Feminism, Fiction, and the Blowback Effect

(Here, I opine on a topic that has people debating like cats and dogs until the wolves howl. Yes, it's the growing divide between men and women, and boy, is it a nuisance to behold.)

I remember a time when fiction was far less complicated in terms of problems than they are today. Guy loves chick, chick gets kidnapped, guy saves chick, and they make out. It’s older than disco. Nobody complained. In fact, girls back then seemed to love a guy who rescues the damsel in distress. And of course, there was also nothing wrong with female heroes as well. From Judith in the Bible skewering an enemy general, to Joan of Arc and Isabella de Castile charging into battle wearing plate mail and backed up by knights, the past is chock-full of females who knew how to swing a sword or an axe and even led whole armies of men in battle.

And fiction reflected that fact: from the earliest days of comics and cartoons, heroines have surfaced to show that girls can duke it out with baddies and keep up with the tough guys, from Wonder Woman, to the females of the X-Men, to female cartoon and anime characters as well as females in novels and movies like Mara Jade and Princess Leia, both hailing from the Star Wars universe. As video games began to come to form and compete in the entertainment business with movies, TV, comics, and novels, they too engaged in the practice.

For every Mario and Link that saves the Princess, there’s a Lara Croft or a Samus Aran doing their own fighting and dirty work. For every male RPG hero like Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII, there’s a female RPG character like Terra from Final Fantasy VI. The first member of the Belmont clan to take the fight to Dracula was Sonia Belmont, the ancestor of Simon, Trevor, Richter, and all the other Belmonts who fought Dracula in the Castlevania games. Even non-playable females like Zelda/Sheik and Cortana, from Ocarina of Time and the Halo series respectively, guide male heroes and keep them out of trouble. Without Zelda and her alter-ego Sheik, Link would be lost in Ocarina of Time. Without Cortana in the first Halo game, Master Chief would have unwittingly destroyed all life in the Milky Way Galaxy by activating the titular Halo Array to deal with the Flood. Talk about dodging the bullet there, Johnny…...

Females in video games, both damsels in distress and action gals, existed without conflict. And female video game players had no problem playing as Mario to save Princess Peach, just as males had no problem playing as Samus Aran slaughtering the Space Pirates. Everything was hunky-dory, and there were no problems outside of a few moral busybodies who hated things because they were new and strange. And those idiots usually stop their crusades when it’s obvious that nobody sane supports them.

But nowadays, things seem to have changed. Thanks to the advances of the so-called “Third Wave” Feminist movement, there seems to be a growing hate for Damsels in Distress while an upsurge of action girls. There seems to be an emphasis on the so-called “strong female characters”-characters who are “strong” because they can scrap with the boys and swear like sailors in their presence. There seems to be this concerted effort to destroy the old image of femininity, defined by its subservience and cooperation with males, and exchanging it for an image of women defying and spitting at men and their expectations of women. They emphasize the idea of a strong female character defined by traits that make men strong-acting as if this was the first time such characters were present. Their total amnesia concerning the boom of action girls in earlier years like the late 90’s and early 2000s is only matched by their seething hatred of the Damsels in Distress trope-as if having female characters captured, held hostage, or even so as much needing a male to help them get out of trouble is so offensive against womankind that these so-called feminists froth at the mouth at even the notion of a Damsel in Distress.

And of course, this created a blow-back from the other side. So-called “Men’s Rights” or “Manosphere” movements have begun to shit on female fighters and tough girls, talking about how unrealistic it is for women to be able to fight or perform feats of strength and skill on the same level as men. In response to the feminists’ assault against the Damsels in Distress trope, these guys then attacked the Action Girl trope, talking about how poisonous and unrealistic it is to have women fighting in movies, video games, and other works of popular media. They get angry when men get slapped around by women in fiction, they get angry at seeing female characters being as strong as male characters.

Just as the feminists get angry at seeing women tied up or needing men to save them, these men get angry at the sight of women being able to fight alongside men and keep up/surpass them, even in works of fiction. They cite the unrealistic nature of such things being poison, even though 1) this is fiction, and fiction is fantasy, and 2) there are women who can fight alongside men and even lead them to battle. Judith is as iconic as any Biblical hero as Deborah, Daniel, David, Mary, or Moses. Saint Joan of Arc is so well-known in the Catholic Church that she has whole parishes named after her in multiple countries. Isabella de Castile, in her battles against the Muslims and her struggle to unite Spain along with Ferdinand of Aragon, laid the building blocks for one of the largest and most powerful Empires in the history of the world. And as for modern women who fight today, they do exist, provided one knows where to look. Just go visit Israel and start making cat-calls towards the female soldiers. I’m sure that you’ll come back home with more than just black eyes and a few broken teeth. Point being, just as the feminists poisoned the dialogue by having such violent hatred for feminine women and Damsels in Distress, so too did these “Manosphere” types poison the well by having such hatred for portrayals of women who can fight in popular fiction.

Amid all this chaos, I only had one thing to ask: When did it all go so wrong?

Well, for starters, let’s begin by dissecting both sides, shall we?

But first, I want to put in my personal view of both the Damsel in Distress and the Action Girl phenomenon.

I personally have no problems with either the Damsel in Distress trope, or the Action Girl trope. Both have their uses in a story, both have their limits and their proper place. For my money, neither trope is bad, it’s only what you do with them that counts.

As I said, prior to the outbreak of this so-called “Third Wave” feminism, women in fiction didn’t have it so bad. We had female characters who were Damsels in Distress, waiting for men to come and save them, and we also had female characters who were action girls, who prefer to let their fists, their legs, or their weapons do the talking. Some females can even be both; a female who is an action hero can wind up biting off more than she can chew and wind up getting captured, and she either has to wait for an opportunity to escape or wait for a friend to bust her out. A damsel in distress put through enough torment or given a method to escape and fight back can become an action girl if she finds the inner resolve to fight.

