No pink ponies, but don’t look too closely at the roses either.
I added the "Rude" speech bubble at the last minute to cover up some text on the sign behind Andi. it read too me like it was "meant" to be dialogue, and that wasn't intentional.
No pink ponies, but don’t look too closely at the roses either.
The female voice eh? I truly wonder what Andi’s art represents then. How the price of beauty is pain? How a mother can be overbearing?
I just saw a shoe thrown in a wall and thought it was cool?
This falls squarely in creating something then shoehorn in a message in later.
Sometimes, all you need is to do something you thought was cool. Even if you have to throw in a message later on to please the masses.
You might as well let the masses come up with their own meaning for something you make if you didn’t have one in mind – they’re going to speculate about ten thousand different possibilities anyway.
….But I like pink Ponies.
Heather…
e_e
O.M.G., this strip made me tear up.
Honestly, sometimes I think Tony is really low on the spectrum, just not quick on the uptake, slow to think things through. And then there are moments like this, that show that he is quicker than the rest to make the connection, grasp the concept. I DO hope that he quickly comes to see that women are powerful, smart and creative,… totally human. We all have the same ingredients, just like guys do — only they in a different box, with different advertising pitch. Corn flakes is corn flakes: doesn’t matter if Kellogg’s makes ’em or General Mills, it’s all just corn flakes. Different packaging, still delicious.
Sorry for the food metaphor- it is breakfast right now.
* note to Dave: Hope yur hiatus did you good… Glad to have you back! Happy new year.
Why do they need a separate female voice exhibit if we are the same (I agree, we are) though? 🙂
Just teasing though also serious, I do wonder about this stuff when women complain about there not being enough video games for women… if we go with the equality thing aren’t all videogames (or legos, movies, books…) for everyone?
…especially since the result of that tens to be stuff like cooking mama or pink legos which seems wrong and actually goes against the equality thinking in my opinion.
You should check out the video by PBS Game/Show about “Girl Games” and what they’ve done for the video game industry. Things like Cooking Mama and Barbie games were actually crucial in developing some of the core mechanics you see in modern-day RPGs.
My issue with them is that “girl games” seems to be implying that the other games are “boy games”, and such a division just seems to enforce the idea that men and women are different when we should be striving towards equality.
When “women complain” about video games not being for women, they’re not saying “oh, if only video games catered to stereotypically feminine pursuits, because my life revolves around pink ponies, cooking, painting my nails, shopping and talking about boys” they’re saying that the mainstream industry often excludes them when they’re creating content. The women you mostly see in video games, IF you see them(damsels in distress who serve as objects for male protagonists to rescue do not really count, nor does the women in refrigerators trope), are typically sex objects. Solely there for a male gamer to fantasize about. They’re not characters in their own right. It’s actually a criticism leveled at a lot of media. Funny that.
And your last paragraph isn’t the fault of the “complainers.” They have no control over that. Manufacturers and content creators do. And that typically amounts to them not listening to the people “complaining” and going “what does a narrow-minded, out-of-touch-with-the-audience-they’re-trying-to-reach board of directors THINK women want?” and then making that thing. Of course, that thing sells poorly, and then they come out with “Women don’t like video games.” You’re essentially saying “Don’t complain about being ignored or patronized by the industry, because the industry responds by pooping out something pink and glittery.” It places the fault of bad products on the audience, rather than the creator.
Furthermore there’s nothing inherently WRONG with Cooking Mama or pink Legos. It’s the fact that games and toys and movies like these are often the ONLY choices for women and girls coupled with the fact that there’s a HUGE diversity of choices when it comes to things marketed towards men and boys. The message is usually a pretty clear: If it’s not about looking pretty or being a homemaker, it’s not actually for girls. We’ll take your money, of course, but we’ll still ignore you when it comes to making new products.
Or at least that’s been my understanding of the issue.
I’m glad we’re getting more and more stronger women. We had Samus for the longest time, but now we can count Chell, Morrigan (Both Dragon Age and Darkstalkers), Zelda is taking a more active part in fighting Ganon. I loved that scene in Twilight Princess where you fight alongside her on horseback. All the female MMORPG characters, they might often be scantily clad, but we have to approach things as people are ready for. Hell, in Saint’s Row, the female character is fully voiced and you can make her as slinky or conservatively dressed as you wish.
