I don't understand why parents feel the need to be so politically correct. As 'yummyfajitas is sure to point out shortly, every empirical study ever conducted has shown that males have a statistically significant advantage in slaying Octoroks and Peahats.
I find this an appropriate comment by Hofstadter, in the Intro to 'Godel Escher Bach', on the gender of the Tortoise:
The Tortoise turns out never to have been attributed either gender. But when I first read it, the question never entered my mind. This was clearly a he-tortoise. After all, an author only introduces a female character for some special reason, right? Whereas a male character in a neutral context needs no raison d'etre, a female does. And so, given no clue as to the Tortoise's sex, I unthinkingly and uncritically envisaged it as a male. Thus does sexism silently pervade well-meaning but susceptible brains.
This was clearly a he-tortoise. After all, an author only introduces a female character for some special reason, right?
This kind of thing certainly applies to me and music. For some reason, it's hardly noticed when a North American of Hungarian, Polish, or French descent decides to play Irish Traditional music, but someone with Hispanic, African, or Asian descent playing that kind of music is frequently asked questions about how she/he got into Irish Music, or if they're in conservatory or are studying ethnomusicology, as if only "white" people are the default, normal human beings. A lot of this plain ignorance. For example, there's a thriving pan-celtic music scene in South America in countries like Argentina, where many people are playing the music as part of their heritage from celtic regions in northern Spain, like Galicia and Asturias, so there's no reason why the above attitudes should necessarily apply, depending on where in S. America that person is from.
Most people have a caricatured view of the world, where the only culture that matters is the majority's, and everyone else's culture is just some kind of distracting "flavor of the month" which only survives out of some sort of jingoism and has no deep artistic value on its own. Let me tell you, this perception has nothing to do with artistic value, and is only an illusion woven by political and economic power. Often the best music is made by people who have neither.
I think the assumption is that white people are the default kind of Irish people. White people playing some manner of traditional African music get asked the same questions, and it's not because black people are the default, normal human beings.
White people playing some manner of traditional African music get asked the same questions
This can happen. It depends on the context. There are contexts where white people don't get asked these questions about African music. I'm not so sure there are contexts where I'm not asked those sorts of questions about Irish Trad, just times and places where people are more reticent about asking than others.
Also, there's an additional difference. There is some small fraction of people who seem to think that I'm somehow defective/slightly crazy/deserving of ridicule for being of Korean extraction and playing Irish Trad. It's rare, but there's even sometimes some sense of resentment. More pleasant, but just as telling, there's sometimes some additional delight or pride that I in particular would choose to play Irish Trad, where my race seems to play a part. I never see the above happen in North America with white people who aren't Irish. I've also seen the same sorts of things happen to African Americans.
The third thing is this: mainstream North Americans don't view African traditional or Irish Traditional music as the default, normal music. It's also something of a "special flavor" to them, even though it was just the default, normal music in a different culture. An Asian person playing western "classical" music sometimes results in the same kinds of questions as Irish Trad, but often it's not even questioned at all.
If you are talking about the Tortoise and the Hare, I personally also identified the tortoise as a male, but the hare as a female. It's just how the words sounded in my head.
I have not read GEB; perhaps it's a different tortoise you are talking about.
In GEB, the protagonists are the Tortoise and Achilles. I think this particular passage is about the french translation that Hoefstader proof-read (as he's fluent in French); the French translator called the Tortoise "she", because "tortue" is of feminine gender so most "tortues" characters are naturally female in French.
Not quite. Achilles and the Tortoise originally came from an essay by Lewis Carroll. Hofstadter had borrowed them for GEB, and in doing so also borrowed their gender -- or so he thought. In reality when he went back to check, long after publication, he realized that Lewis Carroll had left the Tortoise completely genderless.
I dug up the book to check, and in the 20th anniversary preface page 16 and 17, a few lines before the previous quote there is :
"Mr Tortoise, meet Madame Tortue
A few years later, a wholly unexpected chance came along to make amends, at least in part, for my sexist sin."
