dammit said::/ So, I'm saddened that anyone is bothering to give any other feedback on the game here because clearly [he] sees that as support of the game ... I would rather just not have this kind of awful shit on our forums and continuing to offer support to him is going to keep him here and say we're okay with this.
My primary objective is to include everyone who makes games or is involved in game development in South Africa on these forums.dammit said:So, basically, it's fine that he is sexist in his representation of half of the world's population, as long as he's willing to discuss his sexist views with you and that he makes games?
Bigotry and abusive behaviour on the forums will result in a warning and/or ban.
Bigotry and abusive behaviour in games WILL be challenged in the comments and can result in its deletion . After some thought I realise I was wrong in my previous feedback on other games and mechanics or other aspects of a bigoted game cannot be discussed until the bigotry or abuse has been removed. Doing otherwise doesn't endorse the bigotry but does trivialise the issue and gives the developer the opportunity to ignore the problem.
Comments
We need to - as a community - decide where we draw the line. But we do need to draw that line.
Please note that I don't want to argue, I am simply wondering what some opinions are about this.
I agree that if everyone on the forums believed the same things we would not be diverse. The quickest way to accomplish this though is to have bigots express points of view that we as a group don't agree with, but not actually doing anything about it. I believe that if we allow that to happen then pretty soon the only people that will be left on the forums/community will be people that agree with the bigoted point of view.
In @pierre's case I don't think that @dammit is trying to exclude any one specific person, but rather her motivations are that of including more people. We have no idea how many people will get turned away from the community when they see that post because we will simply never hear from them again. If we as a community are supporting that kind of game, then regardless of how much more good the community does there will be some people that won't feel welcome, and in fact wouldn't be.
@Kobusvdwalt9: wanting a diverse group of people surely doesn't mean we want to have all potential people. If someone is a troll, just out to create a toxic environment for others, then they arguably do have a different perspective on things, but I wouldn't want them as part of the community. Unfortunately, we can't actually have everyone. If we choose to include certain people in the community, and allow their behaviour, then we exclude others. To that end, I think we need to exclude people who go again the rules (or at least their behaviour) such as sexism and racism.
I'm just going to add a note here, and it's a little out of context, but basically staying silent and letting sexist, racist etc behaviour simply exist on our forums is problematic in that is adjust how the whole group perceives the norms (of what is okay) for the group. People will then be more likely (despite their own personal beliefs) to act according to the (misperceived) group norms. Jeffery Lin of Riot games also talks about how silence is a problem and how this lead to the kinds of toxic behaviour we see online, especially in LoL-type games in his GDC talk.
The only solution I've ever experienced is to open communications and continuously try to keep teaching, showing and explaining why and how the behavior in question can be harmful to other people, ESPECIALLY if the person who is behaving in a bigoted manner is not entirely aware or understands why what he is doing is wrong. What I've seen happening in these forums is that people are patiently talking about this, and I really believe this as a VERY positive thing.
Explaining to someone that there is a big difference between subjective opinion that hurts nobody, and subjective opinion that oppresses and harms other people is far more helpful and progressive than banning and silencing someone. If they then choose to be mean spirited, refuse to communicate, or outright attack people who are trying to reason with them, then yes, perhaps they are a hopeless case, and the easiest way to deal with that is probably to silence them. But if someone is just having trouble understanding a perspective, then it would be better to actually talk to them about it than to just flip the table and declare them a monster. Nobody is born inherently understanding what other people go through, and everyone is guilty of assumptions. Not tolerating bigotry doesn't mean banning everyone that expresses bigoted opinions, it means addressing those opinions themselves and hopefully changing them. I am personally guilty of defaulting to dismissal, but that's why I've been very impressed by the reaction of this community so far.
@Pierre may not gave been especially receptive about the criticism he is receiving about his character design, but it seems to be more because he doesn't really understand how it actually hurts people. I'm sure he believes it's mostly harmless fun. So to change his mind, we need to try and show him why his approach lacks empathy, why his design is potentially alienating and harmful to many people, and how it can be improved. Banning him isn't going to achieve that, but being inclusive may stand a chance. He seems to at least have been somewhat apologetic about it, though I still don't know if he really understood why people reacted that way. I don't know, maybe given some time and exposure to people who have a healthy outlook on these issues, he could be swayed to see things from a different point of view.
Malicious/overt bigotry, such as knowing that kitchen jokes demean women and making them anyway, is a red line. I'd ban people who continue to do that after being warned.