However, where we must disagree is that there is no choice for women. Every woman I know has said they love the games routinely “meant for men”. I know, my experience isn’t everyone else’s but there is truth that you make your choices. And everyone can enjoy a healthy power trip.
The thing with making games that target only girls doing poorly is that sadly women are a very small minority. It has always been considered a boy’s activity. I know, circular reasoning. You make girl games they sell poorly, you make the games appeal to just boys so you make money, then you push away the girls. So then when you make a girl game it sells poorly. Though I think the steadily growing female hobbyists proves it’s not a problem with the choices available.
It’s the writing. Anyone can enjoy the power trip like I mentioned, and just as supposedly a man is supposed to feel powerful from Arnold Schwartzennegar type characters (Again, I always felt lesser, so I don’t get off on that nonsense.) Women can also enjoy playing tall, buxom, beautiful, and deadly. And that is what gaming is supposed to be about, the escapism.
There’s always going to be stories where you save the girl. That’s inescapable. It is one of the core stories since the dawn of time. It resonates in everyone one way or another. And in gaming, storytelling is still in its infancy. Mario saving Peach or Pauline competed with you on ostrich jousting with other dudes on ostriches……because why not? I say if the games are left as they are, the stories will grow, advance, evolve on their own. Not to say you shouldn’t demand it evolve faster. But it will. Just keep in mind, while change might be slow, it always happens. What will break down and kill any chance of story telling evolution is this censorship garbage so many SJWs are demanding. If you write a woman as the bad guy you’re sexist. If you objectify a woman you’re sexist. Anything but writing a woman as a perfect angel is sexist. That’s what will kill the evolution. Not me giggling like a school boy at Senran Kagura.
If you write a woman as the perfect angel you are also sexist.
I don’t have a problem with the kind of games that cater to boys if there are also choices of games that cater to girls, in roughly the same numbers. There aren’t now, which is why the gender imbalance is being pointed out.
Saints Row IV was my experience of the most enjoyable video game I have ever played, bar none. And I have been playing since the SNES era. SRIV was empowering (not in the gendered sense) in a way I never expected going into it. And I do love that you can craft your character as modest or sexual as you like; more games should allow that sort of option.
…World of Warcraft, back when I played it regularly, had a lot of showing clothing, and some robe/dress outfits. If you didn’t want to be showing your cleavage, wear a dress. I don’t think it was quite that cut and dry, but that’s what sticks in my brain.
I fully agree. Writing a perfect female is sexist. It’s also boring. I want there to be more options for women. I just want this gender divide gone and personally, I want to play the scrawny man along with the fat woman. With a few exceptions. Mindless games catering to men and women by themselves is not a bad thing. Something done for the goofiness of it is always a good thing.
My personal favorite games have nothing to do with genders period. Roller Coaster Tycoon is my all time favorite video game. I like the simple joy of creating things, lovingly crafting a park for people to enjoy, or creating horrible rides to drive the customers crazy if I’m in a bad mood. And as things have continued, avoiding the political annoyances that games with characters I can play directly is so refreshing.
There’s a whole bunch of issues though.
Putting female characters in video games gets developers labeled as sexist, regardless of whether they make the character perfect or flawed. Thus, they stick to male characters. This is what’s keeping strong female characters out of video games at the moment.
Plenty of women can ignore the gender of the person they are playing. I happen to be one of them. My favorite Pokemon game is STILL Silver, even though Crystal was essentially the same game but you could pick a female character. My second favorite is Blue, when there wasn’t even an iteration that allowed you to pick female. I didn’t care, and I still don’t care. I’ll play Halo. I’ll play the original Borderlands. I’ll pick Link for Super Smash Bros despite Jigglypuff and Zelda being awesome choices in their own right.
Complaints that “objectifying” women is a bad thing hit the women who find power in being sexy just as much as they hit the men who enjoy looking at sexy women. Possibly more. “I like being viewed sexually, but that’s being objectified, and that’s bad. What is wrong with me?” I can’t be the only woman who had to work through that and come up with “nothing’s wrong with me, and nothing’s wrong with being objectified”. I’m just not that special.
