Is the Cyberpunk trailer sexist? We ask women gamers what they actually think
By Tim Colwill on January 17, 2013 at 5:45 pm
The release last week of the much-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 trailer from CD Projekt RED sparked a number of comments and discussions online about whether or not the trailer was sexist towards women, or maybe even misogynistic in nature.
Rather than adding to the white noise of “here’s what a man thinks about issues affecting women”, we decided to go right to the source and ask a bunch of women gamers, game developers and games media what they thought about CD Projekt RED’s latest trailer.
But first, for reference, here’s that trailer now.
Note: This article makes multiple references to a ‘Hitman trailer’ — the one in question being this one, the ‘Attack of the Saints’.
CelticAngel82
games.on.net community member
My thoughts are it’s just a game. I don’t see how it’s hating on women in particular and I also don’t know what the rest of the game is about, but viewing the trailer, it looks as though it could be an interesting game. I’m one of those female gamers who love hack ‘n’ slash, blood and gore, I even kill my own team mates where possible.
I have no issues with the fact that it’s shooting a woman, heck I don’t even have issues with beating up on prostitutes in those other types of games. How is it any different from men being killed in movies? It’s a game, it’s supposed to be fun.
Jess Colwill
games.on.net writer
Portraying women in video games these days is fraught with peril. Stray too far in one direction, ala the Tomb Raider trailer, and you are saying women are weak and need to be protected. Show them standing over a pile of bodies being shot at by the authorities, and you’re misogynistic.
That’s not to say there aren’t real problems with the way women are portrayed in all forms of media. And certainly, the Cyberpunk trailer is no exception — at the very least she could be wearing a few more articles of clothing.
But I think a line needs to be drawn somewhere. We ladies are beautiful, and if a marketing company decides to put a beautiful lady in an advert for clothes to make them look attractive, is that okay? Why is it different for video games? Because men are the primary audience? Well, no, not anymore it seems, because here we are.
I don’t want to come off as a bad feminist, I just think we’re hurting the cause if we get upset at every trailer portraying a female protagonist.
.♥. Cupcake .♥.
games.on.net community member
First impressions are often what leaves the most lasting imprints in our minds, and in this case it was very much so. Without delving too deeply into any hidden messages/storylines, a viewer could automatically feel we’re in a male dominated world (as is with many shooters/games/action movies).
However to continue the close ups of women being shot at, beaten and at the end, kneeling in a submissive position with a gun to her head by the ‘dominant’ male figure, it all seems a tad too sexist. It runs back to the old traditional views of women being submissive, having to serve and having to be over powered when a male/males come onto the scene.
In saying this, I have no big issues that will cause me to turn a blind eye towards Cyberpunk. However when first asked about my thoughts, that is definitely what came up most.”
Alice Lynton
games.on.net weekend newsborg
The new teaser did raise my hackles. I’m aware of a wider body of sci-fi works which make regular use of a trope I find particularly distasteful – the “robot lady goes crazy and kills a lot of men” one. Even putting aside questions of originality, that’s a problematic theme, and I don’t want to see it evoked again.
I wish she’d been wearing more clothes, and I wish we’d seen her actually doing something instead of sitting around passively being shot. But although through most of the trailer I felt very uncomfortable, I felt the ending kind of subverted my expectations.
I don’t know yet if CD Projekt RED is doing the boring, embarrassing sexist bullshit seen in practically every game’s marketing or if it is actually being rather clever and playing with that. We’ll see. I’m not ready to judge.
That said, the whole “it makes sense in the context of the RPG’s canon because it might actually be a man in a female shell” is just utter bull. We have to work with what we’ve got, and what we’ve got is a scantily clad woman suffering violence, and a suggestion that there’s more going on than what we can see. If that suggestion turns out to be misleading, no amount of 1980′s source book citations is going to make me any less disappointed in just another example of the industry’s unthinking misogyny.
Lucy O’Brien
IGN Australia
This Cyberpunk 2077 trailer… first off, I was surprised there’s furore around it. Is there furore around it? I presume people were bothered by it or you wouldn’t ask me to write something. So I watched it again last night, and I can isolate two potential issues. Firstly, the woman is in her underwear. Secondly, she doesn’t do anything in the trailer; she just gets shot at. By dudes. So I understand how people might see this as glorifying violence against women, and that it might be in bad taste, particularly in the wake of that Hitman trailer I personally thought was awful for a number of reasons.
But this reading feels forced, as it ignores the trailer’s cyberpunk context. Her blank stare, obvious body modification (look at her right shoulder, before the psycho arm reveal), plastic sheen and the Blade Runner-esque setting in which she exists gave me the impression of a gender agnostic, man-made creature out of a box. Her underwear is clinical and bland, as if she’s escaped from some sort of Jacob’s Ladder hospital scenario. She also has impenetrable skin, arm-blades and is surrounded by the corpses of those she’s killed, so I’m more intrigued as to what she’s going to do after that guy pulls the trigger. Maybe that’s another trailer.
I’m more than aware that glorification of violence against women exists in the strange and sometimes severely twisted world of video game marketing. But in this instance, I just don’t see it. She intrigued me. I thought the trailer was a lot of fun.
Alanah Pearce
games reviewer, presenter on NewGamePlus, @charalanahzard on Twitter
Firstly, the Cyberpunk trailer shows two women who are dressed in a way society doesn’t consider appropriate, but I see no issue with that. To call misogyny on women who are dressed sexually in a trailer is like suggesting that women who dress that way in real life ought to be discouraged, which I would consider to be real misogyny – taking away their right to choose what to wear by being oppressive.
Then, there’s the cyborg-esque woman kneeling, with various stereotypically masculine men shooting at her with bullets that don’t penetrate her at all. To me, that seems to be empowering. She is godly, if anything, in her mysterious ability to carelessly fend off bullets, and a male in her position – while I predict he would be standing, not kneeling – would never be questioned. And that’s where this hints at misogyny. A woman directly has a gun to her head and is kneeling before a group of 5-10 men without getting up or fighting back at all. While there’s no context for this, I can’t imagine a man ever being placed in a position where he wouldn’t fight back or, at the very least, stand his ground.
Nonetheless, I don’t find this offensive because this woman seems to be more than a plot device. I see her as the feature of this trailer, not the men around her. I admit that it isn’t pleasant to see a woman treated so brutally, but I think that only reflects on how little empathy society has for men.
Krystal Ruch
Freelance writer, @hotdogwithsauce on Twitter
The first thing I want to say about the Cyberpunk 2077 teaser trailer is that the CGI is absolutely gorgeous. It is one of the most visually stunning trailers I have seen for a game in a long time. As beautiful as the trailer may be, I’m not sure that it really told us much of anything.
I have heard that some people feel this trailer is misogynistic, particularly after the sexy nuns from Hitman Absolution‘s trailer situation. While I don’t like the way Hitman sexualised strong female characters, I didn’t get that same vibe while watching Cyberpunk 2077. The first thought I had when watching Cyberpunk 2077 is that this isn’t being made by IO Interactive. That alone is enough to make me want to watch it for what it is without trying to find similarities in misogynistic behaviours between them and others developers. Humans are exceptionally good at creating patterns and making connections to other things – sometimes I think that ability comes as a detriment at times. We are ready to see what we want to see, just because we can.
I’m not saying that CD Projekt RED aren’t capable of sexualising women like many in the gaming industry do. I just don’t feel as though Cyberpunk 2077 is focusing on creating a hatred or sexualisation of women. Yes, the female depicted in the video is wearing ‘lingerie’ style clothing and is seemingly flawless in appearance, as is the female in the window advertisement in one of the scenes. Having said that, the women who lay dead around this “cyberpsycho” (amongst dead men, might I add) have a more ‘everyday woman’ appearance about them. At the end of the video, the female protagonist seems to have joined the armed forces that were once holding her at gunpoint. She wears the same clothing and gear as the males depicted earlier in the video, her hair hidden away in her uniform and the only piece of telling information that you could gather it was her was her mouth. She is an equal.
When I listen to the developers talk about this game, they are inclusive of women with Mike Pondsmith commenting “you are the hero, whether you are a one man army or a one woman army.” CD Projekt RED even encourage women to join their development team in creating this game and although I know we expect equal opportunity employment to occur everywhere, I seldom hear developers actively and publicly mention wanting women to get on-board their team. The female protagonist was scanned using a real female as their model to, in their own words, “use the beauty of a real person.” I don’t see those things as being hatred toward, objectification or exclusion of, women or of their intellectual input.
We can always argue that they could have chosen a different woman to scan their character after but, to me, no matter what women in this world they selected as their model, they would always be ruling out and excluding other types of women. To say that this woman isn’t a representation of what real woman are only says that this woman’s ‘real’ beauty is not acceptable or appropriate. We should be happy that a real woman was used to model this protagonist, as opposed to it being another hackneyed, contrived female created from thin air.
I think the team has put effort into trying to establish a balance between a beautiful and a strong female but, like I said at the beginning, I don’t think this trailer has really clearly defined anything more than the environmental setting – it certainly hasn’t given any real insight into the characters. It’s too easy for us all to draw our own conclusions based purely on appearance when there’s been no real substance given behind the pretty imagery.
Lisa Rye
Independent game developer on Freedom Fall
Here’s what I was thinking as I watched it:
0:15 – “Touch me like I’m an ordinary man”… that’s not a man.
0:25 – Neat, maybe we have a female android protagonist, Ghost in the Shell style?
0:45 – The poster in the background says “Don’t worry guys! In the future, women wear leotards!”
1:02 – Damn. She’s a sexy-killing-bot.
1:07 – You can only be a covert, evil murder-bot if you go around in your underwear. But as the poster said, this is what women wear, even on cold rainy nights in the future. She’d have fit right in.
1:23 – Ah, the protagonist is a square-jawed, Caucasian cop. Very original.
I’ve been a fan of the cyberpunk genre for a long time and regularly draw cyberpunk themes in my personal work. However, this trailer made me less interested in the game the longer it went on.
Don’t get me wrong here, the trailer is gorgeous, but there’s nothing in this trailer that suggests new ideas in the cyberpunk genre. Cyber-police, psychotic robots, neon signs and flying cars weren’t new ideas thirty years ago, and from what we see in this trailer, their attitudes towards women seem to be firmly stuck in the 80′s as well.
So that’s my impression. In terms of misogyny, I wouldn’t expect this game to be any worse than the majority of other mainstream first person shooters out there.
Liza Shulyayeva
Game developer
I loved the Cyberpunk 2077 trailer and saw nothing inappropriate or misogynistic about it. I’ve seen someone claim that the trailer is misogynistic because a helpless woman is surrounded by armed men shooting at her. Clearly we didn’t see the same teaser. Not only are bullets literally shattering and glancing off of her skin as officers are shooting her to no visible effect, but she dispatched fourteen people with augmented blade-arms before finally being captured and recruited to be an elite member of the Psycho Squad (bear with me, I have not played Cyberpunk so I’m just going off of what I could piece together from the teaser).
She looked badass! These are the kinds of characters I want to play and see more of in games. I hate that developers have to tiptoe around this crap every time they want to put a woman into a game and still get flack when they present a teaser with a genuinely interesting female role.
Zorine Te
Community manager, GameSpot AU
Overall I wasn’t terrible offended by it. My reaction was more along the lines of, “Oh look, another scantily clad woman. Surprise surprise”, although that train of thought was soon derailed by the action sequence happening in the scene.
My attention was more diverted to the cool soundtrack and cyberpunk art style, which remained in my mind after watching the trailer far longer than any ‘sexist’ offenses it may have caused.
Katie Williams
Freelance writer
Gosh. She’s really pretty. It’s difficult to look in her eyes as that first shot draws near. And when it shatters against her cheek, rather than wondering about her bullet-shattering skin, I instead flinch at the sound of glass breaking. That’s fragility we hear. That’s beauty. We don’t want beauty to perish.
But the woman’s striking looks are leveraged only to draw emotional response from the viewer; this much becomes clear when the camera pans down, and we realise that we are also shocked to discover she’s not a real woman. She’s got creepy insectoid arm-blade things that are clearly meant to be seamless and undetectable when folded back into her skin. She’s surrounded by shredded corpses. She’s a murderer and she just won’t die. We have been deceived by this image of beauty. We are as much her victims as the slumped bodies she is surrounded by.
The use of beauty in general, I feel, is not necessarily misogynistic; we are all mesmerised by pretty people. But the manipulation of it to emphasise a woman’s treachery? To suggest that she must die for her deception, both of the watcher and of the men in the trailer? Now that’s a little problematic.
Danica Zuks
Games vlogger at XXP
Yes, the Cyberpunk trailer is sexist. But, like a lot of things on the internet, it’s often misunderstood why you would say that it’s sexist.
It’s not sexist because the robot is wearing lingerie. It’s sexist because we’re looking at a robot wearing lingerie. It is likely that if you make an attractive looking lady robot, you did it because you thought that sexy lady robot could do things that a sexy man robot couldn’t do.
And that’s, I’m guessing here, is seduce men. So it can be argued that the sexy robot in lingerie makes sense. I’m not arguing against that, because that is certainly a possible scenario.
However, step back — this is advertising. Why aren’t we shown her when she’s dressed as a hobo, to infiltrate the secret hobo lair? Why isn’t she dressed in battle armour to infiltrate a security firm? I posit both are perfectly reasonable things for a sexy lady killing robot machine to do. We aren’t seeing these things because this is an ad, and she wouldn’t look sexy pretending to be a weathered smelly hobo being shot.
And that’s the male gaze.
There are always other reasons that she’s in lingerie: It fits the story. You wouldn’t expect, and so are drawn in, when a scantily clad woman shatters bullets with her face. But part of the reason is that this is a patriarchal society. And that’s why this clip is sexist (but not as sexist as a lot of things).
CD Projekt RED on putting the ‘cyber’ and the ‘punk’ back into Cyberpunk 2077
Other stuff including 'dialogue' and 'character appearance' and 'choices'.
Two smaller 20-hour Witcher or Cyberpunk games in development at CDPR
CD Projekt thinks a "20 hour game" is "small". Take that, AAA developers.
Cyberpunk 2077 confirmed to have multiplayer elements
And.... and that's all we know. Okay!
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Well, at least Liza Shulyayeehaa understood the events in the trailer.
Sexist? …the fuck?
lucy’s opinion nailed it.
First, great article.
Second, I think there’s a simple way to think about it. If the female character was male, would he be in his underwear? Clearly not. Therefore, it is (mildly) sexist.
Third, my personal take (which I’m sure many here would violently reject) is that a bunch of dudes in a group pointing phallic objects at a kneeling woman in her underwear and the material issuing forth from said phallic objects spraying into her face and upper body at the very least has some seriously Freudian overtones…
“….with various stereotypically masculine men shooting at her…..” I didn’t see any men shooting at her. I see one man with a gun to her head, I see a few dead men on the ground. The people shooting could be anything under all that body armour.
As for the idea that she’s beaten and submissive…I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy with the gun doesn’t live long enought to pull the trigger.
Pretty much what Liza and Katie said.
Crazy robot lady just killed a bunch of people with crazy robot blades, the police shoot at her and they’re sexist? Very interedasting view.
@Danica – When glossy mags aimed at women start showing fat girls in filthy hobo outfits, you might have a point. Until then, sorry but no. We all (99% of us anyway) like to watch fitter, more attractive people. End of story.
It’s a moot point anyway, as there are no women on the internet.
In a cyberpunk setting? Hell yes. Naked from the waist up with augs and tats would fit perfectly. Highly sexist towards men, obviously.
