All the hate speech trash and troll talk on the Steam forums is fine though. All the war games are fine though. Make sure people can validate genocide and what not but not see titties.
Not that I agree with censoring that (I don’t), but the double standard is puzzling.
They have picked their battle.
There is a reason you have to pay cash at dispensaries, etc.
I used to work for a fintech. As new employee I had coffee with a colleague who explained KYC, AML, and other compliance topics to me. They mentioned that marijuana businesses can't bank their money due to these considerations as it would make banks knowing accomplices to the federal crime of trafficking a controlled substance. This threat is material because cannabis, unlike adult content, is actually illegal, so I don't think it's a substantially similar example to what's mentioned in this thread.
Let me respond with your attacking-style:
Just because you like it doesn’t mean it’s representative of feminism at large. It doesn’t mean it’s not a conservative think tank hiding behind a veil of feminism.
With something like OnlyFans, where there's money to be made, the 'sex work is real work!' slogan comes out. And there's a reluctance to criticise big porn sites even after claims of links to sex trafficking etc.
But at the same time, scantily-clad videogame characters designed to appeal to the male gaze are deemed unacceptable/objectifying/regressive. And 'sex robots' are seen as a horrifying prospect.
The specific organization we're discussing is not feminist. It's religious conservative, using some of the trappings of feminism.
Yes, it is.
Let me see: they seem to receive funding from evangelical organizations; the founder speaks/writes at Christian venues and is pro-life, anti-gay/trans; they are targeting games because that's what they happen to focus on right now. They've also campaigned against Rap music and artists in the past. They managed to get articles critical of them pulled from VICE, etc. Their modus operandi is typical of religious conservatives.
Compare, for example, Sex and the City, where 4 women were regularly engaged in a variety of sexual encounters and say, background dancers in a music video or advert that exist to appeal as objects to a male audience.
In a different context I might be more sympathetic to this specific formulation of the concept since it's not always clear how much agency the background dancers in a music video or advert have. However, on the original topic of video games, the notion of "character agency" is rather pernicious.
In Kotor 2, there's a character called "The Handmaiden", who will join your party if the player character is a male. She talks at great length about her situation and the decisions the player should make. She's depicted as a chaste, virginal religious character. But one of the very first things you can do with her when she joins your party is spar with her. And she strips into black lingerie to do so. Then she stays in black lingerie on your ship while you go and do other stuff.
She's clearly there as an object for the audience to drool over. It's given a very surface level justification ("we always spar with only our bodies"), but that justification is provided the instant before the player sees her in her undies. (Which, it's important to note, aren't like modest undergarments one might expect from a religious figure like this, but are specifically sexy underwear.)
Compare this to another Star Wars game, Jedi: Fallen Order, where the Night Sister Mirrin can becomes romantically involved with the player character. She has a well developed culture, and is given space to articulate her personality, choices, and opinions in a cogent way. She can be a romantic interest without being an object. She is as complex as all the other characters, and we don't see her positioned in sexy lingerie suddenly out of the blue.
I can come up with other examples if those aren't illustrative.
What I'm disputing is any application of objectification theory to media analysis wherein there are no actual agents involved. Neither The Handmaiden nor Night Sister Mirrin ever possessed any agency, nor were they deprived of it. There is simply no moral valence in how one treats or regards them.
The demand here is that they be treated as if they possessed agency. I see no reason or obligation to do so.
But humans built them, and humans framed them in the camera. Those humans did have the choice to provide them with a setting in which the characters do or do not have that agency. Those humans chose whether or not to depict that agency.
Art reflects something about the creator, and often (but definitely not always) it's the values of the creator. If the authors choose to depict a world in which the character has no agency (within their setting), then perhaps the authors did not feel it was important or valuable to do so. Likewise, if the authors do depict a world in which the characters have agency, perhaps the authors feel it is valuable.
But even detached from authorial intent, art is subject to critique -- we can look at a piece of art, knowing nothing of the creator, and ask, "What themes do we draw here? What values does this work put forward?" Kotor 2 raises many interesting questions about pedigogy and teaching, for instance. One critical read is that it is a piece of art that believes you should absolutely question the motivations of the people who want to teach you. Another thing Kotor 2 seems to value is women can (or even should) be objectified (in the case of the handmaiden) or instrumentalized (in the case of Kreia).
None of the above requires you to recognize that the characters are agents within our world or have agency here.
Rather, if these characters aren't agents, I wonder where this leaves us re: sex positivity and "media [that] sexualizes women to a problematic degree." I don't think anything here tells me.
Unfortunate how short the edit window for comments is on here. In either case, I suppose what I'm saying is clear enough.
Or, as in this case, it's not a feminist organization.
For the better part of a decade feminists have been wildly anti-objectification, not anti-sex. It's an important distinction.
For example, most modern feminists are pro sex-work, but only under conditions that guarantee safety, autonomy, and health care for the sex workers. That's very different from how most sex work is done today. So a modern feminist might say that we should be doing more to protect the sex workers who are held in bondage by a pimp, and forced to walk the streets while simultaneously arguing in favor of well regulated, protected brothels or private sex work.
and you have to assume MasterCard is willing and cooperating here to some extent
The founder is Christian and writes and speaks in Christian venues and publications.
She's not a "feminist" by any reasonable and modern definition of the word.
I meant that this person chooses Christian venues to voice her opinions, and shares with them non-feminist values such as being "pro life", etc.
Hers is not a feminist organization, and Collective Shout is perceived by some as a right-wing group seeking to also ban LGTB+ depictions in videogames (which is not standard feminist agenda). Like another commenter mentioned, Collective Shout receives funding from evangelical organizations. And really, you have to ask yourself: since when exactly payment processors paid any attention to what genuine feminist organizations had to say about anything?
At some point you cannot ignore the evidence anymore. At best you can point the non-empty intersection of conservative Christian groups and some sex-negative feminists who both seek to ban pornography, but this doesn't make them the same thing.
TL;DR this is a variation of "will somebody think of the children!?" pearl-clutching, and everyone should know by now it doesn't lead to anything good.