“Putting female characters in video games gets developers labeled as sexist, regardless of whether they make the character perfect or flawed.”
Now, see, there’s the question begged, right there. “THE” character. That’s the issue. When you have only one character, that’s a lot of baggage. It’s under the microscope. Bam.
When you have many characters, they can have nuance. They can have flaws. They can be “too” perfect. They can lean to stereotypes in one direction, or another direction. Because there are enough of them that it doesn’t matter if any one doesn’t work out.
It’s why the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon was kind of awesome when it hit the second season. Two main characters were girls — one kind of bossy and healer-y, and the other stubborn and butch. The secondary female characters included an antagnoistic trio, with psycho-hyper-competent, emo-hyper-competent, and bubbly-hyper-competent; and the ninja-girl leader; and a pampered princess with a sense of responsibility. Tertiary characters ranged from the lizard-riding bounty-hunter to little old ladies to girls with inconvenient crushes.
There were enough characters that no one of them had to be perfect. They could be human. Flawed. Playing to tropes (because, honestly, it’s a cartoon; it’s gonna play to tropes and play with tropes), but all kinds of different tropes.
That’s what people tend to be objecting to: while each individual game may have its reasons for minimizing female characters or boxing them into a narrow range (and, honestly, I prefer to play female characters; I only have like one male WoW character, and he’s a blood elf, and he’s still not my idea of hawt enough to level him much) — but the cumulative effect is… Not enough to choose from. Want to play a great game? Well, you can do 5 different guy-avatars, or you can do… Missie McBumpies. Yay. (Why does my dwarf paladin’s bosom bounce when she’s wearing plate armor? Gahhh!)
So I gravitated to City of Heroes (Supervillian Granny Wolf! Sonic attacks, kind of plump, and wearing the most dowdy skirt and jacket combo I could force out of it) till it died (and would’ve loved it better had the UI been better), and then found Star Trek Online and glommed onto it with all my little Borgulan grabbyhands. (Tall, cheetah-like Caitian? Yes! Short, curvacious Caitian? Yes! Teeny little ex-Borg Romulan? OH YES. Flat-chested Orion whose only exposed skin is her face? Yup. Muscular Andorian rigged to look like ex-Borg as well? You betcha.)
WoW has better UI, but I’m really kind of tired of the limited options there. -_-
Here’s the only problem with that. Even when there’s many female characters, the people that whine about such things in the extreme whine no matter what.
To go to a different form of gaming, I bring up the game Arena of the Planeswalkers, the new M:tG board game. In a cast of five in the base game, three are women. Each are dressed in a different style and represent different character archetypes. The people in the discussion I was reading were talking about how wonderful it is that the men are outnumbered. Then started talking about the women in detail. Specifically if their clothing offended the idea of strong women.
Nissa is a druid that’s wearing a robe. That went by without any complaints.
Chandra wears body armor. A chest plate that’s slightly shaped for breasts, unrealistic, but that wasn’t their complaint to a point. They didn’t like her midriff showing until someone noted that she’s clearly wearing chain mail. So that reason alone rescued the character.
At this point, I was reading out of morbid curiosity since these women claiming to be staunch feminists were judging the artwork on such arbitrary terms. And claiming to protect the rights of the characters. Hrrmmmm, they’re fictional characters, not real people! They don’t have rights!
Then we got down to Liliana Vess, the only one presented in game with a last name. She was wearing a top that cupped the breasts and was rather sexy. I was sitting there, just happy for a game that was fun and had some cool kickass women. They were whining and moaning about that single detail saying that that made the game worse and were completely writing it off, completely ignoring that some real women would gladly dress like that in real life, that would be their right to do so, and it’s just a game.
And any men that chimed in, kept trying to say they just want to play the game and were shut down for being sexist. Why does gaming have to be such a minefield? Not just Arena, but many games that would otherwise be fine got attacked for such flimsy reasons.