Some female characters even play both roles as a schedule; female action hero kicks ass, gets in trouble, gets tied up, escapes, and foils the bad guy’s plot. It’s to the point where getting tied up as a damsel in distress up is practically in an action girl’s schedule, just as punching the bad guy in the face is. Heroes in shows such as Kim Possible, Totally Spies, The Legend of Calamity Jane, the 90’s X-Men cartoon, and even some in more recent shows like Transformers Prime have female heroes and main characters who alternate between getting tied up and kicking the bad guy’s face in. Characters such as Kim Possible, Calamity Jane, and Arcee usually find themselves in trouble, getting tied up by villains now and then, but they have no problems defeating bad guys in fights and brawls when they do get loose. Another obvious example would be Princess Leia-she has no problems gunning down Stormtroopers when escaping Imperial forces, but nobody can forget the fact that she was held prisoner in all three Star Wars Original Trilogy movies, one way or another-nor can they forget the infamous metal bikini that she was forced to wear when she was Jabba’s captive. Yet that didn’t stop her from being a badass, and even while dressed up in the slave bikini outfit, she managed to assassinate the mighty Jabba the Hutt, the same man who held her future husband hostage thanks to a deal gone bad.

I grew up with some of these shows and movies, just as I watched other male-oriented shows like Dragon Ball Z, TMNT, the Justice League, other Transformers series, and the Gundam shows. And as for others, I came across them in my late teens and early adulthood. So to me, the concept of the Damsel in Distress was not exclusive or in opposition to the Action Girl phenomenon. Just as with male heroes like Conan the Barbarian, James Bond, and Han Solo, female hero leads sometimes have a habit of biting off more than they can chew and getting caught by the bad guy. The bad guy, either being smitten by the captive’s beauty or wanting someone to gloat to or torture, will keep the heroine alive. Then the heroine spots a chance to escape or gets freed by a friend or associate. She then foils the bad guy or fights them off enough to drive them away, or in Leia and Arcee’s case, kill a whole bunch of enemy soldiers on their way out. Some of my favorite female action heroes get “damseled” on a regular basis, and it does nothing to reduce their badass factor in my mind. In fact, surviving captivity and torture kind of does the opposite-to be able to survive the humiliation of capture and the hardships of torture makes them stronger, in my opinion. Heck, I’m currently on my way to creating some characters for a fanfiction that are both damsels in distress and action girls. Part of this is because I enjoy such stories. But another part of it is me trying to revive something that both sides of the gender movement aisle seem to despise.

But we’re not just here to discuss how I view these characters, we’re here to discuss how the modern feminist movement and the men’s-right backlash ruined this discourse for both sides of the gender aisle.

THE FEMINISTS.

Ah, yes, the feminists. To think that I once thought myself a feminist. Back then, it was all about gender equality, trying to fight for an equal wage, or addressing violence against women done by cultures that have a backwards view of women’s rights. Now, it seems that feminist discourse is dominated by trigger warnings, safe spaces, a hatred for male-dominated spaces and activities. Feminism has become a parody of itself. The stereotypes that enemies of feminism in the past laid out-stereotypes that they tried to use to justify denying women the vote, equal wages, or equal rights in general are now stereotypes that third-wave feminists embody. Stereotypes like a hate for men, hatred of chivalry and feminine responsibilities, hate for property, law, and order, are now coming to life with women who see chivalry as sexist, feminine responsibilities like child-rearing and family as a prison, and property rights as evil, now that the feminist movement seems to have gotten in bed with the Communists.

(As an aside: What is it with Feminism and Communism being so close, anyways? Communism was invented by dead old white guys. Aren’t those the types of people feminists are supposed to dislike? During the heyday of Communist nations in the globe, none of the major ones had female leaders. Medieval kingdoms, Renaissance kingdoms, even ancient Empires like China had more female leaders than the Communists did. How is it that Pakistan and the Philippines, both countries in Asia dominated by religion and traditional ways, manage to elect female leaders as heads of state while none of the major Communists Republics ever had a female leader? Does that not suggest that Communists are sexist pigs whose talk of gender equality is shallow, especially with Communist countries like China where old men are dictating to women how many kids they can have?)

Of course, it was only a matter of time before they turned their hateful gaze towards forms of entertainment. Outside of the silver screen, cartoons, anime, and video games were once a male-dominated field, with most toons and games catering to young boys, even though there was no shortage of female-centric or pro-female shows and games. Still, the fact that a large percentage of these mediums catered to boys was something feminists didn’t like.

Animation seemed to be a side battleground when it came to this struggle, at least on the side of Western animation. It seems like the replacement of shows from being boy-centric to either being female-centric or having a unisex cast isn’t really that much of a jump; plenty of cartoons in the 90’s and early 2000s had female main characters or a cast of male and female heroes. And there were still good shows in recent years that catered to the wants of both boys and girls, like Transformers Prime, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the Marvel/Guardians of the Galaxy cartoons, although the numbers seemed to drop and the cartoons got tamer and softer.

Transformers Prime, which was one of the most mature and violent iterations of the Transformers franchise, was succeeded by the more tame and child-friendly Robots in Disguise cartoon, while the Clone Wars cartoon that delighted in killing off side characters that the audience knew and loved got a similar, softer follow-up in Star Wars Rebels. However, the old classical Disney days of the male hero saving the Damsel in Distress, embodied in stories like Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, are well and truly gone, replaced by cartoons where females are either co-stars of male heroes, or the main protagonists of the show.

