Tag Archives: feminism

Attitudes Towards Feminism in the Past Week 3

Posted on March 6, 2012 by | 1 comment

If you are a person who gets their video game news from the Penny Arcade Report, this won’t be new to you. If you’re a person who doesn’t read video game news much at all, this is not a post that will enhance your views of the subculture.

The article is here, and I strongly recommend you read it. I’m going to be summarizing the issue pretty succinctly, so it’s definitely worth a read.

Cross Assault, a Capcom-sponsored event is “the world’s first fighting game reality show.” It features ten contestants, with half being experts of the Street Fighter games and other half being highly proficient at Tekken. Since the show is streamed live online, there’s evidence on the web of all of the reprehensible behaviour that was featured on it.

The primary individual I’m going to be writing about is Aris Bakhtanians, the coach of the Tekken team. To sum up his stance on women and fighting games, he’s quoted as saying that sexual harassment and the fighting game community are “one and the same thing.”

The victim of the harassment in this case is Miranda “Super Yan” Pakozdi, a member of his team. She forfeited a match due to mistreatment by her coach. Below is a video of the first day of the show. Below that are quotes pulled from the clip, in case you didn’t want to hear/watch all of that.

Miranda vs. Sheri mud wrestling cage match, what do you think, Miranda? [. . .] That’s the theme, mud wrestling. And then I get the winner?

How does Miranda smell?

Miranda, I want to know your bra size.

I want to hang a Mona Lisa in the ladies room with the eyes cut out.

That’s all from the first four or so minutes of the video. I’m not certain of whether or not all of the quotes can be attributed to Bakhtanians.

The Tekken coach did email Patrick Klepek at GiantBomb.com with a full apology. To sum up where he’s coming from, he cites the origins of the fighting game scene in arcades as a large part of the subculture. People trash-talked a lot back then and he is, in part, afraid that bringing this world into the public eye will censor a lot of what created it in the first place.

This was a combination of the people taking things out of context and my own inability in the heat of the moment to defend myself and the community I have loved for over 15 years.

In other news, yesterday podcaster/writer Mur Lafferty posted on her website a response to a New York Times article from last year titled “‘Tough, Cold, Terse, Taciturn and Prone to Not Saying Goodbye When They Hang Up the Phone.’” In the article Carina Chocano derided the “strong female characters” that appear in pop culture are defined primarily by being the “strong, silent type.” She also complains that the aforementioned women also show little to no traditionally feminine traits.

Lafferty’s post, “Strong Female Characters, My Own Definition” argues that these characters do exist, and that that they’re “[women] who can take action, who [aren’t] passive.” The following quote was also the one featured on i09’s article [where I discovered the articles]. It’s a good one.

Strength is taking charge of your own destiny and not waiting on others to do so. You don’t have to swear and drink and beat people up and slay monsters. You’re allowed to cry and take care of children and cook and get your heart broken and dress up and date and get pregnant. But when decisions have to be made, a strong character makes them and doesn’t wait for someone else. When a monster is chewing on your true love, you hit it with a stick (or pick up the sword that’s RIGHT THERE.)

I also highly recommend reading both articles, as Lafferty’s fuller, more complete definition manages to soundly trump Chocano’s.

milehighTo end this all off with my favourite subject, comics, Kate Beaton, Carly Monardo, and Meredith Gran created Strong Female Characters last summer, a clear parody of how they saw women portrayed in the media. With names like Georgia O’Queefe, Queen Elizatits, and Susan B. Assthony, these are three ladies who know how to pose while showing off as much of their assets as [in]humanly possible. They featured in a decent number of strips, all hilarious, which can be read at Kate Beaton’s site here.

This has been  attitudes towards feminism in the past week. Three.

1 Comment

Posted in comics, feminism, film, internet, media, video games

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Attitudes Towards Feminism in the Past Week 2

Posted on September 29, 2011 by | 9 comments

My first post ever on this blog was the first “Attitudes Towards Feminism in the Past Week.” It’s been quite a few months since then, but I guess it’s just that time again. To be more accurate, though, these are observations I’ve made in the past two to three weeks.

Most everyone knows about DC’s “New 52.” Well, people who know comics know about it. To summarize it quickly, the people at DC comics have decided to relaunch [reboot] 52 new titles this year. Most have since come out.

Since I am wont to read a comic book every now and then, I perused a few of the bigger titles. I specifically went out of my way to read Catwoman and Red Hood and the Outlaws, two releases that  appeared to have been garnering more than their fair share of attention. They weren’t.