And here comes the French translators part:"[...] they rather gingerly asked me if I would ever consider letting them switch the Tortoise's sex to female."
So I don't see what's the contradiction you're trying to point out.
Then it's probably my mix-up. An extremely similar passage occurs in Metamagical Themas, in which Hofstadter describes a conversation in which he first realized that he may have only assumed that Carroll's Tortoise was male. I've likely confused one with the other.
This I wonder about: do feminine and masculine (and nueter) pronouns indicate gender when used for non-people beings, or must they match the word of those things?
Ich hab' eine Hase, die wir Hans nennen.
The pronoun is feminine to match the word Hase, even though the hare is male as indicated by his name.
In french, the article or pronoun must match the word gender too, it's always "une tortue", even if it's "une tortue male". There are often two different words for male and female animals, though: "un lièvre" (male hare), "une hase" (female hare).
But cat, Katze (feminine), and dog, Hund (masculine), work. There are versions of these words for the opposite sex, Kater and Hündin, but there are used rarely. So 'Ich habe eine Katze, Felix' and 'Ich habe einen Hund, Bella' would be perfectly acceptable even though the gender of the noun doesn't match the sex of the animal.
> This I wonder about: do feminine and masculine (and nueter) pronouns indicate gender when used for non-people beings, or must they match the word of those things?
In french at least, words themselves have gender irrespective of the subject's gender. And pronouns usually match the word's gender. So a tortoise is feminine even if it's a male, so's a sparrow, a mole, a goat or a stork. Then, there may be subsets of the original word for each of the genders (or further differentiations by age). "Goat" in general is feminine but buck ("bouc") is masculine for instance.
Interesting. That also seems to back up my point that languages just make words sound masculine or feminine, even if not explicitly defined like in the Romantic languages (French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, others of similar origin). The fact that they are in a footrace seems to suggest they were lifted from their original myths though.
The race between the tortoise and Achilles (or sometimes Achilles and the arrow) is the common illustration of the best known Zeno's paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zenos_paradoxes
I think the idea is that when kids are growing up, they make subconscious connections and observations about the world around them. If a young child plays video games and consistently sees that boys are always the hero, they might extrapolate that to simply: "Boys and always the hero".
I don't have a strong opinion on the subject, I just thought I'd try and explain the position as I understand it.
> I think the idea is that when kids are growing up, they make subconscious connections and observations about the world around them.
Let me say that, in my experience, this is absolutely true. I grew up in Western PA, in a place where we had to drive 50 miles to visit other asians, who weren't even also Korean. I certainly made subconscious connections and observations about the world, many of which were hugely skewed by my environment. For example, it took me until I was in my 20's to figure out that my parents were as sarcastic as any other people. Absent any Korean community in which to observe interactions in that cultural context, I absorbed this notion that Koreans just didn't do sarcasm, which is absolutely incorrect.
In my case I assumed until I started primary school that all boys had blue eyes and all girls had brown eyes, because this observation just happened to hold for everyone in my immediate family as well as all of the neighbours' children that I played with.
This is very interesting! I'm a Bengali raised in a mostly white surroundings, though not as much as say Western PA. I too perecive my parents as not using sarcasm, and it being cultural. Though occasionally my mom will crack a joke, which I find quite startling. I don't really speak the language very well, so I can't really follow very when they talk naturally with other Bengalis. I wonder how much is in there that I'm missing.
I'm sorry but I'm firm to believe that the problem lies to the mind that makes the distinction first. If someone sees Link and the first thing that pops in his head is "what a shame he's not a girl" and retcon the intended storytelling to keep the content on par with their expectations then I certainly can't blame the game's creator. Not to mention that the boy isn't always the hero. I'll just bring another Nintendo saga as an example, Metroid which the main character is Samus Aran.