Didn’t think she was just in her underwear, but rather a short dress of a type normally seen around nightclubs that was just hiked up due to her position.
I got the impression that she was a cyborg that just snapped and the cops were hoping to take her out (ineffectively) before she can kill more. After reading a bit of backstory, this seems quite likely.
This.
sigh, what the *fuck* is going on lately?
“The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden flaming ants epidemic.” – Jon Stewart
… Sexist?
I dunno, I think it says a lot that many people here can’t even understand why it might be sexist, or in fact, misogynist was the term actually used.
Check yo male privilege, son.
I’ve got to say that I find it baffling that so many of the comments on this trailer site her lack of response to being shot at. Did it go completely unnoticed that it’s shot at a fraction of real time? Unless she’s moving at an inhuman speed, you would barely see it if she was fighting back.
You’re right, I don’t understand how a CG, fictional, killer android in a teaser for an unreleased game could offend and be construed as sexist.
Also, if you have quick look at the headline of this article, “sexist” is most definitely the word used.
What Snootle quoted. I don’t think it’s sexist, I’m being told I think it’s sexist.
Shame on you, internets, and well done GoN for trying to approach it differently.
I didn’t read all of them but Liza hit the nail on the head.
Arguing that because something is CG/fictional/unreleased it cannot be sexist is pretty hugely flawed. For example, here are some games that are NOT sexist, by your logic:
BMX XXX VII: TOPLESS LADIES ON DIRTBIKES EXTREME
DEAD OR ALIVE: SKIMPIEST BIKINIS EVER EDITION
BOOB CITY: ADVENTURE TO BOOBTOWN (BOOB EDITION)
These games aren’t real! But they sound pretty sexist!
The fact of the matter is that this trailer is A Product, and it can be judged as A Product, as can the characters within it.
Whether the woman is an android or not is thoroughly irrelevant. She is presented as a woman, very clearly and deliberately. Therefore she can be treated as a woman when interpreting the Product.
Yes, but misogynist was also a term used in the article. Don’t split hairs! It is pointless.
The real point here is that some women feel the trailer is sexist towards them, and some don’t. It is not the place of a man to say “You’re wrong, the trailer is not sexist towards you” because uhhhh… no, I really shouldn’t have to explain why that’s a stupid thing to say.
This comment thread is sexist towards sexist things.
+1 wdf sexist o.O
I am getting sick of this shit. I am sorry, but there are 2 things that is in human nature, and will never be removed. Those 2 things are sex and violence. Both are paramount to the survival of our race. Why are people blaming media, any media, from Vid Games to, back in the day, Jewels Vern for sexism and violence?
This trailer is not sexist. What is sexist is the opinion that says its sexist.
Getting pretty annoyed that a specific set of gamers are completely unable to see when a pair of blood covered tits could be considered creepy and awful, or when a skimpy woman is used, yet again, to sell games.
It’s not just sexist but fucking lazy – why couldn’t she have been a child? Or an old woman? Why not get creative? Oh, that’s right, because boobs.
The decision to make the character in question a beautiful woman was obviously to contrast beauty with carnage. That is why the trailer stretches out those 0.02 seconds or what have you for so long, to drag out the ‘reveal’ of the blood soaked blades and dead bodies
It is obviously more than just ‘lets make it an attractive women, these nerds will lap it up!’
How in the hell do you get submissive from that ?
she’s just murdered 14 people, in what way is that submissive O_O
She murdered 14 people with her “talons” scantily clad women being apprehended after a mass murder, I would see your point had she not JUST MURDERED 14 PEOPLE
Thankyou !
For all i know she just escaped the umbrella corporation and all those people around her were evil/zombies I don’t think she’s deceptive I think she’s a bad ass.
People get too easily offended, there’s nothing sexist here. you would not put an ugly looking man in an advertisement (unless it’s shane warne in hair loss ads) nor a woman we like beautiful things they are eye catching, that’s it it’s not sexist just beautiful and an awesome piece of CGI
my god, how fucking pathetic are people. Nothing can be released now without people having a fucking whinge. If anything the women looked like a bad ass killing machine that people wouldn’t fuck with lol
Was that her alive at the end of the video clip putting the goggles/glasses on??
Yes, I think it mentions in the video description on YouTube that apprehending people like that is how the squad that apprehends people like that get more members (the guy behind her included).
Who would create a child or old woman cyborg/robot thing? I like to think I’ve very good at seeing what other people may or may not see, but I cannot see how that’s creepy/awful…
I’m assuming this is a troll post but on the off chance you’re serious…
old people aren’t beautiful that trailer would have had less impact without said beauty.
A child would have worked but the anti-video game lobbies around the world would have had a field day with it and no one wants that kind of bad press.
the trailer has a shock factor in something that looks so beautiful and frail is so hardened, it’s artistic and really I thought quite beautiful
I thought it was just some cyborg / robotic assassin. Where being attractive was just another weapon used to get to it’s target.
When a problem occurred and it murdered a group of people instead.
A child could be incredibly useful for infiltration, even if detected it could feign being lost no one would needlessly shoot a child … well most people wouldn’t
I think perhaps the point of this whole article was lost on this audience. It’s not even saying that the trailer is sexist, it’s presenting the views of some female gamers on how they feel about the subject.
The counterpart to everyone saying everything is sexist these days is the male community saying, “Ugh, everyone says everything is sexist these days! Ugh!” and completely dismissing what is an actual problem in the media. But the fact is you’re simply not qualified to give an opinion. That’s why you weren’t asked.
It’s like asking a white guy how it feels to be racially discriminated against. You simply don’t know.
It’s not a fault, you just can’t possibly be equipped to know. You might think you know how it would feel, being able to empathise with a person, but you can’t possibly imagine what living an entire life in that body would be like.
Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t give your opinion. Obviously that’s what the comment section is for. But you should in no way present this opinion as fact as if you know what you’re talking about. You can’t possibly know what it’s like, to have your hands shaking as you write a comment, wondering if you’re going to get shut down by the male community of a website you work for, being told that you’re wrong, to get back in the kitchen.
Now if you go back and read my section, you’ll see I wasn’t even arguing that it was a particularly sexist trailer. But all these men getting up behind their anonymity to say, “No, all you women are wrong, this is not sexist at all, I obviously know what that is and what it is like,” that, that upsets me far more than the trailer ever did.
And Tera? Sort of proving my point, there.
Honestly the whole conversation is flawed, when people cry sexism then all the developers will do is either remove women all together or put in less attractive women so they seem to be more for laywoman however then everyone will cry descrimination due to there being no attractive women and the cycle keeps going on and on.
I think the best way to resolve this is have an attractive female an attractive male both of which are bisexual to be able to please everyone so in every game there must now be two protagonists LOL.
I might not know how it feels to be discriminated against, but I do know cyberpunk. To me it seems that most of the claims of ‘this is sexist’ are coming from people that are, to put it bluntly, ignorant to the subject matter. The woman in the trailer is someone who is heavily augmented. Cyberpunk is a genre all about extrapolating current day technological trends into the future, and exploring their social consequences. “High tech, low life” is the phrase that is often used.
A woman who is heavily augmented would have little reason to be unsightly or ugly in such a future. It is really an extrapolation of plastic surgery. If you’re giving someone extra strong, resistant skin, why not make it flawless skin? If you’re upgrading someones eyesight, why not make the eyes strikingly beautiful while you are at it?
This really is a flawed argument, and here’s why:
To use this logic, if the video showed black people being beaten up by white people, any claims of racism could be written off as “true to the source material” and therefore invalid.
Yet, if the video DID show this, and Cyberpunk DID feature this… it’d still be racist. Hella racist. And terrible. Disagree?
The subject matter doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Cyberpunk doesn’t exist in a vacuum. This trailer can’t exist outside of the social context in which we live and in which video games reside.
If something is bad, it’s bad. Hand-waving it away by saying “That’s how the source material is” doesn’t excuse the actual trailer itself. Any interpretation of it is valid, even if the subject is not familiar with the source material — in fact perhaps especially if they aren’t, because then they’re not biased.
You can’t say “Oh, the source material gives the ability for ALL women to be smoking hot, so it’s legit” — that doesn’t excuse the fact that EXPECTING women to be smoking hot (and reducing them only to their appearance, by doing so) is sexist.
At all.
That wouldn’t be racist. A piece of media portraying racism is not itself racist. If it was encouraging racism then yes, that would be racist.
A great deal of cyberpunk is about the negative social and moral consequences of technological advancement. If, in cyberpunk, all women who were wealthy enough to be augmented were smoking hot, it would not be sexist. Why? Because it would be part of the portrayal of a shallow, morally bankrupt society.
Perhaps the most disappointing part that is coming out of this entire discussion is that many users who have commented seem to have failed to take the time to read each of the opinions given in the article in full. I get the feeling there’s been a lot of assumption that the readers think they know what each woman has had to say, when their comments only indicate they do not know at all.
I think it’s a good thing that this is being discussed. It’s a healthy discussion that needs to happen, between both men and women, but not at the expense of waving off people’s opinions without understanding what that opinion was in the first place.
@ tim
a movie based on nazi ideals, could display features of nazism without being a racist, genocidal or facist i.e a movie portraying racism does not mean the movie is racist purely because it is accurate to the subject materiel which is (I really ca’t word this thought well so please don’t nit pick it).
And yes in cyber punk all women are hot eventually we will live in the age of designer genetics and bio augmentation only the poor will not look all pretty and shiny in a cyber punk world, if i had the money to make myself a killing machine i would make myself a pretty one… well assuming i was a killing machine in human form saying it’s sexist is silly it’s accurate people want to improve themselves saying that they don’t is dishonest.
Also I would argue cyberpunk women are like transformer all more than meets the eye and such either being crazy smart or crazy brutal as the trailer showed she was not just her appearance she was also a vicious killing machine.
wow we should run this important story on Today Tonight..!!!
of course the article will get lots of comments.. it’s kind of a liberal v conservative argument.. touchy people vs pragmatic people.
my opinion is – get over it precious, the trailer was cool as…
So I have tried to write 3 different response before this one.. I guess the only thing that can be taken from this is that people will see what they want to see.
I don’t see there being anything sexist about this, it is a 2 minute slow motion clip to cover about 10 seconds of real time .Anything could have happened before and after, and did you consider that it is intentionally this way to get people to do exactly what we are doing now. Having a discussion about what we have no way of knowing yet, and putting our own perceptions into place.
Pretty sure that this is EXACTLY what a trailer should do, you know that you are either a) going to get the game to see exactly what it is all about or b) keep watching the advertising material they throw out to try and better understand what is going on
Separating “showing” from “encouraging” is difficult if not impossible. What one person may just see as footage, another may see as endorsement.
Broadly speaking I agree with what you’re saying, but I think there’s some fine lines here: the trailer clearly makes the woman the object of attention, shows her power (by shattering bullets on her face) and shows her value (by having her co-opted into the authorities). This could then be construed as endorsement of her, of what she represents, and part and parcel of what she represents is the glorified sexual ideal.
A shallow, morally bankrupt… sexist society?
Where people value appearance far more highly than anything else?
Your argument is essentially “this shows a sexist society”, I’m not sure how this proves that the source material debunks the video.
OMG THIS YES
orly? Wasn’t the prevailing argument about the whole, “killing endangered species and shit” in Far Cry 3 that it wasn’t real, so who really gives a shit?
(I’d try and find the article but there’s no efficient way of doing that yet)
It just annoys me that what is effectively art is tied up with this politically correct bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely a line that shouldn’t be crossed but this is about as far from it as you can get. I’ve played a few games where the female protagonist kills MEN can you believe it? I know I was outraged.
TL:DR Who fucking cares about ridiculous, trivial bullshit such as this.
Everyone keeps remarking on her being in her underwear and having no reason for it.
How about we stop and think for a moment on the whole setting and reason behind why what’s happened, happened?
Simple reasoning: People get modified too much, they freak the fuck out, they go on insane killing sprees.
She’s either in her clothing from the hospital whilst receiving mods, freaked out, killed people, escaped and killed more people.
Or perhaps she was asleep at home in her underwear (even though most females I know sleep with no clothes on), woke up in her freak out robot state, killing spree.
There’s nothing sexist about the trailer. People need to take shit at its face value instead of reading the fuck into things and imagining shit that isn’t there.
@ tim
so you linked the trailer therefore you’re showing it therefore you’re sexist ?
also on “Your argument is essentially “this shows a sexist society”, I’m not sure how this proves that the source material debunks the video.”
Not to speak for someone else but,
a corrupt setting to portray something like sexism in order something like sexism or greed in order to explore these themes doesn’t make something sexist.
Having said that i still see no sexism in this trailer this is more a comment on genres in general
1) Separating showing from encouraging is hard if you are ignorant of the source material, which was my original point
2) Cyberpunk does show a sexist society. The video may indeed show a sexist society, but that is not what people are arguing. People are arguing that the trailer, in and of itself, is sexist. One of the major elements of most cyberpunk works is that they are set in a dystopia. Cyberpunk, if anything, is saying that a sexist society is a bad thing.
It’s ok when tim does something morally reprehensible in a video game but he has double standards when it comes to attractive women in game trailers ?
I think where Clovis is trying to go, is people being outraged about sexism in a video based on sexist source material is a bit odd…. It would be like making a video about cats, and only having dogs in it instead.
This isn’t saying that I am for or against dogs or cats, but if I watch a movie about cats, I am not shocked to see cats…..
I know the one you mean! Yes, a lot of people made that argument, I don’t think it holds a lot of water and so I didn’t make it personally. Sometimes things are still bad even if they aren’t real.
That said I think some things reinforce bad attitudes more than others, and I think somebody seeing this trailer is much more likely to subconsciously confirm that reducing women to appearance only is okay, than somebody is likely to play FC3 and think killing endagered species is cool.
Also, there’s a search box on the top right, or you can click a tag at the bottom of any article!
I get it. You don’t care. That doesn’t mean people who DO care (such as some — not all — of the women above) are wrong.
People can care about what they want, don’t shit on ‘em.
I agree, but that’s hardly the case here. I think this video both shows AND encourages, and you don’t need to be familiar with the source material to understand something as basic as gender.
Cyberpunk may say that, but this trailer doesn’t show that. That’s the point, essentially.
Saying this trailer is sexist (without having any knowledge of cyberpunk as a genre, or the Cyberpunk setting in particular) is an ignorant opinion. Kneejerk reactions of ‘this is sexist’ mean very little when made from a position of ignorance.
My earliest response to you established that nothing exists in a vacuum and that something can be sexist even without reference to the source material. This is still true, even if you don’t agree with the racism example I used.
Sexism is a social phenomenon, it doesn’t exist everywhere except Cyberpunk, and it’s differently interpreted from person to person.
That’s why I asked a dozen women to provide their thoughts on it, rather than deliver my own opinion.
EDIT: By the same token, saying that women are wrong for thinking something is sexist is itself a position of ignorance, if you are not a woman.
dark matter
I agree that people who have only seen the trailer may consider it to be sexist, but that does not mean that it is sexist. If they were serious about such a standpoint, rather than just asserting it as a kneejerk reaction, they would actually do a little bit of research into the genre and realise what sort of society the trailer is portraying (that is a dystopia, not a utopia.)
Instead, we get people who are not actually engaged with the media in any meaningful way giving an ‘experts opinion’ on it.
I understand why people could view this as sexist, but assert that this is a view fueled by ignorance, not by meaningful analysis.
