Sometimes ppl respond to arguments like this one with stuff like "Okay, but Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones is considered like the hottest dude ever. It's the same. Male heroes are also supposed to be extremely attractive." And no, it's not remotely the same. Because patriarchy.
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No reasonable person, IMO, is actually arguing for, like, a ban on attractive movie stars, or video game heroes, or comic book characters, or whatever. Nor is anyone really saying that female characters should never be desirable or express sexuality.
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I mean, in my view, Ellie from The Last of Us is attractive, and when she kisses Riley at the end of Left Behind, it was such a huge moment not just because it was an expression of queer love but because it felt like an expression of what Ellie wanted for HERSELF as a character.
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Believe it or not I want MORE of this kind of romantic & sexual expression from female chars in games, & less that feels like a hollow fulfillment of male fantasies. I mean, in TR 1&2, Lara was sexualized, she was what many find sexy, but she wasn't actually SEXUAL, was she?
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Here's a story I'm fond of telling because I think it is extremely revealing. When I started at GameSpot and first appeared in a video, there were NUMEROUS comments to the effect that women on a site like GS should be attractive to the site's core demographic of straight dudes...
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...and that by hiring me, clearly a woman who was not hired because of my perceived attractiveness or desirability to these guys, GS was in effect betraying its customers. This mindset, that women exist in those spaces purely or primarily to please men, didn't come from a vacuum.
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It was an attitude that years and years and years of video games, video game advertisements, magazines, websites, and other stuff had codified: Women in and around games should be desirable to you, the male consumer.
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Other folks, like the great Jeff Gerstmann or Greg Kasavin or Kevin VanOrd, largely got to be valued for their experience, their perspectives, their opinions. As a woman in that space, I was earmarked as having another primary purpose,...
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...one which I utterly failed to fulfill right out of the gate. And trust me, you can draw a fairly straight line from stuff like 1990s Lara Croft to a gaming culture so steeped in patriarchy and male entitlement that I, and women in general, are and were often evaluated this way
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Replying to @carolynmichelle
As a cishet man, let me thank you. Your passion and urgency helped me find mine. Now I advocate for accessibility in gaming and I make sure to organize inclusive panels. I've changed for the better because you and others have gotten me on the right direction. Thank you.
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That's very kind of you to say and very moving to hear. Thank you. 


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