I know that the problem is that there aren't enough games that a young girl can play who offer character customization and that's not just alarming but also shows that there's potentially a market for that kind of games. What bothers me is that parents do not understand that they can't keep their children grow up in a bubble. This is clearly over-protectiveness over something that might or might not be interpreted erroneously over time by his daughter.
What is he planning to do? "Patch" every possible subconscious connections that his daughter might make for the next 5-10 years?
In some ways I hope it doesn't. Take the recent Deus Ex game, they steadfastly refused to offer a female view of the game.
Their reasoning was this was Adam Jensens story, and he is male, certain in game interactions would only make sense in that context.
That said, why we don't have more female videogame leads is beyond me. I'd like to see something like Deus Ex's opinionated take on games than say more of Mass Effect N's dual gender choice. The latter had some rather weird situations if you switched genders. Certain interactions became downright weird or even creepy.
But by no means is it "both halves." Game players are overwhelmingly male. And this has nothing to do with exposure or expectations, it's entirely possible that the female brain just isn't as interested in video games.
My fiancée enjoys Mario on occasion (and does complain that the princess always needs rescuing), but she flat out does not get into games nearly as much as I do. She could if she wanted to, absolutely nothing holds her back. She is also not unusual in this regard, women as a whole are less interested in video games.
So I disagree that game developers should feel obligated to cater to both sexes. Indeed, game developers should simply be allowed to make whatever games they please.
Nearing half the market of games that have protagonists? I think it's great that more women are gaming. And I'd love to be wrong about this, but it does seem like they mostly make up the casual end of the market.
I'd argue that the lack of strong, unsexualized and realistic female protagonists is the barrier here to begin with. The biggest argument I've heard from other women on why they don't play more "hardcore" games is specifically that they feel like they aren't represented in the scenarios these games present and when there are females, they don't look (or act) like they should if they were really in those situations. You don't tend to get a history of how she got there and what she went through. She's just there, in a tight little number, ready to jump around and look pretty.
The second complaint is not wanting to deal with the gender targeting that comes with gaming, both online and off. Girls feel like they can't be themselves (or even speak) in-game without being seen as or treated like a lesser competitor and they feel like they can't talk about them in real life situations without being labeled as a try-hard or someone that only got into it because of a boyfriend/brother, not because they actually enjoy it. You'll hear a lot of girls recount situations in which they're asked what their favorite games are, and when they answer with titles that aren't obscure enough, are told they're not real gamers. This is not to say that don't exist, but when you're treated like that's the norm, it's unsettling and makes you hesitant to bring the topic up in the future.
In having organized LANs for several years, I have dealt first-hand with the stares and questions dealing with my legitimacy in being there. Online, I've had entire teams target my player specifically and repeatedly with verbal assaults, kills and subsequent teabags despite having a gender-neutral name but a female avatar. It is not surprising at all to me why women would steer clear from this environment.
Third, a lot of women just don't talk about it because they don't see it differently from any other hobby they might have.
I think marketers just don't look hard enough to find who is really playing because they don't care. These tried-and-true formulaic games will keep bringing in the revenue they need to keep churning them out, why bother throwing a wrench in with inclusion?
It does suck that mainstream games nowadays are very macho-male oriented. But if you can look at the whole of gaming, there really are plenty of female protagonists, respectful and strong ones too. It's an annoyance of mine that games like Gears of War and Halo drive what most people think videogames are.
Online gaming is very male dominated. And yes places like Xbox Live are not exactly the best place for girls, unfortunately. But if you instead jump on Steam and play a game of Team Fortress 2 for example, it's a completely different story. Sexist, racist mouthy gamers are not always the norm. Different communities attract different types of players.
My fiancee loves the Tomb Raider movies. When I showed her that they are based on a video game series, she had no desire to play the games at all. I was careful to show her Tomb Raiders were Lara's boobs aren't ridiculous too. She has the opportunity to interactively play through the movies she loves, but that just doesn't interest her. Anecdotal, yes, but in my experience a lot of girls feel this way.
