Sexism in games (Kingdoms of Amalur case study)

[AEmer]

@Jetsetlemming

"Where I found that ad, it had multiple responses from women, including lesbian women, utterly disgusted by the attitudes about their sex contained within."

I'm not surprised; I might add that I hate people like that.

Well, I don't. I don't hate them because this is their oppinion, or because they're outraged. But every time I've encountered a person with that kind of oppinion in response to this kind of thing, I've hated them before I never saw them again. Statistically, I always end up hating them, because it's what has happened every single time.

You know why? Because they're not discerning in their outrage. Again, these women you mention might buck that thread. They might not be excercising a knee-jerk reaction in response to this advertisement. They might know more than what is readily apparent from the ad itself.

It also doesn't matter if its women or men who have that reaction to this advertisement, and as I said the reason I end up hating anyone isn't the reaction to the advertisement itself.

Here's what has always happened so far: I end up getting called a misogynist or sexist when I say, hold on, wait a minute, you're being unfair. Then I spend 3 hours over the next week or so engaging in a back-and-forth where I try to argue why I'm not a misogynist, and why whoever decided I was onesuch was a stereotyping ass themselves.

Anyway, that doesn't mean I won't try with you, so here goes (it's gonna be a long one).

I find that all your comparisons invariable miss elements that are key to why this advertisement isn't what you describe it as, and I'm sure you'll be able to work out why if you read my entire post.

Lets do an analysis and interpretation of the advert together, shall we?

Firstly, the subject of the advert, the supposed recipient, is a male. This isn't sexist on it's own, adverts have subjects all the time, in this one its a bit more clear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pequCn1B ... ideo_title

The idea of the subject isn't to sell the product to a person who matches the subject exactly, but rather to engineer a narrative between a hypothetical user of the product, and the product itself. The narrative can be structured in many fashions. In toy commercials, it'll often be a little boy or a little girl, depending on who the toy is targeted at.

The purpose is to provide a story that's of natural interest to whoever they expect to sell the product to. This isn't sexist either; it's not just that it's modus operandi, it's that it doesn't discriminate based on gender in any way. If a male subject is chosen as it was here, it's not an expression of a belief in any inherent inadequacy in women, it's typically because whoever designed the advert finds a male to be a more optimal choice for selling the product. It's only sexism if it's an inherent feature, not a strictly circumstantial one (as is the case here).

Anyway, back to the advert. In this situation, for some reason, their target audience is people who like playing twisted metal, and who would be interested to buy their girlfriend flowers for valentines. Considering the median age of twisted metal gamers is probably 25, and the median gender who might buy flowers for valentines is probably men, they've decided to target the advert at 25 years old males. So they engineer a narrative that is of interest to 25 years old males: They present an asshole subject within the advert that gets his girlfriend flowers in order to play twisted metal alone on release day, because he's just with his girl to have fun/sex/because, and he can't really stand being with her.

This narrative is funny; it's also very unlikely to be true of the people who actually buy the game and the flowers, but that's not really the point of it: The point is that it's particularly engaging to this exact group of people.

Here's a bit more background: consider the line of scumbag steve web-meme images:
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/35nlyk/

the images roll with exactly that kind of concept. You laugh at steve and what he does, because sometimes abuse is hillarious.

You might say, but Aemer, abuse isn't actually funny! Well it clearly is. That scumbag steve image I linked went to the top of reddit. Scumbags, and learning of scumbaggy behaviour, is absolutely funny to some people, and if you don't think so you're wrong.

You might counterargue, "this implicit subject you describe doesn't actually exist here!" - well that's just ridiculous, of course the implicit subject exists, he's described in a fair amount of detail: He's shallow, enjoys explosions, he really prefers gaming over his girlfriend but usually chooses to spend time with her on valentines because otherwise she'll nag him about it and he hates nagging women, and if he can buy something that lets him have gaming without a nagging woman, he will thank his lucky stars. It might be strictly adressed to "you", but in this case it's "you the recipient we will proceed to describe" not "you, the person reading this".

It might seem confusing that there can be a distinction between the adressed recipient and the actual recipient but it can clearly be the case (if you don't have a girlfriend it's obviously not "you the reader, because it doesn't fit you"), but I'd argue that in this case the two are always distinct: The subject here is cast in such a negative light, and it is so unlikely that the target audience actually have considerations like these, that the two couldn't possibly be meant to be one and the same. It also makes no financial sense: They're only going to sell flowers to men who actually want to buy their girlfriends flowers, and those typically aren't this kind of scumbag, I'm sure you'll agree.