So no, having multiple female characters wouldn’t save a property from the maniacs and fanatics. Any small details that don’t tow the line have to be attacked!
man I wish they’d make more stuff for girls too. it’d be easier to relate to them if they were more into cool entertainment. The problem is they’re stuck in an endless cycle of “no money in making stuff for girls, we’ll make it low-quality” -> “girls aren’t buying the stuff we made for them”
What I say is.. there’s no reason girls wouldnt like the stuff we already have. And cool ones do. But even there they do conciously avoid making, for example, any good action figures of girl characters, for equally stupid reasons.
Basically the executives aren’t sexist, they are responding to what they believe is EXISTING sexism as a market force, and not fighting a futile fight against it. They don’t realize that they are CREATING that situation.
Definitely didn’t mean to fault the complainers for anything, just trying to understand the complaint to begin with. Your second paragraph is what I’m getting at, directors shouldn’t be asking “what do women want” in the first place, the question should be “what do people want”?
The sexualization thing is true to some degree, though nowadays most RPGs let you pick your gender and strategy or simulation games are already gender neutral to begin with.
Or from the other example, where does the idea that regular legos are for boys only come from? I’d think most girls would be just as happy to play with the space or underwater sets as the boys.
I had my wars between the Pirates and the Robin Hoods, with merchants on the sidelines. And I should note that I didn’t really add females to my casts much, although I appreciated a wider variety of hairstyles.
Having a wider variety of colors is good, though. I always used green, blue, and brown (because the Lego brown is quite appealing, and natural), and wished for a wider variety of colors. Now I’m glad to see that a wider variety exists and you can grab what you want on Bricklink.
As for “what do people want”: I point out in my way too huge post (just below this one) that if you try to ignore gender distinctions entirely, you just write your own gender biases. At present, especially because there is such an imbalance in the stuff that caters to male interests versus the stuff that caters to female interests — and so much stereotyping in both, but especially in the female-interest stuff — there should be attention paid to gender.
From everything I’ve been watching on the subject over the past couple of years, it’s like the race debate. People who are in the position of power have NO CLUE what the other side feels like. Trying to stay “neutral” in that effectively stays with the biases of the position of power.
Go look up the Extra Credits episode on Rust. It points out that some people are saying they can’t enjoy the game if the in-game character doesn’t match their real-life racial details. Extra Credits points out that if this is truly the case, it’s an excellent argument for greater representation in games, because how often does a minority player get to choose freely among dozens of options of characters that look just like them?
By the same token, if there’s a lot of stuff that appeals to guys and a little stuff that appeals to girls, and the girls push for some more stuff that appeals to girls and/or avoids the “male eye candy” idea, and the guys say “HEY WAIT! We can’t enjoy this stuff made to appeal to girls. It’s not fair! Give us stuff we can BOTH enjoy” then they’re actually making the argument for having a wider variety of stuff that isn’t aimed primarily at guys. And they’re not in a position to be aware of just how skewed the setup really is right now.
Thank you, Gordon. That was pretty thorough 🙂 I’m replying here for width because this is gonna be long.
AnvilDude is right: The PBS Game/Show episode is well worth watching and was eye-opening about the history of a facet of the industry that I had never paid attention to. Just be aware that that series attracts some really nasty and dismissive comments (I think they have… what’s the word for the opposite of a fandom? people who drop by every video just to comment negatively on it?), so you might want to avoid the comments section.
I grew up an avid reader and I never bought the argument about needing female characters to be able to relate to stories. Even now, when dealing with stories that have strong female leads, I gravitate toward male characters — the Ensemble Darkhorses and fish out of water, mostly.
Reading Robin Hood and King Arthur stories and such, I never thought “Man, I wish I had more girls so I had a character I could relate to.” In fact, on more than a few occasions I’ve been really irritated when modern remakes add in female characters who were never in the original, out of some idea that if the cast lacks strong females it’s somehow flawed and in need of repair. Arwen (LotR) wasn’t too bad but the female elf in The Hobbit was patronizing because it seemed the creators thought unless there was a shoehorned love story the girls in the audience wouldn’t care about the action, the war, or the death of the major characters. (I mostly cared that the death was CAUSED by the female shoehorned character, doing the one thing Dad has always drilled into us that we must not do: Distract the guy who’s fighting.)