Samus is hardly an exception; put into a suit that erases secondary sexual characteristics, the question of gender was (in the first game) left until the last possible minute, as nothing more than a "gotcha." In future games, Samus's gender is still hidden behind the suit.
And the one game where they tried to actually make a character of her, Other M, portrayed her as embarrassingly weak-willed (making sure to make it about her gender as obviously as they could, no less) and verging on obsessive toward her (male) superior officer.
Metroid is a great series, but they do not win points for this.
The saddest part of Other M might be that its development was lead by the surviving co-creator of the original Metroid games, who does not appear to understand why people liked Metroid in the first place.
With all due respect, if Nintendo were to introduce Samus with the blue suit that she's wearing in the latest game, then we would have other kinds of problems, mostly to do with how female characters are designed to appeal the male audience. My personal preference is that I like her wearing the classic yellow suit. After all, if a male can wear protective gear when he fights against pirates in space, I don't see why a female shouldn't.
To be fair, the only games where the zero suit is featured except for the end game are:
* "Metroid: Zero Mission" She crashes, and thus doesn't have the power suit (for a while). Also, it was for the GameBoy, so the sex-appeal isn't as strong.
* "Super Smash Brothers" is probably the worst offender. (not a Metroid game)
* "Metroid: Other M": It apparently has minor occurrences throughout.
Everyone who plays the series today know she's a girl, though. The "reveal" gimmick of the first game is long forgotten and probably says more about this issue in the 80s than it says about it today.
In the first person games you can see her reflection pretty clearly in the helmet. I think other game characters often refer to her as 'she' as well (though I'm not certain of this).
I have a friend whose children were literally furious with her when they worked out that she'd been lying about Santa (which they immediately extrapolated to the tooth fairy, Easter bunny and so on).
Having young children myself I've thought a bunch about it. I'm not wild about the lying but when you see the enjoyment they get out of it, look back at how you felt about it when you were young (where deception doesn't rank highly amongst my recollections) and think about some of the other consequences (them being the only child in the playground who doesn't believe) generally you come down on the side of the lie.
My compromise (if you can call it that) is that I won't be one of those parents who strings it out when they seriously start questioning it. Aside form anything else at that point it seems like a great opportunity to ask them to exercise their reasoning skills to talk through why they're questioning it.
It's hours later and I'm just now responding, so this will likely get lost amongst the other comments, but... I distinctly recall playing The Legend of Zelda and having Link be completely genderless. It even led to a lot of interesting conversations amongst 10 year old kids about why Link and who was Link. Unlike Super Mario Bros., there are no stereotypically male or female aspects of Link. You're not rescuing the princess, you're working for the princess. I have always found the design of the original Zelda game fascinating in that regard, it's designed so that any player can project themselves onto the protagonist without any psychological conflicts...it's as minimal as the protagonist in centipede.
That adds something, and might clue one in earlier, but "every empirical study ever conducted has shown that males have a statistically significant advantage in slaying Octoroks and Peahats" is unlikely to be anything but a joke.
You should totally do that. I don't know how anyone reads HN any other way. (Not with my specific list, but with a list of people who will anchor sane conversations).
At first I thought you were actually encouraging me to post obtuse, self-righteous replies! Your advice (the correctly interpreted and misinterpreted versions) is taken under submission.
I love comments like these just because they reveal how many people don't actually read the comments they reply to (even if they're only two sentences long!)
I think the point was less to be politically correct and more to personalize the game towards his daughter. He seems to really care about video games and wants to create the best possible experience for his daughter so that she can share that love. A large part of video games is basically pretending to be the character you're controlling, and a three year old girl who renamed the character after herself is generally going to pretend to be herself.
This isn't political correctness run amok. This is simply a father trying to provide a positive female role model for his young daughter. Y'know, so she doesn't get the impression that heroism, accomplishment, ingenuity and adventure are of solely male provenance.
