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Female vs male character design

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I saw another disgusting comment under a post about yet another man whining about the "de-feminisation" of female characters.

So, I wanted to showcase the diversity we have when it comes to male characters in video games (scroll for pics). Men get to have all kinds of characters from rugged to pretty to old to fat and even balding, but if there's even ONE female character that looks remotely realistic or isn't sexualised with weird outfits or outrageous body proportions, men throw a fit? And also if she's simply darker-skinned.

In the pictures, these are ALL playable characters or protagonists, not just some side characters.

Tekken is the best example I can think of when it comes to this. You have pretty much all kinds of men in Tekken: pretty boys, grandpas, obese men, rugged, muscly men, white, black, East Asian, even an Arab guy, etc, but every single female character is thin and "conventionally pretty" with a similar body type. Most of them are also lighter-skinned. They only fairly recently added a black female character in Tekken 7 and she's no longer in Tekken 8.

(P.S, I know there is some representation lacking for black and Asian men too. There is almost no South Asian representation for example.)

Men have zero problems and are silent when it comes to the diversity male characters get (except when the character is black ofc) but hate to see diversity when it comes to female characters. It just shows how hard they want to gatekeep everything and make it all to suit themselves only. It's annoying as heck to see them constantly whining and crying about it on social media. Why shouldn't women/girls also be able to see a range of different female characters in games? Because it hurts the fragile male ego and it isn't eyecandy enough for them? Are they even serious gamers?
There are even still guys trying to tell me gaming is a boys thing.

(Added an interesting excerpt from a book at the end)

Find More Gamer Girl Thots On: SorryMother Forum

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  2. I don’t think you can reason with the pretty extreme misogyny displayed in the tweet, there. He started from a position of hating women and viewing them as some antagonistic monolith and formed his opinion from there.

    But if you could, the obvious response is: Real women have agency and can give consent. They get to decide for themselves what they wear, who they wear it for, and how they pose in it. *Some* women are fine with revealing clothing, some of those women are also fine with publicly sharing photos of themselves in revealing clothing, and others are decidedly not. It’s a personal choice and not the choice of anyone else.

    A fictional character does not have agency. They are dressed and posed by their creators. Everything about them is designed, whether to tell you about their character or to sell their character to you. Being sexy is not, by itself, a problem. But objectification absolutely can fuel negative attitudes towards women. And requiring every female character to conform to a very narrow definition of attractive and never being allowed to be unattractive is not a good way to tell a variety of stories and reveals a pretty stark double standard when male characters are not held to the same requirements.

  7. Honestly this whole women being protagonists=bad narrative makes me so very sad and I really hope companies keep putting us at the forefront of these fuckers minds. Like, I don’t understand why only THEY get to have the great feeling that is “wow this character looks like me that’s so fun!”. When I was a little gamer, I never noticed it as much, then I remember playing tomb raider. I was so surprised and it like made me realize, you really can’t play as a woman in 90% of games, and Lara quickly became like an idol sort of. Like I felt like I was seeing someone like me on the screen, and it was an amazing feeling as a little girl. Now I just can’t unsee the patriarchy, women NEED to be in more games, poc NEED to be in more games. And the chuds can sit the fuck back and let some other people have some representation. Then they cry “we’ll make it meaningful and don’t just force dei write good minorities!!”😐😐😐
    This response makes my fucking head explode I’m so serious, they act like every game with a male protagonist is PERFECT, just absolutely no bad male centered games at all. I don’t care if there’s a bad game with a black woman as the protagonist and it has some problems like writing or something. THE COLOR AND GENDER OF PROTAGNISTS AND CHARACTERS DOES NOT DETERMINE THE QUALITY. Writing can be bad for any game what so ever. They just hate women, they just hate POC, they hate having the spotlight taken away from them that’s been on them for so long. Well it’s unfortunate cuz it’s time that we get some representation too, and they can sit tf down and be patient like all of us have. There are still PLENTY of games with white male protagonists coming out, they can go play those.

  8. While I absolutely agree that the issue you’re describing is very real, comparing male leads from ten very different games to the female cast of one specific game doesn’t really back up the point very well. What are the designs of the women from the games that those men are from like? What does the male cast of that one game look like?

  11. Not entirely related, but I remember an old Feminist Frequency video where she was talking about how “woman” is often used a character trait (the example that stuck with me was the Koopalings— there’s the crazy one, the magic one, the big tough one, the one who pays his child support, the cool one, the Beethoven one, and the girl)— definitely a similar thing going on here, where “woman” is a body type along with “average guy”, “fat guy”, “beefcake guy”, “old guy”, etc…

    Also this lack of diversity/representation contributes to situations [like we saw at the Olympics recently](https://youtu.be/yiczrQtzlBc?si=tsqAgOnhsMo0cUwf) where people online lost their minds over athletes that (obviously) didn’t fit this specific stereotype

    When I was trying to find that Feminist Frequency video, [I came across another one where she talks about exactly this](https://youtu.be/qbqRtp5ZUGE?si=7zI2DABPZC3s598x)

  13. I don’t get the “doesn’t look remotely realistic” thing because with the exception of the one on the right, most of them just look like the average generic white woman with varying degrees of hair color.

  17. I find the last pic kinda funny. I made the exact same argument when someone posted on here about how they refused to play games where they couldn’t be a girl because it “broke the immersion” for them. I said how if it was a man saying he wouldn’t play a game as a girl then people would be up in arms about it, calling him misogynistic. How I thought not getting immersed simply because you’re not playing a girl is silly. Could they also not get immersed in games when they played as an animal or some other non-human character? Got downvoted for it. Lol.

  23. You chose to show male character from 10 different games, but just tekken characters to represent women? when off the top of my head you could have used the last of us, horizon, tomb raider, assassins creed odyssey and uncharted the lost legacy. Very disingenuous.

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Haha it’s relaxing I swear