In Watership Down, a plot point that drove the entire second half of the book was that the rabbits didn’t think much of females, and when they made it to their new home they were ready to settle down when they looked around and went “CRAP! We need does if we’re going to make the next generation!” (In other words: CRAP! FEMALES ARE IMPORTANT!) Trying to correct the gender imbalance by making Blackberry into a doe not only stereotypes (“women are the smart ones”), but dilutes the strength of that realization.
So that’s my thought on casting choices: I’m okay with all-male casts. I would like to see a wider variety of casts where women aren’t treated as token members, though (“We have the X guy and the Y guy and the Z guy, and all these other guys defined by what they do, but also The Girl and, oh, The Contrasting Girl”). Also, the “I can only care about my own gender” thing seems more like a GUY thing than a GIRL thing, since attempts to make stories with more girls than guys seems to only work if the story is aimed at girls, and that’s really sad (“I’m a guy, I need the majority of the cast to be like me before I can appreciate it”).
Thankfully, that’s been averted a bit lately with My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, which isn’t too girly and does have a substantial male audience. And I never watched Power Puff Girls but it’s the other one I can think of that might’ve had a male following for a female cast.
On Color Schemes: Some thing you need pink to be a girly color scheme. Others think that color schemes don’t have any gender imbalance. I firmly believe that certain color schemes appeal more to boys than to girls, and certain ones appeal more to girls than to boys, and that pink doesn’t need to be a major component of the girly color schemes.
Do you know how irritating it is when you hate pink (because of its overuse and stereotypicial associations), and find out that they make colored versions of tools (yay! hammers can come in COLORS?!), but the only color they offer is pink, because they think girls have to have pink? Why can’t there be a lavender hammer? or teal? Why are my only choices Stereotypical Pink or Metal or Wood?
I mean, granted, I don’t need any particular color to be able to make use of a hammer, but I would on a psychological level be happier if my tools were of a color I enjoy. Same as how I don’t need any particular color car to drive, but on a psychological level I’m happier if my car is a color I like. Plus, if I were involved in a group project where I provided my own tools, I could easily see which ones were mine without confusion.
With Lego bricks, I thought it was cool that they had new color schemes, because more colors is always a benefit. Then I figured out that they based the scheme on pink again (though they have some nice lavender, teal, and this pretty peachy-orange color too). But they committed a greater sin: Instead of creating a bunch of miscellaneous pieces that girls could use their imagination on (like the stuff I grew up on: a box of 1×4’s and 1×2’s and so on), they made a bunch of set pieces where you basically get to build a stereotyped girly interest (ice cream shop, nail salon) or maybe a slightly creative version of the same. Most of the pieces were shaped rather than generic (at least, from what I saw of my niece’s sets).
And, even worse, they got rid of the minifigs in favor of larger, more poseable figures. The variety might be nice, but you know what this does? It fundamentally separates the boy sets from the girl sets (we’re two different species, don’t you know?), it makes it seem like girls can’t possibly use their imaginations on the more generic minifigs (never mind my old battles between the Pirates and the Robin Hoods), and it requires more Lego bricks to make buildings because the figures are like three times as high as the normal ones. I ran out of pieces trying to make buildings for the normal minifigs!
When it comes to video games, I have a few major complaints:
1. I can’t play a flat-chested female character (or, often, a non-muscular guy).
I can understand letting guys play girls with big boobs, but it irritates me that my options in World of Warcraft are big boobs or UNDEAD. As a large-breasted woman, I want to delve into a fantasy world where I DON’T have a body shape like the female dwarf. The body types provided in a lot of games seem balanced strongly in favor of male interests with little thought given to the females.
2. I can’t think of an MMORPG that is aimed at adults and is MODEST without being CUTESY and/or CARTOONY.
It would be nice to play a game that didn’t make Eye Candy / Sex Appeal a big focus, yet had graphics that ran toward the realistic side instead of the cartoony side. And wasn’t set in a wintery setting (I’m trying to recall how much skin gets shown in Skyrim, but then I didn’t play it all that far, and you’re running around in the snow).
3. I want “colorful” and visually appealing
I remember Saints Row IV being a delight for the senses (well, it’s a delight in so many ways). It’s the one that comes to mind when I try to think of games that have realistic (not too cutesy or cartoony) environments and characters yet don’t cling to “real is brown/grey/washed-out” color schemes.
