It’s almost impossible to catalogue all the ways men are oppressed by women in contemporary gynocratic society. There are so many! For example, did you know that men are oppressed by female characters in video games? I know, right? The last bastion of red-blooded manliness, invaded by imaginary ladies!
Luckily, the fellows at MGTOWforums.com are on the case, exposing this foul virtual misandry. I Am started off a recent discussion on the subject by asking
WTF is with empowered women in video games now? …
I see a new trend in the video/computer game world and that is the increase in strong playable female characters.
Now, I am no hardcore gamer but I do play computer games often and the recent one I have been playing recently is Shogun 2 total war. Now for those who don’t know what this game is, it is a strategy game based on the military of feudal Japan. I recently bought an upgrade for the game the other day and guess what one of the strongest military units was? Nuns. I shit you not. The nuns had an attack 20% -40% higher than most units in the game. Somehow I doubt that in real life a nun would have swung a sword or used a spear faster and harder than a feudal warlord, and this game was based on history.
Clearly nuns are incapable of manlike swordplay, though it is true that they are capable reenacting famous internet panda sneeze videos. (I have seen video proof of this.) But Shogun 2 does not depict them sneezing like pandas. It depicts them fighting.
This is an outrage because video games are meant to be a perfectly accurate reflection of reality. Obviously there is nothing even slightly unrealistic about any of this:
Most of us dudes are in fact capable of karate-chopping heads in two. We just don’t like to show off all the time.
I think I have the right to ask steam and other gaming companes: WTF with the subliminal brainwashing? What now when I buy or play a game women will be doing all the ass kicking? …
I call bullshit on this subject. Video games are the last place for guys to hang out and now women are taking over. Why not just save us the trouble and instead of eliminating our fantasy world just throw us in work camp to provide for thier bastard children (literally speaking) while they shit all over us…wait they already do that.
I Am is not the only dude who’s noticed this alarming femtrend. Goldenfetus added his observations:
I’ve noticed this too, and it drives me insane. Was co-oping Gears 3 last month and there’s a point where 2nd player has to take over a female character. Almost ruined the game for me. It may seem minor, but once you’re aware of this type of brainwashing it’s impossible to ignore. There’s no way a slim female could keep up with the massive battle-hardened male Gears in that kind of environment. They would be a liability as they are in real life combat.
Exactly! By contrast, the male characters in Gears of War 3 are all completely accurate representations of real-world men.
Goldenfetus continued:
You’ll see the same thing in most stat-based role-playing games as well, where you have the option of a female player character – like Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, D&D, etc. The women never have any strength or intelligence penalties compared to the males. … They want to give the impression that people of any race, gender, and sexual-orientation are interchangeable – that there are no differences in ability between them, and that only a bigot could think otherwise. I’m sick of it too.
At the very least, female characters should be depicted as carriers of cooties.
Despite the very serious subject matter – video game misandry is never funny! – Xtc tried to lighten the mood with a little humor:
It would be hilarious to portray the female characters realistically. If you chose the female character in your FPS [First Person Shooter] she would have to move very slowly, dragging the gun around. You could build in some extra shake to the crosshairs to represent hopeless accuracy. Every time you needed to reload your gun, instead of just pressing a button, you’d have to find a male character and go through some flirting dialogue options to persuade him to do it for you. One out of every four missions the game would tell you that you were sitting out this one due to ‘women’s issues’.
Calloway, for his part, offered some historical perspective:
This is nothing new. I got heavy into gaming back in the late 90’s and even back then they had Tomb Raider, S.I.N., etc. Even in the original Unreal, you played as a big-breasted female.
I saw a documentary on the making of the original Tomb Raider once. The lead character, Lara Croft, was originally going to be a man. They saw him as an Indiana Jones-type character. Then, one of the designers suggested it be a woman because “if you’re going to be playing a game for hours, you might as well have something good to look at”. …
When you first take the red pill, it’s amazing the things you see. It’s as if you had blinders on before, and all of sudden they’ve been removed, allowing you to actually understand what you’ve been seeing.
Yep. And what you’ve been seeing is Lara Croft’s ass. Lara Croft’s ass oppresses men! The red pill tells me so!
Now we come to the clincher.
When you try to get romantic with the imaginary ladies in video games, they don’t act like Roissy and those dudes say ladies act. I mean, you can’t even neg them! As Dave sadly pointed out:
I remember about 12 years ago playing the Baldur’s Gate rpg series and there were some romance dialog paths between your character and some of the women who could join your group but you had to treat them very nice. You couldn’t give them any attitude or make fun of them otherwise it would be over.
Basically you have to be a total mangina towards women in most games if you want to bed them.
Even imaginary ladies are stuck up bitches!
The horror!
