The Male Gaze

[Jalopes]

*Ignore This Post* - algony is right, it's better suited to a pm than in the topic

[lord bestfriendgeny]

http://www.derailingfordummies.com/#hostile

[Koopaul]

This topic started out about whether or not its wrong to sexualize women in the media. All other sexist issues do not comply.

They're all part of the same thing. You can't take one sexist thing away from sexism as a whole, because it's part of an institutional system.

What you're basically saying, yet again is "I enjoy it, therefore it's okay".

I see it as harmless as a big fat character in a movie farting. Tasteless, yes. Insulting to fat people, maybe. Directly affects people in the real world, no.

Does the male gaze change how men in society treat women?

Or is this about how women are treated in fiction... who cares? Its not real. As long as we are not treating women like objects in the real world I don't see the problem.

Wait. Masturbation. Women are objects of man's desire in our fantasies. Think about it. Straight men here, I ask you, when you masterbate, do you think about the women as a person? Or do you just think about their body?

Does that mean every man who masterbates to the imagery of women are sexist?

I have a feeling I just started something I'm going to regret...

[Alpha Six]

Farting is not insulting to any specific people. Everybody farts, not just fat people. Hell, I just farted five minutes ago. Who is offended by that aside from the people that think Flatulence Is Disgusting? :I

Does the male gaze change how men in society treat women?

Or is this about how women are treated in fiction... who cares? Its not real. As long as we are not treating women like objects in the real world I don't see the problem.

If a movie treats a woman as a sexual object. it is wrong. Regardless of fiction.

If a movie treats black people as slaves and is not actually based on a time when slaves existed (or based on the movie at all, nor negatively promotes slavery/racism in any shape or form), it is wrong.

If a movie treats gay people as a sin on mankind, and is not actually based on a storyline where Treating Gays Like Shit Is Wrong, it is wrong!


Just because a story becomes fiction doesn't make it okay-- otherwise, fiction would be a lot worse off than it already is.


You're making this sound like nobody deserves to be offended or that it's not a big deal because "nobody is physically affected"-- when in all truthfulness, male gaze promotes the idea that women are, indeed, sexual objects created only for our gain. It doesn't matter if it's fiction-- it promotes negativity, which is wrong.

Wait. Masturbation. Women are objects of man's desire in our fantasies. Think about it. Straight men here, I ask you, when you masterbate, do you think about the women as a person? Or do you just think about their body?

Does that mean every man who masterbates to the imagery of women are sexist?

Did you really just compare masturbation to a woman roles in society?

Do you, with absolutely no doubt in your heart, think that talking about men getting off to women's bodies is going to feed your argument about how male gaze isn't a bad thing in basic entertainment?


That is sort of the point of male gaze. Women are not supposed to be limited masturbatory aid for men in entertainment, or even in life.

[GrooveMan.exe]

This topic started out about whether or not its wrong to sexualize women in the media. All other sexist issues do not comply.

As far as I'm concerned this is entertainment, we want to see things that entertain us. And while it may be insulting to women, I do not feel this directly affects our views on women as a whole.

Yes there ARE still problems out there, but I don't feel this the biggest issue.

I screamed at my laptop when I read this. As aforesaid, Male Gaze exists BECAUSE of sexism. Because of things like privilege and objectification in general society, Male Gaze gets a pass in media in the first place.

What's more, media is INCREDIBLY REALLY VERY important in altering how we view society. The relatability of media depends on reaching our sensibilities of what's normal. And pretty much all producers of media are putting "What they think" into their work. All media contains messages from its creators. We just covered how the director's opinions on women were included into Bayonetta. In high school you covered Dickens, or Shakespeare, and learned how they put social commentary into their work - relatable to the consumers of the period. What messages the media tells us is very important, whether we choose to take them on board or not.

i don't look at jerry seinfeld (in the show) and think "yeah man, i wish i was him." i think wow, this guy is ridiculous (which is how it's usually played up)

if you can point out specific instances where the sole reason we're supposed to like a character in anything is specifically that they sleep with lots of women and don't give a fuck, then maybe you're right, but generally i've found that most, if not all of the time the sympathy comes from elsewhere (or is non-existant)

Duke Nukem Forever.
God of War.
Persona 3/4 (Technically)
Every frat movie made after American Pie
A very large percentage of modern gangsta rap
CASA-FUCKING-NOVA actually let's look at the entries listed in the Casanova entry on TV Tropes there are quite a few:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Casanova

[GrooveMan.exe]

Or is this about how women are treated in fiction... who cares? Its not real. As long as we are not treating women like objects in the real world I don't see the problem.

Wait. Masturbation. Women are objects of man's desire in our fantasies. Think about it. Straight men here, I ask you, when you masterbate, do you think about the women as a person? Or do you just think about their body?