My best friend calls the “change the look of your characters” part “Playing Pretty Pretty Princess” (we laugh a lot over that), but having a wide variety of visuals and the chance to affect how my character looks is appealing. I can understand some games being set in survivalist settings where it’d be unrealistic to care about getting purple pants, but in many games I want to see a system more like Saints Row IV, where I can make as delightful or crazy a character as I want, and mix and match gender details freely.
4. The “girls aren’t any different from boys” movement irritates me sometimes more than the stereotypes.
It’s not difficult to get evidence about the differences between girls and boys, whether that evidence is from studies or from anecdotes. I don’t pretend to know what part of the difference is nature and what part is nurture, but it’s obvious that differences exist, right down to how men with normal male brains perceive fewer color distinctions than women do.
Or how testing a playset with kids of both genders ended up with the girls playing house while the guys catapulted the stroller off the roof.
Trying to say “there’s no gender distinction” has a number of negative effects, and I could go into it at some length, but I’d like to start with just the idea that if you TRY to code without an eye to gender, you END UP coding with your own gender biases. And since the gaming industry is already largely balanced toward guys, that just exacerbates the problem.
5. Catch-22
I have heard these two arguments repeatedly, and I finally thought about them together and realized the problem:
A. Most of the people who play this game, who put their money into buying games like this, are male. Therefore, we should cater to guys. Girls don’t have the right to complain about this because they’re not putting their money into the game.
B. Look, if you don’t like the fact that this game caters to guys, they just don’t buy it. Go spend your money elsewhere. How can you complain about the game’s content if you’re still spending your money on it?
Notice: Whether girls spend their money on the game or not, guys claim that girls don’t have the right to have input on the game’s content and whether or not it is appealing to their interests. Catch-22.
I realized years ago that in the absence of direct feedback, companies making TV shows have to guess at which elements appeal to the viewers. Show A has elements A, B, C, D, E while Show B has elements C, D, F, G, H and Show C has elements B, H, I, J, K. If people dislike elements A and K enough to stop watching Show A and Show C, then the company might think that element B is the one they dislike. Or if the audience puts up with element B because they like elements E and I, maybe the company thinks they need to make more shows with element B.
A lot of times I have the choice of either putting up with elements ABC and enjoying a game that has elements JKL, or not playing the game because it has ABC and finding a game that has element J but not K or L. If I choose to enjoy the content I want and put up with the content I dislike, what does that say to the company? Girls are buying our game! We’ve done something right! Let’s make more games with ABC!
And if I don’t buy the game, what does that say? Girls aren’t buying our game! I guess JKL weren’t really appealing to girls! Let’s not include those elements anymore.
This is the conundrum, and why direct feedback is important. Companies that try to interact with their fanbase can make better games than those that don’t.
Normally I’d go back and do my best to make this shorter and pithier, but I don’t have time today. These are my thoughts as I had them while typing this. Sorry for the length.
Yargh, spelling errors. “Some think you need pink.”
That was a huge post. Really huge. Again, sorry.
As a fan of legos and an aspiring game dev, I’m rather inspired to make a post in this discussion and this seemed like the best to reply to, but I’ll reference other posts too. Honestly I think the “girl” legos are pretty awesome, and they really don’t have that many “exclusively” shaped bricks that make them hard to use with other legos. A lot of them are just new colors of shaped bricks in some of the other newer “boy” lego sets (unless they’re a minifig handheld object/small prop/animal). The Elves’ sets looked especially neat.
I sort of object to them being placed with the other “girl” toys instead of with the other legos though. Legos are legos. If the city sets can exist, these girl legos can be placed right near them.
As for the game stuff, in my opinion the best way to “deal” with the gender issue, is just let devs know they don’t have to be restrained by stereotypes to do well, and then just let them do their thing. If they choose to follow the stereotypes, and make a good game, let them, if they choose to not follow the stereotypes and make a good game, again let them. If the game sucks… then complain.
Would you say there’s something about the regular legos that makes them for boys rather than for everyone?
