[This is the continuation of a new series, in which we'll pose a question and open up the floor to answers from our community. If you have ideas for this column, send them to me!]
Ryu from the Street Fighter series is shown with a torn white shirt with his bulging chest and arm muscles.
We’ve talked a ton about how female characters in games are often sexualized and designed with the straight male gaze in mind. The norm is for developers to dress a female character (whether it is a protagonist or an obscure NPC) in scantily clad outfits, pose them in ways that accentuate their sexuality, and give them personalities that are shallow and desires that appeal to straight male players. When any conversation about sexism in games is brought up, the response is similar to this one:
Street fighter sexualizes women? Give me a break. The men are just as handsome and sculpted as the women. When the men are no longer good looking and ripped with muscle, THEN you can complain.
(Source: Kotaku)
It’s a standard “what about the men” kind of response, one that is dismissive of the concerns of women and a blatant attempt to turn the discussion into an oppression Olympics. Another less inflammatory example of this comes from SOE Creative Director Matt Higby, who in response to this article from Nicole Leffel says:
I’m definitely not condoning any of the sentiments expressed by the antagonists in this post, but, I wonder if any of the scrawny and / or overweight dudes working in the games industry get upset when the hero of their action game needs to be a muscled idyllic “bad ass” human male. If I was involved in a discussion about the size of the arms on the hero of my game I can’t see myself being offended because it doesn’t portray men in reasonable way. I remember the sexism argument used to be that there were too few female protagonists in games, is it shifting to now that they’re too pretty (by societal standards, don’t get mad at me here!)? Finally, I’m not sure that a crude discussion of anatomy can really be considered “sexism”, is it offensive, maybe, but, is it discriminatory? I’m not sure. What do you think?
(Source: Facebook public post
Is it possible to compare the sexist objectification of female characters in games to the macho musclebound male character design? What do you think, readers of The Border House? Sound off below!
We can, and certainly should, discuss the objectification of men in games (and elsewhere). But I don’t think the comparison to oppression faced by female-identified people is necessary or even very helpful. Series like Bitch’s recent “Isn’t He Lovely” show that we can discuss the bullshit lobbed at men by art and advertising without tying the discussion to women. The issues ARE interrelated, being both the result of kyriarchical system, but that comparisons often ignore or discount the power differential between men and women. Yeah, dudes got it rough. But the way woman have it rough is different, and perhaps worse.
I don’t really think it can be meaningfully compared.
Nudity can mean different things in different contexts. The message that the audience is supposed to take away from Ryu’s exposed torso and arms is one of his strength. The intent behind Cammy character design is obviously different.
I think it is an issue that guys are portrayed in this way. However, it is a different issue and can’t really be compared to the kind of objectification women experience.
Couldn’t have put it better myself! Men can obviously face sexualisation, but muscles on men in games (especially “OTT” muscles, like Ryu’s) are first and foremost about power/strength than anything else.
Short answer: No. A beefcake male character is shown in ways that emphasise his strength and the effort he has put into being as strong as he is. But huge boobs aren’t the result of lots of muscle training – they’re something women Just Have. (Of course most men aren’t capable of achieving a male video game character’s physique however much effort they put in, but the goal is to show effort and self-dominance, not that this character was Just Born With Muscles.) The key is that muscles are for Doing. Boobs aren’t really that useful in combat. The only female character I can think of whose boobs are displayed to show off her Effort and the Things She Does is The Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3, whose scarred breasts are proof of her role as a mother-archetype – and a ridiculously powerful one, too.
Overall, the distinction is simply one of Decorative Fanservice and Practical Fanservice. Most character designs are a little of both – going back to MGS3, it’s really kind of weird that (the male character who has been living in the jungle for weeks) Big Boss would have shaved underarms and a hairless chest in 1964 long before manscaping was a thing, it’s only like that to make him look sexier to a modern audience – but really, a character should be designed in a way that suits who they are and the history their body has had. Boring sexist female characters aren’t allowed histories – they put scars on their pretty skin.
Of course this rule can all be waived for totally ridiculous character designs. I crack up laughing whenever I see Marcus Fenix. It reflects his personality, yeah, but just – just LOOK at him. Hahahaha!
Actually the Japanese have a thing against hair and that’s why Big Boss has no hair. Also, genetically don’t most Asian people lack a lot of hair?
The only time I’ve seen hair on a character is to emphasize how manly the character is and is ues for comedic effect.
This isn’t an idea that’s unique to Japan. Compare the sexy, sexy, sexy pictures of Sean Connery as Bond, to our boy Daniel Craig and note the shining differences. Inbetween we of course had Austin Powers, who had a carpet for comedic purposes as though it’s inherently funny.
I really don’t want to get into a discussion about Big Boss’s chest hair on a Border House thread, but that’s pretty much the point I was trying to make – it’s inappropriate for his actual character as a late-twenties/early-thirties white guy living in the jungle in 1964, but they do it anyway to make him more aesthetically appealing to the culture he’s intended for (Decorative design). But for the most part, his character design is to fit with the kind of man he is – he has those muscles because of how he fights, he has those clothes because of how he avoids fights, he has that face because he’s the father of an established series character (who himself has that face to reflect his personality), he has that bandanna because of his history. His design is mostly justified by his character.
Conversely (not so much in Metal Gear, which does have serious issues with its female characters, but this isn’t one of them – but in many other games) female character designs are mostly not justified. She has this face because that’s what the character designer finds hot and she has this body because that’s what the character designer finds hot and she wears this becayse that’s what the character designer finds hot… and usually there will be a few elements that are justified by her personality, just like Big Boss has a few elements that are just there for aesthetics, but in her case it won’t be the focus of her design. The fundamental attitude is that female characters, more often than not, are hot first and characters second.
This is what leads to one of my favourite ‘you sexist bastard’ approaches to character designs – when all the men in a game have varied and diverse character designs and body types, and all the women in a game have identical bodies and faces and vary only in hair colour and the colour of their tops. Fighting games are good at doing this.
This is a fantastic topic and question! I’ve been trying to think of a succinct way to describe my feelings about this, and I think I’ve found it:
In my opinion, men tend to be idealized in games (and other art forms), while women tend to be sexualized in games (and other art forms). In video games especially, women are sometimes both objectified and sexualized, placed into a scene solely as an object of sexual fantasy. I’ve never seen this done to men in games. (I *have* however seen this done to men in movies & tv shows.)
I could blab for hours about the details of this, but to me, this is what it boils down to.
There is a certain level of “objectification” of men in games in that they are treated as idealized, impossible-to-achieve forms. But it must be noted that although some level of this objectification exists, it is nowhere near as bad as female representations in games, for two main reasons: The primary reason is that women’s objectification is generally sexual in nature, where male game characters are generally just chiseled – let’s see them in a thong before we say it’s the same.
Second, it’s far more common – almost universal – to have a male as the point-of-view “subject” character with whom we are supposed to identify through our control.
It’s not fair to compare them, no. Straight male gaze affects how male characters are designed and displayed, but it’s not the same as how the creation and presentation of female characters is affected. Any negative/unhealthy message in a male character’s design is present in a female character’s, and then there are layers and layers of further damaging concepts.
A male character is generally a vessel for power fantasy-focused wish fulfillment, designed for an adolescent male audience. The reaction from that audience is generally an enthusiastic acceptance of the suggestion that they project themselves onto the hulking mountain of meat presented to them.
Even when trying to design a “sexy” male lead, teams of straight (Western) men tend to design what they THINK is sexy, and it often ends up being that same cube-shaped dude that has to walk through doors sideways. Asian developers have their own idealized body form that they present, typically an incredibly slim (but toned) character with perfect skin who is appealingly androgynous.
There are many boys (and men) who do not have a healthy body image, and who are hurt by the invidious comparison they feel compelled to make in either case. This isn’t nearly as prevalent as in women and girls, who face far greater cultural signals that their worth is their physical appearance, but for those affected it is a serious psychological stress regardless of their gender.
So not to “WHAT ABOUT THE MEN!?!?” (and I feel like I did anyways- sorry.), but there are people of all genders who suffer from idealized bodies being the only ones presented across media. For men in games there is no sexualization, there is no othering, there are none of those other layers that make the treatment of women so egregious—but there is harm being done here, regardless.
‘Objectification’ isn’t the right word, I don’t think. Certainly male figures are often stereotyped and sexualised in games. The badass muscle-bound protagonist is a common sight, but is an aspirational figure, an idealised self—not an object to be used or owned. The argument that men are equally sexualised in games falls down, because it only considers the stereotyping itself without addressing the different roles the stereotypes fill.
I don’t think that men are sexualized in the games industry at all. Most male characters in video games are paragons of physical ability, whether they be gravel voiced space marines or ripped martial artists.
