I've been in the process of slowly transitioning from active army builder to hobby painter. I enjoy painting cool models and want to keep doing so, even as my Space Marines army project heads toward a conclusion. So I've started digging around the vast hive of scum and villainy that is the internet for cool new minis to add to my painting case. Maybe something fantasy inspired to give me a break from all the power armor I've been working on this year. There's only so much scifi a man can paint before it becomes old hat. However I've been running in to a bit of an odd problem. Every time I find a cool female mini nine times out of ten she's had her clothing style taken from the Red Sonya school of the Chainmail bikini.... never mind the model's actual proportions which in many cases would be ridiculous for a lingerie model, never mind a battle hardened warrior who lives in a suit of plate armor and swings a sword as long as she is tall. Past the realism there's that little voice in the back of my head going "Remember that creepy roommate? The one with all those anime figurines in various states of undress? Remember what your friends, various girlfriends and even you said about them? Yeah this is the same thing except you have to paint it yourself mate."

I was pretty much letting it go though and was focusing on some of the Resistance fighters line from the fantastic Statuesque Minis. (I'm in a girl power mood, sue me)

Then I found this article on Bell of Lost Souls:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2013/01/how-they-see-us-internet-discovers.html

It's a response to this article from http://bitchmagazine.org/post/save-vs-sexism-kickstarting-sexism and I have to say reading it took me back to some other discussions I've had within nerd groups and without when issues or accusations of sexism and bias come out, mostly a deflective attitude of things like "Well it's just the art style" "Males are just as exaggerated in the game!" So not really addressing the issue but blowing it off and redirecting it.

What of it Dakka? Does the gaming industry have a problem we're failing to address? Is it part of the bigger problem nerd culture seems to be having in general with the mind boggling thought that *gasp* girls might actually like this stuff? Or are we all just stuck in the pulp art of the 70s and 80s?

in the end if i like it im going to do it and feth what anyone else thinks... if you think its sexist thats cool but at the end of theday its all how you as a person choose to see it... i havent seen a lot of discussion on it here so id have to assume that others dont care very much either.. i personally plan on making a female inquisitorial attachment for my ig army

yeah GW seems to have a fear of women, very few being there (and the ones that are, SOB for example, are forgotten and butchered over and over in the fluff)

I actually came up with a few idea's (one being the attempt in making a silly sounding idea, amazons in space, interesting and not suck, though cannot sculpt to save my life, so when I get the money will commission someone to do that for me)

Society in general has a sexism problem. The modeling hobby, as part of society, has a sexism problem because it refuses to make a conscious effort to avoid having one. And, based on the comments on the BOLS article, the modeling community has no interest in making that effort and will therefore continue to have a sexism problem for the foreseeable future.

SOB's an interesting point considering they literally wear corsets and have some BDSM esque material written right into their fluff with the Sisters Repentia. On the whole though I'd say Sisters are pretty decent for the medium as a whole when not being turned into armor paint or other various hideous things that could feed someone's gore fetish but I'm hoping that's not outright sexism and is just picking on a faction GW is hoping to send the way of the Squats.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
Society in general has a sexism problem. The modeling hobby, as part of society, has a sexism problem because it refuses to make a conscious effort to avoid having one. And, based on the comments on the BOLS article, the modeling community has no interest in making that effort and will therefore continue to have a sexism problem for the foreseeable future.

Or the first response to this very thread for that matter. Which seems to be a pretty common theme across all the various nerd sub communities when this comes up.

The problem is that the writer of the first article is wrong.

The consumer doesn't want what they say people want. Reaper has come out and provided some information regarding the sales of their "cheese cake" versus non-sexist miniatures (they have a broad range of both) and the cheese cake miniatures generally sell 10 to 1 when compared to fully clothed and realistically armored figures.

Companies like Kingdom of Death exist only because of Cheese Cake (and for those who recall the early days of Darksword Miniatures...). Calvacade games sells more of their bare chested females than all their other miniatures combined.

Other companies have made similar comments as well. The industry will make what will sell. If it doesn't sell - they generally don't bother to expand the line of figures.

 Somedude593 wrote:
in the end if i like it im going to do it and feth what anyone else thinks...

So I like punching people in the face, so I'm gonna punch you in the face and feth what you think about it. If you don't like it, that's cool, but it doesn't matter because it's really all about how you see it. If you see me punching you in the face as a bad thing, well, that's your problem, not mine. Why so sensitive?

A mindset completely and utterly ignoring how others feel about your actions is stupid.

 Melissia wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
in the end if i like it im going to do it and feth what anyone else thinks...

So I like punching people in the face, so I'm gonna punch you in the face and feth what you think about it.

A mindset completely and utterly ignoring how others feel about your actions is stupid.

There is a difference - one is illegal...the other is not.

A lot of things bother me. I just don't immerse myself in them. Don't like rap? Don't listen to radio stations that play rap. Don't like country music? Don't get bent out of shape then when you go to the country bar and all they play is country music.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
There is a difference - one is illegal...the other is not..

Actually, in many places it isn't legal, and can be constituted as a verbal assault that can get you fined.

But that's not really relevant-- why should mere legality define morality? Something being legal doesn't make it right or wrong.

While I know some people will spaz out and invoke Godwin's Law, you should note most everything Hitler did was perfectly legal as per the laws of the country. If Legality = Morality, that makes his actions moral. Same with Stalin's massacres as well, and indeed most government oppression such as slavery.

Even though all of these things were morally wrong, they were frequently LEGAL.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
The problem is that the writer of the first article is wrong.