Unconscious, subtle bigotry, like not seeing what the problem is with "sexy game characters", is something I'm less inclined to ban people for. I'd prefer to try and educate and critique. Banning doesn't help them understand.
It's also important to be patient. I have debated a good deal online, and there is one rock solid truth that I've learned - you almost never change people's minds instantly. It's a slow, difficult process that happens over time, if at all.
Especially for issues like representation of female sexuality in media, which is an issue that a LOT of people get stuck on. After all, there's nothing wrong with sexual attraction, right? And men are sexualized too, right? Look at Dante's abs in DMC or whatever!!1!
It's easy to forget, if you already see how the patterns in the media around us are problematic, that some people are still at the beginning of the journey to understanding.
People still stuck in the Matrix don't see the Matrix.
I am for looking after our culture, particularly our culture of feedback.
if someone is turned away from our community because of the kind of interaction happening on Pierre's monster hunter game, then they've turned away with a sample of what this forum is good at, relentless feedback, good discussion, and being useful to each other, despite the disagreements.
Honestly I have a bigger problem with this thread:Kid 2.0 Monster because it looks like we're not helping at all. In fact the only real interaction is looking a bit trollish. And I know this is because of history and most of us have that extra information here, but if we're really talking about the way things look to newcomers, let's not talk about the examples in which we're representing the community effectively, and talk about this sort of thing instead.
It is not anonymity online that makes people assholes, as people so often believe, but a lack of consequences. Because we have no consequences for someone who simply shrugs and says no, I'm going to keep my incredibly sexist portrayal of this female character in my game, we are ultimately encouraging his continued efforts in this vein. People have already given up trying to talk to him, so the only responses left in his thread will be people talking about his game sans the sexism - which will serve only to reinforce his thinking that "SJWs" are simply "overreacting" and if you say no enough they'll go away and chew on a different bone.
Punishment, bans, etc, do work and they do have an effect.
I don't understand why everyone here is so precious about not banning people. Are we so nice that we're afraid to actually punish someone?
@Pierre has shown that he does understand and yet has stated that he's going to keep his character the same anyway. He's not simply a misunderstood, confused, uneducated individual. He is actively now being a sexist bigot.
At no point have a said we should ban everyone on sight of bigoted behaviour.
I think you'll find the problem here is that particular user also only posts in his own thread. He's looking for feedback without engaging the community members in any other way.
Also, this is an entirely different issue and I'd like to keep things on topic, please.
While I think it's really important that we do create that sort of space, where people can make mistakes and defend themselves all while having a productive dialogue with the criticism offered to them, I think it's even more important that we create a space that's safe for women, people of colour, queer folk, people with disabilities, and really any other marginalised group that might happen upon our community. Rejecting criticism entirely is a dick move, and not conducive to any kind of productive conversation, but at worst you're hurting your own project and wasting everyone time. However, when that criticism is "your work is actually harmful to real life human beings," you really ought to take that a lot more seriously, and not just double down on your stance and blame everyone else for being too sensitive/don your fedora and claim that the people criticising your work are actually bigoted against you and your bigotry. Because then not only are you wasting everyone's time, you're harming members of the community, driving potential members away, and damaging the community's attempt at providing a safe space for everyone to participate. I think that's a pretty self-evidently worse outcome than just annoying everyone by being an unhelpful asshat, which I think is pretty good grounds for erring on the side of creating a safe space, if it comes down to it.
I happened upon this essay by a mod over at RPGnet, which has a pretty big problem with people derailing threads about sexism. He describes the forum not as one where being a feminist is mandatory, but one where useful participation requires a certain bare minimum understanding of feminism and its terminology. Which is something worth thinking about. When @dislekcia summoned me to the thread in question, he mentioned that there were a bunch of commonly used (and frequently debunked) arguments about sexism and representation, which is totally true. If every one of these threads didn't require dozens of posts to go over 101 level stuff that's already been covered in a dozen other threads, we'd at least be a little less frustrated, and dialogue might be more fruitful. I agree that we need to explain the effects of shitty representation, but that's exactly what's been happening in that thread. I even gave goddamned links to examples (okay, they were anecdotes of the positive effects of inclusivity and empathy, but it's not that hard to flip around), and didn't receive any response or acknowledgement; like I've said a whole bunch of times already, letting people fuck up and talk about their errors is a good thing, but we also need to realise when pedagogy isn't working and we need to take a more punitive approach. At some point there needs to be some sort of top-down indication that this is not the sort of thing that we want in the community.
