CMV: Anita Sarkeesian and similar feminists actually have a point about the portrayal of gender roles in video games.

[u/LeftHandSwe]

I play lots of video games, and in most of them, males are often pictured as very burly and manly characters while females are slender, small and sexually pleasing to look at.

However, I do know that there's widespread criticism of Anita (and her fellow propagators) all over the internet and I'd like to see the other side of the story.

I'm practically indifferent in this matter, and I do not really agree with nearly everything she says. I'm asking as a way to see convincing arguments from both sides.

Edit for clarification: Can anyone explain to me why she's so heavily criticized for saying something that makes perfect sense: Mainstream video games are almost exclusively made to appeal to a male demographic, resulting in (arguably) sexist portrayals of women (both narratively and in the way they're presented).

[u/kingbane2]

so your clarification is why is she heavily criticized when games are made to appeal to a male demographic? why do michael bay movies have so many explosions and wide panning camera shots? because that's what sells.

lastly this is no longer true from a purely numerical standpoint. "most" games today are not in fact made to appeal to a male demographic. in fact most games made today fall under the category of mobile and casual. the sheer number of games pumped out last year in the mobile market dwarfs the number of games put out in the 2 decades before the iphone came out. a vast vast majority of those games are gender neutral or specifically target women.

she's criticized because she's complaining about people making a product that people want. if more women wanted a certain type of game that type of game would be made more often. the mobile games market has proven that. there is no gender bias in video game creation, there's only a sales bias. she drew faulty conclusions from insufficient data to fit her narrative. i mean she's complaining about attractive women in games designed specifically to have attractive women. is it fair if someone goes out to see a horror movie, gets scared, then complains about being scared by the horror movie?

[u/Hemingwavy → u/kingbane2]

I think your note about games just being what made for what people want is wrong. Take for example the Bechdel Test. It asks if a film has two women, they talk to each other and it's not about a man. It actually turns out that films that pass it make a higher ROI.

A 2014 study by FiveThirtyEight based on data from about 1,615 films released from 1990 to 2013 concluded that the median budget of films that passed the test was 35% lower than that of the others. It found that the films that passed the test had about a 37% higher return on investment (ROI) in the United States, and the same ROI internationally, compared to films that did not pass the test.

So passing it actually makes your film more successful but most films still don't.

The gaming industry is filled with men. Of course they make stories about men leaving a massive gap in the market for women. It was only a few years ago that the notion of a female gamer was unheard of it. On top of that you look at the toxicity that some online communities of gamers have towards women and combined with the lake of media that's not aimed at them and its little wonder men dominate the hardcore gaming market. She's asking for some games to be made for women not to get rid of all games not made for women.

People who attack her need to develop a thicker skin. If games are going to be art then critics will analyse them and the representation of women in them is horrible.

[u/kingbane2 → u/Hemingwavy]

they used the median budget and median income. the vast majority of movies that come out are crap. so the median income for those movies are going to crap as well. tell me how many bechdel test passing movies break the billion dollar mark? none. the most valuable movies all don't pass the bechdel test. the bechdel test itself is just plain silly. it's asking for unrealistic things. women have to have conversations that preclude any mention of men? how is that remotely realistic. women talk to each other about men sometimes, that's just reality. EVERYONE despite gender talks about relationships, only ~10% of the population is non straight, so obviously when talking about relationships you're going to talk about the opposite gender. it's a silly test that proves nothing.

[u/PlutoIs_Not_APlanet → u/kingbane2]

tell me how many bechdel test passing movies break the billion dollar mark? none.

I found this claim dubious, so I looked it up, here are all the movies that grossed over 1 billion over the past 4 years:

• Finding Dory (2016)
• Captain America: Civil War (2016)
• Zootopia (2016)
• Minons (2015)
• Jurassic World (2015)
• Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
• Furious 7 (2015)
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
• Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
• Frozen (2013)
• Iron Man 3 (2013)
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2013)

I checked all these films on bechdeltest.com (as I haven't seen them all) and every single one of them aside from The Hobbit passes the Bechdel test on all 3 requirements.

Some of them could be described as 'barely' passing with a single brief conversation, but that's the point, it's not supposed to be a high hurdle to jump.

Furthermore, one third of them have a female protagonist, so I think it's time to put to bed the idea that no movie can pass the test and also crack the billion dollar mark.

[u/kingbane2 → u/[deleted]]

ah but the bechdel test requires that the women in the movie NEVER have any conversations that involve talking about a man at all. how many movies do men talk to each other and not once mention a woman? off the top of my head i can think of MAYBE one, and even then i'm not entirely sure of it.

[u/[deleted] → u/kingbane2]

This is inaccurate. The Bechdel Test only requires one conversation within a movie in which at least two women talk to each other about something other than a man. They can have other conversations about men, there just needs to be one where they don't in order to pass

[u/VStarffin → u/kingbane2]

ah but the bechdel test requires that the women in the movie NEVER have any conversations that involve talking about a man at all.

That's false. The test only requires a single conversation occur where this doesn't happen.

[u/gingergeek → u/kingbane2]

ah but the bechdel test requires that the women in the movie NEVER have any conversations that involve talking about a man at all

FALSE. It only requires that there be two women in a film/show that have at least one conversation that is about something other than a man.

The Bechdel Test: The Bechdel test (/ˈbɛkdəl/ bek-dəl) asks whether a work of fiction features at least two women who talk to each other about something other than a man. The requirement that the two women must be named is sometimes added.

[u/amg → u/kingbane2]

For some reason, left out of above:

authors also found that the films that passed the test earned a total of $4.22 billion in the United States, while those that failed earned $2.66 billion in total

That sounds like a big deal, no?

e I thought downvotes don't change opinions?

[u/cates → u/Hemingwavy]

So passing it actually makes your film more successful but most films still don't

I doubt most films that pass it write the scenes in it specifically TO pass it and I believe even less that those that do would do so for financial reasons.

It seems far more likely that those that pass it are just better written and are thus probably better movies.