occassionally see elsewhere. Those additional custumes were also not used for NPCs. Afaik it is still running although i am not sure if that is all true now.

A new, upcoming offering is the MMO Albion. Disregarding advertising, looking at screenshots it seems to not have to offer much as far as sexualized characters go.But i didn't dig deep into it as i am not really into MMOs right now, so i might be mistaken. I am sure others, who actually play them, have far more examples.

[Ashiel]

Say I want an MMO, but I also do not want overly sexualised female characters in it. Do you know any? Because I sure as hell don't. I know some that aren't as bad as others, but overall, the situation is not one where I COULD vote with my wallet.
Rift, Runescape, Villagers and Heroes. I've heard Guild Wars 2 has a nice variety of outfits. Post transmog, World of Warcraft at least gives you the option to wear what you like. IIRC, Secret World has people dressed pretty normal, but then it's also set in a sort of modern setting.

Rift is probably my favorite of the bunch though. It has some of the coolest mechanics of any MMORPG (particularly due to its 4 class soul system) and is hands down the best pretty princess dress up simulator out of all the MMORPGs I've seen yet. Every time you buy or loot a new outfit, it permanently adds it to your wardrobe. You can then mix and match outfit pieces, change their colors, etc. You aren't limited by class or specialization. You can even change the ways weapons and off hand items like shields look.

For example, if you want to be a tank in heavy armor but look like gandalf with a wand, you can do that.

[Floret]

Lemme just stop ya right there....

Studies have only shown a mild TEMPORARY increase in aggression from playing violent videogames.

Also, competitive non-violent videogames create more aggression than violent non-competitive games. Competition has a MUCH larger effect on short-term aggression than depicted violence. Meaning, in essence, that playing Monopoly will create more aggression than GTA will. (There are, by the way, an average of 2 Monopoly-related homicides per year in the US, and thus far I know of 0 homicides directly caused by GTA)

To my knowledge no long term effects have ever been found at all.

Studies have reliably replicated a temporary increase; and while there aren't as many long-term studies, those that have been made point to the same effects, in milder form, persisting over the long-term, even when controlling for other factors of upbringing (The panelstudies I have read looked at the influence on children and teenagers; though there are some results from other studies suggesting the effect, still smaller, can occur in adults.)

And sure, as I said:
Competition is a far bigger contributor to agression. (I also pointed out the effect isn't on videogames, but on violent media in general)

This still does not negate the effect of violent media. And, look, after all the fearmongering traditional media has done about video games, I can understand the reflex to ignore these results, deny them, or talk their effects down as much as you can - it's really not nice to have something one loves be slandered with ridiculous and wildly exxagerated fearmongering claims. I mean, I've been there, I have seen this whole discussion both in media, and to grandparents, I love games and to be quite honest I couldn't tell you the last time I played one entirely nonviolent. (Probably Tetris some 5 years ago or so... The last violent one I played can be measured in hours, and PvP modes at that.) But ultimately, this does the discussion somewhat of a disservice.


Violence always comes with inherent high stake and also doesn't need much explaining. That is why violence is so common in videogames. And films. And books. And basically ever story medium ever used.
It is just harder to make anything else both easily understandable and not boring. Does not say much at all about our culture if all societies did the same thing here.
Personally i think, the reverse view has more merit : That portrayal is just a result and reflection of the view the society has but is vastly overestimated as possible propaganda tool. When people see a kind of portrayal in media that doesn't fit their opinion, they wont change their mind, instead they will think the media piece is unrealistic/flawed. In case of cognitive dissonance humans tend to dismiss the new information and keep their old notions if they have no real compelling reason to do otherwise.

As I said, this isn't limited to video games, they are simply what there's the most studies on (Since people are fearmongering idiots when it comes to new media. Unsurprisingly, the other studied fields are film and internet, though the latter not so much because of violence.) Heck, some of my favourite books are probably more violent than any video game I ever played.
And just because the vast majority of other societies also do the same, does not mean it doesn't say anything about culture ;) But, yes, there are answers. I never said "stop doing it", just... "ask why you are doing this". If you have an answer satisfying to yourself, carry on. But question assumptions of "this is just the way things are." Hell, I myself write, and not non-violent settings or stories (Though some don't have direct ones in them, the presence of threats and soldiers kinda is enough to imply it). But then again I have been socialized on this, and will not deny the influence media might have had on my preferences.
For your last point: As a propaganda tool? Probably. Telling people "you are wrong" rarely works. But media influence can take two other forms beyond "change opinions": Harden opinions, for which the same reactance works FOR media instead of against it now. And reinforcing beliefs is not necessarily a good thing, closing people off to reasoned arguments and in extreme cases leading to filter bubbles and partisaning of society.
As well as forming opinions on topics where you had none. I mean, do you have a good grasp on how many doctors or policemen there are in society? How likely violence is to happen to you on the street? A REALLY good grasp? Those three things are vastly overrepresented in media - and the more media people consume, the more they tend to overestimate their presence as well. Not on a "if you watch one hospital show you're automatically gonna think there are twice as many doctors as there are" level, but on a "over large, representative samples of people with differing levels of media consumption, there are noticable slants in perception that show a clear correlation." (Science tends to be boring like that)


That picture is also so generic. Characters need to stand out. If I made a game with 50 different people wearing that, yeah... no. I don't care how good the mechanics were, it wouldn't sell.
You know what does sell? Hot buff guys and hot buff chicks wearing next to nothing beating the crap out of each other. Throw in a couple robots, maybe an old guy, and that game will sell every time.
And you know what? You bought those games. So it works. And you will continue to buy them despite your griping. So stuff your feminazi bs.

