Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback I Request Escapism

+1

Yes a curse of patriarchy. It starts harmlessly and gradually increases. I have so often met young guys in the work context, who then said to me in a chummy way, if they are smiled at by a woman, then this means that the woman wants something from them or is into them. This circumstance wanted to know confirmed with their question with me. Such an expectation is of course bullshit. The next stage in such a moronic attitude are then such sayings as: She wants / wanted it but not otherwise, she dresses but so... I think I don't need to elaborate on this pathetic behavior.



I see it the same way. I can also imagine Nymphs / Dryads very well as naked beings who appear "by nature in the Adam costume". Or Mizora and other Succubi / Incubi could be completely naked (as higher level opponents) and try to seduce their prey. All the mentioned are more humanoid than monstrous.

Well um... fascinating. Apparently love and pleasure, the most natural and pure thing in existence and the whole reason for our existence, is now evil and sinful.

Though I must address that Minthara actually wishes to marry the player, as she herself states that she would take us as her consort to Menzoberranzan if given a chance. And she does take that chance, as after being convinced through the power of love to ignore the Absolute's will, she aims to join the player later down the road. So maybe she is not so adulterated and evil and shallow as you think she is

Leaving open the possibility of a redemption arc. That's just good storytelling.

JandK : are you seriously saying that women with a sexual appetite are evil? What about men then? Or do you think, that men are the victims of the evil wicked witches here? I have noticed that in regards to the sex scene with Minthara you called her evil for having sex, but never lost a word about pc, who is a willing participant.

Well, it's the evil path for a reason. The unwed fornication and push to make perversion into a reward. Note how the positioning isn't reproductive, but rather a celebration of flesh and the lowly lustful nature.

This is what destroys society. It creeps into cultures and breaks apart families. Soon children are being raised without parents. It leads to decay and rot, the downfall of all that is good and wholesome. This is why we define it as evil.

The player on the evil path is evil, of course. Either by design or through the machinations of the temptress. It makes little difference in the final judgement.

Well at least now I understand fully what you meant by mentioning Sodom and Gomorrah, the biblical cities destroyed by God due to sins of man.

I thought you were just joking. Honestly I'm surprised a person with such deep religious beliefs is able to even remotely play or even enjoy a game such as Baldur's Gate and other such RPGs, considering the amount of anti-religious things in it.

But then again, a woman wanting to be topless in a video game isn't really anti-religious or anything of the sort, as nudity is the natural state of a human and is depicted in holy depictions absolutely everywhere. So I don't understand what the issue is with breasts. Even angels are depicted with bare breasts ^^

Um...

Just report and ignore the trolling/derailing Mrfuji, no good comes of playing back to it, at this stage.

I must say though, I'm fairly comforted to know that Jand would consider me a terribly evil person, given my unmarried state, my proclivity for a wide variety of kinks an fetishes and my willingness to engage in casual hook-ups, not only with men but also with other women - he must truly think me a most vile and evil creature... which really cements for me how much value his opinion holds.

Amusingly.... I specifically would NOT expect an evil character to go for that particular activity as readily as a good person might, since evil is inherently selfish, but 69ing is a mutually reciprocal act ^.^

Ha ha,
I must admit that a lot of posts here completely cemented for Me just how much value a lot of opinions on this forum hold

OK, I think I'm really creeped out by you now. I don't even want to know, what you think of homosexuality, If sex has to be reproductive in your opinion.
And I noticed that you didn't even answer my question about men and women, which tells me everything, I need to know.

Very true, which is one of the reasons I always found Minthara's romance quite sweet and meaningful.

She comes across as a very unwaveringly determined and headstrong individual, yet in such tender moments of love and passion she fully and faithfully devotes herself to her partner and surrenders to the moment, despite her innate fear of being betrayed. And what makes it all the more beautiful is that to her it is not just a one night stand of carnal pleasures, as up until that moment she never felt like she needed anyone nor trusted anyone. She truly loves the player and wishes to take them as her consort to Menzoberranzan, which ends up emotionally breaking her when her "faith" towards the Absolute interjects and almost takes that dream away.