Japanese Anime, however, was a far more brutal battleground in this so-called “war”. Being unrestrained by American standards of political correctness and sexual restrictions, anime has always been a battleground for moral guardians and their feminist, social justice successors. Accusations of anime being misogynistic and unable to represent females fly left and right across the social justice spectrum. Shows like Dragon Ball Z and the many different Gundam series having few female fighters was a sore point for the feminists, and on the other side, shows that had female fighters from Naruto, to Bleach, to Sailor Moon, among others, are accused of objectifying the female form via fanservice shots and outright sexualized presentations, and therefore, guilty of sexism-which is feminist code word for being a bad influence on the public.

Similarly, feminists don’t have a positive reception to the Yamato Nadeshiko trope that Japanese animation flaunts now and then. A Yamato Nadeshiko is a female character who, while showing manners, respect, and subservience to the rules of society and deference towards the men in her life, still has somewhat of a steely resolve and an idealistic heart. However, while the trope is well-loved by Japanese fans, it is less effective in the west where action girls seem to be more well-loved. So while Japanese fans and western fans who don’t care about political correctness will have a positive view of characters like Lacus Clyne, Relena Peacecraft, or Marina Ismail, some westerners, and feminists especially, will see them as doormats who refuse to take the fight while the men do almost all the fighting. As I previously mentioned, feminists have a negative reception of characters who seem to act dependent or subservient to men, and while the Yamato Nadeshiko characters do show a steely determination to make their ideals come true, the fact that many of them don’t fight directly, and the fact that many of them rely on male characters to fight for them causes many western feminist viewers to despise them.

And that’s outside of shows like Kill La Kill that do have action girls, but have extreme sexualization of the female cast, or shows like Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne, which have female characters being exposed to extreme violence and gore. Not to mention the whole gamut of anime porn that has no problems portraying women as rape/torture victims. Other depictions of females run from well-meaning characters who tend to bite more than they can chew, like Bulma, (from DBZ) or women who tend to show the “bitchy” maternal side of womanhood, like Chi-Chi, (also from DBZ) or women that constantly get caught and need rescuing, like Sailor Moon’s Serena. So, between these depictions, feminists who want a non-sexualized action hero have few choices in anime, especially when female action heroes in anime tend to be sexualized. Top that off with a moe trend in anime where the wide-eyed “cute girl” is seen as something to adore and pat on the head like some cute puppy, and feminists naturally see anime as an alien art that doesn’t cater to their desires.

Unlike Western Animation though, Japanese animators know who their fans are, and they stick with those fans: fans from both the east and the west who like anime for what it is and what it does, so all the Japanese animators do is serve more of the same in new tinsel, because they know that catering to their fans is how they keep the lights on in their office, and they know that Western feminists can’t touch them while they’re all the way in Japan. Pro-feminist censors can try all they like to censor anime from official channels; anime fans can just subvert them and either watch subbed episodes on the internet or stream episodes live from Japan through online services, both legal and otherwise. And there’s always the DVD option on the table, so that’s another strike against feminist censorship.

And of course, there was the feminist assault on video games, which caused the mother of all blowbacks against political correctness, GamerGate. GamerGate caused a mass expose of liberal bias in both the games media and the media at large, causing many former liberals to switch sides and become anti-liberal or downright conservatives. If you were wondering how a country that elected Obama in 2008 wound up voting for Trump eight years later, one of the major causes of that, aside from Democrat political inefficiency and support for terrorists abroad, would be how GamerGate changed the cultural zeitgeist and caused the liberal propaganda machine to sputter and crash. What caused such a titanic backlash so powerful it wound up permanently damaging the liberal media propaganda machine?

Well, it’s because of the seething hatred the feminists had for the video game industry and consumer base at large, as well as the liberal media’s insistence on covering for these feminists. The feminists vilified many games and aspects of games openly, and the games media and the liberal media both sacrificed their name, their honor, and whatever dignity they still had in the eyes of the gaming public by defending these feminists.

Feminists hated almost everything about the video game industry. The games that portrayed traditional male heroes saving princesses and other Damsel in Distress characters. The violence that appeals to many young boys. The fact that female action heroes are “objectified” because they look sexually attractive. The feminists singled out classics like Mario and Zelda for upholding the traditional trope of a male hero saving the “Damsel in Distress”. When they weren’t brushing aside female heroes when brought up by gamers as examples of “badass” female characters, they were blasting said heroes for being sexualized, ignoring the fact that sex sells, and that the primary audience for these games were boys. Not to mention that other female characters like Terra from Final Fantasy VI and Samus from Metroid aren’t sexualized-one’s made of low-res pixels and the other spends the whole game in body armor with only one or two scenes of skin-showing.

They also ignored games where one can create a female character and dress said character up to their liking. Want a female character who doesn’t dress up like a whore? Make one that’s a warrior or a soldier and dress them up in armor. Or a mage wearing long, draping robes. Feminists complain about female characters dressed up in sexy outfits that can’t possibly serve as armor, ignoring the fact that there’s no shortage of games where they can create a female character and dress them up in full head-to-toe armor like knights. The one time they do recognize this truth, they complain about male players creating female characters so they can exercise control over women in the digital world.

Almost everything and anything they can get their hands on is something to complain. As the feminist Anita Sarkeesian once said, “Everything is sexist, everything is racist, everything is homophobic, and you have to point it all out.” The feminist attitude, especially towards video games, is to go even worse than inquisitors and assume that anything that can be construed as sexist IS a willful and malicious act of sexism. At least the Inquisition actually did look for proof of someone being a heretic and asked for local jurors to make the decision. These feminists took it upon themselves to be judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to labeling things as sexist, racist, or homophobic. No wonder the reaction from the gaming community was as violent as it was tenacious.