There are many, many ways to make characters stand out other than to strip them down. If anything, the less clothing there is to vary and change, the HARDER it is to vary characters up, since there is less to put variations on. Still not hard, quite evidently, but "characters need to wear next to nothing" does not follow in any way from "characters need to stand out".
"Sex sells" has long since been proven to be a myth. That people buy those games is, if anything, a proof of them having good gameplay, and the same problem that I alluded to below: If the fighting games that are there, the only ones are those with skimpy armor, people that want to play fighting games will buy those with skimpy armor due to a lack of choice.
...Also, using the word "feminazi" pretty much automatically disqualifies you from any serious discussion.


Stopped doing MMOs several years ago. But the one i played most, DDO, had basically all unisex costumes (which mostly meant to scale the same costume just on the other proportians with occasionally grating results) and neither men nor women are particularly sexualized. Yes, they eventually added "skimpy outfits for real money" but otherwise it is fine in this regard. You really have to go out of your way and dish out real cash to have your character look sexualized. They also are so old that they don't have anything in regards to body type customization, so you would never encounter those PCs with melon boobs you might occassionally see elsewhere. Those additional custumes were also not used for NPCs. Afaik it is still running although i am not sure if that is all true now.
A new, upcoming offering is the MMO Albion. Disregarding advertising, looking at screenshots it seems to not have to offer much as far as sexualized characters go. But i didn't dig deep into it as i am not really into MMOs right now, so i might be mistaken. I am sure others, who actually play them, have far more examples.

Rift, Runescape, Villagers and Heroes. I've heard Guild Wars 2 has a nice variety of outfits. Post transmog, World of Warcraft at least gives you the option to wear what you like. IIRC, Secret World has people dressed pretty normal, but then it's also set in a sort of modern setting.

Rift is probably my favorite of the bunch though. It has some of the coolest mechanics of any MMORPG (particularly due to its 4 class soul system) and is hands down the best pretty princess dress up simulator out of all the MMORPGs I've seen yet. Every time you buy or loot a new outfit, it permanently adds it to your wardrobe. You can then mix and match outfit pieces, change their colors, etc. You aren't limited by class or specialization. You can even change the ways weapons and off hand items like shields look.

For example, if you want to be a tank in heavy armor but look like gandalf with a wand, you can do that.

From looking at screenshots on google for most of these (Googling "Name female armor", taking as much care as I can not to accidentaly look at mislabeled screens from other games): For Albion I cannot find any; the advertising isn't all that good of a sign though. Rift? Just about every set I found is less clothed on women, and has at least cleavage. I even found a wiki just for amor skins (http://riftwardrobe.wikia.com/wiki/Rift_Wardrobe_Wiki). Look through that, there is quite the double standard. Runescape I haven't found much, but amongst those... yeah, some are fully covered, some... not so much. Heroes I can't seem to find anything reliably from that game, I might need more help identifying which one, Villagers likewise. Maybe their names are a bit generic^^
As for Guild Wars 2, I actually play that, and while... yeah, there are some nice armors? Especially at higher levels, those tend to be few and far between, and if you want something that isn't "random stuff you get while levelling", but maybe with a bit of prestige... Tough luck. Boob plate minimum, random patches of skin uncovered mostly included. Worse for light armor than for heavy ones, but there is ONE semi-prestige heavy set that I know of without any of that BS (Except on the two races without breasts, granted; they have simply identical armor regardless of gender).
(Most of what you describe for Rift is actually possible there as well; though you are limited to "your" type, mostly, so a piece of heavy armor will always look like a piece of heavy armor and a sword like a sword, etc.)
DDO I actually played as well, for a time. From what I remember and screenshots, it falls into a similar vein as Guild Wars: Not as bad as some others, but certainly way off of perfect.

And... Two things: 1. "More covered than battle strippers" isn't what I mean. I mean proper, equivalent-to-the-male variants coverage and sensibility. A set of revealing gladiator armor can be revaling for both sets, sure; but what is covered for men should be in women.
2. I was asking for MMOs that don't have skimpy armor. Not ones that have less skimpy armor than others, or that have SOME non-skimpy ones. Guild Wars 2... I really like the gameplay, and it is one of the ones that do better in that regard? But it, and as far as I could see also every other game you listed, aren't quite there. Thank you for trying, but you have so far failed to show me the option to vote with my wallet on an MMO without non-equivalent skimpy armor.

And that is kinda the point - MMOs were just one example. "Voting with wallets" is a vast oversimplification of how things work IRL, leaving out the possibilities of options; and when it comes to the conclusions Firms draw from sales, also often leaves out things like "equivalent marketing budget".

[ImNotTrevor]

Studies have reliably replicated a temporary increase; and while there aren't as many long-term studies, those that have been made point to the same effects, in milder form, persisting over the long-term, even when controlling for other factors of upbringing (The panelstudies I have read looked at the influence on children and teenagers; though there are some results from other studies suggesting the effect, still smaller, can occur in adults.)

And sure, as I said: . (I also pointed out the effect isn't on videogames, but on violent media in general)

This still does not negate the effect of violent media. And, look, after all the fearmongering traditional media has done about video games, I can understand the reflex to ignore these results, deny them, or talk their effects down as much as you can - it's really not nice to have something one loves be slandered with ridiculous and wildly exxagerated fearmongering claims. I mean, I've been there, I have seen this whole discussion both in media, and to grandparents, I love games and to be quite honest I couldn't tell you the last time I played one entirely nonviolent. (Probably Tetris some 5 years ago or so... The last violent one I played can be measured in hours, and PvP modes at that.) But ultimately, this does the discussion somewhat of a disservice.


