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Sweden Considers Adding "Sexism" Ratings To Video Games
An anonymous reader writes A government-funded agency in Sweden is considering creating special labels for video games based on whether or not the games' portrayals of women are sexist. From the article: "Avoiding sexism and gender stereotypes in video games produced in Sweden will become a key goal for the association, which has been given a 272,000 kronor ($36,672) grant by Sweden's government-funded innovation agency, Vinnova. Inspired by the Bechdel test, which looks at whether fictional films or books feature at least two women talking about a topic other than men, Dataspelsbranchen will work with several game developers to analyze how Swedish video games portray female characters and gender issues.
Just for women ? That's really sexist !
The notion that "portraying men as muscled killing machines" is a kind of sexism has not yet arrived in the mainstream.
Which tells you interesting things about our society.
Still: women are more likely to be displayed in roles perceived as *de*grading, whereas men are portrayed with attributes perceived as positive (strength, power, etc). So the problem of sexism against females should get priority imho.
I would give Negative grades for each of the following:
Violence
Nudity
Sexism
Racism/Stereotyping (including slights to LGBT society)
Culturally insensitive
Religiously Intolerant
Religious Indoctrination
Politically Driven Agenda
Historically Inaccurate
Positive Grades for These:
Educational
Social Responsible
Mentally Stimulating
Historically Accurate
And an overall aggregate score
Granted things like Politically Driven Agenda would be hotly contested every time and couldn’t possibly work in the real world, but this would be a near ideal list. As long as it isn’t censorship what’s wrong with full disclosure. If a game would be embarrassed to be labeled Sexism Level 4, then maybe they need to dial back the bikini babes at the race start. I wouldn't want to get too carried away with categories, others may suggest a few more, but if we keep it to under 20 that shouldn't be too over the top, more like a list of ingredients in prepackaged food.
Letter To Iran
Also, this kind of ventures into the territory of "you can be smart or you can be pretty". It helps perpetrate the idea that you have to make yourself a pariah from the majority of women in order to actually be anything you want to be. That's because the missing bit of information here is that women are as sexist as anyone else and will impose their sense of orthodoxy quite readily.
A genuinely liberated "taking care of business" type of woman may find herself shunned by both the homemaker and the "feminist" crowd.
Both will want to control your choices equally.
That's what this "sexism" rating is all about: feminists want to act like church ladies and impose their neo-victorian attitudes on everyone.
Feminists are Tea Baggers without the biblical references.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Tell me again what this label is supposed to accomplish: Warning - Sexist Content
Tell me again what this label actually accomplished: Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics
hmmmm
www.facebook.com/DareDefendOurRights
www.fairtax.org
Also, the test should be gender-neutral.
There are many women-centred films that do not feature at least two men talking about a topic other than women.
They should also be considered sexist.
Imagine that we believe that "two women talking about something other than men" was a good test, we'd therefore lose:
Colonel Samantha Carter, PhD Physicist, intergalactic heroine, smarter than God. Can program, fly fighter jets & alien spaceships, shoot and do things that they don't bother to explain because they are simply beyond us poor males to understand. So that's Stargate gone.
Lt Uhura: Dr Martin Luther King who *some people* see as quite into rights loudly praised her character, but I can't recall her talking to women much, except maybe some of the aliens might have been female, so that's Star Trek gone.
ST in it's various forms look remarkably feminist (usually) women commanded warships in ST long before the US Navy let them, they are engineers, scientists, doctors and of course inexplicable nexus of unknown forces.
Ripley from Alien, Aliens, Alien3, Return of the Alien, The Alien strikes back, Alien Resuscitation. Smart, hard, no bimbo, the Aliens are apparently female, she kills them, conversation with them is rare. The men are a) weak, b) stupid, c) dishonest, d) weak, stupid and dishonest
X-Files : Scully is smart and hardly ever talks to women.
Agents of SHIELD: Loads of women programming, analysing and occasionally shooting at people. The inter-female dialog is rare.
Babylon 5: Strong women, being heads of security, scientists, highly cultured aliens.
Torchwood : Strong female lead, again almost no inter-female dialog.
