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
http://xkcd.com/722/
Yes, I’m avoiding work.
Kitten decided to party all night.
Anyone want a cute little siamese?
Why can’t these dudes just play Grand Theft Auto if they want to slap women around? While nowadays I’m not into video games, I think it’s fantastic that today, more video games that are inclusive of women exist.
When I was a kid, I didn’t play involved or complicated video games – just Pong and Pac-Man on our Atari, and later, Tetris on our Nintendo Game Boy and on the computer. My younger relatives got into Sega Genesis and played games like Sonic the Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat, the latter of which had several female fighters, if I remember correctly. Everyone in my family who played video games developed stronger spatial, rotational, and problem-solving skills, and I actually use many of those skills today on the job.
Many of the girls in my class didn’t like video games, as “those were for boys,” and didn’t test well in spatial/rotation skills. I like to think I tested off the charts partially because I played video and arcade games frequently while growing up – and I’m hopeful that as video games become more women-friendly, we’ll see more women in male-dominated professions that require good visual/spatial/rotational/problem-solving skills.
I think once I found out game designers usually gave female characters quicker reaction times and greater mobility than most male characters I tended toward playing female characters.
It just suited my style better.
I kind of hope I’m wrong, because the whole “CRPGs are for girls” thing is so dumb it’s funny. There’s like, two prominent ones with female main characters that I can think of. But the idiotic argument is kind of close to another idiotic argument I’ve seen (Frequently; Sankaku Complex and /v/ love to blame everything on fujoshi), so I’m guessing they’re related.
Looking at that cast listing, the MCs, and by extension, primary ass kickers, are Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang; although both were chief tacticians for their armies, they were also not the ones in charge. Though Cao Cao is also the plain old head of his side, so…
I actually had to talk myself out of three kingdoms analogies when I wrote that. Because at two points in the Romance thereof, the best ass kicker in the realm *does* become in charge, and it doesn’t end well for him. Glad you broached the subject and not me XD
That’s why I’m ignoring Puppet Man.
Well the ‘JRPGS are for girls’ thing is less about stereotyping female gamers as it is about putting male gamers off playing them…because apparently you should totally care if someone enjoys playing something you don’t(?)
Nowadays it’s more common to see ‘casual games are for girls’ held as a serious belief. It’s just as bad and just as untrue.
I wonder if MRAs just explode when they see Michelle Yeoh movies, which is why no one has brought up how misandrist her very existence is!
What I find particularly amusing is I Am’s incredulous attitude about the game supposedly having historical reference. Took me about 35 seconds to find out that sure enough, there were badass nun warriors in feudal Japan.
Thanks for the find MRAs!
“I wonder if MRAs just explode when they see Michelle Yeoh movies, which is why no one has brought up how misandrist her very existence is!”
Shit, try the soon-to-be-released action film, Haywire. OMG, a woman kicking ass. MISANDRY TO THE MAX!!!
Man…that just makes me wonder what the MRA reaction was to the movie “Drive”. I’m seriously curious (as someone who loves the movie).
I love how, in the anti-women gamers manifesto, the guy making the case for Tomb Raider as a woman says, “We want someTHING nice to look at.”
As an Angelina Jolie fan since her early movies, too, I have no doubt that some of these guys think of her as a “thing,” not a woman, when they watch the Tomb Raider movie.
@Caraz:
Nowadays it’s more common to see ‘casual games are for girls’ held as a serious belief. It’s just as bad and just as untrue.
Wow, I’m definitely out of the loop as far as today’s gaming culture goes, so I wasn’t aware of this. When people say “casual games,” do they mean games like The Sims, games like Tetris, or both?
Come to think of it, I have noticed that when talk turns to video games, many women of my generation will say things like, “Oh, I loved playing Oregon Trail on the Apple computer at school,” but not mention trying any other games. I was definitely one of the only girls in the arcade in the 80s and 90s, too. It didn’t bother me at the time, but looking back on it, I now wonder where the rest of them were.
Speaking of Apple, I just learned that you can emulate Oregon Trail for the Apple II today on a Mac running OsX. Have a look: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OregonTrailScreenshot.png. That brings back memories!
@Kollege Messerschmitt
Well that was disturbing. And every MRAs wet dream. Japan always seems to come out with some of the most messed up shit. I’m also really surprised the comments weren’t laughing and making jokes about putting women in their place like they usually would on videos like this. Then again people were requesting to play it.
Wow, I’m definitely out of the loop as far as today’s gaming culture goes, so I wasn’t aware of this. When people say “casual games,” do they mean games like The Sims, games like Tetris, or both?
Both, sadly. What I think is even funnier is how the concept of “casual games” as a terrible thing has made a lot of Manly Man dudes start referring to themselves with the delightfully oxymoronic term “serious gamers.” They take their fun SERIOUSLY, you guys, unlike us icky-poo girls who just have fun for FUN.