I'm curious - if it was a black father modding in a dark-skinned Link what would your reaction be?
Horrified. White people are better at killing Octoroks, and if telling black people that hurts their feelings, we should blame the Octoroks, not the white people.
This is great, and adorable. When I was a kid, I hated that I was a girl because boys had all the adventures in books. Fiction by authors that featured tough girls - Tamora Pierce being a notable example - helped turn that around. Girls want to go on wild chases in strange lands too!
Probably my absolute favorite book series are The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede. The protagonist is a princess who grows up hating all the typical princess things she's being taught so she convinces people to teach her swordfighting, magic, Latin, and other things princes are taught. When she gets fed up she runs away to be a dragon's princess and has all sorts of great adventures.
Those books are so refreshing and brilliant that I still reread them to this day.
This is a very cool hack, and I support the intention behind it. Still, it is something I would never do for two reasons:
For one, as an author, I disagree with altering a text for a political purpose. To be sure, this instance is fairly innocuous, and parents frequently change bedtime stories on the fly to suit their kids. Nevertheless I consider the Legend of Zelda to be a text with its own mythology and themes, and just as I wouldn't rewrite Hamlet as a girl for my daughter, I wouldn't do it to Link.
Secondly I think it is important to teach kids to have role-models of BOTH genders. Two of my brother's biggest fictional role-models growing up were Wonderwoman and Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. In the same way, girls can learn leadership and toughness from male protagonists and heroes. I'm not accusing this father of not knowing this, but it would be my approach were I playing Zelda with my daughter.
There is no dearth of male heroes. Your concern about her not encountering male role models is completely bonkers.
I’m also not sure what your exact reason for opposing changing a work of art is as long as the original is not destroyed. And what is this political purpose you are talking about? I don’t see any connection to politics.
I'm not concerned about her not encountering male role models. I wrote "girls can learn leadership and toughness from male protagonists and heroes." That's what I would try to do with Link, not make him into a female.
I'm speaking very generally when I say "political purpose". I don't mean that he is advancing an ideology, but rather he is addressing a gripe he has with society, specifically the lack of female heroes. He is addressing this issue by changing a text. I don't agree with this, though I assume the father's intent was purely to help his daughter and not to push his politics on anyone.
You view it primarily as "a gripe he has with society." I think he views it primarily as "I want my daughter to be able to pretend she is this character." There is a difference.
Ok, fair enough. I still don't think it necessitates changing the character's gender. I lived vicariously through a number of fictional heroes of the opposite sex. How this father approached this issue just isn't how I would approach it.
> just as I wouldn't rewrite Hamlet as a girl for my daughter
Actually, that's sort of an interesting thought experiment. I was going to point out "Get thee to a nunnery," but I guess "monastery" would work fine. I think the act of rewriting Hamlet with gender-flips would be a nice exploration of sexism.
It's been noted that in many parts of Africa, the reaction to Hamlet's reaction to his uncle would be: A man dies, so his brother marries the widow -- that's the good and proper thing to do!
Both Wonderwoman and Kusanagi are women designed by men. They are literally characters designed by men that dictate their views on how women should be. Even if they are relatively positive, they are still men transmitting their thoughts on how women should be.
What's interesting is that both of those characters have evolved considerably beyond their beginnings. I think it is oversimplifying to say that they represent men dictating "how women should be", but both Marston's Wonderwoman and Masamune's Kusanagi have been interpreted in drastically different ways by other writers.
If you believe that a character who's gender is the opposite of its creator is somehow invalid or cannot be a role model then I don't know what to say other than I don't agree. It's a subjective point and not particularly interesting to debate in my opinion.
Both Wonderwoman and Kusanagi are modeled with apparent sex appeal by male authors. Could they really still be good role models? I ask this as someone who don't know much about either comics.