I have never felt 'othered' over a forum post before.

I think I'm done with this thread for a while, this is getting a little upsetting. If any posts get out of hand, please don't hesitate to warn them, so I'm notified.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

So if I understood correctly, Alien is a sexist film?
Does this also mean that Metroid games are sexist, since Samus as become an object of desire which you control, and her dangerousness only excites us male players because it plays with sexuality?


Now I want to make a game with a female lead character who doesn't fall in those categories. Or... maybe I shouldn't let the player control her. I think that's a bad idea. What do you think?

[Chutzpar]

Right. I've got me coffee and some time to kill before an interview, so I'm going to field a few things.

First and foremost I have to admit fault with my explanation of the male gaze, I was tired and angry so I phrased it poorly. The male gaze / objectification of a character is not only applicable if the character exists for no other reason. It's more about the context of their actions, and how it compares to how men are treated.

So, say, if we get a strong, capable character who suddenly decides it's time to take her clothes off, adopt spine-breaking contrappostos and moan seductively - that's still pandering to male gaze. For me, personally, that's worse than characters who are just one-dimensional vessels for the male gaze; if it's a previously strong character who's suddenly debasing herself it strikes me as some sort of BUT LET'S TAKE THAT CHARACTER DOWN A PEG thing. Which is horrible.

To repeat myself, it's also somewhat dependent on how men are treated within the same context (if men are ever given a sexual context, at all). I already explained the difference between Kratos and Bayonetta; while both make a business out of ass-kicking and have a sexual element to their character, the difference is in levels. Kratos can be sexual, but in doing so he is never sexualised. Bayonetta, conversely, is absolutely defined by her sexuality. I want to point out again how fucking creepy and intimidating it is for violence to be sexualised, but beyond that, the fact that her power is intrinsically tied to her sexuality is itself sexist, and her sexuality is shown in a way that's meant to be watched and made a spectacle of. Women are almost always handled depending on their sexuality or their attractiveness.

Someone mentioned Sarah Palin already, didn't they? And you're arguing against the existence of male gaze?
Did I miss all the articles talking about how Obama was set to win because of how he's ~sexy~, or articles criticising the cut of McCain's suits? Because I saw an awful lot of similar shit levelled at Palin (and conversely, an awful lot of stuff criticising Hillary Clinton for not being attractive enough).

Women are rarely characterised as just being capable. They always have to be capable -- and sexy!
And that's even if they're lucky enough to be characterised as capable at all.

That's why the action girl thing is sexist; it's always an extension of sexuality, or the character is still largely shown as a sexual one. The same can not be said of men. That's why it's sexist.

---

Alien isn't really a sexist film, btw. It's not half as good a feminist film as it sets out to be, but it's not what I'd call sexist.

---

Oh and this pissed me off:

That says something about the mentality of the youth of both genders, and what roles they actually choose to accept and endorse.

these things do not happen in a vacuum.
Stereotypes are self-perpetuating because we're raised in a society that punishes people for deviating from the percieved norm. It's hard to "choose to accept or endorse" something in a meaningful way when you've been indoctrinated with that shit since you were born.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

Okay, thanks for the clarification!

If it's a previously strong character who's suddenly debasing herself it strikes me as some sort of BUT LET'S TAKE THAT CHARACTER DOWN A PEG thing. Which is horrible.

That seals my doubts over Samus, okay!
It's a good twist to reveal her to be female (I never knew I was playing as a woman with Samus on Smash Bros 64, but I thought he/she was a cyborg badass), but I felt let down when I realized she was a sexualised blonde woman.

[DavidCaruso]

first of all, idk where you're getting the idea that a theme is aesthetic. a theme will resonate through the entire game, in the aesthetics, the plot, and, in a well constructed game, in the gameplay. its a far more important aspect of the game than you are making it out to be. in duke nukem forever, the misogynistic themes resound through the game, in the aesthetics, the story, and even in the gameplay. this makes it VERY hard to ignore and far more prevalent than the gameplay flaws, however egregious they may be.

