Re: Concern about racism and sexism in Supertuxkart 0.9
Hi Vincent, Miriam and Suso,
I absolutely support your positions. In particular I totally agree with
this:
On 01/05/15 17:39, Vincent Lejeune wrote:
> Actually it is not inappropriate in a age rating perspective.
> It's rather : a game that was presented as a family game and which had
> a non human cast for years is now adopting the stance of an
> heterosexual male point of view.
> It's virtually accepted everywhere in the world since 95% of the video
> game industry does it, actually Nintendo does it since their first
> console after the video game industry crisis around 1985.
> It also happens that since Nintendo did it, the number of women in
> STEM slowly decreased to the point where it is now virtually accepted
> everywhere that it's a male only field.
> I strongly thing both phenomen are tied,
and I would like to add to the following:
> Of course having 8 women in bikini in a track doesn't prevent a little
> girl to play the game and enjoy it, and working in STEM later but she
> will have more difficulty to feel welcomed by the game.
that there is another important point which nobody has mentioned so far:
Sara is the *only* female character in the whole game. and guess what,
she's useless, not driving any kart and only there because of her
aesthetics.
now, if *at least* there was one of the other animal character who was
female, the issue would be a little milder but no, there is not. no
female duck or female monkey. only 1 white girl *showing off her body*
cause that is all she does, doesn't she? regardless of the "why" about
which Ansgar argued with Suso.
*I am* a woman and as a woman I can tell you that when I was growing up
I was mad for characters I could recognise myself into. even just to
choose an avatar in a forum etc. and that was a struggle. the only
decent female in tekken tag was the one who transformed herself in
different characters (and wasn't even that strong). same with movies.
and that *does* affect the way you imagine yourself and then the path
you choose in your life. it is *not just a game, nothing more* as
Gianfranco wrote:
> We are talking about games, please don't forget, it is just a (nice to play)
> game. Nothing more.
No it is more. It affects our minds. Just as ads are not only images.
Human minds become biased by all these inputs. and the demonstrations
are things like gamer gate as Miriam and Vincent mentioned:
> It also happens that the video game community that grews with gendered
> games is currently harassing female video game developpers to make
> them resign and threaten developper that want to use their artistic
> freedom
> to introduce non sexualised female or "politically correct" playable
> character in their game.
At first, I thought that applying censorship would be too controversial
but I hadn't thought of the "Debian diversity statement":
> I don't know how "extended" Debian Diversity Statement is but IMHO
> it's not that far streched to consider "welcoming everyone" as also
> ensuring that packaged video game assets follow this rule and ensure
> that
> video game are equally playable by girl and boy with the same level of comfort.
If that's the case then I perfectly see how Debian should do something
about this. It's not that because everyone is used to only see useless
females in videogames since Super Mario came along, then this should
continue happening for ever and Debian should support it and everyone
should think it's normal.
If something is wrong, it is wrong and Debian should actually be very
proud of supporting such a change.
Cheers,
Myriam
>
> Regards,
> Vincent
>
> 2015-04-30 23:05 GMT+02:00 <beuc@debian.org>:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 30, 2015 at 09:26:23PM +0200, Vincent Lejeune wrote:
>>> To be honest I'm hoping a bit that having downstream discussing the
>>> representation in STK may make they change their mind.
>> While I much appreciate the concern for the way a kid-oriented game is
>> depicting the female figure, I feel like this is exporting a debate.
>>
>> I personaly don't want Debian to become a new Apple Store, as in
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Apple#Newspaper_and_magazine_content
>>
>> Debian has already quite its share of heated debate around sexism,
>> enough for me to unsubscribe from various lists to keep my sanity, so
>> I'd like to keep this debate where it belongs: upstream.
>>
>> Save for legally-sensitive material such as recently-discussed
>> pedophily, every Free game is welcome in Debian IMHO.
>>
>> --
>> Sylvain
>
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