Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General Why presentation of gender matters

In my experience, it seems that psychiatric interestingnesses often hang around in gangs, so while they may be distinct and different to each other, in practice I think it's often quite easy to relate. It's one of those subjects where they can often seem more different than they are alike on the basis that all people are different, speaking as someone who for a long time rejected the idea of autism because "but I'm not like that". No, I'm like me, which is the whole point! The autism angle no more identifies me than having brown eyes (or whatever colour I've chosen today: one of the advantages of wearing contacts is that it conveniently panders to the indecisive in that regard at least).

Weird Life Fact of the day: Weird people like other weird people :P Weird being nonstandard for general utility in this case

Opinion: Normal gets boring

2nd Opinion: Guh, I could never do contacts. I'd poke out my eye; sides nerdy is sexy. I love my girlfriend wearing her glasses while wearing a Japanese marvel comi-con t shirt.

Oooooh, you should go into work with Sharigan or something lol

*sigh* well, I'm making my way to bed to see if I can force catch some sleep. These forums are part of my new entertainment lol and it's horrible on my habits

From: http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2015/04/women-preferred-21-over-men-stem-faculty-positions

Whoooooaaaaaa there nelly, hold your horses a gosh darn second. Have you ever experienced sexual discrimination before? Have you not listened to a woman who's gone through it? Have you not read a word about how Vometia feels talked down to because of her hender, did you not read a word that Testad said in the other thread about men being the kings of the household, about how women should be protected from themselves? Are you seriously going to say,



when people like my mother, a woman who has multiple patents for things that she has invented herself, who went from a poverty-stricken, unemployed single mother to having a master's in materials science and a bachelor's in mechanical engineering, has had to file multiple sexual harassment charges, has been passed up for promotions because he boss believed (and this is a quote, by the way) "I think women should know what it's like to have a man on top. Especially when they don't have one in their life."? Hold on for a second. Let me look up the definition of sexism for you.


sex·ism
ˈsekˌsizəm/
noun
noun: sexism

prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.


My mother has been told to her face that she is seen as unfit for a leadership position explicitly because of her genetic makeup. This is the definition of discrimination on the basis of sex. This happened in the US. Do you think this is an isolated incident?

She was hired at Experian because her boss wanted to sleep with her, and when she didn't give in to his advances, she was fired.

When she was at Raytheon, her boss wouldn't stop sending her love messages and giving her special treatment, so she had to file a restraining order against him because he wouldn't listen to her pleas for him to stop.

Hell, it gets as small and petty as that men in my family are notorious for getting tickets for traffic violations, but over Thanksgiving one year, it became very clear after a few minutes of discussion that the women were being pulled over far more often, and being let off with warnings.

And then there was the discrimination that I faced. I was not allowed to play the flute growing up because my family thought it was a girl's instrument.

I was not allowed to be in Choir because my mom thought it was "for girls".

I have been called a freak and sent death threats because someone found out I tried to put on makeup once when I was 14.

The list goes on and on, from the subtle, every day things that people tend to write off, to the major, career-impacting phenomena that are constantly happening to women like my mother year after bloody year. I could keep going with examples if I need to, but your argument that these are "biological" differences is completely baseless, unsupported and downright inane. The thought that there is no more sexism in first-world countries is downright ignorant on so many levels, I don't even know where to begin. It's not like I'm the only one experiencing these things. Look up any of Michelle Obama's talks about feminism and what it was like to face adversity as a successful woman. Hell, go walk up to any woman on the street, and ask them, "do you believe elements of sexism are perpetuated in our culture today?", or anything along those lines, and you may just find that there are societal expectations placed on women to be mothers first, and businesswomen second. Hell, my aunt (who is a self-made millionaire, by the way) taught a whole class on feminism. My grandmother is constantly going to women's retreats and women's bible studies to speak about her degree, and the challenges she faced in attaining it. She has to teach classes on a regular basis about how women are not inferior to men, because here in Texas, where I live, it is not a commonly held belief that women can be or should be allowed to be successful. It's disgusting, I hate it, I've seen it all around me all my life, and I've had to experience my fair share of "special treatment" that comes with being a white male in American society. It's real. I can feel it. I can tell it's there. From the way cops will not at me when they whistle at my sister, to the way the women in my family are expected to do all the kitchenwork (yes, even my self-made millionaire aunt who is somehow simultaneously a stay-at-home mom and an incredibly wealthy businesswoman working from home, God bless her heart). And the way that anytime I go over to help wash the dishes, or chop the onions, or peel the potatoes, my grandpa will stop me and call me over. Just to talk. And when I bring my work with me, he says things like "put that down, Grandma'll handle it". I don't know if you are truly living in blissful ignorance, or if you truly believe that this is the product of biology, but either way, this is not an issue that you have demonstrated that you are holding an informed opinion about. Please, explain to me , with utter clarity, no ambiguity, and unequivocally, exactly why you think that

