Look, I'm glad the forum is talking more about this than it did in the past, but can we get a little more mature and realize tropes that reinforce unwanted stereotypes in games are not the sole property of one gender, nation or race?
At the risk of getting off on a rant, I get really fucking sick of seeing this attempt to re-frame the debate in Every. Single. Gender. Thread.
No one believes women are the only ones affected by negative stereotypes. No one one believes we should focus our attention on solving this problem to the exclusion of all other problems. No one believes unwanted stereotypes are the sole property of women. Not even feminists. Go ahead and ask one about male body issues or male objectification or racial stereotypes, there's a damn good chance they'll say "Yeah, that's also a problem, and we should work to solve that as well."
Yes, a lot of women tend to spend a fair amount of words and time, maybe even a majority of their time, on the way it affects their particular gender. You know why?
Because it's their fucking gender. There's no obligation whatosever on their part to be equal-opportunity about every single social issue and injustice in the world, especially not when the deck is stacked so high against them in the first place. You have to start somewhere, and they've chosen that starting place. There's nothing hypocritical or inconsistent about that, it's just recognizing that time and energy is finite and you have to pick your battles.
For some reason we expect self-proclaimed feminists to take up the cross not only of their own gender, but of every group in the world with a grievance, lest they be accused of being hypocrites. They don't spend time dwelling on the vast injustice of beefcake male characters? Obviously it's because they're hypocrites, no need to pay attention to them. They write an essay about rape but don't mention false rape accusations? Obviously their priorities are in the wrong place and can be dismissed without comment.
But for some reason, anytime someone tries to bring up a uniquely female issue, the cries of "But what about men's rights/male objectification/prison rape/false rape accusations/etc" come up. It is literally impossible to have a discussion about a female-specific issue without someone coming along and trying to reframe it to being part of the larger discourse of humanity generally being pretty shitty and intolerant to itself, as if we didn't already know that really damn well.
If you really care so much about men being depicted unrealistically and as dumb buffoons in the media, SPEAK UP YOUR DAMN SELF. Nobody's stopping you! Write blog posts, make videos, get active! I'm not being glib about this, I'm sincerely saying, if that's what you think is worth fighting for, you should honestly do it. And contrary to what you may assume, you may find that the feminist community are your allies in your cause. They don't like to reinforce negative stereotypes of
anyone (except maybe social conservatives). Many if not most of them are in fact keenly aware of the ways gender and racial and class and educational issues interact and know that they can't be separated that easily.
But I almost never see posters doing that. I've never seen a "Why are male video game characters so objectified?" thread or a "Why does this industry have such a problem with minorities?" thread. Instead certain posters think the most appropriate place to begin those discussions is in the threads that try to discuss the equivalent female phenomenon.
I can't help but wonder how much they really care about their own interests and male representations given that.