And the funny thing is, video games with female leads were already a mainstay of the gaming market even before Gamergate and the feminist push into video games. Even from the earliest days, we had female video game characters like Ms. Pac Man. The last Final Fantasy game for a Nintendo console, Final Fantasy VI, had a female lead, Terra, whom as I said, was made of low-res, 16-bit pixels, not the kind you can make fantasies of unless you know a very good artist who can make sexy fanart of the characters. One of the most well-received Nintendo FPS games was the Metroid Prime Trilogy, and it was seen as Nintendo’s answer to Halo, considering that both the Halo trilogy and the Metroid Prime trilogy were high-class, first-person shooters that came out in the same console generation. And the Metroid Prime Trilogy is a trilogy where the female hero, Samus Aran, SPENDS ALMOST ALL THE TIME OVER THE COURSE OF THE THREE GAMES IN ARMOR. IN FIRST PERSON, NO LESS. How can you objectify someone who spends the whole game wearing battle armor? The only way you can get a sexy scene with her is if you finish the third Metroid Prime in record time and MAYBE get a peek of her in a spandex suit at the end. Heck, Samus Aran’s first two forays into the fighting game series, Super Smash Bros., had her in full armor. Only in the third and fourth games did they finally have her fight in blue spandex as a bare-bones woman, instead of a woman trapped in an armor that made her into a near-inhuman killing machine.

And there is, of course, the games where you had either the choice of making your main character male or female, or the choice of using male or female characters already made by the story. Or both.

Halo Reach, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy are examples of games where you can customize how your female character looked like, if you chose to play as a female. They have you choose your character, male or female. The former allowed the player to customize the Spartan armor of their player character, Noble Six, as well as decide whether or not Noble Six was a man or a woman. (As you can see from my gallery, I personally chose a woman.) You can dress him/her up in a bare-bones armor suit that looks more lightweight, or put on the bulk with chest pieces and shoulder pads that would make your Spartan look like the kind of guy or gal who juggles trucks for a living. And yes, if you create a female Spartan, she will be in the armor the whole time. The only time she takes off the helmet is in the intro, where she puts it on, and in the end, when she’s dying, and you never get to see her face. The most fanservice-y moment we have with female Spartans in Reach is if the camera pans over to the female Spartan’s butt, but to be fair, they do the same thing to males. It’s not sexism if it’s equal treatment.

As for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you can choose many different paths for your character. You can make them male or female. You can make them one of the many human sub-races, like Redguard, Nordic, Breton, or Imperial, or you can choose other races, like reptile Argonians, cat-like Khajit, or one of the different types of Elves, from the Altmer(High Elves), Bosmer(Wood Elves), or Dunmer(Dark Elves). And you can choose to make your character a warrior, who relies on armor and weapons, a thief, who relies on stealth and the bow, or a magician, who shoots different types of elemental attacks, heals themselves and their partners with healing magic, and summons magic creatures such as Daedras with flaming swords or Cthulu-esque monsters that fire magical attacks. Or, you can choose to take all these paths at your leisure and create a character who looks and fights like a knight, but is good at archery and stealth. Or a thief who can use magic alongside with her sneaking skills to turn invisible to the naked eye. Or a magician who fires off lightning bolts and ice spikes while protected by the most hardiest of Daedric or Dragonbone armors.

And of course, you can dress up your character accordingly. If you choose a female character, you can go either way-you can take the most revealing of clothes, like the default undergarments, the Forsworn clothes, the light fur armors, the tavern clothes, or the seductive female vampire outfits, and tramp around like the kind of girl who would make guys’ tongues drop to the floor. Or you can go with the whole “lingerie is not suitable armor” crowd and cover yourself up in chainmail or plate mail armor, or even the robes of magicians. There’s different types of armors, from the Roman-esque armor of the Imperials, the sleek and elegant Elven armors, the ornate and tough Dwemer armors, or even the demonic-looking and sinister Daedric armors, giving that extra touch of darkness for those who want to become the next supervillain of Skyrim. Although sadly, most robes for magicians look rather ordinary outside of the Thalmor Mage robes or the Archmage’s robe, the latter of which is the prize for beating the Mages’ College questline in Skyrim. The former looks a bit more official, like a cross between a military uniform and a mage’s robe, and the latter gives of a unique, dignified look that the most important mage in Skyrim is definitely worthy of.

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is another game where you can customize your look, although it’s just different sets of Jedi robes this time. In this game, you play as a Jedi, going to an academy set up by the son of Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, and you can choose to make your Jedi male or female, and to give your Jedi different colors of Jedi robes, different colors and types of lightsabers, as well as different species of Jedi, whether it be human, or the different types of aliens available, like the Zabrak or the Twi’lek. In here, there is no possibility of objectification, because the robes offered by the select screen do not have an option to have a revealing outfit. Your character is a Jedi, doing Jedi assignments, and unlike a roleplaying game like Skyrim, where you can get different sets of armor and robes, this game is more akin to action/FPS, where your starting look is permanent for the whole playthrough. The game switches in between the action and FPS aspects when you take out your guns or your lightsaber.

There are games where you can choose between male and female party members, and of course, some of these games feature female party members accordingly. I could not understand where Sarkeesian and the other feminists come from when they accuse most major gaming companies of catering to men, when major games from revered series like Final Fantasy 13 had a cast of male and female characters, and in that game, the cast was evenly split-three males and three females. You had an easygoing jock named Snow, a worried father named Sahz, and a vengeful boy named Hope for the male cast, and the females had a tough fighter named Fang, an easygoing girl named Vanille, and the main character of the game, the professional soldier known as Lightning, whose main weapon alternates between a gun and a sword.

