Female Characters

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Re: Female Characters

Postby Matt » 09 Jul 2014, 09:41

AdmiralMemo wrote:
Lurkon wrote:The idea here is that we have a static character in such games that needs that constant gender in order to tell its story.
And while that is true, there is the tangentially related issue of the "Steves" in gaming, as Alex puts them.

Even if you can't point to a single game, like Prototype, and say "That specific game should've had a female protagonist," you can still see this massive flood of games with the same generic mid-20s white dude as the protagonist and see it's a problem. For every Tomb Raider, Among the Sleep, or The Last of Us, there are at least 10 CoD or Halo clones out there with Steve as their protagonist.



There's a relevant point that Anita Sarkeesian raised early in the TvW series(that dudebros love to ignore) where she notes that any single instance of a trope, taken in isolation can be explained away by narrative.

i.e. Yes, Ryuko is wearing a costume that leaves her almost entirely naked, but that's because her powers only manifest when she accepts being exposed. (this is a real plot contrivance, by the way - Kill la Kill)

These plot decisions aren't inherently problematic in isolation, but in aggregate they play into larger trends within the industry that are.

'Steve' is one such example. Every instance of a white male protagonist can be explained away in the context of "this was necessary for the story we wanted to tell". The problem is that the industry as a whole doesn't seem interested in telling many other stories.

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Re: Female Characters

Postby Matt » 09 Jul 2014, 09:51

J_S_Bach wrote:Great video!
I've seen mention of Tomb Raider pop up in a few posts and I'm curious if the LRR community considers Lara Croft (specifically from 2013 Tomb Raider) to be a positive female role model and how 2013 Lara compares to her other iterations?


She's not perfect, but she's definitively an improvement over previous iterations.


J_S_Bach wrote:Also if you would be kind enough to indulge this thought experiment of mine:

It is a valid complaint that not enough video games feature a female lead (something I believe needs to be fixed at an educational level) but if we are to ask developers to give us the option of playing a female character if it's also fair to ask for options for male characters in games like Tomb Raider, Portal, Metroid, Mirror's Edge, etc. it's just a thought that's been keeping me up and would like others opinions.


My inclination is to say no, but only sort of.

There is no problem with featuring a specific static lead if the specific static lead has a story purpose, and ideally we should be telling stories about a wide range of specific static leads. Differing in gender, race, sexuality and so on.

The problem is that we don't get a variety of specific static leads - we get Steve to the exclusion of nearly everyone else.

In games that require a specific static lead, we should be demanding a variety of specific static leads, and we shouldn't let developers get away with always defaulting to Steve.

In any game that doesn't require a specific static lead, we should be demanding a more diverse array of selectable characters, and we shouldn't let developers get away with deprioritizing that feature.

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Re: Female Characters

Postby JayBlanc » 09 Jul 2014, 12:56

Matt wrote:'Steve' is one such example. Every instance of a white male protagonist can be explained away in the context of "this was necessary for the story we wanted to tell". The problem is that the industry as a whole doesn't seem interested in telling many other stories.

-m


I wrestled with this myself with the screenplays I'm currently developing. The first one is focused almost exclusively on a male lead. It's that way because of plot reasons. But... But... But...

So the *next two* screen plays have Female leads. (Actually, two Female leads in Screen Play #2)

I could wave my hands and talk about needing to present conventionality in my package of first-three-spec-screenplays. But that's an excuse, and I know it. I can, and am, producing screenplays with fully fleshed out female leads. If I worried too much about conventionality, I'd be producing three act explosions and car chases. And that hardly stands out to potential readers... And we can already see that the Hollywood convention on this *is* shifting, with the discovery that Female lead movies earn money.

I guess what I'm saying is that not only are Video Game Steve plots are not only a rather big affront to women, but they're both less creative and market oriented than Hollywood is!
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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 13:14

JayBlanc wrote:
I wrestled with this myself with the screenplays I'm currently developing. The first one is focused almost exclusively on a male lead. It's that way because of plot reasons. But... But... But...

So the *next two* screen plays have Female leads. (Actually, two Female leads in Screen Play #2)

I could wave my hands and talk about needing to present conventionality in my package of first-three-spec-screenplays. But that's an excuse, and I know it. I can, and am, producing screenplays with fully fleshed out female leads. If I worried too much about conventionality, I'd be producing three act explosions and car chases. And that hardly stands out to potential readers... And we can already see that the Hollywood convention on this *is* shifting, with the discovery that Female lead movies earn money.

