Sexual Objectification
I wanted to post only after I finished up my new layout for the website (for some reason, it’s a brilliant shade of purple), but there’s this really pressing issue that’s been on my mind for some time, specifically the issue of sexual objectification. For all my feminist foot-stomping and expressions of disgust at how males have managed to internalize such notions, the same can be said for females, quite frankly.
Female-oriented (or any least, populated) communities seem to be the worst offenders of this. Any photo of a male celebrity would always be followed up with someone saying ‘I’d hit that’ and another swarm of other females agreeing, openly discussing their sexual fantasies with each other (also, Yahtzee). No one calls them on it, and yet these very females get on cases where males start saying the exact same things when presented with a female celebrity.
Of course, the usual arguments can be thrown around – females have every right to boggle at men’s bodies, females have had a history of oppression so we’re entitled to have revenge, the guys can do it so WHAI CANT I – but this isn’t about gender equality. This is about sexual objectification, in and of itself, employed by both genders. I personally find sexual objectification abhorrent, in all forms, male or female. I don’t support one or the other, and yes, I do condone my gender for it.
Just because women has had a history of oppression doesn’t mean we can subscribe to the same things men did. Frankly, I don’t think that this is even a valid psychological reason for the sudden surge of male objectification – it’s just another kneejerk “politically correct” answer as to why female objectification is condoned and yet male objectification is accepted. I frankly don’t think feministic revenge goes through the minds of 15 year olds when typing out ‘I WANT TO DO BAD THINGS TO THIS MAN’ on the Internet.
Perhaps the female sex drive was greater than I assumed. Perhaps I did subscribe to some form of projection bias; I don’t see the sexual attraction in men, I don’t gush on end, and therefore the rest of the female population have the same beliefs as I do. I’m wrong, obviously, but that doesn’t make sexual objectification any more right.
Should men be honoured by their sexual objectification status in the female community? With the evidence that men think about sex more often than females, it feels like men wouldn’t be as insulted as women are. But I’m not a man, so I don’t know. Maybe Johnny Depp does take comfort knowing that he’s in the sexual fantasies of prepubescent girls everywhere.
X2’s slut factor
This comment pretty much encompasses the reasons why FFX-2 has been perceived as a ’slutty game’. Yuna wears shorts so short that they reveal part of her rear, Rikku’s in constant bikini form, and Paine’s probably the most decent looking of the bunch. The credits sequence in the beginning of the game also juxtaposes the girls’ breasts with their respective preferred weapons.
There are also some pretty disturbing sequences, like the whole ‘Jack Leblanc’s satisfaction up!’ through massaging, and she gives some very, very disturbing noises. I was Not A Fan of the wording (‘Jack her up?’ Christ, the sexual overtones can’t get any more obvious than that). Not to mention that Yuna teases Brother that he has to pay to see her dance, which pretty much screams ‘I WANT TO BE A LAP DANCER’.
(For the record, I’ve seen even more disturbing sequences than this. God of War II had such a hilariously bad scene and I was just dragging my jaw around for the rest of the day).
But the sexual overtones end there. Yuna, Rikku or Paine do not actually sell themselves out in any way. Sure, one can say the revealing dresses panders to the ‘my penis likes to talk’ demographic, but what about the story? In FFX, I lumped Yuna together with the ‘helpless girls who get kidnapped and need to be saved because they are special’ heroines (see: Garnet, Rinoa and Aeris) and couldn’t tell from the four of them. X-2 gave her a character makeover, and I’m glad for the fact that she actually gets angry and frustrated at people who aren’t villains. Paine, as indicative of any ‘badass’ stereotype, projects nothing that can be seen as sexual. Rikku’s probably the more passive of the three, and her reaction towards Gippal’s joke that they used to be together made me roll my eyes and mute the TV.
There was some debate that asked if revealing dresses subverted the characterization of females in games. You have Lara, who scales the skyscrapers of Tokyo barefoot and in a skimpy black dress. You have Ivy, who clearly needs a good ol’ bra. You have Mai Shiranui, whose bouncing bosom has been a subject of debate even within SNK itself. All these girls are strong – fighter strong, even, but has the sexualization of these women actually subverted their strength?