1. Source on these other studies, pls.
2. Make sure to see who the studies were done/funded by. Antivaxxers have research that supports their position, too. All of it is awful, but there you go.
3. How does one control for upbringing, exactly? Unless all the children come from the same home and have the same parents, same level of exposure to their parents, attend the same classes with the same people at school and have the same friends, this cannot be controlled for. Which adds to this smelling strongly of bull excrement. (You would also have to make sure you were controlling for competitiveness and noncompetitiveness, as I show below, as well as their sports activity.)
4. Eliminating faulty data points does not hinder a discussion. It does exactly the opposite.

Competitiveness (http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/video-games.aspx) has a higher effect on aggression than violence in videogames. The study I linked and several japanese studies have reliably demonstrated this. (So mine is international. Weee!l

Meaning violence is more likely from someone who just finished a game of monopoly than from someone who just finished DeathMurder 5.

As always, vote with your wallet. I don't think it's being a feminazi to complain about a character design. Doing it for a game you didn't support, don't play, and never will play is stupid and frankly should be ignored same as a sci-fi fan saying your fantasy game should have laserguns. If you're obviously not a customer, they shouldn't bother. This phenomenon is actually causing issues in the industry, now. Companies are rushing to be all-inclusive, releasing sub-par products intending to pander to the people who apparently care more about well-covered women than game mechanics, and are becoming shocked to learn that people aren't spending money on them because the people complaining never intended to support a change anyways.
It's very amusing to watch an industry feel guilty and pander to a market that doesn't exist in the first place.

Buy the stuff that you support. Telling other people they need to buy what you like is stupid.

[S@tanicoaldo]

As always, vote with your wallet. I don't think it's being a feminazi to complain about a character design. Doing it for a game you didn't support, don't play, and never will play is stupid and frankly should be ignored same as a sci-fi fan saying your fantasy game should have laserguns. If you're obviously not a customer, they shouldn't bother. This phenomenon is actually causing issues in the industry, now. Companies are rushing to be all-inclusive, releasing sub-par products intending to pander to the people who apparently care more about well-covered women than game mechanics, and are becoming shocked to learn that people aren't spending money on them because the people complaining never intended to support a change anyways.
It's very amusing to watch an industry feel guilty and pander to a market that doesn't exist in the first place.

Buy the stuff that you support. Telling other people they need to buy what you like is stupid.

Didn't Amazon made it clear that she is a girl who likes to play those games but has problems with the sexualized female characters?

It's sounds like a valid point, to be unhappy if she pays for something that missrepresents her.

[Liquor Box]

I'm sorry what?
http://sm.ign.com/ign_pt/screenshot/default/ghostrider_dmhn.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/65/7d/c2/657dc2ef6e8022e571f72ae09bb035f5--hobbit-hole-the-hobbit.jpghttps://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/b/b6/The_Hobbit_wallpaper_48.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20131112182330https://apollo2.dl.playstation.net/cdn/UP2154/CUSA03881_00/FREE_CONTENT7q1vv8cOxljDDDsSBJ8F/PREVIEW_SCREENSHOT1_117523.jpghttps://ap.imagensbrasil.org/images/crash.pnghttps://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/nier/images/a/a0/NierGestalt.png/revision/latest?cb=20120409124053http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UbCYmhAcKYk/UTZSgLJ2KAI/AAAAAAAABFw/rsBnNhbTubU/s1600/Peter_Griffin.pnghttps://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1459865136i/18666483._SY540_.jpghttps://selectstartgames.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/gears-of-war-20060714024932572.jpghttps://www.xboxachievements.com/images/screenshots/1897/med_860bed584edcfd87a204c0000183da5d_1280x720.jpgh ttps://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--NtGyKLBG--/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_800/kzzexmcv3ah6njywjast.jpghttps://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/the-mask/images/1/1f/Lobo_Mask_1.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170130084014http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/marvel_dc/images/b/ba/Martian_Manhunter_0003.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20101215005015

Male characters in games and comics are allowed to be: short, tall, fat, ugly, muscular, slim, hairy, haryless, bald, naked, covered, musuclar, handsome, young, old.

Girls are mostly allowed to be pretty.

As I said it's not about skin and it's not about the bodies it's about how it's portrait.

If you have a famale character who is sexualied to the point of being ridiculous, dressing in Impractical outfits that make no sense what so ever, we have a problem, and that doesn't happen in a vacuum it helps to reiforce sexist ideas on the real world. That a woaman can only be relevant for her sexuality and beuty rather than her ideias and actions.

I know Ashiel has already replied to your post differently, but I was struck by how hard it was for you to find a counter-example to her assertion. Ashiel said "You don't generally see male heroes who are short, fat, or particularly ugly."

In response you posted various pictures of anthromorphical animals and other non-human characters or characters who are clearly not heros (like Peter Griffin from Family Guy who is a butt monkey), but I think you only identified ONE human character who actually fitted Ashiel's criteria. That was Wolverine from the comic, and even he got an attractiveness upgrade for the movies.

Was it really so hard to identify human male heroes who are " short, fat, or particularly ugly"?

[Calthropstu]

Didn't Amazon made it clear that she is a girl who likes to play those games but has problems with the sexualized female characters?

It's sounds like a valid point, to be unhappy if she pays for something that missrepresents her.

I wasn't aware SHE was being represented at all. (She isn't)
Did it occur to ANY of you that not only are you trying to talk pro censorship (bad idea given the fact that most of the games we play faced pro censorship movements to eliminate them) but the primary source of these video games is an entirely different culture. You honestly have no legitimate complaint here.

[S@tanicoaldo]

I know Ashiel has already replied to your post differently, but I was struck by how hard it was for you to find a counter-example to her assertion. Ashiel said "You don't generally see male heroes who are short, fat, or particularly ugly."

