Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)

Mephala said:

I tried this but only the beta and from experience with trying betas I definitely say wait for the final product before judging.

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I've been playing it since that open beta recently and it's fun, but it is extremely BETA. More of a hold over till monster Hunter world comes out later this year on PC. People I know who played in the closed beta say it has improved a lot but the content seems a bit on the thin side, after a couple of weeks we were gearing up for end game monsters.

Biestmann I do like the aesthetic of Dauntless, I can easily imagine all the armor sets as a action figures though. It feels very Saturday morning cartoon show.

Manzoon said:

Biestmann I do like the aesthetic of Dauntless, I can easily imagine all the armor sets as a action figures though. It feels very Saturday morning cartoon show.

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Oh yeah, I constantly joke about the sets looking like Power Rangers. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but it's kind of awesome. Speaking of MonHun though, I want to ask as a series novice: does the game cover up the women in the way it should?

Biestmann said:

Oh yeah, I constantly joke about the sets looking like Power Rangers. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but it's kind of awesome. Speaking of MonHun though, I want to ask as a series novice: does the game cover up the women in the way it should?

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No.

Double standards everywhere. Huge disappointment. You literally have fully armored men next to women wearing battle bikinis in it. It's terrible.

Biestmann said:

Oh yeah, I constantly joke about the sets looking like Power Rangers. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but it's kind of awesome. Speaking of MonHun though, I want to ask as a series novice: does the game cover up the women in the way it should?

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Nope. The female armor designs are massively disappointing.

Biestmann said:

Speaking of MonHun though, I want to ask as a series novice: does the game cover up the women in the way it should?

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It's not great. Most armours aren't as egregious as bikinis (though some are pretty much that), but even the "better" ones often have shit like zettai ryōki all over the place.

I ended up playing as a male character. :(

Can you edit your character after creation?

(In Monster Hunter World)

Well, that's disappointing.

Manzoon said:

Can you edit your character after creation?

(In Monster Hunter World)

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Yes, you can edit their hair(both style and color), their clothes(as well as their color), any make-up or tattoos they'd have(to add/remove and I think color too).

Biestmann said:

Oh yeah, I constantly joke about the sets looking like Power Rangers. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but it's kind of awesome. Speaking of MonHun though, I want to ask as a series novice: does the game cover up the women in the way it should?

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Occasionally, but not as much as you'd probably want. It can get frustrating because some of the female armors are really good, but a lot of them feed really blatantly into the artists' thigh fetish.

RoseBell69 said:

Yes, you can edit their hair(both style and color), their clothes(as well as their color), any make-up or tattoos they'd have(to add/remove and I think color too).

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Well I was more wondering about gender swapping in case there was a super egregious armor set, I recall some talk about going through the whole character creator again.

Manzoon said:

The "immersion" crowd, yup I get it now... Glad I knew some nice people in the game, I mostly played with IRL friends but met some cool people in one of the larger linkshells on my server.

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The best part is that the bunny suits have been in the game for something like three years at this point, yet they only became a huge problem when men could equip them. Nor was it a problem when every third Catgirl wears some variant of this. I wouldn't say most of the newer armor is really that "immersive", either.

I've made friends playing with people I've met through MMOs (I still talk to some of my buddies from FFXI), and it adds a lot to play with people you're familiar with or actually know. I do kind of miss the days when people would actually communicate in-game, but also kind of don't, lol.

Biestmann said:

Speaking of MonHun though, I want to ask as a series novice: does the game cover up the women in the way it should?

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Some sets do, but mostly no. It's really disappointing because I love the series otherwise.

Manzoon said:

Well I was more wondering about gender swapping in case there was a super egregious armor set, I recall some talk about going through the whole character creator again.

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I don't think I've heard of the latter, so I can't answer that. Hopefully you get your answer soon, because I'd be interested to know as well.

The MMO talk reminded me how much of an issue this generally is in MMOs. Even Guild Wars 2, a game I like and which I feel generally does a good job with diversity and representation and such, has stuff like this -




Same armor set, same weight class.

Underboob must be the most stupid thing in all of gaming.

Manzoon said:

Well I was more wondering about gender swapping in case there was a super egregious armor set, I recall some talk about going through the whole character creator again.

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You can change the gender, but only after using one of the Character Edit Vouchers they have in the psn or xbox live store as add on content. They give you 1 for free, but any others after that require some money. Things to note are even if you use said voucher, you cannot change your name, nor your Palico.

Manzoon said:

Well I was more wondering about gender swapping in case there was a super egregious armor set, I recall some talk about going through the whole character creator again.

