I linked some examples of what I mean, sorry for any mental losses suffered by them lmao. I tried to pick the more "classic" ones so the cringe is minimized.
Now the question for me isn't "why do gamers think every woman has ti be wank material". That's a frankly obvious question – sexism and objectification. It's horrible, but it's not puzzling to me. I want to ask a different question.
How on Earth is Aloy, Lara or literal APHRODITE unattractive to these guys? I ask this as somebody (very) attracted to women. I'm a bit afraid to ask this on a main sub for obvious reasons, but I thought I'd ask here.
How does this happen?
Obviously looks are subjective, but how does it happen that people of a certain political opinion all look at these beautiful women, designed and modeled to be beautiful, and go "these are fat hags that look manly". And they consider it a political issue, too! Is it confirmation bias? If not, what is it?
Why isn't there scientific research on these guys?
Pornbrain. It’s the only “female representation” they watch, why else would they think women would look like the pic on the right. Is Sephora still open post apocalypse?
They’re doing what has been done to real women in magazines for decades; editing them into some fake ideal that has been peddled to women for too long.
Now that fantasy characters are actually modeling the variety that is real women, they’ve come full circle into editing fantasy women who look like realistic women back to the fake airbrushed, cocaine skinny, etc. fantasy that mainstream media, anime, and porn has rotted their shallow worldview with. They don’t interact with real women and don’t understand women beyond the ones who have been built as a literal brand to take money from them online.
“Unlike the average woman.”
That boy doesn’t get out much…
Because they’re so porn-addled and involuntarily celibate that they’ve lost grips with reality on what women actually look like.
Wait…so…the goddess of beauty is considered ugly? smh.
Goddess forbid that women look like actual women -_-
Honestly, they’ve been fed for decades a very narrow standard of female beauty. They’ve been taught that this standard is mandatory for every female character and that anything that defies it is ugly.
We’ve been enjoying many types of male characters in videogames, despite the “brown-haired, angry male type”. We got a small, chubby Mario as one of the most popular characters ever. We celebrated sexy guys like Dante or Leon, or rough ones like Kratos or Marcus Fenix. We enjoyed regular Joes like James Sutherland and Ethan Winters. GTA main characters have been consciously unattractive, like Niko Bellic or Trevor Philips. Even in the indie scene we got Dave The Diver or Harrier Du Bois and nothing happened. We enjoy a sexy guy, but we don’t go on a rampage because a video game has an “average/ugly protagonist”. I would even say that there aren’t so many “sexy male characters”, in comparison to “sexy female characters”.
They came to the point in which they’ll trash perfectly attractive female characters. Hell, Aphrodite is literally a naked, slim woman, with even features and beautiful curves. Lara Croft has a perfect hourglass shape, with a face that looks like a top model. And still aren’t enough. Every time I’m more convinced that they don’t like videogames. Or women, for that matter.
Because they have extremely skewed views of reality. It’s right there in that first screenshot. They’re implying the average woman looks like the right. Meanwhile, the left photo, to me as a woman, looks like one of the most realistic women I’ve seen in a game.
We all know people don’t look like the right without, at the very least, makeup.
misogyny, that’s literally all it is
Really? Lara Croft? Who still has the long hair, tiny nose, big lips, small waist, arched eyebrows, skinny arms, and cleavage out? Not feminine enough? I guess they can have this Lara, who looks less feminine, honestly, and barely even human.
https://preview.redd.it/54jjikcmf5bd1.jpeg?width=912&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7aa82f21f28bee31d55cefd9dfd93ec6a9f1675a
All of human civilization and culture has been catered to male sensibilities since before Ea-nāsir was overcharging for copper. And we’ve made embarrassingly little progress since then, **and** the price of copper further inflated.
Turns out they’re accustomed to privilege, like being the cultural default, and are unwilling to cede any ground whatsoever. Take even a small part of that patronizing away, a game free from male gaze for instance, and they’re going to push back. It sets a precedent that more cultural currency is to be taken from them, which, in their defense, I and many others indeed very much *are* advocating for.
It’s not that the women are *”less hot”*, rather, they’re aware they’re being decentered and they don’t want that and are willing to fight for it. Even if all that “fighting” entails is polluting the internet with dogshit tweets.
The hilarious thing about the first picture is that “hire fans” pic of Aloy was made specifically to make fun of this argument, and these morons are too far up their own asses to realize it.
The problem is that to these kind of men, exactly one body type, facial structure, etc is beautiful. Anything deviating from that extremely narrow ideal is “ugly” and “mannish”. And that ideal is heavily influenced by anime styled women – *very* narrow jaw and chin, extremely thin with no muscle definition, large breasts, narrow waist, etc.