I think this is a very different issue than the whole Jade Raymond incident. The problem here is that the women are already sexualized, and there has never been some sort of survey done that actually measured what people felt. Jade, in contrast, was a woman working in a professional capacity, and became a sexual object. Perhaps this goes to show that gaming culture truly does affect our perceptions. There are psychological studies to show that violence in gaming is correlated to the amount of violence exhibited in real life (Anderson & Dill, 2000), despite gamers’ protests. Perhaps this correlation of violence can also be carried over into perceptions of women, and since violence is essentially a physical activity, it can be possible that the ‘nonphysical’ can be manifested more readily. Since physical aggression harms people, and everyone knows it, stereotyping and discrimination becomes a more acceptable form of aggressive behaviour.
It’ll be a very interesting study to partake: gauging the type of attitudes men have about women, and the correlation between video games that presumably sexualize females.
Back to FFX-2. No, I don’t think the game actually made them whores. Character development on any of the three girls don’t show that, and while the style of dress is objectionable, it’s not extremist. The other dresspheres looked pretty decent and appropriate – the dark knight and warrior dresspheres are but two examples, and hey! NO CLEAVAGE. I suppose in that sense, it pretty much caters to both the male and female demographics – the males can jack themselves off looking at the outfits that are revealing, and the girls can squeal at the massive amount of clothing they can change into.
Anyway, it’s not how sexual the game was that killed it. It was the motherfucking minigames.
My misogyny has nothing to do with me; it’s your fault I’m showing it!
Having followed Assassin’s Creed for a while before it was released, I already caught a glimpse of the sexism that pervades the male-dominated gaming community. Jade Raymond is the producer of Assassin’s Creed, and she had given interviews promoting the game. Any preview video of Assassin’s Creed with Jade in it has always been met with comments of ‘OMG she is sooo hawt’ and ‘I wanna fuck her’. I had originally brushed it aside as another case of the ‘my penis iz talking, let me show you it’ syndrome, but then it got so out of control I can’t help but express rage at this point.
Recently there were rumors she was about to appear in Maxim magazine (which she flatly denied) and SomethingAwful.com linked a comic of her giving blowjobs to men to persuade them to buy Assassin’s Creed. The webmaster of Something Awful was given a C&D from Ubisoft. Comments of ’she’s a touchy bitch’ and blame the victim are abound.
Being steeped into this event, I’d like to offer a few observations on the general arguments made by (misogynist) men who think it isn’t that big a deal.
The most common argument made was Ubisoft was using Jade to sell their game, hence, ’sex sells’. No one has seen a producer get this much coverage, compared to other producers of other games. It’s Ubisoft’s fault to send a woman to promote a game publicly, and the comic (and comments) were just backlash ‘in response’. Dave, the very man who created said offensive comic, gives his extensive tl;dr thoughts of this argument, and so does Crawford, and Ken. It’s also interesting to note that the amount of misogynist comments made on any news post about Jade have been brushed aside by the arguers, and heap blame on Ubisoft. It’s not new to find people looking only for evidence to confirm their own biases and dismiss disconfirming evidence, but when something as obvious as sexist comments are ignored in favour of a company conspiracy, I can’t help but wonder if everyone’s missing the forest for the trees.
In short: The blame lies wholly on Ubisoft for exposing a woman to the public to sell their game. Because she’s hot and popular, the misogynist comments are therefore justified.
This argument is fundamentally wrong on two accounts:
1. It was the press coverage (i.e: Kotaku) that focused on how pretty Jade was than the game; not Ubisoft. Anything that was possibly sanctioned by Ubisoft never portrayed Jade in a sexual light. The few photos of her show her in a completely professional capacity. The Developer Diaries that promoted Assassin’s Creed never portrayed her in such a way. It was the press response that molded a spokesperson into a sex symbol. It was not Ubisoft’s fault; it’s the misogyny that pervades the journalistic (gaming) culture, and the subsequent comments that spawned from these newsposts.
2. Explicit misogyny is never justified. No more needs to be said.
With that out of the way, more inferences can be had about this argument. Firstly, this operates on the basic assumption that pretty women are forced to be exposed publicly, with or without their consent. The feedback the pretty woman receives is therefore justified, because ogling at beautiful women seems to be a norm for men. This then leads to the conclusion that since one does not like the feedback men find okay to dish out, one must stop being exposed to the public. This is where the blame for Ubisoft may come in – by stopping exposure, you stop the feedback.