The consumer doesn't want what they say people want. Reaper has come out and provided some information regarding the sales of their "cheese cake" versus non-sexist miniatures (they have a broad range of both) and the cheese cake miniatures generally sell 10 to 1 when compared to fully clothed and realistically armored figures.

Companies like Kingdom of Death exist only because of Cheese Cake (and for those who recall the early days of Darksword Miniatures...). Calvacade games sells more of their bare chested females than all their other miniatures combined.

Other companies have made similar comments as well. The industry will make what will sell. If it doesn't sell - they generally don't bother to expand the line of figures.

Well now we're into the meat and potatoes of the issue. The companies provide the goods but it's the masses at large who buy them, so we the masses are at fault for driving the consumption of the product. The same could be said for Nerd Culture's sexism issue on a whole. How do we correct that? Who should correct that? Is it the corporation's responsibility? Ours? Should we just not care and say it is what it is? I agree with Melissia's point on that last argument but I suppose it is on the table.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
The industry will make what will sell.

So what? The industry makes what sells, and what sells is sexist garbage because the community has a sexism problem. The fact that companies are willing to exploit that sexism as long as it sells well doesn't change the fact that the sexism problem exists.

 Melissia wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
There is a difference - one is illegal...the other is not..

Actually, in many places it isn't legal, and can be constituted as a verbal assault that can get you fined.

But that's not really relevant-- why should mere legality define morality? Something being legal doesn't make it right or wrong.
.

now your interjecting your own moral preferences into the debate.... they have no place here.. youre morals are not the same as others and living in a diverse world youre going to have to just live with it.... there are always going to be things you dont like going on around you.. thats life can you do anything to stop it? not really... there will always be people who will disaprove of what you or I or anyone does and if we try to make them all happy we cant live life... its not stupid its something we have to do to live in this world

 Somedude593 wrote:
now your interjecting your own moral preferences into the debate.... they have no place here.. youre morals are not the same as others and living in a diverse world youre going to have to just live with it.... there are always going to be things you dont like going on around you.. thats life can you do anything to stop it? not really..

So let me get this straight: your entire response to the subject is "shut up and deal with it"? Thank you for providing a textbook example of why the sexism problem in this hobby isn't going to change in the foreseeable future.

 Somedude593 wrote:
now your interjecting your own moral preferences into the debate....

I didn't realize that, how uncouth of me! Next you'll be telling me that when someone posts a painting article they're posting their own personal preferences about painting. Or that someone who says they like Space Marines is posting their own personal preferences regarding fluff in to the discussion, and HOW FETHING DARE THEY DO THAT.

I guess I should apologize for stating my opinion on sexism in the hobby in a thread about sexism in a hobby.

Except I won't.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
now your interjecting your own moral preferences into the debate.... they have no place here.. youre morals are not the same as others and living in a diverse world youre going to have to just live with it.... there are always going to be things you dont like going on around you.. thats life can you do anything to stop it? not really..

So let me get this straight: your entire response to the subject is "shut up and deal with it"? Thank you for providing a textbook example of why the sexism problem in this hobby isn't going to change in the foreseeable future.

my point is that if you try to shape the world to be the way you think it should be you will be most likely unhappy and disappointed.. you cant change the way someone is going to act if thats the way they want to act.. its just the truth

 Somedude593 wrote:
you cant change the way someone is going to act if thats the way they want to act.. its just the truth

The entirety of human history states otherwise.

 Melissia wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
now your interjecting your own moral preferences into the debate....

I didn't realize that, how uncouth of me! Next you'll be telling me that when someone posts a painting article they're posting their own personal preferences about painting. Or that someone who says they like Space Marines is posting their own personal preferences regarding fluff in to the discussion, and HOW FETHING DARE THEY DO THAT.

I guess I should apologize for stating my opinion on sexism in the hobby in a thread about sexism in a hobby.

Except I won't.

im very sorry i didnt clarify... i meant the seperate debate that we are having about morality that this has devolved into.. i am sorry this has devolved into what it has and of what its worth i give my sincerest apology no hard feeling

 Somedude593 wrote:
i meant the seperate debate

A debate about sexism in the hobby is necessarily a debate about the morality of misogyny.

There is no separation. They are the same.

Well, there's a lot to talk about concerning sexism in... everything.

Hell, women weren't even considered a major audience for big-budget movies until TWILIGHT came along (and it hurts me to admit that the Twilight films actually managed to do something good, and do not misinterpret, they do not promote anything positive themselves).

I don't think it's a matter of the consumer base being inherently sexist, it definitely has something to do with the people producing unwilling to adapt to a modern ideas. Something like Twilight proves that there is definitely money in marketing towards the female market (yes, there is that small bit about Twilight being misogynist bs, but let's work in babysteps).
If someone were to do it right, there's no doubt in my mind that you could get the same crossover success that series aimed towards men/boys have to women/girls.

The problem is not that women aren't buying, it's that nobody wants to make something that appeals to them.

I have no interest in MLP, but its creator, Lauren Faust makes a great point:
"The belief that boys shouldn’t be interested in girl things is the main reason there’s hardly anything decent for girls in animation — or almost any media for that matter. It’s a backwards, sexist, outdated attitude."

 Fafnir wrote:
Well, there's a lot to talk about concerning sexism in... everything.

Hell, women weren't even considered a major audience for big-budget movies until TWILIGHT came along

Titanic.

Just saying. It's still fairly recent mind you.... but you don't have to give credit to that horrible series.

Fair enough, but it doesn't change the fact that women being considered a major audience for anything with a high production value is rare.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
The industry will make what will sell.

