Feminist Philosophy

[notorious bum]

At the end of the day, the fashion industry still benefits males in more tangible, monetary/non-monetary ways than the women at the bottom of the food chain could ever dream of. High-end fashion (which involves reminding the world that skinny white women are the symbol of beauty) and celebrity bobble-heads (exploited sex-objects), who are famous for no reason at all, obviously skew those model pay numbers as well. The fashion industry is far from what any feminist would call an example of a "win" over men or career that is more lucrative for women. The job security of a career model, female or male, is an absolute joke.

[Aksannyi]

This exact same kind of logic applies so many times in discussions about feminism and video games, and we all know how well those go. Demographics matter, but only when it benefits women.

I think the problem to me with comparing this to video games and who the target demographic is, is that now the demographic is not just males. There are quite a few males who resist this, and insist that women do not play video games, which many studies have shown to be completely false. The female gamer demographic is growing quite rapidly but the video game culture still heavily targets men. I'm not going to talk about scantily clad women in barely-there armor, but I can see where that's frustrating for the average female gamer, especially when male gamers - especially online - continue to insist that we don't exist, and if we do, we don't know anything about the gaming industry. I've also heard nightmares about women who work at places like GameStop who, when answering the phone, have to put up with men asking for "the guys on staff" because they refuse to even acknowledge that a woman can know anything about games or offer good recommendations.

So I'm not sure that I would look at gaming in the same way. Gaming has become a lot more heterogeneous and thus, should consider appealing to females, and not by making "fashion games!" because of course women just want to shop and look pretty - but having female protagonists that aren't necessarily sex objects or whose sole purpose isn't a male character's love interest. And there has been a lot of resistance from the online male gaming community, because we apparently want to "take gaming away from men and make it all about women!" No. We just want more accurate female representation in games that are actually good and not just pandering to what the male-driven industry thinks women like.

[Salodin]

I won't take it further and go off topic. I just found it amusing that you bring up demographics, then deny the same excuse for other industries.

[Aksannyi]

But I'm not? The demographic for the gaming industry is not all male anymore, nor should gaming cater exclusively to males anymore. It's not the same.

[BaneTheBrawler]

I've also heard nightmares about women who work at places like GameStop who, when answering the phone, have to put up with men asking for "the guys on staff" because they refuse to even acknowledge that a woman can know anything about games or offer good recommendations.

Any gamer calling a Gamestop for recommendations and that sort of thing deserves whatever shit game/product they get tricked into buying.

That being said, this is probably more suited to the Gamergate thread. Feel free to continue it there. I think it's worth discussing.

[Cream Soda]

[Cream Soda]

But I'm not? The demographic for the gaming industry is not all male anymore, nor should gaming cater exclusively to males anymore. It's not the same.

It's catering to what's highest in demand and what nets them the most sales; rather than a specific gender

[Andalusian girls]

as Panda mentioned the modeling world is dominated by men at the highest levels and the sexual exploitation of models (the majority of whom start their career before the age of 16 and so have comparatively little ability to resist sexual predators) is endemic and systemic; this in addition to the fraudulent financial practices and eating disorders which are standard fare, unsurprising given it is an unregulated industry composed of teenage girls desperate to achieve. if the gaming industry was dominated by an upper layer of female producers who regularly sexually exploited the majority male developer underclass of the industry, who they also deigned to rob, you would have an accurate analogy.

by all accounts male models are likewise regularly coerced into sexual encounters with gay or female figures of power, but with less frequency given their far smaller numbers. but to look at the industry as some kind of feminist victory because in-demand female models make more than less in-demand male models is absurd. i've seen a lot of feminist complaints about equal pay for equal work but precious few demanding WNBA players make what their more popular male counterparts make.

[BaneTheBrawler]

This seems relevant, so I'll go ahead and ask:

I can't cope with the amount of cishetero privilege oozing from this statement.

This confuses me. Are you joking? I don't understand how knowledge of an industry has anything to do with privilege.

[Andalusian girls]

a jest, panda is an upper-class heterosexual white male with a solid deadlift, he never uses the term privilege except ironically

[BaneTheBrawler]

Okay. Internet, hard to tell, etc.

[BerenTebogo]

a jest, panda is an upper-class heterosexual white male with a solid deadlift,he never uses the term privilege except ironically

bolded for all that matters

[Gredival]

I think you've misunderstood the culture of 4chan. Tits or GTFO is not about entitlement to see females naked - it's about punishing women who deny their anonymity, which everyone has in equal measure, in order to seek the privilege of female status on the internet. There are no "femanons". There is just anon. I can go into this more if you'd like, but it doesn't seem to be the meat of your argument.