It doesn’t take long to notice that ‘casual gamer’ meaning drifts to whatever women are playing. Sim City and such used to be ‘hardcore’ but the Sims was casual because women played it (the argument was that the game was aimless and had no ultimate goal so was just a big dollhouse, but that is also true of SimCity). The stigma for JRPGs comes from the fact that for a lot of women, their entry into ‘geek culture’ was through anime.
I think it’s only a matter of time until MMOs end up on the ‘casual gamer’ divide. The F2P games are gaining a lot in popularity, and these tend to have more women in them. WoW will probably be seen as either ‘the last bastion’ of Serious Gamers or the beginning of the end… Already I’ve seen a lot of people disparage City of Heroes and Champions Online as being way too casual (i.e. too attractive to women).
Speaking of Jolie, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when MRAs and PUAs saw Mr & Mrs Smith!!
Why do I feel the need to become a profiler every time I read one of DKM’s posts? I think I’ve been watching too many Criminal Minds reruns. It seems like his disorder should have a name. Or names.
Ugh. Maybe we need a “creepiest MRA of the year” poll. My shower was broken for 2 days and I just repaired it almost immediately after reading his post. I had to walk away from the computer for a minute to contain my disgust and started repairing the shower for the hell of it. Probably not a coincidence that my brain went there. He just really, really creeps me out.
PS zhinxy was correct (from earlier in the thread), I did mean World Wrestling Federation. I was going to post a link but was too lazy. Enjoy!
Houses of cat entertainment don’t seem so bad…
So, Meller, since you don’t want women like me, and you now know that we don’t want you either, why are you here? Your “upset the feminists!” plan has manifestly failed, as we are all laughing at you rather than getting upset, and your “convert them to fluffiness!” plan is also getting nowhere. So what are you trying to accomplish here? Is this literally the only place where you can get women to acknowledge your existence, or is it some sort of BSDM thing where you enjoy having women call you an asshole so that you can then justify your fantasies of hurting them?
Going by your last comment option B seems very likely. That’s really pathetic, dude. If that’s what you’re looking for just go hire a pro domme to yell at you.
And there’s more ridiculousness from our resident creeper! Indeed, Meller, Kathleen should kill her cat because she acts like…a cat.
Nice to see that your delusions about the true nature of (insert the name of any living creature here) and desire to destroy any such creatures that don’t behave the way you want them to extends to literally all living creatures except straight white men. (With straight white men who don’t do what you want you seem to prefer to pretend that they aren’t actually straight white men.)
You really are a monster, aren’t you? You’re like something out of a Brothers Grimm story.
On a brighter note – Pecunium, that porcupine is adorable, especially the little happy, excited noises it makes.
Oh, now I get it. The whole Lara Croft as fanservice == misandry bit is actually a poorly worded “Entitled bitches r takin’ our jerbs!” bit.
The terrible feminists are now taking jobs from fictional men!
Pecunium said:
“SaraGoku: Meller fixates on me because I’ve had the sort of life I’ve had. His worldview says that men like me should be like him; demanding slave women and feeling oppressed because we can’t have them.
But here I am, with so many of the stereotypical male interests/hobbies/career choices, and I laugh at him. I mock him. I enjoy living in a world he thinks hellish.
I, more than Gloria Steinem, Amanda Marcotte, even Andrea Dworkin, threaten his world.
Of course he has to pick on me, belittle my experience, attempt to bemean my very nature. If more men with my sort of interests are as I am, then his fantasy of wiping feminists from the face of the earth and having a Gor-slave at home and an Entertainment Center (reminiscent of Gor too, now as I come to think about it) where he can obtain some “outside stimulation” (not my problem, my partners are stimulating enough to make me want to be home, spending time with them), is doomed.
Which is something he doesn’t want to think about, much less admit.”
I think you’re right. It must be very disturbing to him that there are typically “masculine” men out there who have active, adventurous, “manly” (for want of a better word) lives, like the one he wishes he lived, and yet they disagree with him so vocally, while the best he can do is play with dolls and dream up Gorean-style fantasies.
North America need cat houses of entertainment Katz.
I recently went from living in the our family home to selling off homes and living in a rental apartment downtown. It’s a good thing except that I miss having pets very much, our beloved little dog is now living with a close friend of mine way, way out in the burbs that’s impossible to have regular visits.
I really would love to have somewhere to go to hug a cat, or a dog, or really anything fluffy.
I would like this cafe where I could snuggle to be real animals and not porcelain without movement or thought or action. I also don’t want to snuggle humans because they are fluffy. I must be weird.
I actually found a way to do this, volunteering at a humane society (not so often but to fill my need) . Incredible isn’t it? Problem solved easily.
Kavette, is there an animal shelter near you? They are usually looking for volunteers. I have a wonderful kitty but I go to the humane society when I want to get kisses from puppies.
Reading comprehension FAIL.