They’re as engaged with the media as you are, and are completely qualified — as women themselves — to comment on whether or not they feel it is sexist towards them. They are in fact eminently more qualified than you or me (assuming you are male) to argue that it isn’t.
Additionally, this was hardly presented as ‘experts opinion’. The large majority of them attest voluntarily to not having expertise on the subject material.
Momentary, impressionistic analysis means very little in the grand scheme of things. I have actually engaged with the genre, having studied the literature, and engaged with such topics concerning social issues and sci-fi on an academic level. I’d argue that I am more qualified than they are to comment.
Perhaps my experts opinion comment was a bit off the mark, but even you yourself are trying to present their opinion as ‘eminently more qualified’.
I understand what you’re saying, but — do you really believe you are more qualified than a woman to comment on whether something is sexist towards women?
Well for what it’s worth, both me and the wife don’t think there is enough information/context in the trailer to warrant it being sexist.
I didn´t say ¨naked from the waist up¨, I said ¨in his underwear¨. As in, sitting in the middle of a street in the middle of the night in his jocks or boxer shorts only.
Well Tim, there are people out there who can. Understanding the gender doesn’t have to be gender exclusive. In fact, being a woman does not necessarily guarantee that a woman would truly understand sexism towards women, from an empirical perspective. Note though that I have no idea who Clovis is, so I cannot say if he can represent women in general.
it wasn’t that long ago when we wouldn’t hear anything of this sort, games were games and that’s that, now every game that comes out is scrutinised and picked apart for its portrayal of women and it makes me sick,
FUCK its a game get over it who cares if it has a girl or a guy or what ever race they are or what role they play.. just shut the fuck up about it and enjoy the damned game!
All CPR needed to do was indicate that there was a woman somewhere in the assault rifle squad and that would have been it to make things square. When ever you a police or army force of some kind in gaming it is a rare thing to have a sex mix indicative of their real world equivalents.
I feel that would be all that was required to balance the score…
I’d like take a moment and just point out how futile and pointless this entire article and discussion is.
Sexism and whether or not something is sexist is completely 100% opinion and perspective based. Some women/men are going to view it as sexist, and others wont that is their opinion and they are entitled to it.
This discussion is about on par with peoples opinions on music. I like my music, you like yours. You can say mine sucks and I can say yours sucks doesn’t mean either of us are correct or incorrect about the music we like or don’t like.
But you can argue about this subject until your face turns blue. Unless someone is actually willing to cede their argument and accept another persons opinion, no one is going to win.
Who is really qualified to say shit about this entire subject. If a woman or man feels this video is sexist they are going to believe it is sexist for a long time regardless of what some suit/professional/educated person says about it.
i have to say though this article did give me quite the chuckle.
and ill finish with this: Tits or gtfo.
I want things to go back to when men were considered beautiful.
Where’s Germaine Greer when you need her?
I also want ice cream, but it’s just too far to walk.
Do androids dream of electric sexism?
PinothyJ,
The rifle squad didn’t seem to be of any distinct gender, they seemed to be entirely covered head to toe in functional gear. The trailer in my view highlighted the female and male(the obvious stand out) characters as the focus point rather than the rest of the stormtroopers. I think a better option would of been to have the advertisement in the cyberware window a male instead of female.
Although unless that male(Cyberware window replacement) was submissive people could view that as glorifying the male figure therefore sexist. I hate this topic.
Fabulous to read those individual and unique perspectives. Thanks for sharing and collating!
It all comes down to stop commenting as soon as we get to sixty-nine comments…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZRYROjQPoI
OH MY GOD! A topless guy in his underwear with a cyberpunk/modified body theme. Shit, we’d better have a discussion about sexism in games.
Oh wait, no-one gave a shit and just enjoyed the trailer, and later on the game.
Well, I think I might do something a little different here, seeing this is an opinion piece (and everyone had one, some better informed than others, as Jess points out) and instead of disparaging anyone else’s feelings on the matter of the trailer, I’ll consider my own.
So, the question. Is the trailer sexist?
Yes, it is. And I think that is part of its point. It might be still subtle in places (hence all the debate) but it is still prevalent, and making use of an advertising feature which, unfortunately, continues to be relevant because it is aimed at the lowest common denominator, human attraction, by using an extremely beautiful female as its focus point – first sexualising her appearance, and then following that with more than a little male oppressiveness, which she appears to meekly submit to. Sure, she might have killed a bunch of people, but while she appears equipped to handle the goings on around her, she seems to choose not to, and gives up. It reeks of oppression, and because that is what we see, and NOT her carving up fourteen people, that is the image we are left with.
What is the context? Why did she do it? Why is she still alive at the end? None of that is explained, nor shown. There is definitely going to -be- context, there has to be, but remove that from the event. Remove the bodies, remove the arm blades, and instead of focusing on the devices that led up to the moment, look at the trailer WITHOUT context. What then do you see? A kneeling woman being brutally attacked by armed forces before concluding with the promise of a bullet through the back of the skull. It’s a savage example of mysoginistic violence. She might have the power to resist, but the crucial fact is that she doesn’t actually fight back. The fact that she gives up without a fight, without a shred of defiance, is actually worse. It gives the horrible illusion that she -can’t- fight back, when it should be showing that this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Instead of empowering her, they take all her strength away.
However, I’m going to choose to read into things a little bit more, as some others have done previously, so I might be regurgitating their points a bit, so here goes.
The use of sexualisation and beauty in the trailer could also be construed as a genuine device to increase shock. When we first see this woman, the first thing you see is how attractive she is. This isn’t a mistake, its highly deliberate. We’re supposed to see it, and then, it all gets slightly jarred by a bullet smashing uselessly off her face, revealing the sheen of metal beneath.
And then the camera pans down, slowly, and you see the bodies. You see the blood, which is clearly not her own, because she doesn’t have blood any more. You see the forearm blades, disturbingly deformed, and suddenly, beauty is tarnished to the point of irrelevancy. When it reaches this point, the woman has developed all the sexuality of a mannequin. She is human in the fact that she is only a simulcra of it. At this point, uncanny valley has been reached, and the original feeling of sexual attraction is turned on its head, to become a conflict of what you feel and what you are supposed to feel.
Does it work? Nope. Still sexist guys.
Despite the fact that the woman is an android rather than a flesh and blood human, it becomes irrelevant in the face of the fact that she is clearly designed to illicit a male orientated response of attractiveness to the subject, amongst an audience so unbelievably saturated by the marketing tool of using beautiful women to sell a product that they don’t even notice any more. Whether you notice or not doesn’t change the fact. They are using sexual attraction to sell the trailer and the product and that, therefore, makes it sexist. You can argue that if it was a half naked man there wouldn’t be this furore, and maybe so. But that too would -still- be sexist. Using physical beauty to sell a product is using a sexist device. The vast majority of it, however, uses women, objectifying them and making them objects of gender rather than objects of humanity.
Let’s edit that trailer. Cut it completely differently. Change it from a kneeling woman to a standing one. Change the character into a male. You can still have the bullet smashing off his face. Off the rest of his body too, for that matter. You can have someone appear behind him, putting a gun to the back of his head. You could even make it the same woman from this trailer, in body armour, with some obvious cybernetics. Reverse the roles, and you can make gender irrelevant. She, in the position of the law enforcement, is not an object of sexuality but one of power. The squad of guys shooting could remain faceless male protomen. It would still be a good trailer. It wouldn’t use sexuality or gender to make its point. And that’s the problem here. The trailer could have been just as effective without using sex to sell it off. In a world where, thankfully, women are becoming far, far more relevant to the gaming community, slowly encouraging it to finally grow the hell up, we need to be more considerate of how this sort of thing can be viewed and taken. Dismissing it out of hand is disrespectful. You can disagree, sure. But try to look at it from the other side, and see if you still feel the same way about it.
I’m somewhat surprised by the emphasis placed on the protagonist’s kneeling posture by some commentators. Certainly this is submissive, but it’s pretty typical of the situation, hardly limited to females.
Quite apart from the great swathe of action/period movies that present men on their knees, awaiting their executioner’s mercy; history sadly is flooded with such images, involving mostly ( but certainly not limited to) male victims. One needs only to peruse WW2 archives, for example, to see it repeated seemingly ad infinitum. It’s hard to interpret the pose as sexist with any context what so ever, I reject the idea that ‘he’d be standing’ explicitly.
Games commonly do present a stereotyped and facile presentation of gender, but it’s hardly limited to female characters. Apart from a protagonist and a few key characters, males mostly faceless, mindless automatons, slain en masse and with out moral consequence. Note the gunmen, they are barely human, more mobile biological targeting systems for firearms than people. Men are commonly presented as objects for violence as women are presented as objects for sex, both in and out of gaming.
There are many more obvious examples of sexism in vidya than this trailer. For it to be misogynistic it has to intend to be as such. It ought to imply directly that because the central figure is female, the viewer should or could feel gratification at her suffering. If that’s what you see in the above, then I think your either hyper analysising in a very reactionary manner, or you’re just plain weird.
The implication that I as a male can’t recognise sexism/misogyny is pretty sexist itself.
I also know that if it was a man he would be topless, the scene calls for a fair bit of exposure of flesh to help delineate the extent of the body modifications.
As for Cyberpunk itself being inherently sexist, it did after all draw its fashion inspirations from punk/alt scenes. Its an aesthetic of challenging conventions and shock.
The warcraft franchise has had plenty of men kneeling mighty near godlike men
Bolvar fordragon in the wrath of the “the wrath gate cinematic”
Darion morgrain is forced to kneel before the light at lights hope chapel.
even the lichking was known to kneel, he gets back up and dusts himself off sure but he kneels
there are plenty of other examples of this across gaming and cinema but NONE is better than King Leonidas at the hot gates in 300 has to be the best there is no way his kneeling is submissive if anything it is boldly defiant. Claiming there can be only one explanation for an action is incredibly ignorant.
also :
“The implication that I as a male can’t recognize sexism/misogyny is pretty sexist itself.”
^this
Seem’s like people are just looking for things, and looking very hard. To make an up roar about these days.
Sexism or not.
The trailer has been extremely successful at advertising the game, given that it is generating this sort of response.
I think this whole conversation is being sexist. Think about it. Would we be having this conversation if Tim had not posted this whole sexist argument?
NO we would not. Or at least, it would be less likely.
So, again, the trailer it self is not sexist, what is sexist is the opinion that it is sexist.
All art, whether it be a video game or a painting or a book, is always going to have some sort of reaction. All art is abstract, and we only for opinions after we look at it. There for, it is not what is sexist. The people who think it is sexist are, in fact, the ones who are being sexist.
Now, can we please get over this out dated thought process, and move on.
I feel like it’s more sexist that people are bringing up sexism just because it has a female in it than for any other reason to do with the trailer.
Why does nobody bring this shit up when the character is a good looking male in a tight shirt that’s being exploited?
Firstly, a response to her ‘meekly giving up’. She has a 12 gauge aimed at the back of her head, you have to remember that the scene is in extreme slow motion, you’re probably getting .02 seconds or something like that. Not even time to react. But that is all inconsequential, in the Cyberpunk 2077 setting (based off 2020, a pen and paper game), if you get too many augments you begin to lose your humanity and drift towards a state of cyberpsychosis. She is most probably on the edge of this, caught between thoughts of mindless violence and what little humanity she has left. It seems to me, as someone who knows the subject matter, that she is just now ‘coming down’ from losing control. The gravity of what she has done has hit her hard, just as it hits us during the course of the trailer.
Regarding context, you can’t simply say ‘ignore the arm blades and the bodies’. They are an integral part of the trailer, when it pans down to them we learn the reason why she is being apprehended. If you remove them, it is a radically different trailer. This path of logic is flawed. The assertion that the trailer would be sexist without the arm blades and bodies is also a little clumsy. Just because we see men apprehending a woman, it does not mean that it is a sexist act. In such a situation, you would be jumping to conclusions, which speaks of your own bias.
I would also love to engage in an argument with you regarding whether or not using an attractive woman in advertising is instantly sexist, but I think that would only take us off track further. I do find it odd, however, that you refer to this as using an object of gender to advertise rather than an object of humanity. I think this is a false dichotomy, they are not mutually exclusive.
Your final point about completely changing the nature of the trailer is completely off the mark. You yourself acknowledge that an attractive woman was chosen to be the focus of the trailer due to the contrast between violence and beauty, but then you brush it off as ‘not working’. Ironically enough, that line of argument doesn’t work. We can see, from that, that the use of an attractive woman is deliberate, and not simply a ‘sex sells’ manoeuvre. Even straight women can admit that she is beautiful, and ‘clean’ looking, so the juxtaposition works just as well on them. For you to say it doesn’t work and is still sexist is very telling. It shows that you are looking for sexism, even when given reasonable explanation for the inclusion of an attractive female. This reasonable explanation is also why your bizzaro verision of the trailer, with a standing man rather than a kneeling woman, wouldn’t work as well. It is the contrast of ‘clean beauty’ with gore that makes the trailer so poignant. I assert that your vision of the trailer would not be ‘just as good’. I would argue that sex isn’t selling the trailer, but rather the inclusion of beauty is. And since it isn’t a straight forward ‘Hot woman, please buy our product’, but rather a well thought out film technique, (the delayed reveal, the contrast of beauty to carnage) I would argue that it isn’t sexist.
This.
Feminists are full of shit. They say they are only interested in equal rights for women but that’s a load of bullshit. They are only interested in creating an amazonian like future where women dominate.
The only people in this world that are interested in equal opportunity for women aren’t women that piss and moan about it in public fashion. They are the women that see something they might like to do/want to do/feel they can do and fucking do it. Often better then any man could.
IE I have this friends whose girlfriend is a police officer. Now not so much anymore but 5 – 10 years ago this was a male dominated profession. Now she thought she would like being a police officer herself. So she applied to the academy blah blah blah succeeded and now shes a regular on the beat cop. Now my friend has to be a good 130kg and fit, strong enough to cause some trouble. This girl is no bigger then 5 1/2 foot there is nothing too her and yet she can put my friend on his ass on command, She is a very intimidating, strong and proud woman. This is the kind of woman that is interested in equal opportunity. Doesn’t sit, piss and moan about how she is treated incorrectly or she doesn’t get the same career path as a man. She does her job and does it to the best of her ability.
Now here’s a slice of equal opportunity for you and proof that feminists are hollow and full of shit. Show me an example where one feminist applied for a manual labor / construction job.
Woman want to be equal but when something happens to them they all out cry and call sexist.
What about all the male’s getting murdered in video games, wheres the sexism articles and propaganda there? She just killed a dozen victims, some were no doubt males.
This is actually sexism towards men! Woman robots killing men etc. lol!
What if it was a guy just in his underwear and all the cops were female, is it still sexist? Honestly racism and sexism are some of the biggest double standards in history. Just because there was a history of racism or sexism against a group doesn’t mean any little remark about that group is suddenly racist/sexist in this day and age. It’s honestly a joke.
Sex sells, for women sex means big boobs and slim body, for men it means steroid pumped uber muscles. Neither body is realistic for either gender which is one is the arguments used in sexism arguments yet only one side claims sexism all the time when both these images show up.
I treat sexism like I treat racism, if there was no hate intended then nothing wrong has happened. To me no hate was intended in the trailer, it was just a pretty girl getting taken down after going on a murderous rampage. There’s nothing wrong showing off a good looking girl for whatever reason just as there’s nothing wrong showing off a good looking guy for whatever reason but again the complaints only ever happen when it’s the good looking girl is shown off.
Asura’s Wrath was massively sexist against men just look at all their muscles and perfectly chiseled bodies zomg! Let’s not even think of 300.