You're right it's not the meat of the argument. Insofar as I don't want it to be distracting, I'll concede that I could misunderstand the mentality given that I'm far from an active participant in 4chan. But the counterpoint I would bring up is that, yes, by identifying as female you remove a level of anonymity. But isn't the default assumption that you are male? And, AFAIK, even when you post something that outs yourself as a male, you are not told "Balls/Dick or GTFO." Comparatively, a female on 4chan is told "Tits or GTFO" immediately upon any identifying information, even if she doesn't initially introduce herself as a femanon,

I can absolutely agree that we as a society need to be more accepting of people as they are. However, an important piece of that is recognizing that maybe society is a reflection of the average person, as opposed to society determining what the average person is. If you watch that Brainwash series on youtube, you'll see that time and time again sociologists give far too much credit to society shaping humanity, when society has little impact on how people think and feel.

There is utterly no defending the photoshopping of children (or anyone for that matter), but I absolutely will argue against the notion that the content in magazines seemingly pushing women towards settling down and men towards promiscuity is some kind of holdover of patriarchal society. As I went into a few posts ago, men and women are biologically different when it comes to mating, and these differences combined with hundreds of thousands of years of evolution (biological and social) has lead to men ensuring their genes continue via promiscuity, and women ensure their genes continue via monogamy and sexual choosiness. When you say "they are catering to implicit assumptions from society that exert forces on what their readers do" you are literally giving credit to society where credit is actually due to biology. The reason those things sell is because a majority of the demographic for a magazine implicitly agrees that those are desirable things. I can't stand economics at the large scale, but on the small scale like this, it's a well-accepted and obvious notion that free market products will, over time, become more targeted towards their consumers. There is such a thing as creating false demand, but that's nigh impossible to do with media. If people thought the stuff in the magazines was bullshit, backwards, and they had no interest in it, then they wouldn't buy it.

This is getting a bit into a nature vs. nurture argument, and maybe that's where the heart of the disagreement lies. I hate to reference it again, but those Brainwash videos are really fucking good, and they have one that goes into a few studies about nature vs. nurture, and the science overwhelmingly indicates that nature is the dominant factor at play. Nurture can push us a little bit this way or that, but the majority of who we are is determined by our brain patterns, which is determined by hormones, which is determined by genes.

I said this in the Sexodus thread I believe, but the literature I've read on the subject is that monogamy is an evolutionary adaption that creates incentive for BOTH sexes to cheat. Males who cheat are successful are able to pass down more genes and basically get another male to raise their offspring. Females who cheat are able to get offspring with superior genetics (assumption that they cheat because the other man is a superior genetic specimen) and still receive the protection and support from the cuckolded male. This isn't specific to humans; the sexes of all species are in evolutionary arms race with each other, but it's most potent in species that rear their young since there's much more investment.

It's basically a prisoner's dilemma. Both mates are better off cheating, but are worse off when they both cheat. The ideal option for the pair is mutual faithfulness, the ideal option for the individual is cheating.

Yet, however subtly and implicitly, society, tolerates one sex cheating more than it tolerates the other sex cheating. It's heavily clustered with how female chastity is more valued, something you've already pointed out.

And as I said, it's not that I believe these magzines are sexist; it's that I believe they write what sells. They aren't pushing with the intent to reinforce gender norms. The fact that they write these articles is a reflection of the norms ingrained in our society.

And I don't believe it's that society merely reflects nature, and I don't believe it's false demand. We're talking about ingrained biases that assimilate themselves into people's world view.

If you want proof of that, look no farther than racism. The civil rights movement didn't erradicate racism when the Civil Rights Act was signed; it took time and education, over multiple generations, for racism's hold to weaken (and it's still strong in many regions of the country). You are seeing the same thing with gay rights. The increased support for tolerance is coming from younger generations. Even sexism itself; we've come from a time where women weren't allowed to vote to one where a woman is the presumed front-runner for President.

The fact is that teaching tolerance works. I don't think you can deny that.

Our real dispute is whether or not there's still work to do. Many people think feminism is silly because they think feminists are arguing it's horrible to be a woman in today's society. And that's why I said the fight isn't about explicit sexism anymore, it's about subtle biases. No one is going to argue explicitly that women are entitled to less rights; they may, however, judge a woman for dressing provocatively and sleeping around without passing the same judgment on a man.