I don’t know how Sarkeesian and her fellow feminists missed this major release, along with games like Skyrim, Halo Reach, and the Metroid Prime trilogy. Final Fantasy 13 is reviled by most gamers now, for its linear design, but when it came out, it was big, with many gaming sites and magazines giving it glowing reviews, a long line of fans lining up to get the game, and even today, it has its hardcore fans and defenders. How in the blue hell did the feminists miss this? Also, again, the female cast isn’t much sexualized outside of the odd leg-skin-thigh gag that comes up once or twice. Vanille and Fang wear dresses, and Lightning wears a military uniform. She wasn’t tramping around the streets of Cocoon like a cheap whore looking for attention. In fact, since the main cast are fugitives in a fascist police state, they tend to try and blend in with the crowd.

And of course, there’s games that have both those things. Games like Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2, and their modern successors, the Mass Effect Trilogy, had both an ensemble cast of male and female party members, as well as a player character that can be either male or female. The party female members in the first KOTOR game included Bastila Shan, the famed Jedi prodigy of that era, as well as another powerful Jedi named Juhani and a brave street urchin named Mission Vao. The second KOTOR game ups the numbers, with a very powerful close-combat expert code-named the Handmaiden, a Sith with special Force sight powers named Visas Marr, a well-known elite bounty hunter named Mira, and a very introspective Jedi Master named Kreia.

In these games, you can create a male or female character, dress them up however you want, and also play dress-up with your male and female party members, in whatever manner you’d like. When it comes to clothing for the female player character and party members in the KOTOR games, it’s the same deal as with Skyrim. You can dress your female character and party members up in space armors akin to Imperial or Mandalorian armor. You can dress them up in Jedi robes. You can dress them up in light armor or civilian clothing. And you can choose to forgo that and have them tramp around in undergarments, or, in the case of KOTOR 2, have your female character and party members try out the metal bikini dancer’s outfit that is gifted to you after you take a job dancing for a Hutt, which is optional. You can ignore these options to show off the female characters’ more………..attractive features and have them spend the whole game wearing armor or Jedi robes. The same goes for the 2011 sequel to these two games, the Massive Multiplayer Online game, Star Wars the Old Republic. Once again, you can choose to have your character be male or female, and the female player character and her female cohorts can go into battle with armors, uniforms, robes, or even skimpy underwear, all at the desire of the player. You can choose to have your characters look sexy, or have them wear armor, uniforms, or robes all the time.

Mass Effect 1 has no choice for undergarments, but you can choose whether or not your party wears skintight light armors or medium/heavy armor sets. The most sexualized dress-up you can do in the ME trilogy is have your female player character, Commander Shepard, choose to wear the cocktail dress in Mass Effect 2 and 3, although, for my tastes, the dress in 2 looks better than the one in 3, and the dress in 3 looks horrible. In my humble opinion, it’s better to have your female Shepard in ME3 wear the Admiral’s uniform for an increased air of dignity and pride, now that she’s leading a bloody war effort. Female Shepard can pursue a romantic interest in any of the characters, which results in a sex scene where she is temporarily naked or in underwear, but for the most part, one can ignore those options and fully commit to winning the battles that the story throws at the player. Shepard can be monogamous, or have multiple love interests, or they can even be chaste, even as celibate as a Catholic nun, if the player so desires.

Point being, there’s plenty of games where you not only get to play as badass female characters, there’s also plenty of games where a badass female player character isn’t objectified. Not all female game characters are like Lara Croft or Bayonetta where they have to be sexy to be accepted. There have been female gaming characters who have been both badass, and non-sexualized, and there will always be. And they have been in the gaming world LONG BEFORE feminist politics came into the gaming world. This feminist drive to enter the gaming world was totally unnecessary-female game characters have always been in the gaming world, ever since Samus Aran of the original 1980’s Metroid turned out to be a woman and Pac-Man suddenly had a female counterpart. The feminist drive to criticize the industry for not having enough female characters was not only unnecessary, it was a joke. It was a clear sign that all these third-wave feminists did was take a look at the large bevy of male-centric games, and they took that as an excuse to bitch about how there weren’t that many games for females without sexualization, even though the games I mentioned above had examples of females being action heroines without being explicitly sexual. The sexualization and attractiveness is either non-existent as an option, or an optional thing on the side that can totally be ignored.

KOTOR came out in 2003, along with Jedi Academy, and the second KOTOR game came out the following year in 2004. Mass Effect 1 came out in 2007. Halo Reach, Final Fantasy 13, and Mass Effect 2 came in 2010. Skyrim came out in 2011, along with the Old Republic MMO. Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012. The Metroid Prime trilogy was released around the same time, with the first game coming out in 2002, and the last game coming out in 2007. All of these games came out long before the feminist push into video games and GamerGate. And yet, the feminists could not be bothered to look up these games that had badass female characters who can fight without being forced into objectified sex roles. At this point, it almost feels like I’m talking to a brick wall here, and nothing I say can ever convince these people. And it’s not like these titles were minor releases, either.

The Metroid Prime series is seen as the pinnacle of the Metroid franchise, the last swan song of the franchise before it sank into “mediocrity” with Other M and Federation Force. Not to mention that the revamped Trilogy version of these games made good use of the Wii controls as some of the smoothest motion-control FPS games in existence. Halo Reach was the last Halo game made by the makers of the Halo franchise, Bungie, before they handed the reins over to 343 Industries, and they made a big show of how Reach was THE definitive ultimate Halo game, made by the guys who made Halo. KOTOR 1, KOTOR 2, and the Old Republic MMO were some of the most well-known Star Wars RPGs out there, known well for quality storytelling in an epic scale, that takes place in an era where the Jedi and Sith numbered in the thousands. Jedi Academy was the last game in the Jedi Knight series, and like Halo Reach, was seen as the pinnacle of that beloved series. Final Fantasy 13 was seen as one of the most important Final Fantasy releases out there, to the point where it got two sequels to its specific numbered entry, Final Fantasy 13-2 and Lightning Returns. And of course, the Mass Effect series garnered great attention with each entry, to the point where when the ending for the third game failed to deliver, fans practically went nuts, and that caused a shitstorm in the internet.

