Voin wrote:So where are all the women standing up for depictions of their gender in media?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L_Wmeg7OTUVoin wrote:So if we want more depictions of strong, independent female characters in media (and not just fap-fodder like Lara Croft), then women need to step up their game and make such characters happen.
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/10/2 ... y-her-job/This is something I could go on about for weeks (and have, in the past). Women have been stepping up since the very dawn of gaming, and a virulent segment of the population rises up to destroy them. I've been in the conference rooms when
female game heroes get changed to male ones because the execs don't want to rock the boat, and I've been in companies where
female-led games got axed by the publishers because the developers refused to make that gender swap.
This recent thing with Gamergate isn't something new. If you've spent any time working in video games and entertainment, you've seen women get harrassed and hounded out until they're forced to leave the industry, over and over and over again. It's not a once-in-awhile thing, I've seen it at literally every video game company I've ever worked at, and at every (non-indie) video game company anyone I've known has ever worked at. The weird thing would be to see a woman in video games
not being abused.
I don't know if you have any women friends in the game industry; I have probably around a hundred. Ask them to tell you about the industry abuse sometime. Every one of them will have a story.
Voin wrote:In America, your silence is your consent. I know Hollywood isn't exactly a democracy, but we still vote with our dollars - that's how a free market works.
That's part of what I was saying about memetic Darwinism. But, also like American democracy, we only get to "vote" on the options that the richest top tier allow - politicians who are on the side of anyone with less than a billion dollars in the corporate account are not picked up by the major parties. Instead, 99% of the time, we're stuck choosing between either a
Republican or a
Democrat, rather than someone who isn't going to fuck us bloody and then send us a bill for the dry-cleaning.
So yeah, we're stuck holding out hope for the indies to take over and get us all out from under the thumbs of the corporate interests who are vested in propagating the male-hero-female-object schema (
because market segmentation makes marketing a hell of a lot easier and more profitable). If you could see my online friendslists, you'd see a couple hundred of their names; they're out there plugging away, although they're never going to get the millions of dollars of corporate marketing support like Chad Penis-Haver would.
I guess even I count as an indie game maker, sort of, although being limited to Lego means that I tend to hit the gender thing from a screwy angle.
Voin wrote:And at the end of that episode, someone slimier than a typical lawyer shows up in the courtroom - Al Sharpton bursts in (apropos of nothing) and exclaims "Let her, play the part, give us a black Spider-Man too while you're at it! Yaddah, yadda, etc"
Oh my god, have you ever been involved in something that got surprise co-opted by Al Sharpton? It happened to me once back in the nineties in New York.
It's completely accurate, he really does burst in apropos of nothing exactly as depicted. You end up just standing around with your jaw hanging open wondering what the hell just happened.
Voin wrote:But would people like Sharpton be as supportive if Storm, Luke Cage (Power Man), or the Falcon were suddenly portrayed by an Asian or Hispanic actor?
I'm going to have to object on the grounds that there are no other people like Sharpton. He is a species to himself.
Voin wrote:Good cultural discussion, but we are way off topic.

Memetic Darwinism in action.