And all the pages.

If you call what Fever was doing as disagreeing at all. I call it trolling. I provoked a reaction, hopefully now this will lead to an honest discussion. Now, we at least have a response that refers directly to an actual article. We still have trolls in HTown who somehow thinks his usual non-responses and changing of the subject were inexplicably "detailed and nuanced" who also seems to show his true colours toward another nation as a whole. So, glad his prejudice is worn on his sleeve based solely on the country of own's origin. So very progressive...

I'll get to Fever's post in a bit. Finally we have something to discuss besides the hatred toward the magazine's owner...

Now, that is a fair critique of the article. And c'mon guys, whoever is downrepping actual thought out responses...Fever's post does not deserve to be low rated, I argue, should be high rated given that it is fairly topical and a push in the right direction toward actual discussion...

So, lets get to the real meat of the issue. What is your take on the "Quiet" character? Do you have an issue with it? Onto the playsets, do you feel its wrong for Quiet's action figure to have soft breasts? Does it matter that the same playline uses the same soft material for Punished Snake allowing movable pecs?

How about the exclusion of Black Widow from the Ultron playset? Where now Captain America or inexplicably Iron Man (who can fly) are now riding the motorcycle? The argument from the creators was that the playset was geared to boys, hence the decision. I saw in comments that the Frozen playset did the same thing, gearing the toys toward girls. Is there a problem with children playsets being geared to a single gender?

Not saying there are correct answers to these questions, but there are obviously those who are arguing in the extreme of both sides. Where should the line be drawn? Is it really okay for certain feminists to complain every time a female character is portrayed in an attractive manner? Is it really okay for people to complain so hard about the depiction of Snake in drag?

Expanding the topic a bit, from Adrian Chmielarz's criticism of Arthur Gies' Witcher 3 review, is this... Are these complaints about inequality and tokenism in games just? Or is it easier to complain about something than to propose a fix? Especially in the wargame genre where its very likely that the player base is strongly majority male, do you really think changing the protagonist to a lesbian female Hispanic character will improve sales? Is the demand from women who want to play wargames, plus LGBT, plus non-white races, enough to make up for those who might give up on the franchise? Is it sexist that certain types of games are played by more men than women? Is it sexist for certain types of games which are played by more women than men?

It's one thing to claim there is a problem, what's the solution? Thoughts?

Fever,

My question about you trolling or not is framing, obviously. Hence the ;)
At a meta level, social justice's "questions" likewise frame the possible answers. To the point that if a cis white male denies being privileged, the frame of what "privilege" means precludes that answer! Talk about pre-judgement! :) Actual judgement not required...

And I didn't even imply anything about art and aesthetic subjectivity. Because neither journalism, nor life, which are what I referred to, are art to me. And that's my sacrosanct interpretation. ;)

To repeat: Looking for misogyny, patriarchy and other forms of oppression without an objective standard means you will always find it. This is as much prejudice as stereotyping someone because of how they look...

I'd assumed that HTown was referring to my main Sunday post specifically
And in relation to the Australian thing - aww c'mon British and Australians have had banter ever since we invented them!
They call us 'Pommes' and we call them 'Aussies' and we have a cricket match once a year over the ashes of the death of English cricket (work THAT one out!)
We compare their lager to copulating in a canoe (f-ing close to water) and they laugh all the way to the bank about how much crap lager they sell us!
It's just a thing, we can have a bit of friendly banter because we meet on equal terms
And again - who has had the sense-of-humor-ectomy here?

I'll have a think about the rest of it but I believe the MGSV thing it is a special case - I believe that Kojima IS up to something - I think the fem side should have a bit of faith and take a 'wait and see' stance, see if the point was worth it, it might favor 'alpha-males' or it might punk them or it might try to 'punk' BOTH sides and some other folk too
It might succeed to cries of 'ooh burn' or it might be lame and miss the point or only make sense if you're already invested in 20 years worth of crazy-dense MGS plot lines - as I say, wait and see

On the other side, I believe that Kojima has gone out of his way to over-sexualise Quiet on purpose to make this as-yet undisclosed point and it's just slightly amusing that as long as you don't actually SHOW pubes and nips it seems impossible to go too far for the other side's sensibilities even if you set out to

Also, comparing Quiet to Black Widow it highlights how fine the dividing line is between 'Strong, Sexy Heroic female character' and a pandering 'fan-service' one and that's going to keep coming up and be contentious and more and more up to individual interpretation as we move forward, probably

You should be able to bemoan that you wanted one and got the other without an entire, other, parasitic article taking you down because of it though. Except for that 'wait and see' thing again and, yeah, I agree, when you stop and think about it the whole 'First World Problems' angle is pretty valid here - arguing over dolls when there's more important stuff going on in the world if you want to take that tack, but you could say that about the majority of 'geek-culture' spats

Maybe the trouble with the rep system is that people see the plus and minus buttons as 'Agree' and 'Disagree' buttons rather than 'Valid Point' and 'Just Trolling'...

