OF GAMES, REPRESENTATION, AND WOMEN'S CHEEKBONES

author=Max McGee
I don't see how that is so. If lots of guys want to embody the traditional masculine gender role or lots of gals want to be 'traditionally feminine' how is that fact in itself an argument in favor of abolishing those roles? Can you explain?

The problem isn't for people who won't to conform but for people who don't conform. A man who wants to stay home and raise his children and a woman who focuses on her career instead of spending time with her family are both likely to get the stink-eye from people when the reverse isn't true. This isn't just something people need to 'toughen up' or 'get over' because it can manifest itself in real, legal problems. In divorce, men almost never get custody of their children because of the ingrained assumption that women are better at child-rearing, for instance. Women also face a lot of barriers in career advancement that men don't have to navigate, such as the assumption that they'll eventually leave the company to have children.

author=Alichains

author=Alichains
Max has a history of showing up, derailing and shutting down discussions like these. From what I can tell, it gives him some false sense of superiority. There's no point in trying engage with him. You'd be better off arguing with a brick wall.

How about "A safe environment for everyone except for the people who are actively trying to make it an unsafe environment."

author=Sated
On splitting consumer products into men/women or boys/girls, I think that some of you are kinda skipping over the "real world" elephant in the room: Capitalism. Many products are marketed towards stereotypical male/female roles not because companies intend to marginalise people who don't fit those roles, but because it's far more cost-effective to produce adverts that leverage existing broad-stroke stereotypes.

This is 100% true, but that's just doubling down on the stereotypes. We're taught to believe that girls should be hot and guys should be tough (by both the media/ads and the people around us) and then we're convinced to buy things that make us more hot or tough. It's self-perpetuating! And yea, I wouldn't expect advertisers or manufacturers to start being more open-minded on their own. That's why customer feedback and public opinion can be so important: the only way to stop this cycle is to be aware of it and actively resist it, to point it out, etc.

Like other people have said, there's nothing wrong with an individual matching the stereotypes assigned to them - but we shouldn't pretend that's the correct way to be.

But not always. Especially when we're dealing with a recurring trouble maker.

Just saying.

Seeing how Max was fairly mild with his recent post .. moving along,

In a way, to say that an abstract or concept of society creates direct harm is a good point. A concept by itself does not.
However, what this abstract or concept is based on is the very reality of how we interact, how we grow up and how we are deemd to think as normal or abnormal - that is to say, in our gender structure (nevermind being fair to women and men), trans people have no real place by this differantiation alone. We try to sort people in our mind into men and women. The usual train of thought - sex equalling their gender works most of the time, so it is convenient and easy. And when someone identifies with the opposite of their sex, then many are confused and do not know what to do with them. Does the sex not equal their gender? Do they adress them by their sex or their identified gender now?
And this lack of common thought or thought at all makes a variety of problems come up easily. Are they just posing and dressing up as another? Are they just not on good terms with themselves?
Thinking they are gross or monsters at worst, when they can't put it together in their head.

Having a place and education in our parenting for not just cis gender, but trans as well would easily help to broaden that thinking. You could argue the culture and society is built to encourage it, or you could argue the individuals create this environment to begin with with their thinking.
The influence certainly goes both ways.

In the same way, of course, stereotypes can be both useful and harmful. They give a sense of belonging and association, something to pick more easily and ideally give us a way to be proud of who we are.
Being proud of your feminine or masculine traits is a very healthy thing to do. It is unhealthy, though, to be reprimanded if you do not belong to all of these associated behaviours and things. It's also cool to stick together as a group, even if it is just for silly reasons.

Growing up, I hated dolls, pink things, all this "girlie stuff" (I also hated princess peach with all my might) and would rather dig up worms, catch grasshoppers and play football. This gave me a strange sense of aligning myself more with the boys and being accepted easily by them, but not so much by girls. Yet not a second I stopped thinking of myself as a girl deep down, even if I was proud of being boyish and called just one of the boys. I did not actually hate the gender but its associations and stereotypes.
I remember getting very upset once as a boy asked me why I wouldn't get an operation or something to become a boy (which in hindsight, is fascinating and cute in some ways)

And while there are many traits inherent to one or the other - there are many more which we share and which we can expand on. There is far more common ground than we seem to give us credit for, and that is something which may very well be influenced by such stereotyping. And common ground is what we should appreciate just the same as the differences.

going on a bit of a tangent, but it's always interesting to me how people will pretend that the narrow, sexist design modus of a lot of media these days is just a simple matter of market demand, and then immediately turn around and decry any shift in that (because women, trans people, and nonwhite folx make up more of the market than people often admit) as unnatural

like, there really isn't much substance to the 'well, sex sells so this is okay' argument besides being another reskin of the whole 'the unspoken majority is on my side so feminists should shut up' thing.

that said, there are discussions to be had about the ineffectiveness of 'buycotting', and how readily companies will try to capitalize on social issues (see: how many awful companies started selling rainbow merch as though they had been there for gay people all along), but those are issues that educated activists stay abreast of; their presence doesn't invalidate entire avenues of change.

like, it's not really anyone's place to say 'well games won't change anything anyway so you might as well leave them alone'. they matter to people, and that's enough.

that's why I said it was a tangent! the things said reminded me of other things said. I think everyone else is well-enough involved with the actual current subject to permit me a strange interlude.

though my last lines, re: buycotting and so on, were more direct and the bit in quotes probably wasn't doing you any favours. my bottom line, though, is still that people are generally pretty well-aware that marketers aren't really our friends; part of why I disagree with the question of 'is this a feminist film' on its basic premise, actually. (the other big part being that it kind of asphalts over the interesting and meaty points of feminist analysis in favour of a pithy tagline)

as for whether it'll make a difference, a great thing about people is that we can apply our chisels and fulcrums to many different cracks at once! while I have my own doubts about games' world-changing properties on their own, being lashed to the same desperate and monstrous marketing and profit engines as other things, they're just one method of approach.

author=mawk
going on a bit of a tangent, but it's always interesting to me how people will pretend that the narrow, sexist design modus of a lot of media these days is just a simple matter of market demand, and then immediately turn around and decry any shift in that (because women, trans people, and nonwhite folx make up more of the market than people often admit) as unnatural

it's really hard not to quote this whole post and copy/paste the good shit meme and then vomit up a bunch of "CAPITALISM IS THE LITERAL WORST", so I'm just gonna say Y U P

I know someone on the last page mentioned something about gendered marketing being a natural side-effect of capitalism, but I would defs argue that this doesn't help the case for gendered marketing at all, since there is nothing benign or harmless about capitalism, thus making that a null point.

One day I would love to go more into that! That day is not today. I am barely coherent right now and need my coffee. I am really just making this useless post to say "YUP FUCK CAPITALISM IT SURE CONTRIBUTES TO THE FACT WE UPHOLD OPPRESSIVE IDEALS"

bahleted