I guess what I'm saying is that not only are Video Game Steve plots are not only a rather big affront to women, but they're both less creative and market oriented than Hollywood is!


I'm not convinced this is the best course of action either. It was my wife who pointed out to me that adding a female protagonist instead of a male only to be a female protagonist is little more than affirmative action, which isn't necessarily the best thing.

What she told me is: I would rather play a video game, watch a movie or read a book with a male protagonist that has a engaging and enjoyable story than suffer through something with a female protagonist who's only character is "I am a woman". She and I both feel that the quality of a story/experience is far more important than the gender of the characters involved in said story/experience.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby JayBlanc » 09 Jul 2014, 13:27

J_S_Bach wrote:I'm not convinced this is the best course of action either. It was my wife who pointed out to me that adding a female protagonist instead of a male only to be a female protagonist is little more than affirmative action, which isn't necessarily the best thing.

What she told me is: I would rather play a video game, watch a movie or read a book with a male protagonist that has a engaging and enjoyable story than suffer through something with a female protagonist who's only character is "I am a woman". She and I both feel that the quality of a story/experience is far more important than the gender of the characters involved in said story/experience.


It is in fact possible to choose to write a female protagonist as a person, not just as a cardboard cutout women. And I'm not dropping in a Female protagonist to replace the "default male protagonist", as if it's a substitute ingredient in a recipe. This isn't cookie cutter character generation. These screen plays started out life as a series of post-it notes on a wall describing my protagonists.

If us writers don't actively choose to write more women protagonists, then the societally imposed default is going to win out. And the reality is that there is no real 'organic' process of writing. It's all artificial, we create it all, and it's our choices to decide the genders of our characters. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest writers should be able to choose to have more female characters, and not just expect it to somehow happen on it's own.

Writers are not mystic shamans channeling stories from the ether, we actually intentionally make decisions about what happens in our writing and who it happens to.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 13:29

Matt wrote:
J_S_Bach wrote:Great video!
I've seen mention of Tomb Raider pop up in a few posts and I'm curious if the LRR community considers Lara Croft (specifically from 2013 Tomb Raider) to be a positive female role model and how 2013 Lara compares to her other iterations?


She's not perfect, but she's definitively an improvement over previous iterations.


J_S_Bach wrote:Also if you would be kind enough to indulge this thought experiment of mine:

It is a valid complaint that not enough video games feature a female lead (something I believe needs to be fixed at an educational level) but if we are to ask developers to give us the option of playing a female character if it's also fair to ask for options for male characters in games like Tomb Raider, Portal, Metroid, Mirror's Edge, etc. it's just a thought that's been keeping me up and would like others opinions.


My inclination is to say no, but only sort of.

There is no problem with featuring a specific static lead if the specific static lead has a story purpose, and ideally we should be telling stories about a wide range of specific static leads. Differing in gender, race, sexuality and so on.

The problem is that we don't get a variety of specific static leads - we get Steve to the exclusion of nearly everyone else.

In games that require a specific static lead, we should be demanding a variety of specific static leads, and we shouldn't let developers get away with always defaulting to Steve.

In any game that doesn't require a specific static lead, we should be demanding a more diverse array of selectable characters, and we shouldn't let developers get away with deprioritizing that feature.

-m


Thank You Matt.
I noticed that you've been playing through Tomb Raider (2013) on Twitch could you give a little more on your opinions of Lara as a character? Why you feel she is a decent female protagonist but what would need work to improve and what do you feel was wrong with past Lara's? (I'm specifically referring to other Tomb Raider games, not the can of worms that are the movies).

Personally I'm not a fan of her behaviour in the first half of the game, I find her to be whiny and overdependent on Roth, bordering on weird daddy issues/possibly implied sexual tension. But, leading up to and after the death of Roth I feel Lara's character takes leaps forward in her emotional maturity. She grabs hold of her situation and decides what to do with her life (I'm extremely interested to see what the developers are going to do with Lara's character in Rise of the Tomb Raider).

