No Girls Allowed • Hacker News Board

Re: No Girls Allowed

#201

Post by knowitall » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:28 PM UTC

rmc wrote: post #170

knowitall wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, is that a general rule? My son is not yet in school, so I don't know what it is like these days. Also "like pink" is different from owning the occasional pink thing. I suppose a boy who would dress exclusively in pink would stand out, and maybe the bullies would try to cut him down. Still, I suspect it is not a large scale problem - obviously I don't condone the actions of such bullies, I mean there are probably…

I don't care if a boy would "stand out" by dressing all in pink. That's not a valid reason for children to beat up children. The problem is not the child who's standing out, the problem is the bully who wants to hurt another person.

Um yeah that is what I wrote!

Re: No Girls Allowed

#202

Post by knowitall » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:34 PM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #196

knowitall wrote: post #29

While I think the history of marketing of games is interesting, to be honest to me this read like "bla bla bla... Video games were heavily marketed as products for men, and the message was clear: No girls allowed.... bla bla bla" Meaning the conclusion "no girls allowed" is just randomly inserted somewhere in the middle of a wall of text. Just because boys and men were identified as a large audience and targeted with…

Hi, I'm a lady. Have you noticed that pretty much all "hardcore" games have male protagonists? These games tell players that they are fantasies for guys to have; women are relegated to the roles of support or prizes in most of these games. It sucks to try to be the hero when the shape of the fantasy is constantly telling you that you're not one. And then we have the advertising campaigns mentioned in the article that…

Edit: TL;DR I think you make the mistake to assume that games and ads targeted at men imply that there are no ads or games for women. It is OK to target games at men or women imo. I seem to recall a lot of ads for gender neutral Wii games, too.

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It's probably true that a lot of games are targeted at men. Presumably because more men are into buying them than women. So what? There are enough games with female protagonists.

I am a man and a lot of "hardcore games" don't appeal to me (the ones that advertise on the box with "choose from 300 different weapons"). I scratch my brow and wonder about the people who enjoy that kind of thing, and move on. Luckily there are many, many good games, too.

Most games I picked for myself also have female main characters. For example I played a lot of Left 4 Dead, Tomb Raider, and many RPGs which almost always have a "customize your character" option which usually means you can play a female.

I hesitate to mention it, because I don't want to consign women to certain genres, but I don't complain about games that are about horses or whatever, either.

There are also big budget games targeted for women, like "The Sims".

Do you think a lot of women would like to play hardcore shooters? I don't know, but frankly, I am doubtful. I am not saying they shouldn't, just that perhaps companies have tried to estimate the size of the market before gendering the main hero.

Do you happen to know if the games with female heroes sold a significant amount of copies to women? I don't, but would like to know.

Edit 2: I think in most games where you can play a woman you have to do the same things as the male characters, so what do you mean by "the roles they offer for us to play"?

Re: No Girls Allowed

#203

Post by kaybe » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:41 PM UTC

alandarev wrote: post #156

jaimebuelta wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compliment women (not only girls) "by default" on their looks actually drives me nuts. It's used even in situations where is totally irrelevant (e.g. radio show). It is really engraved n our culture.

At the risk of downvotes, I will still speak up. I agree with you, that visual observable complements, over sound-only channels are pointless and frustrating to hear. But, does it hurt you, that women want to look pretty? Would you like your daughter to be indistinguishable from a boy? I certainly would feel this world being a crappy place if women were as awful with their appearence men.

Sometimes I want to look competent, strong, eloquent, sturdy (good for martial arts training), etc. Sometimes I'm ok with pretty or cute. No, it's not the same. Don't reduce us to just pretty, please. Look beyond. (Some don't, which is why too pretty can be a problem if one wants to be a kick-ass hacker or such.)

Re: No Girls Allowed

#204

Post by spacehome » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

aestra wrote: post #199

spacehome wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men wearing a wedding ring, another marking campaign invented in the 1940's. Do you have a reference for this statement?