In response you posted various pictures of anthromorphical animals and other non-human characters or characters who are clearly not heros (like from Family Guy who is a butt monkey), but I think you only identified ONE human character who actually fitted Ashiel's criteria. That was Wolverine from the comic, and even he got an attractiveness upgrade for the movies.

Was it really so hard to identify human male heroes who are " short, fat, or particularly ugly"?

I think her exemples were fine. And what you mean anthromorphical animals? I only see crash.

Peter can be considered the hero of the show, he is tge main character after all.

Mask is ugly, lobo is ugly and short, Frodo is short, that guy from psychonauts is ugly, short and has a huge head... I really fail to see the problem.

Ghost Rider is the only one that doesnt fit unless we count Nick Cage.

[ImNotTrevor]

Didn't Amazon made it clear that she is a girl who likes to play those games but has problems with the sexualized female characters?

It's sounds like a valid point, to be unhappy if she pays for something that missrepresents her.

She still needs to vote with her wallet by not purchasing these games. The point stands.



I think her exemples were fine. And what you mean anthromorphical animals? I only see crash.

Who is also played for comedy, which proves the point being made.



Peter can be considered the hero of the show, he is tge main character after all.
Peter isn't meant to be looked up to. Look up Satire. Peter is an idiot, he's fat, and he's not a figure one aspires to be in the same vein as Homer Simpson. He is by no means a hero except by this longshot stretch that breaks down once you, you know, see any episode of Family Guy.



Mask is ugly, lobo is ugly and short, Frodo is short, that guy from psychonauts is ugly, short and has a huge head... I really fail to see the problem.
You're also missing the "generally."

People generally have 10 fingers. There exist people who don't have that many or who have more. This does nothing to invalidate the statement that generally, they have 10.



Ghost Rider is the only one that doesnt fit unless we count Nick Cage.
Which is subjective....

[S@tanicoaldo]

Which is subjective....

I'm sure it is.

http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/509802cb69bedd6209000009/nicolas-cage-will-be-in-the-expendables-3.jpg

[Max_Killjoy]

Probably not necessary.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Probably not necessary.

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/000/210/119/9b3.png

[SaurOps]

Amen. Create something. Rather than telling other people what trash the stuff they like is, make something better. If it's better, they will come. Or they won't, and someone else will. You get your own fans. A new thing is born. If you feel you cannot create something, then buy, consume, and support things that someone else is doing that you like. If you have a favorite artist who draws kickass fantasy art that you find tasteful, consider showcasing their works.

I mean, it's not like it's hard to find some truly stunning pieces with only the laziest of casual attempts.


You're getting into two logical fallacies here. First, it takes an awful lot of time to develop creative skill, and the individual's creative skill may be in criticism. Secondly, who says that people aren't also creating material as counter-examples? Just as critics of video games will criticize them and also make their own games (in order to create, they did have to at least self-articulate what they wanted to include and what they wanted to leave out, after all), your argument falls flat on account of artists doing the same. People don't need you to "explain" how capitalism works. They've probably sat through the same tired defense enough times to lose count. Meanwhile, captains of industry with massive influence over where development cash goes decide to pick and/or green-light low-hanging fruit... again. Capitalism isn't going to solve the problem if it keeps getting in bed with closed-off, incestuous industry networks.

[ImNotTrevor]

You're getting into two logical fallacies here. First, it takes an awful lot of time to develop creative skill, and the individual's creative skill may be in criticism. Secondly, who says that people aren't also creating material as counter-examples? Just as critics of video games will criticize them and also make their own games (in order to create, they did have to at least self-articulate what they wanted to include and what they wanted to leave out, after all), your argument falls flat on account of artists doing the same. People don't need you to "explain" how capitalism works. They've probably sat through the same tired defense enough times to lose count. Meanwhile, captains of industry with massive influence over where development cash goes decide to pick and/or green-light low-hanging fruit... again. Capitalism isn't going to solve the problem if it keeps getting in bed with closed-off, incestuous industry networks.

I block this easily with the thriving Indie Games scene on PC, citing runaway hits such as Shovel Knight and Undertale, both of which outperformed many AAA titles on their platforms, in both sales and reviews.

I cite also that the only reason these games are made is because people buy them. Stop buying them if they bother you. They have no reason to change anything after you pay. THEY ALREADY HAVE YOUR MONEY.

The point stands.

(As well as for practical reasons. The only other option is widescale economoc upheaval which, well... good luck with that.)

(And the Nic Cage this is just a red herring after the examples were pretty easily and handily dismissed.)

[S@tanicoaldo]

(...) hits such as Shovel Knight and Undertale, both of which outperformed many AAA titles on their platforms, in both sales and reviews.

Funny how you name two games that are very respectful towards the female characters and this whole gender thing, and some posts ago you were talking about how this gender sensibility was harmful to the game industry and not what gamers really want.

If the industry really wants to make money why not listen to this respectful, thought provoking and gender inclusive games? That is what is selling and according to your logic what sells is what is good.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm not sure that "what best grows quarterly numbers and lines the shareholders' pockets" should be the only or biggest touchstone of our entire cultural milieu.

[Satinavian]

If the industry really wants to make money why not listen to this respectful, thought provoking and gender inclusive games? That is what is selling and according to your logic what sells is what is good.Because that is what already happens ? At least outside of niche genres.

I mean, i just checked the more played games of my steam list (which does include lots of AAA titles) and found 42 games where i have no reason to complain about the find (or lack of) female representation and only 12 where i would find something to complain about. It is not exactly thought provoking to have proper female representation now, it is pretty mainstream. It is not equality, as i found only 3 where i would complain about the male representation, but eh.

Yes, it is worse with MMOs, where the prevalence of WoW and especcially all those Chinese/Korean games leave much to desire and the need for large playerbases leeds to new entries closely following established formulas. It might be also worse on consoles which i don't use, but as the biggest AAA-hype today seems to be Horizon:Zero Dawn, which gets praise for the strong female main character, i am sceptical.

