(02-27-2014, 08:07 PM)Kriven Wrote: I don't know how checking privilege changes what science has and has not learned about how media impacts the ways individuals act in the world.
There is no substantial evidence to validate that playing violent games makes people more violent.
There is no substantial evidence to validate that enjoying any media will make people act more like that fictional world.
Neither is there evidence to the contrary.
unlike violent games, were most gamers know that there is a false correlation between reality and fiction, in the issue of gender people actually (superficially perhaps) identify with media representations and more importantly with the media reaction (or at least that seems to be the implication from the anecdotal examples that are in the media periodically)
as long as we exist in a culture where people believe that representations in media denote some kind of ideal persona, or more particularly are persuaded into believe that those representations are harmful, people will be harmed by them (and that's even if actually direct effects don't exist)
my personal, and maybe idealist, thoughts on this topic is that we should try to promote individualism, where people can separate themselves for representation at all, instead of trying to create a better breed of role model
maybe in a world like that, we'd see a more diverse cast of women in fiction (after we get over the hump of pandering to any kind of demographic)
but I'm saying this as a straight white male so who knows
oh also I can understand why you would have trouble finding the evidence for this stuff substantial, there is so much bias in these edgy topics
also I hope none of you guys are missing the bigger theme of this thread, that we should diversify female representation for the sake of better story telling (and males too even in that regard)