Over 20K games, book, and other content have been removed with no warning to customers and creators. All because of pressure from Visa and Mastercard, a duopoly propped up by puritans and authoritarians.
There is no chance in hell an organization like that wields anything close to the power required to force these kind of decisions.
Either it is the payment processors or the regulators, or a combination of both, or some other kind of group behind the scenes. Personally I don't know what the true answer is, but it's clearly not some activist organization.
It doesn't take a lot of people/very big organization or a lot of money to do, just a willingness to be loud and obnoxious, but in a legal way.
It's the same thing with DMCA trolls that send takedown letters to demonetize things like YouTube channels. They don't need a lot of people/power/money, just a willingness to complain in volume and leave the evidence and fact finding to other people and/or automated systems like YouTube's auto-DMCA.
This is about power, not preventing violence.
It is classic 1970s TERF stuff. Dworkin identified real problems, but her solutions are bad and make the actual problems worse by targeting already-targeted people for greater policing. What they do do is give suburbanite women the rush of power and control, building their own little evangelical theocracies.
Also, politicians are constantly threatening to revoke section 230 of the communications decency act, without which hosting any kind of user-generated content, from forums to video streaming to social media, would be effectively impossible in the US, because everything posted would need to be censored before ever being displayed.
The founder of collective shout Melinda Tankard Reist is against abortions. They are also working with a lot of conservative organizations.
Sounds more like reactionaries in feminist clothing pretending to care about feminism for tactical reasons. Especially as their actions are hurting LGBTQ+ people.
It also the perfect storm to drive more people towards the right by "look those evil feminists are taking our games". Even though these people are not representative for progressive feminism.
Also if you think "real" feminists would be for adult games targeted at men you might be straight up delusional.
That aside you can word it however you want "attractive", "unrealistic beauty standards", "sexualized", or even call it "not having enough representation" but everyone knows what you are actually talking about is getting rid of good looking women in video games and not giving players a choice of having a "representative selection".
As for it being purely a business decision by companies, how is Concord doing? The point being both men and women like having beautiful characters so say that it’s a business decision to have ugly characters is just not true.
So why are other people not allowed to also complain if they are not represented in games? Why is that bad?
This does not mean they want to ban certain games. It is often not even about pushing devs to create more diverse characters though that would be great but just to create awareness how certain beauty standards and ideas of normality are recreated and enforced in media.
Embracing that people are different is something that is good for everyone. There will always be a Stellar Blade but there could be also so much more.
Games are a visual medium, like movies, which is why games with attractive characters are generally more popular, and just to be clear simple graphics like in Schedule I are not unattractive or ugly.
More importantly how a character looks has nothing to do with how relatable a character actually is - it an absurd premise. What you are basically saying is that people won't enjoy playing Stray because they are not cats, which obviously isn't true and doesn't make sense. It's the same in movies, when watching Wall-E people don't go "well I'm not a trash compactor so I can't relate at all".
>Embracing that people are different is something that is good for everyone.
And I would agree except that in reality it isn't include non-attractive looking characters along side attractive ones, it's always to exclude what you call "standard beauty standard".
As an example of this if would really is about just giving options to player then why is the breast slider in Dragonage Veilguard limited so that players can create only characters with small breasts? Where did the "representation", "inclusivity", "player choice" go to with regards to large breasts?
I mean you can lie and say how no one has asked for it but the activist have complained about big breasted women in games for a long time usually under the guise of how it's sexualizing the women in games. And yes there have been straight up complaints about characters breasts being too large over the years usually when it's a non-western game.
And this being about sexual preferences is just you blatantly projecting. What I'm doing is pointing out how all this talk "representation" and "inclusivity" has nothing to do with actual representation and is just a thinly veiled cover for censorship.
You speak of not wanting censorship and wanting there to be balance, but balance of what and how? Without actual measurements and quotas on game content there can be no balance and it’s just censorship to please the side which has the most political influence, for video games this is obviously the far-left right now.
If it’s not about censorship and about having choice, why are there complaints when existing games that have attractive character come to western market ?
You have a game where you can wear different armor and clothing and you think the body shapes are restricted because of some grad woke conspiracy?
Ever thought about how you would make the armor look good with huge breasts? It would either clip, look silly stretched or you you have to make an extra big_boob version that would be an huge overhead. It is super normal that character creation in RPGs has some limits so that all equipment still fits you.
Also THAT is your problem? Are you for real? We are not even talking about the conventional western beauty standard anymore, that is just your very specific preference for huge boobs.
You might want to listen less to right-wing grifters that make up stories where there is nothing.
No, are YOU for real? You thinks it's technical limitations that limit breast sizes and it's that assets would look stretcher? Or that the game engine couldn't handle big boobs assets? An incase you haven't noticed character creation in games usually allows you create all kinds of weird looking characters without it somehow hitting those magical limits that somehow apply to breast sizes apparently.
The breasts slider was just an example of "representation" not being actual representation and you need take time out and reflect on why big breasts in video games make you upset.
Given the choice between creating new "big boob" asset models for most of the many outfits in the game and simply capping breast size, it's hardly surprising that the developers chose the cheap, easy option.