[thetruepandagod]

a jest, panda is an upper-class heterosexual white male with a solid deadlift, he never uses the term privilege except ironically

Damnit i've been outed. I just wanted to talk about fashion for once...

[FNH]

But I'm not? The demographic for the gaming industry is not all male anymore, nor should gaming cater exclusively to males anymore. It's not the same.

While it is 52%male/48% female, the studies and reports seem to put "gurl gam3rs" in puzzle/sim/board/card/mobile games. They also report women are more likely to stick with just a few games versus men playing multiple games. It's more profitable for the industry as a whole to market games towards males based on the attention span, put multiple shiny cool new game and guys will buy them and play them for a couple weeks before hopping to another one(see new COD/Madden/NCAA every year) I can't find a breakdown of how much money is estimated to have been spent between men and women. Though I did read that women spend more money on casual/mobile games which is apparent in the marketing for those as most of the popular ones are gender neutral or just slightly feminine. All the gaming industry has to do to be financially successful with the female market is putout a freemium Cooking Mama Mobile game and women will sink more money within the mobile game.

[Aksannyi]

I don't even want to talk about how sexist the last line of your post was. You couldn't have possibly picked another example, like ... literally anything else?

Also, I have to ask, would men really not want to purchase video games if the women were clothed? Would men really not want to purchase video games if they had a strong female protagonist (I mean really, Metroid did pretty damn well)? Is that really going to ruin the gaming industry?

And yes, I recognize that we were supposed to transfer the gaming talk to the other thread, this is why I didn't respond as thoroughly as I usually might have.

[FNH]

I don't even want to talk about how sexist the last line of your post was. You couldn't have possibly picked another example, like ... literally anything else?

Cooking Mama is an actual game that I didn't make, so I'm not sure why the finger pointing. Though it isn't currently a mobile freemium game, yet. I could have used Kim Kardashian's Online Adventure and would still be an actual game marketed to women that buy the shit out of it.

Also, I have to ask, would men really not want to purchase video games if the women were clothed? Would men really not want to purchase video games if they had a strong female protagonist (I mean really, Metroid did pretty damn well)? Is that really going to ruin the gaming industry?

And yes, I recognize that we were supposed to transfer the gaming talk to the other thread, this is why I didn't respond as thoroughly as I usually might have.

Tomb Raider has been a big seller in addition to the already mentioned Metroid. Perfect Dark was a superior game to Goldeneye, imo. The main characters gender doesn't really matter if the story is good. Why move it to another thread? This concerns feminism/gender issues.

[Gredival]

Insofar as the Gamergate thread is a clusterfuck that I'm not entirely prepared to moderate right now, I want to permit the use of gaming as an example. I think, given the fact this is a gaming site, it's one of the more potent examples we can use to discuss whether or not society demonstrates latent cultural biases since it's something we are all familiar with. Moreover, GamerGate is, at least partially, a subset of general Feminist philosophy.

However, the discussion should not center on just the gaming industry and. The point is to use the gaming industry as an example to discuss or illustrate broader concepts.

Also, could someone provide some evidence on the deceptiveness of the 50/50 spread on gamers? I, personally without having studied the issue extensively, do believe that the inclusion of "casual" games fudges the numbers; however I believe that females can still make up a decent portion of the traditional gaming population. So I'd be interested to see if there's any analysis of the data out there that shows breakdowns by genre, age, etc.

For instance, I imagine in terms of proportion of females to males is actually gradated in the order of Mobile > Console > PC... with the majority of those PC players being MMO. Unscientific anecdote, I've met tons of female console gamers, lots of females who play MMOs, but very few females who focus on "hardcore" type games (i.e. eSport caliber titles)

[Aksannyi]

I know Cooking Mama is a real game, it's just ... of all the examples, that's the one you go with? And yes, I actually do cringe at the fact that people play that stuff.

For what it's worth, I don't really count mobile games like Candy Crush or Farmville as gaming, you play for a few minutes twice a day and that's it, not really gaming, imo. I'd be interested to see where females fall in terms of traditional gaming versus the cell phone game market. I mean my mom plays some online casino game, and I do not consider her a gamer, nor would she consider herself one.

[FNH]

http://www.theesa.com/wp-content/upl...SA_EF_2014.pdf


shows 52%/48% split of players with a 50/50 split on purchasers, which could be written off as moms? Casual/social/board/card/puzzle make up 58% of their online games played most often, and 77% of mobile games played most often. I would think if they include people who play freecell it would skew the numbers a bit.