As "discourse," this shit is tired, but man, there are still SO MANY people, and they are out in droves at the moment, who try to defend objectified female characters as "sexual," and frame criticism of them as being against "sexual expression." This remains as absurd as ever.
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Replying to @carolynmichelle
Tomb Raider 2 was pivotal for me. Maybe it’s because I was 17 when it came out, but I adored her. I adored that she was a bombshell. I loved that she didn’t have a love interest. I dressed as her that Halloween in NYC with cardboard and gaffer tape garter pistols and I loved it.
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Replying to @cgouskos @carolynmichelle
Maybe I’m naive or maybe I don’t care what the purpose was to the developers. I don’t presume to know. But she was awesome to me because she was sex/y/ual/ized. Maybe I’m subjugating myself for being okay with the “male gaze” but I think it’s okay if you are authentic about it.
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Replying to @cgouskos
It's absolutely okay. This is part of an ongoing conversation and I 100% don't think there's anything wrong with any of that. I loved those games and that character in my own way too.
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Replying to @carolynmichelle @cgouskos
What I'm responding to specifically here is the argument some--particularly men who clearly want the sexual objectification of women to remain routine in games—are making that to criticize her is to criticize female sexual expression itself.
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Replying to @carolynmichelle
Yeah I think our complexity here is intent. And where one man’s sexual object is a woman’s sexual revolutionary. I don’t disagree that we need more representation but I’d make the argument that we can have both. And intent matters even if it’s hard to identify.
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Replying to @cgouskos
Perhaps we can have both. But certainly in the 90s we really didn't, and often we really haven't. It's getting better, but by being the standard at the time, as valuable as Lara was to a lot of us, she also helped a lot of dudes feel comfortable that gaming was a space...
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Replying to @carolynmichelle @cgouskos
...in which women could and should be sexually attractive and available to them specifically. I'm not all that interested in intent. Impact is what matters. And as a trans woman who came to prominence in that culture when I did, well...
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Replying to @carolynmichelle @cgouskos
...the experiences I had left no doubt in my mind that a lot of men in those spaces fundamentally lacked something one requires to see women as human beings. That is 100% of course not Lara's "fault," but she also didn't threaten that, really, and there was a real dearth of...
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...representations of women that would have.
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