I think it is wishful thinking, (balanced by whatever personal restraint they have) that drives the character designs in video games. Guys look at Ryu and secretly wish they could throw hadoukens and look like that.
my answer is “No”. even the military bros are still human beings with motivations (no matter how shallow or cliche) and pasts and defining characteristics (even if that characteristic is an unnatural love for snippy oneliners or how strong and competent the man is). women in games are often sex mechanisms. dudes in games are main characters or plucky sidekicks whose journey we are meant to follow and empathize with (no matter how tedious) and women are romantic interests who otherwise contribute very little (and when they do contribute it tends to be in a sexxxyyyy way – Samara, Bayonetta, Catwoman…). as a straight dude I never watch a main character and go “oh am I supposed to want to have sex with him?”.
well, except for Nathan Drake, I guess. but it’d be a stretch to say he is “objectified” in the way that Lara Croft has been (exaggeration of sex characteristics, posters, photo shoots, etc). Or take Ryu and Cammy since we’re talking about SF: Ryu is a (goofy, ineffective) Everyman who is out for revenge and wears a gi which is … kind of rooted in things human beings wear to a fight. Cammy is a blank slate who is a receptacle for other people’s spirits and wears a camo thong. and that’s just street fighter. the dudes wear boxing shorts and the women wear stockings.
i can think of a few non-sexualized females but I can think of a crapload more non-sexualized males. i can think of tons of sexualized females with no other characteristics but I can’t think of any dudes who have so much as an ass shot.
I think when we talk about the muscle-bound male hero, or even the overplayed space marine character type, that we’re talking more about idealized bodies, not sexualized bodies. These body types aren’t shown as available for sex, their sexual body parts are not highlighted or exaggerated. Instead muscles are the focus of these bodies, and while muscles are considered a part of the attractive male ideal, they are not focused on because they are seen as representing sexuality or as being overwhelmingly sexual, but because they represent power and strength. This is most likely an artifact of the heterosexual male gaze in game design which calls for sexy female characters the presumed audience would feel attracted to and male characters that they can aspire to be. Now these idealized bodies may be hard for most men, or even impossible for any man, to obtain and as such they should be critiqued when they’re held up as the main standard by which male characters are held to.
However, as its been pointed out before, male characters have a much, much wider range of body types in the medium than female characters. Couple that with the gaming industry’s tendency to not sexualize men (either through camera angles, costumes, or character design) and I think that the two situations are not really comparable. The idealized bodies of men are a great discussion point and can really highlight the roles men are presumed to have in games, but they really cannot serve as a “What about the menz” counter-argument to the sexualization and idealization of female characters in games.
Idealised instead of sexualised sounds like a good way to make the distinction to me.
As a mexican male, I’m usually more concerned and attentive to how they portray country stereotypes in those genres than how they portray men, which I usually don’t care unless it’s really badly exaggerated (they’re getting there, seriously). Also hate unreasonable/nonsensical clothes and armor, which women in games tend to have it worse than men.
I recommend reading this gender-flipped version of a “how to draw superheroes” book to illustrate the differences: http://vito-excalibur.dreamwidth.org/183224.html
Oh gosh, thank you! That was a great read. I feel like I’ve seen it before, but it was a great refersher on just how depressing that double standard can be.
Only just followed that link; absolute classic. Utterly insidiously done, no less. Makes the point very well.
great link, i love it
Both male and female characters in games are almost universally represented as idealised bodies. That ideal may be in the view of their creators or in the hypothetical view of the audience they are created for.
On top of that idealised body the character may be sexualised. That may occur somewhat in their character design, but I think mostly is shown through how they are presented: Lingering closeups of taught pecs and voluminous breasts alike. This sexualisation is more common in female characters.
I identify as male, have played games almost all my life and have yet to encounter a male character with a body I can identify with. Guess that means I’m not an ideal.
Uh, I would say that there is something to be said for the idea of male characters in some of these games providing an intimidating and depressing “aspirational” object for young men and boys as they are by and large all but unachievable body types, and even potentially a catalyst for such phenomena as reverse anorexia. That said, by and large I think Boo Doo above is right in that it serves more in a wish fulfilment role, wherein players see themselves in that position, rather than see it as something they are supposed to attain. And certainly many guys will, when faced with a character creator, opt for the large, powerfully built, the scarred and the “heroic” looking. For instance my principal character in Aion had a build that tended in that sort of direction.
As for objectification, we probably have to draw a line between the sexual objectification of female characters and the muscle objectification of the men, because of the differing directions the objectification takes. Bluntly put, only one of those forms of objectification has a relation to the task of the characters; i.e., combat. Placing so much of a female characters focus on traits which are secondary to what they are ostensibly trying to do (win the tournament, vanquish the Very Naughty Villain, etc.) seems inherently more destructive and gratuitous than the male character’s focus on ludicrous physical prowess.
Now some male characters are dressed skimpily, potentially even more skimpily than some of the more sexualised female characters, for instance Zangrief of the Street Fighter lore. Parading around in a pair of underwear with a belt does not, however, render sexuality the defining trait of his character, due to the male gaze of the game. In the end it simply serves to further heighten the characters defining nature, that of his role as a muscle bound, scarred combatant.
In sum, yes its an objectification but a completely different ballgame.
Aspirational vs. desirable are two very different types of “unrealistic”. Both sets of character designs set out to appeal to the male gaze. Otherwise it would not be muscle-bound hulked-out characters in clothes that leave the size of his package up to the imagination of the player; there would be young, skinny, thoughtful-looking white men who feature in every boy band that has actually been marketed to the female gaze in America.
When I can see most of a man’s package peaking around his jock-strap the way I can see most of Ivy’s breast I’ll believe men are being sexually objectified.
I’m going to have to go with the consensus.
Yes, the male body is also objectified and it also can negatively affect the way some male persons think of themselves (what the hell is manliness anyway?) However, the motivation for objectification is very different from their female counterparts.
Wasn’t there a quote recently where it basically said “design male characters the way you want to be and design female characters as people you would want to fuck.” That’s sums up the viewpoint of the media in general.
I agree with the comments above. I can’t put it any better. I really would love to play a big, muscular woman who is physically imposing in a game and see more men who are smaller and not muscular. In real life I am not big or muscular though I am extremely proud of my new arm muscles from yoga and show them to all my friends.
I played Dark Sun and in that game I was a female half giant and I would pick tiny team members who would stay behind me so I can protect them. I want to live in a world where all shapes and sizes and strengths and exercise proclivities are ok. I was just reading a post about a geek girl with an eating disorder and this article just underlines how bad it can get for everyone, but especially for women. I like that all the previous commenters get it.
Just because you said that, I’m going to geek out about Hammer from Fable 2 who was definitely not your usual female body type and even gets to be the bruiser! The powerful mage is a small dark skinned man. Good times.
That is great, only it’s an X-Box game and I’m a pc gamer, don’t have any consoles. Waah!
did it come out for pc by any chance?
It did not, actually. Fable 3 did but lacks an archetype-busting character like Hammer.
Aww
Well I’m just happy Hammer exists in the world!
She was a pretty sweet character and I’d like to see more like her.
Don’t forget Fable II had STEPHEN FRY as well.
I just came up with a short checklist:
-does he have a bulge?
-does the camera lick him?
-does he strike sexy poses?
If the answers are mostly “no”, he’s not sexualised.
I agree with everyone else that yes male characters are idealized, but they are very rarely sexualized. I’m trying to think of a male character who might be considered somewhat sexualized, and all I can come up with is Rion from Galerians: Ash (the one on the left in this picture: http://i.neoseeker.com/boxshots/R2FtZXMvUGxheXN0YXRpb25fMi9BY3Rpb24vQWR2ZW50dXJl/galerians_ash_backcover_large_NoEoN2risTpfyK6.jpg). He wears a choker-necklace, a top that’s unzipped so that it shows off his navel and part of his chest, and red leather pants. He’s also quite thin, and not that muscular. His outfit is not what I would call practical for his role in the game, but aside from the generic soldiers and enemies, practically no one’s is. Still, compared to what most female characters wear in games, his clothing is tame.
The “but guys are exaggerated too!” argument always strikes me as being disingenuous, since so many of the people who use it seem to have chosen it because they don’t mind that sort of exaggeration rather than because it’s the closest available comparison.
I mean, take a look at Vaan from Final Fantasy XII. Passive pose, nonthreatening expression, undone vest partially hanging off his shoulder to expose his chest. It’s much closer to the female depictions than a guy in a sleeveless gi and a fighting stance could ever be.
But no one uses this as an example because a lot of guys tend to actively despise it. Vaan’s character design certainly isn’t the best out there, but the level of vitriol it inspired is rather out of proportion with that (and seemed to subside significantly when they gave him a shirt in his other appearances). It’s not like guys don’t really care about how they’re depicted; they just don’t tend to mind being depicted as bulky muscle men regardless of their level of undress.
(Square-Enix’s main Square franchises tend to do that kind of stuff a lot, albeit usually less blatantly; unsurprisingly, they have a large vocal female fanbase who draw sexy art of their male characters and an equally-vocal group of male haters who say the characters are just too androgynous while saying they want to go back to the even more androgynous early Final Fantasy designs)
“It’s not like guys don’t really care about how they’re depicted; they just don’t tend to mind being depicted as bulky muscle men regardless of their level of undress.”
