For Zelda-playing daughter, Dad gives Link a sex change
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The Tortoise turns out never to have been attributed either gender. But when I first read it, the question never entered my mind. This was clearly a he-tortoise. After all, an author only introduces a female character for some special reason, right? Whereas a male character in a neutral context needs no raison d'etre, a female does. And so, given no clue as to the Tortoise's sex, I unthinkingly and uncritically envisaged it as a male. Thus does sexism silently pervade well-meaning but susceptible brains.
This kind of thing certainly applies to me and music. For some reason, it's hardly noticed when a North American of Hungarian, Polish, or French descent decides to play Irish Traditional music, but someone with Hispanic, African, or Asian descent playing that kind of music is frequently asked questions about how she/he got into Irish Music, or if they're in conservatory or are studying ethnomusicology, as if only "white" people are the default, normal human beings. A lot of this plain ignorance. For example, there's a thriving pan-celtic music scene in South America in countries like Argentina, where many people are playing the music as part of their heritage from celtic regions in northern Spain, like Galicia and Asturias, so there's no reason why the above attitudes should necessarily apply, depending on where in S. America that person is from.
Most people have a caricatured view of the world, where the only culture that matters is the majority's, and everyone else's culture is just some kind of distracting "flavor of the month" which only survives out of some sort of jingoism and has no deep artistic value on its own. Let me tell you, this perception has nothing to do with artistic value, and is only an illusion woven by political and economic power. Often the best music is made by people who have neither.
This can happen. It depends on the context. There are contexts where white people don't get asked these questions about African music. I'm not so sure there are contexts where I'm not asked those sorts of questions about Irish Trad, just times and places where people are more reticent about asking than others.
Also, there's an additional difference. There is some small fraction of people who seem to think that I'm somehow defective/slightly crazy/deserving of ridicule for being of Korean extraction and playing Irish Trad. It's rare, but there's even sometimes some sense of resentment. More pleasant, but just as telling, there's sometimes some additional delight or pride that I in particular would choose to play Irish Trad, where my race seems to play a part. I never see the above happen in North America with white people who aren't Irish. I've also seen the same sorts of things happen to African Americans.
The third thing is this: mainstream North Americans don't view African traditional or Irish Traditional music as the default, normal music. It's also something of a "special flavor" to them, even though it was just the default, normal music in a different culture. An Asian person playing western "classical" music sometimes results in the same kinds of questions as Irish Trad, but often it's not even questioned at all.
I have not read GEB; perhaps it's a different tortoise you are talking about.
"Mr Tortoise, meet Madame Tortue A few years later, a wholly unexpected chance came along to make amends, at least in part, for my sexist sin."
And here comes the French translators part:"[...] they rather gingerly asked me if I would ever consider letting them switch the Tortoise's sex to female."
So I don't see what's the contradiction you're trying to point out.
Ich hab' eine Hase, die wir Hans nennen.
Oder würde man "Der [die Hase] heißt Hans" sagen?But cat, Katze (feminine), and dog, Hund (masculine), work. There are versions of these words for the opposite sex, Kater and Hündin, but there are used rarely. So 'Ich habe eine Katze, Felix' and 'Ich habe einen Hund, Bella' would be perfectly acceptable even though the gender of the noun doesn't match the sex of the animal.
In french at least, words themselves have gender irrespective of the subject's gender. And pronouns usually match the word's gender. So a tortoise is feminine even if it's a male, so's a sparrow, a mole, a goat or a stork. Then, there may be subsets of the original word for each of the genders (or further differentiations by age). "Goat" in general is feminine but buck ("bouc") is masculine for instance.
I don't have a strong opinion on the subject, I just thought I'd try and explain the position as I understand it.
Let me say that, in my experience, this is absolutely true. I grew up in Western PA, in a place where we had to drive 50 miles to visit other asians, who weren't even also Korean. I certainly made subconscious connections and observations about the world, many of which were hugely skewed by my environment. For example, it took me until I was in my 20's to figure out that my parents were as sarcastic as any other people. Absent any Korean community in which to observe interactions in that cultural context, I absorbed this notion that Koreans just didn't do sarcasm, which is absolutely incorrect.
