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
@wajib
Duke Nuk’em Forever?
@Darksidecat
My traditional ox-tail dao weighs about 4.5 pounds. The historical katana that I’ve held are usually around 3 pounds. The newer ones weigh about 2.5 – 3 pounds. My spear about 2, but it’s Chinese which typically used a lighter, more flexible wood than the heavy ash or oak of Europe.
RE: video games, I play a lot of MMORPGs. I almost always play female characters. Because… well… I started because I like watching a woman’s butt rather than some dude’s. But now I do it out of habit. I like choosing their hair, clothes and most games (since the original EverQuest took away the dark elves assless plate) have made the female armor nearly identical to male.
From game experience, people assume that female toons are played by men. Maybe console and FPS are different, but I get exactly the respect that my ability to play the character earns me.
Katz–January 11, 2012 @4:13pm:
No, I am not interfering or invading womens’ doll collecting at all! On the contrary, I am hoping that they use it to enhance their understanding of what womanhood, femininity, and its associated qualities are, and maybe even cultivate them in themselves away from the horrid feminist ones of gender egalitarianism and antimale paranoia.
Yeah, Pecunium, you’re like the world’s biggest mangina. Shooting guns, sword fighting, being in the military? Take up a real man’s hobby like putting perfume on dolls.
What is it with the de-gendering, DKM? Why is your go-to insult “if you don’t do as I say you’re not really your gender?”
I think it’s a sign of people who never had anything to be proud of in their lives besides their gender, so they act like it’s a badge of honor instead of, you know, an attribute of just about everybody. I’M A MAN, WHAT AN ACHIEVEMENT.
So, uh… women being anywhere at all=male oppression, I guess?
Meller, I do like my dolls and figurines, and they have nothing to do with regendering myself, and I find fascinating your theory of such. Can you expound further on how doll collecting might do this? Also, what do you picture when you think “typical doll collector?”
@DKM – So being a man is all about viewing everything in paranoid, insular, black and white sense where one’s gender is their primary characteristic?
Just noticed I used “invoked” where I meant “involved”.
DKM, you said that women don’t like it when guys hang around while they’re doing their feminine stuff. Why do you get to be the exception?
@Viscaria: Nah thanks for the hugs but it’s not bad, it’s just annoying. I’m a bi cis male so the only annoyance is the ‘hetero by default’ part. And I’m out to everyone else, including my lovers and family. Now if I could get around to coming out as a kinkster poly… 😉
Pecunium, you big girl. 🙂
Meller, why is gender your insult? Is your masculinity so fragile that you can’t function unless you impugn someone else’s? You play with dolls, remember.
I love how Meller defines “not interfering” as using doll collecting as some kind of sociopolitical tool to pressure women into conforming to his expectations. No interference there, no sir.
For some ungodly reason, I’m trying to communicate with him.
MRAL, Arisia is going on in your city this very weekend. Go there. Meet nerdy girls. Say hi to Phil and Kaja Foglio for me. Get off the fucking computer already.
When I was your age, I believed guys like you when they blamed their shitty behavior on being socially-awkward geeks who just needed women to treat them right. You know why I’m such a mean-ass bitch now? Those guys. I’m a cranky old nerd and I have no patience for that nonsense anymore.
It’s funny how some of these dudes, like Meller, who defend traditional masculinity, forget that it requires more than just possessing a dick. And considering everything that Pecunium knows, and has done, the only way he may not conform would be the “bros before hoes” mentality, and even that is a heteronormative way of saying friendship before romance, not a way of saying you should always side with men over women.
DKM:
Strangely, I don’t think of men as “the enemy”. I don’t even think of you, Meller, as the enemy; just a sad, sad person. Maybe that’s why I have a boyfriend and many male friends, and you have a neat doll collection!
@Blackbloc:
Oh okay, I misunderstood. I definitely see how that would be irritating though :-/.
Hey everyone who does things that make them happy. You should do things that make you unhappy instead so DKM can have peace of mind.
Shorter DKM: “I meant no TRUE Scotsman!!!1peaceandfreeomone!”
Meller: Do you read? My posts here are in response to asshats, and idiots (when dealing with the OPs) or in response to others. I just made a post in which I said a woman had an odd, and limited, stance (in regards to her skill set in shotgun shooting).
Given that all of your posts here are designed to insult, degrade, or otherwise attack women, it’s no surprise that I am not your cup of tea. But I identify with a lot of men. Guys I was in the service with, guys I practice Aikido with, guys I work with.
Mostly those guys aren’t here, so you don’t see the discussion. Hard as you may find it to believe, I too (as with you and your dolls) have a life outside of manboobz. I ride motorcycles, cook, garden, take photographs, fence, shoot, hang out with friends, play games (I’m more fond of Go, or strat wargames, or things by Ravensberger, than I am of Chess. It happens those are games which are better when played with people than computers. This means I have to spend time with people. I can see where this might frighten you, as some of those people are often women).
I teach people knife skills. I teach them how to sharpen. I play the penny-whistle, and am making some effort to learn the banjo. Sometimes I hang out with people and sing. I’ve travelled the country speaking about torture. I’ve been a speaker at SF conventions (I’ll be speaking at one in March).
Next week I’ll take a stab at brewing mead. When that’s bottled I may put up some beer.
In short, I have a life which doesn’t involve ranting on the internet about how evil women are; or the Fed, or praising Ron Paul. It’s rich and varied and… it’s manly.
You, of course, can continue with your no-true-Scotsman fantasy life, in which “real” men agree with you, and the “renegades” like myself, are, purportedly, miserable, because we aren’t complaining about how we can’t find women we like. This is probably because we have women we like.
…
PS – Full disclosure, Meller – I prefer figurines to the movable/dressable sorts of porcelain lady. Is this the problem? Is a Lladro craving more feminist than an Ashton/Drake one?
In a roundabout, stopped-clock sort of way, MRAL’s right: they have this ridiculous picture of women’s capabilities because they’re inexperienced. Not just inexperienced with women, inexperienced with real-world physical tasks and skills.
I’ve experienced the most sexist bullshit and misconception in physical culture from guys who’ve either trained only little or not at all, and the absolute least from guys who’ve been training seriously for years. Same goes for shooting culture; the relative newbies and the guys who’ve been up in their No Gurlz Allowed clubhouse by sheer force of will are the only ones spouting or perpetuating the idea that women are limited at all in shooting.
Why? Experience- of being outperformed, by many different women, because being outperformed by people who’ve trained more or better is something that happens a lot when you work seriously on a skill. It doesn’t necessarily make them less sexist or misogynistic- both the shooting sports and strength sports remain boys’ clubs that attract a lot of macho young men- but it gives them a much more realistic picture of womens’ actual capabilities.
So I tend to interpret rants like that as “I am so out of shape lifting something that weighs ten pounds is difficult, and women must be much weaker than me because I’m a man, so women must be useless!”
Dracula: Pretty much if it’s using swords, there is some compound of “fencing” which covers it. I’ve done, at least a little, of pretty much every major style/period of European fencing, and some Japanese. I’ve also done some polearm work.
It’s all fun.
Shaenon: I’ll be at Arisia (as, so I am told, will another Boobzer). Shall I convey your greetings to Phil and Kaja?
Shaenon, if we had like buttons here I’d like your last comment a dozen times.
DKM, as long as you will play with dolls, us women will play video games, play football, drink beer, fight, have sex with women and other manly things because you stole our fluffy femininity!
.
precision: I’m not saying each of us will do all of that. It’s as a group.