I bet they would mind if their characters were actively sexualized like women are, which you can do with any level of (un)dress. But, yeah, I don’t for a moment believe than men don’t care and that it’s only us whiny bitchy females who are never satisfied. Blood elves, anyone? Their original model raised such a shitfit that Blizzard bulked them up, and even now they still get insulted as scrawny faggy girly-men — by men and boys who are, I’d be willing to bet, rarely as buff as that model they so despise, so what does that make THEM in their twisted view of the world and of “masculinity”?
Generally: well said, everyone, don’t think I’ve anything else to add.
That’s an awful lot of hate there Korva. Regardless, I think it is a complex issue and it isn’t as simple as saying that they would or wouldn’t care if they were or were not sexualized. It’s easy to imagine, for example, that men wouldn’t mind as much because society doesn’t place as high a value on appearance for men as it does women (indoctrining them at birth nearly).
Oh, definitely. We learn that being pretty and sexy is crucial even if it means serious harm to ourselves. On the other hand, many boys learn that if they’re not “masculine” enough, someone may do serious harm to them. It’s more subtle and maybe less pervasive, but there’s still a kind of indoctrination, and it definitely shows in all that hatespeech of “fag” and “sissy” and “girly” that’s so prevalent in gaming and elsewhere.
That is why I’m convinced many would care if “their” characters were sexualized like female characters are: it’d go right against gender stereotypes. And when there’s even a hint of that, there’s often an outcry. Again, just look at the poor blood elves who were made “more masculine” and are still despised because then males of most other races pump ten times more steroids.
It’s the same when a male character gives off an air of having been designed to (also) appeal to (straight) women. Two examples have been given in the comments, and I’d also count many of the male “love interests” in the Bioware games as further examples (though with them the appeal is more in the writing than in “sexy” visual design). Invariably, there’ll be threads by male players attacking these characters, calling them wimpy and whiny and “just like ” even when they have nothing in common with each other — except that attempt to sexually appeal to straight women.
Bottom line is: I agree with Ikkin that men do care about how “their” characters are displayed. Not all, no, just like not all women do, but examples like these exist and show that the “men don’t complain, so why do you?” argument that is sometimes trotted out to silence criticism of the portrayal of female characters is invalid.
Whoops, one sentence got messed up by the formatting. I meant:
… and “just like (insert-male-LI-from-the-last-game)” even when they have nothing in common with each other …
Invariably, there’ll be threads by male players attacking these characters, calling them wimpy and whiny and “just like (insert-male-LI-from-the-last-game)” even when they have nothing in common with each other — except that attempt to sexually appeal to straight women.
I’m not sure that this is the same issue, really. That kind of thing seems less like a rejection of male characters who appeal to women and more the result of that rather irksome heroic male ideal under which any show of emotion that isn’t anger is automatically “weak” and “whiny,” especially the more vulnerable sorts like fear and sorrow.
If there’s one representation problem guys have that’s in any way comparable to the one-dimensional-sexiness issue we get, it’s the overvaluation of that sort of emotional deadness. It’s not quite as impossible to avoid, which reduces the impact somewhat, but ugh is it annoying.
Yes, the toxic “real men don’t show emotions except for lust and anger” doctrine is bound to be another reason why some despise these characters — just as “real men don’t dress/pose/wear their hair like that” is part of the contempt for those other characters. I think both are possibly pretty inextricably linked to the dislike of having male characters designed to appeal to women because they show that the “real ultra-masculine macho he-man hulk” type that we’re all supposed to worship isn’t the end-all and be-all for straight ladies.
I also think that at least some of those who insult the hetero male “love interests” as weak, wimpy and just-like-Carth do so by knee-jerk reflex without really knowing them, since they usually also say that they never use or talk to that character if they can help, except to get him killed if the game allows it. If they don’t talk to the character, how can they know he’s weak, wimpy and just-like-Carth? That’s where I believe a certain “he’s for the girls, he must be shit” attitude comes in.
I’m going wildly off-topic here, but I think the range of emotional expression in male characters and how they’re perceived by the audience could be an interesting subject to explore. For example, are there any male characters who display a fuller range of emotion than is “acceptable” but who aren’t “love interests”? And if you take a closer look at certain favourites who seem to be closer to the “masculine stereotype”, are they really all as stoic and untouchable as they may first appear?
I think both are possibly pretty inextricably linked to the dislike of having male characters designed to appeal to women because they show that the “real ultra-masculine macho he-man hulk” type that we’re all supposed to worship isn’t the end-all and be-all for straight ladies.
Yeah, I think this is the heart of the issue. It’s not that guys don’t like the idea of their power fantasy character being attractive to the ladies (otherwise we wouldn’t have Duke Nukem); it’s that the characters who are attractive to actual women can’t be that type of macho power fantasy, and those guys don’t like that.
I’m going wildly off-topic here, but I think the range of emotional expression in male characters and how they’re perceived by the audience could be an interesting subject to explore. For example, are there any male characters who display a fuller range of emotion than is “acceptable” but who aren’t “love interests”? And if you take a closer look at certain favourites who seem to be closer to the “masculine stereotype”, are they really all as stoic and untouchable as they may first appear?
Yeah, this is something that’s really interesting to me too, because it does so much damage to the characters it affects.
There certainly are male characters who avoid that trap while being designed as player avatar rather than a love interest, though I don’t think I could say how common they are; the majority of examples that I can think of come from one division of Square-Enix, which means they’re not exactly a representative sample. From what I’ve seen, they tend to be physically attractive, but I don’t think that’s the purpose of their unrestrained emotionality — the point seems to be that these characters suffer from and react to the burdens they carry, rather than acting as if those burdens simply didn’t exist.
On the other side, there are a few “acceptable” deviations from the stoic and untouchable standard that show up in macho characters, most likely to avoid them coming off as too inhuman. Unfortunately, it often involves Women In Refrigerators (which is problematic in its own right), never brings the character’s dignity into question, and usually devolves into channeling that momentary vulnerability into rage in the end anyway.
I wouldn’t mind seeing something written about it by someone who had a better sense of the scope of the macho problem than I do, though; I tend to avoid macho characters when I can and seek out subversions of that expectation whenever possible.
YES. These willowy beautiful men are the ones I usually see female fans drooling over. THESE are the characters fulfilling female gaze, not bulked-up space marines. Predictably, many male gamers have a knee-jerk hatred of these characters.
Kuja from FFIX immediately springs to mind. Slender, beautiful, showing off his belly and thighs, his ass is hanging out and–oh my, is that PACKAGE?
http://www.game-art-hq.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Final-Fantasy-Dissidia-Game-Character-Official-Artwork-Render-Kuja.jpg
Female FF fans loved this guy while males predictably called him a fag.
Sephiroth from FF7 is an interesting combination of bulked AND beautiful, who seemed well-liked my male and female fans alike. Cloud, too, for that matter.
Most of the games I can think of with characters that female fans happily drew sexy fanart and sexualized the male characters were usually made in Japan.
To be fair, the reason that you don’t often see female fans drooling over any other type of character is because there’s social pressure surrounding what women are allowed to like. It’s considered OK to like bishounen or Twilight pretty boys and businesses are happy to exploit that, but if you like guys outside that norm, you’re going to repeatedly hear about how strange people think that is. I’ve had a lot of female friends admit to me that they were worried I’d make fun of them if they told me they liked big/muscular/pudgy/older/whatever men, and I’ve have had my own sexuality policed by both men and women over liking men outside the accepted norm.
Which of course doesn’t mean that big/muscular/pudgy/older/whatever men are being sexualized because there are women that think they’re sexy, I’m just sayin’.
I don’t know how OK it is to like pretty boys, really. I’ve gotten a lot of flack for not liking the typical Hollywood men or football players or whatever. Women I’ve known have made it clear they thought I was weird for not liking big muscles and hyper masculine attitudes. This is just my experience, but I don’t think the world is very accepting of other depictions of masculinity in the mainstream. Maybe as a kind of side thing, yes. It’s true Twilight is big, but there’s so much hate of Edward– and not all of it is because he’s a creepy stalker. I’ve heard a lot of bs about liking “a real man’ and usually from women, and that almost always means the musclebound, silent, emotionless type.
I think Edward is attractive to women because his only purpose for existing in those books is to pay attention to Bella. Basically he’s just a catering machine on two legs. His looks are probably not as relevant as the fact that he actually listens to her and thinks she’s the most fascinating being on the planet, and his life revolves around her.
As a side note, I’ve noticed in general men have a really hard time dealing with the fact that women find other men attractive. In my online RP group, for example, we had two men who always got upset when the GM described attractive male NPCs but never wanted to discuss it openly. It was really interesting.
Your definition of “pretty boy” must be different than mine, because I think of the typical Hollywood men as pretty boys, especially recently. Typical Hollywood men aren’t androgynous and beautiful like bishounen/biseinen, but the focus is definitely on their fine, chiseled features, lovely eyes, pouty lips, etc. Model-types. That’s just how I’ve always heard the term used.