In regard to the influx of "Steves" I believe that it is a symptom of the AAA gaming industry. The companies working on these games are so monstrously large that coordinating a character more complex than a "Steve" seems to be a daunting challenge as even getting separate programming from just two people to work together can be difficult. I know there are exceptions to the rules but AAA companies are too huge to support themselves if they took the time to flush out characters, do more creative storytelling they would probably go bankrupt before the game was out of Alpha stage. Here's hoping that the AAA mess will change quickly and for the better. I dream of a utopia where AAA stands for a games quality in storytelling and/or design; not for how much money got poured into it.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby Matt » 09 Jul 2014, 13:32

J_S_Bach wrote:I'm not convinced this is the best course of action either. It was my wife who pointed out to me that adding a female protagonist instead of a male only to be a female protagonist is little more than affirmative action, which isn't necessarily the best thing.


Ehh, I find this reasoning pretty specious. Did Mass Effect played with Femshep tell a worse story than Mass Effect played with Broshep?

If Mass Effect had featured only a female lead, but had been identical in all other respects, would that have been an example of pure tokenism?

Fact is, game protagonists are currently insufficiently diverse. Improving that diversity of representation is an inherent good in and of itself, separate from the fact that it opens up additional perspectives and avenues for storytelling.

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Re: Female Characters

Postby Ricardo Anderson » 09 Jul 2014, 13:39

Muahahaha! Awesome awesome video. Laughed like hell. :-)
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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 13:41

JayBlanc wrote:If us writers don't actively choose to write more women protagonists, then the societally imposed default is going to win out. And the reality is that there is no real 'organic' process of writing. It's all artificial, we create it all, and it's our choices to decide the genders of our characters. It is perfectly reasonable to suggest writers should be able to choose to have more female characters, and not just expect it to somehow happen on it's own.

Writers are not mystic shamans channeling stories from the ether, we actually intentionally make decisions about what happens in our writing and who it happens to.


Exactly! In the light of video games this is an issue we need to work on at the educational level. Currently there are more men than women working in video game development "Women account for only 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, strikingly low even when compared with the broader fields of graphic design and technology, where women make up about 60 percent and 25 percent of employment respectively, according to surveys." http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/01/27/women-remain-outsiders-video-game-industry/275JKqy3rFylT7TxgPmO3K/story.html
The facts are than women know women best. Even in the video it is a room of three men trying to figure out what a woman is, perhaps this was one of the points LRR was trying to make? We need to be more supportive of women who want to get into the video game industry and right now there is a generally toxic environment to this idea.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby JayBlanc » 09 Jul 2014, 13:50

J_S_Bach wrote:The facts are than women know women best. Even in the video it is a room of three men trying to figure out what a woman is, perhaps this was one of the points LRR was trying to make? We need to be more supportive of women who want to get into the video game industry and right now there is a generally toxic environment to this idea.


I'd note that you don't have to be a women to write female characters, and lack of women writers is not really an excuse for video games.

It's perfectly possible for male video game writers who are unable to fly or shoot lasers from their eyes, to write characters who can fly and shoot lasers from their eyes. Yet some how, having a uterus and breasts makes the character unwritable by males?

Or to be more prosaic... "Write what you know" is one of the worst things told to new writers. Because if you do only that, you write nothing you haven't personally experienced. What was originally meant by the term, was to add from your own experiences or research and discover the perspectives you need to write beyond your perspective. It's possible to write in the perspective of a murderer without being a murderer. And so it's entirely possible to discover the perspectives of women, and you can even do it just by listening to women talk about their lives!
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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 13:55

Matt wrote:
Ehh, I find this reasoning pretty specious. Did Mass Effect played with Femshep tell a worse story than Mass Effect played with Broshep?

If Mass Effect had featured only a female lead, but had been identical in all other respects, would that have been an example of pure tokenism?

Fact is, game protagonists are currently insufficiently diverse. Improving that diversity of representation is an inherent good in and of itself, separate from the fact that it opens up additional perspectives and avenues for storytelling.

-m


Mass Effect is a poor example to use as Shepard isn't a character but a construct, simply pants. Shepard has no emotional investment and no motives beyond what the player puts into him/her. Mass Effect is much like Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark where Shepard isn't actually important to the story. The whole genre of role-playing games where you build your own character to role play as are the exception rather than the rule. If you replaced Shepard with a magical talking tree it wouldn't have changed the story.

