You might be right but as a engineer i can tell you this. When you work on something complex for a long time you can get a bit weird about your finished machine, especially showing it of to others.
I am not talking about all characters being intelligent, i am talking about them being intelligently written. As in well portrayed.
Not just to be something sexy to look at while you gun stuff down.
And i dont want to ban such characters either, i just dont want 9/10 of the female characters i encounter in games to be so poorly written that it hurts my brain. I want fuller and more realistic personalities, to get that we need more women in the industry.
That is actually happening but to slowly and with a lot of ugly stuff floating to the surface along the way.
I live in Sweden and here it is pretty (and increasingly) common for men to take half of the maternity leave since it is encouraged by the government both financially and politically.
I don't want to force people that want to have defined roles to do stuff differently. I just want to remove the barrier caused by people expecting you to do things a certain way. Like Sinatra said, "i did it my way" and i am going to try to keep doing that despite what people think.
A lot of people has criticized (sometimes very openly) my wife for forcing her husband to stay at home with our child not realizing that i wanted this. People then go on to criticize her for leaving the baby with me since it could hurt the child on the basis of me being a man and therefore not being able to care for a child. Their logic is that a man has a masters degree in engineering and was a Sergeant in the army simply cant care for something as complex as a child. The sexism goes both ways and neither is pretty.
If a family wants to have more defined roles that is absolutely fine with me as long as they do it because that is their way, regardless of old misconceptions or people pushing to hard for change.
In general i would highly recommend men to try to take some leave to care for their kids, it truly is a great experience. Even if i have rarely been this tired in my life.
Women generally work more hours than men (see http://www.oecd.org/els/family/43367847.pdf) it is generally not until the age of 40+ that men work more hours than women.
That women work less and take more time off and so on is a misconception. So the wage gap is not just a propaganda piece.
... young, unmarried women without kids make more money than their male counterparts in the major cities across the States
This does not amaze me since more women than men are graduating college (and the gap is widening), but if they start out ahead in pay how does the dudes that start out with lower salary (which must be due to them being less educated and so on for the job) manage to blast past their more qualified female counterparts in a few years?
Also the fact that less and less men actually finish college has a sexist piece to it. it is becoming less and less "manly" to be smart and/or educated. Instead of people thinking of brains as manly it is increasingly becoming "nerdy" or even a outright "feminine" trait.
Sexism is not something that is bad for just women, it is really bad for men to. Having a unthinking aggressive hulk as a rolemodel for manliness is bad (i am being a bit hyperbolic here to make a point but i believe you are intelligent enough to see my point) for men and women alike. The same goes for the current stereotype that we have for women. Just look at the amount of idiotic female characters in games. Sure there are one or two good ones to but you have to wade through a lot of filth to get to a tiny nugget of reason.
I just pointed out that many countries does bar women from education and so on, i did not say the whole world does.
Maybe it is and maybe it is not representative, but it is real stories from real people and there are a lot of them.
Do you think that it is a isolated problem?
Do you really think that the gaming industry treats them exactly the same as men (keep in mind that it is statistically proven that they make less pay and less advancement than men in the same position)?
I have to go and play with my son now, but ask yourself this. If you have/ever have a daughter, would you want her to be treated in the way women around you are treated? Everything from coworkers grabbing her ass at parties, lower pay, "tits or gtfo" and "make me sandwich" stuff and however hard she works men with less experience, drive and education are promoted above her.
Just think about the world for a bit. You are entitled to your opinion but i think that the world can and should be better than it is right now.
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