I can’t agree on the Twilight thing because every time Meyer writes about Edward she makes it a point to refer to his beautiful looks, or his toned body, flawless statue-like skin, etc. He’s rarely given any characterization outside of “is gorgeous” and “wants Bella”. His creepy behaviors are given a constant pass because of his looks and the fact that he “loooooves” her. Scary stuff.
Then we must have different experiences regarding the term. I don’t think Hollywood men are pretty boys– I would say they have what are considered traditionally handsome masculine features. I’m not a big fan of mainstream movies though so if that has changed, there’s a good chance I’ve missed it. I do know that when I hear female friends talking about Hollywood men, it’s never about their lovely eyes or full lips, but rather their muscles, abs, etc, and I’m considered strange because I don’t find those things attractive.
As for Twilight, we can agree to disagree. I know a few fans and from what they say, I conclude that Edward’s behavior matters more than his looks ultimately. His looks matter, but not for their own sake.
My theory is this: I think Edward is the ultimate “trophy boyfriend”. He is superhumanly attentive to Bella, he is protective and obsessive, but supposedly it’s because he cares so much he can’t help it, he is rich, he wants to buy her anything she wants, he is attractive in a way that’s acceptable to most people, and he’s still very, very manly as well as being sensitive, emotional (but only in approved ways). His looks are attractive, but not deviating too much from what is considered typical, from what I remember of the books. In short, he’s the type of man a woman would like if she wanted to impress all her friends in the mainstream. He’s basically a man created to show the woman’s worth in catching such a great prize. The looks are secondary to that consideration. Edward is generic and bland, and as a character exists only to show how special Bella is. He can’t be ugly, because that would be a flaw in the trophy boyfriend, but he can’t be too weirdly beautiful, because that would not be acceptable either. So I don’t think it’s the looks that are the primary attraction.
The difference in objectivation is that men are idealized and women are sexualized in games. The only example of a sexualized man that sponanously comes to mind is Voldo from the Soul Calibur series in his bondagelike gear and jiggling butt cheeks. And there it is still based on the male gaze and used for squick instead of eye candy, so to an entirely different purpose, and pales in comparison to the sexualisation of most female characters in the game.
The only fighting game that spontanuously comes to mind in which the female characters are not sexualized is this here http://www.youtube.com/user/ManeSixDev and it is both non-commercial and the characters are ponies.
I think that a female protagonist that actually looks like she can kick ass would be a significant change for the better since it would defy the whole “weaker gender” stereotype which imo is half of the problem since quite a bit of the rest is based on that assumption.
I liked Voldo very much and would use him exclusively, partly because of his strange and confusing moves, and partly because of his lack of clothing and sexual poses, simply because it made such a contrast to the women in Soul Calibur. I don’t know if he’s meant to squick men out or what he’s for, but I do know that a lot of men really hate him and the usual “faggot” thing comes out on youtube comments or game blogs. I take it to mean that those men are threatened by the fact that an attractive man came along and broke the covenant of not competing through looks or something!
Given that Voldo started out as more of a gladiator or show type fighter (compare the moves and victory poses in the earliest parts of the series, back when the game still had the name Soul Edge (they only renamed it due to a copyright claim) ) I guess they added the sexualization to make him more distinct, and given that his crouching starting pose and snarling also are reminiscent of a horror movie (in addition to being pale, gaunt and bald and wearing a helmet or gear that completely conceals his emotions), I guess they added the sexual aspect to scare their target demographic of hetero male players even more, comparable to the sexual imaginery in the alien movies. Don’t get me wrong, Voldo one of my favorites and the part of me that is bi finds him attractive. I just guess that they did not sexualize him with attracting female or bi players in mind. And I admit that part of why I like playing him is because it feels like playing something straight out of a horror movie.
I didn’t think about the horror aspect of Voldo but it’s really interesting to consider. I always thought of him as almost a caricature of male attractiveness, like a really over-the-top sexual being. I never considered that the sexuality was put there to frighten men. I guess I figured they were just having fun creating the character and that his moves suggested sexuality so they created that in his story. It is interesting and thought provoking to look at it from the angle that they did this to be scary to straight men and I’ll have to think about this. Thanks very much!
I’ve very rarely experienced anything like objectification of male characters. Many characters are stereotypical and one-sided. I guess you could say they are violent and macho the way female characters are sexy. I think you can call it objectification, the way men are often reduced to killing machines and such. That is something I think is very much worth discussing, although not as some kind of counter-argument to how female characters are portrayed. It’s not a zero-sum game after all.
The reason I don’t feel so affected by stereotypical male characters is that I can easily find variations. There are many macho space marine types, yes, but also a whole range of other men with many different characteristics. Even when with men who are attractive, you get someone who is attractive because they’re strong and interesting, and not strong and interesting because they’re attractive, as is so often the case with women.
Variation and wider range of characters removes much of the issues with typically male characters for me. I think it might work for characters of other genders, sexualities and ethnicities as well.
I think that there’s an extra step to take – when men are sexual, they’re ‘supposed’ to be dominant, whereas women are ‘supposed’ to be submissive. Even when men are meant to be sexualised they won’t be sexualised in the same way – and that’s before we even get to the points that everyone else is making about idealisation over sexualisation. There is a (slight?) difference between “hot flexing muscular dude” and “powerful flexing muscular dude”, but even when the former is intended it’s still not going to be comparable to how women tend to be sexualised.
I’d also go with the “idealized” group.
The first thing I asked myself is whether or not I find that picture of Ryu sexy. And that’s a clear no.
i’m not that kind of woman who’s impressed or turned on by exaggerated muscles and many are not, either.
So… the concept of putting that much muscles on a character is most certainly catering for male players. It is them who love beefy boys and muscles like the Hulk’s or Garrosh Hellscream’s. Those body types are their wish fulfillment since they are taught “muscles = masculinity” from early on.
Another point is his pose. He’s not in a sexually suggestive pose, he’s posing for fighting. His “sexy bodyparts” (Groin, Buttocks) are well hidden and his face does an unfriendly grimace.
If he was a woman with a similar amount of cleavage, but the same muscles, pose and visage, I’d be more than happy since we finally had a pretty non-sexualised female in a fighting game (unless you count Zelda and Peach in Smash Bros.)
To see the “muscles = masculine” pattern, just look at the female heroes in games. How often do you find a conan-esque figure besides the femBarb in D3? How often can you choose male and female from the same race and find the female one (even of fantastic races) to be the smaller one with most times half the muscle mass of her male counterpart?
Those muscles must be made of steel then, if said female wants to fight as well as her male friend.
As said, Final Fantasy has a huge cast of appealing men that are sometimes quite sexualized. Vaan is a good example, but he’s not my type. http://ipadwallpaper.eu/wallpapers/2/basch-fon-ronsenburg.jpg fits me better and is also an example of a slightly sexualized male character. Plus he’s the only character that ends up chained in a cage and is in need of rescue. What I like about FF is that they play the sexy part with both male and female characters without reducing them to fanservice. As sexy as Basch or Ashe or Balthier might be, they are still badass. And did I mention Kuja? He’s THE epitome of sexualized male character http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy2/de/images/9/9c/Dissidia_Kuja.jpg
Muscles? Yes. Beefy? not at all.
Sexualized? Not at all unless gay people have taken over the industry or something because those men would be appealing to a homosexual gaze. Why? Because I don’t think women have taken over the game industry either. Maybe in Japan the character designer was a woman because in Japan they actually let women have those kinds of jobs over there. Heck, they even let women design games strictly for women! *shock*
Also, those people can get off the “wahh wahh mens” train because for every idealized man they have a Mario. Women don’t even have that. Name me one fat female character that isn’t a mother/older care giving woman/shopkeeper that is part of the main cast that fights? I can’t think of one. One might say “Fat Princess” but she’s just the “flag” in the capture the flag game.
Sexualized? Not at all unless gay people have taken over the industry or something because those men would be appealing to a homosexual gaze. Why? Because I don’t think women have taken over the game industry either. Maybe in Japan the character designer was a woman because in Japan they actually let women have those kinds of jobs over there.
I think Japan is a lot more comfortable appealing to the female gaze in general; there are certainly male developers over there who are associated with fangirl-friendly designs and a tendency to show off their guys, like Square-Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura and Metal Gear Solid’s Hideo Kojima.
The US, on the other hand, seems to be suffering under the delusion that merely admitting the possibility of male beauty is enough to question one’s sexuality (which seems like it could be related to the US tendency to refer to beautiful objects, like cars, as sexy…?). If a man can’t be understood as attractive without first being seen as sexy, then you get the assumption that a male designer who creates male characters for women must be gay – but that’s certainly not a universal assumption given the artistic interest in male beauty as late as the Renaissance.