And as soon as you are done making your point, we are going to drop it. Because it is insensitive, irrelevant to the discussion presented, and just generally genuinely insulting on behalf of every female in my family who has to go through all of this.

On these forums there have been amazingly long and tiresome flamefests about skimpy armors and high heeled boots. The 'Yay Skimpy' (YS) side usually ends up falling back onto a "if you complain about how the female characters are portrayed, you're engaging in CENSORSHIP and are therefore terrible".

This is a forum for the alpha. The developers have said that pretty much anything at all is still up for negotiation or change. Most of the players agree. The YS group's position though, is that the Alpha's artwork and portrayal must be set in stone. It must not be changed, it is SACRED and to change it is BLASPHEMY, CENSORSHIP. They are only doing this because the artists integrity is paramount in their minds, of course. The fact that they enjoy that art style is a complete coincidence.

Anyone who disagrees, who has a different preference for the art style is evil and committing CENSORSHIP. They must be shouted down and called names. They're trying to Destroy High Art. Remember, even though this is an alpha and basically anything can be changed, artwork is verboten, off-limits. The first impressions from the art must be preserved through the final version.

Any changes are not because the developers changed their minds on their own, or reconsidered what they wanted to do. Of course not. Everyone knows that in games development unlike gameplay coding features skills stats economy enemies, all of which require iteration, the first rough artwork is always final and always perfect. The first artwork never needs any improvements or changes. Even though the first impressions of gameplay and balance are usually in need of tweaks and changes, the first artwork always gives the exact impression intended by the artist and never should be changed.

If a developer ever does make changes, it's not because they decided that the impression that was received was different than that which was intended, or because they wanted to refine the art more. No. changes only happen because an evil cabal of nazi women ganged up to threaten the developers with consequences if they do not comply.

1. [Finesse] *Say everyone on the thread is wrong.*

Men and women are not equal. For one thing/person/idea to be equal to another, they have to be perfectly identical. There are no two people (regardless of gender) who are equal.

There have been a few topics that have tackled issues of gender and sexism as presented in D:OS2. As some of those threads have gotten out of control, I felt it was time to start fresh and try to cover the subject as comprehensively and maturely as I can.

Biological and cultural differences between men and women

There are clear biological differences in athletic aptitude between men and women, and that's why sports generally are uncontroversially segregated by gender. However, Lyrhe made some comments where he argued that there are fundamental biological differences in intellectual aptitude between men and women.

Addressing a comment by Skallewag, I made the case earlier that culture is much more significant than race when it comes to athletic aptitude.

That's why Americans are good at basketball, Australians are good at swimming & cricket (and summer sports, generally), Canadians are good at hockey, New Zealanders are good at rugby, Europeans are good at soccer, etc. I can't imagine anyone trying to argue that there are significant biological differences between these groups.

Likewise, all evidence points to differences in intellectual aptitude between men and women, but further analysis points to this being cultural, not biological. This has been demonstrated repeatedly in different contexts, as per the following references:
Think Again: Men and Women Share Cognitive Skills
Men Are Better At Maps Until Women Take This Course
Why you should send your daughter to an all-girls school
Girls and boys have different cognitive abilities

Text vs subtext

To be clear, it is not a problem if the world depicted in D:OS is sexist. First off, it's far less sexist than the real world anyway. In the real world there are few women taking on the roles of warriors, particularly in the medieval style of society that is depicted. The removal of this sexism makes the world less realistic, but I can accept it and I appreciate the freedom it provides.

On the other hand, there are media like Witcher 3, Game of Thrones & Dragon Age which also present sexist worlds with sexualised characters, and yet this does not bother me.