The problem with this logic is that it begs back to the gender-role stereotype that women are not to be seen, especially beautiful women. The belief that it’s okay to say ‘God damn, I’d rape her in a second’ has become so internalized that misogynist men find there’s nothing wrong with their psychological make-up, instead, one has to blame other sources for implanting misogynist thoughts.
The second argument was that there was nothing offensive about the comic; in fact, it’s a political and well-thought out message about the sexual perversion that UBISOFT WHORED HER OUT TO OMG. Also, ‘people need to learn how to take a joke’ can also fall into this category of ‘not getting it’. Dave, as mentioned, loves his tl;dr, and Brad, in his infinite wisdom, doesn’t mind being called stupid, and neither does he mind photoshopped pictures of himself giving blowjobs to other men (but then refused to give his picture).
I doubt I can find anything of value to actually counter this argument, simply because it seems their our values greatly differ. It doesn’t take a Psychology major to know that personal values cannot be changed (unless you’re shown to have explicitly experienced some form of cognitive dissonance, which is not the case for the arguments made here; all of them think objectifying women is okay).
From a personal standpoint, I found nothing satirical about a comic that portrayed a professional woman in a demeaning way. There was nothing ironical nor mocking; it was explicitly sexist, which Dave readily admits to (and how it falls under his belief it is still ’satire’ is something beyond my grasp). I found nothing laughable about a comic whose only message was a sexist view of women.
The final most observed argument was ‘it’s the internet, stop getting your knickers in a twist and focus on something more productive’.
Apparently, the word cyber rape has been either ignored or not learned. Sexually demeaning photos is a form of cyber rape. If a woman didn’t ask for it, then don’t give it. The fact that it’s virtual is not any less important than the physical assault itself. Sadly, ‘violence’ has become a metaphor for ‘rape’ over these years (see the statistics on the amount of judicial punishment meted out to rapists who inflicted bodily harm to their victims against those who did not), and it is assumed that if there is no physical harm done to the female, it’s relatively acceptable. It is not. Whether it be severe psychological trauma or just minor annoyance, the fact remains that harm was done.
It’s not shocking to see the same old arguments made by both misogynists and feminists alike. I can’t say that I’m well versed in the area of misogyny myself, but all I am able to observe so far are extreme examples of it, with no ‘moderate ground’. This is also perhaps based on my feminist nature, since I have observed varying degrees of feminism (the oft-proclaimed question of ’should a man hold open the door for a woman?’ is often met with a variety of responses from feminists) and none yet from misogynists. Perhaps it is because all their arguments can be countered, and every single comment is inherently sexist in nature.
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ETA: Before I forget, my entire point was this: the attempt to justify the objectification of women (in this case, Jade) is misogynist. The arguments that I’ve seen from these very people seem to have ignored this very issue, instead focusing more on who is to blame for this fallout (not the misogynists). It seems that they indirectly admit the fallout is sexist in nature, but have attempted to justify their misogyny by shifting the blame to someone else, hence the title of this post.
ETA 2: I’ve seen a greater and greater amount of posts that have completely sidestepped the issue of misogyny and has now focused on the ‘freedom of speech’, or ‘the First Amendment’, and that any form of censorship is oppression. Any person who has actually read the First Amendment would know that the amendment is not an umbrella that protects every single piece of bullshit that is spouted (see also: libel, defamation, obscenity). The fact remains that the response (which encompasses fanboy reactions, the comic, and the photoshopped photos) was sexist in nature, and is possibly defamatory. I will not speculate on whether Ubisoft actually has grounds to win should they choose to sue (given that I’m no lawyer, but hey, it still doesn’t stop wannabe-lawyers from espousing misconceptions of the First Amendment and then predicting the result of the lawsuit based on that).
More gloriously related posts:
Character Assassin’s Creed… More Misogyny in Gaming. (Roy is full of awesome, by the way. He put things into words more eloquently than I ever could).
The Trouble with Jade @ Feministe.
Jade Raymond is for Real @ GameGirlAdvance
Shrub.com.
Clearly, We Do Not Deserve Nice Things And/Or People.
A Brief Word About the Whole Jade Raymond Situation.
Sexism – An Observation on Elizabeth Swann
Edited and purged, formerly “Sexism and Asian cinema”: Because Elizabeth needs some love all her own.
You know how you just get that irritating feeling when people say ‘that’s sexist!’ whenever the opportunity shows itself? Yeah, try and swallow that when you’re around me. After this stereotype and prejudice course, I’m seeing shit in a whole new light, and everything is sexist, or racist, and can be justified.