I had a
I hear you Crumb. And frankly it’s starting to make me a bit paranoid. Like how do you know the next person you meet isn’t a raving misogynist? although I’m sure it will come off in their demeanor. According to Avfm, women lack moral agency. But they’re not misogynists…oh no! they’re just rightfully angry! they’re ALLOWED. Fine. If they’re allowed to be irrationally angry, then we can say the same about rad fems. Or any other extremist group.
Look at this. They keep repeating over and over that men die earlier, that men’s health isn’t regarded as important etc…look at what I grabbed from one of their own cited sources:
http://www.emhf.org/resource_images/Vienna_Declaration_Bgrd_Doc.pdf
YET THEY IMPLY THIS IS FEMINISM’S FAULT. Are feminists preventing men from going to the doctor? NO. This is a problem. It deserves attention. The PDF itself offers solutions. But instead of spreading awareness for men’s health, instead of campaigning, instead of educating men about the importance of going to the doctor, instead of recruiting men and women for a cause like Movember….what do they do? spend time bashing women on the internet. Spend time blaming feminists for daring to care about women’s issues. These guys are fucked up beyond belief.
@Pecunium
You’re an acquaintance of her son? that’s pretty awesome! How did you meet?
Most of video games are based on female characters who are heroines of that games, the enemies are men. So the story is a about a woman is fighting against a lot of men and defeating them. These are feminist strategies for brain washing of younger generation.
@ Pecunium – I’ve done fencing, I know that it’s tiring. The fact that it’s tiring isn’t because women are too dainty to lift the swords.
@ Meller, women don’t want to be attractive to you. Your endless attempts to school us in how we can better attract you are a complete waste of time because we have no desire to attract you, and in fact we have a strong desire to repel you, because you are a disgusting, deranged, vile human being. In fact, I’m willing to get that there’s at least one woman out there reading your screeds who’s decided to make her appearance LESS feminine and fluffy out of terror at the thought that walking around in pretty dresses might attract creeps like you.
Once again, with feeling – women do not like you and do not wish you to be attracted to them. This is why you have a doll collection. The effect that you have on women is somewhat akin to dumping a bucket of ice water on a cat, but with a side order of “ew there are roaches crawling all over me”. You will die alone with your dolls, because you are repulsive to women.
(And most men, and probably children too.)
“What I find is that the boundary of “guy” and “girl” games becomes hilariously shifty. Remember when console RPG’s were a respectable dudely pursuit, not “girl stuff like FF?””
Yes! I have never been welcome in the nerd club because anything I like is ‘for girls’. Final Fantasy, point-n-clicks, anything particularly focused on story, puzzles, White Wolf (over D&D), Harvest Moon, Mario+Zelda and so on. When I was younger guys used to go on about how awesome these games were o_o
Explore Nature- If you played videogames you would know that female characters fight other female characters too. And monsters. And other males. Just like male characters fight female characters, monsters and other males. Don’t talk about shit you know nothing about. It makes you look like a jackass.
@Kendra
Oh, I wasn’t replying to your comment but to one of the citations from the OP:
which, considering the context, seems to imply that the guy who complained about that thinks it was a misandristic choice of the developers.
I’m sorry for the misunderstanding 🙁
I think it was obvious from your comment that you were being sarcastic, especially since you have been a regular commenter here, so no worries 🙂
…Though it does prove your point about MRAs pretty much requiring their own Poe’s Law.
EN:
…uh, what? I know you usually just pop out of nowhere to leave singe cryptic and inane comments, before disappearing again, but can you name some of these games?
Your assertion that MOST games are featuring female characters as protagonists makes me a bit… suspicious as well.
I’d be very interested to learn more about those games, since this would be news to me, and probably most of the people here.
So, video games where a man fight other men is brainwashing men as well, no?
This is like some sort of bizarre cargo-cult version of studying patriarchy in media.
MRAs may well be the only people on earth who could interpret being “forced” to look at Lara Croft’s ass while gaming as an example of “misandry”.
They should just get their own games that are all about how much women suck. It would give them something to do when they’ve run through all their usual boilerplate complaints and they can’t think of anything else to talk about.
“Most of video games are based on female characters who are heroines of that games, the enemies are men.”
Quick recap of the biggest 2011 games:
Skyrim – Gender of the player character is chosen by the player themselves, enemies are both male and female throughout the game. The ‘Big Bad’ is a freaking dragon.
CoD – Group of men doing some shit about a world war.
Uncharted 3 – Player character is male, with both male and female supporting characters. Most enemies are male, but the Big Bad is female.
Gear of War 3 – Group consisting mostly of dudely dudes fighting monsters. The main enemy of previous games was the locust queen, so…female gendered Big Bad?
Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Male PC, mostly male enemies.