That is a awful, awful idea. And it would achieve the exact opposite of actually changing people's minds.
More specifically about disagreement, as much as I'd like everyone here to be a super-inclusive intersectional feminist, I know it's not going to happen. I don't like the idea of not including someone just because their politics are different to mine (within reason), but we're clearly seeing that there's a certain point where continuing to try to change someone's mind comes into conflict with the safety of marginalised forum members and has a negative impact on their desire to participate or even be part of the community altogether. Perhaps I shouldn't have phrased my post in such absolute terms, given that I'm relatively new to this forum, and have no experience actually moderating or administrating anything like this, but yeah, just having a hard time reconciling the desire for the forum to be open to as many people as possible, irrespective of politics (again, within reason), and the desire for the forum to be a safe space for everyone who uses it.
Why would a system of formal warnings, with some number of warnings resulting in a ban (with various time windows for either ban lengths OR warning expirations) NOT act as valid consequences? It's not an instant "hey you get off the forum" and it makes it abundantly clear what was unacceptable instead of leaving that vague and open to misinterpretation. It leaves people time to communicate their positions and/or debate their work while at the same time empowering people to speak up against socially unacceptable content/messages.
I'd appreciate it if you could explain why it wouldn't work. Perhaps that way we can come up with something better.
@dislekcia "Okay, hang on... Why would this achieve the exact opposite?" - Because saying "take this criticism on board or you're getting a warning/ban" is not persuasion, it's a threat. And people almost universally react very poorly to threats. They get angry, and they either double down or stop engaging.
Threats cause people to close down to new ideas, not open up.
(I am, of course, entirely fine with their being consequences for malicious/overt bigotry.)
It could definitely work as a way to force certain people to leave these forums and presumable continue to make the same games elsewhere without changing their attitude. If that's the outcome we desire then it's a valid course of action.
(Obviously I'm also entirely fine with their being consequences for malicious/overt bigotry.)
It's because "debating an issue" is a farce if there isn't some space for people to disagree without being punished for it.
In fact, this concept seems to come up a lot in discussions of sexism online: Men feel that they should be "able to have opinions" without consequences and feel that when they express those opinions that they're somehow protected. That's false - you can indeed have opinions, but you need to be prepared to accept other people's reactions to those opinions. When we're talking about material that clearly demonstrates how you see people that are different to yourself, others are going to interpret that and react accordingly. If you act in ways that demonstrate a lack of regard for people (by, say, expressing a sexist opinion, posting sexist material or positing debunked arguments for why something isn't sexist) then there are going to be consequences to those actions: At the very least, people won't like your opinion and they'll be able to point out WHY. Any amount of arguing is not going to change that.
Even something like Bayonetta cannot be argued that it isn't sexist. I doubt anyone here is creating work of that same calibre, nor are they aware enough to subvert tropes as well as Bayonetta does. Being given a warning for posting sexist (or racist, or otherwise harmful material) is a judgement of the material, not of your argument as to why it's okay, your argument pretty much doesn't matter after the material is posted. I don't understand why people think it would...
Besides, getting a warning would be part of a process of the community discussing something, not an instant ban. If enough people feel something is worthy of a warning, bam, a warning happens. That's discourse! You might not like the conclusions reached by other people, but that's how we all learn.
I feel that saying "No, there shouldn't be warnings" is a waste of time - if you're worried about warnings being inappropriately applied, then discuss how they're earned instead. Ask yourself: Is posting sexist material grounds for getting a warning? Is posting racist material grounds for getting a warning? Do these things go against what the community stands for? We know that we need visible, enforceable consequences for infractions, if warnings aren't a good way to achieve that, suggest alternatives instead of saying that all debate is protected by magical intention.
I'm happy to talk about things, but when someone stands by statements which are equivalent to creationist theories, then there is no debate left.