You might say, "nono, the scumbag steve subject is there, but the advert implicitly makes him look like a good guy exhibiting good behaviour" to which I say...huh, what? Please point to where it suggests this guy is actually a good guy?

And if you're correct in that accusation, it's even worse: Then the advert presents a person who does these things as the example of a good boyfriend! If anything that's incredibly misandrist in its portrayal of men (If he's a good boyfriend I'd hate to see what a bad one looks like, yikes)!

And I'll wager the people arguing this is sexist aren't doing it because they think it's misandrist, so in that case, logically, they'd actually be sexists themselves for choosing to focus on the female subject, when the misandry is so much more obvious and so much pronounced.

No, the only logical interpretation here is that the boyfriend is meant to be understood as a scumbag, you're meant to laugh and think about how much better of a boyfriend you are than him, then you're supposed to order some flowers for the girl you love because you're a good guy, have a fabulous time together on valentines, and then kick back with some twisted metal the day after. That's the big idea at work.

And this is exactly the point I set out to make: The people who jump on this, and things like this, and call it sexist probably don't care to put in the effort to look for a non-sexist interpretation, to weigh them, to consider them, and to figure out what's the more likely intention here. If they did, they'd arrive at either this conclusion, or one that assails the ad for being anti-male (which I think is also very wrong, but at least it's logically consistent), not one that assails it for being anti-female, which is what you described as happening.

I actually think that's really messed up: Sexism is a serious problem, and this presumtuous BS is thoroughly unneeded. It distracts from the actual problems, and it puts a chilling effect on expression by being pseudo-moralizing, and overall it gives a messed up impression of what sexism is to people who read it if they don't have the analytical chops or interest to examine the situation more closely themselves. It perpetuates wrong ideas, and as an overarching trend it legitimizes attacks on content producers over similar issues, where they get accussed of something really horrible without any thought going into whether such an attack might be fair...and conversely, when this happens a lot (and I think it does), it becomes very easy to dismiss all accusations of sexism as the rantings of people who don't have a clue what they're talking about.

Ah, anyway, now I'm about done.

[Jetsetlemming]

I refuse to read that giant post because you start it by saying you hate people for daring to be offended by things they find offensive. How DARE they not agree with you about how they should see the world! What, do they think they're independent people!? Good christ, man. Take a fucking step back and look at yourself. I've already had a bad day, and given how that post starts I can only imagine trying to parse all of it would give me a stroke.

[AEmer]

heheheh

You're making my point for me. You see a single sentence, and you jump to conclusions because it's something that seems unbelievable and unfair. You don't really care if there is some nuance you're missing, not when your gut is filling with vitriol. You just need to react, who cares if you base it off of an assumption.

Well let me quote what I say just after saying I hate them:

Well, I don't. I don't hate them because this is their oppinion

It's the very next sentence. The very next. You couldn't even keep your bile down to read one more sentence that might turn it on its head. If that isn't proof you don't have a problem with skipping over the nuance of things, I don't know what would be.

[AEmer]

Look, I'm sorry, you don't deserve my acting smug. If you've had a bad day, and you really think arguing with me will anger you that much, just leave it. It's not worth it. My points cut to the core of not just what you think, but how you act. Whether you prove me to be a giant ass, or you accept my arguments, it'll probably get you riled up.

And now I look like I'm being condescending. Well who cares; I know I'm being straight, and you probably will too. So yeah, if you think arguing with me will give you an aneurism, don't argue with me, or do it some day where it won't. I can wait.

[Jonas]

Participation in the patriarchy via spreading or believing stereotypes, encouraging or enforcing gender roles, or prejudging a sex based on stereotypes, prior expectations, or expected gender roles. Sexism is not just "hating women", just as racism is not just "hating blacks". We're all racist and sexist on some level, because we're all raised in a culture with gender roles and common stereotypes. The difference is whether or not you accept those gender roles and stereotypes and live by them, and expect them of others, or begin to recognize and understand them, and accept people as individuals based on their own merits.