Ok fine maybe the ratio of normal girl to super sexy girl is off by a fair bit but that doesn’t automatically mean that every game that does show off a super sexy girl is sexist. Some of you guys would argue we should never ever have sexy girls in games ever again while hyper muscle guys are still perfectly ok. Again, massive double standards and that’s what annoys me most more than everything else.
So, you’re an angry male aged 15-45, then?
You have absolutely no idea. None. I am not going to educate you (I suspect it’s impossible), but women face very real and very entrenched discrimination throughout our society (and don’t even get me started on the position of women in developing countries).
For example, women straight out of uni earn thousands of dollars per year less than men for no reason other than that they are women:
http://www.watoday.com.au/business/young-women-pay-dearly-for-gender-gap-20130103-2c6m9.html
1 in 5 women will be sexually harassed at work, compared to 1 in 20 men:
http://www.humanrights.gov.au/sexualharassment/index.html
Women who complain about harassment are bullied into submission:
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/sexual-harassment-rising-as-women-who-speak-out-are-silenced/story-e6frf7jo-1226505586144
About 100,000 women are sexually assaulted every year in Australia. More than a third of women experience violence from a partner:
http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html
Women only make up about 15% of company boards:
http://www.companydirectors.com.au/Director-Resource-Centre/Governance-and-Director-Issues/Board-Diversity/Statistics
Women account for between a quarter and a third of members of parliament, despite parliament supposedly representing the community as a whole (which would suggest 50/50 without some other factor affecting the gender mix):
link
That’s from about 5 seconds of googling. If you could be bothered looking for actual data, instead of anecdotal stories about your mate’s girlfriend who is totally a cop and whatever! then you’d find that the reality is that women get a very raw deal. And read up on a bit of history to find out some fun facts about how recently women were prevented from voting, could legally be raped by their husbands, etc etc etc.
If you are male, not disabled, and living in a first world country, then guess what? You are a member of a group which is about as privileged and pampered as any group in the history of human civilization. Doubly so if you’re white. In case you’re wondering, I’m a white Australian male, not a crazy feminazi. I just have some bloody perspective on how lucky I am, and about why feminism is a very important and very legitimate movement.
I’ve just sat down and read the article in full and every single comment. For the first time in history I totally agree with exe3′s last comment there. From what I’ve seen in this comments Clovis is the only one approaching this rationally. He’s including subject matter and not frothing at the mouth. It’s all been calm resolve.
Tim in the other hand is over biased towards women forgetting some of the more prevalent facts about this video (such as the setting, the actions before and after the focal point) and solely focusing on the woman, which is a shame because I rated Tim to be a fairly intelligent and somewhat wise man. The worst thing I got from Tim’s comments was that if the woman was fully clothed and/or ugly then it wouldn’t be sexist.
Then you have Jess coming in flatly stating that men’s opinion don’t count for ass because they’re men and they don’t know shit about the subject. Yet it’s funny when on a widely different topic such as male circumcision (mutilation imo) women are always at the forefront of that argument. (Wild tangent there, i apologise but it points out that anyone can have an informed opinion even if they are of the opposite sex)
The worst part is, this video is very specific in it’s execution yet it’s being viewed as a generalisation of sexism towards women. That’s the biggest crime in this whole argument.
It’s also interesting to see some men come riding to the defense of the women here instantly assuming they need protection. (p.s that’s sexist)
It’s interesting to see this discussion unfold though. It could quite easily be used in a study of internet society, and how visceral arguments can get.
caitsith01,
ok, to your first point. The statisics used were oversimplified to give the numbers the ‘researcher’ wanted. http://www.news.com.au/national/govt-agency-oversimplifed-gender-pay-data-graduate-careers-australia-says/story-fncynjr2-1226547949451
This proves that anyone can get stats off the internet. doesn’t mean they’re corerct. I just read that 1in 6 male children will be sexually assault in australia. 1 in 4 female children will aswell (But if I left that part out it has more effect yes) Coming at us with only one side of the story is a pretty poor method for getting your point across.
and directly attacking collect0r out the gate is actually kind of disgusting.
Oh cool, cheers, good to know I can’t be intelligent and wise if I disagree with you. Thanks for the backhanded compliment?
As I pointed out in my (very calm, not frothing at the mouth) comments to Clovis, the woman is the focal point of the trailer, and her presentation can easily be construed as sexist by a woman (or a man).
Then — surprise surprise — some of the women polled agreed. Some didn’t! There is no solid answer.
The point is that a) Women are innately more qualified than men to offer their opinion on whether something is sexist towards women, and b) Men should NEVER turn around and TELL them it isn’t sexist.
That’s it. That’s why I put this whole article together. You can read it in the first paragraph, I asked women how they felt about an issue “rather than adding to the white noise of ‘here’s what a man thinks about issues affecting women’”. So many men seem to think it’s their place to TELL women how, why or what the issues affecting them are. And it is absolutely not.
You (not you specifically, Kel) can offer your opinion, “I don’t think it’s sexist”, sure. But you can’t say “It’s not sexist, and you’re wrong.”
Seriously?
Re-read Jess’ comment again. She’s saying men can’t present their opinion as fact when the issue doesn’t affect them. That is 100% objectively correct, she’s not saying men’s opinions don’t count — she’s simply pointing out that men are not able to make flat statements about how women should feel. Which is exactly what I’m saying above.
No, it doesn’t prove that “anyone can get stats off the internet”. Every link I posted was from a reasonably authoritative source. Even the article you have dug up (from that bastion of gender equality, News Ltd) still confirms that there is a significant pay gap between male and female graduates. If you want to learn more, here’s a starting point with more references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap#Australia
“Australia has a persistent gender pay gap. Between 1990 and 2009, the gender pay gap remained within a narrow range of between 15 and 17%. In August 2010, the Australian gender pay gap was 16.9%.”
What I was responding to was the suggestions that ‘feminazis’ complain about nothing and that women are not discriminated against or disadvantaged in our society. The objective facts (including those in your post) indicate that this is untrue. I’m sorry if you find objective reality being pointed out to someone making incorrect assertions “disgusting”.
this scene is a reference to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lj2ISTrfnE
At least she’s not running around topless like in Blade Runner. And given that Cyberpunk is a world full of hookers and drug addicts its not supposed to be politically correct in the slightest. I also think people are getting fed up with the blatantly shit attempts to generate PR for this game.. this is one of them.
Sorry, but kinkyle is right. You can slap any name on a research paper, it wont change who payed for it. All the research has been done to try and get a center view ‘legitimized’, and any CAN go any where on the net and get stats that back them up. So, unless the research is done by a completely nu-bias company, or is backed by someone who is know for wanting to get the truth rather than there own opinon, then I am sorry, but stats are useless.
Tim Colwill,
ok first off.. I didn’t proof read my comment as well as I thought, it was supposed to be rate not rated (fat fingers), 2nd, why are women more innately qualified to deal with the sexism topic?
as for Jess, you only need to look at her first comment:
I dunno, I think it says a lot that many people here can’t even understand why it might be sexist, or in fact, misogynist was the term actually used.
Check yo male privilege, son. <— what the hell is male privilege?
Maybe I was a bit harsh with my initial statement though. Jess just come across as a man hater? Or is it a male gamer hater? I dunno.
These comments are incredibly difficult to masturbate to. Everyone please lift your game.
This whole article screams of nerd baiting, discussing a topic fully knowing it will stir up shit with almost everyone to get more views and comments, very kotakuish.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I don’t think anyone can tell another person how to feel about something because everyone has their own points of view and perceptions but we should be able to accept other peoples views and not get so defensive about it, you don’t have to agree with them but to say that because you’re a man you don’t have the right to question something about whether or not it is sexist is rubbish.
The amount of vitriol in these comments is quite disgusting.
caitsith01,
actually what I said still remains true. There is so much old and conflicting information on the net I could pull stuff up from anywhere and manipulate what I wanted to make it seem true.
as for my views on objective reality:
So, you’re an angry male aged 15-45, then? <— looks like an attack to me, thus fairly disgusting. Hardly objective reality. You made an instant assumption about him, went for the most negative ideal and threw your assertion in his face with a dramatic one-liner.
Sorry, no. Just because one can dig up random info on the internet doesn’t mean that someone presenting a series of fairly objective and reliable sources backing up a particular point should be disregarded.
As as for my “disgusting” comment, I await with interest your views on the way that collect0r’s rant began:
Yeah, I’m the disgusting one. Why on earth would anyone make an assumption about someone like that?
Firstly, women are only innately more qualified at making an impressionistic emotional response to the topic of sexism. As far as logical analysis and discourse goes, there should be no difference between men and women.
I have asserted that it is not sexist, and that people who are saying it is sexist can be, and in this situation are, incorrect. There is no reason why discussions of sexism are somehow immune to analysis and logic. There is nothing that makes such discussions exempt from the same logic we use in any other argument, nor is there anything that makes men less able to logically analyse and draw conclusions in such discussions.
For some reason people have gotten it into their heads that emotional kneejerk reactions are somehow worth more when discussing discrimination. I have seen no sufficient reasoning to back this up, however.
Not sexism in general, just sexism against women.
Why are they more qualifed? They are women. They know what it’s like.
You wouldn’t tell a nuclear physicist they were wrong about nuclear physics, because you don’t understand. By the same token, I will never tell a women “you are wrong, this is not sexist towards you” because I am not a woman.
That’s all I’m really getting at. By this whole article. I asked women what they thought rather than telling them how they should feel.
Dude, she’s my wife — I think she’d have trouble if she was a man hater.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_privilege
In this case, the privilege of a man is assume (and be backed up by other men) that you have the right to tell women what they are and are not allowed to find offensive (or not, as the case may be — as I said, many of the women polled didn’t agree at all).
whilst those numbers are interesting, it’s extremely hard to compare something like this. there will never be two perfectly identically qualified graduates (male and female) that will get the same job at the same company.
and what % of women have degrees and experience that would qualify them for the role?
you just need to be careful with comparisons like that. I’m sure there are very few male head nurses, doesn’t mean the whole industry is against male nurses.
same as above really. what % of women are in politics?
parliament is never going to be truly representative. look at how many of them have law degrees. where are the scientists, engineers, doctors?
anyway, back to the article.
I think it would serve the conversation better if instead of looking at whether it’s sexist, you consider if it’s offensive. plenty of things are sexist. plenty of things are racist. but that doesn’t immediately imply they are offensive.
as for my thoughts on the video. firstly, there’s not much context. but from the looks of it, I can’t help but laugh at the people saying she’s in a submissive role/position. it looks like she just killed a bunch of people, and seems to not give a fuck that she’s being shot at. from the looks of it, the gun being pointed at her head could do exactly nothing.
the clothes she’s wearing might be a bit eh, but nothing too revealing compared to what women willingly wear out in public. if you would like to argue that women in the western world are oppressed and subtly forced into wearing revealing outfits, then go ahead I guess…
I don’t see anything outrageous, and I honestly don’t think it’s offensive, but I’m not a woman.
There is a huge difference between anyone giving a quick off the cuff reaction to something whilst possibly being quite ignorant of the greater contexts of the genre and then being able to say that those opinions are always 100 % correct, can’t be challenged or examined by people of the opposite gender, or have any expectation of being modified should the person be given more information on the topic.
You can’t read a reaction when someone misinterprets something completely but then not be able to have an opinion on their conclusion.
You can’t say that everyone is always 100% objectively correct all the time when they say they are offended by something. If I say I am offended by Women who wear men’s clothes you would judge me poorly.
Its like Western women getting offended by the Burka, when women from that culture are telling them that no it is an empowering choice to wear the clothing. Does one woman’s right to be offended trump the others? Where does the right to be offended cross over to the value in people actually educating themselves, and not passing off flippant first thoughts as something more substantial than that?
Sexist?! How on earth?
I totally agree that sexism is a very real and serious problem in society, even western society, and would absolutely love to see all traces of it forever wiped off the face of Earth; however, I completely disagree that the trailer is in any way sexist.
I think people are seriously struggling with what sexism is.
Sexism is discrimination, or prejudice, against a person based on their gender. How is the subject of the trailer being discriminated against, or demeaned, because she is female?
Misogyny is worse than sexism in that it is hatred towards women, by men, because they are women. Again, this trailer has absolutely no misogynistic themes; unless, of course, you would say that if a male cyber-psycho murdered 14 people in a popular night spot then everyone would be totally fine with that and just let him continue to roam around freely…
The only thing sexist in this thread, as others have pointed out, is Tim insinuating that men are less-able to identify sexism; which is quite ironic.
What is interesting in this article is how female gamers are obviously quite concerned about sexism in society in general; which is very valid and understandable. Its absolutely shameful how male dominated society is. It’s gotten better, and appears to getting better, but there’s still a long, long way to go. Having said that, I must reiterate that the trailer itself is not sexist in any way.
If the article was asking women gamers if they were offended by the perceived sexualisation of the subject, then I could possibly understand; I would not agree, but I could at least understand. Sexualisation is not at all the same as sexism; they are very, very different beasts.
Tim Colwill,
Whats the difference between sexism against women and sexism against men? It’s both sexism. Neither side is more qualified than the other when dealing with it. And from the comments I read, most of the comments here aren’t telling women how they should feel. If anything it’s the reverse, we’re being told how we should feel towards sexism against women.
And thanks for that link about Man privilege. I read all of it, and can say I’m against the concept. We’re all human in my book. I don’t care if you’re male or female or androgynous and hermaphrodite. We are all human.
Arrgghh.
I never said that. I said that women are more qualified to comment on whether something is sexist towards them, than men are.
Because they are. Because they are women. I don’t know why I keep having to repeat this :/
Okay i can’t help but chime in here… There seems to be a lot of people getting worked up over this debate, which in itself leads to a discussion of why, but that’s for somewhere else, so lets get on it with it.
Can this trailer be construed as sexist? Well obviously from female opinion that is presented in this article, yes, yes it can. Fair enough, it is quite understandable that some women feel this way and others don’t (note: i am saying women, because they were who was asked by the person who wrote the article).
So we have established that some women feel that it is sexist and some don’t. What does this show us? It shows us that, much like everything in the world, it is an opinion and an individual choice, whether this makes it right or wrong is beside the point, people are different and are not only able, but willing to read things in different ways.
My opinion goes a little like this, can the trailer be construed as sexist? yes i guess it can, much like a bowl of fruit with two oranges and a banana can be construed as sexual innuendo. It’s all in the perceptions of the viewer, and actually says more about the viewer than the people that developed the trailer. This to me is much more interesting, the fact that people can get so fired up over something reeks of crosses to bear, or maybe just to much time on your hands. I have no problem with opinion, but when one is adamantly being forced down my throat, my hackles start to rise, it doesn’t matter if what you believe is true. There is a wrong and a right way to go about stating your opinion (one of the reasons i have a problem with Apple evangelists and Vegans).
Ultimately do i really care? Do i want to debate this worn out topic until the cows come home with people that are capable of having knee-jerk responses, and the possible anger that could ensue? Or do i just want to enjoy a well rendered trailer for the obvious silly entertainment that it obviously is, and sit back and bask in the glow that someone is finally making a Cyberpunk game?
People seem to forget that just because you feel a certain way, it does not give you a mandate to personally crusade and become a detestable human being. All ideals are grounded in greatness, but ultimately they deny the fact that people are imperfect and that imperfect people will wage war over how a video is sexist or that it isn’t. Wanting to crush out all aspects of nudity or appreciation of the human form, be it male or female, smacks of something more than what this topic is actually about, and highlights far deeper social problems than just sexism.