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There is a 1time ticket to fully redo character (including gender). Extra tickets are paid DLC

Edit: beaten like a Great Jargas.

PhazonBlonde said:

Fucking nailed it. Discovering yaoi was like a revelation for 14 y/o me because it was the first time I saw anything like it. (thanks Final Fantasy 7!) Evo Psych has always just been bullshit used to justify racism and sexism. I'd legit hear guys in college using evo psych to justify why men cheated on their girlfriends guilt-free.



This was all over the Soul Calibur VI thread yesterday. A game where you literally have a domintrax woman wearing a thong and brandishing a whip, and where most female characters have FFF cup tits bouncing around moaning when they get hit.... and you still had posters in there being like "yeah but Maxi is shirtless! You can see his abs! Totally the same thing!" No.... no it isn't.

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What the fuck?

Rocketjay8 said:

What the fuck?

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College dudebros are the worst.

Karai Pantsu and Ferrs
Thanks, that must have been what I heard about.

PhazonBlonde said:

College dudebros are the worst.

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I just got out of my first year of college and I never even heard or met any men who do that.

Rocketjay8 said:

I just got out of my first year of college and I never even heard or met any men who do that.

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It's not like people would say that to your face, but there are definitely those types. Some people are always looking for the thinnest of excuses to explain away their shitty behavior.

"My animal brain made me make these series of bad decisions!"

Manzoon said:

It's not like people would say that to your face, but there are definitely those types. Some people are always looking for the thinnest of excuses to explain away their shitty behavior.

"My animal brain made me make these series of bad decisions!"

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Or they are like my cousin who just becomes the scum of the earth. He always brags on his Facebook about how having sex with virgins are his god given right and how "women are trash once they lose their virginity".

So yes, they definitely exist and I wish I had a hammer to brain them all.

Manzoon said:

It's not like people would say that to your face, but there are definitely those types. Some people are always looking for the thinnest of excuses to explain away their shitty behavior.

"My animal brain made me make these series of bad decisions!"

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It was basically that.

"Why are you flirting with me don't you have a girlfriend?"
"Were all just like animals right? And men you know we've got that impulse to spread our DNA around."

no joke this actually happened

Xaszatm said:

Or they are like my cousin who just becomes the scum of the earth. He always brags on his Facebook about how having sex with virgins are his god given right and how "women are trash once they lose their virginity".

So yes, they definitely exist and I wish I had a hammer to brain them all.

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What the fuck

Llyrwenne said:

The MMO talk reminded me how much of an issue this generally is in MMOs. Even Guild Wars 2, a game I like and which I feel generally does a good job with diversity and representation and such, has stuff like this -

Same armor set, same weight class.

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I spent most of my time in GW2 playing charr and asura characters so I forgot the humanoid armors could get that bad.

Nemesis162 said:

What the fuck

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Toxic Masculinity is the best, totally.

It pays to never underestimate the lengths some men will go to - or the depths they will sink to - to get their, eh, "fix".

Xaszatm said:

He always brags on his Facebook about how having sex with virgins are his god given right and how "women are trash once they lose their virginity"

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It's mindsets like this that lead to the deluge of pure and innocent virgin characters in video games - and the stunning lack of hetrosexual women.

I wish I was more horrified.

Xaszatm said:

Or they are like my cousin who just becomes the scum of the earth. He always brags on his Facebook about how having sex with virgins are his god given right and how "women are trash once they lose their virginity".

So yes, they definitely exist and I wish I had a hammer to brain them all.

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:S
On the bright side, I suddenly feel a lot less bad about my own shitty family. :/

PhazonBlonde said:

It was basically that.

"Why are you flirting with me don't you have a girlfriend?"
"Were all just like animals right? And men you know we've got that impulse to spread our DNA around."

no joke this actually happened

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These same men also usually despise the idea of their own girlfriends cheating on them. They are all hypocrites, the lot of them.

Nemesis162 said:

What the fuck

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LucidMomentum said:

Toxic Masculinity is the best, totally.

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Weltall Zero said:

:S
On the bright side, I suddenly feel a lot less bad about my own shitty family. :/

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Yeah, he is a scumbag that just exemplifies the phrase "toxic masculinity". Granted, given how he was raised (a spoiled brat+,,,other things), it's not surprising he has such a disgusting ideas.

Dary said:

It pays to never underestimate the lengths some men will go to - or the depths they will sink to - to get their, eh, "fix".


It's mindsets like this that lead to the deluge of pure and innocent virgin characters in video games - and the stunning lack of hetrosexual women.