[S@tanicoaldo]

Yay, For diversity! I guess the sexsist problem is a problem that will be solved by itself. If you ignore all the feminists who worked hard for this.

[Floret]

1. Source on these other studies, pls.
2. Make sure to see who the studies were done/funded by. Antivaxxers have research that supports their position, too. All of it is awful, but there you go.
3. How does one control for upbringing, exactly? Unless all the children come from the same home and have the same parents, same level of exposure to their parents, attend the same classes with the same people at school and have the same friends, this cannot be controlled for. Which adds to this smelling strongly of bull excrement. (You would also have to make sure you were controlling for competitiveness and noncompetitiveness, as I show below, as well as their sports activity.)
4. Eliminating faulty data points does not hinder a discussion. It does exactly the opposite.

Competitiveness (http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2011/08/video-games.aspx) has a higher effect on aggression than violence in videogames. The study I linked and several japanese studies have reliably demonstrated this. (So mine is international. Weee!l

Meaning violence is more likely from someone who just finished a game of monopoly than from someone who just finished DeathMurder 5.

As always, vote with your wallet. I don't think it's being a feminazi to complain about a character design. Doing it for a game you didn't support, don't play, and never will play is stupid and frankly should be ignored same as a sci-fi fan saying your fantasy game should have laserguns. If you're obviously not a customer, they shouldn't bother. This phenomenon is actually causing issues in the industry, now. Companies are rushing to be all-inclusive, releasing sub-par products intending to pander to the people who apparently care more about well-covered women than game mechanics, and are becoming shocked to learn that people aren't spending money on them because the people complaining never intended to support a change anyways.
It's very amusing to watch an industry feel guilty and pander to a market that doesn't exist in the first place.

Buy the stuff that you support. Telling other people they need to buy what you like is stupid.

1. Since I currently do not have access to the appropriate databases (Due to not having personal accounts there, only due to university), I can rely only on what I have saved on my computer and snowball from there.
Luckily, one of those I still have is a compilation/Metaanalysis of studies from the field of media violence; though it is in German: "Medien und Gewalt. Befunde der Forschung 2004-2009; M. Kunczik and A. Zipfel (2010)." Funded by German gouvernment ministry of Family, Seniors, women and youth - my personal experience calls those people clean in regards to censorship agendas.
From their sections on longitudinal studies, which is what really interest us here, they quote, amongst others:
Bushman, Brad J. / Huesmann, L. Rowell (2006): Short-term and long-term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults. In: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 160, S. 348-352.
Christakis, Dimitri A. / Zimmerman, Frederick J. (2007): Violent television viewing during preschool is associated with antisocial behaviour during school age. In: Pediatrics 120, S. 993-999.
Slater, Michael (u.a.) (2003): Violent media content and aggressiveness in adoles-cents. A downward spiral model. In: Communication Research 30, S. 713-736. Slater, Michael (u.a.) (2004): Vulnerable teens, vulnerable times: How sensation seeking, alienation, and victimization moderate the violent media content-aggressi-veness relation. In: Communication Research 31, S. 642-668.
Zimmerman, Frederick J. (u.a.) (2005): Early cognitive stimulation, emotional sup-port, and television watching as predictors of subsequent bullying among grade-school children. In: Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 159, S. 384-388.
Ostrov, Jamie M. / Gentile, Douglas A. / Crick, Nicki R. (2006): Media exposure, aggression and prosocial behavior during early childhood: A longitudinal study. In: Social Development 15, S. 612-627.
Graber, Julia A. (u.a.) (2006): A longitudinal examination of family, friend, and media influences on competent versus problem behaviors among urban minority youth. In: Applied Developmental Science 10, S. 75-85.
(And yes, I have read those as well, though that was some years ago, so I don't quite remember all details beyond the summaries in Kunczik/Zipfel that I read again to answer your call for studies. Some of them do have certain problems in their methodology, but overall the direction and presence of a certain effect seems stable enough for me to believe that there is some influence. Again, not a strong one, heavily dependend on covariables, but present. I do no longer remember their funders, but hadn't found anything questionable when I read them.)
2. Sure, I know how to check for validity of studies. Had it drilled into my head for 2 years straight.
3. Checking for the education of the parents, emotional and cognitive support of the kids, the presence of physical punishment, parental depression or problems of the parents dealing with their kids, for example, and taking those into account while looking at the results. Maybe "control" was the wrong word, talking in an academic context, but English is not my first language. Some nuances might not quite sit in my statements.
4. Eliminating faulty datapoints can. Dismissing the oppositions datapoints out of hand (without proof yourself, I might add, though ofc. the usual problems of proving negatives still apply somewhat; and I was the person who made the claims.) not so much. In fact, doing that is really not conductive to a productive discussion.

...Also, why are you asserting so strongly and arguing that Competitiveness is a stronger factor than violence. You do not need to convince me. I know that fact. I already agreed with you. In fact, I pointed this out before you did. You are correct, but your continued pronouncing of this does nothing to further the discussion, and serves more as a distraction/derailment of the point at hand - namely, the effects of media violence that are being discussed, and not the effects of competitiveness.


I wasn't aware SHE was being represented at all. (She isn't)
Did it occur to ANY of you that not only are you trying to talk pro censorship (bad idea given the fact that most of the games we play faced pro censorship movements to eliminate them) but the primary source of these video games is an entirely different culture. You honestly have no legitimate complaint here.