For instance i will hold up a large first world country as an example, coming from it’s puritan roots to the travesty it is now. Do we want our world to be like this country where you can show people getting there heads blown off, but if you have anything of an adult sexual nature or exploring strong emotional themes it is a big no? Do we want to be known in future generations for burning books like the fascist movement in Germany pre-WW2?
Ultimately it is great to have an opinion, but feeling the need to beat someone down with it smells a bit like oppressive behavior to me, and that is something i will never champion.
Enjoy the trailer for what it is, a preview of a new game by CDPR. I am at least happy that there are still developers that try to tackle adult issues rather than just pandering to the audience. Sure some issues they are weak on, but who isn’t? Are we all so perfect?
Repeating something doesn’t prove it. Perhaps you should read my post a bit further up, where I challenge this notion on a few different levels.
I agree. But we don’t have that here. We have men TELLING women that they shouldn’t be upset or offended and that they are wrong.
That is bad. I will never stop thinking that is bad or pointing out that it is bad.
I appreciate what you’re saying and I think there’s definitely a case to be made for a further discussion of this.
I’m not saying we should not use analysis and logic. The intent of this article was simply to ask women — in the light of people already discussing the topic — what they thought. That’s all. I’ve done that in the hope that it would spark discussion, and it has.
I never claimed that the trailer was or was not sexist, I simply asked the question and then handed the microphone to actual women for comment. Analysis and discussion can come after, and it has — although by and large this comment thread is not that. It is, again, people TELLING women how to feel.
incarna,
That whole piece was truly well said and the answer your last question for me, No. I’m far from perfect.
Tim Colwill,
So you agree, then, that women are no more qualified than men to draw conclusions* regarding whether or not something is sexist? Because things you have said earlier contradict that.
*Emotional responses do not fit under this umbrella.
I agree that sexism towards either gender is bad. However sexism against women is far more prevalent and much more a pressing/relevant issue in society.
I also agree that neither side is more qualified when DEALING with it… but when it comes to sexism against women, women are more qualified to RECOGNISE it. Because they are women.
And vice versa, for men.
I’m glad you’re against male privilege! It is a bad thing, I’m sure I do it/rely on it subconsciously all the time, it’s just something we need to be aware of.
I don’t completely agree with that, but broadly speaking I think there’s a lot that men can contribute to the discussion around sexism against women, as long as they don’t make the mistake of assuming a position of privilege when doing so (ie, telling women how to feel).
If you’re saying “gender shouldn’t come into a dry academic discussion” then I broadly agree, yes, but then again I think the reality of this will always be that sexism will always be an emotive issue.
So we men are wrong to be offended by the notion that our feelings are not as valid in this topic? Is that what is being said here? Am I being told what to feel?
Yes, you are wrong to be offended. Why are you offended? What is there to be offended about?
I am a man, and when it comes to the issue of ‘is something offensive to women’ my immediate thought is “I’d better ask women, because I am not one”.
I don’t find this offensive to me, it’s simply logical. The same is true in reverse and I wouldn’t expect a woman to get offended.
You’re not being told what to feel. You’re simply being reminded that women are in a better position to comment on whether not something is sexist against them, than you are.
I think that’s sort of self fulfilling, though. In any other area of discussion we have learned to remove emotional response as much as possible. By resigning and saying that sexism will always be an emotive issue, I think you are inviting bias. Furthermore, I think protecting and validating these emotional responses pushes back the debate further, and I think (while I am not condoning it) that this standpoint may be partially responsible for provoking more hostile responses from men. Let’s face it, nobody likes being told that their opinion is worth less, no matter what gender they are.
That is wrong though. Sexism has a definition, no-one can redefine it and both men and women are able to apply that definition. Women and more qualified to discuss their personal experiences with sexism (i really hope none of them have had direct exposure to it) but women are no more qualified to identify sexism than men are.
I think the whole problem with this article and why it’s gone off like it has is that you asked the women involved a loaded question. That’s a pretty big no-no.
The question you should have asked was “Did you, as a female gamer, find the trailer offensive?”. Asking them if they thought it was sexist forced them down a path that was wrong to begin with and tainted the result to a huge margin.
The trailer was not sexist by definition or concept. There was no prejudice or discrimination against the subject because she was a woman. This is not an opinion, it is fact. As i said before, it could be argued that the subject was sexualised, but it should have been up to the respondents to discuss that as their own opinion.
Jess Colwill,
That post just about broke my heart.
I don’t feel that the trailer is sexist specifically, objectifying attractive people of either gender is common amid all forms of media. It does have elements of sexism surely, though I hope given a full example of context most of it will be reversed and played upon cleverly.
Though I didn’t really care to discuss it, I enjoyed the article and I think Tim and the contributors for it. Moreover I found the comments disheartening. That a group can still so blindly thrash against opinions explaining why some women have been made feel uncomfortable and hand wave them away with such ignorance astounds me, and says a great deal more about how far we to go as people then a short game trailer. Agree or disagree one should still accept, appreciate and acknowledge the effect it has on people. That awareness as well as the discussions, as HotDogwithSauce pointed out are important parts of all this. prejudices don’t just go away but when we can see them and appreciate the others feelings then we can begin to fight at the more significant issues.
Oh but Jess, your comment just melted me. I hope for a time that you’d never have to feel like that and I appreciate you braving the potential vitriol and sharing it. Whether it was more born of eloquence then genuine heartfelt emotion I cannot know, but it seemed heartfelt and made me feel very lucky that this site that I enjoy has such a passionate and clever woman working there in what is a male dominated industry.
Kind Regards,
Az
Got halfway through…..
**facedesk** **facedesk** **facedesk**
This is why we can’t have nice things, over analysis like this.
When does something become sexist? Let’s run a thought experiment:
A dog is scratching itself on its testicles, 5% of women are horrified by this as it’s a male beast clearly displaying it testicles in public and believe it to be sexist, everyone else thinks it’s normal and say “yeah… You’re overreacting a little here”.
But let’s bump that up a little. 20% of women are horrified by it and think it’s sexist. 30%? 40%? At what point does it become sexist? If at all? Men simply say “that’s just what dogs do, if you look back at the past and at dogs that is just part of their species, they love scratching themselves”.
So what if all women are horrified by this act and believe it to be sexist? 100% of women think dogs scratching themselves is sexism against females. Is this a sexist act? Most would probably say no, the dog is reacting in a natural manner and has no ill will towards females. Case closed.
Ok now we’ll change it up a little. People are able to control the dog scratching its balls, and chose to market their products with a dog scratching his balls as it just happens to be what their target market enjoys. But lets say instead of 100% of women finding it sexist, we bump it down to… 33% (whatever the ratio was in this article who agreed there were elements of sexism in the trailer).
Is this still sexist? The dog has always scratched it’s balls, it’s in it’s nature (genre). Well sure, but now we’re actively choosing to display these images when other images could have been used for marketing. So is it sexist?
Some people will disagree saying “that’s just what it is, it’s perfectly normal, these feminists are just being silly getting worked up over the image of a dog scratching it’s balls”.
Well sorry to break it to you guys but the truth is if something is deemed misogynistic/sexist to one person, it is simply that way to them. When it is misogynistic/sexist to multiple people it is that way to them. And you’ll find that this has happened so often over the years in so many ways there are actually conventions, signs and symbols for sexism and misogyny. They aren’t dogs scratching their balls, they’re women kneeling before men, violence against women, women dressed scantily before full clothed men, etc. etc. All of which are delivered in this video. So yeah, it’s by no way a stretch for people to see this as sexist.
“But there’s heaps of games with topless men with tattoos, and that’s not sexism!”. Well that might be portraying an unrealistic image of men, but is it sexism? Well I’m yet to see a game where it’s a man being shot at by an army of powerful women. Well there’s the recent Hitman game, but even then they had to dress those “powerful females” in quasi BDSM/nun getups. Someone posted a video of Deus Ex earlier and another referencing images of men kneeling down in other instances, as far as I saw it was MEN standing over and killing another MAN, not females. So is it sexist to have a ridiculously ripped guy with tattoos as a protagonist? 300 makes me feel all flabby. Unrealistic body image of a male after all, right? Well yeah, it is a little sexist actually, but is it close to the imagery of men standing over a different sex and committing the same acts of violence? Nope. You may think it is but it would only be the same for females committing violence against other females.
If you don’t think the video has ANY elements of sexism you’re deluded. If the best you can come up with is “she’s scantily clad and gorgeous, but I play games where men are scantily clad and gorgeous so it doesn’t count” you aren’t going to understand.
There’s a large enough proportion of females who see sexism in the video, guess what? It’s probably sexist.
Are you serious? How the hell could you prove this? Are you assuming a woman has never applied for a construction job?
Yeah i see what you did there. Very good, fight fire with fire. So what do you have now? One big conflagration, very intelligent, very subtle and a great way to prove your point.
When did people start putting some much worth in emotional responses? This field of debate should be no different to any other. A number of people having the same kneejerk emotional “This is sexist” response doesn’t actually translate into any sort of proof of sexism, it is merely proof that someone who is unfamiliar with the subject matter may view it that way.
If you actually read some of the comments, you will see that that there are reasons behind her kneeling, her wearing scant clothing, and violence being used. Just because these symbols, as you refer to them, can be used in sexist ways, it doesn’t mean that they are always used in such a manner. It takes about 5 minutes to read into the Cyberpunk 2020 setting, and cyberpunk as a genre, to realise that there are reasons for this, and none of these reasons are as simple as “she is a woman.”
Wow this certainly stirred up a hornet’s nest.
On one hand we have some men telling women that it isn’t sexist.
On the other we have some women telling men that it is sexist.
Both opinions are sexist in and of themselves. Yay we’re all sexist.
I have my own opinion on the matter. Anybody telling anybody else what their opinion should be on what is obviously a very grey area is bad.
All -ism arguments tend to turn into a fairly childish yes/no circular argument, especially given, for this piece, the complete lack of context. Handily there also isn’t any specific definition of the various -isms so people make it out to be whatever they want it to be.
Finally the clip is clearly racist because there are only white people in it. True, but pointless.
Nobody is trying to redefine it. Sexism’s definition is not at stake here.
The question was whether the trailer was “sexist towards women” (first paragraph). So to answer that question, I asked women, because… they are women. Chances are they experience sexism against them every day in some way or another. It happens.
It’s not about identifying sexism, it’s about identifying sexism towards women. You can’t just say something is “sexist”, it has to be sexist towards something. And women are better qualified to comment on this if the sexism in question is towards them.
…not really? A whole bunch of the respondents just went “nope, it isn’t, and here’s why”.
I mean yes, I could have phrased the question differently, but the discussion was already out there in the wild and this was the topic at hand. If I’d been the first person to start talking about this, I could have set the tone. The tone was already set.
No, it’s opinion. Sexism incorporates such things as gender roles, sexual value, stereotypical behaviour, etc, etc. As many women and men have said in this thread, there are definitely elements here that are playing to stereotypical gender roles and reducing women to sexual elements and are therefore sexist.
It’s not black and white, I’m not saying “THIS IS 100% SEXIST FACT” because I’m not going to make that call, especially as a man when I have women telling me it might well be.
tl dr. I try to keep a level head on such matters but absolutely hate it when such topics are blown totally out of proportion or targetted towards certain people. As per a lot of aspects of life there are exceptions to the rules*
*rules such as women liking shopping and men liking cars
giraffe,
So you’re asking if a dog sits scratching it’s balls in a forest and noone’s there to see it, did it really scratch ?
I honestly think these are the same women that have some serious penis-envy going on. They have no clue about this particular genre but instead are finding every and any excuse they can to stand on their soapbox just like our politicians do these days regarding everything from roof bats to the NBN.
I even saw one comment up there where the guy has a square chin and a police uniform – that’s merely “cliche”, but the woman, that’s clearly sexist?!? – sexism is the exploitation of a cliche, no?
Whether something is true or not doesn’t matter if you can win an argument in the public eye.
This is cyberpunk, obviously the woman was the one with the power – it took how many fully armed men to take her down – and they still couldn’t scatch her and could only finally arrest her. She took down a 10 people or so before they even did that.
Ridiculous to think the men were the ones with the power.
Just to illustrate here’s a great article about Beyonce giving another diatribe on feminism … in her underwear. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/15/beyonce-photographed-underwear-feminism
If there was a guy in his underwear in the clip, and a bunch of hot woman cops taking him down – would we be any less enthused about the game? No.
Merely bringing this stuff up is like – me thinks ye protesteth too much.
You don’t need to understand the genre to feel that something is sexist towards you. This is exceedingly harsh of you.
This is a very shallow interpretation of the video. Read Danica’s contribution at the end about the male gaze, and try to understand that claims of sexism come not ONLY from what is in the video, but WHY things are in the video and what they mean to women who see them.
Maybe not you personally, but there would have been less eyes on the video, because it didn’t feature a hot woman as the focus point. That’s another reason this could be seen as sexist, it relies on women being reduced to only their appearance as a marketing tool.
I still would like to know why it’s not ok for us to claim it’s not sexist but it’s perfectly fine to have it stated, as if it were truth, that it is sexist to the rest of us. Sexism is a subjective point of view.
For instance we can have a woman walk into a room with two guys, she jokes with one guy utilising sex or innuendo as the punchline, to which he laughs, she could then use the same joke the other chap and he may find it offense and sexist.
It’s all completely subjective to the viewer. So why does everyone have to conform to the notion of one thing being sexist and another not? By the black and white? Grey does exist.
Tim Colwill,
Okay Tim, I see this is a big issue for you… okay it is an issue. So i have a slight suggestion. Don’t buy or play the game.
You can’t possibly change everyone’s views over night, not only is that unrealistic but foolish. Fair enough you may be right, but by antagonising these people you are only entrenching these ideas further. There is a difference between standing for what is right and leading by example, to just trying to force you opinion down their throat. A lot of the posters here don’t seem to get how their views are construed as sexist, these are views that will change over time, surely you can not think you railing at them is helping your cause? It just makes them defensive and feel that they are right, and by doing so you impede the change that is already happening. For every person that gets rebuffed once, it makes them less likely to try again, so they will be less likely to try to understand again and they will believe they are right.
But you’ve re-affirmed thefinn’s point here. Danica completely misunderstood the trailer, obviously having little knowledge of the genre or the setting itself. Danica thought (entirely misguidedly) that the woman in question was a robot constructed for infiltration, and complained that she wasn’t made to look like a hobo rather than a hot lady.
She is actually a woman that has gotten herself augmented, of course she was going to look good. She was dressed in what looks to be some sort of eveningwear or sleepwear. Cyberpsychosis can hit at any point, and that is what happened in the trailer.
Did you read something somewhere perchance? Don’t think there was any context given with the video about the cyborg, its purpose etc. Please share it if you have because it would do a lot to quell the debate.
Amazing that someone can write something like this and then purport to contribute to a discussion about sexism.
Cyberpunk 2077 is based off Cyberpunk 2020, I am familiar with the 2020 setting and its rules, so I know all about cyberpsychosis. The rest is just filling the gaps from what I know.
Even if you didn’t know about 2020, though, why would an infiltration unit kill >10 people in a busy street? That should be enough to not make the broad assumptions that Danica did, one would think.
If i created something somebody found sexist and my intention was not sexist say I painted a woman naked to display humanities raw beauty and that offended someone. I have every dammed right to tell her she or anyonelse they are wrong for claiming my artwork is sexist. They may not like it they may be offended by it but that will not change the fact that the work of art is not sexist.