If she was as evil as she is perceived to be, it would be more of a dominatrix type of scene instead with no emotional attachments afterwards.

Niara talking absolute sense.

The fact that a woman would be breaking the law and inviting unwanted abuse by walking topless in my community (something I can do freely without a second thought) demonstrates that despite a lot of progress in my lifetime the patriarchy inherent in our culture remains depressingly strong.

( I live in Canada)

True.
But still ... these rules exist for a reason, and despite popular opinion in today's society, that reason isn't always just that one group wants to bully another.

On the one hand you have women who want to go shopping with their breasts exposed.
On the other hand, you have women who don't mind that someone looks at them when they breastfeed in public.
Both cannot be satisfied.
(for the record, I personally don't feel the least bit offended by bare breasts...)

Except nobody here is debating about inappropriate dressing scenarios in which establishments have a strict dressing code. Neither a man nor a woman should be allowed to be topless in places where there's a dressing code. Period. Wormerine mentioned the same thing, but it's not what is being debated here.

This whole debate is about the sexual objectification of women which causes oppression, because certain people do not think that a woman should be allowed to be topless in all scenarios, because breasts according to them are considered sexual objects in all given circumstances, despite the fact that breasts do not biologically have a sexual purpose and it's only because of men who sexually objectify breasts that women have rules and laws set in place against them, due to the stupidity of men throughout history.

Because of this, a woman cannot even be topless on a beach, while men can. Because there are many restrictions and even laws that forbid a woman from being topless precisely because of this sexual objectification. There are plenty of places where a man can be topless, but a woman cannot by law.

In this thread's case, a woman came to ask for a feature to be able to be topless in a video game that features full nudity and explicit sex scenes. And to some individuals it's inconceivable, because breasts to them are sex objects, despite the fact that women do not sexualize their breasts and game does not even try to hide nudity.

Sexual objectification = problem.

Should a female character be able to be topless in BG3? Yes. I would love to be able to create a badass topless female Berserker Barbarian with body warpaint, ginger hair and green eyes, wielding a massive giant axe to smash my enemies, completely devoid of any civilization while fully embracing the raging wilderness of Faerun.

This raises some interesting questions.

In apes, does sexual attraction to breasts have an adaptive value?
Are human female breasts sexually attractive only because of social conditioning?
It seems to me that breasts in female humans could have a number of different possible adaptive values, and because of this it seems logical that the perception of them as sexually attractive is at least partially hardwired, and not entirely socially motivated.
One related question. In human societies where breasts are not taboo, are they considered desirable in some proportion of males in those societies?

I mean, there's worth in vocally supporting good (or decrying bad) ideas/mentalities.

To be clear, I suppose for Larian feedback collectors and others reading, I support this option. I initially kneejerk reacted to OP's post by kind of lumping it in with the standard calls for more nudity & sex in BG3/games in general. But Crimsonrider, Lotus, Niara, and others have made some very good points. Particularly with the defining and separating of sexual objectification, sexualization, and being (or not being) inherently sexual.

Plenty of games allow various levels of nude characters, and this is one of the things that actually won't detract from others' experiences if it's implemented in BG3. Unless I suppose one of your multiplayer friends makes a topless character and you don't like that, but that's a problem between you and your friends, not for the rest of us.

To be fair, I must note that, yes, of course there is a natural, physiological element to this that is not 'purely' socially motivated; What you're getting at, I think, Count (Though... I don't see any mention of turnips there, so it might be an imposter...), is that in humans, our breasts absolutely are a secondary characteristic; unlike a lot of other mammals, we retain our breasts even when we're not nursing, because they are a part of our 'display', as it were - a feature that says to the animal brain that this creature will be able to rear offspring well. Males have similar secondary attributes that advertise in similar ways - I mentioned a few earlier - that say that they are are fit, healthy and a good choice. In no case are any of those features inherently sexual, on their own, and that's the important point.

