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
And I was comparing it to the Twilight fangirls, etc., many of whom ARE (I know, because I’ve seen it) very naive about males, or romance, or whatever, and think young guys are all basically Edward with variations.
You didn’t say “naive,” buttmunch, you said fat. Shouldn’t you be fucking your hat?
MRAL, we are not hating on all male gamers, we’re mocking the stupidity and misogyny of some.
“No, I was not putting the onus on women, that’s MORE misrepresentation, isn’t that against the comment policy? I was saying they haven’t had much success with women, because of one reason or the other and that’s ALL I meant. I think I can be sympathetic to that without being a raging evil twisted vile misogynist who thinks women need to service men’s needs at all times. Anyway, as a result (I’m talking about the video untitled posted, if that wasn’t clear) they come off as a bit naive and idiotic. And I was comparing it to the Twilight fangirls, etc., many of whom ARE (I know, because I’ve seen it) very naive about males, or romance, or whatever, and think young guys are all basically Edward with variations. Not just in looks, but creepy stalkerish behavior and all that. I’d think feminists would agree with me that’s not a good thing. Unless you actually do think men all behave like sparkly vampyres.”
Wait, what?
Seriously, can someoe pull out a translator?
MRAL, I am a geek, and I try to stop misogyny in the geek community, not to be “holier that thou” but to make sure the community that I belong to becomes a better community. The people that David quoted in the post, people that have become so bitter about women and girls enjoying games are not good representatives of our community. We geeks should not be creating a sexist environment, we should be creating one that is welcoming. Now this does not mean that we should welcome all beliefs, the old saw about not needing to tolerate intolerance.
Well, then why are you jumping all over me for mocking Twilight? I do think there is some underlying misandry, as well as whole lot of borderline toxic underlying creepiness, in the Twilight phenomenon.
psychopaths, misandry. I think we all get your point. But please explain how mocking the people quoted is misandry, go on.
Don’t pull that disingenuous crap, MRAL. Nobody’s jumping on you for mocking Twilight. We’re jumping on your for your stupid misogyny.
Well, sure, the guys in the OP are assholes, as per usual, but I hardly think they’re representative in any way of anything except Elam’s Whole Sick Crew. I’m focusing more on the guys in untitled’s video, who do live up to some geek stereotypes.
Nobody but you was talking about twilight. My opinion on that is that Edward is very creepy, and the book is an insult to all literature on vampire.
And I love the geek community for so many reasons, although it has some big problem when it comes to sexism.
Kyrie, I’m not saying everyone’s like that, or anyone all the time, but I do think that there is a lot of coldness here for socially awkward or loveshy males, which is strange because the feminist movement, and this blog’s community more specifically, go to such lengths to be so inclusive in almost every other respect. Sure, “psychopathy” was a strong word, but I’m not apologizing for that. I’ve felt very piled-on the past few days here, and I do intend to leave pretty soon, so you can all throw up your hats and celebrate I guess.
“Sure, “psychopathy” was a strong word, but I’m not apologizing for that.”
But we should be nice with you?
First, I remember getting into a DAYS long argument with a guy who was convinced that Samus wasn’t a female… DAYS… eventually his pals on the football team took a look at the game and pointed out the waist/hip ratio and the boob armour and pretty much said “ya… girl…” (don’t ask me how she rolls into her ball though!)
Second, MRAL, where did twilight come into this? I mean if people had been discussing fan bases in general and not this specific one I might be able to see a link, but no one did that. The discussion started as very narrowly on female game charachters being somehow tools of the feminist agenda, but you jump in with wider geek culture and misogony and expect everyone to jump on your topic instead.
I’d prefer if the conversation stayed on charachters in games, as I find that much more fascinating. Did anyone notice that while they wanted charachter mods in the games they only wanted to penalize women, and not buff them in any way? It’s like they want everyone to be “the tank” even though there are lots of us who like playing “the scout” or “the assassin” and drop our strength stat so that we can pick up speed and agility… why do they think that women would be bad at EVERYTHING based on a different physique? You lose some, you gain some… just like that real life thing I’ve heard so much about… (also, why do they think that females should automatically be dinged on intelligence?? the mind boggles)
Also, can you stop erasing women you don’t notice? There’s alot of coldness for socially akward PEOPLE… (and I personally think it’s better here than in many other places I could name)
“and I do intend to leave pretty soon, so you can all throw up your hats and celebrate I guess.”
