Oh wait, nobody reads my blog. Never mind.
Anyway, it all started with this video. Leaving aside the absurdity of the title "true female characters", I was kind of hoping for a celebration of real humans depicted in games as opposed to tired stereotypes; instead I got sort of a confused mush of "WOMEN SHOULDN'T ADHERE TO CULTURAL STEREOTYPES, EXCEPT FOR THE ANTI-STEREOTYPE OF THEM NOT ADHERING TO STEREOTYPES", which, to add insult to injury, flashed a picture of Alyx Vance for about two seconds and didn't even mention her by name. Since any good study of excellent female characterization in games should, at the very least, be a seven-minute love ballad written about and directed toward the delightful Miss Vance, I wandered onto the forums to see if anyone else was as upset by her omission as I, and to my delight, a lot of people were (with the exception of one gentleman who dismissed her as "a typical badass latino girl with daddy issues", both parts of which are completely factually wrong - Alyx is half black and half Malaysian, and her father was an integral part of her life, leaving her with absolutely no void to be filled, nor any compulsion to find another older male with which to fill it.)
As I continued to read the comments, I found one lamenting the fact that Chell, the silent, player-controlled protagonist of Portal, had been prettied up for the sequel, and that it was unfortunate that women in games couldn't just look normal instead of being attractive. Before I get into this, let me provide a little context for those of you not reading my blog who haven't played Portal:
Personally, I don't get what the big deal is - the proto-Chell really shows that the game was more about introducing the concept of the world of Portal than pouring a lot of effort into its design, because quite honestly, she's a bit unsettling to look at. And not in an 'unattractive' way, either - it's more the psychological result of the subtle flaws and just plain wrong bits in her facial modeling that aren't quite wrong enough to let you actively point them out. In the words of Harry S. Plinkett, "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FAAAACE?"
By contrast, new Chell looks like a smoothed-out, realistic human being. Nothing has been changed from the old Chell, except that they've clearly put more effort into her. The jumpsuit is there (tied around her waist presumably to signify her comfort in her surroundings and her rebellion against her captors), and the tank top was probably underneath it the entire time anyway; you can see a bit of white there on old Chell. New Chell is arguably more clothed, as she actually has boots instead of just surgically implanted heel springs. Also, this is concept art; I'm willing to bet that the game model will not be quite as lovingly rendered.
Anyway, I responded to that comment with one of my own saying that she looked perfectly normal to me, and that people in general aren't nearly as unattractive as the commenter seems to think they are, with the exception of my Mac Basics instructor, who looked (and sounded) like the unfortunate lovechild of a pig and Nina from Office Space. I also pointed out that men in videogames, or in any medium of fiction, for that matter, don't exactly look like guys you'd see walking down the street, because the whole appeal of fiction, especially the interactive variety, is that it shows us things we don't see every day. Men are idealized, women are idealized, and that's really kind of the reason fiction exists. My piece said, I left for work, then came home and went to bed.
When I got up the next morning, I decided to see how the thread was progressing. I found a response to my comment which rather rudely made the point that male characters didn't have to show nearly as much skin as female characters because male characters are not designed so that players can masturbate to them. After I recovered from the LOLWUT, I reiterated my point that gaming in and of itself is supposed to be something of an escapist fantasy, and wondered where on earth he was getting this idea that female characters in games don't wear anything (admittedly I'm not much of a gamer myself, but the only truly ridiculously skimpy outfit I recall ever seeing on a female character in a game was the armor on my melee character in Atlantica Online.)
He fired back (completely ignoring a large portion of my post, I might add) citing the infected in Left 4 Dead - the males come in all shapes and sizes, and the sole female wears lingerie. Hilariously enough, he completely neglected to mention everygirl player character Zoey, and in retrospect I should have called him on this; instead I asked him, again, where he was getting this idea that a g-string was the standard uniform for female game characters, and then responded to his query as to whether I'd ever see how alienated women feel when all female game characters are male fantasies with the shocking revelation that I do, in fact, possess a vagina.
Which brings me to part one of my argument: seeing sexualized women in fiction does not bother females as much as seeing sexualized men does males. I mean, I personally find the bikini armor rather tasteless, because I choose to dress rather conservatively, but it doesn't disgust me to the point that I refuse to play any video games, ever. Now, when the female assets get out of control to the point of being anatomically impossible, that's one thing, but a woman who's not afraid to show off what she's got, especially if she's an interesting character? Hell yeah. Women with large breasts and tight clothing can be very well written, as can those in less revealing outfits, and the point that the video that started all of this ruckus should have made, instead of descending into a politically correct screed, is that writers can't let character development stop with character design.
I'm also willing to bet that another factor in this phenomenon is that male homosexuality has a different cultural significance than female homosexuality. When a guy sees a male character who's obviously been designed with fanservice in mind, of course he's going to be disgusted, because in general, men have it pounded into their skulls that any manifestation of homosexuality, even something as benign as appreciating the male figure, is weak and something to be ashamed of. Teenage boys call each other 'fag' as an insult because it's a quick and easy way to emasculate someone. By contrast, female homosexuality doesn't have anywhere near the same stigma - a woman trying to insult another woman will go after either her appearance or the number of people she takes to bed, but usually not whom she chooses to go to bed with. When a woman admires the body of another woman, any men in the vicinity will usually think it's 'hot'. Because of this, women in general feel more comfortable looking at depictions of their own sex in various states of undress, while men (again, in general) will run for the nearest vomit receptacle in the same situation.
When I posted this response, my opponent questioned my qualifications to represent all females, insisted that women DO get upset at sexualized depictions of other women, and then suggested that I google "Feminism".
Ah, I said to myself; THERE'S the problem.
And so my story finally winds around to its ultimate point; feminist thinking is a tanker truck of cow manure speeding forth from the metropolis of Victimhood, belching thick clouds of misplaced self-righteousness from its exhaust as it goes. While seated comfortably in its cab with a safety belt of smugness securely fastened around his waist, the penis-owner can proudly mow down the arguments and opinions of the legitimate female that stands in his way. She is not a feminist; she does not know how modern women think or what offends them.
Now, there's no denying that feminism, at its base definition (a belief that women should have opportunities and rights equal to those of men), has been important over the course of history; patriarchal society was a thing for thousands and thousands of years, and still is a thing in many parts of the world today. Unfortunately, in the good old US of A, feminism (like its partner -isms, race and fasc) has become a blanket under which one can hide from those scary monsters known as facts and reasoned discourse while still maintaining some amount of superiority over the opposing party. Crying "anti-feminist!" has just become another way of saying "I disagree with you, so I need to belittle your opinions. Also, you are conservative."
...come on, like that last part isn't totally true.
Anyway, not only is this a cowardly approach to arguing a point, it also smacks real feminism soundly in the face. As I said before, there are plenty of places in the world where women's rights are still an issue; blowing the girl-power whistle on something as dumb as skimpy outfits in video games cheapens the whole thing to the point of parody. While I won't deny that chainmail g-strings are incredibly impractical in combat, I like to think that human beings aren't so stupid and easily led as to see women as objects just because of sexually suggestive clothing.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go finish up my Motoko Kusanagi cosplay. Pink leotards and tight pants; that's the kind of feminism I can get behind!