The issue I was referring to was when you have a character driven story with lazy writing which features a female character who's only character trait is "I'm female". We all know examples of this, the most glaring offender I can think of is Team Ninja (responsible for Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive 5, Metroid: Other M, etc.)
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Re: Female Characters

Postby Matt » 09 Jul 2014, 13:56

J_S_Bach wrote:Even in the video it is a room of three men trying to figure out what a woman is, perhaps this was one of the points LRR was trying to make?


This was most definitely intentional.


J_S_Bach wrote:Exactly! In the light of video games this is an issue we need to work on at the educational level. Currently there are more men than women working in video game development "Women account for only 11 percent of game designers and 3 percent of programmers, strikingly low even when compared with the broader fields of graphic design and technology, where women make up about 60 percent and 25 percent of employment respectively, according to surveys."

The facts are than women know women best. We need to be more supportive of women who want to get into the video game industry and right now there is a generally toxic environment to this idea.



This argument has a couple of problems.

The lack of women in game development likely arises from a number of factors beyond simple education.

I mean, there are the legacy effects of game culture in the 90's actively alienating women, and discouraging them from taking an interest in games.

There's the open hostility to women that arises from gaming communities, that acts to drive many female gamers out of those spaces, or to give up gaming as a hobby.

There's cultural narratives of women being "bad" at math and science, discouraging them from pursuing work in those fields.

There's the culture of the industry, which itself is hostile to work-life balance, and places demands on time, which acts to discourage women who might want to raise a family from entering the industry.

and there's the lack of representation of women in the work produced by the industry, demonstrating to women that the industry is less interested in them as customers etc.

And on and on it goes.

If we want more women in the industry, we need to give women a reason to be a part of the industry.

Funneling women into STEM educational paths will do little to affect industry demographics if, once women join the workforce, they find themselves having to sacrifice major aspects of their lives, and endure harassment and boys-club mentalities, while producing work that doesn't appear to value them as either creator or customer. They'll just leave.

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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 14:04

Matt wrote:
The lack of women in game development likely arises from a number of factors beyond simple education.

I mean, there are the legacy effects of game culture in the 90's actively alienating women, and discouraging them from taking an interest in games.

There's the open hostility to women that arises from gaming communities, that acts to drive many female gamers out of those spaces, or to give up gaming as a hobby.

There's cultural narratives of women being "bad" at math and science, discouraging them from pursuing work in those fields.

There's the culture of the industry, which itself is hostile to work-life balance, and places demands on time, which acts to discourage women who might want to raise a family from entering the industry.

and there's the lack of representation of women in the work produced by the industry, demonstrating to women that the industry is less interested in them as customers etc.

And on and on it goes.

If we want more women in the industry, we need to give women a reason to be a part of the industry.

Funneling women into STEM educational paths will do little to affect industry demographics if, once women join the workforce, they find themselves having to sacrifice major aspects of their lives, and endure harassment and boys-club mentalities, while producing work that doesn't appear to value them as either creator or customer. They'll just leave.

-m


I wasn't referring to educating women in how to design games but educating the rest of the world so they aren't insufferable tools. By educating those who cause those hostile work environments we can make it a more welcoming place for anyone who wants to design games. Education can change the negative cultural narratives.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby Matt » 09 Jul 2014, 14:06

J_S_Bach wrote:I wasn't referring to educating women in how to design games but educating the rest of the world so they aren't insufferable tools. By educating those who cause those hostile work environments we can make it a more welcoming place for anyone who wants to design games. Education can change the negative cultural narratives.


ah, that was not clear from your argument.

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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 14:14

Matt wrote:ah, that was not clear from your argument.

-m


Sorry for not making that clear.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby My pseudonym is Ix » 09 Jul 2014, 15:06

Matt wrote:f we want more women in the industry, we need to give women a reason to be a part of the industry.

Funneling women into STEM educational paths will do little to affect industry demographics if, once women join the workforce, they find themselves having to sacrifice major aspects of their lives, and endure harassment and boys-club mentalities, while producing work that doesn't appear to value them as either creator or customer. They'll just leave.

