The Last of Us: Has evil feminism ruined the zombie apocalypse?

I actually made a list some time ago on my blog on the top sexist things that bother me in pop culture… Obviously YMMV on this, these are just what I, personally, find most and least disturbing. (I didn’t include when the heroine is raped by the hero and enjoys it, or where the villain is a straw feminist, merely because I think these two are, fortunately, not common any more, although you do come across them in older stuff now and again.)

1. When women are consistently portrayed as less intelligent, brave, moral etc than men.
1. (Number one is thus shared): Romanticizing sick abusive relationships, stalking, manipulation etc.
2. When action heroines have terribly impractical clothing merely in order to be sexy to the audience, and/or body types that would seriously hinder what they’re doing (like, someone does stuff that you need to be physically strong to do, but is super thin with hardly any muscle, or someone is supposed to be a top-trained athlete but have a body like Marilyn Monroe).
3. When a movie version of a comic book or book makes the female characters much less bad-ass than the original.
4. When a completely asexual woman who’s never orgasmed in her life meets her one true pen… LOVE and suddenly orgasms all over the place.
5. When it’s stressed that a female character doesn’t give a crap about how she looks, alternatively thinks she’s ugly, but is actually perfectly beautiful according to our society’s ideals. Gets extra stupid when an author tries to convey this in a story told from that characters POV.
6. When women sexually harassing men is supposed to be empowering and feminist.
7. When only men are allowed to be all brooding and profound, and women’s job is to be down-to-Earth and sensible and encourage the brooding men to get a grip on themselves.
8. When men who aren’t conventionally attractive are consistently paired up with women who are.
9. When all women are super thin while most men are chubby.
10. When there are loads of unmotivated female nakedness, and/or unmotivated “sexy” clothing (although it’s not impractical, impractical sexy clothing has already been covered in point 2).
11. More or less lack of female characters, when such lack isn’t motivated by the story (i e we’re not talking about “das boot” or something similar).

They’re all disturbing, but I’ve found that I have a way, way easier time putting up with 11 than with 1.

I’m not sure how this guy specifically reacted to the feministfrequency series on video games, and I’m not going to make assumptions. But the sheer magnitude of the irony is still overwhelming. Video games are heavily biased towards a male audience, in general. The complaint in feministfrequency videos isn’t about a particular game, but about a trend in the gaming industry. So this guy picked out one game that has the roles reversed: the women are in charge, and the men are in backup roles (assuming he is not misrepresenting it, as I haven’t played the game yet). And he latches on to that as proof that feminism has taken over the industry?

I’m taking it this guy hasn’t played any other video games ever?

Also, have to agree with Dvärg about The Walking Dead. That show is so extremely sexist against both men and women. Actually, my friend was watching it with me and he got sick of the way the men in the series were depicted as violent, angry and overprotective douchebags.

Delurking just to add that The Last of Us is really excellent game. I haven’t actually played it, but I watched one of my housemates play through most of it because it was so so TENSE and really emotional in places. Seriously, it was like watching a movie sometimes. The writing is excellent and the transitions between game play and cut scenes are so smooth that sometimes I hardly noticed them.

ALSO POSSIBLY SOME SPOILERS.

And honestly, I have to wonder what game these guys played that found so filled with evil feminism! At its core, this story is still about rugged, bestubbled, typically masculine lone wolf type who develops a paternal attachment to a 14 year-old girl whom he must protect and save. In that sense, it’s pretty standard videogame fare. BUT, where it hives off slightly is that the 14 year-old girl isn’t actively useless – she’s portrayed as smart and capable and resilient and more than a match for this nightmare post-apocalyptic world, though ultimately she does end up needing to be saved. Also, you get some game time playing as her, which is really great, because female characters normally have zero agency in videogames of any genre.

ALSO, she is not portrayed as being as strong as a fully grown man. The differences in the gameplay are really great a logical – she moves faster than the male protagonist and it’s must easier to sneak past enemies when you’re playing as her, but she’s also slower and less accurate with the rifle and she dies MUCH more quickly in close-quarters combat. So I’d say they actually did a really great job of realistically simulating the physical differences between a fully grown man and a fourteen year-old girl.

These dudes seem to be pissed off that this game is not actively misogynistic. Which is just ridiclous. Most women gamers aren’t even asking for games specifically targeted at women, we just want games that don’t actively alienate and objectify us at every turn. But obviously, that’s is too much to ask.

RE: tedthefed

I think I now know how ‘The Haunted Vagina’ got written.

RE: Walking Dead

I really have no interest in watching/reading this. It’s just another zombie apocalypse. It’s been done. It’s been done A LOT. It’s become such a cliche, with little room for expansion, that I’m actually playing around with it in my own post-apocalyptic ‘verse where zombies are created by people believing in them, and unscrupulous assholes try and sow belief to create an infinite loop of escalating zombie attack, belief, and death, just to clear out land they want, or as a means of social control.

