Alright fine, let's call it something else. Equalist? I'm making that word up now if some random-ass political party hasn't done that already.
I'm an Equalist. What does that mean? I think that men and women should be treated equal in everything. If men and women want to compete together in some sport, they're equal. No special rules for either gender. If a man and a woman want to work in the same company, in the same department, doing the same work as one another, they're equal as long as they have the same qualifications, skills, experience, etc.
I even think that both genders, men and women, should get the same time off when they have a baby. They should both get 3 months. It's unfair to men that they only get 2 days. Or whatever it typically is.
Anyway, what really irritates me is that when a woman is accomplishing this equality in a public sphere, the most common thing you will here about her is how attractive or ugly she may or may not be.
How often do you hear that when a man accomplishes something in a public sphere? When some guy is being interviewed about who cares what, how many people actually say "Jeez, that guy's got a face like a fucking bulldog" or "I'd fuck that guy until the cows come home".
You don't. You very rarely, if ever, hear that about men in the public sphere. But if some woman is doing this, especially in a male dominated field, you hear "Holy shit, I can't listen to this old ugly hag, I wouldn't fuck her if my life depended on it" or "Damn, I'd fuck that pussy all night long".
o.O
... da fuq?
The worst example of this is Jade Raymond, managing director at Ubisoft. She was a Producer on Assassin's Creed and EXECUTIVE Producer on Assassin's Creed II.
This is Jade Raymond.
She's married and has a daughter. :)
Yup. She's pretty damn good lookin'. She's got the whole package: intelligence, wit, humor, and beauty. The problem with that last part though is that whenever there's an article about her or her work, it is entirely derailed by said beauty.
It is hard to find articles about Assassin's Creed or Assassin's II that is centered on Jade that talks about Jade and the game and all the work she's done on them. It boils down to a bunch of neckbeards saying "hur hur pretty gurl is smrt, so she's even prettier".
I know this is old news (2007?), but it got to the point to where someone posted a rumor that was completely unsubstantiated, stating that Jade was slated to pose for Maxim's December issue of whatever year in which this started.
Ubisoft and Maxim both came out stating that this was not true after the rumor went viral and then these man-children got mad at Ubisoft for "using a pretty woman to promote their game". AS THOUGH SHE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME, THEY EQUATED HER TO A BOOTH BABE. (If you don't know what a booth babe is, go look it up, they've been banned at PAX.)
The harassment she faced when she didn't even do anything that warranted any kind of attention (except for, you know, making an awesome video game and being female at the same time) was abhorrent. Men that do this shit should be ashamed of themselves; they are the lowest scum of the earth, only scant millimeters about those that physically attack women.
So then this whole Anita Sarkeesian thing happened. Oh you didn't hear about it? Yeah, that's probably because it's buried in nerd culture so it never really went "viral". Until someone was so pissed off at her that he created a video game that allows you to punch her in the face and you'll see livid bruising and bleeding as a result of your punching.
His reasoning? He felt that Sarkeesian was cheating people out of their money with a very selfish goal in mind. She started a project on Kickstarter to raise money in an effort to create a video that studied the Tropes vs Women in video games. This man thought that she should just have used her own money to create such content, and that because he felt she was cheating people out of their money to achieve her own ends, created that game.
All that happened, and then Anita raised way more money than she ever thought she would because of all the publicity it garnered. Now she probably has extra and I just hope she donates it to a charity so she doesn't have to deal with more crap.
I want to know what it is we are teaching boys (children, teens, and young men) that allows them to think this type of behavior is acceptable. Where are they getting that it is okay to verbally harass a woman simply because she thinks that there are really crappy stereotypes of women in video games and this makes gaming much less enjoyable for women?
I feel bad for these males that are so verbally hostile about this specific topic. There are gender stereotypes of both men and women in video games. Any man that says "But what about the mens!?" in response to a woman complaining about female stereotypes in video games has a valid argument. What guy on the planet wants to be some meat-headed lout that is only good for beating the crap out of the enemy? Especially when these fictional male characters are given the body that only a fraction of bodybuilders have achieved, I don't blame any guy for speaking up and saying they've got a problem with it, as long as it's done so seriously and not in an effort to mock the feminist.