The "misogynistic" themes in DNF (lowest-common-denominator pointless sexypandering and outright hatred of women are different things -- both are bad of course but in this case it's technically not misogyny) are mainly aesthetic (story, graphics, and audio all fall under the general "aesthetics" category), and can be fixed without impacting how the game plays very much, if at all. Here's a basic example of how I'd do it:

1. remove the cutscenes with the twins, including that one with the alien pregnancy (they're Half-Life style in that you can look around and whatnot, but the player still can't impact anything that goes on in them meaningfully e.g. saving the girls, and they're generally irrelevant to the plot and just there for fanservice, so their removal doesn't affect the game's overall design much if at all)
   
2. change the wall boobs in the Hive level to glowing Ego Increase rocks/panels or something, and remove the gratuitous breasts on the alien boss
   
3. put more clothes on all of the women and make it so they say more than just exhilarated screaming or damsel-in-distress-ing whenever they see Duke
   
4. make it so those creepy-ass vagina doors in the Hive level are just regular doors
   
5. change the "babe" in the multiplayer mode to a flag

I have no clue how to handle the strip club dream level at all though (the dumb condom/popcorn fetch quest could probably be replaced by an equivalent one with different items but idk), but all of the other changes are basically separate from how the game plays, or its mechanics and level design. It's not very intertwined in this case (again, with the probable exception of the strip club level).

if you think that awful themes in videogames should "just dock the games a few points" there's no hope in getting you to understand the problems inherent with accepting women being treated as weak and unable to function without a male behind her/women being treated as cheesecake and fanservice with or without the flimsy excuse of "but she's a strong woman who's in control of her sexuality"

I never said that this wasn't a problem. All I'm saying is that there can still be great games in spite of bad themes, and if and when this happens it should at least be recognized as such instead of the entire or major focus of criticism being on the themes. Same with movies. More justification and support for that below.

comparing this to outrageous things like child porn/lynching is a non sequitur, because as it stand these things are reviled in our society, while sexism is highly prevalent and accepted

Only reason I mentioned those things was because others brought those up to me and I was responding to them. Isn't the Rapelay example the same way anyway (rape is reviled in our current society)?

seriously the gameplay and mechanics of a game do not matter one fucking bit if the content is going to openly display out-and-out discrimination and marginalisation of any group, not just women

Hm, would you also say the same applies to movies, that their narratives and visuals don't matter if they display discrimination of any group? If so, have you heard of The Birth of a Nation? It's an incredibly racist movie, with scenes where black people are depicted as unintelligent and aggressive; at the same time, it's also a landmark film and widely regarded as one of the best and most influential ever made, it was selected for preservation for the Library of Congress, it has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it's on Roger Ebert's Great Movies list, etc. It also came out at a time when racism in the United States was considered okay, "highly prevalent and accepted" even. So why is such an openly discriminatory movie regarded so highly? Well, read Ebert's review; he spends time criticizing the racism, but at the same time he also spends time admiring and complimenting the craft of the film: its powerful narrative, its revolutionary new camera and editing techniques, its visual beauty, and the many unprecedented things it did in general. He says "it is a great film that argues for evil, [and] to understand how it does so is to learn a great deal about film, and even something about evil," and his review reaffirms and justifies the film's status as one of his selected Great Movies.

Now, is there any good reason that a similar type of criticism can't or shouldn't be done for a similarly offensive videogame, especially one which manages to have great mechanics and design (the equivalent of plot and cinematography in movies, in terms of importance) in spite of any ugly themes? There aren't many great videogames with ugly themes (closest I can think of is Bayonetta, at least in the context Tachikoma puts it in) right now, but as videogames get closer to a fully immersive and free virtual reality more taboos are going to be broken, and this issue is only going to grow in importance.

grow up and get out of your fantasy world of "a game is good if its gameplay is good and nothing else matters". rapelay could have been the pinnacle of pc gaming with fantastic gameplay and beautiful graphics, but at the end of the day it's still a video game about raping women (which is, as i hope you know but at this point i am not completely sure, a Bad Thing).

I never said that gameplay is all that matters ever. If you read my post again, I said that there are cases where a game can be ruined for me if the aesthetics and/or themes are bad enough, and that the examples others gave (games about child porn, lynching, etc.), as well as this one, fall squarely in that category. At the same time, I'd hope that in this hypothetical case, critics and experts talking seriously about the game would not dismiss it entirely as soon as they saw it, and mention that it's a "pinnacle of PC gaming" in spite of the disgusting theme (just like the Birth of a Nation example I mentioned above is a landmark movie in spite of its racism). That is what "growing up" entails =P

It's a good twist to reveal her to be female (I never knew I was playing as a woman with Samus on Smash Bros 64, but I thought he/she was a cyborg badass), but I felt let down when I realized she was a sexualised blonde woman.

Other M never happened. Please don't remind me, I refuse to accept it as canon



EDIT: ok, to clarify:

[2: 22: 35 AM] radkojjiro: carusos point is that sexism is cool as long as hes entertained
[2: 22: 35 AM] radkojjiro: That's Sort Of Not Admissable
[2: 22: 36 AM] radkojjiro: ever

do people actually think this is what i've been saying? wtf.


EDIT II @ Tachikoma's below post (because making a new one seems like a waste):

[2: 58: 39 PM] Sengir: i have the mental image of a naked guy in a battlefield bending over and blasting massive shits

(and yeah, we do =P)

[Sengir]

Why don't we ever see games like chess? The woman is very capable and not overly sexed out. Even the pathetic male pieces cower in fear, a true testament to a woman's capability!