So what? The industry makes what sells, and what sells is sexist garbage because the community has a sexism problem. The fact that companies are willing to exploit that sexism as long as it sells well doesn't change the fact that the sexism problem exists.

Sexism is discrimination. This is not discrimination. If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

When there are giant protests about movies like Magic Mike then it'll be be more even. But it's sad when males are attacked for being MALE. Just because you are easily offended doesn't mean you can ruin it for the rest of us. And for the record I didn't participate in the kickstarter.

Kind of sad to see the tumblr-feminazi crowd seems to have found Dakka

 Melissia wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
you cant change the way someone is going to act if thats the way they want to act.. its just the truth

The entirety of human history states otherwise.

im sorry i just had to come back for this.... the only ive ever seen people stop doing what they want to do is the application of bloody violence towards the offending populace... and thats not what i think youre advocating.. im actuallycurious about this

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

That is bs. The male sex drive does not necessarily push people to be donkey-caves. There are far more boys and men who are NOT violent, misogynistic turds than there are boys and men who are.

There are more males who are good people than bad. And yet despite this, you'll still probably attack me as a feminazi.

Well screw you. I am a feminist. I believe in equal treatment between the genders. I am fething PROUD of it.

 Somedude593 wrote:
im sorry i just had to come back for this...

Stop apologizing for your defeatist philosophy. It won't help make it seem any lest defeatist.

 Somedude593 wrote:
the only ive ever seen people stop doing what they want to do is the application of bloody violence towards the offending populace

Or simply being asked not to... or being told it's illegal... or realizing that it hurts other people... or, you know, being rational.

Which most people are. People quite frequently use logic such as "I don't really want to do [action] because it'll hurt someone else"-- and as a result of this logic, do not do the [action].

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Sexism is discrimination. This is not discrimination. If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

It's wrong because it is the ONLY image of women the hobby offers. It focuses entirely on what (some) men want to see and excludes women as customers.

Plus, defining it in terms of biology is kind of ridiculous when there isn't some universal "perfect woman" that everyone wants to see. For example, I consider the models in question about as sexually appealing as watching paint dry.

When there are giant protests about movies like Magic Mike then it'll be be more even. But it's sad when males are attacked for being MALE. Just because you are easily offended doesn't mean you can ruin it for the rest of us. And for the record I didn't participate in the kickstarter.

Since when is "wanting their hobby to have 'sex object' be the only place for women" an inherent part of being a man?

Kind of sad to see the tumblr-feminazi crowd seems to have found Dakka

Seriously?

The level of sexism, racism and homophobia tolerated within not only tabletop wargaming, and not only gaming in general, and not only 'nerd culture,' and really the entire internet is so revolting that I sometimes think "Why do I even do this crap?"

Then I remember that at many jobs I've held or sporting events I've been to or parties I've attended all the idiots there think I'm as racist/sexist/homophobic as they are and I think "Well, at least gaming is something I enjoy..."

But guys, look at the long arc of history. Every time a group has managed to agitate for better treatment and more rights, they have not only got those rights eventually, but the people who denied them in the first place went down as either fools or monsters. It takes far to long to get this stuff right, but it happens eventually. I'd rather we not be remembered as the last society to get it wrong.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
The industry will make what will sell.

So what? The industry makes what sells, and what sells is sexist garbage because the community has a sexism problem. The fact that companies are willing to exploit that sexism as long as it sells well doesn't change the fact that the sexism problem exists.

Sexism is discrimination. This is not discrimination. If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

When there are giant protests about movies like Magic Mike then it'll be be more even. But it's sad when males are attacked for being MALE. Just because you are easily offended doesn't mean you can ruin it for the rest of us. And for the record I didn't participate in the kickstarter.

This also brings up a point, even if it is very clumsily made. Although, let's stay away from silly terms like 'feminazi.'

Personally, I have nothing against things like the KD pinups (I even own one or two), models which are cheesecake for the sake of cheesecake. The problem comes when oversexuality is marketed as something that it isn't, or when a character's value is only what they can offer sexually, or as an accessory.

Really, what a lot of people don't seem to understand is that feminism isn't about the subjugation of men, but rather, the desire for gender equality. If you haven't experienced being discriminated or suffering for being a different sex, it can be hard to understand.
https://sindeloke.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/37/

 Melissia wrote:
That is bs. The male sex drive does not necessarily push people to be donkey-caves. There are far more boys and men who are NOT violent, misogynistic turds than there are boys and men who are.

There are more males who are good people than bad. And yet despite this, you'll still probably attack me as a feminazi.

Well screw you. I am a feminist. I believe in equal treatment between the genders. I am fething PROUD of it.

There are also feminists who don't go into a fullblown rampage when they see a woman in revealing clothing.

Also if you are a feminist, why do you believe in equal treatment between sexes? Shouldn't you call yourself a humanist then?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Sexism is discrimination. This is not discrimination. If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

It's wrong because it is the ONLY image of women the hobby offers. It focuses entirely on what (some) men want to see and excludes women as customers.

Plus, defining it in terms of biology is kind of ridiculous when there isn't some universal "perfect woman" that everyone wants to see. For example, I consider the models in question about as sexually appealing as watching paint dry.

The ONLY? You sure you want to go there? Because when you start putting out words like that, it gets much easier to prove you wrong.

Also anecdotes aren't going to get you anywhere because I'm sure that at least one person is sexually attracted to one of the models.