@dammit my stance isn't at all about abandoning all forms of punishment. I agree that at some point, the effort expended trying to reason with a person exceeds the value of their understanding, especially since, like @brondin mentions, it is our personal responsibility to stay aware of the issues that negatively affect innocent people, but we simply can't all know everything all the time. This is a fairly small community, and we have the luxury of attempting personal conversation before "corporal punishment". It seems like there are people who are talking to this guy, be it in person or in private. Their efforts may hopefully prove to be more fruitful than a bunch of strangers talking about how much of a butt he's being. @BlackShipsFilltheSky hits the point exactly, we aren't the only people he is speaking to. In a different forum, he is probably not receiving the same criticism that he may be receiving here, particularly because the issues of female representation simply isn't something that much of the larger gaming community understands. The fact that he's opened this topic for discussion is probably better than if this discussion never happened at all. Maybe we don't change his mind in the end, and he receives multiple warnings and then a ban, BUT, this is something that has offered a few bystanders, including myself, the opportunity to ask questions or reflect on the issue at hand. As long as it hasn't descended into personal attacks or threats, is it not possibly too premature to censor?
@garethf I suppose morality may not be scientifically definitive, however, it is something that is widely regarded as philosophically sound, and isn't really as much of a blurry grey as you make it out to be. Right now, the sexism in question isn't a difficult one to pin. Is it disrespectful? Yes. Does it represent a participating group of people in a ridiculing/mocking way that is inappropriate and otherwise completely irrelevant within the context? Yes. Does it encourage humor and derision at the expense of a different or less fortunate demographic? Yes. Therefore, it should be seriously re-evaluated, and the refusal to do so suggests a "total butt"
It only seems like there is a broad consensus when you stick to arguing broad strokes, the minute you get down into the nitty gritty specifics a thousand different opinions emerge.
Whilst I was at GDC I went to lost levels (basically a million indies giving micro talks about everything). Before they started they clearly and boldly stated the most comprehensive Safe Space policy I've ever heard - like literally down to asking someone's permission to take a photograph. Way over the top to my mind. But it got me thinking really hard about my own conduct and what it meant to be a part of that space. (It was uncomfortable as hell - a good sign my assumptions were being tested). And the interesting thing is I've never seen such a diverse audience, not only of women but of people from every corner of the gender/not gender spectrum.
That makes me think perhaps as a community need to make a very clear, loud, biased and unambiguous statement about our stance on gender issues and what will be accepted. Our own safe space policy if you will. It will have to be opinionated, in much the same way "affirmative action" is opinionated. And yes some folks won't agree with those views and turn away, but it aggressively creates the stage for other diverse voices to join and be part of our community. Even besides the crap that's happened online in the last year, games development needs diversity in order to thrive as a South African industry (like literally we get more government support). As an organisation it seems MGSA would almost be neglecting it's duties to grow game dev in SA if we didn't do this.
What we're talking about is something that is provably harmful
I'm entirely on board with both of those things. Pedagogy is a noble goal and I've definitely made attempts to educate folks on this forum. Safety is really important and we should always strive to be considerate of the lived experience of marginalised groups and how our words and actions might impact their emotional and psychological health. I'm just not convinced they can happen in exactly the same place. I'd love to be wrong about this, but it seems like there is a certain extent to which those two ideals would struggle to coexist. If bigoted content stays up, we compromise the safety of certain community members, and perhaps implicitly signal to potential members that we're okay with this sort of thing. If we take it down right away, we miss out on an opportunity to do some long-term good by educating someone (who will perhaps go on to educate others), and that person could easily just go to another board and not meet any resistance.
For what it's worth, I would advocate for prioritising the safety of marginalised people every single time. It's not a pleasant choice, but I really do think it's the right thing to do. That said, I have a potential (possibly horrible) solution, which may or may not allow us to have our cake and eat it too: When problematic content shows up in a thread, we flag it, perhaps through an extension of the category system, or perhaps a mod/admin adds some text to the thread title. This signals to anyone who might find it important that the space is not necessarily a safe one, and that 101 level discussion is probably happening in that thread (I have this source and this source, both of which suggest that a common feature of safe spaces is an avoidance of 101 level education), and is a visible indication that the community recognises problematic content and cares about providing safe spaces. Folks who are keen on education then know where they're needed, and have room to try to engage with the person responsible for the bigoted work.
I don't know if this approach is ideal. Problematic content still appears on the forum. It also might come off as that shitty, "well if you don't like it, just don't look at it," type of argument. Perhaps it isn't entirely favorable to whoever puts up a game that people take issue with, and could have the same effect as a warning, leading to people doubling down or refusing to engage. And of course, then we come back to the debate of how bad something needs to be before we deem the thread an unsafe space.
I guess that doesn't leave us all that far from where we are already, but it seems like a small step towards some kind of resolution. So maybe it's worth asking if safety and pedagogy are antithetical, and to what extent that is true? If we have to choose one, which is it and why? If we can have both, what does that look like, and how do we reach that point?
