Saving the princess

omega 616:
Extreme hyperbole and simplification would be “women are only good for cooking so need saving constantly”.

It’s a common misperception to believe that the reason women are so often “imprisoned” in games is due to their perceived impotence.

After all, in traditional reality (“real life”) men are imprisoned at a far higher rate than women, so according to this logic men are perceived to be far weaker than women.

The primary reason women are usually the ones imprisoned in video games is that the usual gender of the hero main character is male, and there’s a heterosexual factor in the “saving”, as per the original myth of the noble (horny) knight saving the princess locked away in a high tower within a castle. The implication is that upon saving the damsel the damsel’s king father will be so full of gratitude and so impressed by the knight’s bravery and prowess that he encourages or perhaps even forces (heavily coerces) the princess to marry the knight. While an utterly sexist myth, note that the princess’s weakness here is not inherent but rather is caused by the political/social reality. The tower is a phallic symbol, the princess is imprisoned within the penis, and the knight merely moves her from one prison to another, one which he obviously prefers since it’s his own. Also note that the tower is within an enemy castle, so the king doesn’t so much care about his daughter but rather about his own loss of prestige of having his daughter captured by the enemy.

Rather than appreciate any of this and respond to it by boycotting said games, most gamers will happily engage in “save the princess” sexist games while simultaneously claiming to be at the very least friendly to feminism. A hypocrisy which is very rarely called out, so life gets to go on with no real thought, care, concern, or self-criticism given to it.

Mothers Betrayed

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Cindy Sheehan on abuse of female soldiers in the US military

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Sheehan sets the stage but fails to draw the conclusion.

This degree of widespread abuse and terrorism cannot occur without complicity if not outright encouragement at all levels of leadership. There must be a culture of degradation of women soldiers in the military by that leadership. Hence they discourage females to join the military by abusing and terrorizing them (and in some cases effectively murdering them). Creating this kind of culture is a crime and these military leaders, ALL of these leaders (including the civilian ones at the top like Bush himself) need to be brought to trial for it.

Media treatment of Women in Politics

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Parenti: Race, Gender, and Class Struggle

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Just a few points on Mammary wonderkin

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Where to begin? Check out that weapon, first off. I’m not even sure it would hurt. It’s bending. It’s thin. It has weird things attached to it that look in no way painful. It’s not even sharp except on the end.

The armor is insane. She’s ostensibly a warrior, according to her pose, and she must really value her left shoulder, because she’s wearing a very heavy and ornate type of gold-leafed plate mail there and no armor anywhere else, unless you count her left hand, where she either has talons for fingers or her fingers are very uncomfortable. In terms of weapons that left hand is likely to be a lot more effective than her “sword”.

The expression on her face is one of being disengaged, which is perhaps logical given the lack of imposition provided by her weapon.

She’s wearing custom-made clothing, so I guess she’s some kind of fashion warrior. Her breasts are extremely unwieldy for a life of combat.

It’s unclear how she plans to defend her lower body. or almost any part of her body for that matter. Perhaps the outthrust claw-hand can scare someone if she’s lucky. Or maybe the whip-sword can entangle someone if she’s very lucky.

While I refer to this example, a great deal of this sort of thing is made along these kind of lines. The idea is to make her a warrior for the “excitement” and to make her mammary-ridiculous for the other kind of excitement. Nevermind that she’s a “warrior” who wouldn’t last two minutes and availability of plastic surgeons or not no warrior-woman would have those breasts. I’ll leave the hyper-styled hair and lip gloss aside, although the vision out of her left eye being largely blocked can’t be helpful.