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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.
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
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.
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?