-m

I'm studying engineering at the moment, a field that has about 10% women in it and has done for the last 30 years (and probably much more, I don't have the data to say). This is not because engineering is an all-boys' club; engineers are by and large a friendly bunch, and I've never seen any of the girls on our course treated anything other than normally. The same is true with regards to all evidence I have from industry; most male engineers have zero problem with women doing the job, because engineers prize something working above all else and their main concern is whether a person is capable of doing their job. No, the bigger stumbling block occurs far earlier, in education. Many D&T teachers come from an arts rather than technological background, and most IT teachers come from an IT rather than computing background- as such, there is little interest fostered in the technical fields amongst the young, nothing to get kids hooked & excited about the field, and young kids are discouraged from getting involved in technical fields. This is not a problem exclusive to girls (engineering as a field has a massive supply-demand problem on an economic scale because people simply aren't interested in going into it), but girls have an even harder job than guys getting engaged in the field at a later stage in life, because by that point gender stereotyping has taken over and it isn't seen as a 'girly' thing to do. So... yeah. The STEM thing is a lot deeper than a 'boys club' mentality.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby Master Gunner » 09 Jul 2014, 15:55

There is an issue getting women into STEM fields, yes, but there's also a significant problem with women leaving STEM fields. According the study referenced in that article, women were 45% more likely then men to say they planned on leaving the industry within a year, which backs up the sizable drop between the percentage of STEM degrees granted to women, versus those working in the industry.
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Re: Female Characters

Postby Matt » 09 Jul 2014, 15:56

My pseudonym is Ix wrote:
Matt wrote:f we want more women in the industry, we need to give women a reason to be a part of the industry.

Funneling women into STEM educational paths will do little to affect industry demographics if, once women join the workforce, they find themselves having to sacrifice major aspects of their lives, and endure harassment and boys-club mentalities, while producing work that doesn't appear to value them as either creator or customer. They'll just leave.

-m

I'm studying engineering at the moment, a field that has about 10% women in it and has done for the last 30 years (and probably much more, I don't have the data to say). This is not because engineering is an all-boys' club; engineers are by and large a friendly bunch, and I've never seen any of the girls on our course treated anything other than normally. The same is true with regards to all evidence I have from industry; most male engineers have zero problem with women doing the job, because engineers prize something working above all else and their main concern is whether a person is capable of doing their job. No, the bigger stumbling block occurs far earlier, in education. Many D&T teachers come from an arts rather than technological background, and most IT teachers come from an IT rather than computing background- as such, there is little interest fostered in the technical fields amongst the young, nothing to get kids hooked & excited about the field, and young kids are discouraged from getting involved in technical fields. This is not a problem exclusive to girls (engineering as a field has a massive supply-demand problem on an economic scale because people simply aren't interested in going into it), but girls have an even harder job than guys getting engaged in the field at a later stage in life, because by that point gender stereotyping has taken over and it isn't seen as a 'girly' thing to do. So... yeah. The STEM thing is a lot deeper than a 'boys club' mentality.


Yes.

which isn't really at odds with what I was saying. There is a massive culture problem that affects individuals across all levels of development.

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Re: Female Characters

Postby Duckay » 09 Jul 2014, 16:34

It's only tangentially related, but that made me think of a story. A few years ago I was walking around at the university, and a bloke started a conversation with me. A few minutes later, it became clear that he thought that I was an engineering student, and when I asked why, he paused and said, "I don't know, you just look like one." I still have no idea what that means.

Anyway, off that side-bar: there was something that I wanted to address from above.

J_S_Bach wrote:The issue I was referring to was when you have a character driven story with lazy writing which features a female character who's only character trait is "I'm female". We all know examples of this, the most glaring offender I can think of is Team Ninja (responsible for Ninja Gaiden, Dead or Alive 5, Metroid: Other M, etc.)


Yes, it is true that plenty of games are along those lines. However, I don't think this is evidence that we shouldn't try to include female characters; quite the reverse. We need a greater variety of female characters, and we (as a group of consumers) need to not accept that "I'm female" is the only alternative to "Steve".
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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 16:42

Duckay wrote:
Yes, it is true that plenty of games are along those lines. However, I don't think this is evidence that we shouldn't try to include female characters; quite the reverse. We need a greater variety of female characters, and we (as a group of consumers) need to not accept that "I'm female" is the only alternative to "Steve".


I suppose my social group and I are of the mindset that we would rather be tired of a "Steve" than be absolutely offended by a horrible portrayal of a female character. I look at it as a case of quantity versus quality. Ideally I'd like to see more female representation but of a higher quality writing. Perhaps we can convince Patrick Rothfuss to give game designers lessons on "how to write female characters and have them act like people".
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Re: Female Characters

Postby CulturalGeekGirl » 09 Jul 2014, 18:46

My pseudonym is Ix wrote:
Matt wrote:f we want more women in the industry, we need to give women a reason to be a part of the industry.

