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StarCraft = Sexist? Some feminists just go too far - Page 5

Forum Index > General Forum
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Tensai176
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
Canada2061 Posts
May 16 2009 20:58 GMT
#81
I'm pretty sure its for an essay for college and certainly she has some points you know, If you can argue correctly, you're never wrong right? I think it took some creativity to draw out the metaphors that she has and such. An example for a high school essay was that the Lord of The Rings was a tale for feminist power or some such.


We see things they'll never see
Chef
Profile Blog Joined August 2005
10810 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-16 21:02:03
May 16 2009 20:59 GMT
#82
Well, GTA IV is intentionally obscene for shock value. It's more interesting to analyse games that aren't intentionally trying to be rude, but are anyway. Some games go out of their way to make a point about cultural stereotypes, like Eternal Darkness. Some games don't think about it at all, and you end up seeing something revealing about how we think.

Anyone who is a gamer expects female characters to be seductive, or damsel's in distress. Tomb Raida: seductive. Zelda: Damsel.

How often do you get characters that are just women with various interesting different personalities? I can point to the Final Fantasy series, maybe. But other than E.D., I can't really think of any others. Big tits mcgee action star and little girl who needs to be saved. [edit: I guess Clock Tower one was pretty phenomenally unsexist]

That's not to say than men get stereotyped a lot in games too... But you at least see various personalities among them, and body types. Only Duke Nuk'em and Gears of War are really saying the protagonist has to be beefy.

What I'm basically saying, is tightcasting a gender to a role isn't feminazi bullshit. It's something that should change if only to make games more interesting.


EDIT: Or 10 posts could happen inbetween this and who I was replying to.. whatever.
LEGEND!! LEGEND!!
FieryBalrog
Profile Blog Joined July 2007
United States1381 Posts
May 16 2009 21:00 GMT
#83
On May 17 2009 05:18 The Raurosaur wrote:

But her point still stands. To use an extreme example, if someone comes along with a KKK booklet and says "this shit is racist", pointing out its target audience (KKK members) doesn't make it less racist.


So most chick flicks are sexist then, since the men are all shallow 2-D characters used by the women as emotional props and outlets to fulfill their dreams. Never mind that its a fantasy for a female audience, its sexist and misandrist!

Amidointhisrite?
I will eat you alive
Rekrul
Profile Blog Joined November 2002
Korea (South)17174 Posts
May 16 2009 21:01 GMT
#84
scvs aren't black are you crazy?

look at the nose and lips
why so 진지해?
Deleted User 3420
Profile Blog Joined May 2003
24492 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-16 21:04:18
May 16 2009 21:02 GMT
#85
On May 17 2009 05:43 The Raurosaur wrote:


Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 05:29 travis wrote:
except for most of those stereotypes and motifs are not only based on truths of our society, but on truths of our behavior as individuals of our species.

That's a totally unfounded statement. Firstly, we don't understand the interactions between nature and nurture with regards to human behaviour, especially considering the conditioning effect of society. Secondly, what about all the different cultures around the world that have different power structures and different stereotypes and tropes?

kewl I get to argue

your point here is a great one, and in general I will concede that many stereotypes may in fact be unfounded outside of our society. but I don't think all.



Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 05:29 travis wrote:
beyond that, mahnini made the most obvious point I can think of. the game is for guys, not for girls. why wouldn't they make it what guys want?

I have to challenge both of your premises here.
1) Starcraft was made for guys.
Really? I'll agree that the market audience was mainly young males, but I doubt the design team at Blizzard sat down and said "right, let's make a good old strategy game for the lads". It wasn't marketed as a particularly "boyish" game.


it doesn't need to be. strategy games = boy games. and I am talking any kind of strategy game, really. chess, go, poker, starcraft, age of empiries, warcraft 3, online games like travian, even the stock market.


2) So they made it with what guys want.
Do guys actively want games with empty female characters in them? Most of the response in this thread suggests that people don't care.

well "empty" is just how you would describe it, but I won't disagree hehe. anyways I would agree most guys probably don't care. however I think most guys probably do like having hot gurlz in their games. but personally I would indeed like complex, interesting female characters in games. who were also hot of course.