I feel like people have just been yelling @Pierre. And that's not cool.
We're supposed to be cool.
The answer to the question in the first post is pretty redundant. We shouldn't allow bigotry on the forums. But let's do the very basic thing and ask what bigotry is? In this case. We as a "community" have been intolerant and hostile towards @Pierre. We the "community" have been bigots. Now please do not take this as me condoning the work presented. Personally that character creeps me the fuck out, and makes me want to not play the game at all, and it being changed would be a great boon for the game. But the willingness to dog-pile and vilify someone who by all accounts from the "community" was simply not versed in the appropriate parts of feminism is pretty bad.
@Dammit pointed out that it's a lack of consequence that makes people act like assholes online. Well banning people from some little forum on the internet isn't exactly a big deal to a new person here. Yes there are some of us that have been around here for ages and for us receiving a reprimand would actually mean something. But for someone who just arrived? They're simply going to say "Fuck those assholes from MGSA." And continuing doing whatever they we're and just have a bad view of the "community" and MGSA itself. And that has consequences for MGSA as an organization.
Banning and warning people makes us feel better about "our" space, and that we have done the "right" thing. It's not going to actually make people change their minds. And as I said above: you are simply going to fuel their current belief since the backfire effect is a thing. And you want to get people to change their mind, not walk away. You need to engage with people, and slowly get them to change their mind: epiphanies are a rare thing.
I've seen a lot of people walk away from the "community" but really the community of MGSA is supposed to be all game developers in South Africa. Not a bunch of people who are able to yell the loudest on the forums. I've seen a lot of people be active and then leave simply because we have been hostile to them.
This is nuanced subject and I'm not saying we should never remove actual terrible people. But Pierre has been civil. And wow a human didn't change their opinion immediately after someone on the internet told them to, that's never happened! As was pointed out it takes a exposure therapy to get people to change their minds — much like I'm expecting people to yell at me, and be pissed off at me, and maybe in a month realize that was a kinda crappy thing to do, and then wonder if I might have been a bit right and reflect on their actions.
We can guide and help people, and indeed we have a wealth of experience to do that. From a lot of places. And I think we need to realize that not all devs in SA are going to be indies, not all devs are going to be versed in feminism. We need to be tolerant of people who set out develop games in different manners. We should point out how to act better, be guiding, and give them time. And yes we should state that intolerance is not welcome here. But let us not be intolerant while we do that.
Sorry, my opening sentence was horribly worded. Morality itself can indeed be blurry, but by "it" i didn't mean morality itself. I'm talking about the context about which this discussion is held. The validity of authorial intention aside, the intent I inferred was what @Pierre himself intended, and I quote from his own thread "To me, the fighting sex doll has become an element of humor, and a part of gaming culture." The fact that a fighting sex doll is a humorous part of gaming culture doesn't justify its existence, it suggests that the gaming culture that he has thus far experienced sees no problem with extracting humor from the ridicule, misrepresentation or objectification of women.
Unless his character is literally a plastic sex doll that has been brought to life by magical forces, and is not intended to represent an actual person, the portrayal of women as sex dolls being a disrespectful thing is hardly a contestable point within any community, feminist or no. If he genuinely "appreciated the dimorphism" between the genders, which, it has been scientifically proven, is rarely even dimorphic, then surely he would be more aware that differences between men and women are NOT that women are plastic breasted sex toys designed for his amusement. Whether or not his intention is malicious isn't my concern, but it is, however, undoubtedly sexist. I don't see how the criticism of his main protagonist being a part of a negative culture of misrepresentation is getting into nitty gritty specifics :/
Also I know you just used this as an example of bad argument earlier, but since some people genuinely ask questions like that, I want to point out that Dante's abs suggest he is strong and capable. Men, women, hermaphrodites, in some cases even babies, can have abs. Therefore, it is irrelevant to his gender, so sexism is not brought into question.
As I said, changing people's minds is a long, slow, hard process. If you seriously want to reach people who are not already 90% in agreement with you, you have to have more patience than "well, he had that entire forum thread to change his worldview and he didn't, guess he's just hopeless and we should ban him".
You shift that needle very slowly, if at all.
Regarding @TheFuntastic's point about a safe space policy, I fully agree with that. Overtly sexualized imagery is a tricky issue, as we've witnessed. I would be careful to set policies based on limits of content and behavior rather than opinion, though. In other words, people are free to agree or disagree that Bayonetta is problematic media, and debate that without being banned for dissent from the popular consensus. But they shouldn't plaster threads with images like this.