Funneling women into STEM educational paths will do little to affect industry demographics if, once women join the workforce, they find themselves having to sacrifice major aspects of their lives, and endure harassment and boys-club mentalities, while producing work that doesn't appear to value them as either creator or customer. They'll just leave.

-m

I'm studying engineering at the moment, a field that has about 10% women in it and has done for the last 30 years (and probably much more, I don't have the data to say). This is not because engineering is an all-boys' club; engineers are by and large a friendly bunch, and I've never seen any of the girls on our course treated anything other than normally. The same is true with regards to all evidence I have from industry; most male engineers have zero problem with women doing the job, because engineers prize something working above all else and their main concern is whether a person is capable of doing their job.


Yeah, you may never notice inequality of treatment. That's kind of the point.

Multiple studies have shown that when teachers allow boys to dominate class discussions, teachers and male students usually perceive that the talking time has been allocated equally. When one teacher actually made a conscious effort to improve the ratio of speaking time allotted, by the time he reached the point where they were truly being treated equally, both he and the boys in his class felt that he was spending 90% of his time on the girls. The problem is, boys are raised from birth so that situations where they dominate classroom conversation feel normal, and they assume that normal is equal. This pattern is found to be more prominent in classrooms with male teachers, and science teachers are more likely to be male because of the very real historical boy's club.

A club that, in the field of programming especially, was deliberately constructed by organizations that sought to turn a female-dominated field into a more prestigious male-dominated one.

These fields have also come to value aggressive, take-charge behavior. Studies consistently show that when women exhibit this kind of behavior, people perceive them as unlikable, whereas it does not have a negative impact on the likability of men.

This devastating anecdote from a sixteen-year-old girl hits incredibly close to home:
Sometimes I feel like saying that I disagree, that there are other ways of looking at it, but where would that get me? My teacher thinks I’m showing off, and the boys jeer. But if I pretend I don’t understand, it’s very different. The teacher is sympathetic and the boys are helpful. They really respond if they can show YOU how it is done, but there’s nothing but ‘aggro’ if you give any signs of showing THEM how it is done.


Oh man, I hear ya, anonymized study participant. I could never figure out why guys in my science classes were so much meaner and more "aggro" towards me than any of the other girls, until I realized that I'd been missing this social cue. My speaking habits more closely resembled the boys', rather than the more popular girls who employed the techniques she describes above, all the while getting the best grades in the class. It was clear their confusion was feigned, designed to reduce aggression. I've always been terrible at picking up on gender-based social norms, so I didn't learn this trick until years later, and I still suck at it.

What's more, studies keep showing that even when all other things are absolutely, completely equal, everyone - men and women alike - will subconsciously assume that men are better at technology things and favor hiring or mentoring them over equally qualified women. They will honestly believe they are judging solely on merit, but they won't be, at all.

So the engineers you're talking about probably THINK they're prizing someone's ability to do the job over all other things, but chances are they aren't. The study was specifically designed to debunk the common inaccurate assumption that you're putting forth in your post: that people in various science and technology fields would be unbiased about gender. Everyone thinks they're being unbiased and judging solely based on ability, but most people aren't, including women!

The boy's club is alive, well, and imperceptible to most people until we actually sit down and do science to it. How much of it is gender stereotyping in earlier life, and how much is an invisible silencing of women's voices? How much is omnipersistent micro-aggressions when they express themselves with the kind of assertiveness that boys are rewarded for?

The personal account of Ben Barres is very telling. He is a transgender computer scientist who reports startling differences in his treatment by colleagues during different periods of his career when his gender was perceived differently. So if there are circumstances where female students are being treated unequally, you probably wouldn't notice... and the female students might not be conscious of it either. It's not your fault, it's an omnipresent social force, one that we have to become consciously aware of if we want to fight it.

These days, sexism doesn't look like a fatcat chomping a cigar and saying "women can't do the job!" It looks like someone of either gender saying "I just want the best person for the job, regardless of gender" and then picking a man over an equally qualified woman because of an unconscious bias. It doesn't look like a woman being barred from a classroom, it looks like a woman being interrupted when she tries to contribute to the discussion, while a man is allowed to aggressively talk over her.