Under the Dome : The main character is a strong woman, all the weak bad people are men
Terminator 1,2,3, Sarah Connor : Oh look ! what a surprise a strong woman in a world of defective men
I've not yet seen Interstellar, but let me guess, the women in it are smart and honest and whoever is screwing things up is a man ?
I can't be the only person who's noticed that in many SciFi and action films a dumb American male is accompanied by a highly educated woman who actually understands what is going on, whilst he shoots at it.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
Wait, are women independent self-aware creatures fully capable of being anything and doing anything they want, or are they hothouse flowers who need rigorous and pervasive government protections (and of course ample funding) to ensure that their delicate sensibilities aren't offended by coarse language?
Maybe their message of "don't treat me as a sexual object all the time" would be more persuasive if the internet wasn't full of 8 million new pictures EVERY DAY day of ducklipped skanks' selfies of their tits, ass, or other body parts?
Hey, I DO get it: just because millions of women are ho's, doesn't ipso facto mean ALL women are ho's - that's obvious. But to then castigate men for not immediately recognizing which are which seems a wee bit unfair, no?
The boundary line is pretty fucking gray, and constantly shifting, especially when there seem to be many many women who aren't ACTUALLY ho's but want to seem like they are for the attention?
-Styopa
What's frightening about your comment is that it's hard to tell if you're joking or not.
Ever read a credit card agreement, insurance contract, or mortgage agreement?
There's a huge difference between a private contract you willingly enter into, and a government edict that you are forced into and cannot opt out of.
"Business has a very limited range of things that they do as well or better than the public at large ... - business action beyond that range invariably becomes incompetent, expensive, dangerous, or worse.", and
I agree, and my agreement to your point does not invalidate what I wrote. ;)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Are they? I recently read an article by a prominent feminist writer talking about the media and female body image. She included a throwaway sentence about this being the result of the "patriarchy" suppressing women. I then took a scroll through my Facebook feed, where every fourth item was an advertisement urging me to take some sort of drug to increase my muscle mass.
People are portrayed in degrading ways in modern media, but I'm not sure it's quite as one sided as generally presented. GTA had prostitutes, but it also had psychotic gangsters who were invariably male.
Telling you the game contains sexist attitudes is not telling you it's not appropriate.
Yes it is, in today's society sexism is inappropriate. Therefore, saying that game A is incredibly sexist is telling you that it is incredibly inappropriate.
It's about portraying women with degrading properties, when men are not.
You have not been paying attention to games or any other form of creative media. Every anti-hero in any game is a character given degrading properties. You have ignorant buffoon male characters in numerous games. Take the blinders off please. The only reason you don't recognize it when it comes up is because men can be given any quality and it not be considered some statement about men in real life (e.g. oh he's just a lazy alcoholic, not all men are alcoholics). But if it's a woman, then it somehow morphs into a statement about all women, instead of that one, individual character in the story. You can't have it both ways, if characters in games are a reflection of their labels in real life, then it applies to both sexes.
And while we're on the subject of degrading properties, this is irrelevant to the above point but. Most gamers who had played the older Metroid games, were annoyed to pissed that Samus was neutered to be a dependent know nothing in some of the recent Metroid games.
Why do you think I have to support the goals of a campaign that works against men and have my own campaign to try and get support for it?
Huh? I don't exactly follow. Would you care to rephrase?
I can just fucking drop support and dismiss the campaign that isn't about equality, I don't have to "leave it alone". I can tell you right now every feminist group in the world would be on my ass in a second if I started a campaign about equality for men, saying it hurt their cause, in fact it's been done my friend.
"every" sounds very much like hyperbole to me. So, what was this campaign by your friend that got jumped all over?
The problem is narrow minded self interest groups don't impress me, if they want to start a campaign about equality for everyone, I'll support that
Well, you've managed to create a hypothetical thing that is impossible to create. So you would avoid all quality campaigns because they don't also support and advocate equality for those poor sods living in North Korea? There's too many problems in the world for people to care about them all. But caring about a small subset and trying to improve that doesn't detract from any of the others, nor does it stop other people from acting.