I’m guessing toy companies try to make “girl toys” based on some research rather than just cause they feel like it? It’s just weird because we don’t have “boy toys”, just toys.
But the implication of that seems to be girls don’t like playing with them as much, hence companies feel like they need to specificaly appeal to them.
I wouldn’t, thus the quotes around boy and girl. They’re a building toy, thus inherently for everyone. I mean, sure they can have girlier and more boyish default models, but one can just as easily create an pretty elf princess tea party out of LoTR lego set as you can make a twisted horror hospital out of a girl’s health center set (The colors might be a tad off, but imagination IS a thing)
Now I want to make one with some after market lego parts people make. 😛 Get some blood pools, zombie minifigs, and scared faces and we are go!
You probably didn’t mean to, I assume your examples were just the first thing that came to mind, but notice the implication that girls would rather make tea parties while boys would prefer to play horror hospital? I think that’s one of those stereotypes right there.
Well, sort of. You’re right that I’m not saying that all boys should be and would prefer horror hospital and girls should and would prefer tea parties. The use of a stereotypically boy’s lego set used in such a stereotypically girl activity was intentional to achieve an example of subverting the stereotype though. Same for the girl set for boy thing example.
I’ve come to learn that the toxic part of many stereotypes isn’t the stereotypes themselves, but the assumption that people should follow them, or that they always follow them. When clearly not everyone will or should.
On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with a person willingly following said stereotype and for others to use said stereotype to reach out to those willingly following the stereotype.
I mean, really people spend so much time either trying enforce or completely deny a stereotype, with in real life the healthy road is somewhere inbetween… like a company not catering to girls, but a company catering to interests that are stereotypically for girls, without the implications that only girls would or should be using said product
I think we are quite past that though, ten years ago this certainly was a bigger issue but nowadays you have games with big boobed females and damsels in distress, but also games with bare chested muscle dudes and strong female characters as the lead. The only recent big “woman-unfriendly” game I can think of is the Witcher 3, and there you can blame the source material for that to some degree – though I do hope they get around to making a Ciri game next. 😀
Games like Fallout 4, Dragon age inquisition, Civilization BE though should already appeal to women same as to men. Do they, and if not, why?
Then you have games like Shadow of Mordor – you could argue that it’s not women friendly since the only character is a dude, though then is Mirror’s Edge a girl game just because the character is a woman?
Beautiful. Andi, A+ awesome mom.
(You know, now that she has actually started being a mom)
Hmm, No Pink Ponies, sounds like a good name for a web comic.
It could be about a girl and her comic shop and her friends and the shop’s patrons and her landlady and her (yet unnamed in the comic) boyfriend.
There is one already: http://nopinkponies.keenspot.com/
That was the joke.
Now if Amanda were in the show, there would be pink ponies. Or at least purple ones.
Gettin upset at the pink ponies comment.. meanwhile she’s the one that felt it necessary to specify that they were women artists with the “Female voice”. so it’s okay if YOU pigeonhole them, but not him?
Yes, people are more inclined towards identities they choose to embrace than other people’s stereotyping comments about them. Funny how that works.
But sure, explaining what an art exhibit is about is totes just as bad as someone else making (sexist) assumptions about what that means.
Saying Rude and then explaining what she did for the art gallery is far from being upset.
Geez, I’m starting to sound like I support her.
Her art is weird and she’s weird!
Anyone buy it? Good.
It’s not about pigeonholing a group when it’s a show promoting the work of people who have been traditionally ignored. To the people sneering at a “women artists” show, please name for me without using Google a famous female artist other than Georgia O’Keefe or Frida Khalo?
so what I’m hearing is “it’s okay to be a hypocrite as long as the group you belong to is labeled oppressed”
I know you’re just trying to help, but that doesn’t help anyone.
Is Frida that chick with the unibrow? I don’t know. But don’t get too mad at me. I know very little of art. I didn’t know who Jackson Pollack was until Guardians of the Galaxy made a joke about him.
Wow, and here I thought the interesting thing about this comic was Amanda being too annoyed to take advantage of the “my mom is so cool” moment, and the look on Heather’s face. Not to mention the deliberate exclusion of Selkie from the scene so far. I can’t wait to see what THAT brings.