View Poll Results: Should there be more ugly female characters and fewer attractive female chracters in video games?

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Thread: Solving sexism in video games: Best ugly human female video game character?

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    Default Solving sexism in video games: Best ugly human female video game character?

    I've been watching Anita Sarkeesian's YouTube videos as well as other feminism-related videos and I have to agree with the general theme: women in video games are mainly used for two things:

    1) Damsel in distress. Female characters are always helpless and needs a man to save her. She also acts as a man's trophy.
    2) Sex symbol. In this case, the female character is nothing more than eye candy and masturbation fodder for the male gamer.

    Both problems can be solved at the same time. What I propose is the giving ugly female characters a greater role in video games.

    How can ugly female characters solve sexism in video games? Well:

    1) Ugly female characters are pretty much the opposite of sex symbols. They are ugly. Nobody wants to look at them if they can help it and they definitely won't jack off to it. As a bonus, nobody will draw hentai pictures of this ugly female character.
    2) Nobody wants to save ugly female characters. Imagine Mario going through all the levels, defeating the massive Bowser, and saving the princess: a fat, old and ugly woman. Would Mario let himself get kissed by her? No, he would politely decline. Why would Mario want to go through all that trouble? The good thing is that he doesn't have to because Bowser wouldn't kidnap the pretty young maiden princess in the first place because Bowser knows that no-one would risk their lives for an ugly old crone. In a world without sex young attractive females, no-one would be worth kidnapping because no-one would be worth saving.

    All I need now are examples of ugly female characters in video games. Do you know of any?
    Last edited by GodofHardcore; 07-23-2013 at 11:54 AM.

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    Last edited by kupomogli; 07-23-2013 at 11:49 AM.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kupomogli View Post


    Quina doesn't count because its gender is still up for debate plus she's not human. The latter is my fault though because apparently I can't count on the intelligence of the users of this forum to assume I'm talking about human characters without adding a disclaimer to my first post. I'll add it now.

    Although Freya is female, again she's non-human. And even if she's non-human, she's still considered attractively drawn by furries and the Final Fantasy 9 GameFAQs board.

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    Female is female and your post stated that they always use females as save the princess or sex symbols. Shouldn't matter if characters are human or not. Women in video games aren't always used as some save the princess or sex symbol and RPGs have the most common use of female characters as party members.

    I think most video games portray females in the way you'd expect them to be portrayed in real life. Same as male characters. There's more than one personality and archetype for female and males. Suikoden is a series that pretty much covers them all. Most other video games cover the more basic archetypes because that closely resembles the majority of females. Women must be sexist towards themselves because most of them fall under the very basic archetype that people claim is sexism everywhere else.

    Anyways, here's Marie from Suikoden. You may consider her as an NPC, but she joins as one of your 108 stars. She is in the game during portions of the storyline and during war battles. If you're not satisfied with the choice it's just as simple to find another character in the Suikoden franchise that you can have in your party.

    Last edited by kupomogli; 07-23-2013 at 12:20 PM.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    I don't see how we fight sexism in video games by playing up the other half of it.

    The problem is one of devaluation. In video games, the roles of women are most commonly polarized into either that of the sex object, whether they're powerless or powerful sex objects (if they're a main character), or the "ugly" woman; the evil witch etc. Both are inherently dismissive - sex objects are more valued than the "ugly" woman for obvious reasons, but they're both looked at as less than human beings, as objects to either be fetishized/drooled over or ignored/destroyed.

    So I think the solution has less to do with focusing on one perceived extreme over another than it does with just depicting women as equal human beings with some level of dignity.

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    This whole topic is deeply offensive. How is this guy not banned yet after his other bizarre religious posts? Can a mod lock this down? Thank you.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kupomogli View Post
    Anyways, here's Marie from Suikoden. You may consider her as an NPC, but she joins as one of your 108 stars. She is in the game during portions of the storyline and during war battles. If you're not satisfied with the choice it's just as simple to find another character in the Suikoden franchise that you can have in your party.

    Thanks for trying but is that the best example of an ugly (or in this case, fat and ugly) female character? A literally throwaway and disposable sub-sub-character? I concede that plenty of RPG towns have fat women or in your case, fat female sub-sub-characters but I'd impressed if she was part of the main god-killing party.

    Quote Originally Posted by Berserker View Post
    I don't see how we fight sexism in video games by playing up the other half of it.
    I don't see why not. Instead of a typical teenage female love interest trope, just pair up the hero with a sterile old and ugly woman. Since she's an elderly citizen, she can take care of herself with her life experience. She can even help out the hero. And since she's ugly, the big bad boss won't even think about kidnapping her to lure the hero. Why would the hero want to invest and risk his life for an old woman, despite her helpful ways?

    Anita complains about tropes. The above example I give eliminates the tropes.

    What could go wrong?

    Quote Originally Posted by Berserker View Post
    The problem is one of devaluation. In video games, the roles of women are most commonly polarized into either that of the sex object, whether they're powerless or powerful sex objects (if they're a main character), or the "ugly" woman; the evil witch etc.
    Are you putting quotes on the word ugly on purpose? I think you'll find that many of the evil and bad female characters are sexually attractive. While the hero's love interest is a pure and virginal young lady, the evil bad lady is a scantily clad and sexy dominatrix who wouldn't mind having the hero as her boy toy.

    The existence of sexually attractive females in video games is deeply pervasive. I argue that we need more ugly females, from both sides. The good and the evil female characters.

    Quote Originally Posted by Berserker View Post
    Both are inherently dismissive - sex objects are more valued than the "ugly" woman for obvious reasons, but they're both looked at as less than human beings, as objects to either be fetishized/drooled over or ignored/destroyed.

    So I think the solution has less to do with focusing on one perceived extreme over another than it does with just depicting women as equal human beings with some level of dignity.
    And what is that solution? If we want less sex objects, then the only option I can see is ugly female characters. "Plain jane" females (also known as girl next door) are also prone to fetishization. It is not enough to simply make females plain in order to prevent male gamers from masturbating to them. Female characters MUST BE UGLY. That's the only realistic option that I can see.

    Suppose that a video game depicted a woman as a human being with dignity. Now suppose that woman is physically attractive. Result:

    1) Male gamers are going to masturbate to her Hentai drawings, despite her dignity as a human being
    2) Female gamers will continue complaining about her sex appeal, despite her dignity as a human being

    Again, making that hypothetical woman ugly eliminates both problems.
    Last edited by GodofHardcore; 07-23-2013 at 12:50 PM.

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    I think Bojay's right, you seem to be trolling pretty hard here.

    No more shit threads.

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