Of course they can. Imagine a hypothetical comic with characters of both genders who are all sparklingly excellent role models in the way they behave. Now imagine that this comic was drawn by people who designed all those characters to be blatantly, panderingly sexy -- a fairly common situation, since sex sells, and cross-demographic appeal makes commercial sense. Does this make the characters poor role models, in spite of their good personalities and deeds? I doubt it.
These are not hypothetical comics. If the characters are primarly tools to entice male audiences, then they are unlikely to also serve as good role models.
The creation of Wonder Woman is actually pretty interesting -- it was done in collaboration with the creators wife, and she was modeled somewhat after a woman they were in a polyamorous relationship with. She was also explicitly designed to be a good role model for girls.
> In the same way, girls can learn leadership and toughness from male protagonists and heroes.
As inspired as I am by men in web development, I don't get the same feeling of confidence as I do from other women in the industry. I would say that while these heroes are naturally going to have a positive effect on anyone, the females are inherently more relatable - and therefore more influential - to girls.
Hayao Miyazaki uses female protagonist not because it is more "PC" but for the advancement of the story.
'Miyazaki: I don't logically plan it that way. When we compare a man in action and a girl in action, I feel girls are more gallant. If a boy is walking with a long stride, I don't think anything particular, but if a girl is walking gallantly, I feel "that's cool." '
I accept it's not specifically because it's PC, but that's not advancement of the story, that's just him applying his own perceptions and prejudices.
A girl walking a particular way isn't more significant than a boy walking in a particular way, he just sees it as such.
Generally in these situations it's best not to worry too much about the intentions the person had and just look at the end result. After all, intentions will often be unclear, lied about, recollection of why something was may change over time and so on.
It's interesting to hear what someone says, but what they actually produce is more important.
I'm about to be the father of a baby girl soon myself and there is no end to the anxiety I hold for the struggles she's going to face simply because she's a girl.
Although if she ever wants to know programming, maths, and how to solder a PCB I intend to be there for her... and perhaps editing hex dumps of games as well. Thanks for the tip!
I don't worry about it so much because I know as a father that I can make sure she has the opportunity and encouragement to pursue traditionally male-oriented interests. I worry more about other little girls whose parents may be the biggest enforcers of these stereotypes.
As someone who is myself about to be the father of a baby girl any day now, congratulations!
I have to admit, it is pretty shocking to realize for myself how gender-normative I am already being. Her room is Tiffany Blue and all her clothes are already pink. I hope I keep it to these superficial things...
It's very easy to encourage and support an outlook where the default gender is female, where heroes are female (even if they are princesses who favour pink). For us, all that was easy and natural. I'm now flummoxed by "Math is hard." And speaking of over-sexualized toys, that cultural norm is also easy to avoid.
It might be that part of our family culture includes a sense of cliquishness, so this all may circle back for ass-chewing later on; but for now it's good.
Congratulations to you both! It's a wonderful journey.
As a completely unscientific experiment I just did some colour searches on Google Images. Pink and blue images make up 65% of the results for the word 'baby'. As you've probably already discovered, a trip down to your local baby shop doesn't offer a huge variation from this in terms of baby clothes.
You mean about how there's no character named "Maya" in the Zelda canon? I think they'll be able to work past the character customization. Somehow even Mass Effect players manage to discuss their game.
Mass Effect players know and expect that players will have their own version of the main character with different genders. Nobody has that expectation about the Legend of Zelda.
My young son loves Studio Ghibli films. Nearly all the main characters Kiki, Chihiro, Ponyo, Arrietty, Satsuke and Mei etc are girls. He is a bit young for Mononoke and hasn't seen Nausicaä. About the only one he doesn't like is Porco Rosso. Role models are important but I don't know that all our kids heroes and game characters have to be same sex.
That would actually be rather interesting. A significantly more extensive hack though, and maybe not one as "necessary" as there isn't exactly a dearth of male heroes in 3D adventure games.