You can't avoid stereotypes. Seriously. You use them all the time, every day, because during the course of navigating society, you will in some way interact with so many people that you couldn't possible get to know them all and understand them as individuals. So in your mind, you group them into rough categories based on what you can tell from very little interaction with them: woman, Asian, young, well-dressed, standing behind a shop counter. Man, Caucasian, old, dressed in rags, sitting on the sidewalk with a dog. You don't need to know these people to know how to engage with them, how they fit into your day.

Stereotypes are not inherently discriminating, it all depends on how you act on them and whether you allow them to get in the way of forming proper individual opinions on a person once you have a need and an opportunity to get to know them better.

I agree with the following part of your definition: "encouraging or enforcing gender roles, or prejudging a sex based on stereotypes, prior expectations, or expected gender roles". I do not agree that "spreading or believing stereotypes" is sexism. Sexism is discrimination, it's the assumption that there are some things a person just can't do, or can't do well, because of their gender. It's the assumption that there are some things a person should do or should be able to do well, because of their gender. Recognising that a woman has a disadvantage at sport that requires strength is not sexism. Insisting that she not attempt to compete in it is.

But the bottom line is that my interest doesn't lie in advertising. Advertising is fucked up on a fairly fundamental level, and I have neither the energy nor the inclination to attempt to fix it. The only "fix" for advertising is to take off and nuke the site from orbit, as they say on the Internet. My interest is in games, and it frustrates and annoys me that you keep pulling the discussion away from my chosen medium. I feel that there's plenty of material for a discussion of gender roles and sexism in games without having to include the advertising.

For example, it is a rare female character in a videogame that won't at some point need to be rescued, far more often than not by a male character or player character. Even when a game tries to pull off an empowered female, she usually ends up essentially written like a male character and just genderswapped. And it's fucking hard, I know from experience; portraying well rounded female characters is something I care deeply about, but there's almost nothing you can do that won't offend somebody, it's such a hot button subject. No matter how hard you try, somebody will criticise your portrayal of every female character you write. Possibly the only person in the games industry who can really pull off female characters that are genuinely identifiably female without seeming like stereotypes or drawing on problematic gender roles is Ragnar Tørnquist, and he makes adventure games the gameplay of which I just can't bloody stand.

All of that, to me, is a lot more important than some douchey advertising guy making douchey ads for a hypothetical douchey target audience.

[Jetsetlemming]

Jonas, what specific stereotypes do you feel you need day to day interacting with people, beyond basic assumptions about people, regardless of sex, in your society? I don't expect the person behind a store counter to act differently depending on if they're a man or a woman. You can say, I guess, that I have the stereotype that because they're in a store uniform, behind the counter, in front of a cash register, that I'm stereotyping them as the store clerk, I guess, but that's not the same thing as assuming different expectations from them based on sex, race, gender identity, etc.
And assuming women would do worse at a sport requiring strength than men is, in fact, sexist. Women being the "fairer" sex is a gender roll. While by default, if you've got a dude and a chick and neither work out and both eat the same diet, the man will have somewhat more muscles, the difference is actually negligible. The physical differences between sexes is encouraged to develop by gender expectations- women are encouraged to work out to stay thin, men are encouraged to be strong. Nothing stopping a woman from being strong, or a man from being thin.

Here's one of my favorite links when talking about the difference between sexes:
http://ninamatsumoto.wordpress.com/2010 ... r-artists/#
That's seriously like the best resource ever, I love it.

Note the male and female gymnasts, standing next to one another, and tell me that she has a disadvantage over him (and yes, gynmastics is a sport requiring strength, even more than, say, baseball or football. They have to be able to not only support their entire body weight with one hand, but be able to push themselves up off the ground or balance board with their hands, with their body above them. The strength and endurance requirements to keep poses and gracefully pull off moves without falling on your face is quite high).

Anyway, about game characters, I thought New Vegas did pretty good in having realistically normal women, who weren't damsels or cheesecake.

[VectorM]

dyes, gynmastics is a sport requiring strength, even more than, say, baseball or football. They have to be able to not only support their entire body weight with one hand, but be able to push themselves up off the ground or balance board with their hands, with their body above them. The strength and endurance requirements to keep poses and gracefully pull off moves without falling on your face is quite high)

Do you have any actual knowledge about this, or are you just basing this stuff on your own examinations?

hey have to be able to not only support their entire body weight with one hand, but be able to push themselves up off the ground or balance board with their hands, with their body above them

That has a lot to do with balance, flexibility, weight and diet as well. A gymnast only needs to be able to support a nbit more than his body weight. A weight lifter or a football player is expected to endure a LOT more.