Because of these guys’ assholery, when I eventually play my copy of Dragon Age: Origins, I plan to play a female character. (Whether we go with Sneak’s desire to play as non-combative a character as possible, or just shove one of our fiction characters through the filter remains to be seen.)

I blame the Harvest Moon games for teaching men that the best way to find true love is through a series of awkward gifts and dances.

oo, can I expand the list of games of capable female protagonists?

The old NES game The Guardian Legend features a heroic android who can turn into a spaceship and shoot lasers and, when human-shaped, is female-human-shaped.

Lammy from Um Jammer Lammy is one of the most endearing characters in all of video games: a socially anxious, two-dimensional lamb who becomes filled with confidence when playing her guitar.

Beyond Good and Evil has Jade, who is the result of when designers go out of their way to NOT be exploitatively sexual or stereotypical about their lady characters, and yet everyone who plays the game falls in love with her anyway.

Okami has Amaterasu, who is offhandedly mentioned to be female a couple of times, and otherwise makes no big deal about it. She’s pretty bad-ass, since she’s a wolf and the goddess of the sun.

And this is actually an ANTAGONIST, but the greatest female video game character of all time is from Metal Gear Solid 3: The Boss. Your (male) character runs into her several times throughout the game and every single time she kicks his ass (it’s the opposite of Leon and Ada in Resident Evil 4). And then, when you finally beat her, it’s because she let you, and her reasons were more noble than the noblest thing that’s ever happened.

Can I get a shout-out for Commander Shepard? Seriously, there’s a lot to dislike about the love story handling and a lot of the other female characters, but I loved Jennifer Hale’s work in that series. And I loved how much it makes no difference to the various political/military types you work with — they praise you or chew your ass, and it has nothing to do with being a woman commander. Go Bioware!

will my games be misogynist? You better fucking believe it. Misogyny The likes of which will make duke nukem blush. I won’t need to tell you guys when I break into the industry, you’ll know it from the sheer uproar it’ll cause.

LOL cool story bro

@Dvarg

I couldn’t watch “the Walking Dead” for the reason that it was so fucking sexist…

OMG. I’d been avoiding it because I was afraid it’d ruin one of my favorite comic series, and now I’m really glad I did. There are definitely badass, capable women (as well as regular, scared-but-surviving women and men) in the comics.

There is also a ton of problematic shit, like dudes fighting over a woman, and one incident of rape-torture (another reason I haven’t watched the series). But it sounds like it’s at least better than the TV version.

It’s become such a cliche, with little room for expansion, that I’m actually playing around with it in my own post-apocalyptic ‘verse where zombies are created by people believing in them, and unscrupulous assholes try and sow belief to create an infinite loop of escalating zombie attack, belief, and death, just to clear out land they want, or as a means of social control.

This? This is brilliant. I love apocalyptic literature (see above, comment #1) but I’ve been consiously avoiding new zombie narratives because I just couldn’t see where anyone had anything new to bring to the table, but this is awesome! Are you self-publishing? Publishing online? I must read this!!!! (searches frantically for pleading puppy-dog eye emoticon)

*potential triggers in this comment*

Probably one of the more “realistic” portrayals I’ve seen in a video game involves the main character’s responses in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Granted, the monsters are not realistic, and the science in some parts is questionable, BUT his responses (fear, sweaty, shaking hands, teeth grinding/chattering, etc.) are realistic. People don’t have superhuman strength. He can’t fight, he can only run and hide and hope that his wits save him. And he gets anxiety and panic attacks. I’m not saying that people who can fight back, who are strong, who don’t panic, etc. don’t exist. Those people do. But they’re a minority.

I don’t understand this sudden need for what they perceive as “reality” in video games. In Skyrim, I played a fucking cat person. I don’t even-

And I’ve watched some of Sarkeesian’s videos and they are SO on point.

Ted beat me to it: Beyond Good and Evil is awesome and you should all play it.

There’s a game mechanic where you friggin’ take pictures of animals. I think the amoeba saltans is my favorite.

RE: stormster

Amnesia: the Dark Descent is awesome. Me and Sneak watched a Let’s Play for it PURELY as a lesson in horror design. Mental illness and trauma is one of my things, so I really enjoy it when people use it well.

My personal favorite immersion story for Amnesia was watching a friend’s partner play. At one point, his character was in a meat locker when suddenly AAAH MONSTER!

There’s nowhere to go! Nowhere to hide! And guy can’t even LOOK at the monster, or he’ll take damage. All he can do is crouch down between meat counters (in the dark, which also causes sanity damage) and hold still and pray the monster doesn’t notice him.

A random tweak in Amnesia is that the first-person camera never holds still, even when your character is at 100%. You can never see your character, but due to the camera quirk, he appeared to be rocking. (And crouched down, it was easy to imagine him in a fetal position as well.)

And the player was imitating the character! Without appearing to realize it, he was all curled up in his chair, rocking in rhythm with the character, and gibbering, “Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, don’t look at me!” (Which, let’s face it, is probably EXACTLY what the character would’ve been thinking.)

Brilliant immersion. Very well done.