And the nuclear physicist thing, if they were wrong I would, if they had made a calculations error that I noticed I would inform them.
You do not have to be qualified to have an accurate perspective
You’re right you can “feel” it’s sexist that does not make it sexist, if I chose to hire someone who is white instead of someone who is black(I apologise for “black”), the reason I make that decision is what matters if I made it because the white person is more qualified or better suits my team it’s not racist.
Now the black applicant can still “feel” like my decision was racist, when it was not.
Going by the definition you use because I’m a white male who has never been the victim of racial abuse I couldn’t tell him, even tho there is a non racist logical explanation for my actions that my choice was not based on his skin colour.
I honestly think the way you claim men are simply not qualified to have an opinion or claim a woman’s opinion is wrong is it’s a form of sexism
go to youtube and click “show more” it gives this lovely lady abit of a back story and explains cyber-psychosis
Katie Williams’s take on it i found the most interesting.
her idea of beauty juxtapozed with violence to elicit a response is in my opinion spot on.
it reminds me of a good book about the idea of beauty:
On Beauty by Umberto Eco.
http://www.bookdepository.com/book/9780436205170?redirected=true&gclid=CPb94_WH8bQCFYlLpgod5TYATQ
relax. it’s just a game.
Tim Colwill,
It appears we might be discussing semantics here, and I seriously believe the difference between sexualisation and sexism is being missed. They are not mutually exclusive, but they are still very, very different.
I do not take sexism lightly at all and I am 100% against any form of sexism. My life, and the lives of some people very, very close to me have been effected by sexism in a big way, as i realise a lot of other people’s lives have been.
I’m fairly certain “sexism” is just being used as a blanket term to be used by anyone who doesn’t particularly like something they see where a woman is involved. I believe the term is being misused and I think it cheapens and trivialises the actual issues that are caused by sexism; which are fucking huge, as anyone who’s been effected by it would know. Sexism is fucking barbaric and makes my blood boil to an indescribable degree.
I watched the trailer 3 times before i saw this article and not once did sexism even enter my mind. This may be due to me knowing the Cyberpunk universe but i’m quite confident I would have felt the same had i not. People seem to be far too quick to cry out sexism every time a woman isn’t wearing what they think is acceptable, or if they are in any kind of posture or position that could be construed as “not acceptable”. That actually sounds familiar…
Anyway, IMO the trailer has to be one of the best trailers I’ve seen due to the accuracy and respect to the Cyberpunk universe it portrayed. It was absolutely spot on; although I reject the idea that the woman at the end, donning the tactical headwear, was the same cyber-psycho who slaughtered the night spot goers. I don’t know if it’s officially meant to be the same woman or not, but i’ll chose to believe it’s not.
Being white and male is the worst combo. We are apparently never discriminated against racially or sexually… ever… didn’t you get the memo?
It’s not sexist imo (subjective).
I don’t believe it’s sexist in general (objective as I can be) given that there is little context. There could be an entirely reasonable explanation for her appearance, or it could be an appeal to male gamers.
I respect the right for the women questioned to offer their own subjective opinion.
I call in to question Tim’s assertion that men are less qualified to spot sexist actions or sexism. Any man can spot sexism, it’s not about qualification (in this case, “qualification” means having boobs and girl junk rather than guy junk…), it’s about being honestly objective (although I would agree that men may find it hard to be honestly objective). Similarly, some women will only ever see discrimination because it reinforces their beliefs.
The choice of the antagonist/protagonist role in this clip is imo about juxtaposition, the sheer contrast between the first impression (which may play up to sexist stereotyping, vulnerable beautiful woman) and the reality (this “lady” does not need the door opened for her).
Compare her “dress” with some pictures from last years Slutwalk…
http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/09/10/photos-from-slutwalk-seattle-2012&view=comments
That’s women fighting for the right to not be stereotyped as “asking for it” if they dress racy and go out, right?
Yeah, she’s a fictional character (so it’s not like she chose to wear that), but honestly, are her clothes really that outlandish compared to, saaay, cyberpunk cosplay..?
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=cyberpunk+cosplay
Oh dear, they’re positively Armish, right?!?!? X D
Substituting a man, a grandma or a child? Man would be less surprising when he turned out to be a monster murder, grandma would have been quite a shock but really out of the setting (and not likely to be recruited). As for children, I wouldn’t be bothered by it and it would serve the same story purpose, but the whole industry has a knee jerk reaction about showing children getting harmed. I tend to think that it’s stupid to ignore such an evocative trope (eg. Law Abiding Citizen is a good example of using harm to a child for maximum effect on the audience), but that’s neither here nor there. The character is reminiscent of Molly the cyber samurai (http://cyberpunk.asia/cp_project.php?txt=79&lng=us for an interesting read on her) from Neuromancer/Johnny Mnemonic.
And Caitsith, srsly guy, if the first thing you think about when you see blazing bullets smashing in to a cyborg chick is that the guys are waving their guncocks blowing their lead cumwads all over her, Freud and co. are saying something about you. I sure as hell didn’t make that connection on watching the video. No one else used the word ‘phallic’ including the women.
Tim secretly looks forward to when this drops off the front page. >_>
I’m just interested to see what people see as sexism against women. Like for those who say it isn’t at all sexist, what imagined scenario is outright sexism and what imagined scenario is only tinged with a little sexism? Personally I’d give this video a 30 out of 100 for sexism. Not too much, but the elements are there.
Just unsure why people insist there’s absolutely no elements: sexist, not sexist. Anyone else want to rate sexism in the video out of 100? Just interested to see what peoples thoughts are.
Sexism is a cultural thing. It’s a shared understanding of how we view and treat women and their worth. It is communicated in cultural things like games, that’s how it’s spread and how things become “everyday”. If you say: “it’s JUST a game/movie/joke” then you are being willfully ignorant about one of main fronts where stereotypes and gender roles are defined.
Also, it doesn’t matter what the artist thinks his or her motivation is, something can still be sexist … like the progressive husband of the 60s saying, “hey, I even LET my wife have a job…”
I’m also 100% with Tim on women being more likely to be able to identify sexism against women. Women have years of experience dealing with sexism, much of which can be pretttttty subtle. Little digs which go under the radar are the most infuriating. They tell you that you don’t belong and do it in a way that isolates because the people not registering all of the little stings don’t see them at all, they definitely don’t feel the weight of them mounting up.
The sheer numbers of comments on this article is proof sex will always sell, regardless of what peoples moral opinions might be.
I don’t see how you can say only women are only qualified to talk about sexism towards woman. Yes only a woman can say how it makes them feel. But from objective point of view a man can determine if something is sexist. Yeah sexism has elements of subjective to it. But if we want to look at this rationally and logically then man can do that just as equally as a woman. To say otherwise is sexist against man. And a lot of comments here seem to forget what sexism is, so here is the definition:
Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
I can’t view this video here so I can’t comment on if the video show this or not. Just pointing out that women are no more qualified than a man to offer discussion and debate on if this video is sexist. In fact if you read that definition you will see this article itself is sexist in that it only asks women’s opinion on if the video is sexist. That is discrimination against males.
I understand though you wanted to get women’s thoughts on the video. So I wouldn’t go quite as far as saying it is sexists cause you present it as here are some women’s thoughts on the matter. Not that only women can comment. But then in the comments you reject some of the more logical responses by saying only women are qualified to comment is just plain sexist. Only women can comment on how it affects them, but that is stating the obvious IMO. But you are saying only women can comment on sexism towards women; is sexist.
PS: I am totally against sexism, racism or any form of discrimination. I strive to judge based on ability. And wish people would be more rational and logical.
We’ve already been through this. Women are only innately more qualified at making an impressionistic emotional response to the topic of sexism. As far as logical analysis and discourse goes, there should be no difference between men and women. You may have a point in terms of subtle, direct experiences, but being a woman does not somehow qualify you as an expert at finding sexism in the media, that claim is simply unfounded.
I feel compelled to point out, in light of my own comments, that while I think that the trailer contains sexist overtones, which I’ve chosen to read heavily into, I think its a fairly mild example overall. There are far more awful examples, hence the heavily divided opinion on it. Honestly tho, I think its time everyone took a deep breath, step back, and think it over. In the end, we have to understand that even if we don’t agree with an opinion or the need for one, we should respect them, and understand that sometimes they come from radically different perspectives.
Hahahahah that is awesome. It is racial discrimination. WHY NO COLOURED PEOPLE!!!???? (beats chest)
This is completely farcical. It doesn’t matter what kind of in-world justifications are used, it doesn’t matter if it makes sense within the fiction. It doesn’t matter, none of these things matter, none of these things change the outcome and none of them change the image that is being presented to women.
A woman could easily look at this trailer and see something that reinforces the attitude that women exist purely for sexual fantasy fulfilment of men. This might cause her to conclude that it is sexist towards women.
That’s… that’s it. That’s the end of the story.
It doesn’t make it okay if she’s augmented. You can get breast augmentations in the real world right now, and one of the biggest reasons that cosmetic surgery is as popular as it is is because of an endemic sexism that makes women believe their physical appearance is the only important thing to care about. It starts at childhood and it gets worse from there.
Does that make this trailer objectively sexist? No! Is there room for further debate? Sure! But you can’t say “this makes sense in the fiction of the world”. It doesn’t hold water, it’s completely inane and it in no way negates OR invalidates anybody’s interpretation.
Really struggling to keep up with everybody’s responses here, so sorry if I’ve missed anybody, I’ll catch up soon :/
Context doesn’t matter ?
please tell me you don’t really think that if I use shock imagery to raise awareness for children starving in Africa say I show a video of an aid station fill with children dying from disease and malnutrition to raise awareness, i’m presenting the image that I encourage and condone suffering ?
And yes I know it’s an extreme example but if you’re saying context is irrelivent you’re saying any piece of video/image/art/fiction that has an example of any time of abuse is condoning that abuse.
Are you going to say that the movie “the help” was incredibly racist and offensive because it was an accurate portrayal of life in that time and local ?
Firstly, what you quoted was from a post pointing out that one of the ‘opinions’ in the article was based almost entirely on an incorrect interpretation of the trailer. She didn’t even take the time to read the ‘blurb’ that the trailer came with, which really shows that her opinion holds little weight. She literally doesn’t know what she is talking about. My augmentation explanation was showing that.
To answer your specific point, though, you still miss the fact that a cyberpunk future is a dystopic one. Showing something isn’t encouraging it, and if someone makes a mistake in this distinction it is their fault, not the fault of the people behind the art.
Augmentation as a way to look good is presented in cyberpunk fiction as a shallow, terrible thing. If someone looks at this trailer, and writes it off as male wish fulfillment without actually doing any sort of research, they are both ignorant and incorrect. They are free to interpret how it is, but their interpretation is simply incorrect. The information is out there, if someone chooses not to research it then they have to be ok with the fact that they will, most likely, be drawing incomplete and incorrect conclusions. They can feel however they want, but if that feeling is based off a bad interpretation, then it really means very little to the debate at hand.
People are invalidating their own interpretations by ignoring facts that are already out there, i’m just pointing out how invalid these interpretations really are.
Are they shooting at her because she isn’t in the kitchen?
This is eye candy for a particular audience and nothing more. I see no prejudice or discrimination or suggestion of it in the trailer. It is just a snippet of video, there is no context or story to base such a black and white view.
My opinion isn’t white noise.
Sensationalism. Like linking violence to video games.
My personal opinion is that the trailer might be mildly sexist, it didn’t occur to me when I first saw the video, but I can see how someone would think that, in hindsight. Rather than see it as men attacking a vulnerable woman, the fact that bullets are being destroyed when hitting her, the men are attacking in such overwhelming numbers because she is one bad mofo and they are the ones that are vulnerable. She is the one in a position of power because she knows the feeble attacks coming towards her are ultimately futile.
Having said that, all the responses contained in the article were reasonable and well-thought out, and I could see how someone could come to that conclusion. By comparison, some of the responses to the article in the comments section are far more knee-jerk and extreme.
I’m reminded of a Keisha song now”
Blah, blah, blah
Stop talking
Stop talk, talk talking that
Enough said
This is hugely different and is not a valid example.
That shock imagery is designed to raise awareness that a bad thing is happening and to help prevent it.
Sexual imagery that reinforces the place of women as sexual objects only does not raise awareness that it is bad nor does it help prevent it.
My point is that regardless of the in-world justifications, the end message is the same as far as some women are concerned.
I am by no means saying context is irrelevant; context is everything and context is in fact what we are discussing here. The context is that this is a piece of marketing designed to promote a product and that it used imagery that some (not all) women find uncomfortable.
It doesn’t matter what happens in the fiction, that’s still the end result.
No understanding of the fiction is required to see that this is a piece of marketing that reinforces the notion that women are primarily valuable as sexual objects. I’m not sure why we are discussing this.
No, I get your point. I just don’t agree.
It doesn’t matter if the future is dystopic one. By showing something you indirectly encourage it. By showing a beautiful woman as the focal point you reinforce that women are meant to be beautiful in some way.
Different people will feel motivated and encouraged by different things. You don’t know and you can’t tell other people what they may be encouraged by, especially if it’s on a subconscious reinforcement level, especially with something like sexism which is culturally endemic.
If the movie had text on the screen that said “WOMEN ARE VALUABLE FOR MORE THAN JUST THEIR APPEARANCE” then you could objectively point to it and say “No, this does not encourage sexism.” What we are discussing here is a reading of the themes and that’s going to open to interpretation.
It’s very clear we don’t agree on this, so I guess I’ll just try and deliver my final thoughts so you can deliver yours too and we’ll just move on.
I feel very strongly that there is no need to research something like this to form an impression of it.
It doesn’t matter what the reasons are for what is happening in the trailer, or the justification for why the woman looks the way she does, or what Cyberpunk as a book says about the human condition — none of these things change the end result and the end result is something that can (clearly) be interpreted by some women as demeaning to them.
You clearly disagree. That’s fine. But the bottom line is that this is a piece of marketing and as a piece of marketing, it appealed to the lowest common denominator in order to increase exposure. It did this by playing on what are arguably sexist tropes and in doing so made some women feel uncomfortable.
No matter what in-world reasons there are for this, nothing changes the facts above.
Wouldn’t have seen this trailer without reading this.. probably buy the game now :GG
It doesn’t show that women are only valuable as sexual objects, though. At the start of the trailer she is seen as a sexual object, then we see what havoc she has caused. At the end of the trailer we see her, now bald (Long hair is traditionally attractive on females) and covering up her face with a mask (obscuring her beauty.) I would love to see you explain how this is showing that her value is sexual, when her recruitment into the psycho squad shows her having much of her sexuality taken away. This is what I mean about interpretations, yours interpretation was flawed as it jumped to a conclusion early on, and ignored the ending of the trailer.
In regards to ‘showing is encouraging’, how do you feel about anti drink driving ads that show drink driving, or anti rape ads that show rape, anti discrimination ads and so on? Do you believe these are encouraging the issues they tackle? 1984, a reliable ‘go to’ dystopia’, was not encouraging a super strict, locked down society when it showed us life under ‘Big Brother’. 1984, while more subtle in its approach, seeks the same ends. If someone took 1984 to be an encouragement of extreme totalitarianism, the fault would be theirs, not the texts.
I still assert that the interpretation of Cyberpunk as sexist i flawed, and have shown reasons for why I feel this way. It is true that some women do indeed feel uncomfortable because of this trailer, but that is, again, because of a flawed interpretation. You seem to ignore this point and respond with “No, it is still sexist.” You can feel this way, as you say you do, but such an impressionistic argument backed up with little logic is not really sufficient of proving anything, other than your unwillingness to accept arguments from the other side.
