If women want equal pay, then they should be willing to do the same jobs as men, meaning the most unsafe or dirty jobs. From what I've seen, "equality" in work for feminists means "We get cushy customer-service desk jobs while men do all the yucky/physical stuff we don't like".

tl;dr More women down coal mines, less secretaries who get paid for answering a phone.

Either way someone's already classified you as extremist because the the only thing more readily available on the internet than people with extreme opinions is people willing to classifying you as having them anyway.

I wouldn't say ''hero saves princess'' is bad, because it isn't but it can get tiring to people who have experienced it again and again. IMO we should never say something is truly a bad trope in art because art itself is meant to challenge perceptions and you will never know when a common trope story can yield a very good narrative.

As to games having gender roles, I'd say that isn't the case most of the time. I'd struggle to find game from last 5 years that had this and even if it does I don't think there is much value in having or not having it. Games give us an experience and that experience is lacking any element of identity. But we perceive them differently. So in a game where there is narrative and mechanics, both will have capacity to give us a complete experience and I find focusing on the narrative part alone as the only part contributing to the experience really ignorant.

Mature is really subjective and perceived immaturity really needn't harm the experience of the game. But most importantly, I see narrative and mechanics as a balance. There is no use praising one element when the other is really bad. Games can advance social commentary but IMO they can also keep on doing what they're doing if that is what they're interested in or let game devs who want to explore what they to explore do what they want. I don't see tackling social issues as some obligatory barrier to maturity. Its the same thing of games getting grittier in an attempt to seem more mature. We shouldn't be overly judgmental of the game's theme as a signal of maturity as the outcome we get is what I'm saying. Look at SoTC; I won't reject it just because it has a common story trope but would be more concerned about how that is conveyed and how well the game manages to convey the emotions.

Any emotion is strong enough to provoke a response, if it is conveyed properly. Something as trivial as getting out of a creepy castle and being able to feel safe and see the sky can be remarkably strong under proper artistic wizardry. And I see this ''maturity'' bar of arbitrarily engaging in social commentary for making a game more mature as just dismissing some situations as not having the capability to be portrayed in a meaningful way. Eg; Brothers : a Tale of Two Sons has been praised as one of the most emotion evoking games ever made. It doesn't have shoehorned in social commentary and yet manages to be ''mature''.

I think for gaming to have any sort of ''maturity'', we need to discard the notions that some stories at the outset can be more ''mature'' just because its about something X or something Y. It is all a matter of a perceived normal and regarding the abnormal as some thing to strive for.

Nobody's talking about equal pay for completely different jobs. The problem is in being paid the same for doing precisely the same job. It's well documented that women in most countries of equivalent qualifications and responsibilities are paid lower than men in the same position.

The voice of reason, rarely heard.

Too bad people are label feminists or bigot for having a different opinion, reasonable or not.

You don't get so much money for working in coal mines. When was a dirty job ever well paid? Who earns more, a lawyer or a garbage collector?

Come on. In our modern times 80% of the jobs and nearly 100% of the well paid jobs do not require excessive physical strength but mostly some smartness and dedication.

As I said. My female colleque spends more hours working than me and probably gets done more too, yet does not get more money. And I know I could not and want not do as much as her. Sitting 16 hours at a desk is exhausting but nothing that a women couldn't do.

Yes, from an academic approach you would now make an experiment and give the women different possibilities and then let them choose. For example offer them well paid, highly desirable jobs and then look if maybe they just don't want them. Of course this experiment won't happen, but I also guess we do not really need to make it in order to guess that most probably they would act mostly identical to men if given the same choices. Maybe a bit smarter in some regards and a bit less smart in others.

Basically how do you make sure women that stay at home do not need to stay at home? This is practically impossible.

Also the adaptation to the traditional role models already starts before age 6 or 10. Just go to the clothes job and see clothes for girls on one side including skirts and clothes for boys on the other side without skirts (except in Scotland) of course. Ask a girl or a boy for whom are clothes and they will know exactly what the clothes company thinks is for them and what is not for them although in reality it doesn't matter: a man is perfectly capable of wearing a pink shirt or skirt and vice versa.

The problem is that women cannot chose freely, have less options and are bombarded with the still existing traditional role models which are very stupid and come from a time where men were seen as something much better.

The only good solution I know out of this is actively convincing (and promoting women) that they should try new things like becoming computer scientists or else (or even becoming coal miners but I probably would not do it for the money). To be fair one could also try to convince men to become kindergarten or elementary school teachers. And there is the problem of overshooting but so far this risk is far away. We can continue doing it for at least two or three generations without any problems.

My mantra is: men and women are mostly the same and can do anything they want fully independent of the gender. They should always stand for themselves and never should anyone face discrimination because of their belonging to a certain sex. Everyone has a right to individually create his life.

Now this so simple and so true but is obviously difficult to do depending on how your environment treats you.

But then men just have to imagine having daughters and then thinking about how they will have it much harder. That should give them the kick to change something. If I would have a daughter or two that would make me pretty much a solid supporter of femininism, at least to some degree.

My hope is the scandinavian society model. I feel like they have progressed most far in many of these regards. I hope it spreads further.

You should travel to Western Australia.

I beg to differ. Women can wear pretty much anything men can wear, but not vice versa. Men are severely restricted in clothes selection compared to women.

Okay. But even then I imagine that modern coal mining is heavily relying on big machines which need to be controlled instead of carrying heavy weights themselves. It's probably exhausting but really something women cannot do physically? I don't know anything about coal mining so I cannot say.

I hate the internet.

Yes I have.
Yes I have.
No.

By the way, after posting the last post I thought about it and realised how much more boys are tied to gender stereotypes than girls are. It's a lot more acceptable for girls to do boy stuff than boys to do girl stuff. So more freedom for men would be nice.

Hissy fits on the internet. Don't you kids have anything better to do with your time?

Why? Don't you know? Because women get all hot and bothered over guys leaping to their defense. Tactics man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSpFRNWmaFI

Huh?

I hardly ever dig deeper than the first tab of these fora - shame really - so this must be bit of a bitter back to the future joke, or what? ;-)

If a topic is something I wish to respond to, I do, and do not look at what vintage it might have been. So in my view can others.

Chill out, and let opinions flourish would be my take on it.