But I shouldn't even have to say this, because comparing gymnastics to football is like comparing Deus Ex to Starcraft.

the difference is actually negligible.

Yeah, under the circumstances, that you find convenient, the difference is negligible indeed

Anyway, if we are talking about sports, these negligible differences are actually pretty huge. The difference between a black guy and a white guy is smaller than the difference between a a man and a woman. Yet you can see what the NBA is like. Yes, not all black men are better than all white men at basketball for sure, but in general, most of them have just enough of an advantage to be put in the team instead of that other white kid who did just a little bit worse. You don't need more than one point difference to win a match, after all.

[Jetsetlemming]

Even if a stereotype is typically true (they DO tend to have some origin for being thought), you shouldn't expect them or live by them.

[VectorM]

Even if a stereotype is typically true (they DO tend to have some origin for being thought), you shouldn't expect them or live by them.

Why would i not expect them to live by it, if it has turned out to be true so many times? Do you not expect things that have happened before to happen again? What kind of thinking is that?

Unless you are talking about pressuring them to live by them, then that's a completely different thing.

[DDL]

While VectorM's post is..oddly formatted, to say the least (EDIT: oh good, he fixed it), his point is still valid. Gymnastics is not so much about absolute strength, but power to weight ratio. As an example, if we took those two athletes and used magical suspensor fields or weights to make the female weigh as much as the male, and vice versa, while retaining the same strength values, do you think they'd still perform comparably?

In terms of absolute strength, men will always have the edge. Sure, there's a large overlap (so a woman who does resistance exercise might get stronger than a man who sits on a couch all day), but at the extreme high end, it's men all the way.
"Nothing stopping a woman from being strong, or a man from being thin." ...er, other than insufficiency of the correct hormones, and basic physical makeup: Androsterones are just really really good for building muscle (and sheer physical mass), and men simply have tons more of them. Like for like, men will be significantly stronger than women: the difference is not negligible at all.
You might as well try and say "men being generally taller than women is just a gender role: there's nothing stopping a woman getting just as tall as a man, if not taller!" -It would make about as much biological sense. There may certainly be tall women, but on a population-wide average, men are taller.

And heavier. And thus have more muscle mass.

On top of all this, you're using athletes as your example, which is...a hugely biased representation: these are people at the very very peak of their physical potential, not members of the population at large. If you were able to reliably say that similar percentages of men and women reach that athletic peak, then maybe this would be ok, but ...I dunno, are there stats on that? My gut feeling is that male athletes make up a larger percentage of the athletics pool (cusory Googling indicates that women are usually underrepresented at the olympics, though this is improving, and parity has almost been achieved -42% female at the last olympics, should be roughly 50:50 this year -though this is the olympic, so the athletes of the athlete world, so possibly not reflective of athletes in general).

Ask yourself this: why do so few sports allow women and men to compete at the professional level? Because the women would get kerbstomped, pretty much. It really is that simple.

These biological properties are not a "gender role", they are a gender characteristic. To argue otherwise is utterly insane.

[Jetsetlemming]

Even if a stereotype is typically true (they DO tend to have some origin for being thought), you shouldn't expect them or live by them.

Why would i not expect them to live by it, if it has turned out to be true so many times? Do you not expect things that have happened before to happen again? What kind of thinking is that?

Unless you are talking about pressuring them to live by them, then that's a completely different thing.

Because there's people outside the stereotypes, there's ALWAYS people outside the stereotypes, and when you expect them to be inside the stereotypes, and react when they're outside the stereotypes, that can be very disrespectful, for example being surprised when you see a strong woman or a short black person or a gay dude. And, again, I'll ask you the question I asked Jonas: When do you NEED a stereotype, beyond basic expectations of all people such as common courtesy? I can't think of any point in my day to day life where I need to be informed by typical expectations of people of a certain gender or race in my interactions with them.

edit: DDL, the point isn't that all women and men are equal (though that's true here in America, where we're all shapeless fat asses), it's that women can match the stereotypical standards for men. There are female bodybuilders, and female football players, and plenty of female soccer and baseball players here in America.