L.A. Noire – Male detective PC with exclusively male partners solving crimes. Crimes largely committed by men. Female characters are pretty much limited to minor love interests and victims.
Batman: Arkham City – Main PC is male, secondary PC is female. The majority of villains are male. The female villains are ridiculously sexualized.
Portal 2 – Female PC, enemies are a female gendered AI and a male gendered AI. Female AI is insane but intelligent, male AI is the biggest moron to have ever lived. FEMINIST BRAINWASHING PLOT!!
I think the secret group responsible for feminist subliminal messages is slacking off…
@Caraz
Also, Dragon Age II where you can choose to be male OR female and bisexual, straight or gay (actually there was so much sex in the game that I felt like being asexual, but there you go). Clearly a misandric plot to undermine heteronormativity.
Unfortunately, all the female characters had ridiculously large breasts (one (female) reviewer of the game suggested that BioWare should “Live a little and embrace the B-cup”) and generally wore skimpy clothing. Of course, this is actually an example of misandry since MGTOWs are sure to get unwanted boners.
Yeah, because reloading a gun is just so difficult…/fail
I’m assuming, of course, that all of the MRAs complaining about female characters “kicking ass” are athletes and firearm experts.
Sorka:
No kidding. But even if they didn’t embrace the b-cup, at least they did embrace the idea of attractive men outside of the WWF model. Bethesda still hasn’t figured that out, sadly.
Baby steps, I guess :/
Leni: True. AND the idea of attractive queer men. Baby steps indeed.
What’s WWF?
Kyrie, I think she means World Wrestling Federation? i.e. big bulked up wrestlery doodz? (correct if wrong, leni)
DKM said
“Pecunium–January 11, 2012, @4:00pm
Physically, you are a male, but there is a LOT more than just a Y chromosome, an abundance of testosterone as compared with estrogen, or the presence of a penis with testes! There is also identification with other men, especially when we are, as a group, and as a gender, under attack, and NOT being a renegage who will side with, or advocate for, the enemy at the first opportunity! Every post of yourshere has been an advocacy for female posters and their posts,and almost every post of yours here has been an attack upon a fellow male only interested in preserving his gender specific identity and values! Physically, you are a man, Pecunium, psychologically and sexually, I just don’t know. No real man would be happy always siding with women against his own the way you, and other manboobzers are, expecially when the blog or website you posted on, like this one, was explicitly hostile to men and our interests, while being sympathetic to our adversaries.”
This nonsense is just too stupid to be taken seriously.
1. There is no war going on in anything but the most metaphorical terms. You just use this bullshit hyperbole to make yourself seem heroic and important and to draw completely artificial lines between MRA types and other men and women who don’t feel as threatened as you obviously do.
2. Men and women are not generally on different “sides”. Lots of men see where women are coming from and are happy to shake up the old stereotypes and try a different way of relating to one another. They have a good deal to gain by doing so if they have the brains to figure it out. Not every man wants a wife/partner who is sweet, fluffy, subservient and in need of guidence and punishment if she “misbehaves”. Such men are not “renegades”, they simply see our point and are responding like rational human beings. You do not speak for all men, in fact, you don’t speak for anyone but yourself.
3. The fact that you pick on Pecunium, of all people, is hysterically funny. Reading his posts I see that Pecunium has lived a varied, colourful and sometimes downright dangerous life. He seems adventurous, to be able to deal with hardship, to have many friends of both sexes and to be able to live happily in long term relationships. I really don’t think that you have any right to be calling either his mental health or his masculinity into question.
That would be my guess — just as most games can’t imagine women with anything smaller than a D cup, so too all men must resemble an overly muscled slab of beefcake or they aren’t masculine enough to exist.
They should just get their own games that are all about how much women suck. It would give them something to do when they’ve run through all their usual boilerplate complaints and they can’t think of anything else to talk about.
Wasn’t there some MRA dude who was developing a game that revolved around punching women – something like two pregnant women fighting over a millionaire or something? Oh yes, the Preggo Punching game.
Late to the party but oh this is hilarious. Thanks for doing a games post, David. It was well overdue. XD
Oh yeah! To those whiny babies annoyed that women are playing games: tough shit! As a budding game developer I need women to buy my games as well as men. Larger demographic = more mula XD Suck on that.
Incidentally, my favourite game character when I was young was Princess Rosella in King’s Quest IV.
She uses brains and courage (rather than sexuality or brute strength) to complete her quest, which is to restore a dying kingdom and save her father’s life. She even politely declines when a prince proposes to her (because she needs to get back to the quest). What is more, she wears a humble peasant’s dress throughout the whole game and does not make use of her princess “privilege”.
I wonder what MRAs would have made of her? 😛
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/117/Kings+Quest+IV+-+The+Perils+of+Rosella.html