(turns out there wasnt much arguing)
NrG.ZaM
Profile Joined March 2008
United States267 Posts
May 16 2009 21:02 GMT
#86
The power of the Zerg lies not in how many productive buildings you have, but in how many reproductive (larva-birthing) buildings you have. Also, their power lies not in efficiency of building (more marines per minute) but in keeping your troops alive long enough to get them nurtured and grown up to a state of power. (Good job for those of you who are putting together the gender argument already).


lolololol I love how backwards this is.
L
Profile Blog Joined January 2008
Canada4732 Posts
May 16 2009 21:02 GMT
#87
The article was written by a single female. In my opinion, that's a clearly sexist and gendered source of interpretation.

Misandry yet again.

You know what else is fucking awesome? The fact that misandry seems not to be a word in most spellchecks.
The number you have dialed is out of porkchops.
FieryBalrog
Profile Blog Joined July 2007
United States1381 Posts
May 16 2009 21:03 GMT
#88
On May 17 2009 05:59 Chef wrote:
Well, GTA IV is intentionally obscene for shock value. It's more interesting to analyse games that aren't intentionally trying to be rude, but are anyway. Some games go out of their way to make a point about cultural stereotypes, like Eternal Darkness. Some games don't think about it at all, and you end up seeing something revealing about how we think.

Anyone who is a gamer expects female characters to be seductive, or damsel's in distress. Tomb Raida: seductive. Zelda: Damsel.

How often do you get characters that are just women with various interesting different personalities? I can point to the Final Fantasy series, maybe. But other than E.D., I can't really think of any others. Big tits mcgee action star and little girl who needs to be saved.


You'll find the same thing in media that caters to adolescent women. Sometimes people just want wish fulfillment. There is nothing wrong with that, what is wrong is getting outraged about it and turning it into a morally significant matter. That's a philosophical error known as moralism.

I will eat you alive
lololol
Profile Joined February 2006
5198 Posts
May 16 2009 21:05 GMT
#89
On May 17 2009 05:43 The Raurosaur wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 05:30 lololol wrote:
On May 17 2009 05:28 The Raurosaur wrote:
On May 17 2009 05:23 lololol wrote:
On May 17 2009 05:14 The Raurosaur wrote:
Did any of you actually read the article, or even its opening paragraphs? While the article quickly descends into the post-structuralist cultural studies style that I dislike immensely, the author points out that:

1) this isn't a problem with Starcraft - it's a problem with society and the structure of our social hierarchies
2) Starcraft is merely symptomatic of these problems, and is useful as an exemplar.

And she has a point. Starcraft fails the Bechdel test; it has few female characters (even the non-human characters are archetypally male). This doesn't mean that those who made Starcraft were sexist - it just goes to show that Starcraft is not above the (potentially negative) stereotypes and motifs that run through society.


And if there were more women, they would complain that women are represented as ruthless killing machines, which is totally insulting to women. There would always be something to complain about.

Stereotype #53: Women complain a lot.
Are Raynor or Tassadar portrayed as ruthless killing machines? You're making a strawman.

Are the zerg portrayed as women and the protoss and terran as men? Who's making a strawman?

What I'm getting at is that the situation you're suggesting (women being in the game, and the feminists still complaining about it) is one that you don't really have any evidence for. If someone tells you you're doing something wrong, and you fix it, and they still say it's wrong, either a) they're never pleased or b) you didn't understand what was wrong with it in the first place.
In this case I think it's a mixture of both of them.


Considering what is called evidence in the article, I have evidence to prove anything you want.
The carrier is definitely female, since he has to nurture his interceptors and he is worthless without them. Now tell me it isn't female despite this evidence! Modern aircraft carriers are given female names, coincidence? The titanic is obviously reffering to a male phallus and guess what, it god hit by an iceberg, most of which in under the water, while only a small part on top shows, which is obviously a female representation!
I'll call Nada.
Jibba
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States22883 Posts
May 16 2009 21:05 GMT
#90
She's got an interesting idea but fails to tie it together with her poor writing. I think she could've stuck to the economy theory and gotten somewhere, but then she'd have to reconcile the fact that Zerg are in no way products of nurture, but strictly nature, which would go against the typical Marxist-feminist critique.