Nope … looks like he’s decided to reference his magnificent creation in another article. Maybe this whole thing was a ploy to finally get people to use the new comment section. Either that or Tim has some massive vendetta against this game and its developers.
I ask of anyone who’s bothered by this, read the plot of this South Park episdoe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Hankey,_the_Christmas_Poo#Plot
Get over it, your every nitpick will not be satiated. Yup, you could argue there’s a token girl but I don’t see what’s so horrible about something having a girl in it. But if there is, then let’s just simply remove all females from everything, right? That way they can’t be represented “incorrectly”.
Anyway, complainers gonna complain. I think we should just throw them all in a white room…wait no, a white room would be racist.
Well done Tim, you’ve created the online version of Today Tonight.
I think I’ll stay on the forum-side of GON from now on. Cheers.
Robot woman surrounded by dead males and[\b] females being shot at by police (gender obscure)……. Sexist?? Really? The only person who is definitely male is the enhanced? cop who holds a gun to her head. There is no suggestion that she is kneeling in submission to anyone that I can tell. Maybe I watched a different trailer….. or maybe I watched the trailer to see what was actually happening and not with my own preconceived expectations coloured by my prejudices. Heh I don’t know why people make so much about these things. I sense other agendas at play …….
The idea that you think I would have any agenda behind this is pretty hilarious. Hilarious and wrong, naturally.
See you on the forums :)
I’m afraid you do, otherwise you have no idea regarding CONTEXT. This is paramount in this video. If you don’t understand the context of the fact that this woman happens to be not all she appears, then you really have no clue what is going on and thus no basis for any kind of conclusion – or you CAN and just admit that your conclusions are wrong – either way, it’s still not sexist.
You might find it OFFSENSIVE, but sexism requires some intent on the part of the video maker, apart from stylised characters I see no proof of intent any greater than seeing a sports illustrated calendar.
Tim Colwill:
This is a very shallow interpretation of the video.
Ridiculous – a shallow interpretation is taking the video at face value not knowing what’s really going on and deciding that even though you have no experience with cyberpunk or the particular style of characters and genre, you will create some amazingly grandiose scheme by which you call it sexism. There are FAR bigger fish to fry that a girl in her underwear who obviously was caught while sleeping (going by her attire) and ended up in the street surrounded by her enemies.
THAT’S shallow, shallow would be not reading more into it, shallow would be playing up some politically correct psychophant rant that pleases the mob.
You portray what I said as exactly the opposite of what I propose – and that is that the video is not shallow, as it has hidden depth – the people making the accusations however, ARE.
In cyberpunk2020 as best I can tell from backstory, things like this happen because people feel forced to improve themselves as much as possible even risking their sanity to be “perfect” it is social commentary and it raises awareness of how has the world is and how it often drives people to do self destructive things in the pursuit of being “perfect” both in the real world and in fiction.
Without showing examples of this the message is impossible to convey.
Context in this case shows a picture of a woman literally driven to madness thru her self destructive obsession to become perfect something that often happens in the real world at the end it shows her having redemption from her destruction via becoming part of the “psycho” squad.
How is it sexist when that happens ? both in real life and in fiction portraying it happening is somehow evil ? There is nothing sexist here, there is no sexist intention and the back story supports this it’s a pretty female character to get us to engage and because it fits the genre if it weren’t a woman it would have been a pretty man however men getting shot does not have the same impact on an audience.
Just because your perception of something is that it is “sexist” that does not make it sexist just like if you look at the mona lisa and think that is sexist you are equally wrong.
Clovis, what I think Tim might be trying to suggest (and I hesitate to say this because I am loath to put words in another mouth) is that using the argument to say the imagery is appropriate to the setting is flawed, because for the majority looking at the material are not familiar with it. Because you ‘are’ familiar with it, its skewing your perceptions. Your impressions are equally flawed, as you put it, but in this case it is from the other side of the spectrum.
Take all knowledge of Cyberpunk, the world, the mechanics, all of it away, and look at it then. The ending of the video does change things, but the imagery is brief. The focus is on the (arguably, it seems) sexualised imagery. That’s the part people are talking about. That is what some people are uncomfortable with. Without knowledge of empathy loss through cybernetics, psycho squad or anything else, this trailer is about a bunch of men shooting a robot woman. And different people from different fields of life will read into that differently. Your opinion is different because of extraneous knowledge. But that doesn’t mean others have to accept it, even when they are privy to that knowledge. They are still allowed to find it objectionable.
The intention is irrelevant. You just said yourself that it’s a pretty female character to get us to engage. That is textbook sexism, dude. It is reducing women to eye candy in order to draw attention.
No, of course it wouldn’t! You know why a man being shot wouldn’t be the same? Because of gender roles. It’s expected that men should be the ones fighting while women just look pretty. You wouldn’t blink an eyelid at it because it’s expected, it’s normal, it’s a form of endemic cultural sexism.
Again, this is irrelevant because it doesn’t matter if the woman is more than she appears, it’s the way she appears, the way she is presented, and the way she chooses to look (assuming body modification) that is the problem.
No, it doesn’t, and yes, a Sports Illustrated calendar is in itself sexist as it reinforces the idea that women exist only as eye candy for men. That is not a good example.
You don’t need experience with cyberpunk, with the characters or the genre, to feel that you are being demeaned as a woman by watching that video — as is true from reading the above comments, from women.
Does that mean this video is OBJECTIVELY sexist? No of course not, it’s an interpretation. I’m just sick and tired of people trying to claim that a woman’s opinion on this isn’t valid unless she’s read Cyberpunk from cover to cover. It’s ridiculous to suggest this.
My impressions are skewed? As the one that actually understands the setting, I fail to see how this is a position that could be considered. My impression of the trailer is one that comes with context and knowledge of the genre. If anything, my impression is the ‘complete’ one, or the one that is closer to the vision of those who created the trailer.
Asserting the view that an impression coming from a position of knowledge and clarity is ‘skewed’ really just shows that you are desperately trying to defend the impressions that are truly flawed, and thus your bias is revealed. The only thing it is ‘skewed’ away from is a sexist reading, which if you read my earlier posts, I have provided numerous (and largely unanswered) arguments against.
To answer the second part of your post, the amount of time that the focus is on the sexual imagery is inconsequential, as the ending of the trailer asserts the sexual nature of the woman as unimportant in regards to her usefulness for society. She has usefulness past that, when taking a feminist reading. To say “but she is sexualised for longer” is an incredibly shallow statement that is only looking at duration as opposed to any actual meaning.
Additionally, many of the details you ask us to ‘remove’ from our analysis are not only crucial to any real understanding of the trailer (as opposed to kneejerk “This is sexist!” reactions) but are provided in the “more information” section of the youtube video. To ignore this and say it is ‘extraneous’ is ludicrous, and any impressionistic comment made without even including such information is deeply flawed.
I don’t even think you know what ‘Cyberpunk’ is. It is a pen and paper setting, not a traditional novel. And to be honest, half of these impressions could have read the ‘more information’ section and educated themselves, or just read a wiki article on cyberpunk as a genre, and could have then formulated a more informed opinion. Instead, we end up with emotional responses based on incomplete information.
We (attempting to speak for others with similar viewpoints) are not saying the opinions are not valid, they are just less valid than educated, informed opinions on the same subject material. It is an argument from a position of knowledge, rather than a flawed argument from authority (Which is the standpoint you are taking when you say women are automatically equipped to expertly discuss sexism in media, despite the possibility of them having a shallow understanding of the subject matter)
And you are right that you don’t need experience with cyberpunk to feel demeaned by it, in fact it seems that most people saying they are demeaned by it have had no previous experience with it, and little understanding of it past shallow impressions. Wouldn’t you say that it then becomes a possibility that these two thing could be linked? Yes, corellation does not equal causation in all cases, but I think it is an interesting possibility to consider, and important for this line of argument.
Clovis.
‘Skewed’ does not mean ‘wrong’. It means you are viewing things from the opposite end of the spectrum from the people who ‘are’ being offended by the video, and thus are unable to see their point due to your own knowledge making your opinion lead into a different direction. Like I said multiple times, a different view point creates a different perspective. You are choosing to say that only one is and can be right. This is not the case, as no two observations of events can be taken exactly the same way in an emotive context. That is not to say that the reaction of every individual is wrong – it is a personal one, and therefore contextual to the individual. We are both reading this differently. However, I refuse to accept your assertion that I am wrong and you are right in regards to a personal perspective on a matter. That is why we have so many divisive opinions on the issue. I’m not trying to convince you, so I’m not trying to refute your arguments. I’m simply saying no one ‘has’ to agree with you, and that they won’t, no matter how much you try to convince them.
Yes, I have bias towards the trailer being considered sexist by some. You have bias towards it not being so. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be so passionately defending it. Revealing it doesn’t validate your point or mine any more or less. It is simply our personal feelings on the matter. Same as Tim’s, same as anyone else who agreed or disagreed. They aren’t right, and they aren’t wrong, and the same thing applies to you.
Thankyou, but I do know what Cyberpunk is. I’m typing this from next to a bookshelf with 47 different D&D books (eBay, aieee), half a dozen Dark Heresy books, and even a smattering of Palladium and RIFTS. I know exactly what Cyberpunk is. I haven’t played it, but I know what it is and I have looked into it.
I posit that you are also making a flawed argument from authority when you claim that knowledge of the subject matter beyond the video gives you a greater validity than those of people who might actually feel the video demeans them.
I maintain that the video is a product in and of itself, divorced from the setting, and the viewer does not need familiarity with it to form an opinion of it. Indeed, as a piece of marketing, CDPR would not expect the viewer to have an understanding of it. They are relying on tropes such as the attractive murderbot or the shock at seeing a beautiful woman shot in order to generate interest. These are things that women might (and apparently sometimes do) find demeaning.
Nobody is claiming that “Cyberpunk is a sexist setting”. It’s clear you like Cyberpunk, that’s great! It seems really interesting, and I’ve always wanted to play. But this video is a Piece of Marketing and may wholly and validly be judged on its own merits. Judgement of it is NOT judgement of Cyberpunk as a setting.
I would also really like it if people would stop claiming that I assert “women are automatically equipped to expertly discuss sexism in media” or “women are the only ones qualified to comment on sexism”. I did not say these things, I simply pointed out that being a woman gives you more authority to say “this is sexist towards women (or not)”.
I don’t think so at all, especially in so small a sample number.
No it’s not and heres why:
) People like pretty things this is nature and saying we should not like pretty things is just silly, just like pretty men get alot more screen time than ugly men it’s not sexism it’s nature it’s sexism if you proclaim “this is the standard all women should live up to” but being a murdering cybernetic killing machine I think it’s pretty obviously that’s not the statement being made here.
) How is intention irrelevant? This is exactly what I said with the videos of suffering statement If I show something to raise awareness or demonstrate a point to convey message that matters ALOT if I show racism to convey the point that it should not be socially acceptable if that is my intention it is alot different than if I showed it to encourage it, context is important.
My only real issue with your argument is that you think intention and context are meaningless which is just silly. if you’re offended by someonelse’s painting of a woman in her underware the problem is with you not with the painter they didn’t mean to offend you or objectify women simply to capture natural beauty, unless of course they did intend to objectify women/offend you, then you could claim the painter/their work was sexist.
You can “feel/think” something is sexist but that does not make it sexist your perspective and opinion can be wrong
Sure it’s the same as far as some women are concerned, people miss interpret things if my intention as an artist is to convey a certain message and someone gets a different message they have miss interpreted my works I didn’t offend them their interpretation offended them.
It isn’t valid, you cannot expect every video to be tailor made to every person in the world.
To a muslim this video is offense because the woman is not covered head-to-toe and so is most of western film incredibly offensive to their core beliefs, someone can find something offensive even be upset by something that does not mean they are right to do so.
If I get angry because I don’t understand the subject matter it is no ones fault or problem but my own.
If something is not objectively sexist any sexism in the material is personal and is nto worth worrying about, living in the real world you have to realize every experience cannot be made to suit every person on the planet and no matter what it is someone will be upset or offended by it.
The difference is that my bias is being used to fuel my logic, whereas you are using your bias in place of logic. That is to say, I am biased towards my point of view, so my logical arguments are being crafted quickly and decisively compared to, say, when I would write an essay. You are biased against me, so instead of arguing against logical points logically, you are bringing up impressionistic emotional responses and putting them on an equal level of validity to reasoned, logical arguments.
Again you say my argument is skewed, but it could only be considered skewed when looking against an impressionistic, ignorant interpretation of the trailer. In any other field of debate, an argument made from a standpoint of knowledge is considered to be superior to an impressionistic standpoint, not ‘skewed’. There is nothing intrinsically different about arguments concerning sexism and any other debate that should cause this, so such a view is questionable. You seem intent on referring to shallow, emotional responses as different rather than inferior, which leads us to the question of ‘Why?’ Why, in this field of debate, are emotional responses considered to be equal to logical, reasoned responses? You seem quite happy to label this an emotive context, when the basis of any field of logical debate is that emotive influence should be kept to a minimum, unless it is backed up by logical thought.
It is also rather ridiculous for you to argue against my assertion that “only one perspective is and can be right”, given that this debate should be argued logically, as opposed to emotionally. I would like for you to explain how the perspectives of “This is not sexist towards women” and “This is sexist towards women” could both be correct. These perspectives are mutually exclusive. A statement of “This is sexist towards women and not sexist towards women” makes no sense without changing the meaning behind those statements.
By showing pretty men/pretty women on screen, you reinforce the stereotype that this is what is valuable. By making pretty people the only thing shown, you imply that it is the standard that needs to be lived up to.
That is definitely not what I am saying, I am simply looking at the video in a different context and intention to you.
I submit that the trailer’s intent is to market a product. I submit that the trailer’s context is that of a marketing device.
Viewed in these contexts, I submit that the trailer depicts women in a way that women may find offensive/upsetting.
It’s not relevant or helpful to say “this is not offensive to women, because it could be offensive for other reasons or to other people”.
I’m not saying this video objectively IS sexist, I was just trying to share what some actual women felt.
I repeat my belief that you don’t need to understand the subject matter to comment on what is ultimately a marketing video.
I am not arguing that I am an expert on such issues, rather I am arguing that I have a full knowledge of the context and the trailer, as opposed to people who do not even read or refer to the ‘more information’ section of the youtube video, and jump to a false conclusion. This is not an argument to authority. I am not positing that I am correct because I have been correct about these things before, or am an expert in the field of gender studies relating to cyberpunk settings. Rather, I am arguing that I am correct because I am actually looking at the trailer and the information provided with it, rather than ignoring half of the available information. If what I said appeared to be an argument from authority, I apologise, but that was not my intention, and indeed I am hardly an ‘authority’ on the subject, I simply have a more full understanding of the trailer, which is crucial when discussing it.
Additionally, I am claiming that both Cyberpunk, and the trailer, are not sexist. I believe the trailer, when viewed with the information provided taken into account, is not sexist. Information from the 2020 setting is not needed to prove this, but it does hammer the point home much more convincingly to those that still have doubts.
You, however, are still asserting that women are automatically authorities in the field, (“I simply pointed out that being a woman gives you more authority to say “this is sexist towards women (or not)””) and that is a false argument from authority. I can explain the difference between this argument, and what you thought to be an argument from authority on my part more clearly, if you so desire.