1. Noone is arguing censorship, at most what is being argued is a lack of reflection on the parts of the game developers; alongside a call for change, without anyone calling for that call to be of the legal variety.
2. "This isn't from our culture" is a) unnecessary cultural relativism, just because something is someones culture does not put it beyond criticism and b) entirely tangential to the point since they are played in, thereby part of, and therefore influencing ours. (If all of us can even be considered to have the same culture. I for one am not American, for example.)


You're getting into two logical fallacies here. First, it takes an awful lot of time to develop creative skill, and the individual's creative skill may be in criticism. Secondly, who says that people aren't also creating material as counter-examples? Just as critics of video games will criticize them and also make their own games (in order to create, they did have to at least self-articulate what they wanted to include and what they wanted to leave out, after all), your argument falls flat on account of artists doing the same. People don't need you to "explain" how capitalism works. They've probably sat through the same tired defense enough times to lose count. Meanwhile, captains of industry with massive influence over where development cash goes decide to pick and/or green-light low-hanging fruit... again. Capitalism isn't going to solve the problem if it keeps getting in bed with closed-off, incestuous industry networks.

I just want to highlight this, and thank you for iterating the problem with "vote with your wallet" I tried to make so much better than I could.


I'm not sure that "what best grows quarterly numbers and lines the shareholders' pockets" should be the only or biggest touchstone of our entire cultural milieu.

Also, this.

[ImNotTrevor]

Funny how you name two games that are very respectful towards the female characters and this whole gender thing, and some posts ago you were talking about how this gender sensibility was harmful to the game industry and not what gamers really want.

Quote me making the second argument. Verbatim, not some individual sentence than may construe it.

You'll find I never did.



If the industry really wants to make money why not listen to this respectful, thought provoking and gender inclusive games? That is what is selling and according to your logic what sells is what is good.

The better question is, if this is what sells, and performs well, why are we still crusading against depictions from the 80's?


I'm not sure that "what best grows quarterly numbers and lines the shareholders' pockets" should be the only or biggest touchstone of our entire cultural milieu.

Nobody made this argument either. The only argument was "vote with your wallet." Which is to say, whatever fits your personal morals is what you should support.

We live in a capitalism. Companies hear money and little else. Too bad. Use the tool you have to influence them: your wallet.

It's not a values judgement unless you're so ready to defend your point as to readily paint anyone who doesn't cowtow to it as fullblown sexists (see above). It's pragmatism. Use the most powerful tool available to you.

[Amazon]

Well now that you mention it (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/9-SInbWISpw/maxresdefault.jpg)...
I'm pretty sure (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nYzJ5zdPsZQ/SxMEpngbtqI/AAAAAAAAAfs/JDvMa5NFY-U/s1600/manlysp3.jpg) I've seen something (http://cdn.cheatcc.com/dispatches/large/SexyMen2.jpg) seen something somewhere (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/fe/ef/de/feefdeea5c3374af004a740416631860.jpg), that really kinda (http://att.3dmgame.com/att/forum/201311/03/180104exj9wzkqmxfxxe5q.jpg) looks like those guys (http://i.imgur.com/zszYXM1.jpg) from those romance novels (https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-073d71fcab77e09f58b44a9144516807-c), pretty frequently. It's almost like (http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2010/183/3/4/Chris_Redfield_Fanservice_1_by_favorites1.jpg) I've seen them (http://www.mobiletoones.com/downloads/wallpapers/game_wallpapers/preview/49/p18203-1227004566.jpg) somewhere before (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/fd/79/0f/fd790f11b56d246cce00f1eeacec649d--woman-body-female-characters.jpg). Now where (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/64/29/72/6429724181737bc5003a266b4cf70379--fantasy-sword-fantasy-male.jpg) could that have (http://www.wallpaperup.com/uploads/wallpapers/2013/12/30/209335/big_thumb_f0d210508a85a419dff881c8312aacde.jpg) been, I wonder (https://image.shutterstock.com/z/stock-photo-fantasy-barbarian-22838119.jpg)...

Let's go:
1-Not in game, everyone one is semi-naked in character creation mode, even kids.
2-Not handsome or sexualized, just muscular, big deal, no one will look at this charatcer and go OMG I need to hit that.
3-That's not how he dress in the game.
4- Mods.
5- Not found.
6- Character art, not how they dress in-game.
7- Same as Shao Kanh, besides I don't know a living person who whould like to f Kratos, he is so scary looking.
8- Cutscene. That's not how he dress in the game.
9 and 10- Male fantasy.
11- Not a game.
12- Not a game.
13-Not a game.

The last 3 were fan art, you complained that I used a main character instead of a "hero" but at least I used a real character rather than fan art.

EDIT:

How does me not buying games will signal that sexist characters are bad exactly?

EDIT 2:

I don't know what's your deal, we are not asking much, none of our requests are out of this world.

Here have eight things developers can do to make games less ****ty for women:

1-Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")

2- "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)

3- Have female characters of various body types

4- Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.

5-Include more female characters of color.

6- Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.

7-Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic.

8-Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies.

Is this too much to ask? All of these things are fair and rational requests to make in my opinion. Can't see any reason anyone would have a problem with any of them.

[Satinavian]

Is this too much to ask? All of these things are fair and rational requests to make in my opinion. Can't see any reason anyone would have a problem with any of them.Nr. 3 is expensive and games tend to recycle models as much as they can get away with, often having exactly one male and one female body type in the game (example : xcom-games). But yes, more would be better. Unfortunately i can't see it becoming industry standard until modelling gets much cheaper somehow.

Overall it is a nice list i agree with.

[Mendicant]

I know Ashiel has already replied to your post differently, but I was struck by how hard it was for you to find a counter-example to her assertion. Ashiel said "You don't generally see male heroes who are short, fat, or particularly ugly."