The social element is important here; we are at our cores, social creatures, and over time as a species we have developed a wide spectrum of social cues that functionally negate, or at least counterbalance, the individual creature element. We choose partners on a far, far broader spectrum now, to the extent that our choices are not even reproductively motivated most of the time. The social element then, is the acknowledgement that while it is entirely natural to notice and even appreciate secondary characteristics for the way they make our brains happy when we do, that does not, and should not define or control any of our social behaviour or how we treat one another when discussion of direct attraction is not on the table... this along with the social awareness not to *put* it on the table when it is not appropriate to do so.

In most cultures where covering the breasts is not an expectation in various public situations, you'll often find that the same is true or the actual genitals as well; they may be covered by functional clothing, and they may not be, but the main observation is that it doesn't matter, because the day to day situations are not sexual, are not viewed as inherently sexual, and... to be blunt... they're bits everyone has in some form or another, and they have very little meaning outside of actual sexual circumstances. I'm not from any of those cultures, and casual at-home nudism really doesn't count... but I do feel fairly safe in asserting that even in those places and amongst those people, yes, folks of all stripes enjoy those features, just as anyone else might. In the case of breasts in particular, yes, for many women they are erogenous, and so naturally they will have a part to play in sexual situations when those circumstances do arise... but dressing down in the evening over camp duties amongst friends and other non-intimate companions is not such a circumstance, so whether someone is wearing a shirt or not should not matter, regardless of what's beneath.

And besides... Halsin has bigger turnips than me anyway, so the imbalance is double silly ^.~

I do not know since I'm not an ape. You will have to ask the apes that one

Yes and no. Kinda. The question has quite a broad answer, but I think your last question covers that.

Sexuality definitely can and is influenced by society, but at our cores as a human race; a woman is attractive to a man, just like a man is attractive to a woman. It is an instinctive evolutionary biological imprint and a part of our DNA as a race. And being sexually attracted to someone is completely fine, to which body parts depends entirely on the person. However... the issue arises if that sexual attraction starts affecting a woman in a negative way, which at that point it stops being fine.

Which is the case with humanity throughout history that still follows to this day. The sexual attraction coming from men is negatively impacting women, but because of this attraction women are the ones who keep having rules and laws imposed upon them. So they are being punished for something they cannot control whatsoever, because the problem does not originate from them, but from men.

Actually pretty damn good question. The answer is no in general.

The tribes and even modern parts of the world where bare-chested women are a completely normal everyday thing do not find breasts sexually attractive on their own. When something is common and normal and loses its mystery, it stops being exotic.

In modern society however, the huge part of why someone might find someone attractive is mystery, but also the way one presents themselves. Mystery is exotic and sexy and curious, which makes things that cannot be seen highly attractive and amplifies that sexual drive because it makes the mind wonder.

"breasts aren't sexual!!!"

--meanwhile, billions of dollars being made through topless bars and magazines and only fans sites and etc and etc and etc.

You can scream all day about what you think the world should be, and you can insist till your blue in the face that the *only* sexual parts are in the crotch, but the world keeps turning and breasts continue to be sexual in the actual culture you live in. Whether you turn a blind eye to it or not.

The problem with the logic of "objectification = bad" that's being pawned off here is that it's shallow.

First of all, just because a society deems something as normal, does not make it right. The very church and religion that you so deeply embraced also used to hunt, burn and kill women by the mass for centuries and is the whole reason why women are still punished and oppressed to this day. And according to you, people should just sit and be quiet and accept the way things are.

Do you know what stopped all those terrible crimes against humanity? Exactly the men and women who spoke and fought against it. And many of them died. And if you take a look at our world today, there are many protests of women to stop this sexual objectification of breasts by doing topless rallies all over the world.

Second of all, quite ironic that you would say something is shallow after the opinions you've expressed in this very thread.