Art is more complex than just the world it presents. In art, it's important to remember that there are different layers of text:

• -> text (in this case, the world that is depicted)
• -> context (the cultural lense in which we view this world)
• -> subtext (the attitudes presented by the manner in which this world is portrayed)

The subtext is the part that really raises eyebrows. To be clear, the subtext in D:OS is much less sinister than the subtext in highly sexist examples like Metal Gear Solid V or Grand Theft Auto. D:OS2 could be worse, but there's still room for improvement.

So far, the concerns I've had regarding the subtext regarding gender relate to:

• -> Contrast between male and female poses during character creation
• -> Sebille (female) as the only scantily clad playable character, and the first character you see during character creation

This is certainly not exhaustive. There are potentially other issues that will be more apparent through further exploration of the game and as more content is released.


Traditional gender roles and why it matters

There were some very problematic comments by Testad I'd like to highlight. He's right that he comes from a different culture that views gender differently from my cultural background. But we all need to analyse our cultural views on gender, and consider how individuals push their cultural attitudes (which Testad admitted to be unjustifiable) onto the broader society they inhabit.

Traditionally women are not idolised for their intelligence or their strength. It's not seen to be attractive for a woman to be strong or intelligent.

Under this dichotomy (and as confirmed by thebonesinger's comment) the men are attractive for taking poses that emphasise their strength or intelligence, but for women who want to take on a strong or intelligent pose, they also need to also sway their hips or otherwise emphasise their female sexuality in order to also be seen as attractive.

This is the reason women seem to be inherently less apt in masculine fields. There is clear research showing both men and women unintentionally rate equally qualified women as less competent than men in traditionally masculine fields. Media sends the message that strength and intelligence are masculine traits that are less important to women their femininity. This is the direct cause of experiences such as the one that Vometia expressed where colleagues questioned her aptitude in IT because of her gender. (This not only affects women, mind you. Men also face roadblocks if they want to take on feminine roles.)

Regardless of our culture, I think we can agree that men and women should have the same freedom of choice and the same opportunity to succeed, but we all need to acknowledge that this is not the reality we live in. This is the reason I care about how women are represented in a game.

Finally, there is this article from Swen lamenting that only 4% of the visitors to the Kickstarter were "female", and that only 9% of the followers of Facebook were "female". In the end, one conclusion Swen reached is that the Google analytics used for the Kickstarter were inaccurate. He accused the analytics of being sexist because when demographic data can't be obtained directly, Google will guess gender for purposes of Adwords. Because these are guesses, it's impossible to understand its accuracy.

However, when Google Analytics guesses, it does it in a sophisticated way -- that is, it won't assume you're a male just because you visit a website associated with a male interest. However, it will look at the known audience of that website and assume that you're male if you spend a lot of time on websites where most of the audience is known to be male. The results of these processes appear to be very accurate.

The fact is that all evidence points to the D:OS audience being overwhelmingly male. As a business, Larian needs to recognise that it's unlikely they're reaching the gender diverse audience they expect to be reaching. Given that Swen pointed out that PAX attendees are 35% female, this is clearly a problem that cannot simply be explained by blaming the overall demographics of hardcore gamers.

Even highly masculine games like Battlefield have a 22% female player demographic, so it's unlikely that less than 20% of the players of D:OS2 would be female, but there is something very problematic about having only 4% of visitors identifying as female. I'd be interested to know if there are any Google Analytics that have been done to see if this forum's demographics look any better.

If Larian wants to attract female gamers or address sexism, then they will need to do some navel gazing that doesn't simply rely on fielding opinions from their core fans. I'm not necessarily suggesting that the gender imbalance will be solved by reducing sexism in the game. As we are all living products of sexist culture, eliminating sexism in the game may actually be irrelevant to the goal of attracting women and Larian may be better off focusing on introducing explicitly "feminine" elements such as romance.

But it's important to recognise that there's a problem and I do not think it is unreasonable to hope that Larian could also try to aim to present any new or existing elements in a manner that does not invoke or reinforce regressive sexist attitudes.

What is the point of pointing out that men and women are not equal if first and foremost no two people are equal to begin with? What practical benefit does a society gain from acknowledging that on average men and women are better in certain spheres if exceptions exist anyway and those exceptions should ideally be able to pursue whatever they feel like pursuing?