[Chutzpar]

You heard it here first, people! One board game completely outdoes an entire culture of sexist imagery.

---

Spoiler

are you shitcannons not realising I'm being facetious, just wondering

[StarSock64]

Gillian I don't think that's what he meant
but it was still funny

I don't know why this is even such a big discussion. It's so simple: sexism is never good! Ever! Including in video games! Objectifying women is sexism! You can say "but it's just a video game so it's not as important" except...what, are you one of those folk that doesn't see them as an art form, too? Or see how important they've become in the lives of our youth, whose opinions haven't been fully formed yet? It's not all gameplay gameplay gameplay! it's a full package. I think people spent a lot of time talking about the big picture (I kind of just skimmed because wowee), which is the important part. But I wanna talk about some very game-specific things, like

As a girl, you can't play a "hardcore" video game sample in a store (the MVC3 setup in a best buy I saw is a very good example) without feeling like the guys are looking at you, figuring that you don't know what you're doing or how to play. They probably wanna take over and show you how it's done!! Make the little girlies get outta the way so the big boys can play for REAL. If you think this is just senseless paranoia then you're stupid and uninformed. And "well who cares what others' think!!!" is also really stupid and you couldn't possibly understand if you're not a girl because oh wait you're not a girl and you can't see how this affects other parts of your life all the time as well. It's a cumulative thing, and it wears you down.

As a girl, I can't talk on the microphone on xbox live EVER without
1) people assuming I'm a prepubescent boy (because girls don't play xbox)
2) people making fun of me for being a girl (this doesn't seem to happen to girls who sound hot, but I'm sure they're often harassed in other ways)
3) boys feeling bad when I beat them (girls suck at xbox!!!!)
INCREDIBLY ANNOYING so I just never use the microphone except in private chats. Dhurhurr that's just xbox people they're all stupid yeah but um they're EVERYWHERE you can't just avoid them you know? Sometimes even my friends' friends are sexist in private chats. I can't just be forced to not talk to anyone ever, that's not exactly right is it?

And it really ticks me off when characters I like are ruined by sexualization!

Like, Jill valentine was such an iconic-looking cool character just, shootin' up them zombies. And then she was turned into a generic-looking boys' mind control fantasy, complete with body suit, moaning boss battle, cat woman physics and blond hair. And even after she turned back to normal she still looks really boring and generic. I don't know any developer details or anything but it just came across to me as a change for the sake of throwing some "much-needed" sexual appeal to the game, and screw what happened to jill as a result

[GrooveMan.exe]

Okay, this is giving me a headache. Seems like it's time to do a

~MOD CHALLENGE~

The rules are simple. Since David Caruso, Sengir, and Koopaul seem to struggle with the idea that wanton sexualisation can and will ruin an experience regardless of other factors, maybe it's about time you witnessed it from another perspective.

The perspective of the person being objectified! What a wonderful learning experience. To complete this challenge you must either:
- Don high-heels (and additionally any other female clothing you can get your hands on), and have photographic or film evidence of you doing something practical in a sexy manner. This can be trying to run, do kung-fu, DIY, or even walking up and down stairs. You must state what task you intend to do in your heels before you post the evidence. Remember to do said task *sexily*. The women's clothing is optional - but the high-heels are NOT OPTIONAL. Your submission will be peer marked by the community, but the staff decisions are final.

OR

- Watch this video:

Choose 3 screencaps of Bayonetta in a sexy pose. Recreate these sexy poses, and provide video or photographic evidence of you doing so. Again, state which screencaps you are doing - they will be judged on appropriate sexiness level. The evidence will also be peer marked by the community, but the staff decisions are final.

Completing either of those challenges will mean you win the Mod Challenge, and as a reward, I will do one photograph of the second challenge (meaning all 3 if all challenged members complete the task)

Failure to complete the Challenge will result in a week suspension - we don't want your sexist bullshit stinking up the air. Excuses and attempt to get out of, or otherwise cheese the Mod Challenge will be seen as Foul Play, and a Three Week Suspension will be given as punishment. You may forefeit the Mod Challenge, and get a Two Week Suspension as penalty.

You might think this challenge is unfair or humiliating. But remember! This challenge is all in the name of entertainment for the community, and especially me. My 'Male Gaze', if you will. And since it's for entertainment (and these game mechanics I've laid down are pretty damn awesome if I do say so); it's all perfectly okay!

You have one week to complete this challenge. The challenge ends at 10pm GMT on Sunday 24th July. Tick tock.

Addendum: And don't say "I didn't see the this post" I know you're all following this thread.

[Jalopes]

laughing