In response you posted various pictures of anthromorphical animals and other non-human characters or characters who are clearly not heros (like Peter Griffin from Family Guy who is a butt monkey), but I think you only identified ONE human character who actually fitted Ashiel's criteria. That was Wolverine from the comic, and even he got an attractiveness upgrade for the movies.

Was it really so hard to identify human male heroes who are " short, fat, or particularly ugly"?

https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/5/57/Gimli_at_the_siege_of_moria.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070726164348
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/deathbattlefanon/images/a/a9/The_Thing.png/revision/latest?cb=20150223191205
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/5/50/Darth_Maul_profile.png/revision/latest?cb=20140209162228
http://www.writeups.org/wp-content/uploads/Beast-X-Men-Avengers-Marvel-Comics-glasses-h.jpg
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/hellboy/images/0/08/Hellboy_2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20080103220603

Seriously, I can do five of these for any one similar woman you want to produce. And this is just scratching the surface. What if we included female protagonists, primary antagonists, heroes, etc. who are old, vs. old men? 90% of the old or middle-aged women you'll find will have some explanation for why they're still young and pretty looking -- they're an elf, or a vampire, or a succubus or something. Or remove subjective matters of attractiveness; since I'm sure I'll be inundated with nitpicking about how "this Psychology Today article I found proves that Hellboy is actually sexy, so he doesn't count!" How much do female body shapes vary? How much does their size?

[ImNotTrevor]

How does me not buying games will signal that sexist characters are bad exactly?


Because companies listen to their bottom line first and foremost. When you refuse to buy their products, or organize a general boycott (which is also perfectly acceptable in my eyes) they listen more than if you keep giving them money and complain later. When you keep giving them money for slop, they will continue to produce slop.



EDIT 2:

I don't know what's your deal, we are not asking much, none of our requests are out of this world.

Here have eight things developers can do to make games less ****ty for women:

1-Avoid the Smurfette principle (don't have just one female character in an ensemble cast, let alone one whose personality is more or less "girl" or "woman.")

2- "Lingerie is not armor" (Dress female characters as something other than sex objects.)

3- Have female characters of various body types

4- Don't over-emphasize female characters' rear ends, not any more than you would the average male character's.

5-Include more female characters of color.

6- Animate female characters to move the way normal women, soldiers or athletes would move.

7-Record female character voiceover so that pain sounds painful, not orgasmic.

8-Include female enemies, but don't sexualize those enemies.

Is this too much to ask? All of these things are fair and rational requests to make in my opinion. Can't see any reason anyone would have a problem with any of them.

Other than 7 being partially on bad voice acting, these are things that I agree should be changed. And actually I agree with 7 but it's not necessarily totally inaccurate. (Listening to womens tennis audio sounds like some lesbians having a very... intense evening of mutual spanking. To a humorous degree, though. It's not really erotic.)

But these things you've noted are improving already. Buy the games with the improvements, don't buy the ones without.

[S@tanicoaldo]

But these things you've noted are improving already. Buy the games with the improvements, don't buy the ones without.

I wonder why they are improving. (http://kotaku.com/new-overwatch-character-shows-blizzard-really-is-listen-1689904549)

[Tobtor]

https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/lotr/images/5/57/Gimli_at_the_siege_of_moria.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070726164348
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/deathbattlefanon/images/a/a9/The_Thing.png/revision/latest?cb=20150223191205
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/starwars/images/5/50/Darth_Maul_profile.png/revision/latest?cb=20140209162228
http://www.writeups.org/wp-content/uploads/Beast-X-Men-Avengers-Marvel-Comics-glasses-h.jpg
https://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/hellboy/images/0/08/Hellboy_2.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/250?cb=20080103220603

Seriously, I can do five of these for any one similar woman you want to produce. And this is just scratching the surface. What if we included female protagonists, primary antagonists, heroes, etc. who are old, vs. old men? 90% of the old or middle-aged women you'll find will have some explanation for why they're still young and pretty looking -- they're an elf, or a vampire, or a succubus or something. Or remove subjective matters of attractiveness; since I'm sure I'll be inundated with nitpicking about how "this Psychology Today article I found proves that Hellboy is actually sexy, so he doesn't count!" How much do female body shapes vary? How much does their size?

I very much agree.

To those people who deny that male characters show alot more diversity, and explain it away whith "humor/background story/a race that isnt human etc". While this may sometimes be true, it just show that male characters fill many different roles in story-telling (tragic stories, humorous stories, epic stories etc), while women are either "sexy enemies", "sexy princesses who needs saving", and if they are really luvcky "sexy heroines".

If looking across games/media you can also notice a predominants of "male dwarfs" and "female elves" (substitute with relevant race/type in the world).

You also see this with actors: you can have actors like Dani DeVito who made a career out of being short, fat and ungly (even being main character in some movies). You dont see feamle actors do that.

[Amazon]

I wonder why they are improving. (http://kotaku.com/new-overwatch-character-shows-blizzard-really-is-listen-1689904549)

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_super/11111/111117016/4689238-6040815197-chess.gif

*giggle*

[Max_Killjoy]

Maybe I'm an old grump, but I really wish we could do without the memes and animated gifs...



I wonder why they are improving. (http://kotaku.com/new-overwatch-character-shows-blizzard-really-is-listen-1689904549)

Awesome effort... 98%... still has "boob plate". :smallwink:

Kinda funny that the comments I'm seeing about her include several variations on "well she's Russian so it's still a stereotyple Blizzard fail"... guess there's no winning with some people. (See my immediately previous comment for irony...)

[Ashiel]

You also see this with actors: you can have actors like Dani DeVito who made a career out of being short, fat and ungly (even being main character in some movies). You dont see feamle actors do that.

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/08/rosie-odonell-fighting-Getty.jpg

[Amazon]

Maybe I'm an old grump, but I really wish we could do without the memes and animated gifs...