Is it not good enough until all women have millions of dollars, then maybe men can stop being treated like disposable garbage that should serve them?
I'm afraid you've lost me on this particular point.
And games are FINE the way they are.
Not everyone agrees.
I don't want you fucking with them that's the issue,
Well, you should have no expectation that I'll pay the blindest bit of attention to you when you demand I spend my time in certain ways. Heck since you're making absolute demands on my time, I almost feel like fucking with games just to spite you.
and sure I can not buy their products, but you know what? If people are too afraid their games will be judged "Sexist" so they lose profits, games will suffer. Why? Because it doesn't have to be a blonde bimbo for someone to label it sexist, someone can be pissed off that there is a pretty face in it.
really? I'm not sure I'e heard of that happening.
I shouldn't have to start a campaign for sexism against me
You should if you care about it. Why do you expect other people to do all the legwork for you?
it should be just a campaign against sexism, period. If you think they need to be separate, you're saying, there needs to be a fight over it where men and women aren't supporting each other. Which means campaigns about sexism about women are just one sided.
Nope. They can be together or separate. I see no reason why you get to decide that some cause is "big enough" to be worthy and why smaller causes are therefore not. People fight for causes close to their heart. Sometimes those are small, sometimes they are large. There are more isms than sexism anyway. Why don't you demand that any campaign basically includes every injustice ever?
You don't seem to understand that someone fighting for one corner of a large cause does not detract from either that corner or the cause as a whole.
How do you expect men to support one sided campaigns?
You seem to view the world entirely through the lens of conflicts and sides. I'm not enturely sure why.
If you care so much, why not start a campaign against all forms of sexism. Or, try to create an umbrella organisation to unite all the sub organisations. It would surely do more good than whining on the internet about how people aren't spending their valuable time promoting your pet cause when not even you are apparently prepared to put time into it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I actually went and asked a female physicist about it. Her response if she'd been at this lab when younger (older academics develop a very, very thick skin it seems) then yes she would have found it (a lab head with a shirt emblazoned with nearly naked women on it) very off putting probably to the point of not going there.
Anecdotes mean nothing, and here's why: My wife's favorite t-shirt has an almost-nude Bettie Page in full dominatrix gear, and she happily wore it to work when we first met (albeit she's not a physicist or in academia, but she does work in the tech realm.) The difference? She's completely secure in her self-image, and in her femininity - enough that she doesn't give a damn about what some guy wears.
...at making a group feel completely excluded.
What group - militant feministas who are so insecure in their self-image that they have to lash out at the planet? In all honesty, fuck them. I get the whole professional attire business, but I refuse to attenuate my life or attire out of fear that I might somehow offend the perpetually-offended.
If the group you refer to is simply 'women in general'? Sorry, but that group is way too damned diverse to be put into a container, and the dude's shirt wasn't pornographic, so what the hell?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It's because of bigots like you that guys like me feel feminism still needs to exist. Same goes for affirmative action.
The simple rule is to treat others as you'd want to be treated. Period. How often do you hear about women having too much power? Never by sane people. How many females are on boards of directors? Way too few. Do women have way more obstacles to overcome just to do well at work? You bet your ass they do. Of course men "don't talk and bitch about it" because they have no idea how poorly women can be treated.
I know women to this day who are seen more as sex objects than colleagues and never taken seriously at work, even though they happen to be smarter than many of the others in the room. They are often ignored or 'mansplained to' (Wikipedia). Women (and men) actually ARE doing something productive about it by informing the ignorant that women generally have it rougher than men.
As for life being unfair, I agree with you, but not with the word 'sometimes'. Being a woman on earth means 'almost every time' life is unfair, and I don't see why that should be the status quo nor why we shouldn't set a high standard of conduct for ourselves to resolve that.
By the way, why is calling a locker room full of guys 'ladies' or something based on the feminine like 'bitching' derogatory , while telling women to 'man up' supposed to mean to strive for better?
I don't see why the burden of action should be on those who are subjugated to unfair behaviour. Why isn't it up to men to stop being jerks?
What? I can't assume Occam's Razor was a slick fold-up scooter?