When there are giant protests about movies like Magic Mike then it'll be be more even. But it's sad when males are attacked for being MALE. Just because you are easily offended doesn't mean you can ruin it for the rest of us. And for the record I didn't participate in the kickstarter.

Since when is "wanting their hobby to have 'sex object' be the only place for women" an inherent part of being a man?

Strawman, I never said that. I said that if men purchase it because it is attractive to them, then that's that. And like it or not, the women (at least in the art) are designed to be attractive to men. You may not like it but the numbers don't lie, many others do.
The people who bought them bought them for multiple reasons. Maybe they did want a sex object in their hobby but that can't be the only reason because the main boardgame doesn't have the pinups. They're extras.

Kind of sad to see the tumblr-feminazi crowd seems to have found Dakka

Seriously?

Seriously.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Strawman, I never said that.

Yes you did.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

Right here.

But then again, I don't agree with your definition of what makes a man.

 Melissia wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
the only ive ever seen people stop doing what they want to do is the application of bloody violence towards the offending populace

Or simply being asked not to... or being told it's illegal... or realizing that it hurts other people... or, you know, being rational.

Which most people are. People quite use logic such as "I don't really want to do [action] because it'll hurt someone else"-- and as a result of this logic, do not do the [action].

if that were true there would be no crime or rape because such things are not rational.... however people are irrational by their very nature so these things do happen.. i am not arguing that this is how it should be but it is the way things are in this world..... no amount of law can stop someone from doing something.. it merely sets consequences... while this may stop most people the others choose to be "donkey caves" and flout the rules whether they be social or legal... this is the reason why any social problem can never truly be solved no matter how much it may seem so. if a persons mind is changed by logic they didnt REALLY want to do it in the first place

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Sexism is discrimination. This is not discrimination. If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

It's wrong because it is the ONLY image of women the hobby offers.

I'm sure you've heard people talk about Infinity before. Sure, they have some Cheesecake models, but they have a healthy amount of good female models. They just seem to have a fascination with bare midriffs.

 Melissia wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Strawman, I never said that.

Yes you did.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
If a testosterone-fueled male is biologically attracted to big breasts and a big butt, then what's wrong with that? This is yet another attack on the male sex drive.

Right here.

But then again, I don't agree with your definition of what makes a man.

The pertinent part is the "be the only place for women". I never insinuated that sexy women should be the only place for women in the hobby, but there is a place for them alongside well dressed females like Loki posted above.

Also of course you'd disagree, you aren't a man.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
The ONLY? You sure you want to go there? Because when you start putting out words like that, it gets much easier to prove you wrong.

Oh FFS, do you really need to go straight to nitpicking? Yes there are occasional female characters/models that aren't defined by sex appeal, but that doesn't change the fact that the majority of them are, or that a loud and obnoxious element of the community wants them to stay that way.

Also anecdotes aren't going to get you anywhere because I'm sure that at least one person is sexually attracted to one of the models.

The point is that your "it's all about biology, that's just what men want" argument is ridiculous. Since not all men are sexually attracted to that image it's not some universal "law of being a man" that you want them instead of being a personal preference that some men have.

Strawman, I never said that. I said that if men purchase it because it is attractive to them, then that's that. And like it or not, the women (at least in the art) are designed to be attractive to men. You may not like it but the numbers don't lie, many others do.

You did say that. You said that men are being attacked for being men. You very clearly defined "liking and buying X art" as an inherent part of "being a man", such that an attack on the former is also an attack on the latter.

Seriously.

Well, at least you're honest about having no credibility.

 Somedude593 wrote:
if that were true there would be no crime

A strawman. The overwhelming majority of people aren't sociopaths.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Also of course you'd disagree, you aren't a man.

Apparently, that just gives me a better perspective, because I have a higher opinion of men than you do.

 Melissia wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
if that were true there would be no crime

A strawman. The overwhelming majority of people aren't sociopaths.

you dont have to be a sociopath to commit a crime... you are putting up the strawman

 Peregrine wrote:

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
The ONLY? You sure you want to go there? Because when you start putting out words like that, it gets much easier to prove you wrong.

Oh FFS, do you really need to go straight to nitpicking? Yes there are occasional female characters/models that aren't defined by sex appeal, but that doesn't change the fact that the majority of them are, or that a loud and obnoxious element of the community wants them to stay that way.

If you can't stand my nitpicking then don't make all-encompassing statements, especially when they are easily disproved.

Also after what just happened, do you really want to get into the whole "loud and obnoxious element of the community wanting them to stay that way"? Because we all both know that it's not going to end well...for you.

Also anecdotes aren't going to get you anywhere because I'm sure that at least one person is sexually attracted to one of the models.

The point is that your "it's all about biology, that's just what men want" argument is ridiculous. Since not all men are sexually attracted to that image it's not some universal "law of being a man" that you want them instead of being a personal preference that some men have.

However, they were designed to be traditionally attractive, in the sense that they have the typical structure associated with fertility. Aka large hips, breasts, butt, and legs. If you don't find them attractive that's that, but they do have the traditional fertility features.

Strawman, I never said that. I said that if men purchase it because it is attractive to them, then that's that. And like it or not, the women (at least in the art) are designed to be attractive to men. You may not like it but the numbers don't lie, many others do.

You did say that. You said that men are being attacked for being men. You very clearly defined "liking and buying X art" as an inherent part of "being a man", such that an attack on the former is also an attack on the latter.

I replied to this for Melissia who called me out, but I was referencing the portion of text referring to men desiring sex objects as the ONLY part of the hobby.

Seriously.

Well, at least you're honest about having no credibility.