I think there’s a context issue. For fighting games, it makes *sense* for characters to have their strength exaggerated, but not for them to have their sexuality exaggerated – unless you’re saying something about their character. When most of the women are sexualized, you’re making it abnormal for women to not be “sexy”. By comparison, it’s fairly reasonable for it to abnormal to not be ripped in a fighting tournament.
In other genres, rampant hypermasulization makes way less sense, and does feel kind of off. Shooters, for example, or avatars in puzzle games.
While the head-on-refrigerator phenomeon in evidence in games like Gears is obviously unrealistic, I don’t think the characters in most shooters suffer from undue “hypermasculinization”: the avatars from series like CoD and BF and R6 tend to resemble rather closely the men (and women) in real life who do those jobs. Not sure if this forum will let me embed images or not, but if you GIS the new character from MW3, Sandman, you’ll see that he’s got exposed forearms that Marcus Fenix looks like he could snap like a twig. I don’t think it’s just the realistic shooters either: the characters in Killzone look pretty reasonable, as do the ones in F.E.A.R. and Resistance.
It would be great if they’d be something other than the stubbly-chinned brown-haired caucasian male, though.
Fighting games are kind of a blind spot for me. I like sleak, iconic, unique characters that tell their attitude and backstory with their clothes, stance and appearance. “Realistic” would be boring to look at, male and female both.
It’s problematic when you’re left surprised when you find out that Ivy from Soul Cal is, for example, a Noblewoman sorceress that inhereited the legacy of the soul edge from her father, where from her costume you’d assume she was a blind person that tripped in a dental floss factory.
Well, I just want to observe that I have played games where the male characters are designed solely to appeal to the female audience, and they don’t look like that.
I’m going to have a proper think about this and may write more later, I think, but for now, I will say this:
I will except that there is parity in the portrayal of the sexes when I see games where male characters are subjected to the ME2 Miranda Arse Cam.
I have never, ever seen a buttock shot of a male character used in that way, where a part of the body was looked at as if it were a thing, not part of a person.
That’s “accept”, not “except”, of course. Aaargh!
Is it possible to compare the sexist objectification of female characters in games to the macho musclebound male character design? Yes. Is it a productive comparison? No. As BooDoo mentions above, male character design in games is about fantasy/wish fulfillment. Whose wish or whose fantasy? Straight white men’s. (This is not to say all men secretly want to be muscle-bound, but even so it is the case that devs are clearly designing to appeal to their target audience- men.)
To take it one step further, of course fantasy and wish fulfillment drive not just male character design, but also female character design. Whose wish or whost fantasy? Again, straight white men’s. Hello male gaze.
With very few exceptions, game characters are designed to cater to straight white men. Even (and especially!) the muscle-bound, shirt-ripping heros. Could the bolstering of these kinds of fantasies and wishes cause harm to male psyches? Absolutely yes, and I’m all for men getting game developers to create heros that look like real people. But this is a different issue or experience than that had by women, whose wishes and fantasies – even the unhealthy ones – are just not part of the equation. In game after game after game, the message for women is THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.
I’d also note that one of the most iconic game characters of all time is a short, portly male plumber. I can’t even think of a female corollary.
I am not sure about Mario though, he is more like Legos people or Peanuts, i think it is different perception in play here.
For sure. He’s a cartoon-type character. But still, what do the princesses in Mario look like?
My short answer: You can’t equate the objectification of men to that of women. Men get idealized, objectified into actionable bodies while women get desire-ified into bodies “you” want to commit action to. Men get to be, women get to receive.
That there’s only one female body type in gaming, and dozens of male body types, should serve as proof enough.
As a writer and one who enjoys discussion, I’ll say that the trends of male objectification are troublesome in the rut it’s created and propagated in character archetypes. I am so god fucking damned sick of bald muscular space marines I could scream, and the shit cliche’d writing of when it’s okay for men to be emotional (after shooting all the people in the face, when their token love interest takes their hand at the end of the game, to be sure).
People don’t like to think, and games don’t like to call people out on that. Snake from MGS is a complex array of duty, guilt, depression and resignation. What do we all call him? A bad ass. What wonderful discourse we’ve been saddled with.
Yes, it’s two idealizations, but not equitable.
The reality is that they’re 2 ideals created from the SAME (male) mind. A women did not objectify herself. This “ideal” was imposed upon women, whereas the muscle-guy was designed by a man who figures that to be the greatest design for a hero. If a woman was in charge of what all the men “should” look like, they’d probably universally look different. (Just look at bishounen manga.) It’s really not a subconscious sort of enslavement, degradation, or domination of the male gender. If anything, the beefcakes were designed specifically to EMPOWER the player. Whereas the impossible clothes, poses, and non-existent personalities for females only serve to do the opposite.
Even with this idealization of some men characters, they will never pile up to equal the amount of women this has been done (in my opinion, far worse) to, both in and out of this medium. Because in the end, the male characters are still treated like respectable, mighty people with large depths of characterization.
Not to say that injustice towards men doesn’t happen, just that it does NOT cancel out the female char problem, nor does it EQUAL it.
I wouldn’t exactly call Cole Train or Barrett idealized aspirational figures. These men are objectified as monstrous, brutish and other as opposed to sexually fetishized, but they are objectified all the same and the message they send is the same, “This game is not for you!” So actually the short answer is YES when you consider ALL representations of men in videogames, not just the straight white ones. This really isn’t an either or thing where the fact that women are objectified means men are not or that because men are objectified then it’s okay that women are too.
So many posters above have already shared many of my thoughts and feelings on the matter. But to echo some of my previous BH posts when we’ve danced the objectification dance:
Are men idealized in games? Yes. Are men objectified in games? No. Are men sexualized in games to that which is comparable to women? No. And that, in short, is the major sex/gender divide in our games.
Men are idealized to showcase prowess, strength, capability, power, dominance, and often aggression/defiance/rage. Being without a shirt for men is not to give some cake to an audience that isn’t the target demographic, it is purely FOR the target demographic. In other words, this character is showing muscles, power, and strength to fit into a very specific male fantasy. Same as having women with huge breasts and little clothing is meant to fit into a very specific male fantasy. Whether beefcake or bootycake, both are geared toward one specific audience.
^That should read *sexually* objectified.
I agree with a lot of what’s been said in the thread already about idealized versus sexualized, There is definitely an idealized male form sold to young boys in our media and it leads them to body image issues – I personally know teenaged boys who take illegal steroids and crash diet during the “cutting” phase and think that’s a perfectly healthy and normal way to get “ripped” – but that’s not what anybody is talking about right now. It’d be fantastic if there guys were to make their own threads or write their own articles about the idealization of the male form in video games. But using it as a puerile derailing tactic in order to shout down any and all women or feminists who want to discuss the sexualization of the female form is disingenuous at best.
I wonder: were someone to write such an article about the idealization of the male form in video games and the effect it has on their body image, would any female gamers show up to say “sorry, until women are no longer stick-thin large-breasted babes you don’t get to complain” or “women have to deal with it to, so stfu” or “wah wah we’re programmed to be attracted to that kind of man and the producers want to sell games so stop whining”?
Somehow I doubt it. So why isn’t the reverse also true?
Feelings of entitlement based on a mountain of priviledge maybe. Or they simply feel threatened in what they percieve as this entitlement, I guess.
Of course, discussion of how women are sexualized by media in general seems to be so deeply intertwined with discussion of how the media affects women’s body image that you’d practically be shutting down all comparison between men and women’s body image problems and how the media causes them. Which is unfortunate, because they need comparing. For example, if you were reading Feministing or probably any big feminist blog with ads a couple of years ago, you may recall that they had a problem with ads for acai dieting pills that they had trouble eradicating. What you may not have noticed is that they later ended up covered in “get ripped now” ads aimed at men and selling the exact same shady product using the same tactics and the same scam. (Don’t think I ever convinced them to pull those ads at all, unlike the ones aimed at women.)
Oh, and if someone did write that article about the idealization of the male form and body image problems, I’m pretty sure you would get comments like “sorry, until women are no longer stick-thin large-breasted babes you don’t get to complain”. (TW for examples of rape apology.) I’ve actually seen at least one blogpost about men being raped get derailed in this way, with female commenters insisting that talking about it was somehow an attack on “real”, female rape victims, and that we shouldn’t talk about men getting raped so long as there’s a single women out there that is.
Being female – or a member of any oppressed group really – does not automatically make someone a decent person.
I don’t know, if it was presented in exactly this context – that the “sexualization” of the male form is frequently used as a puerile derailing tactic for discussions about the sexualization of the female form, so let’s have a post about the male form and have hat discussion here instead of derailing the other – I sincerely doubt you’d get any comments to that effect. But, of course, you’re right that we’d have to try it and see.
Naturally that one is part of an oppressed group doesn’t make one a decent person (I can do you one better in personal experience, actually: on Jezebel of all things there were several posters arguing that even in the case of female on male rape the male should forced to pay child support if the female conceives and carries it to term – they were the extreme minority, but they were there) but this is the internet, so one has to bear in mind the signal to noise ratio of extreme minority opinions, concern trolls, etc.