Most of the time people fail when they try to relate gender to specific shapes of structures, and I think she has. She also misses some of the obvious examples and has nothing to say about Kerrigan, who is very much in the model of a third wave feminist, or could even be described as a model of Harraway's Cyborg.

Aversive sexism is definitely present in Starcraft, but I can pretty much guarantee the nearly all-male development team had no understanding of the female orgasm when they mapped out Zerg unit development. Still, her basic premise of unit development and the histories of the races has some merit but she goes in the wrong direction very early on.

Any other political theorists on TL?
ModeratorNow I'm distant, dark in this anthrobeat
lololol
Profile Joined February 2006
5198 Posts
May 16 2009 21:07 GMT
#91
On May 17 2009 06:01 Rekrul wrote:
scvs aren't black are you crazy?

look at the nose and lips


They aren't, it's just the poor lighting. They aren't black in sc2 as well.
I'll call Nada.
Tyrant
Profile Joined September 2003
Korea (South)234 Posts
May 16 2009 21:08 GMT
#92
I'd say that the spore colony could be rather phallic in nature shooting hot green loads of protein... similar things could be said about sunken colonies with their rock hard shaft that makes medics moan in only 3 touches.

I'm appalled that the penis is being bastardized by this game... why it's an insult to men with penises worldwide!
FieryBalrog
Profile Blog Joined July 2007
United States1381 Posts
May 16 2009 21:08 GMT
#93
On May 17 2009 06:02 travis wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 05:43 The Raurosaur wrote:


On May 17 2009 05:29 travis wrote:
except for most of those stereotypes and motifs are not only based on truths of our society, but on truths of our behavior as individuals of our species.

That's a totally unfounded statement. Firstly, we don't understand the interactions between nature and nurture with regards to human behaviour, especially considering the conditioning effect of society. Secondly, what about all the different cultures around the world that have different power structures and different stereotypes and tropes?

kewl I get to argue

your point here is a great one, and in general I will concede that many stereotypes may in fact be unfounded outside of our society. but I don't think all.



He/she is incorrect. All known societies are based on male public power structures, with some possible fringe exceptions that aren't well studied. All military actions are performed primarily by males in known societies. This includes thousands of different societies across the entire globe, including hunting-gathering based societies, that have never had contact with Europeans. Many societies are polygamous (many wives for powerful men), extremely few societies are polyandrous (and the only known examples, about 2-3, are still patriarchal, and the multiple husbands are usually brothers.) Many societies have taboos for menstruating women (which is sexist according to modern feminists), yet they independently created them. Almost all societies discourage female promiscuity, same idea.

Etc. Needs an explanation. Only valid explanation is biological factors, which are actually well studied through the science of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary science in general. Ever wondered why male gorillas are huge compared to female gorillas? Evolution through sexual selection. Same ideas operate in humans.
I will eat you alive
Rekrul
Profile Blog Joined November 2002
Korea (South)17174 Posts
May 16 2009 21:08 GMT
#94
On May 17 2009 06:07 lololol wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 06:01 Rekrul wrote:
scvs aren't black are you crazy?

look at the nose and lips


They aren't, it's just the poor lighting. They aren't black in sc2 as well.


BS

They are totally black
why so 진지해?
lololol
Profile Joined February 2006
5198 Posts
May 16 2009 21:10 GMT
#95
On May 17 2009 06:08 Tyrant wrote:
I'd say that the spore colony could be rather phallic in nature shooting hot green loads of protein... similar things could be said about sunken colonies with their rock hard shaft that makes medics moan in only 3 touches.

I'm appalled that the penis is being bastardized by this game... why it's an insult to men with penises worldwide!


It's 4 touches, four.
I'll call Nada.
Tyrant
Profile Joined September 2003
Korea (South)234 Posts
May 16 2009 21:10 GMT
#96
On May 17 2009 06:08 Rekrul wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 06:07 lololol wrote:
On May 17 2009 06:01 Rekrul wrote:
scvs aren't black are you crazy?

look at the nose and lips


They aren't, it's just the poor lighting. They aren't black in sc2 as well.