Comics Alliance and io9 put it into much better words than I do, and I strongly, strongly suggest you read at least one of their articles. If I were to personally point out the problems with both comics, they would go as follows:

In Catwoman her first on-panel appearance involves her changing into her suit; red lingerie and butt/boob-shots abound. The issue ends [SPOILER] with her and Batman having sex. It ends with a whole page of them just- going at it.

Red Hood and the Outlaws is a comic which features Starfire, a character who also showed up in the immensely popular cartoon Teen Titans. My problem here isn’t so much with her costume design [on the right]; it’s what you expect from most female heroes nowadays. My problem is that she spends most of her time out of that costume and in a barely-there bikini. She also wants to basically have sex with everyone.

DC’s responded to fans’ reactions about Starfire on Twitter. Essentially, we’re not supposed to be letting our kids read these comics.

This past Sunday I watched Ironclad, a period piece which features Paul Giamatti as an irate Prince John trying to take over in spite of the Magna Carta he just signed. Baron William de Albany, played by Brian Cox1, must defend a castle alongside templar Thomas Marshal [James Purefoy]. Kate Mara plays Lady Isabel, who occupies the keep they guard.

Lady Isabel serves two purposes.

1) To be a strong female character in a heavily male-dominated film/era.

2) To incessantly try to seduce Marshal, haranguing him about how his vows keep him from love and that he should listen to his emotions.

I hated Lady Isabel.

Mara’s character strives to be both fierce and independent [she hits a man in the face with a mace]2, yet her single goal seems to be trying to get into a templar’s pants [tights?]. As a role model she teaches that the ultimate victory is not over the iron grip of royalty, but instead the taking of a holy warrior’s virginity.

In two comic issues and one film [all released in 2011] we’re given a picture of what strong female characters should be. Attractive, certainly, but also sexually aggressive. Sexual freedom and independence seems to be what helps define a woman as strong and in control. This has caused me to come to the conclusion that the last thing I want my daughter becoming is a “strong female character.”

This has been  attitudes towards feminism in the past week. Two.

1. Who I must point out was also Colonel William Stryker in X2. It’s the only thing I can think when I see him.

2. Though when you take into account the fact that one man is cleaved in twain and another is beat in the face with a disembodied arm, it’s not that big an accomplishment.

9 Comments

Posted in comics, feminism, film, sex

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Attitudes Towards Feminism in the Past Week

Posted on June 23, 2011 by | 4 comments

Last week I edited the introduction of a 75,000 word manuscript that I had worked on in May, it being emailed to me long after the original job was complete. It was, by and large, about the feminist movement in the UK, and how it has lessened the nation as a whole. It cited the “ladettes,” which the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines as “Young women who behave in a boisterously assertive or crude manner and engage in heavy drinking sessions,” as a subject of particular disgust.

It grew more and more subjective as it went on, and denounced the “feminazis” as intensely angry women who felt little for the role of motherhood and were destroying chivalry. High subjectivity aside, on the whole he railed against these most extreme cases, acknowledging the need decades had past for gender equality in the workplace. This was by far the most reasonable standpoint I was witness to.

The day before that it was brought to my attention that Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, had once again written another blog post sure to start the internet buzzing. In response to the wave of news discussing men who have been cheating on their wives, tweeting pictures of their genitals, and raping, he explains that men are born “round pegs in a society full of square holes.” In other words, the society we live in today is constraining, keeping males in “a state of continuous unfulfilled urges, more commonly known as unhappiness.”

I’ve heard two of my English professors say that we always hope for our heroes to have risen above the thoughts of their time period. From the front of the classroom they often wore their disappointment clearly when this was not the case, such as Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Dilbert is a tremendously well-written comic strip, and in this case it’s saddening that an artist behind such a hilarious comic would also be the creator of such wildly offensive posts.

Last week, after some 15 years of development, Duke Nukem Forever was finally released. Decried by many as being overtly crude, disturbingly misogynistic, and having boring, repetitive gameplay, the comments sections of any article discussing the game became a place rife with conflict. Many staunch supporters of the game came out with some very strong opinions, the following catching my eye:

Internet Comments: A Cornucopia of Well Thought Out Opinions

This was found here, and I don’t have much else to say about it specifically. Duke Nukem Forever garnered terrible reviews, so much so that their public relations firm announced that they would be “reviewing who gets games [to review] next time and who doesn’t.” Everyone, however, is entitled to their own opinion.

In posts to come I hope to more fully explore the backlash against feminism that I believe to be an emerging trend. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, though in this case it appears to be a more extreme retaliation, to the point where the sensitive male is ousted as being a traitor to his gender.

This has been attitudes towards feminism in the past week.

4 Comments

Posted in comics, feminism, video games

Tagged , , , ,