Yes, I do. From the Journal of Social History. A "Real Man's Ring": Gender and the Invention of Tradition http://www.jstor.org/stable/3790353 It wasn't until 1944 when a Catholic priest asked if a double ring ceremony was permitted by the church. Previously it was called for only the women's ring to be blessed in marriage rites. There was social change at the end of WWII that lead to that adaptation, but it was inven…

Thanks!

Re: No Girls Allowed

#205

Post by kaybe » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:45 PM UTC

knowitall wrote: post #38

k_os wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe marketers have an agenda about indoctrinating girls to like pink? In the hopes that you are not a conspiracy theorist you must assume marketers haven't done any research about what girls innately like and are purely marketing products based on what you might call 'traditional' views. It's much easier to market sugar than it is to market broccoli so that's what most foods marketed today contain. I don't…

A handy way to sell things twice if boys and girls need different colors. Maybe not so much for dolls, but certainly for clothes (can't pass on clothes from older sibling if gender differs). Perhaps the main desire being served is to be able to announce "I am a boy" or "I am a girl". Also note that there aren't many pink first person shooters.

The camouflage performance of pink in a realistic setting could play a role; you'd have to have a very pink world.. hm. (Unreal Tournament maybe? In my mind it was kinda purple..)

Re: No Girls Allowed

#206

Post by alex_c » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:52 PM UTC

romanovcode wrote: post #2

Not another one of these posts..

It's actually not. This one was a good article.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#207

Post by knowitall » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #205

knowitall wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A handy way to sell things twice if boys and girls need different colors. Maybe not so much for dolls, but certainly for clothes (can't pass on clothes from older sibling if gender differs). Perhaps the main desire being served is to be able to announce "I am a boy" or "I am a girl". Also note that there aren't many pink first person shooters.

The camouflage performance of pink in a realistic setting could play a role; you'd have to have a very pink world.. hm. (Unreal Tournament maybe? In my mind it was kinda purple..)

Pink world wouldn't be a problem I think. Many FPS seem to play in weirdly colored fantasy worlds.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#208

Post by etler » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 5:54 PM UTC

Outside the fps genre are video games really that gender based? Pretty much every Nintendo game is enjoyable by boys and girls. Many ubisoft games are gender agnostic, all puzzle games are. I'm not a big fps guy so looking at my personal library, almost all my games are gender neutral.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#209

Post by mseebach » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 6:01 PM UTC

Kronopath wrote: post #197

mseebach wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diamonds have a slightly more complex role than just being conjured from thin air by marketing. Premarital sex is not, popular opinion to the contrary, a new discovery. In most societies we know of, however, men prefer to marry women who have never slept with anyone else. This creates a problem. Unmarried women are reluctant to have sex for fear that it will lower their ability to find a suitable husband, and as a re…

It's always interesting to me to see how many things people take as sentimental, even sacred, rituals and practices, things that people write poetry and music about, turn out to be coldly economic when looked at in a broader historical context. This is especially true when it comes to anything having to do with marriage.

"Coldly economic" is too cynic IMO. It's a practical solution to a practical problem that must be overcome for two young lovebirds to engage in sexual intimacy. The solution to roughly the same problem today is a condom. Condoms are not the subject of many love songs, but they still enable something that very much is.

Re: No Girls Allowed

#210

Post by mankypro » Tue, Dec 03, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

There's a reason most boys gravitate towards guns, monster trucks and blow-em-ups. There's a reason why most girls gravitate towards dolls, ponies and puppy dogs. It's called evolution aka 200,000 years of it. Many iterations, regression testing etc.

Put quite simply, it works for the propagation of the species.

You can argue all you want with 200k years of evolution and or civilization, isn't going to change a thing. We are first and foremost made to procreate and natural systems are all about efficiencies - White Knights and Jezebels notwithstanding.