These feminists are tech-savvy enough to the point where I’m sure they can do a quick Wiki search and find enough games with non-sexualized female protagonists. Enough of these games exist that they’d take a long time to play them all. But of course, actually playing games like these would be hard, so let’s take a look at male-centric games and blast them for being male power fantasies, even though games that cater to both men and women, not to mention Triple A games that cater to both genders, already exist and are some of the most well-known games of all. Let’s also not look at the fact that there’s a large gaming culture in mobile devices such as Iphones that consist of puzzle games like Bejeweled and Candy Crush that plenty of women love to play. No, let’s ignore the fact that there are games that cater to males and females, as well as games that specifically aim for a male or a female demographic, and just accuse the whole industry of sexism because there’s male power fantasies and sexualized females in gaming.

Male power fantasies exist for one reason-to create a story where a male character acts as an avatar of strength. It’s a game that men and boys play to feel tough, to feel good about themselves and entertain themselves. Complaining about games like the Witcher 3 where the main male hero, Geralt of Rivia, is allowed to bang chicks left and right is asinine, because that’s part of the game. Just as there’s games like Candy Crush and Bejeweled that seem to cater to women, so too are there games like Witcher 3 that cater to men’s fantasies of being a badass monster-killer who plows chicks left and right. However, both males and females can play and enjoy these games. God knows I’ve had female cousins and friends play Mario games long enough to discover that female gamers who are real gamers don’t give two shits about the gender of their avatar. If they can play as a female avatar, all the better for them, but they’d more than happily play Mario, Zelda, Star Fox, or Halo without having the male hero undergo a sex change. Not to mention that games with bishonen-type male heroes might have a good female fanbase who finds the heroes attractive. Heck, if Team Fortress 2 can have fangirls, then so can Final Fantasy XV, a game with an all-male cast that has bishonen boys as the main characters of the game.

And of course, there’s better ways to petition game companies to create versions of these games that have female playable characters. Wouldn’t an official petition be better than say, accusing the franchises of Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox of sexism? Wouldn’t a more civilized and gentle approach be more diplomatic, not to mention garner more support from the gaming community? Come on, women pride themselves on being more gentle and civilized than men! Can’t they pull it off? Wouldn’t a parade or petition outside of a Nintendo office in a public place, like say, New York City, garner more support and attention to create a Mario, Zelda, or Star Fox game with a female character at the lead? Rather than just bitching like dykes and accusing these franchises of sexism? Even though there already are Mario, Zelda, and Star Fox games with female characters being playable, such as the Paper Mario games, Hyrule Warriors, and Star Fox Command? Can’t the feminists just ask for more of them, politely? Wouldn’t a movement like the Social Justice Warriors get more things done and more people on their side if they added a bit of politeness to their rhetoric, disarming those who would oppose them by being more mature?

Apparently not. These SJW feminist types seem to take more of a cue from the more provocative of the leftist instigators, and instead rely on censorship and denial and drown out the opposing side’s more reasonable members, instead focusing on the trolls, practically acting like the very same trolls they complain about. Well, the problem is, if you act like a troll, then people will treat you like a troll. It’s as the Game of Thrones villain, Roose Bolton, once said to his sadistic son, Ramsay: “If you acquire a reputation of being a mad dog, you will be treated as a mad dog. Taken out back and slaughtered for pig feed.” No wonder the reaction against feminists and SJWs by the gaming community was so violently furious.

The same problem goes for the other members of this radical new left: If these feminists and SJW activists intend to keep acting like violent upstarts, eventually, those in charge will treat them as such, especially now that the political right has retaken control of the government. If these feminists and leftists intend on harassing the new authorities up to the breaking point, then the ruling party’s patience will wear thin, and I shudder to think what the new right will do to counteract the left. We’ve already seen the rise of the alt-right, and even though Trump has tried his best to distance himself from them, if he’s cornered, he might actually give them a call and empower them to strike at these would-be activists. If President Donald Trump gets either killed or impeached, his Vice President, Mike Pence will take over, and Mike Pence was the kind of right-winger who once thought shock therapy will cure gays of homosexual tendencies. Trump, despite his banning of transsexuals from the military, has gone on record saying that violence against gays is intolerable. Imagine if that gets replaced with a new president who thinks that rounding up gay people and giving them the shock treatment is a good idea.

The leftist gaming media tried to cover for the left, and all they got was a bruised ego and the loss of confidence from the gaming public, who now rely on word-of-mouth and smaller, independent review sites for their gaming news. The gaming media was caught with a memo called “GameJournoPros”, a list that sets out what gaming news websites are allowed to talk about, and most of it was leaning towards the left, preventing meaningful dialogue of leftist/feminist topics that criticize people like Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian. The revelation of this, of course, only caused the gamers to disavow their own media, especially when the media started attacking the community for imagined sexism and racism, even though women and non-whites have been integrated in the gaming community for years. Sure, there was the odd sexist or racist insult here and now, but that usually comes from ill-tempered folks in multiplayer chatboxes, usually kids playing around and trying to sound tough by throwing around insults. Unlike real bullies in schools, one can easily mute these annoyances with a simple command from the console. However, once again, the feminists took the few offenders who were truly sexist or racist, and tried to paint the majority of gamers as such. Which, of course, only elicited anger from the rest of the gaming community that was neither racist or sexist when they got accused of being racist or sexist.