American McGee's Alice
Resident Evil
Perfect Dark
Old NES Games based on the Alien movies (Ripley)
Donkey Kong Country 3 (Diddy Kong is the main character)
Chrono Trigger's main hero is a male, but 3 of the other 6 playables are strong females (2 of the others are a Frog and a Robot)
There are definitely more games with male protagonists than female, but there are enough to list.
You meant Dixie.
Ironically, the first games I thought of, Fallout and Elder Scrolls, are probably not the best choice for a girl who can't read yet.
I know that the problem is that there aren't enough games that a young girl can play who offer character customization and that's not just alarming but also shows that there's potentially a market for that kind of games. What bothers me is that parents do not understand that they can't keep their children grow up in a bubble. This is clearly over-protectiveness over something that might or might not be interpreted erroneously over time by his daughter.
What is he planning to do? "Patch" every possible subconscious connections that his daughter might make for the next 5-10 years?
Maybe the plan is to make a bunch of noise about it so eventually game creators get used to the idea of catering to both halves of their audience.
I hope it works.
Their reasoning was this was Adam Jensens story, and he is male, certain in game interactions would only make sense in that context.
That said, why we don't have more female videogame leads is beyond me. I'd like to see something like Deus Ex's opinionated take on games than say more of Mass Effect N's dual gender choice. The latter had some rather weird situations if you switched genders. Certain interactions became downright weird or even creepy.
My fiancée enjoys Mario on occasion (and does complain that the princess always needs rescuing), but she flat out does not get into games nearly as much as I do. She could if she wanted to, absolutely nothing holds her back. She is also not unusual in this regard, women as a whole are less interested in video games.
So I disagree that game developers should feel obligated to cater to both sexes. Indeed, game developers should simply be allowed to make whatever games they please.
We're nearing 50% of the market, just so you know.
The second complaint is not wanting to deal with the gender targeting that comes with gaming, both online and off. Girls feel like they can't be themselves (or even speak) in-game without being seen as or treated like a lesser competitor and they feel like they can't talk about them in real life situations without being labeled as a try-hard or someone that only got into it because of a boyfriend/brother, not because they actually enjoy it. You'll hear a lot of girls recount situations in which they're asked what their favorite games are, and when they answer with titles that aren't obscure enough, are told they're not real gamers. This is not to say that don't exist, but when you're treated like that's the norm, it's unsettling and makes you hesitant to bring the topic up in the future.
In having organized LANs for several years, I have dealt first-hand with the stares and questions dealing with my legitimacy in being there. Online, I've had entire teams target my player specifically and repeatedly with verbal assaults, kills and subsequent teabags despite having a gender-neutral name but a female avatar. It is not surprising at all to me why women would steer clear from this environment.
Third, a lot of women just don't talk about it because they don't see it differently from any other hobby they might have.
I think marketers just don't look hard enough to find who is really playing because they don't care. These tried-and-true formulaic games will keep bringing in the revenue they need to keep churning them out, why bother throwing a wrench in with inclusion?
Online gaming is very male dominated. And yes places like Xbox Live are not exactly the best place for girls, unfortunately. But if you instead jump on Steam and play a game of Team Fortress 2 for example, it's a completely different story. Sexist, racist mouthy gamers are not always the norm. Different communities attract different types of players.
My fiancee loves the Tomb Raider movies. When I showed her that they are based on a video game series, she had no desire to play the games at all. I was careful to show her Tomb Raiders were Lara's boobs aren't ridiculous too. She has the opportunity to interactively play through the movies she loves, but that just doesn't interest her. Anecdotal, yes, but in my experience a lot of girls feel this way.
Metroid is a great series, but they do not win points for this.
* "Metroid: Zero Mission" She crashes, and thus doesn't have the power suit (for a while). Also, it was for the GameBoy, so the sex-appeal isn't as strong.
* "Super Smash Brothers" is probably the worst offender. (not a Metroid game)
* "Metroid: Other M": It apparently has minor occurrences throughout.
I'll admit it's nice, but at the same time it's delusionment.