[Jonas]

Even on the olympic level, the athletes of the athletes, men demonstrably have an advantage. I present to you, Wikipedia's lists of world records for men and women:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wo ... oor_events

Don't give me the "it's all socialisation" rubbish. Read DDL's post.

And assuming women would do worse at a sport requiring strength than men is, in fact, sexist.

Yes, if that's the full extent of the assumption (ie. we know nothing about the two individuals being compared other than one is a man, the other is a women), it sure is. I think you should focus on the part where I never said that. Because that's my favourite part.

I'll readily admit gender is probably the least useful identifier in everyday stereotyping, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a factor. Based on simple demographics, I can tell that women are most likely to pick up certain magazines in the grocery store, while men are most likely to pick up other magazines, as a really random example. I can also tell you that as a bicycle commuter, I am far more likely to get screwed by another male bicyclist than a female bicyclist. Women tend to behave better on bikes. That's a stereotype based on a generalisation based on statistics that I read in a newspaper once.

Does that mean it's gonna be true in all or even most cases? Of course not, some days I'll just run into a disproportionate amount of idiotic women who aren't paying attention while navigating the city traffic. And is it socialisation? It sure as fuck is, I seriously doubt women have some sort of politeness/consideration hormone that just makes them less dangerous in traffic. But it's still a factor, and it can still help you to prioritise your targets when you're trying not to get pushed off the bike lane and creamed by a bus.

That's the essence of my distinction between stereotyping and discrimination: my stereotypes describe that certain people are more likely to be a certain way. I would never use stereotypes in a prescriptive way, ie. to say that all people of a certain group must/should be a certain way.

[gamer0004]

That's the essence of my distinction between stereotyping and discrimination: my stereotypes describe that certain people are more likely to be a certain way. I would never use stereotypes in a prescriptive way, ie. to say that all people of a certain group must/should be a certain way.

I think that indeed is the exact issue of sexism/racism/discrimination. There are statistical differences, but these are averages and there is often a lot of variance between people in the same average (group). If statistics are literally all the information you have, then it's not sexist to prefer a man to a woman for a job that requires a lot of heavy lifting. If there is some way to find out (as is usually he case), these statistics should not be used as an excuse not to consider the woman.
Which is kind of an issue for the whole sexism/racism/discrimination debate: whether something is racist/sexist/discriminating depends very much on context and (as such) different people hold different views about what is sexism/racism, which means a different opinion should not reduce anyone to being white supremacist sexist pigs, but in many cases that's what people make of it.

[AEmer]

Actually, Jonas, it kindof is sexist to prefer to merge lanes with female bicyclist, because they're more likely to cut you in. It's acting on a stereotype you have about women. Sexism is acting on presumed characteristics of a person based on their gender: It doesn't matter that the presumption is made because there is a very high probability of it being true, to not be sexist, you need to not act on said presumption.

In the bicycle example, not being sexist could have a real cost: You could get creamed by a bus.

Making the presumption, knowing about it, and propagating it, however, is not sexism. It's only the action that's actual discrimination.

Now there is such a thing as irrelevant discrimination; your bicycle strategy? Completely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Noone can actually see through it and tell that you're discriminating, so it doesn't propagate discrimination, and it doesn't make anyone do anything they weren't required by law to do anyway, so it's completely harmless. Even calling it sexism is problematic, because that word has such strong ties to the hatred of women, and to negative and overt discrimination in particular.

But yeah, check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzprLDmd ... e=youtu.be

Both of these characters are being racist by changing their actions because they see people of a certain race and adjust their behaviour solely based on that. Both apparently think that it's in their best interest to do this, because they're scared, and think this is a way of hedging things such that they're safer. They may even be acting on statistics they've read.

Not being racist would come with a real cost to either person; they'd have to take a higher risk, in their minds.

But everything you've said about sports is true; you never suggested someone should act on the presumed strength disparity, just that statistically, it's there.

Anyway, also:

All of that, to me, is a lot more important than some douchey advertising guy making douchey ads for a hypothetical douchey target audience.

Sad mads is sad noone appears to have even read his analysis of the advert.
I get why, because you're really dispassionate about it, but I disagree that the advert was any of those things.

[DDL]

I read it, and thought it was waaay better than anything I could've said.

Didn't want to post just to say though.