Point being, feminists have really screwed the pooch in addressing modern fiction. Instead of a reasonable critique, now, any person who identifies as a feminist in front of the likes of gamers and anime fans will be met with eyerolls and sighs. “Here we go again”, they will mutter to themselves, expecting the feminist to start raging about how video games or anime are sexist. Feminists have to improve their movement’s reputation in these communities, and the more whiny they get, the more militant these communities will be against feminism. To the point where anyone who identifies as feminist in their presence will trigger their hostile instincts. Feminists pose themselves as defenders of women’s rights, but instead of defending women who are being forcibly circumcised or stoned to death for getting raped, it seems that picking on nonexistent sexism is more to their liking. I suppose it makes sense-the people who would stone a woman for getting raped are the kind who will kill people who criticize them publicly, so I suppose attacking the traditional “nerds in their mothers’ basements” is a safe bet for them.

Speaking of hostility for feminism………

THE MANOSPHERE

I will come out with a confession: I used to hang around with these guys. Especially during the Gamergate days. I admit, I once considered myself one among them. I was once proud of identifying myself as a member of this “manosphere” and I shared some of their videos with my friends online and in person. Looking back, I can’t believe that I once considered them close friends. Close friends that I can confess my views to. But as I said before, I burned bridges with the Manosphere and the Alt-Right when they got a little too obsessed with their views. I thought they were traditionalists, then it turned out that they were sex-obsessed man-whores who will balk about women being whores in the morning, then pork those same “whores” at night, engaging in the kind of behavior that real traditionalists from the past would punish them severely for. They will try to justify it by saying that men are biologically programmed to have multiple sex partners, but let’s not kid ourselves; they’re setting up a double standard where they condemn the other side for doing something that they are guilty of themselves. I was once an ally of theirs, back then when they condemned the excesses of feminism and were out for equality, but now, their message has shifted from a search for equality to a male-supremacist dialectic, which to me, is a joke. God created two sexes, and He made it so that one is reliant on the other. A world that can go on okay without women is just as fantastical and idiotic as a world without men. God made male and female for each other. Yin and Yang, light and dark, hot and cold. There’s a certain balance to the universe, and while the Alt-Right and the Manosphere might have once fought for it, now, they fight against it. They have proven themselves to be just as blind as the feminists they fight.

When it comes to media, they have begun to become increasingly hostile to any notion of powerful women. As I have noticed across the years, they went from having a reasonable critique of feminism, with an acceptance of powerful women, to having an increasingly hostile and angry tone whenever powerful women are depicted in media. Take for example, women in anime. Women in anime who smack men around, either in comedy or real combat, has begun to really piss off the manosphere types. I just find the badass anime chicks to be nice, while I saw the whole “woman slapping around men as slapstick” as a way to show how violent women are. That, unlike the stereotype that women are more pleasant, less violent, and more tender, women, in truth, are just as capable of domestic violence as men are, a fact that men in real life are sadly familiar with. However, to these men, these examples of anime women are anathema to their idea of manhood. Kids must be kept from them, these people say, lest ideas of girl power infect their heads.

I’ve noticed along the years, an increasing hostility to women in combat, from forum posts and Facebook diatribes about how bad it is for women to be depicted as badass in movies, to calls for women to be removed from the armed forces. They have some merit, as some women in media get powerful somewhat faster and easier than men, which is unrealistic, and some military branches lower standards to let more women in. However, this shouldn’t mean that action girl stories can’t be told, and there are certainly women who can achieve a similar skill/strength/fighting level as men could. Just ask the Israeli army, or the many armies across the world that allow women in, but primarily use men. The women there have to at least show competent battle capability as men could in order to hold guns.

I’d just be in favor of holding women to the same standards as men. If they can’t make it, then that’s why the standards were there-to keep them from getting killed faster if they were in the men’s place in the battlefield. But if they can make it, then let them join. And I also want stories of action girls to be less Mary Sue-ish, perhaps make them more reasonable and less focused on relaying a message that women are better than men. It’d be better if they were portrayed to be “as good as men” or at least of the same value. There’s even more realistic stories of girl power where a girl doesn’t have the same strength level as a man, but has other skills and strengths that she uses to get what she wants or needs, like how Lacus Clyne in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED can’t necessarily fly robots like the guys do, but she has other talents like her beauty, singing voice, and charisma, that serve the boys in giant robots throughout their campaign in more ways than one. Sometimes she pleasures Kira, other times she becomes a rallying figure.

However, many of these alt-right and Manosphere types seem to be on a roll of “recovering the greatness of man” when in reality, there’s already a bevvy of shows, movies, and games from the past (and present) that show that. There’s no need to censor the girl power types and create a media solely to honor the power of men, because we already have a good, strong archive of those. Want a cartoon that’ll teach kids how to be a man? Try G Gundam. The manliness meme level in that cartoon alone reaches lunar heights. Want a game with a badass male hero? Try the ocean of male power fantasy games where the man saves the day, kills the monster, and then marries/bangs the chick at the end. Show classic movies like those of Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Wayne, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone. Read classical literature on manhood written by philosophers and writers of the past, and pick from them what you’d consider to be the best. Sure, there’s always a need for new media for men, to pass on the knowledge and wisdom of the past, as well as teach new lessons for men of the future, but there’s no need to sink the girl power boat in just doing it.

The only thing these men do by sinking the girl power boat and attacking it with diatribes of how unrealistic or poisonous they are is show how insecure these men are. It’s like these men are afraid of women with opinions or a sense of strength. I mean, take the comic book and manga scene, for example. There’s no shortage of female heroes and characters in those stories, but there’s no shortage of powerful male heroes either. The Justice League, for example, has men and women, both with superpowers and gadgets, fighting side by side. Same goes for the Avengers who are so popular now. Powerful women and strong men can coexist, side-by-side, without one gender screwing over the other.