But whether they would or not doesn’t change the fact that the “sexualization” of male characters is being used as a puerile derailing tactic in this instance, however, and the persons bringing it up don’t give two shits about it (in their own admission, even, as an example of why women are just whiners) otherwise. So that’s still a completely fair and accurate description.
Well, if the post was only there to separate the discussion of men being sexualized from the actually-important discussion about the sexualization of women, then it might not get comments about how we shouldn’t be talking about this and it’s a distraction from the more important issue of women being sexualized – but only because that’d be implied by the post itself!
(Also, from what I’ve seen the idea that in the case of female-on-male rape the male should be forced to pay child support is pretty much mainstream, even on feminist sites. It’s mostly MRAs that object to it, which is why it didn’t feel like a good example. This is way off-topic now though.)
Whoa.. sorry if this contributes to being off-topic but I have never heard that men should pay child support in the case of female-on-male rape.. am I totally misreading this or am I just living in a cave? What’s the justification? o.O
In the US they have to, yeah. The same is true of statutory rape. This has been tested in court repeatedly and the legal justification is that there’s just no exception in the child support laws. The usual moral justification I’ve seen is that child support is for the benefit of the child, not the rapist – which of course leaves entirely unexamined the issue of whether being brought up by a rapist really benefits the kid so much that we should make her victim pay for her to do it. (The whole thing’s probably deeply tied to gender roles of men as providers and women as nurturers, and hey presto – we’re back to the topic of objectification again. Still no link to games that I can spot though.)
After Googling it I haven’t been able to find any evidence of this claim that wasn’t an opinion piece from an MRA website with no links to factual or legal sources, but maybe makomk can provide those? But makomk is right – this is getting way way off topic.
No one is talking about how it’s a “distraction from the ‘actually important’ sexualization of women”, they (or at least I) am talking about the instances of men using this topic as a derailing tactic in conversations about the sexualization of women, purely to get women to shut about about it. They do not, in their own words, actually care about or have a point to make about the sexualization of men.
If they were actually concerned about the objectification of men (which is very much important) we’d have something to talk about. And it would probably go more like “hey this happens to men too, let’s work on it together” than the present ‘hey something sort of like this happens to men to so shut your face you whiny hysterical woman you don’t get to complain”.
(How is it mainstream? Those supporting it were contradicted by the vast majority of Jezebel users, in any case, who thought it was crap. Got any links to feminist sites supporting child support payments in the case of rape? Statements by women’s organizations supporting it? Blog essays by feminists supporting it without controversy? I’d honestly never met a woman or feminist in my life who supported child support payments from rape victims until the handful of users on Jezebel did – and again, they were in the extreme minority.)
(I read some feminist blogs and haven’t seen anything like that, ever. I Googled it and there is a case apparently but I don’t know how that will play out or how people are reacting.)
At risk of sounding like a total fangirl (again), I love this site and these comments!!
Very strong people don’t necessarily appear muscular so I think the big muscles in game characters are mainly for show, and to imply strength. It’s like peacock plumage or something.
Here’s the problem with the “objectification of men” argument. The fact is, the typical female character in a game is designed and dressed with a straight male audience in mind. However, the typical male character is designed and dressed… with a straight male audience in mind as well. If game producers were trying make tons of eye candy specifically “for the gals” a la Twilight, then it MIGHT be a different story. But quite simply, they’re not. Ryu is not showing off his muscles in order to be a sexual fantasy for women: he’s designed that way so that male gamers can project an idealized fantasy of themselves onto him. As a result, the men in games are not really sexualized at all, or at least not in any way resembling how female characters tend to be custom-made for the Male Gaze. And that’s the key difference.
I’m going to keep this short, hoping to minimize the chance that I’ll ram my foot in my mouth.
I think it’s, at best, unfair to compare different groups. The honest truth is that different groups, even ones that are directly tied together (like gender) face their own distinct difficulties. No, male video game characters are not reduced to sexual objects in the same way that female characters are. Offensive male characters are the ones that reinforce the cult of masculinity. This is the permeating, hegemonic belief that men must act a certain way. That masculinity is X and can be measured by Y and it is the same central issue that exists in the presentation of women; a preformed, preexisting identity is being forced upon someone, with or without their knowledge, but it exists in a different form.
The trials that women face on a daily basis are very serious and shouldn’t be belittled. The same goes for the commonly institutionalized attitude towards women (in gamer culture and beyond).
Still, the boxes and brackets that men are forced into shouldn’t be dismissed either. The “universal masculine identity” is heavy, invisible, and toxic.
These experiences are parallel, not contrary. They do not exist on a continuum and when the they are compared as if they are dichotomous, no matter what conclusion is drawn, one side is marginalized unfairly, alienating the individuals within that group.
To accurately address the issue they should be seen as issues that are essentially independent from, but influencing each other.
Basically I should just say that there is a reason why sociology professors aren’t just people off the street. There are entire textbooks, courses, and careers spanning multiple generations that deal with just a fraction of gender within society. These are complex issues and an “either/or” answer will oversimplify the matter and ultimately miss the truth.
(and before anyone argues with me on usage of the word “misogyny” because it has happened, coincidentally on kotaku, misogyny is not limited to the overt expression of negativity, hatred, or violence towards women. For those who have missed the last 60 years, discrimination can be a subtle, almost invisible part of your daily culture. A part of your daily life that you don’t see until it is approached from a different perspective. As in “one that is not your own.” An attitude that views women as anything other than human beings with identities that include, but are not comprised of their sex or gender is misogynistic whether it is lit up in neon or . Don’t like it? Well thems the breaks, kid).
Holy f***-Balls, I did not keep that short at all :’(
It’s heartening to see someone else here who doesn’t think “Men have real issues” means “Women don’t have real issues” and vica versa. These issues are very similar, but not the same. The lessons we learn in fighting one can help us fight the other. And further, many of the toxic ideas about men and women reinforce one another* and dismantling them for both at the same time is highly effective, as all cis gendered people suddenly have a stake. Gender egalitarianism is not a zero sum game.
*For example, “Women are only nurturing” and “Men are never nurturing” is harmful to both genders, and really need to addressed together. Or, as Ozy’s Law states, misandry mirrors misogyny.
I find the idea that “males are rarely sexualized” as a straight up bullshit one. Males ARE sexualized all the time, it’s just that your present understandings or perspectives of sexualisation maybe short sighted. Part of the problem is that the dominant reading of sexualization isn’t really open to include male.
Ryu is a bad example of male sexualisation first and foremost. Using Ryu or Marcus Fenix as totems of male sexuality/sexualisation is like using Aveline from Dragon Age or King from KOF as one for females. It’s just plain intellectually dishonest.
There are many reasons for this, some reasons come in the form of Ryu being cast as almost entirely asexual and B) his design isn’t supposed to accentuate sexuality or sexualize him. I see a lot of fancy lip-wriggling about the ‘intentions’ of the artist or the ‘intended audience’ well Ryu and Marcus Fenix are not INTENDED to be sexy, in anyway shape or form towards their intended audience and their designs are reflective of this. This goes from their personalities all the way down to their vagrant clothing or duck-taped fridge armour. The list could go on and on but I’m pressed for time.
However the good news is that there are examples of male characters that ARE sexualized staring us right in the face and can be argued on a more levelled playing field. Doing this will also mean that feminist discourse won’t have to completely go back to the drawing boards in order to understand male sexuality or sexualisation. Let’s take Dante from DMC, Benimaru from King of Fighters (in fact a hell of a lot of the main male cast from KOF) for instance. These are characters that are created in order to be sexually attractive to heterosexual women/girls (to the extent that it’s written as a character trait).
This begs the question can men be sexualized in the same way as women? I personally don’t think they can, not entirely anyway and the reasons are as followed: Men cannot be sexualized in the same way as females because they don’t have anything that is linked invariably to sex to actually display. Having attractive features is not the same as being sexualized since ‘intention’ among other things is the key missing ingredient there. How many times do we hear the fallacious argument that an exposed barrel chest is the same as a large but hidden rack? Too much! And each time the argument is brow beat with the jeering retort that “it’s not sexual objectification because it accentuates his power”. Well that argument is a double edged sword homie.
The issue is complicated but I do think this is a question males need to ask and answer more than they do. I don’t think women are the ones holding the keys for this one.
Thinking about his some more, I agree that men are sexualized in games, but they way they are is very different from the way women are. Would Duke Nukem be considered a sexualized male character? I mean, he’s not put on display the way women are, but just his attitude towards women in the games and hell, even the cover of DNF (http://thegamingliberty.com/wp-content/uploads/DNF_360_FOB_ENG.jpeg) send a sexualized message. Only, his sexualization isn’t passive; he’s standing above the viewer, has a woman’s hand around his hip, and he’s holding a smoking gun right over his crotch.
“The issue is complicated but I do think this is a question males need to ask and answer more than they do. I don’t think women are the ones holding the keys for this one.”