Also, a lot of them are looking to be led, so when a grifter like Grummz tells them to believe something, they believe it. They’re addicted to being outraged and their own victim complex. So even women who should fit their ideal (such as Lara Croft in the upcoming remakes) get slammed as having a “mannish” jaw or too small breasts, even when neither of those things is even remotely true. Their thought leaders have declared it so, and so it is so.
I have a bit of a hot take on this. I think it’s less to do with their actual appearance and more to do with the fact they aren’t designed “for men”. These people are arching up at the character not being forced into the stereotypical appearance of an objectified woman. This affirms the personhood/subjectivity of the character, which generates anxiety in the insecure player.
Being asked even subtly through artistic cues to actually identify with the woman they’re playing is very challenging. They tend to find it emasculating because they are very insecure in their own gender expression.
Another part of it is that to a certain kind of man real women are highly unsettling. This is because real women are people who have their own thoughts and opinions and the ability to reject men that they don’t want which is a core fear for these types.
Because they’re used to anime women and they’re porn addicted lol, the men who get angry at female characters who actually look like real women probably have right arms the size of their torsos.
Based on what they say about women’s various personalities and looks, those men don’t actually *like* women. 💁♀️
Because they aren’t hypersexual and have realistic movements.
Anime.
Porn addicted cretins
I’d say most of these guys are just pornsick, misogynistic, or just casually pervy.
The rest are carefully manipulating the pornsick and the misogynists so they can be ‘top dog’ on Twitter and become the next big bigoted influencer on Elon’s platform. Everyone there wants to be the next Kirk or Shapiro. The best thing to do is delete your twitter account. Let them speak to each other where no one cares what they say or do.
>Why isn’t there scientific research on these guys?
There’s probably more recent research on incels and the alt-right than anything beneficial for women and girls. We’re paying these people way too much attention. Their takes have zero merit and deserve none of our attention.
Because they see Instagram and Tiktok women daily, who are filtered to the max, but pretend to be all natural, and men think that women just look like that.
I’ve seen guys in a comment section about Stellar Blade argue that “all women can look like that if they just take a little more care of themselves.” They seriously said that we women all should have bodies like that, but we are “lazy and would rather eat cheeseburgers and be obese.” Insane.
“Removing the man face.”
Simply adding the lipstick would have had the same effect.
[deleted]
These guys will say they want a fantasy of a woman. They will flat out admit it and say that video games are fantasy and so they want a hyper sexualized woman with fantasy features that are unrealistic. They don’t want someone who looks “plain” in their opinion.
They have a narrow view of video games. They have a narrow view of sexy, sensual, beauty, and what it means to be a woman. They just want it all to be unrealistic and not representative of average women while also throwing a fit when something “unrealistic” happens like how MJ in the new Spiderman games is too strong or that no woman can be buff like Abby. They want their cake and to be able to eat it too. The criteria for what they find acceptable is always moving. You cannot win an argument with these people about what is acceptable to them. Video games are media and art, like books and movies. It’s a medium to tell a story and not all devs or artists want to tell a story about a woman with giant knockers who wears revealing clothing and barely talks and her only story is about sexual trauma. Some want stories about and with women who are capable, complicated, complex, and work to succeed not to find love.
This is what happens when you have certain demographics are the dominant representation in popular media. They call people “woke” as an insult and here they are crying because now they are the ones who aren’t being catered to in every single release every year. I guess it sucks to feel like your interests and needs aren’t important. How ironic.
Lol this Grummz guy has issues. I can’t even tell the difference except a bit of lipstick
There’s been really interesting analysis of comic book and other characters that are animated all having the exact same face and bone structure, and bodies…. just different hair colors and colouring. Even female orcs look closer to human counterparts than to their fellow orcs. Guys literally have only ever seen one woman in pretty much most of anything and they seem to freak out when anything is ever different.
They also do the same with scifi. Anything that strays from the same 3 stories they were raised on, they freak out and it’s an oppression or not real or some nonsense.
Every story/image/woman has to be their personal safety blanket because they are the hero of their own little story, which to them is just actually everyone’s story.
I think depictions have been so unrealistic in the past that now that they err closer to realism the characters look bad to them.
These people have no idea what an actual woman looks like. Not just because of porn, but because virtually every depiction of a woman in media has been edited, filtered, lots of makeup etc. Even tiktok automatically puts a filter on.
Ask an AI generator to make pictures of women, they’re always unrealistic too. Go to /r/midjourney and you’ll notice the difference between images of men and women.