One good example is the anime Dragon Ball Super, which revolves around powerful men, the two most important of which are Goku and Prince Vegeta, who are fathers and husbands. But there’s powerful and important women too, from Prince Vegeta’s wife, Bulma, whose technology and wealth is vital to both the heroes’ quest and their ability to placate the God of Destruction, Beerus, with banquets of delectable meals. Goku’s wife, Chi-Chi, who maintains his household while he’s out farming, training, or fighting. Android 18, who protects her weaker husband Krillin and their daughter Marron, and who fights in the Tournament of Power along with her husband and her brother, Android 17. Vados, the Angel guarding the God of Destruction of Universe 6, Champa, who usually keeps her insensitive and impulsive ward in check. Helles, the Goddes of Destruction for Universe 2, is one of the 12 people in the Dragon Ball multiverse who wield ultimate power over life and death in an entire UNIVERSE. And we recently had an episode where female fighters from her universe fought other fighters, and they didn’t damage the machismo or manhood of the other fighters one bit. The most that one of them did was make a face that Prince Vegeta was too disgusted to punch.

These important and powerful women co-exist with powerful men, and for some of them, they were vital to the heroes’ plot. If it wasn’t for Bulma’s genius, they’d have been totally lost with the Goku Black arc or the Androids Saga of the previous show, Dragon Ball Z, because her ability to fix the time machine that her future self invented was essential to fight the villain, Goku Black. If it wasn’t for Bulma’s wads of cash, the heroes would be flat-lost without the money to feed the appetite of the gluttonous God of Destruction for their universe, Lord Beerus. He might have nuked the Earth if he wasn’t so pleased by all the food Bulma and her family stuffs his mouth with, from Takoyaki balls, to a crab buffet, to a simple cup of Ramen. Android 18 was essential because the presence of her and her brother gives the heroes’ universe, Universe 7, enough fighters for the ring, and without her, Android 17 might not have joined, depriving Universe 7 of not one, but two fighters, both of whom have done well in the tournament arc of the current episodes so far. Vados keeps Champa’s worst instincts in check, and God knows how much damage that fat tub of lard could have done if nobody was there to hold his hand and prevent him from acting rash. If it wasn’t for her and her brother, Whis, Beerus and Champa might have destroyed whole universes with their brotherly infighting long ago, especially since they can’t seem to stand each other. In the Goku Black saga, the girlfriend of Future Trunks, Future Mai, kept him from getting killed by Goku Black, and if it wasn’t for her, Goku Black would have destroyed Future Trunks before he got back to the past to ask for help from his father, Prince Vegeta, and Goku. However, none of these powerful women hamper the manliness of the male characters. In fact, they help these male characters, in a way that doesn’t screw with their notions of masculinity and being a man.

I guess it’s just the principle of blowback. Feminism and girl power was popular, and the culture of man was under attack from feminists, so many people trying to counter feminism obviously jumped on the “girls aren’t/shouldn’t be strong” bandwagon. Their fear of powerful women, ironically enough, made them into the very same sexist stereotypes that feminists saw “the patriarchy” as. They became the kind of guys who fear powerful women, in essence, the kind of guys that the feminists have been painting their enemies as, all along. In trying to fight feminism, these men seem to have taken on some of the worst aspects modern feminism had to offer, such as a single-minded, dogmatic view on gender, only it’s now flipped upside-down. And we see now that it isn’t a good thing. We’ve seen this before in history: unrestrained capitalism is bad, especially since it impoverishes the lower class for the sake of their social betters, but socialism and communism were also bad, since they wrecked economies and cost millions of lives. Religious extremism is bad, costing thousands of lives in religious wars, but atheism and materialism also have their flaws, with atheist countries being some of the worst places to live in the world, such as Red China, North Korea, and back then, the Soviet Union. The same can be said of the problems here: man-bashing feminism is bad, but so is woman-bashing on behalf of the self-appointed defenders of masculinity and manhood. And in the end, both sides can be equally toxic. One seeks to sever women from family, traditions, and the love of men, and the other seeks to dominate women like cattle, because in their view, women are blind pigs without a man guiding them.

In the end, this is what happens when we have people who turtle down and create a cult out of political beliefs. Instead of basing one’s beliefs around a matter of principle or philosophy, politics and the state become the new God, and the party becomes the new Church. And no matter where you go, right or left, this phenomenon has a rather devastating effect on rationality and moral thought. And in the end, as the darkness takes us, we are nothing, unless we can find some common ground and find reason once again. God gave us the gift of reason and a mind capable of compromise-unlike animals which HAVE to fight to decide who is right, we can talk things out. And I’m sure if the more reasonable sectors of the feminist movement and the men’s rights bloc come to terms and talk things out, we may have a way of mending this cultural divide that reflects in fiction. Fiction is a mirror through which society views itself, a way for ideas for flow without petty restraints. The zealots on both sides are lost; it’s a waste of time trying to appeal to them. But in both sides, it seems that there’s a healthy amount of people who just do what they think is right, and there should be a place for strong men and women to work together, like they have in the past. I came from a religious country in love with its religious traditions, and yet, strong patriarchal men existed alongside strong women and both were capable of providing for themselves and their families. There is no reason why one is antithetical to another. No reason why we can’t share the same boat. God made us so that we can help one another, not kill each other over petty differences. Some may have different roles, yes, and those roles change over time. But that shouldn’t mean that war is inevitable between the two sexes, nor is it impossible for two sides of the same house to have an important say in things. But in the end, it all comes down to who becomes the voice for men and women-the radicals, or the sane ones?