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Yep. This delusional idea that women are better if they are virgins is so silly. And the horrific psychological effects for abuse it does to women, in addition to the toxic masculinity it empowers in men, makes it such a disgusting concept.

Many of those, particularly the virgin thing, are carried by mythology and various religions. There may have been a logic to it (not that I'm aware of what it might be) a thousand years ago, but with modern medicine it's a completely baseless belief. I wish I could say I'm surprised the superstition still exists, but religion continues to perpetuate it, largely for their own selfish ends (plain ol' sexism regarding purity testing) and not for the betterment of women.

Religion is, in many ways, a bane to modern thought. I'd say its purpose in the modern day is not dogma, but charity - unfortunately that charity comes with the caveat of them peddling their (frequently backward) beliefs.

esserius said:

There may have been a logic to it (not that I'm aware of what it might be)

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If I had to take a total guess, I wouldn't be surprised if it originated as some kind of extremely rudimentary understanding of sexually transmitted diseases which managed to get turned into something misogynistic because double standards.

Syril said:

If I had to take a total guess, I wouldn't be surprised if it originated as some kind of extremely rudimentary understanding of sexually transmitted diseases which managed to get turned into something misogynistic because double standards.

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I suspect, amongst upper echelons of various patriarchal societies, it also had something to do with lineage/birthright, ensuring that any offspring from marriage would have no secret older rivals/cousins that the mother would favour. On top of all the crap about 'unsullied purity/value' etc. That's where you get the origins of the 'honeymoon' in that it's a period of a month of privacy after marriage where any offspring are guaranteed to be the fathers, or the weird, pointless obsession with wanting to see bloodied sheets on the wedding night. Especially in some feudal societies where the male line was automatic right to dominance and inheritance of kingdoms, this stuff was worth going to war over for them.

Religion aside, men simply like to pit themselves against each other in competitions of conquest and manlihood. Taking a woman's virginity is high up on the point list, as there can only be one man to do that. So if a woman decides to give you her virginity, you really are one big, bad boy. It's just another form of self-validation to those insecure about their worth as a man. And worse, some think they mark the woman as theirs forever.

Biestmann said:

Religion aside, men simply like to pit themselves against each other in competitions of conquest and manlihood. Taking a woman's virginity is high up on the point list, as there can only be one man to do that. So if a woman decides to give you her virginity, you really are one big, bad boy. It's just another form of self-validation to those insecure about their worth as a man. And worse, some think they mark the woman as theirs forever.

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This is a base assumption and is something that's learned or taught. It is effectively just another part of toxic masculinity. Similar to how women learn or are taught to wear dresses. Society forces these stereotypes on gender.

esserius said:

This is a base assumption and is something that's learned or taught. It is effectively just another part of toxic masculinity. Similar to how women learn or are taught to wear dresses. Society forces these stereotypes on gender.

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Absolutely. And therefore you see a lot of men partake in rather horrible behavior. I think it speaks for the patriarchal structure of our society when the stereotypical woman is just meant to be a sexual vessel for the stereotypical man. Myself, after three years of being in a relationship with an asexual woman, had to rethink a lot of concepts regarding my own manlihood, and while it is a recurring struggle, I realized that it is nonsensical to draw my worth as a man and a partner from the frequency of my sexual activity. To begin with, I shouldn't look to be worthy as a man, but simply as a person.

esserius said:

This is a base assumption and is something that's learned or taught. It is effectively just another part of toxic masculinity. Similar to how women learn or are taught to wear dresses. Society forces these stereotypes on gender.

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Media also tends to focus the value of the loss of virginity for young people around that single encounter, painting it as this amazing enlightenment that will never be bettered, rather than something that can be painful, confusing etc, male or female, ready or not. It's rarely depicted as a training wheels learning experience leading to far more pleasurable activities for both parties that then actually know what they are doing later on. A bit like how sanitised both childbirth and death are in media and education (even for adults) too. The pressure (on men by men) for men to be sexually experienced leads to this desperation to both lose and take virginity, which then leads to crap first encounters for both young men and women, and also ridiculous power dynamics where some men hypocritically want their partner to be far less experienced than they are.

Perhaps only tangentially related to this discussion, but seeing as we have pages of anime discussion I thought I'd mention the comics I grew up reading instead! 2000AD (Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, ABC Warriors etc) has an issue this month dedicated to female creatives and characters with a view of expanding its audience from 40 years of being a boys club. Some interesting points in this interview about both the weirdness and necessity of such issues.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp..../the-futures-female-2000ads-all-women-special

Tarr says it was "completely appropriate" for a comic with 2000AD's longevity to focus an issue on women creators. "I think it's a great move that says, 'All are welcome.' If it helps shine light on new and existing female creators then I'm happy to be a part of it!" she says.