BS

They are totally black


Don't let Jesse Jackson find out that the UED reinstated african slavery, the shit will hit the fan.
QuanticHawk
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
United States32157 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-16 21:14:16
May 16 2009 21:11 GMT
#97
My god, that's bad, even for feminist writing. The only thing that's remotely sexist ius the usage of the females in the game.
PROFESSIONAL GAMER - SEND ME OFFERS TO JOIN YOUR TEAM - USA USA USA
Jibba
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
United States22883 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-16 21:19:28
May 16 2009 21:15 GMT
#98
On May 17 2009 06:08 FieryBalrog wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 06:02 travis wrote:
On May 17 2009 05:43 The Raurosaur wrote:


On May 17 2009 05:29 travis wrote:
except for most of those stereotypes and motifs are not only based on truths of our society, but on truths of our behavior as individuals of our species.

That's a totally unfounded statement. Firstly, we don't understand the interactions between nature and nurture with regards to human behaviour, especially considering the conditioning effect of society. Secondly, what about all the different cultures around the world that have different power structures and different stereotypes and tropes?

kewl I get to argue

your point here is a great one, and in general I will concede that many stereotypes may in fact be unfounded outside of our society. but I don't think all.



He/she is incorrect. All known societies are based on male public power structures, with some possible fringe exceptions that aren't well studied. All military actions are performed primarily by males in known societies. This includes thousands of different societies across the entire globe, including hunting-gathering based societies, that have never had contact with Europeans. Many societies are polygamous (many wives for powerful men), extremely few societies are polyandrous (and the only known examples, about 2-3, are still patriarchal, and the multiple husbands are usually brothers.) Many societies have taboos for menstruating women (which is sexist according to modern feminists), yet they independently created them. Almost all societies discourage female promiscuity, same idea.

Etc. Needs an explanation. Only valid explanation is biological factors, which are actually well studied through the science of evolutionary psychology and evolutionary science in general. Ever wondered why male gorillas are huge compared to female gorillas? Evolution through sexual selection. Same ideas operate in humans.
The issue of physical strength is very real, especially since women are unable to fight when heavily pregnant, but the idea is that modern societies should be able to go past the physical requirements that helped create them, just as we expect them to in areas of ethics, etc.

There is still something to be said for the nurture argument, at least in regards to gender roles, which is the basic feminist critique.

I think the real problem with her piece is that she probably decided her thesis before actually thinking about it. That is, she could have done an interesting gender studies critique on the game and come to differing conclusions about different aspects of the game, but instead she pre-determined that the game was anti-feminist and made no effort to adjust her thesis when the evidence failed to present itself. Classic problem of selection bias in paper writing.
ModeratorNow I'm distant, dark in this anthrobeat
micronesia
Profile Blog Joined July 2006
United States24784 Posts
May 16 2009 21:17 GMT
#99
Wow I couldn't actually read all of it... I was able to read about 3/4 of it... That's quite an accomplishment by the author.

There are so many claims that are as close to wrong as you can be in an open-ended discussion, and are actually weaker when the author tires to back it up.

It's clear she chose her goal, then tried to think of ways to reach that goal while writing her essay, even if it meant making claims that would never make sense if you weren't working towards a certain goal ._.

Also there were errors and shit D:
ModeratorThere are animal crackers for people and there are people crackers for animals.
-_-
Profile Blog Joined November 2003
United States7081 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-16 21:21:45
May 16 2009 21:17 GMT
#100
On May 17 2009 06:08 Rekrul wrote:
Show nested quote +
On May 17 2009 06:07 lololol wrote:
On May 17 2009 06:01 Rekrul wrote:
scvs aren't black are you crazy?

look at the nose and lips


They aren't, it's just the poor lighting. They aren't black in sc2 as well.


BS

They are totally black


You're wrong.

While it's unclear as to whether blacks' voices sound different than whites, SCVs have a hapless hickish southern accent usually associated with backwater white trash. This same kind of voice is exhibited in many of the cinema scenes by white characters.



Watch this youtube video. 3:23. Check out the lighting too.
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