Anyway, what alternative explanation are you proposing? Prudishness? The game has plenty of sex scenes, so it's not that.
> The breasts slider was just an example
Well it was a bad example. Dunno what to tell you.
These all mean different things.
That obviously can’t be it. So I take it what you actually are trying to say is “this shouldn’t be considered the standard”? But it’s not the standard, it’s the top. And people (both men and women) like to play as characters that aren’t standard but at the top.
Actually no, not really. The whole outrage around Stellar Blade was largely manufactured, spurred from an right wing influencer's mischaracterization of a (retracted) line from IGN France. IGN France and its milquetoast quote represents all the 'insane leftists' that people loved to portray in that discourse as having started the attack on the game. All the drama that stemmed from there were simply the result of people digging their heels in - right-wing people taking up SB to be their perceived savior, the unapologetic disruptor that cuts through 'ugly Western designs', while left-wing people naturally put themselves on the other side, claiming that it's a mediocre game that right-wingers only like for the sex appeal, thereby feeding the cycle. But this wasn't started by the left, there was no initial outrage, all of this was just bait. But many people still see it from the perspective of the people who incited it.
And I mean, look around. Lots of games have attractive protagonists. How much outrage was there when NieR: Automata came out from 'the left'? Lots of games have extremely appealing designs, and the fact that no one seems to go against them and that they keep selling should tip you off that the perceived unanimity you're talking about is a niche and extreme opinion.
The always excellent Shaun did a deep dive[0] into the nonsense.
There is also no reason why feminism would need to support LGBT? The point of feminism should be to support women.
Something similar was attempted against atheism. ("Atheism+")
Because lesbian, trans and generally queer women exist?
Even if you were to only care about cis hetero women, it is silly to think that transphobes will only keep attacking trans women. As lot of cis women have been "transvestigated", have been harassed in bathrooms for "looking trans" and so on.
So even cis women will ultimately suffer if no one speaks up against bigots. The window of what they are allowed to wear, look like, how they are supposed to behave gets smaller and smaller.
The enemy is the same. The same patriarchal reactionary ideology that wants to punish any difference to the imagined norm. Ultimately it is a class war and the rich pricks are winning.
It is liking saying "why should I defend Jews, I am not a Jew.". Sure they might not come for you first but they will come for you eventually. United we are strong. Divided they will get us one by one.
If you are pretend to be feminist but throw your trans sister under the bus, you are a traitor not a feminist.
To call women who want to feel safe in a bathroom a traitor to feminism is just so ridiculous and is a betrayal of women. I haven't look at any stats, but from I have been seeing it appears like the so called trans-exclusionary feminists are growing regardless if you call them a traitor.
Wanting women to feel safe is such a basic tenant of feminism.
Looking it up, it sounds like some kind of incel term?
Its like how some call men who didn't conform to male norms "girlies" or so, these things are so ill defined that its dumb to argue over it. Of course it is rude to call something they don't wanna be called though.
It's coming across as an idiosyncrasy. Presumably it's something you aware of?
It kinda feels like you're using the term to push a specific idea, but you don't want to say that idea out loud. Which is fair, I guess. People do that all the time. It's just that, when asked to explain, it all starts to sound a little wobbly, like the logic doesn't hold up under even basic questions.
It's interesting though. Like, if the phrase only makes sense when nobody asks what it means, is it actually meaningful? Or is it just a way to say something without really owning it?
> So it's not really about the wording itself, it's more that the phrase "biological man" is standing in for something you're not quite saying directly?
I am trying to say exactly what I am saying. When I said biological man that is exactly what I meant to say.
> It kinda feels like you're using the term to push a specific idea, but you don't want to say that idea out loud. Which is fair, I guess. People do that all the time.
Perhaps you can enlighten me about what idea I am refusing to say outloud?
As far as I can tell, the idea I was trying to convey was exactly what I said so if you know what I truly meant it would be great to hear it.
> It's just that, when asked to explain, it all starts to sound a little wobbly, like the logic doesn't hold up under even basic questions.
I refused to answer because I was under the impression you were just trolling.
Since biological man is a common phrase I used it. Apparently using common phrases is now insidious.
> It's interesting though. Like, if the phrase only makes sense when nobody asks what it means, is it actually meaningful? Or is it just a way to say something without really owning it?
Nobody defines what blue or banana means to adults. We all just know what they mean. Using biological man is the same.
I am left two possible conclusions. You have no idea about basic terms or you are trolling.
If you are trolling then thanks for wasting my time and everybody else who reads through your nonsense.
If you actually don't know the term, I am sorry that I assumed that everybody here had graduated from middle school.
Just to prove how dumb your argument is, do not respond to me unless you can define every word in your post I am replying to. If you do not then I am left with the conclusion that you're arguments only make sense if you aren't asked to explain.
Most cismen look like a stereotypical man. Some transwomen look like a stereotypical women which is what makes the situation harder to stop. You could theoretically put a guard at a bathroom and stop most cismen. You would only stop some transwomen.
> considering the fact is you're far more likely to be assaulted in the bathroom by a cis man, transvestigator, republican, Christian, or ICE agent than a transwoman.
Source?
Not that it's much of a help here.
A few major ones that come to mind are Russia, China, and Germany.