The only way to fight this is to be conscious of it. You gave us an innocent assessment of your perception of an environment, but studies show that those perceptions are often incredibly misleading.

I know you probably did not intend it, but the way you phrased your argument is characteristic of a new movement that attempts to attribute a lack of female representation in these fields to women's internalized sexism - a girl wants to be girly, and science isn't girly, so she chooses not to pursue it. There's very little research that reinforces that interpretation.

Instead, when gender stereotyping is a factor, it's almost always externally imposed. Women don't get into science because when they look for mentors, they find more encouragement in non-science fields. When they seek advice, they are not advised to go into science. When they excel equally at science and non-science, they are praised more for excellence in non-science. So women's perception of science as unfeminine and the "boys' club" are not two different forces pushing women away from science. Women's perception of science as unfeminine is a symptom of the "boys' club" of institutionalized sexism we often believe is a thing of the past.

So when you downplay the possibility that people in your field might really be treating women differently and play up the idea that some societal force takes hold of women and causes them to choose not to pursue science, it perpetuates a number of incredibly dangerous misconceptions.

The boys' club used to have a sign that said "no girls allowed." The sign's gone, they let them in the door now... they just pay them less, offer them fewer jobs, mock them if they are assertive, interrupt them when they speak, make threatening jokes at their expense, and then act surprised when all the women leave.

"We've got to figure out why women aren't interested in coming here!" they say.

The problem isn't deeper than the boy's club, the boy's club is deeper, larger, and more omnipresent than you could possibly imagine, and you've been trained your entire life to be psychologically incapable of noticing it.

The boys' club created the perception that computer programming isn't for women. They did it on purpose. It happened recently enough that we have the paper trail. They actually managed to reverse a perception that programming was women's work. This isn't just some untraceable social phenomenon, a vague societal problem - it's the direct result of deliberate actions designed to push women out of an industry. It happened less than sixty years ago. Some of these people are still alive.

And they would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for those meddling Smithsonian historians and experimental psychologists. They would have convinced everyone that this was a mysterious societal problem, that women in these fields are treated equally, that they are guilt-free - but if you take even the slightest effort to do research, you can pull the mask off.
mariomario42
Posts: 177
Joined: 03 Jun 2013, 13:35
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Re: Female Characters

Postby mariomario42 » 09 Jul 2014, 20:21

CulturalGeekGirl wrote:So the engineers you're talking about probably THINK they're prizing someone's ability to do the job over all other things, but chances are they aren't. The study was specifically designed to debunk the common inaccurate assumption that you're putting forth in your post: that people in various science and technology fields would be unbiased about gender. Everyone thinks they're being unbiased and judging solely based on ability, but most people aren't, including women!

The boy's club is alive, well, and imperceptible to most people until we actually sit down and do science to it. How much of it is gender stereotyping in earlier life, and how much is an invisible silencing of women's voices? How much is omnipersistent micro-aggressions when they express themselves with the kind of assertiveness that boys are rewarded for?


Dismissing a group of people that focus on their ability to understand an comprehend by some "invisible silencing" and "omnipersistent" force playing a larger factor than simple judgement of character and ability is silly. I'm part of the engineering group, and when it comes to engineering ability, it is on intelligence. There can be outside judgements and gossips that a wide variety of people, male and female, participate in since it's human nature. If people talking bad about others is the issue, there's a lot more to it.

CulturalGeekGirl wrote:These days, sexism doesn't look like a fatcat chomping a cigar and saying "women can't do the job!" It looks like someone of either gender saying "I just want the best person for the job, regardless of gender" and then picking a man over an equally qualified woman because of an unconscious bias. It doesn't look like a woman being barred from a classroom, it looks like a woman being interrupted when she tries to contribute to the discussion, while a man is allowed to aggressively talk over her.


In a real world environment, there are never equally qualified people. There is always a factor is separate people. For the rest, there are men that are aggressive. There are men who are submissive. Same for girls.

CulturalGeekGirl wrote:The only way to fight this is to be conscious of it. You gave us an innocent assessment of your perception of an environment, but studies show that those perceptions are often incredibly misleading.