However, she hopes that the comics industry won't "need niche things like 'all-female' specials to give girls jobs in comics" in the future – a sentiment echoed by artist Emma Vieceli, who worked on a Judge Anderson story for the special.

"We nearly all strive toward a day when a publisher can do what 2000AD have boldly done here without the main push of the promotion being a discussion about the fact that it's an all-female issue," she says. "I can't remember many comic books being promoted as 'all-male', after all, despite many being exactly that. Why would we care? Why do we care if it's all-female? It really shouldn't be seen as such an oddity.

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What's funny is all the usual manchild 'fan' outrage about 'teh social justice' getting put on blast on social media by longtime male and female fans pointing out that the extreme satire of fascism and violence has been left-wing since its inception 40 years ago. Reminds me of various other satirical vehicles (Private Eye magazine, South Park) in recent years saying that modern events (Brexit and Trump respectively in those cases) are so hard to believe that it's hard to satirise by taking to an extreme without it just looking extremely plausible instead.

This made me laugh on their Facebook page:

I'm sure glad geoff endorsed boogie on his e3 show, fuck him and fuck boogie



(he blames Anita Sarkeesian for the Charlottesville violence/murder)

MattWilsonCSS said:

I'm sure glad geoff endorsed boogie on his e3 show, fuck him and fuck boogie



(he blames Anita Sarkeesian for the Charlottesville violence/murder)

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both sides sides sides. i love how he gives john tron a pass

A Trending Video Gamer, everyone.

I don't really have much to say about Boogie that's particularly polite anymore. He tries to hide behind the label of being a Totally Logical Centrist while peddling dangerous views, and isn't particularly great at it. Francis was never really a 'character', huge shock.

This is basically how I feel.

MattWilsonCSS said:

I'm sure glad geoff endorsed boogie on his e3 show, fuck him and fuck boogie



(he blames Anita Sarkeesian for the Charlottesville violence/murder)

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I really don't understand why so many people give this guy a pass. People that usually will go againt his speeches, but with this guy, somehow, they make an exception. I don't get it.

MattWilsonCSS said:

I'm sure glad geoff endorsed boogie on his e3 show, fuck him and fuck boogie



(he blames Anita Sarkeesian for the Charlottesville violence/murder)

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He might be sitting on the fence but his ass is clearly hanging over one side.

Manzoon said:

He might be sitting on the fence but his ass is clearly hanging over one side.

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More like he is all on one side with a finger poking through the hole so he can claim he's "on the fence".

Ferrs said:

I really don't understand why so many people give this guy a pass. People that usually will go againt his speeches, but with this guy, somehow, they make an exception. I don't get it.

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Then there's also the other chap saying that the 'majority' (straight white guys) are being 'excluded'. I don't get it. As a straight white guy who's participated in Persephone 's thread for the last eight months or so, I'm really not feeling excluded. It fucking annoys me that such arseholes can think they speak for me, let alone suggest that the cause of men murdering people is due to a woman criticising fucking computer games. Jesus wept.

Redcrayon said:

Then there's also the other chap saying that the majority (straight white guys) are being 'excluded'. I don't get it. As a straight white guy who's participated in Persephone 's thread for the last eight months or so, I'm really not feeling excluded. It fucking annoys me that such arseholes can think they speak for me.

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Wait...you're actually not a red dragon!?! MY LIFE HAS BEEN A LIE!!!!

/s

Xaszatm said:

Wait...you're actually not a red dragon!?! MY LIFE HAS BEEN A LIE!!!!

/s

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Us seregios prefer to hide in the clouds, ready to boot those privileged bloody rathalos out of their lairs :D

It's always worth remembering that Standard Fascist Tactics involve taking a "moderate" position to get people on your side, then feed them little nuggets of your true ideology, so as to ween them on to the harder stuff over time.

Redcrayon said:

Then there's also the other chap saying that the 'majority' (straight white guys) are being 'excluded'. I don't get it. As a straight white guy who's participated in Persephone 's thread for the last eight months or so, I'm really not feeling excluded. It fucking annoys me that such arseholes can think they speak for me, let alone suggest that the cause of men murdering people is due to a woman criticising fucking computer games. Jesus wept.

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Pretty much this exactly. There are a lot of dudes I've spoken to that have a hard time not internalizing any kind of critiques. I've seen it in a lot of fandoms any time representation comes up.

Luckily I don't interact with many people like that outside of the internet.