*Rubs forehead.* Using logical rhetoric to refute what is purely an emotion based response on the individual – I’m baffled as to how you think that will work. Logic and emotion are very different things – Logic is what ‘is’, emotion is what one feels, but it is no less real for it being a feeling rather than computation. You cannot deny a person’s emotional response, Clovis, no matter how much logic you throw at the matter, and it also does not give you the right to disparage it. They are allowed that emotional response, based on their own context, knowledge, and various other factors that come together to elicit a certain response, hence why people disagree on this matter. You’re arguments are logical, yes, but I still disagree with them. There is a validity to emotional response when the entire CONTEXT OF THE ARGUMENT IS ABOUT EMOTIONAL RESPONSE TO A SUBJECT.
However, I’ve gathered enough from your posts that you are not going to see it this way, and thus I’m not going to swing you to your point of view, and you are not going to change mine.
I must admit, on a final note, when I first saw the trailer, sexism didn’t come up as an issue at all. It was only after I read the responses of the women who viewed it did I realise just how much I missed on the matter, leading me to view it again. Does this make me a bad person? No. Just someone who viewed something from a point of view that didn’t take certain factors into account. When different perspectives were offered to me, the entire context changed dramatically, and now, I can’t view it any other way.
I find it amazing that is seems that everyone here looks at the police in a group shooting the “woman” and immediately assumes that they are all men. Pulling the imagery apart as best as I can I can actually see a couple that look like men and the rest that are indeterminate gender. Why is it that it must be males shooting a woman rather than just police? How do people leap tot hat immediate assumption? Is it just because a female figure is the target of the shooting? I’m confused.
oddangryshot,
I commented with a similar view on the rifle squad earlier, it has been used confirmation bias.
I think this entire discussion would be better off if the topic wasn’t approached with the idea of implanting ideas(therefore close scrutiny) of sexism and instead asked if the trailer was offensive. I would of liked to know views of the people that are in the article what they thought of the trailer before being asked by another person if it was sexist.
After reading most of the responses above. I feel that the trailer is not sexist. I believe that there is no intention by the people who made it to be intentionally sexist (Although i haven’t look at any other sources apart from the trailer). I feel the only things wrong with the trailer are, the advertisement in the Cyberware window as it’s unnecessary and I have no real idea of what that’s trying to convey, and that it seems intentional to market towards males because it uses a female to draw attention before the “reveal”. I don’t think that the female character in the trailer purpose is to display weakness or to display social commentary, but merely to attract attention.
Following my opinions the trailer is sexist as it cater towards male (female-attracted), how ever I don’t think that is the sort of thing that can be overcome in a trailer like this unless there is a person for each gender being the point of focus in the same view. Maybe if the developers release an alternative trailer it would be ok?
It made sense in my head, I am bad at articulation.
This is a story, context is important in any story or you end up taking it OUT OF CONTEXT. Anyone familiary with the Cyberpunk literature or William Gibson would completely understand that this setting is sexy, gritty, edgy and dystopian.
It is ridiculous to ASSUME – and ASSUMING is what you’re doing when taking something OUT OF CONTEXT that there is some hidden “women at gunpoint” message trying to be conveyed in the video.
Sexism is a message conveyed to base opinion on traditional sterotypes. A woman at gunpoint who just killed 10 people IS NOT A TRADITIONAL STEREOTYPE and anyone thinking that somehow a woman at gunpoint is the same as a woman in the kitchen barefoot is fucking insane.
Psychophants – look it up.
Nuff said.
Derp
For your opinion to matter in a debate you do. To get upset by something you’re right you don’t need to understand it but when you start claiming “this piece of film shows *insert opinion here*” your opinion of what the film shows is completely irrelevant, the intention and context of the film say you saw the last movie in a trilogy your interpretation is missing context and will be different to everyone has that context.
Nemesis_22,
You seem to have a hard time grappling with this, so i’ll give it one last shot to try to explain it to you without using too much ‘logical rhetoric’. I am not denying that people can feel this is sexist towards them, I am arguing that them ‘feeling’ it is sexist is in no way proof that it is, and indeed that many of these ‘feelings’ of sexism are based on incomplete understandings of the subject material. This has yet to be refuted, other than claims of ‘Understanding of subject material doesn’t matter’.
To give an example, lets say someone was to read The Fellowship of the Ring, and then communicate to me that they felt Middle Earth was created by a giant space whale. I, having read the Silmarillion, could argue otherwise. Their feeling is a genuine one, based off their own limited knowledge and context, but it is obviously not based on a full understanding of the subject material. Bringing up the Silmarillion would not be extraneous information, and the emotional response based on incomplete fact would not be considered to be as valid as a properly formulated opinion. Again, there is nothing special about sexism that makes it exempt from the regular rules of discussion or debate.
On another note, I am sorry to read that you have been convinced by these knee-jerk emotional responses. It is sad to see.
Ok…
look at the original artwork for Cyberpunk 2020 in the original book.
http://dc93.4shared.com/doc/TAnvrARJ/preview010.png
doesn’t stop there either.. Look at the chrome books as well.
link
link
link
Again no one really cared about this back then. The reason why CD Projekt are marketing the game like this has little to do with Sexism and more to do with staying authentic to the original PnP roleplaying game.. Cybrepunk 2020 was marketed in the exact same way as this trailer. If you’re having an issue with this.. you’re having issue more with the PnP RPG of the 1980s than the upcoming game.. I think Tim’s showing a bit of a lack of understanding here, maybe if you had a copy of the PnP RPG you could open it up and clearly see why the game is being marketed this way.
Even still it goes even further back.. Molly Millions being the catalyst to all of this. She was the original Razor Girl afterall.
http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/gallery/neuromancer-graphicnovel-lost/front.jpg
Cyberpunk by its nature is sexualized. Its supposed to be a commentary on how bad our modern society can turn into.
which is the point people have been making using sexualisation to point out errors in society is not equal to being sexist, you can’t convey a sexist society without showing sexism.
Exactly. Even in the video, the poster in the shop window selling cyberware is not dissimilar to current computer shows – I don’t see the same diatribe about those.
This entire thing is not unlike 1984 being a statement about THAT government controlled future – only this is a corporation controlled future.
It is crazy-talk to call this anything but in-line with the art and world portrayed and they did a marvelous job of it.
Of course not understanding the context people don’t understand ANYTHING.
Wow, how is this even a thing?
Okay Clovis, if we’re going to be superior and condescending here, here goes.
Having played the source material before several times, having played its descendant Shadowrun for years, having an intimate knowledge of the Cyberpunk dystopian future where the lines between sex, gender and self are blurred due to the distortion of self realisation due to the fact that the self can be augmented and changed to become something else entirely until the original is all but lost, I can say I am familiar with the source material, and I can also say that this is still using sex to sell a product, and therefore is, by that note and the very definition, sexist.
It uses an attractive woman to gather attention. It then puts her in her underwear to ensure it -keeps- that attention.
It uses the trope of the femme fatale cyborg, a Cyberpunk gender stereotype that’s been done many, many times before. A gender stereotype is classified as an act of sexism.
It involves violence against women. If they showed her attacking the people shooting at her, this wouldn’t be the case, it would be responsive actions taken against an assault. You can refer to the source material, but this is a case of evidence, which means, THAT WHICH IS SEEN. What we -see- is an act of violence against a completely non responsive woman. What we can -guess- at is merely heresay, regardless of whatever talk of setting you choose to use. That which is not seen, observed or otherwise recorded cannot be given as evidence, and therefore is inadmissable. Therefore, this is an act of violence against a woman, perpetrated by what appear to be men or patriarchal figures, and thus, again by definition, an act of misogyny and therefore sexist.
Lastly, your argument that the source material justifies the use of sexualised depictions is flawed. The source material itself is irrelevant, because it is, by its own nature, also sexist. Drawing on a sexist material to create a sexist material of your own does not cancel out the original sexualisation of the material. That being said, it is, as posted above, merely a commentary on what society is becoming. By standards of today, however, by standards of THIS world and the world we live in NOW, this can, by means of examples I have just given, be classified as sexist material, but admittedly, of a far lesser nature than some examples which can be found in the world now. It is milder, yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that sexist overtones are present in the evidence of that which has been observed. I’m not saying that they are extremely bad ones, but they are present.
You’re own complete arrogance of bias is also showing, I must admit. You have just admitted to having discounted all opinions that disagree with your own as merely knee jerk, as they cannot be correct when weighed against what is merely your own opinion. The fact you have dismissed out of hand every female reaction that was offended about the material speaks greater volumes to me than your arguments do. By such definition, a woman has no right to be offended unless you deem it otherwise. Which is also, by example of ‘male privilege’, also sexism.
Anyway, we done here yet?
Sex selling the product is incidental, not the primary purpose of the woman being attractive. I’d argue that given that, the woman being attractive is not sexist, especially seeing as we are shown her having use beyond her appearance in the trailer. It is important that we see her in a more sexualised state at first, to play off fears that this is all sexist wish fulfillment, so that when we arrive at the trailers conclusion, it has more meaning.
A female cyborg killing things is no less common than a male cyborg killing things in Cyberpunk, and even then one trope does not a sexist trailer make. Furthermore, we see this trope being turned on its head when she is ‘redeemed’ and becomes every bit as government serving and law abiding as the other figures in the trailer. At the end of the day, it is impossible to entirely avoid tropes, and this trailer is certainly not riddled with them.
Violence against women is not inherently sexist. It is stereotyping on your part to conclude that the figures we see in their police uniforms are all male. Again, men attacking a woman is not inherently sexist. Furthermore, we see that the female is later recruited into the psycho squad. The attacks from the figures of indeterminate gender are presumably to distract her so that she can be restrained, and not fueled by any misogyny. It is obvious she is not being attacked for being a woman, There is no evidence here for sexism, you are simply assuming that because what you deem to be male figures are attacking a female it is sexist.
As I have explained many times, and as you even acknowledge (but then choose to ignore), the portrayal of sexist content in Cyberpunk is a critique of society. As much as people may ‘feel’ this to be sexist, it is in fact the opposite. The sexualisation is not simply because of the ‘male gaze’, or whatever other terminology you may choose to use, it is employed to show how bad sexualisation in the modern world may become. To say ‘but it still shows it, so it is sexist’ is a shallow interpretation. If people are not gifted enough to read into meaning as opposed to simply taking the face value of the portrayal of women in a dystopic setting, the blame is on them.
The women in question have every right to be offended if they choose to, but they have no right to be exempted from criticism, and their offense need not be taken as any sort of proof of sexism. If my criticism offends, I apologise. That is not my intention, as much as you may wish it is.
I appreciate someone actually taking the time to post a decent argument for sexism in this video. I am not convinced, but you have done a valiant job. I still feel as though your opinion is flawed, for reasons I have listed, but these flaws are not from careless ignorance, which I can applaud.
If I felt at all inclined to continue this discussion before, it’s pretty much over now.
Your high-handedly arrogant and condescending tone, coupled with your backhanded implications about the intelligence of people who disagree with you infuriates me vastly more than any issues I may have with your argument.
I’ll continue to watch this thread and delete any blatantly offensive comments to women, but I’m done with this.
holy crap, it’s still going?
Well, I am 100% not offended by this trailer but I am a lot more interested in the game since I saw it. Catchy tune and stylised violence, just the way I like it.
How is it sexist? sometimes people just want to take the slightest implication *thats probably not even there to start with) and turn it into a card playing game, this time its the sexist card, next will be gay and so on. im tired of this world we live in being so sensitive, maybe i should have been born in a different time.
Harden the Fuck up internet.
that is all
At least you have the courage to kill what you have created, Tim. You’re like a modern day Frankenstein.
I thoroughly appreciate the work of Tim Colwill but it was very disappointing to see the editor baited into something as base as a forum flame war, particularly one so dull.
This … by CaitSith01…
“…… a bunch of dudes in a group pointing phallic objects at a kneeling woman in her underwear and the material issuing forth from said phallic objects spraying into her face and upper body … ”
Brings a whole new perspective on people playing shooters … and gun advocates….
Will be very …. interesting …. if you try it as an experiment by broadcasting this view … and see if the debate changes direction quicker than the wind…..
At the very least it will make a great internet meme …. just needs something catchier.
Btw Tim…. need the font / highlighter etc back …
Thanks for the edit button tho… such a godsend.
especially for such an overwhelming thread such as this
^THIS
if you’re offended avert ye gaze if you want to start telling other people it’s wrong you will be open to criticism, the immunity of some people/topics to avoid criticism is absurd in a society such as ours everything should be open to debate, analysis and criticism. There is no subject that should be exempt of this treatment
This from the guy who early on in the piece started telling anyone with a dick they are not as capable as a woman at recognising sexism, even though some of of the women interviewed are of the same opinion as some of the male respondents? Or even just posting this story in the first place (hell, I wasn’t even aware, like Lucy in the article, that this was an issue). You want to throw that flamebait out there and then act surprised when it get’s a strong reaction? And then talk about condescension?
What the hell did you think was going to happen? “Oh, it’s the internet, everyone will discuss in a calm respectful manner free of hyperbole/trolling etc”.
It’s not as if Clovis and co. aren’t arguing anything that isn’t put forward by some of your female respondents.
You have a different opinion Tim, and that’s just peachy. But you set a bad tone when you started saying our opinions (and yep, there were a few trolls who played the Mr. Manly McMakemeasammich role…) are innately inferior because we don’t have a vagina. What, you think the best way to stamp out sexism is more sexism?
This is not a thing I said at all.
What I said was: “Women are innately more qualified by the fact that they are women to comment on whether or not something is sexist towards women.”
For some reason you and others apparently interpreted that as an attack on “anyone with a dick”. I have one of those. Why would I attack myself?
I don’t think men are unqualified to engage in the debate on sexism. I just think that when it comes to the question “Is something sexist against women?” the first port of call for comment should be…. *drum roll* women.
What I *hoped* was that people would read these (very different) thoughts from (very different) women and post some interesting and insightful comments after thinking about it. We got some of that. We also got a bunch of people telling women to shut up, a bunch of people saying that we should stop overanalysing things, a bunch of people attacking me for attacking men (?!?!) and a bunch of people saying that any discussion isn’t valid without citations from the Cyberpunk sourcebook(s).
If anybody felt my tone in my discussions with them was condescending, I apologise. I never directly or backhandedly insulted anybody’s intelligence or denigrated their argument as stupid, however.
It is not sexist to say that women are more qualified to comment than men on whether or not something can be interpreted as sexist towards them.
It would be sexist to say “I only asked women, because men are all dumb.”
However, this is not a thing I said.
I was sure that this horse died, got beaten, got sick of being beaten while dead, resurrected, breathed fire all over this thread before flapping its newly found phoenix wings and flew to sunnier pastures elsewhere – perhaps an Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate… held at a kindergarten, behind a church, next to an archaeological dig where dinosaur bones had been found.
So I may be missing something here but, how was this prejudice or discrimination based on sex?
The only grounds this topic has to stand on would be if this kind of material is shown to minors. It’s a fictional game. It’s not a real girl. It’s not even made of flesh and blood. She isn’t even killed.
Christ GTA 3 was pushing the boundaries with prossies but this doesn’t even come close.
“reflects on how little empathy society has for men.”
That pretty much said it all. If it was a guy in boxers with massive abs it aint sexist. But put a chick there. BAM SEXIST.
I think it is sexist to show a male cop in skin tight clohting that reffers to abs…. I also find it sexist as it makes men feel like they have to be the Alpha male, muscle covered hero.
I also find it racist as he has black armour.
Yes on some level it can be seen as sexist towards women. But really, who cares.