Says the guy who backs down from his own statements.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
Apparently, that just gives me a better perspective, because I have a higher opinion of men than you do.

Except that it doesn't, nice try though. You want to prove that you have a higher opinion of men than I do or will you just conveniently ignore this?

 Somedude593 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Somedude593 wrote:
if that were true there would be no crime

A strawman. The overwhelming majority of people aren't sociopaths.

you dont have to be a sociopath to commit a crime... you are putting up the strawman

No, I'm not. The lack of empathy required to commit the most heinous of crimes almost guarantees that the person committing them is, at some level, a sociopath. Thievery might be driven by need in a dire situation, but it takes a certain kind of person to do something like this, and even amongst criminal acts, such things are rare and exceptional.

The fact remains, you were using a strawman argument. A small portion of the population commits crimes, and an even smaller one commits heinous crimes, but neither of those samples imply that the entire population is the exact same.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
Except that it doesn't, nice try though.

You believe men are animals driven by nothing more than base instincts regarding lust, I believe men are intelligent, rational people, and that the sex drive is only a single part of the human psyche, one that many people, both male and female, ignore all the time for the sake of more important things.

And before you start incoherently babbling about "feminazi" again, there's nothing inherently wrong with the occasional fanservice in a medium, but that does not excuse the idea that fanservice is all that the audience wants.

There are plenty of different options for people who do not want cheese cake miniatures. If you want them seek them out.

They tend to be in the minority because that isn't what sells. You can see the exact same thing in real life - yesterday they had the Golden Globes here in the US. They didn't talk about the dresses which were modest and showed a persons intellect - they talked about and showed the women who wore dresses which showed everything...or nearly so. Even in women's magazines - you find women being shown in ways which are not much different than the miniatures which are being criticized.

If you guys want to fix what you perceive is wrong - I would suggest starting there as opposed to here. Reaper has a hundred or so of them. 7TV has several as well. Play Battletech - no boobies there.

Please don't even mention women's magazines. Absolute trash.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
There are plenty of different options for people who do not want cheese cake miniatures.

No, not really. There's very few examples of models that might be useable for an Imperial Guard infantrywoman, for example. Almost none of them are for sale-- most are custom-converted. And this is just to reproduce something that exists in real life, to boot. Most fantasy models used for games such as DnD are cheese-cake, too, this despite the fact that women go in to roleplaying games at a much higher rate than they do wargaming.

"It's what sells" isn't accurate when you haven't even bothered to try anything else.

 Melissia wrote:

Except that it doesn't, nice try though.

You believe men are animals driven by nothing more than base instincts regarding lust, I believe men are intelligent, rational people, and that the sex drive is only a single part of the human psyche, one that many people, both male and female, ignore all the time for the sake of more important things.

That's funny, because I also believe that men are more logical, intelligent and rational. Of course when you try to hamfist one thing I said into my entire belief system regarding men, I can't say that I'd be surprised by the outcome, which by the way I'm not. But that's what you get when you jump to conclusions.

And before you start incoherently babbling about "feminazi" again, there's nothing inherently wrong with the occasional fanservice in a medium, but that does not excuse the idea that fanservice is all that the audience wants.

So it was one kickstarter that got your panties in a knot? Also here we go again in the inclusive word "all". I'm sure that some people for the Kingdom Death starter were legitimately interested in the game, and they happened to get a few of the pinups on the side. Is there anything wrong with that? You can't just throw around words like "all people" and expect that to stick.

 Melissia wrote:
"It's what sells" isn't accurate when you haven't even bothered to try anything else.

Reaper...over 100 of them. They don't sell.

That is why while they have over 100 non-cheese cake females, they also happen to have about the same number who are wearing nothing at all...not to mention all the ones who are actually wearing chain mail bikinis.

While the non-cheese cake guardsmen are harder to find - they are not impossible to find. CHS does some. Tinbits had some nice ones...they are no longer in business though. Most of Copplestone's female troopers are non-cheese cake (though a couple of them are wearing shirts as opposed to flak jackets).

Granted, when it is something that I feel that strongly about...I tend to do something about it. You can arrange for custom figures to be sculpted for a couple hundred a pop and casting can be handled by a contract company easily enough. If you think there is a market - it should be a sure thing.

I had this discussion rather recently in context of actual professional planning in the industry.

Here is the issue, there is always clamoring for female models, and saying it is extremely easy. 'I want respectful, non-exagerated female models'. There, I just said it. Easy!

The problem is execution.

What makes a model female? Really? Hairstyle, boobs, hips. That isn't sexist, it is simply the reality that sexual characteristics physically differentiate the genders. It's inescapable.

So, if you take the realistic angle, and shove a woman in combat fatigues, which are typically fairly formless and covered in pouches and stuff... what do you do? Most women are not endowed with boobs so big that they would show through a kevlar vest or a chest plate, so boobs disappear. Then what about hips? All those lovely pouches and cantines tend to get in the way. Then what? Hair? Is she going to have a pixie cut? Or, if we are sticking to realism, isn't it more likely to be in a bun or shaved and under a helmet?

So what are you left with to make it look like a woman? The model may have a sligtly slimmer sillouette, but thats about it. Honestly speaking, if you are realistic, you should barely be able to tell. Period.

This assumes a warrior scenario, I am sure you could do a woman in a tasteful pant suit with no issue, but lets face it this is not the typical setting we are going for.

Then on the other hand, can you do a warrior woman respectfully and still have it actually look like a woman? Sort of. Mcvey does this fairly well in some instances, although he semi cheats by putting his heroine in a tank top or some other unconventional battle dress that lets you notice their sexual attributes (boobahs) and gives them hairstyles not suited to war.