I know you probably did not intend it, but the way you phrased your argument is characteristic of a new movement that attempts to attribute a lack of female representation in these fields to women's internalized sexism - a girl wants to be girly, and science isn't girly, so she chooses not to pursue it. There's very little research that reinforces that interpretation.

Instead, when gender stereotyping is a factor, it's almost always externally imposed. Women don't get into science because when they look for mentors, they find more encouragement in non-science fields. When they seek advice, they are not advised to go into science. When they excel equally at science and non-science, they are praised more for excellence in non-science. So women's perception of science as unfeminine and the "boys' club" are not two different forces pushing women away from science. Women's perception of science as unfeminine is a symptom of the "boys' club" of institutionalized sexism we often believe is a thing of the past.



This again is a bunch of assumptions that some "boy's club" has a bigger influence on an individuals life than loved ones, personal interest, and skills.

CulturalGeekGirl wrote:The problem isn't deeper than the boy's club, the boy's club is deeper, larger, and more omnipresent than you could possibly imagine, and you've been trained your entire life to be psychologically incapable of noticing it.

The boys' club created the perception that computer programming isn't for women. They did it on purpose.


This sounds like a conspiracy theory, and I'm gonna treat it like one. Sorry.
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Duckay
Posts: 3706
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Re: Female Characters

Postby Duckay » 09 Jul 2014, 20:50

mariomario42 wrote:For the rest, there are men that are aggressive. There are men who are submissive. Same for girls.


Of course there are. No one said anything to the contrary. The point being made was that aggressiveness is a trait that tends to be, in the workplace, praised in men and criticized in women.

Can I note, by the way, that it comes across as passively sexist to refer to "men" (a word we use for adults) and "girls" (a word we use for children) in your point? This is infantilizing women.

mariomario42 wrote:This again is a bunch of assumptions that some "boy's club" has a bigger influence on an individuals life than loved ones, personal interest, and skills.


No one said this either. The point being made (as I understand it) is that the "boy's club" has an enormous impact on how comfortable one feels working in an industry.
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JackSlack
Posts: 4572
Joined: 15 Oct 2010, 19:46
First Video: ENN, but I forget which.
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Female Characters

Postby JackSlack » 09 Jul 2014, 21:00

mariomario42 wrote:In a real world environment, there are never equally qualified people. There is always a factor is separate people. For the rest, there are men that are aggressive. There are men who are submissive. Same for girls.


Studies show that even when women do aggressively push for promotions, high visibility jobs and other improvement opportunities they are more regularly denied them than men are.

There may never be equally qualified people, but the evidence shows that being a woman hurts your chances in and of itself.
J_S_Bach
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Re: Female Characters

Postby J_S_Bach » 09 Jul 2014, 21:36

Duckay wrote:
Can I note, by the way, that it comes across as passively sexist to refer to "men" (a word we use for adults) and "girls" (a word we use for children) in your point? This is infantilizing women.


This is something I've been making a point to watch in my own language but I'm reminded of the quote "do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by [laziness]" (I don't believe stupidity fits in this instance).

The boys club is real and can be extremely toxic. My mother is a lawyer and a member of the Queens Council. She has been practicing law in her own firm for over twenty years, yet one of the only female lawyers in the same town I grew up in. She worked hard to get to where she is today and has been putting her name forward for openings at being a judge. Yet, when she was rewarded the Q.C. many of the old, backwards thinking men lawyers said she was awarded it only because she was a woman and Canada's justice minister has said that women are not being appointed to the bench because they aren't applying (which isn't true). I'd also argue that she participates in a different form of sexism, she exclusively hires only women, as secretaries, volunteers, and when law students study under her.

HOWEVER! That doesn't mean everything is roses and sunshine for men. The Canadian Justice system is extremely sexist towards men especially in family court. I've been the victim of sexism while I was in the public school system and trying to get employment at Summer Camps.

In my own career as the only violin teacher at a music school in Fredericton I currently have 17 female students (mostly girls ages 8-15) and only four male students (evenly split between boys and adults). In my experience my female students tend to practice more and enjoy the violin more than my male students, so when I have a waiting list of students and a time opens up I call the parents of the female students first because I feel they are going to get the most out of the lessons. Of course it's first come first serve and there have been some exceptions but it's how I've been able to keep a stable amount of students so I can have money to pay my bills. Though I'm afraid we're starting to swerve away from the main issue that the video brought up.

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