I’m not celebrating. I was of the naives ones who were surprised and extremely happy when you announced you were stopping the trolling. The idea that someone could go from complete asshole to decent person so fast, in front of my eyes was very heartwarming. But you haven’t lived up to any of your redemption promises.
Sigh.
Kate, why didn’t you just tell that guy to look up the 100% ending for any Metroid game on Youtube?
MRAL, now, I have only watched the RiffTrax of Twilight (I really recommend these, they are hilarious and allow one to have some understanding of this cultural phenomenon, but cushioned by Mike and the Bots), so I don’t know much about them, but what I have seen is really bad, from heavy handed gender essentialism, to the oft mentioned stalking. The portrayal of domestic violence as no big deal was particularly awful.
These real critiques are lost, however, when you fall back on the, “Twilight is bad because fat women like it” thing. Maybe you should lurk for a while, and definitely preview your comments before posting. You keep apologizing for outbursts, but if you were to type out what you want to say, then before posting reread the comment and decide if it is really what you want to say, or if it is just intended to get a rise out of the other commenters here. You had to know from past interactions here that your ‘mostly fat’ comment was going annoy people here. Now if your goal is to annoy, then leave such comments in, but you had said earlier that you were trying to stop trolling, so maybe remove comments designed only to annoy and instead post only about the concerns you actually have.
“Did anyone notice that while they wanted charachter mods in the games they only wanted to penalize women, and not buff them in any way? It’s like they want everyone to be “the tank” even though there are lots of us who like playing “the scout” or “the assassin” and drop our strength stat so that we can pick up speed and agility… why do they think that women would be bad at EVERYTHING based on a different physique? You lose some, you gain some… just like that real life thing I’ve heard so much about… (also, why do they think that females should automatically be dinged on intelligence?? the mind boggles)”
It’s funny, really…first, they go out of their way to “prove” the superiority of men and the weakness/evil (the way MRAs speak, the two seem to be interchangeable) of women…and when they can’t do that, they try to prove it in video games, only to find THAT distasteful, too.
If they can’t be happy in fantasy and reality…how does one live like that?
Yeah, I agree there’s a lot of coldness for awkward people, but on Manboobz it seems to be more reserved for men. Although maybe that’s just because there are more male trolls here. Regardless. I understand the problem of women being socialized as people-pleasers (though I disagree with the severity of the problem, and I think men are socialized the same way, though it manifests differently), but I think that people here are often so concerned about that it blots out other problems, and other people. Men can have as many issues as women.
I’m a fucking autistic geek. Loveshy nerds have my deepest empathy. I wish vile nice guy fuckers would stop roping them into their shit. I also don’t know why the fuck you’re still here. Oh, well, I DO. Here, I made you a poem –
As I was scroling down the page
I met a man who’d flounced in rage
He won’t post there again today
I wish, I wish, he’d go away.
Yeah, I agree there’s a lot of coldness for awkward people, but on Manboobz it seems to be more reserved for men.
You’re not awkward, MRAL, you’re downright insulting. That comment about fat girls was just one of many. You demand infinite free passes for all the mean, shitty things you say, but you refuse to make any effort towards seeing women as people. I was prepared to cut you all kinds of slack, but you’ve proven that you’re really not that nice a person.
MRAL is basically Going His Own Way from Manboobz, by which I mean he’s going to consistently fail to go anywhere, sticking around to be the same asshole he always was and probably always will be.
Another thing, is that when a geeky (or even other) guy is an inconsiderate douche, a million internet experts rush to declare it aspergers or something! Haven’t we considered that! (And need I mention how insulting this is to the actual autie guys out there trying to navigate and be decent?)
When a woman is anything but completely socially responding in warm and deferent ways, it’s not even considered she’s anything but a stuck up, properly functioning, neurotypical standard model bitch who knew what she was doing.
We ARE both socialized to please, but it’s a different kettle when women aren’t pleasing. It is rarely even considered that we can even BE socially deficient for any other reason than inherent badness. There’s no rush to excuse us when we break the social contracts.
Maybe they could mod the game so that it would reflect their real life strength. Which I’m sure doesn’t measure up to the intense levels of physical fitness video game characters require to deal out wave after wave of death and destruction.
Oh yeah, people don’t do that because video games are fiction.
lol, these guys are going to keep getting more angry at games. Everything they describe as bad? They’re going to be having a lot more of that in years to come, more and better.
Long live Chell, Faith, Aveline and Femshep.