That's kinda the trick of it... you have to show some skin at a certain point, or the form of the body. Even the sisters, commonly regarded as fairly respectful, have form fitting power armor emphasizing their female curves and hairstyles that although are slightly severe, still feminine. They still have corsets on guys lets be honest.

So, being honest, the reason you don't see lots of 'respectable' female warrior forces on the table is not necessarily some prevalent but aggressive undercurrent of woman hating... it is simply that obviously female + what we have come to expect of serious warrior garb, modern or sci-fi, simply does not work. The result of that equation is not feminine at all.

No one to blame here really, but the idea that it is eminently doable but no one is interested or has thought about it or tried is patently false.

The other, secondary question is, is it wrong to glorify the femininity of women in model form, if we accept that feminine physical features are by definition sexual? To me, it's a murky question. I don't find Renaissance works like 'Venus' to be disrespectful of women, even if it could be seen that way as she is nude.

I find kingdom of death minis quite beautifully sculpted, but I do find that they could be interpreted as offensive due to the design of the ... bikinis. But still beautiful models. The soda pop stuff is borderline porn in the poses, again, I can see why some would be offended.

But at the end of the day it pre-supposes that it should be offensive to appreciate the female form.

I ask you, even in media targetted at women, by women, is it ok to do this? Is it offensive to buy a copy of Elle or Vogue? Cause guess what there is quite a bit of nudity and really attractive women in there too. And that is by women for women.

So my second point would be there shouldn't be anything offensive about glorifying a beautiful woman, as we have all been doing so, men and women, for a very, very long time.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
If you can't stand my nitpicking then don't make all-encompassing statements, especially when they are easily disproved.

Or you could just not nitpick and address the substance of the comment instead of whether it's technically "all" or if we need to refer to "the overwhelming majority" instead.

Also after what just happened, do you really want to get into the whole "loud and obnoxious element of the community wanting them to stay that way"? Because we all both know that it's not going to end well...for you.

Sorry, but remind me again who it was that started off with calling people "feminiazis"?

However, they were designed to be traditionally attractive, in the sense that they have the typical structure associated with fertility. Aka large hips, breasts, butt, and legs. If you don't find them attractive that's that, but they do have the traditional fertility features.

Of course they were designed to be attractive. The point is that this attractiveness is not some inherent thing about being a man, it's just a popular image. Your "but biology!" argument is nonsense.

 Vladsimpaler wrote:
So it was one kickstarter that got your panties in a knot? Also here we go again in the inclusive word "all". I'm sure that some people for the Kingdom Death starter were legitimately interested in the game, and they happened to get a few of the pinups on the side. Is there anything wrong with that? You can't just throw around words like "all people" and expect that to stick.

You're missing the point. If the KD kickstarter was one example of women as sex objects in a hobby full of awesome non-sex-object female characters and models there wouldn't be a problem. The issue here is that their models are representative of a larger trend of sexism in the hobby, where the default customer is a man and women are excluded.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Reaper...over 100 of them. They don't sell.

Which just highlights the sexism problem. The customers, as a whole, want women as porn, not legitimate characters. This is a problem.

Granted, when it is something that I feel that strongly about...I tend to do something about it. You can arrange for custom figures to be sculpted for a couple hundred a pop and casting can be handled by a contract company easily enough. If you think there is a market - it should be a sure thing.

That's missing the point. Companies releasing the products that sell best is just a symptom of the problem. The larger issue is the attitudes of the community, and commissioning some custom figures doesn't do anything to address that larger issue.

Yes - the "Venus de Milo" and the "Birth of Venus" (or any other classical sculpture or painting) are "porn".

 MajorTom11 wrote:
What makes a model female? Really? Hairstyle, boobs, hips. That isn't sexist, it is simply the reality that sexual characteristics physically differentiate the genders. It's inescapable.

What makes a model male? And why is the default that a model is male unless a specific and obvious effort is made to define it as female?

Honestly speaking, if you are realistic, you should barely be able to tell. Period.

Then start with the fluff. Release a model for a female character, and clearly define her as a woman on the fluff page in the codex. Even if the model isn't clearly a woman just by looking at it from across the table every time you use or talk about the character you'll be using "she" and "her" and making it clear that it is a woman.

But at the end of the day it pre-supposes that it should be offensive to appreciate the female form.

No, it doesn't do that at all. Appreciating the female form is fine. The problem is when it's almost universal that a female character is there to be appreciated for her form, while male characters are there because you want to BE that character. It's offensive because it pushes away women as potential members of the community, since there are few characters they can identify with and an obvious attitude (helped in large part by the community) that women are there to be pretty.

So my second point would be there shouldn't be anything offensive about glorifying a beautiful woman, as we have all been doing so, men and women, for a very, very long time.

That's not really true. Men and women are glorified, but in entirely different ways. Women are glorified as something to look at, while men are glorified as someone to BE. In both cases it's being done from a male perspective of what is "glorious".

Major Tom: I actually would prefer to have "not obviously female" miniatures over ones which are "obviously female"; if I had to choose between putting a guardswoman in fatigues or putting her in a skirt, I'd choose the former over the latter without exception.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Reaper [...] have over 100 non-cheese cake females

I'm not so sure about that. Certainly I have considered some of Reapers miniatures to represent DnD characters, but I was not impressed by their overall offering the last time I looked, and I spent practically all day looking. Someone who is much more casual about it would probably stop looking after the first couple pages of miniatures.