Men and women need to come together on these stereotypes and abolish them. No, women, you cannot do it alone. Do not try to put yourself above men. That is stupid. We are equal. We may not need men to succeed in this, but it will be a much better outcome if the two sexes and come together and say, collectively, we want to put an end to this kind of behavior and content in video games.
I'm not even referring to the shit women have to deal with in the online gaming community. After learning the hard way, I do not disclose my gender to anyone I don't know on the interwebz unless it's a close-knit guild in which I know act like adults (more often than not, there are other women in the group that have disclosed the fact that they are women and their husband's are usually in the group too).
It's the kind of stuff on the other end of the game, the things that the writers and producers come up with that makes me want to punch a baby:
Yes, she has a chainsaw for a right hand. I don't know what the glow-y stuff in her left hand is though.
That's Juliet, protagonist of the game Lollipop. She kicks the shit out of bad guys and rips them up with her chainsaw and has way too large of tits for that upper body size (waist and shoulders are too narrow). But she does kick some major ass. It's a very weird game; I'm torn on it's level of female empowerment and the sexism that is totally rampant in the entire concept of the character because, to be sexy you apparently have to have huge tits and be in a state of undress.
She couldn't, for instance, wear proper clothing for going out and beating the shit out of the bad guys with her chainsaw hand. That's absurd! Nobody would want to play that game.
Then you get crap like this:
That's the opening credits of Ninja Gaiden II. A woman, capturing another woman, both of which are showing ample bosom in the process. Neither of them are properly dressed for any kind of combat action and yet, here they are bouncing around like fucking retards.
The camera forces you to look at the captured woman's breasts as the bounce around. The character is reduced to nothing but that. Bouncing boobs.
There's nothing I can do about that. There's nothing I can do to the camera angle so I don't have to be subjected to that distasteful crap. Look, I like bouncing boobs as much as anybody else on the planet (really, I do, I have my own, and they're fun), but I like them in certain places. I don't like them objectifying female characters in video games. At all.
What I'm really getting sick of is this:
Male ninja
vs
female ninjas
WHAT.
THE.
FUCK.
No. Seriously. I want to know why the fuck the gaming industry still has the artistic capacity of a 14-year-old boy that has never seen a real rack before. And don't even try to argue that the chick on the left is clothed anywhere remotely properly for ninja-type combat, that girl would get the shit kicked out of her after they deflated her breasts first.
I wish I could do that!
There.
That is a real mother fuckin' female ninja. And she will kick the shit out of anybody.
Holy shit.
SEE!
Kick you in the head!
I want to see THAT in a video game!
I don't condone violence against women. Don't get that idea out of all this. However, if you're playing a video game and the story has gotten to the point where the protagonist (usually the character you're playing) is set up to fight against a woman, there should not be a problem with this as long as the fight is well scripted (no boob shots, no nut shots, no pulling hair, and DEFINITELY NO THREATS OF RAPE).
The new Lara Croft game would have been pretty great if it did not have the following:
1.) Lara Croft grunting and moaning and screaming ever two seconds
2.) Lara Croft being captured and threatened with rape and you have to fight your way out.
Urgh. That's just distasteful. Look, yes rape does occur in the real world. But so do a shit ton of other really horrible things like genocide and famine and tons of homeless people, and you don't see that kind of shit making it in to a video game (okay maybe some games have hobos on the city streets, but I don't know of any game in which the protagonist is homeless).
Then whats-his-face, the produce of this game, tries to pull a fast one by saying that nobody projects themselves on to Lara's character, they think of themselves as Lara's protector.
WTF I DON'T WANT TO BE HER PROTECTOR, I WANT TO BE HER AND I WANT TO KICK ASS.
-.-
Note: I started this a few weeks ago and I'm glad I waited to publish it because a lot of new articles have come up with men that are now fed up with all of this sexism because it's making them look like fucking neanderthals. See, it's bad for both genders, not just womenz.
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