I wonder why they don’t, though. Like people above have said, when it comes to characters like Vaan, Kuja, the blood elves, etc., many straight white male gamers vehemently voice their dissatisfaction (to say the least) with them. But characters like Duke, with his, “Let me just put this phallic symbol right in your face,” don’t face nearly the same amount or type of criticism from that demographic. Is it because this sort of sexualization still places the character in a position of power and dominance, whereas someone like Kuja’s is seen as putting them in a position of passivity (at least aesthetic passivity)?
I think a lot of these discussions have much to do with pervasive heteronormativity and strict gender roles. Even though these systems give power and privilege to men, I’m not sure that enough of them are willing or able to examine the cost of that privilege to themselves and people of all genders. I honestly wonder why that is.
I think it’s very valuable to look at how male and female sexuality and sexualization is explored differently in games, and I thank you for pointing that out.
Thanks, but damn! You nailed it homie! If this was Killer Instinct that would have been a 46hit Ultra right there.
You explained a good chunk of why males sometimes get irritated, threatened, annoyed or confrontational about characters like Vaan, Jacob, Edward, Kuja, Blood Elves and a plethora of others but not characters like Duke. It’s a classic shift of power and by that I mean that the gender of the character that is being depicted is not in control of the sexualisation of the character being depicted, a reality women/girls are too familiar with, and one that males are starting to really be confronted with.
I was having an interesting conversation yesterday about how hyper sexualized female characters often make girls/women feel sexually inadequate regardless of whether they are intended to do that (they rarely are). We got into it when discussing how women consume Japanese manga more than western, mainstream comics because manga allows them to more easily spend their money on what they MAY want and thus author or endorse the depictions of what they like or even feel, while mainstream western comics often don’t or the ones that do are harder to access.
Bear in mind that this can be the case even if the actual artists or writers are male. Women can and do often commission male artists and writers to write stories for them; just the simple act of purchasing a manga/comic or downloading it is an act of commissioning a certain artist, writer, theme, motif or cultural phenomenon for the consumer.
Of course this also leads us to another area known as the ‘feminization of heterosexual masculinity’. If heterosexual women are choosing by way of their consumption habits on what they find to be sexually appealing to them then at last heterosexual males are faced with the prospect of adapting to these consumption habits or risk living in a world where they may be perceived as being less sexually attractive. Yes women/girls are able to influence behaviour of males, it is not impossible. We’ve had centuries to see that members of a different gender are able to influence the behaviour of another by the more ‘subtle’ implications of what is ‘popular’.
I often just think back to the last item of clothing bought, hair style I got, was it completely and utterly in a vacuum of my own creation or was it influenced by any external metaphysical force including the possibility of a simple compliment?
No, Ryu and Marcus Fenix are not in Dantes league when it comes to sexualisation. Ryu and Marcus Fenix are OLD MEN, Dante is a NEW MAN by means that his sex appeal is dictated by what the artist/writers deem as sexy by heterosexual women, not heterosexual men. Marcus Fenix and Ryu are not burdened with that. They have an entirely different burden one that is geared towards their INTENDED male audience. The Japanese are fully capable of depicting hyper masculine males, Fist of the North Stars Ken, Augus from Asuras Wrath, Mugen from Samurai Champloo and let us not forget their insistence on showing how MANLY black males are. Almost every single male black character is depicted as being hyper masculine within Japanese narratives. Black NEW MEN simply do not exist in Japanese texts because that is reserved for main Japanese characters.
Heterosexual female consumers now have the funds to reinforce what they like; it may not be within the same numbers but since when was any of this a numbers game? I thought it was qualitative. It’s pretty clear that light, smooth skin, slim, toned, but with adequate musculature long/medium blonde or brunette hair is seen as attractive. If I’m wrong then I should be hearing the whirring of a couple thousand battery operated devices start for the bald, hyper muscled, space marine but all I hear is silence.
We can all perform an exercise in order to speed the conversation along by deconstructing this picture of Raiden and Augus two polar opposites.
http://images.wikia.com/metalgear/images/a/a3/RaidenRising.jpg
http://nerdreactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Asuras-Wrath-Augus-Artwork.jpg
I’d be interested in hearing more about what you (or any straight males who frequent this site) perceive to be “sexualized” male characters. Dante’s a good example, as would be I think Nathan Drake from Uncharted and Leon Kennedy from Resident Evil 4 (Leon even sheds his clothing over the course of the game, going from a loosely-fitted WWII-style bomber jacket to a skin-tight 5.11 Tactical undershirt – why he’s not got a shirt or body armour on top of that I can only presume to be fanservice). Of course it’s apples and oranges as far as comparisons to sexualized females go – e.g. this sex appeal to heterosexual women/girls is not the whole of their identity and they are powerful in their own right without that appeal unlike, so often, their female counterparts, or are they anywhere near as ubiquitous – but I’m curious as to what, if any, problems you think can be associated with these “sexualized” male characters.
I don’t know if I would consider Dante much more sexualized than Ryu or Marcus Fenix per se… I mean, Dante’s “cool and stylish” appearance is a type of male character seemingly ubiquitous in Japanese media, the same way Marcus Fenix’s gritty, surly mannerisms are a hallmark of many Western male characters. It may be that they are simply the same concept realized in a different way: two different idealizations of masculinity intended for the male gamer to project himself onto. However, I’m admittedly not familiar enough with Japanese culture to say for certain.
It is pretty accurate. Lean in frame and hints of androgyny (pretty boys) are idealized outlets of maleness representation in Japanese culture. Anyway, I’d agree that I do not consider Dante a good example for the argument. Is Dante sexual(ized), in that he usually has no shirt on under his outer clothing or whatever, and he sometimes poses like a GQ model showing off his fashion to be attractive? Maybe. And that’s a hard maybe. But it certainly is not done to give non-hetero men something to waggle their eyebrows at. It is not what is done to Ivy or Kitana or Miranda from ME2 or countless number of other ladies out there (and many we’ve covered here on BH) for a very specific demographic with a very specific mindset involved.
I think you’re on to something here. It seems to me, as an observer, that the Western and Japanese ideals of a Real Man differ in that a Japanese Real Man also has to be able to be sexy, and know how to perform, when it suits him, as an object of gaze for women. And that’s what we’re seeing with Dante, Solid Snake, and all the other ‘sexualised male characters’ from Japan we always mention. Certain other Japanese characters, like Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, are even portrayed as being immature and kind of ridiculous for their inability or unwillingness to ‘perform’ sexiness when it would be appropriate or cool to do it. The main focus is still on the man’s desires and the man’s actions, and he is only ever being attractive for the sake of himself and not because that’s what any of the women/men around him actually want, and a man is not portrayed as inherently sexy, all the time, the way a woman is – but being able to be sexy is part of a man’s maturity and masculinity.
But the Western Real Man doesn’t have to be sexy. He’s allowed to be good-looking, but not to act or seem attractive. His appearance is irrelevent, because if he is attractive, that’s threatening – his sexuality is directed entirely inward, and measured in the women he pursues (and beds), and not in his ability to interest or please them. There’s an assumption that women don’t care whether or not a man is attractive – they fall for him because he’s masculine, or because he has a natural magnetism. In Japan, it’s okay for a man to be pretty, so long as it’s on his own terms and only when appropriate (if he’s running around flirting in a submissive way with everyone at all times, he’s likely a creepy gay villain, just like he’d be in the West). But in the West, being pretty is for women and women alone.
I think it’s more about power structure in society then actual character designs. In my opinion there are some male characters that by design came very close to being objectified (i.e. Furious Ming from Jade Empire ) but since: 1. They are men, they even as fictional characters are put in position of power by society standards by simply being men. 2. They are/can be played by men and by that once again “power goes their way”. The result is that these two aspects can pretty much negate all objectification that came from design. It’s even more clear with Korva’s example of male Blood Elves, being men and being played by men is so strong that to “de-power” them, there is specific ritual needed by calling them: “scrawny faggy girly-men” etc.
I don’t think the super-muscular heroes in video games are objectified – they are subjects as opposed to objects, intended to embody the player’s power fantasies. However, objectification in games isn’t limited to women. The hordes of identical musclebound thugs that many game characters tear through could be considered an objectifying portrayal of males, and a classist one at that. I recall that in the Thief games, many guards had a deep, nasal voice meant to sound very dumb and crude, marking them as lower-class peons that players could feel good about outsmarting. Many games like to present simplistic caricatures of certain groups of people that the developers feel their target audience will not identify with, and this kind of portrayal is certainly objectifying.
But real-time strategy games are perhaps the most objectifying of all. In Command & Conquer, Starcraft and similar titles, people are portrayed as expendable resources that the player can create at will. Their deaths have no significance apart from representing the loss of an asset to the player or computer that controls them, and they can be replaced with the click of a mouse. In Blizzard’s RTSes, the units have animated portraits and sound clips, but all copies of a unit have the exact same face and voice, which lends to the perception that they are identical, expendable people. The appellation ‘unit’ does this as well – ‘losing a unit’ sounds so much nicer and tidier than ‘someone getting killed.’