Sorry, S@tanicoaldo seem to have a bad influence on me.

But anyway, the point is we don't need to talk with our money if we can talk with our mouths.




@Ashiel :

*mimicking Ashiel voice*: Oh, but she is not as short as DeVito so your entire point is irelevant. :smallamused:

[Max_Killjoy]

Sorry, S@tanicoaldo seem to have a bad influence on me.

But anyway, the point is we don't need to talk with our money if we can talk with our mouths.

I like both.

It's good to not spend your own money on products you don't want to support.

There's also nothing wrong with rationally and factually discussing why you don't spend money on those products, so that other people can also make informed decisions.

[Ashiel]

If looking across games/media you can also notice a predominants of "male dwarfs" and "female elves" (substitute with relevant race/type in the world).
That's just 'cause people can't tell the difference. :smalltongue:

"It's the beards," - Aragorn

[Satinavian]

I wonder why they are improving. (http://kotaku.com/new-overwatch-character-shows-blizzard-really-is-listen-1689904549)Considering it is not actually a new trend, i wouldn't draw connections to some internet personalities.

[Amazon]

I like both.

It's good to not spend your own money on products you don't want to support.

There's also nothing wrong with rationally and factually discussing why you don't spend money on those products, so that other people can also make informed decisions.

But I can't play a fighting game that uses medieval weapons as the main form of combat anywhere else, why should I reduce my amount of fun? It’s unfair.

It's like stop going to a park next to my house because it's badly preserved rather than fighting for it to improve.

[Mendicant]

http://media.breitbart.com/media/2015/08/rosie-odonell-fighting-Getty.jpg

http://i.onionstatic.com/avclub/3957/78/16x9/960.jpg
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODc0NTU3NDA4M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNDkxNzQxNA@@._ V1_.jpg
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/10/13/1413233706317_Image_galleryImage_No_Merchandising_ Editoria.JPG
https://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/2/28/Wayne_knight_a_p.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160222131230
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTcyNjU2MTYyM15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjY5MDY4NDE@._ V1_SY1000_CR0,0,799,1000_AL_.jpg

[Ashiel]

@Ashiel :
*mimicking Ashiel voice*: Oh, but she is not as short as DeVito so your entire point is irelevant. :smallamused:
I'm just being cheeky. :smallbiggrin:

For the record, I never claimed your entire point was irrelevant. Merely pointing out that I didn't think your response reflected what I said, and then noted why I thought your examples were questionable (particularly since they're largely the exceptions, or are representations of the very characters I had made exceptions for - no kidding, I was thinking specifically of Deadpool when I talked about ugly dudes in masks). I've never heard of anyone talking about how hunky the hobbits were but Aragorn and Legolas? Oh boy, not a dry seat in the theater. :smallamused:

I'd also like to note that, again, a lot of these things feel really similar to moral outrage complaints over violent video games and such (which stick with me here for a bit). We've established that there are indeed great and plentiful alternatives for games if you don't want sexy in your games (except Stardew Valley - hooollleee sheeetz those gals are hotter than freshly lotion on a miami bound efreeti's buttcheeks). However, folks pick these particular games to complain about, painting them as the face of an industry, a hobby, a passion.

It's like when people used to groan that video games are all violent, bloodthirsty things, that teach you to murder and commit crimes, and telling developers that Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto are bad, should be changed, are too insert thing I don't like here, etc. Well, that tends to piss off people who like those things about it, and when you've got lots of alternative games to play, why are you trying to piss in their cheerios? Go play Mario, or Harvest Moon, or Marvel vs Capcom, or Age of Empires, or Baldur's Gate, or any other billion titles that caters to your artistic bent. Maybe try to raise voices and speak about games you'd like to see.

"We really like mortal kombat's gameplay, but the comically extreme levels of violence is kind of off putting to us. We'd really like to get an MK-lite or something for us," is far less likely to rub anyone's fur the wrong way. Especially compared to something like "We really like mortal kombat's gameplay, but it's comically extreme levels of violence influence undesirable effects in society, so future mortal kombat games shouldn't include fatalities or blood," which will instantly mark a big "*******" sign on your forehead to every MK player around.

[Amazon]

I I've never heard of anyone talking about how hunky the hobbits were but Aragorn and Legolas? Oh boy, not a dry seat in the theater. :smallamused:

But that wasn't the point!!!!! -_-'

The point was not how hot and sexy hobbits are, the point was how male heros can be something other than hot with supermodel like bodies! They can be short, tall, muscular, fat, ugly etc...

Besides, I'm not asking for no sexy girls in hentai games or Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, I'm asking no sexualized girls in games where sexualized girls are not the core element.

If it makes sense for a charatcer to be sexy and sexualized, go for it, the problem when that is the norm.

I dare you to find me one, ONE! Mainstream, classic and iconic female superhero who is not super sexy according to the beauty patterns of our society.

[Max_Killjoy]

But that wasn't the point!!!!! -_-'

The point was not how hot and sexy hobbits are, the point was how male heros can be something other than hot with supermodel like bodies! They can be short, tall, muscular, fat, ugly etc...

Besides, I'm not asking for no sexy girls in hentai games or Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, I'm asking no sexualized girls in games where sexualized girls are not the core element.

If it makes sense for a charatcer to be sexy and sexualized, go for it, the problem when that is the norm.

I dare you to find me one, ONE! Mainstream, classic and iconic female superhero who is not super sexy according to the beauty patterns of our society.

The Grrlpower webcomic actually lampshades that by making it part of the lore that whatever it is that gives people superpowers (no one has figured it out yet) also seems to universally give them exaggeratedly "perfect" physiques and appearances.

The lead protagonist gets her powers from a different origin, and is "not amused".