Looking through the female models in the sci-fi category, I can count the number which are not cheesecake on one hand. The posing is almost uniformly terrible, and they seem confused on how to sculpt breasts that aren't behind apparently overly-tight fabric, often with erect nipples poking out, and very short pleated skirts (wait, isn't this supposed to be sci-fi?). And there's very few of them, but I can hardly blame them there I suppose, Reaper does fantasy mostly.

Their fantasy selection is a bit better, what with them apparently understanding how to sculpt fantasy armor where they're incapable of sculpting a woman in sci-fi armor, but even then, there's more fanservice with lovingly sculpted cleavage and buttocks than there are usable miniatures.

For every warrior such as "Oriana: Grey Maiden" who are given both a good pose and are competently designed, there's quite a few that are closer to "Lorna the Huntress", whom are both almost naked and posed to try to maximize how apparent this fact is. For each spellcaster like "Sharyn, Female Wizard" who look the part (no pointy hat makes me sad though, but eh, ymmv), there's probably four or five who are more like "Dragon Summoner", chainmail bikini and all, highly sexualized poses, etc.

And then there are the models that are just plain bad, but I'm sure I probably have a bit too high of a standard on that (I also think plenty of GW and Infinity models are just plain bad, as well, FWIW). So pardon me for not taking Reaper in to account, but they're... a mixed bag, at best.

 Melissia wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
There is a difference - one is illegal...the other is not..

Actually, in many places it isn't legal, and can be constituted as a verbal assault that can get you fined.

But that's not really relevant-- why should mere legality define morality? Something being legal doesn't make it right or wrong.

While I know some people will spaz out and invoke Godwin's Law, you should note most everything Hitler did was perfectly legal as per the laws of the country. If Legality = Morality, that makes his actions moral. Same with Stalin's massacres as well, and indeed most government oppression such as slavery.

Even though all of these things were morally wrong, they were frequently LEGAL.

It is important because we live in a nation of laws. These laws can change, and by all means seek to change what you feel is not just, but it does not change the fact that we live in a society that holds everyone equal before a set of rules that we (the people) have ostensibly agreed to.

Laws, like any set of rules, is imperfect by nature because they exist to a large degree in the abstract, i.e. without consideration of the specific facts to which the law will be applied. This is quite out of necessity because one cannot make a rule for every set of facts,

Now, as to your other point, our systems of governance are generally based on a single principle: the protection of personal property. The rights of every individual necessarily stop at the rights of another individual, with the ideal being that each individual's rights extend as far as it is possible to go while guaranteeing equal protection. Thus, I may have freedom of religion, but my freedom of religion stops at your right to the property in your own person. Thus I cannot murder you in the practice of my religion, even though I should be free to practice my religion. That is a hyperbolic example used to make my point clear.

Now, this is far afield from the current discussion. To make an on topic comment I will say that wargaming is a rather gendered activity. One can argue about the appropriateness of gender roles, but this does not change the fact that, according to perceptions of gender roles prevalent within the dominant society, wargaming is a very masculine activity. Wargaming principally concerns themes of conflict and violence. In this way it is a very masculine activity. One can easily argue that a wargaming identity is often a subordinated form of masculinity, if one were keen on the concept of the multiplicity of masculinities and femininities.

Thus one finds that there is a perception, and here I emphasize perception for it does not always match up with reality, that wargaming is a predominantly male activity. Therefore I am not surprised by the high volume of interest among miniature gamers for so-called "cheese cake" aesthetics, especially if once considers wargaming to be a subordinated identity. Sexualization of the female can be a means to assert dominance and possession, so it can be used to not only assert the hegemony of ones masculine identity vis a vis the female, but also one's hegemony vis a vis other males.

People are also on a big retro kick nowadays.

I've 30+ years old been make been into moel since I was 9, I have tons of models, I don't looked at the any figure as a sexal thing. I always wonder the peope pushing the sexism angle, never think there the one with a problem, becouse they even think it in the first place. It never crossed mt mind, why dose it so fill there minds.

weeble1000 wrote:
To make an on topic comment I will say that wargaming is a rather gendered activity. One can argue about the appropriateness of gender roles, but this does not change the fact that, according to perceptions of gender roles prevalent within the dominant society, wargaming is a very masculine activity. Wargaming principally concerns themes of conflict and violence. In this way it is a very masculine activity. One can easily argue that a wargaming identity is often a subordinated form of masculinity, if one were keen on the concept of the multiplicity of masculinities and femininities.

But that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wargaming is perceived as a male activity, therefore the wargaming industry and community treat it as a male activity and do things that push women away, and therefore wargaming continues to be a male activity. There's nothing inherent about wargaming that makes it inappropriate for women. The same was said about RPGs and video games, and yet somehow both of these manage to have decent numbers of women participating. So why is wargaming somehow special? Even if the "natural" ratio would be, for example, 70/30 that's still a substantial female audience being driven away by the actions of the community and industry.

And of course none of this changes the fact that a problem exists.

Ok, that's your opinion and you are welcome to it. I'm not really sure why you posted in an argumentative fashion though peregrine, I certainly don't really see anything offensive in my post.

I'll make a few broad comments in response but I will leave it at that afterwards.

1. To your what makes a model male comment, I'm really surprised you went there actually! The default assumption in wargaming is that the model will be male, thats not really up for debate, it is demonstrable fact... I am surprised you even raised it as a question. When you see combat armor and power armor, the assumption is the model is male. When you see a viking you assume the model is male. The onus is not equal in this venue, in fact, the level of automatic assumption of maleness both in the medium and subject matter in general of warriors means you have to go to extra effort to 'call out' a female.