Since we're on the topic of discussion on this discussion on this issue; may I request the downrep idiot to rest its' fingers and stop fapping for a second or a few weeks or two? If its not enough to be too dumb to take part, then at least stop trying to discourage others from posting. Seriously, we have people losing 10+ points a day, and that is ridiculous overs omething so political ON A GAMING FORUM! If someone wants to hate and politicize, do so against a TV or smth. Or argue with a book! I've heard that's common in social justice.

Now, since we're also on the topic of SJWs, I completely agree with Brasas who says looking for something without an objective example will always lead to absurd findings that some people will still cling on to. We also have the haze created by the casual use of words like ''sexism'' and ''misogyny'' and ''transphobia'', where it appears the righteous promoters of all that is equal and just are more interested in someone calling someone else gay over teamspeak than countries banding together to refuse entry of homosexual UN delegates or actual problems faced by transgender folks. Instead we have this sort of shit sling accusations against ''offensive'' (as rated by an social justice and evil thought patrol office near you (TM)) ''e-celebrities'' and religious devotion to the defense of nutjobs with more air in their arguments than and less objective facts than even mainstream media.

For the dolls, it comes down to the issue of genderized marketing. Is it really sexism at work to put a male hero on the motorcycle? It's not like toy lines stay faithful to the movies anyway, like giving Iron Man a sword. Or is it simple marketing, a toy set for boys, because they know more boys will want those toys by a wide margin. Or as Brasas says above, "Looking for misogyny, patriarchy and other forms of oppression without an objective standard means you will always find it."

For those looking for problems, aren't they going to find as you call it "pandering fan-service" just about everywhere? Couldn't those same people bemoan the character if she really just looked like any male soldier with a crew cut and claim it's "denying her sexuality". Or if they aren't complaining about the appearance, do they just go back to complaining about tokenism? Just like the whole to-do over Black Widow being sterile. The whole idea is a common trope. Female eastern-bloc soldiers bred for war. All based on some of the side-effects of Olympic athletes and performance-enhancing drugs where some of the female swimmers gained male characteristics. It's actually well-known for athletes like gymnasts, that if a woman's body fat percent goes too low, they do not menstruate. Doesn't it seem more likely this was the inspiration for Black Widow's sterility? Or is it just easier to believe its because Joss Whedan hates women because he's a man?

It seems to me, its a no-win game depicting women action heroes. If one isn't complaining about them looking too sexy, then one complains about them being just a Mrs. Action Hero. On some level, it just looks like these people are attacking any genre where more men view it than women and calling it wrong. They "know" it's wrong because more men watch it, and then make up an excuse to fit why...the same with certain styles of video games.

there is this dutch quote "wie een hond wil slaan vind licht een stok" (if you want to hit a dog, you'll probably find a stick)

it means if you want to hate on someone or something it's easy to find reasons.

and that is where the SJW problem lies.
They do not go Data => evidence => conclusion => proven
they go conclusion => data => evidence => proven

And if you want to prove something is something, you can always find some evidence. And 3 pieces of evidence is a treasure mine for SJW. Ignore everything else and the context etc.

Oh I totally agree that Disney are just a company trying to maximise profits and I certainly wouldn't agree with any knee-jerk throwing of buzz-words at them

Its a shame that they don't at least take a chance on cultivating a female audience though, or convincing boys that, while they might personally identify with Iron Man or Captain America that the female on your team can be a real asset - that sounds incredibly healthy actually, although, again, not when your motivation is profit, unless people complain and you have to weigh up bad press against swapping the girl out for a guy.

We did have She-Ra back in the 80's after all, although I don't know how well the She-Ra figures actually sold - they might be the failed experiment that has made the action figure industry shy away from female characters ever since for all I know - the doll equivalent of Beyond Good and Evil or whatever!

But there were always other females - Thundercats had Cheetara and Star Wars had Leia figures too (although she was arguably more of a damsel who subverted the trope by being quite strong and scrappy rather than overtly a hero, shame she never got force powers actually, she had the heritage after all...)

As a father with twin 5 year girls I can say that Disney does cultivate its female audience. They have lots of things for female children.

LOL OK, badly chosen wording - Marvel then, The Marvel part of Disney!

Although I again, giving freedom to girls and pushing girls in a certain direction are two different things and you have to be careful - especially at that young, impressionable age, I certainly wouldn't want to vilify and push any girls away from the contents of the pink aisle if the pink aisle is what they want and where they want to be - ta very much!

which is exactly what we are witnessing today. Girls no longer being allowed to be "girly" because that'd be confirming the patriarchy's gender stereotypes you need too break by forcing a different one.

Check out the stuff written under ''mind control'' : http://www.cultwatch.com/howcultswork.html
Quotes:
''Character assassination is a sure sign of a cult''
''No legit group needs to lie or mislead you about what they practice or believe''
Another: https://twitter.com/Animerica/status/511771323928813568/photo/1