@Dammit Mmm, you're glossing over some nuance there.
The studies show less that the images themselves are intrinsically harmful and more that the saturation of said imagery is harmful, ie, the constant, inescapable, long-term bombardment via the media, often from a young age. Which does, yes, have a negative impact on things like women's self-image etc.
But there isn't, as far as I'm aware, good evidence that healthy adults choosing to consume erotica for their own pleasure is particularly harmful.
So the context is important to consider.
As responsible creators we should absolutely be aware of adding another drop of water to the tidal wave, especially if we're targeting mass media.
But the evidence available isn't just a blanket proof that "all imagery of sexy thin girls is bad". If someone wants to make soft-core erotica for a specific, adult audience, I don't have much of an issue with it. (Whether that media should be plastered all over this game dev discussion forum is a different question, obviously).
But on that note, the harm you talk about is primarily caused not by anime rocket-tit girls, but by regular exposure to images of conventionally attractive women, like this.
Is it your wish, then, to ban games from this forum which depict conventionally sexually attractive women? Or are we just singling out Pierre because of the ludicrous rocketship breasts? What is the line, exactly? If we're going by what the psychological evidence suggests causes harm, surely we should be consistent?
I am asking this simply to make a point about nuance. Personally, I don't care for that silly boobie character and I think the forum should have a content policy restricting sexually suggestive media. If people want to link to cheesecake characters or worse, put it in an offsite link, clearly warning people so they know what content they're about to consume and can make an informed choice in accordance with their tastes.
@Jelligeth You've inferred that humor=ridicule here, which I think is a bit of a leap, as that is not necessarily the case. Pierre explicitly stated that the humor (as he sees it) arises from the juxtaposition of a soft, feminine or pacifist archetypal character with unexpected martial prowess and proficiency for violence (cheerleader with a chainsaw archetype). As with a lot of humor, it is the surprising* and unexpected that elicits humor. These kinds of juxtaposition-for-effect manifest in a range of media, such as the little girl monster, made particularly creepy because of the mix of innocence and monstrousness, or the preacher-with-a-gun archetype, who surprises and entertains by combining a role we traditionally associate with pacifism and unworldliness with a proficiency for violence. Or the old granny who unexpectedly beats off the intruder by proving handy with a frying pan, another example of "it's funny because you don't expect violence from that character archetype".
Characters stepping outside their expected roles and boundaries often entertains or amuses us.
You have chosen to interpret that as ridicule of women, but I think that's rather an ungenerous leap here.
*You could certainly argue that the society being surprised that a cheerleader could be proficient at martial arts is a sign of sexist attitudes. I would agree. But that is a sin that we can't really lay at Pierre's feet.
I see where we struggle now.
The PROBLEM with this is the very fact that his character is a female "sex doll archetype".
The sex doll archetype is NOT an unexpected surprise. It is not even a character. It is an object.
This is why it is called "objectification".
She is not a nun, or a cheerleader. Not a small child.
She is a sex doll. Portraying a real person as a sex doll is not innocent, unexpected humor.
People are not sex dolls.
Sex dolls are objects.
This is not a bondage fetish game, this is not a game about a magical plastic fetish toy.
It is an action game about a female protagonist who is a "sex doll archetype". This casually assumes that objectification is supposed to be inoffensive just because it exists as a horrible archetype.
Battle Nuns, crazy little girls, sniper preachers, gentle monsters, these are all designed around characters and personalities.
Sex doll: Object. It's a pleasure toy. It's designed for one sided pleasure.
Ridiculing women is probably one of the kinder things I can call the "sex doll archetype".
But basically yeah it's not sexiness that's a problem. It's the way you portray it. Is it respectful or inclusive, or is it objectifying and one sided?
Bigotry can be unintentional, and both women and men do it, but discussion is good. Wish I had more time to read through everything so I'm not just talking in circles or repeating stuff other people already said >_< Sorry again.
I'm going to stop now :P
That being said, those characters are generally heavily objectified, yes.
The question is whether the banhammer is the right solution, though. Widespread objectification harms women, yes. We should discuss and critique that.
But do we ban people for not agreeing on where the line is set?
Consider Blazin' Aces.