Having young children myself I've thought a bunch about it. I'm not wild about the lying but when you see the enjoyment they get out of it, look back at how you felt about it when you were young (where deception doesn't rank highly amongst my recollections) and think about some of the other consequences (them being the only child in the playground who doesn't believe) generally you come down on the side of the lie.
My compromise (if you can call it that) is that I won't be one of those parents who strings it out when they seriously start questioning it. Aside form anything else at that point it seems like a great opportunity to ask them to exercise their reasoning skills to talk through why they're questioning it.
I wonder did they extrapolate to Jesus?
It's not about being PC, it's about a cool hack and supporting one's daughters.
I will admit, the possibility of you out-Poe-ing tptacek is possible here tho....
Now I'll have to check out tptacek's "must read" list.
I'm curious - if it was a black father modding in a dark-skinned Link what would your reaction be?
Those books are so refreshing and brilliant that I still reread them to this day.
For one, as an author, I disagree with altering a text for a political purpose. To be sure, this instance is fairly innocuous, and parents frequently change bedtime stories on the fly to suit their kids. Nevertheless I consider the Legend of Zelda to be a text with its own mythology and themes, and just as I wouldn't rewrite Hamlet as a girl for my daughter, I wouldn't do it to Link.
Secondly I think it is important to teach kids to have role-models of BOTH genders. Two of my brother's biggest fictional role-models growing up were Wonderwoman and Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. In the same way, girls can learn leadership and toughness from male protagonists and heroes. I'm not accusing this father of not knowing this, but it would be my approach were I playing Zelda with my daughter.
Are you aware that Hamlet is a rewriting of an earlier play for a political purpose?
I’m also not sure what your exact reason for opposing changing a work of art is as long as the original is not destroyed. And what is this political purpose you are talking about? I don’t see any connection to politics.
I'm speaking very generally when I say "political purpose". I don't mean that he is advancing an ideology, but rather he is addressing a gripe he has with society, specifically the lack of female heroes. He is addressing this issue by changing a text. I don't agree with this, though I assume the father's intent was purely to help his daughter and not to push his politics on anyone.
Actually, that's sort of an interesting thought experiment. I was going to point out "Get thee to a nunnery," but I guess "monastery" would work fine. I think the act of rewriting Hamlet with gender-flips would be a nice exploration of sexism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2000/aug/23/artsfeatures.e...
It's been noted that in many parts of Africa, the reaction to Hamlet's reaction to his uncle would be: A man dies, so his brother marries the widow -- that's the good and proper thing to do!
Tell us more about female role models please!
If you believe that a character who's gender is the opposite of its creator is somehow invalid or cannot be a role model then I don't know what to say other than I don't agree. It's a subjective point and not particularly interesting to debate in my opinion.
As inspired as I am by men in web development, I don't get the same feeling of confidence as I do from other women in the industry. I would say that while these heroes are naturally going to have a positive effect on anyone, the females are inherently more relatable - and therefore more influential - to girls.
'Miyazaki: I don't logically plan it that way. When we compare a man in action and a girl in action, I feel girls are more gallant. If a boy is walking with a long stride, I don't think anything particular, but if a girl is walking gallantly, I feel "that's cool." '
A girl walking a particular way isn't more significant than a boy walking in a particular way, he just sees it as such.
Generally in these situations it's best not to worry too much about the intentions the person had and just look at the end result. After all, intentions will often be unclear, lied about, recollection of why something was may change over time and so on.
It's interesting to hear what someone says, but what they actually produce is more important.
I'm about to be the father of a baby girl soon myself and there is no end to the anxiety I hold for the struggles she's going to face simply because she's a girl.
Although if she ever wants to know programming, maths, and how to solder a PCB I intend to be there for her... and perhaps editing hex dumps of games as well. Thanks for the tip!
I have to admit, it is pretty shocking to realize for myself how gender-normative I am already being. Her room is Tiffany Blue and all her clothes are already pink. I hope I keep it to these superficial things...
It might be that part of our family culture includes a sense of cliquishness, so this all may circle back for ass-chewing later on; but for now it's good.
As a completely unscientific experiment I just did some colour searches on Google Images. Pink and blue images make up 65% of the results for the word 'baby'. As you've probably already discovered, a trip down to your local baby shop doesn't offer a huge variation from this in terms of baby clothes.