Grummz is kind of a bigoted piece of shit and him and his followers are kind of the vocal minority, especially since Twitter kinda sucks.
They’re stupid. But I also noticed that all of your examples are from twitter which is always a complete and utter cesspool. So it’s not surprising. I realize this doesn’t only happen on twitter as well though but I just feel like twitter is never a good example.
The fact that they didn’t only change Aphrodite’s ”man-face”, but also her body is beyond me. It’s a small change, but was it needed…?
These men don’t want women they want moving sex dolls
Honestly I wouldn’t care if Aphrodite was trans. It wouldn’t make her less of a goddess, less feminine, less powerful, or less of a woman in any way. And if it kept transphobes out of my witch game full of powerful women kicking ass then all the better for it.
It’s not even like it would be impossible to tie it to the mythos either, cause didn’t she grow from a titans ball sack dissolving in the sea in some versions? Idk I don’t really care if a diety of love, beauty, fertility, and war is cis or trans or gender fluid. I can buy into any of them because she’s a fucking god.
Anyway my point is that the problem with the trans ones isn’t the accusation of the characters being trans, but the implication that it would be a bad thing if they were. When the Aphrodite thing first came to my attention my first instinct was to push back against it and defend her cisness and the things they were using to say she wasn’t cis, but I realized that I wasn’t actually mad they called her trans. I was more so that they were so upset over it and that whether she was or wasn’t didn’t actually matter.
Men get mad about female characters that don’t cater to them *because* they don’t cater to them. We are clawing out a space in what they perceive is theirs and they feel that every game that is women led or designed or simply doesn’t center them is taking the spot of a game that would have centered them. I mean look at them trying to find absolutely anything to complain about in a fucking naked, flirty, woman character. All because her art is done by a woman and she has agency and power as a character in her own right.
Sorry this comment just devolved into being about Aphrodite, I’m kind of in full Hades brain right now.
They have completely unrealistic mental images of what women look like. Anyone who’s not a photoshopped magazine model is ugly. Any amount of muscle or even slight fatty or skin wrinkle looks unfeminine because they only see them edited out. It’s getting really ridiculous, and I can only assume these same men either do not have non-familial relationships with women, and if they do, they probably think they are “settling” for an “uglier” woman because the beautiful ones are “out of their league” (but also probably think all of those women are uptight for not dating them).
It’s because game devs jobs have been overran by men and the male gaze for decades. Now that more women, poc, and nonbinary folks have entered the chat, they’re losing their fucking minds.
They don’t go outside and watch too much porn/hentai and think real women are meant to look like anime girls basically
I have never once thought Aphrodite “looks trans” and I spend a lot of time playing Hades around trans people. These people don’t spend any time around women, cis OR trans.
Because they’re boys/ men and they expect for everyone to cater to them. (Oh wait I see that you said you already get this)
I think the character on the right in the first image is more attractive according to beauty standards but that’s just because the person on the left actually looks like a normal woman.
I don’t think she looks masculine, but she doesn’t have the exaggerated version of femininity that men have come to expect from video game characters, she doesn’t have a full face of makeup.
But I’m also into women and I wouldn’t be into either of them because they’re not butch enough for me.
I think it’s pretty funny (not ha ha funny but just the eye roll oh more classic sexism way) that in their fan-made version they made her smile and were like “ahhh much better”
Second image is another similar situation where they’re like “remove the man face” but the “man face” is just… not wearing makeup? Having a shadow or line where the cheek is? Having the inside of the nostril visible because it would be visible at the angle that the head is at? I think the issue is that they’re used to seeing women who are not drawn realistically, whose bodies bend in weird ways so that their tits and ass are always displayed, who are always shown at the most flattering possible angle, and are drawn to be sexually appealing to the male viewer.
The Lara Croft thing is just the whole trans panic bs that’s going on these days. At first I thought maybe it was because they gave her short hair but then I realized she has a braid so I have no idea what they’re on about with that one – other than they’re just trying to manufacture rage.
I think because I’m lesbian I can say I don’t see why men like the typical male gaze I always thought it made characters look way to young
right because Aloy’s priority is covering her freckles before setting off to *checks notes* stop the end of the end of the world.
I guess they watch too much anime or play anime styled games. A model based on a real woman isnt going to look like a 2d anime character…
They always say its a west thing but they also start crying even when they see characters made by japanese devs (like lara croft or the resident evil women). I cant believe they can see lara croft or jill valentine and say “wow she looks like a man”, wtf
I’ll say in the case of Alloy that’s just not a great pic of her. I’ve seen her in game and she looks at better than that. But a lot of people making the complaint didn’t see anything other than that pic that always gets shown.