That logo clearly objectifies, although the issue is made muddier by the fact that it's a historically-accurate reference to an objectifying graphic from the time period, so is the intent historical reference or objectification? Does it even matter when it's used to advertise the game in the app store, though?.
Do we accept Blazin' Aces but insist that Pierre change his art or get lost? Or do we insist that Red Dot change their logo if they want to be a part of the community?
Or is having just the logo be an objectified woman be ok, since the game is mostly about little planes? Do we tolerate just a bit of objectification? How much? What if we say we're ok with the logo, as a community, but someone else says that no, no amount of objectification is ok, ever. How do we justify letting that pass, since we know that objectification is bad?
Where's the scientific study indicating where exactly the line should be set?
Maybe I'm being too literal, but let's just analyse our metaphors. Saying that someone has a heart of gold is talking about the value of gold, the preciousness and apparent rarity of it. What values are we talking about when we compare someone to a "sex doll"?
When it becomes an archetype, a CULTURE, to consider women without any character or humanity, this affects how we are perceived in real life. Sexiness isn't itself a problem at all, but when sexiness is detached from every other human quality, it becomes inhuman, disrespectful, or exploitative, that's when it becomes harmful.
Violence in game may not make most people violent in person because that is so far removed from what we know of reality and our inherent propensity towards violence due to cultural conditioning. But prejudice in game does affect people in real life because we are ideologically malleable, and we have been culturally conditioned for a long time to regard people different from ourselves as inhuman or unrelatable. When you have been made aware that objectification hurts real people in real life, then it is considered "good" or "right", morally speaking, to attempt to change that negative archetype. Defending it due to "personal taste" becomes very irresponsible.
The fighting sex doll archetype is not (necessarily) literally about depicting " women without any character or humanity".
Also, @Karuji, I'm being pedantic here, and I know what you meant, but I'm a linguist and this is a thing that's important to me: using dictionary definitions as the foundation for arguments, especially when it comes to social justice stuff, is usually a bad idea. Sure, we can talk about the community being unhelpful or unwelcoming in that thread, but nobody was a bigot towards Pierre. That just isn't how systemic oppression works. Again, being more difficult about this than I should, but that sort of argument is one that bugs me :)
I see what you mean when you say that certain cases can be blurry, but that's why we both advocate discussion. I can't honestly say I'm a fan of the Blazin' Aces logo, if it is indeed as irrelevant to the actual game as you suggest it is, cos yeah, it's kind of exploitative, but she at least has a personality. Sure, she's a saucy character, but you can at least imagine a story behind her. There ARE real people who look and act like that, so she's still within the realm of realism. It doesn't have to be deep and meaningful, but at least she's a human being with a spark.
This particular case however, Emi has both no historical context, nor any character to speak of. It's not really so difficult to differentiate between this case and the Blazin' Aces example. Also, this conversation is especially important because a work in progress is making an irresponsible mistake, and as people who are aware that it's a problem, it's great that we're talking about it. This is a game making forum, so if a game is in the progress of being made, and we can have any influence as a community to nudge it in the right direction, that's what it's all about. And if conversations like this can inspire future consideration, then that's an even greater bonus.
You could, however, ask the developer about the character's background and personality and if he says she's a blank slate, suggest ways to humanize her and discuss why that's important to do, even if the character remains objectified.
That would be a helpful way to educate, methinks. :)
My reaction was after I saw his lengthy responses attempting to justify his design. If my reaction was hasty, then yes, that's my bad, and I made the mistake of assumption. Maybe he just struggled to communicate his intentions. But by continuously denying the validity of moral critique without giving valid reason besides "it's my personal taste" , he wasn't exactly broadcasting an invitation for further discussion. It just suggests that he believed his personal taste is more important than the negative impact it has on real people.
I'd imagine that suggesting ways to humanize her is what people would do if he were genuinely receptive about re-evaluating his character design, but his initial "it's a sex doll because that's what I like, your criticism is irrelevant to me" reaction pretty much gave people the bad impression we have and sparked this discussion. If he genuinely understands why his character still needs a lot more work, then the conversation has moved on.
I'm glad he's decided to think about his design further. But I'm sad that it required threats of banishment and rejection to get there. If he was banned immediately as soon as he presented his prototype, this conversation wouldn't have happened, so it's good that he wasn't.
Nonetheless, we have also been reminded that many people still struggle to understand why misrepresentation is harmful or offensive, which means that these conversations are still very relevant.
The warriors of Social Justice still have a lot of work to do. :P
Huzzah!