I find it extremely hypocritical for these very same Sue authors to tout an unrealistic representation of themselves when Elizabeth is a (relatively) realistic representation of nearly all of these things that they want to be. She fends for herself, holds power, and doesn’t fall for every man that comes her way, but at the same time she could not defeat the main antagonist, Davy Jones. She couldn’t save her father from death, or Will, even.
Fanfiction aside, I observed (at least in the communities I frequent), people refer to the personage as Keira, not Elizabeth. It’s ‘Keira’s annoying’, ‘I didn’t like Keira in the movie’, and it baffles me why they don’t refer to her as Elizabeth. If they want to hate the character, shouldn’t they refer to the character’s name, and not the person who portrays her?
There were numerous comments of ‘I liked her when she wore pretty dresses/fainted’, ’she had too much screen time’, and ‘I’m all for girl power, but she was annoying’. I got really bothered by the second reason; are males really necessary to become the main protagonist on default? I also never got a real definition to ‘annoying’ when I probed for answers, and my guess is that they don’t know (at least consciously). My inference was that they didn’t like the stronger character of Elizabeth, and ‘annoying’ was just the most suitable way to express dislike without sounding prejudiced (I suppose the most popular word to describe Elizabeth in the fanfiction world would be a Sue).
When I attempted to probe further into the reasons why they wanted Elizabeth to not be the Pirate King, they began to get offended (who wouldn’t, and in my defense, I would like to believe I wrote as neutral a tone as I am now) and began to state over and over along the lines of ‘I’m not sexist, I LOVE KEIRA, I never said I didn’t like her, and I’m not going to discuss this further.’
Sadly enough – from my observation at least – comments of this nature were usually made by females. It’s really sad to see females actually conform to the stereotype of gender inequality, where females are supposed to wear pretty dresses and get rescued by men, and must always play the supporting role to a male protagonist.
The males, in contrast, don’t disguise their prejudice. I’ve seen comments ranging from ‘I hate Keira’s jaw’ to this little gem:
if you’re gonna have a girl that’s a badass in your movie, the only way for it to be believable is for her to be butt-ugly. a pretty girl just throws all believabiliy out the window. anyone seen “Monster” with Charlize Theron. she killed lots of people and it was freakin terrifying. why? because it was hard to even look at her.
Let’s take this apart, shall we?
1. The only way for a girl to quash stereotypes (specifically, not being the damsel in distress) is to be ‘butt-ugly’. If you’re beautiful, you’re just there to be goggled at. Your purpose is to be goggled at. Apparently beautiful girls cannot be strong – it’s not ‘believable’ – which makes me wonder how many women he actually knows.
2. The fact that the character of Charlize Theron murdered people was not because of the act itself, but rather it was how ugly she looked. I’m pretty sure the movie wasn’t exactly trying to portray her as the next Medusa… literally.
There are others which are perhaps more explicit and implicit compared with this comment, but I shan’t make you roll your eyes and tell me that ‘ZOMG SEXISM EXISTS DIDNT U KNO’.
What I am shocked to see, however, is how bad the objectification of women has become in cinema, and how much of these stereotypes have been internalized. Even when a female character is ‘badass’, she still needs to bare skin and have a desirable personality (Tomb Raider, Charlie’s Angels), while simultaneously getting defeated by a man or being ‘broken’ by a man (falling in love and thus not being able to be badass anymore). The character of Elizabeth isn’t like that at all. She traveled all the way by herself to find Will, made decisions herself, becomes a captain of a ship, becomes the Pirate King, and actually took on the roles that a man is stereotyped to hold. That doesn’t sit well with people (females included, sadly enough). I find it absolutely sad that Elizabeth’s character has been so negatively received, simply because she has rejected all the stereotypes of what women are supposed to be without having to become a sexual object.
I think we’ve become a society so afraid to offend others that subjects like these become taboo. I myself have stepped away from the constant Elizabeth-bashing because of all the high emotions that run from the other party (I just like to analyze other people’s words, regardless of my personal bias.) Out of all my sourcing, I have yet to see a legitimate, unprejudiced reason as to why Elizabeth (the character, not Keira) has been so widely disliked by everyone. Goes to show how much stereotyping and prejudice runs deep in the societies we live in.
