Re: Concern about racism and sexism in Supertuxkart 0.9
Hi Vincent,
you are totally right: those images are sexist and racist. For those who
see nothing wrong with them: do you know why a swim suite can be worn
only at the beach and not anywhere else? would walking in biking among
other totally dressed individuals, attract sexual attention? and while
being of course also thin and posing in that unnatural position
(https://i.imgur.com/Zkil96v.jpg) which only causes back troubles?
However, unfortunately, censorship is a delicate topic and in cases like
this you'd never know where to draw the line. what to censor, why and
what not and why, etc.
so what should change is the mindset of those developers (and maybe the
amount of women among them). i want to believe that our society, thanks
to people like you, Vincent, is going to gradually evolve towards
non-sexist behaviour. We'll have to work on this the hard way, though,
without censorship.
All the best,
Myriam
On 30/04/15 20:26, Vincent Lejeune wrote:
> Ingame pictures (using imgur) of Sara :
> http://i.imgur.com/eT0WmrV.jpg
> http://i.imgur.com/X8sYzYc.jpg
> http://i.imgur.com/Zkil96v.jpg
> http://i.imgur.com/fNo3HDj.jpg
> http://i.imgur.com/FkeD8PV.jpg
> http://i.imgur.com/NMD1gmJ.jpg
>
> The Sara model in bikini is fine per se, buthaving it 8 times in a
> tracks that takes only 1 min to complete is a lots IMHO ;
> others models have up to 4 occurences on the same tracks.
>
> Sara playable character (in 0.8.1 too) :
> http://i1.wp.com/aldarone.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Sara-STK-4.png
>
> Monkeys in native village :
> http://i.imgur.com/RfH3VRU.jpg
>
> The poster by itself is not really about sexism, but rather about
> cultural appropriation:
> First Sara is white in what appears to be a native american like outfit.
> Then she is in front of a religious building (the pyramid) and wear a
> feather halo.
> It seems that feather is a sacred symbol for native american culture.
> I might be wrong though since I dind't find anything saying that no
> native nation used elements in religious ceremony that could be seen
> as sexualizing in my european eyes,
> yet Wikipedia's entry on Aztec and Maya women tells that it wasn't the
> case ; and IMHO mixing religious symbol and potentially sexualising
> clothes is not respectfull.
> I think it is as equally offending to have a nun wearing a bikini top
> in front of a christian church for instance.
> On the other hand, the poster isn't bundled with the game, or at
> least, it doesnt really need to be packaged. It's more marketing
> material.
>
>
> I was part of the STK team so I already had a discussion with upstream
> about these issues but without success.
> I don't want to spoil future discussion Debian may have with STK, but
> basically their points are that they don't see the content
> offending,that it's part of their
> artistic freedom.
> To be honest I'm hoping a bit that having downstream discussing the
> representation in STK may make they change their mind.
>
> STK seems to be used in academia, for instance Microsoft Research used
> it to demonstrate the Illumiroom project, AMD as an example of
> debugging Opengl app in
> linux with Gpu Perf Studio API, and on the forum/mailing list there
> was a professor in cognitive science that wanted to use STK to test
> brain reaction to stimuli iirc.
> I assume this is because STK is often seen as harmless 3D game since
> it's a family game with colorfull graphism. It's a bit like Disney
> movie, actually the monkeys
> in the village reminds me of the Jungle Book scene for example and
> despite it being frankly questionable it's still considered a classic
> animation movie in 2015.
> That's why the presence of representation matters a lot in STK :
> players may take them as acceptable or even positive without
> considering them as potentially wrong,
> not accounting that even if STK is a game developped by volunteers,
> the contributors may later enters the video game industry.
>
> Thanks for your interest in these issues,
>
> Regards,
> Vincent
>
> 2015-04-30 12:52 GMT+02:00 suso <mail@susobaleato.eu>:
>> I do not understand the added value of displaying sexualized
>> characters in the game. Perhaps the concept of a semi-naked
>> white woman with anorexia plays some unreplaceable role in
>> the storyline that, let's say, a similarly dressed but
>> healthy latino man cannot not. Not enough information.
>>
>> Could you please provide a link to the discussion where that
>> decission was made?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Gianfranco Costamagna escrebeu:
>>> Hi to All,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > [1] <http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/persistent/images/8/82/OfficialPoster_090.jpg>
>>> > [2] <http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/persistent/images/6/65/OfficialPoster_081.jpg>
>>>
>>>
>>> I see one woman, and ~15 anymals, no men at all.
>>>
>>> How can this be interpreted as "privileging a male gaze position."?
>>>
>>> I honestly fail to see anything bad in the two images, are we looking to the right images?
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm a 0.8.1 gamer, and I never found anything offensive in the game, and no women at all (as you said).
>>>
>>> Having "Sara" in the game is not disturbing, I don't know why it should be.
>>>
>>> (just my .02$, since debian-games list is now involved)
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>>
>>> Gianfranco
>>>
>>>
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>
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