Sexism is prolific in the video game industry

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Good thing I'm not the only one who saw it as that. There have been female developers, reviewers and journalists in the industry for a LONG time, like Jane Jensen who created the Gabriel Knight games.

No, you're basically saying that I'm saying that, though you clearly haven't read what I'mm actually saying, because otherwise you would know that what I'm basically saying is that when new fans of something, be it a genre, band, tv series, or game, criticise that thing, those who have been in the fandom a lot longer are bound to get upset.

As far as actually sexist and misogynistic games go, I really don't see it. But that could be down to the games I play being Half Life 2, Portal, and Mass Effect 2. The latter two, of course, have female protagonists who aren't in stripperrific outfits (yes, there are some people who play the variant male Shepard, but I insist, he's not the proper one - no MalShep), and the former has Alyx Vance, the non-stripperriffic outfit wearing mechanic. Maybe other games have females soley as eye candy, or as masses for the characters to slaughter, though from what I've seen that's not the case.

Then again, I can't really see much misogyny in TV either. But given that my impression of women from TV has been from Firefly and Voyager...

If you want misogyny on TV, look at Game of Thrones. Constant abuse of women on that show with senseless nudity. The men never get naked and hardly get the same treatment the women do in the show.

Probably one of the reasons why I can't stand to watch it.

Games that treat women horribly have been the GTA series. No female protagonists (and not a good explanation why), they're used as eye candy (strippers, hookers, etc), they are the "crazy" type or just in general offer no substantial character growth.

That's a whole series about criminality, and reflects (an extremely exaggerated version of) the culture surrounding that, which is primarily male; that's kind of like complaining that there are no female characters in Madden. Also, considering the scope of those games, a female protagonist would be an all or nothing proposition due to the sheer amount of writing and voice-work that goes into those things, and with the amount of money they spend on those things on the line, they're just not going to take the risk.

Game of Thrones has several strong female characters, with the prime example being Brienne of Tarth. Game of Thrones isn't trying to glorify the medieval times, nor does the series portray any character that isn't an underdog as a role model. Plenty of male characters are killed and tortured as well:

That's the problem though, I'm not talking about the extremists, the people I'm referring to are fairly mainstream and typical of current feminist thought. That's actually a major frustration of mine, the immediate dismissal of any criticism of feminism as "cherry picking the crazies", as if the critic just read the SCUM manifesto and broad-brushed all feminists with it, when I can go to Slate, Salon, or The Atlantic at virtually any time and find an article espousing these "extreme" ideas, to say nothing of sites like Jezebel or Feministing.

Depictions of female nudity are not, in and of themselves, a mark of misogyny.

Women are raped and murdered in ASOIAF, because George is acknowledging the harsh realities of medieval life, including those harsh realities inherent to prostitution and warfare that are usually glossed over and ignored in fantasy fiction. Feminists ought to happy about this.

Last edited by Stannis on 20 Sep 2014, 4:38 am, edited 8 times in total.

Also: Ramsay Snow

I suppose you could make a case against the TV version of GoT for the pervasive female nudity, though really I think that's more of a marketing, 'hey, we're HBO, you won't see THAT on network television' thing than a sexist thing. As other posters have noted, it's usually the guys that are on the receiving end of the worst brutality in the series, and as GRRM's whole thing is fantasy that reads like historical fiction, it's not like he's deviating from the realities of medieval life in his portrayal.