I've grown increasingly impatient with the faux-feminist agenda (as compared to the genuine feminist movement; same name, totally different values) and its attempt to chokehold entertainment, particularly video games.
If you make a character a woman just for the sake of her being female, then you're devolving the female condition into a sideshow attraction, and that isn't doing anything admirable for "representation". This is the same problem that affects popular media depiction of say, gays, who in media are almost never normal people who happen to be gay but will always have their gayness as a constant topic of discussion, thus turning them into an exotic and alien weird thing rather than
a #(!@ing person.
What really pisses me off are "strong female characters" - the concept is completely hypocritical. They're just another precise standard demanded / forced of women and their portrayals in media, and I could have sworn that was precisely what feminism was meant to combat but uh?
Male characters aren't even given any better treatment than females. It only looks like this due to perspective and value dissonance; women usually aren't offended by male stereotypes and vice versa. The male characters are, like the female ones, false ideals - they support superfluous if not harmful values supposedly intrinsic to "being a man", and many of them are just as sexualized as the women (see Kratos from God of War, the various Snakes of Metal Gear, SPIDER-MAN, etc.). It's just that the people who find the women sexy
are usually not the same people who find the men sexy. (Ergo, perspective.)
Has anyone who objects to "sexualization of women" in video games ever considered
how many women are totally okay with that? Has no woman ever considered that a random other woman
might not be a clone of her ideals and values and might not
give a single @!$#?
Every character is a shallow fantasy for the player, not just the females. And you know what? Not everyone is offended just because a virtual person with similar genitals is hotter than they are (hotter than most people who exist for that matter.)
And the game designers know that very well. The problem isn't that game designers want to make these kinds of games - the problem is that the society they need to sell product to
wants these kinds of games. This is why good games with artistic and profound messages like
Okami (female protagonist btw) get swept under the rug and forgotten.
Okami doesn't appeal to those shallow archetypes and therefore a lot of shallow people just were not interested.
Far and away the most aggravating thing I've ever heard said about a video game is something I've actually heard in many different forms, but the example I'll pick is
Samus Aran, the protagonist of
Metroid.
Samus is what some women refer to as a "bad bitch". She is a proficient bounty hunter, forensic and criminal investigator, and general mercenary who is capable of single-handedly exterminating (or almost-exterminating) several species who define war and predation as their entire point of existence, namely Metroids, the SA-X parasites, and Space Pirates.
With the exception of
Other M, a horrible game on most fronts, Samus is one of the most courageous, respectable, and admirable female characters gaming has to offer.
... She is also consistently portrayed as
flaming hot whenever she isn't in her space armor, causing faux-feminists to immediately hate her and consider her an insulting objectification of women, apparently unaware that "tasteless" is not the same thing as "sexist".
This is literally
ignoring all of Samus's considerable talents, strengths, and accomplishments to slut-shame her. There is no way to interpret that sentiment other than that
respectable women are not allowed to be sexy, and
what kind of feminist says women aren't allowed something?
The "feminism" that usually gives a crap about video games isn't feminism; it's sexism against women
by other women. There is no worse kind than that.