Yes. It is most emphatically comparable. Mainstream societies, including gamer mainstream, objectifies both men and women, but in different ways. We must address ~both~ sides of this because if we do not, we wont ever really be able to shake it off. In this case, as in many others, addressing men’s and women’s issues often helps (and is sometimes essential) to dismantling the underlying stereotypes for both.
This is generally presented as a false dichotomy:
Women are sex objects, and Men are success objects. From this, there is derived two myths; The Myth of Women Not being Successful and the Myth of Men Not being Hot.
They are basically set up to code men and women into their respective boxes, and also to send a clear message that the other box is not for you.
This is reflected in games quite clearly in many ways, in which women are almost always highly sexual and men are almost always hyper capable. (Exceptions to both exist, but we’re talking trends here.)
While neither of these things are bad on their own, their trend to the exclusion of just about everything else ~is~. The lack of variation reinforce general cultural messages that both men and women are only good for One Thing, and erase the very real and varied experiences of real people, who generally do not fit well into these boxes. Just about everyone, I think, chafes at least a bit at restrictive gender roles because they create expectations that many people cannot possibly live up to. I think the solution is not to rail against individual examples of sex or success objectification but to encourage the emergence of varied themes and more characters with deeper and more nuanced personalities with flaws, of both genders. Or in other words, fewer stereotypes, more characters.
There is also a growth in various forms of media of the (straight) female gaze, although it hasn’t much hit gaming spaces yet. It’s an interesting development though and I don’t a problem with it. Still, I hope to see more of it in games, although not for my own enjoyment (I’m het male). Fanservice for all, I say, as long as it’s not one-sided and tastefully used.
I think it’s pretty telling that the idea that a huge muscular warrior is a sexualized stereotype is only trotted out when guys want to counter claims of sexism. Most of them never have a problem with it until they need to use it to defend gratuitous female sexualization. If it was actually comparable, then they’d be complaining about it all the time, not just when they want to shut a woman up.
While I do agree it tends to be used as a strawman argument, especially in gender justice circles, it is actually a real issue for many men, and is leading to similar body issues that women face. Anorexia is a growing problem and “biggism” or the preoccupation of getting giant muscles are growing problems for men which arise from these stereotypical depiction of Real Men(TM) being slabs of muscle. It is something that gets talked about alot, although quietly or in MRM circles (which have their own problems).
We have to remember that men are shamed for having emotions, and encouraged to pretend we don’t have them. (Usually with variations of the message Man Up(TM)) Men who are insecurity about not being able to measure up to these impossible ideals tend to suffer in silence, and only share these with ~extremely~ trusted friends because there is a tremendous amount of shaming from both men and women should it be known he has any insecurities or vulnerabilities (which are Not Manly, and thus Evil). This should not be confused for not caring, even if that’s what the toxic notions of Real(TM) Masculinity tell you men feel.
Definitely, those are genuine problems that can be rationally addressed. What I take issue with is that usually those real issues are only brought up in caricature form to silence women, not help men who are actually being damaged by them. I’m not a psychic but I’d be willing to bet the guys that need help with those issues are normally not the ones using them as a club to deny the existence of sexism. Just more examples of sexism hurting both men and women.
I agree very much with this and I also find it frustrating that (very good and relevant) arguments about the representations of and treatment of men are brought out so often in spaces where commentators are already very clued up on gender issues (such as sites with a strong feminist element or a focus on ‘minority’ issues), but seem to be so rarely directed towards the spaces that need to hear them the most (such as many mainstream, hetero male-centred gaming sites where these attitudes are deeply ingrained and hardly questioned).
I’m not suggesting that these issues shouldn’t be brought up online in feminist spaces (because I think they often lead to excellent debates and are deeply relevant and often essential to discussions of gender and sexism), but if individuals and groups worried about vulnerable men focused as much on the male-dominated media that breeds these stereotypes as they do concern trolling websites or playing the Oppression Olympics, maybe things would start to change for the better.
Complaining to people who are already heavily burdened with tackling other (though connected) forms of oppression will only get them so far. They need to go to the source and take their concerns to the (usually male) games designers just as feminist gamers have been doing for years on behalf of female characters, with mixed results but with results all the same.
Absolutely, those are very real issues that are a problem. Sexism does not JUST hurt women, it hurts men as well. It harms everyone in society. However, the specific point of this article is about whether sexualization and objectification are comparable between men and women in games. That is a very different, if relatable, bag than sexism (against one or both sexes).
The issue with body imagery and insecurities is more the result of (body) idealization of men in our games than it is sexploitation/sexual objectification (like it constantly is with women). But it definitely IS a worthy topic for on-going discussions.
No, no comparison. Why? Because art objectifying men DOES exist, and video game characters don’t look a damn thing like it. Sexualized male imagery for the non-het-male gaze is rarer, and out of the mainstream, but it’s out there, and any idiot who claims that western video game heroes are sexualized has never seen a gay magazine or lady’s manga or straight-female-drawn smutty fanart in his narrow little life.
Do a search. Male pin up art. Gay pin up art. Bishounen. Biseinen. Yaoi. Gay comic art.
Look at how those guys are dressed. Look at how those guys are posed. Look at where the camera angles put the focus. Look at what physical features are emphasized and exaggerated.
Look at what an image made BY people attracted to men, FOR people attracted to men, with the intention of turning on people attracted to men, actually look like.
Then look at those video games again.
No.
Thumbs up.
Right on! *fist bumps* I couldn’t have said it better.
Clearly we need more games with these archetypes.
Exactly! Thanks for pointing that out!
This has already been said different ways, but this is how I see it:
I think it’s most non-comparable because it comes down to the question of the male gaze. Women are portrayed according to a male ideal– and men are also portrayed according to a male ideal.
If men were objectified even according to, say, a male homosexual ideal, it might be the same issue that women complain about. If women looked like most women want to look but most don’t, it would be a different, but equitable issue.
In other words, I think the key lies exactly in the the quoted’s short aside: “(by societal standards, don’t get mad at me here!)”. The quoted is accurate that in both cases, it’s about societal standards. The reason we object is that in both cases, societal standards are set by men.
Male characters may be sexualized to some extent, but they’re not generally trivialized. That’s the big difference that I see.
Great post. The argument that representations of male characters are as damning as those of female characters is certainly a bingo square that gets marked all too often (and its not very convincing), but it can be too easy to dismiss it by just saying “what about the mens” rather than actually engaging in discussion. Sure, that’s easy and quick but I don’t feel that it earns allies and does feel intellectually lazy to me.
And apparently TBH agrees, since, wow, almost 100 comments already!
Everyone else has said it well, but I’ll say it again: You don’t need big boobies to fight baddies. At least big muscles are PRACTICAL. You’re a superhero with big muscles, okay. But why do the ladies consistently have big boobs? There’s no point. It’s not the same thing at all.
I’d really like to see more “Sexaulised” Male characters, in a really camp kind of way, because I like that sort of thing.
By the way – everyone needs to watch this. I know Bayonetta tends to divide feminists quite a bit, so perhaps this will throw some light on the issue:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwp31V2lvD8
(May not be SFW)
If that doesn’t prove my point, I don’t know what will.
I ran into these fanservice character models when looking up Final Fantasy Type-0, which seems… somewhat relevant? Not entirely sure what to think about it, to be honest. The guy certainly doesn’t seem to be anything like the type that’s usually brought up in these sorts of arguments, in any case.
to me, the female and male character get pretty equal. Both are in a similar state of undress, both are in the same stance and share the same facial expression. I think they were not done for fanservice, but to have a non-nude basic model for the character that can be dressed. (Many artists start with a nude model when creating a character so they know they get the anatomy right and since those three were 3d-based and therefore shared among the devs they gave them underwear)
Well, maybe her boobs are a bit large in comparison to her body type and maybe the male’s waist could be a bit more accentuated, but to me both are equally attractive and not designed with either gaze in mind
to me, the female and male character get pretty equal. Both are in a similar state of undress, both are in the same stance and share the same facial expression. I think they were not done for fanservice, but to have a non-nude basic model for the character that can be dressed.
I probably should have added some context about that particular image, actually. It’s a fan render using the character models from the game disc in the neutral stance (it’s not quite a T-pose, but something similar to that). They’re not meant to portray the characters underneath customizable clothing, since costume changes don’t work that way in the game — they’re models from particular fanservice scenes (the male version of which I haven’t been able to track down apart from references to its existence, likely due to the game only being available as import so far; the female version seems to involve the character lounging around in that costume in extra scenes, so I’m guessing it’s something similar).
I didn’t quite have the time to read through all the comments, so forgive me if it’s been said before:
There’s a difference between sexual idealization and heroic idealization. Women are given exaggerated sexual characteristics (often at the expense of power or basic biology). Men are given exaggerated “heroic” characteristics, like bulging muscles. Their forms are exaggerated and unrealistic, yes, but not in the same way. It’s not sexual objectification, it’s hero worship.
That said I would love to see a game with thin-but-toned dudes fighting in speedos.