2. People are clamoring for female models, not female fluff with unidentifiably female models. That is what the discussion is about unless I am mistaken?

3. Again, you are very black and white here. I don't think everyone wants to be every single male model out there. I haven't ever looked in the mirror and said damn, I wish Yarrick was looking back at me lol. You are very much in denial if you think that male models are not also there to be appreciated for their form alone too for a great many people. Sure, there are a few rock-stars... but it's like saying I wanted to be every storm trooper in star wars. I didn't. Sometimes, males are just dudes in cool armor. Not every single model is representative of some devastating and deep psychological envy.

Similarly in your last called out point is the idea that all men are glorified as something to be and women are glorified to look at only. It is extremely male centric to not realize that as far as pretty people go, the same is also true in reverse when a female sees an attractive pretty-boy and attractive pretty-girls in a magazine. We all want to be idealized versions of ourselves, I doubt many women are wishing they looked like brad pitt or whatnot lol. Maybe some lol, lord love em lol!.

I find your point of view a little fearful and not entirely realistic to be honest but as I said you are entitled to it and to expressing it. We obviously disagree, I don't find your logic stands up particularly well and you probably feel similarly about mine, so how about we leave it at that and let the thread continue? If you would like to respond one more time to me though that is completely fair as I rebutted. Just want to keep things moving along after I'm sure you understand.

Noir wrote:
I've 30+ years old been make been into moel since I was 9, I have tons of models, I don't looked at the any figure as a sexal thing. I always wonder the peope pushing the sexism angle, never think there the one with a problem, becouse they even think it in the first place. It never crossed mt mind, why dose it so fill there minds.

Seriously? Can you honestly look at a model like http://hazardousarts.deviantart.com/art/Kingdom-Death-White-Speaker-154774935 and tell me that you don't see how it could be a sexual thing?

Just buy Dreamforge if this is something that bothers you. Both male and female models have bun-tight armor

Noir wrote:
why dose it so fill there minds.

An unnecessary personal attack.

Just because there's a thread on the topic does not mean that everyone in it thinks about the topic all the time and that it occupies their every fething thought. Personally, I rarely actually think about this topic, except when I'm trying to shop for miniatures and there's no good miniatures to buy (which happens FAR more often than it should).

That you never noticed the problem does not mean that it doesn't exist.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
2. People are clamoring for female models

That does not necessarily mean we require "obviously female" or, to put it more accurately, "blatantly exaggerated female features".

Would you want to buy a marine that had a codpiece that resembled a set of aroused genitals? I am certain that ther are some who would, and hey, that's cool and all, but that doesn't mean you would want it, right?

 Peregrine wrote:

Noir wrote:
I've 30+ years old been make been into moel since I was 9, I have tons of models, I don't looked at the any figure as a sexal thing. I always wonder the peope pushing the sexism angle, never think there the one with a problem, becouse they even think it in the first place. It never crossed mt mind, why dose it so fill there minds.

Seriously? Can you honestly look at a model like http://hazardousarts.deviantart.com/art/Kingdom-Death-White-Speaker-154774935 and tell me that you don't see how it could be a sexual thing?

I don't find it overly sexual either... the pose conveys confidence and business... she is not bent over presenting her cho-cha like some soda-pop stuff. That being said obviously she is pretty bloody scantily clad, but again, it comes down to does nudity = sexual every time?

For example, I don't find this to be sexual or offensive either...

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I don't find it overly sexual either... the pose conveys confidence and business... she is not bent over presenting her cho-cha like some soda-pop stuff. That being said obviously she is pretty bloody scantily clad, but again, it comes down to does nudity = sexual every time?

Actually, it'd be less sexual if she was nude....

 Melissia wrote:

Noir wrote:
why dose it so fill there minds.

An unnecessary personal attack.

Just because there's a thread on the topic does not mean that everyone in it thinks about the topic all the time and that it occupies their every fething thought. Personally, I rarely actually think about this topic, except when I'm trying to shop for miniatures and there's no good miniatures to buy (which happens FAR more often than it should).

That you never noticed the problem does not mean that it doesn't exist.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
2. People are clamoring for female models

That does not necessarily mean we require "obviously female" or, to put it more accurately, "blatantly exaggerated female features".

Would you want to buy a marine that had a codpiece that resembled a set of aroused genitals? I am certain that ther are some who would, and hey, that's cool and all, but that doesn't mean you would want it, right?

You are being a bit dramatic Melissia lol. I was not advocating one extreme or another, merely saying some concession to feminity and therefore female sexuality must be made in a female model to make it work. I am not sure if you agree here, but Studio Mcvey's Kara Black models are good examples of 'tasteful' non-overly feminized sculpts that are respectful and treat her as a warrior first and a woman second. But the concessions are still there, the overly pouty lips, high cheekbones, woman's haircut unblocked by a helmet, some pretty form fitting clothes... It's not some plain looking woman all covered up, it's still feminine and makes concessions to show it, but it works... do you agree?

 Peregrine wrote:

Noir wrote:
I've 30+ years old been make been into moel since I was 9, I have tons of models, I don't looked at the any figure as a sexal thing. I always wonder the peope pushing the sexism angle, never think there the one with a problem, becouse they even think it in the first place. It never crossed mt mind, why dose it so fill there minds.

Seriously? Can you honestly look at a model like http://hazardousarts.deviantart.com/art/Kingdom-Death-White-Speaker-154774935 and tell me that you don't see how it could be a sexual thing?

Maybe I just can't get it up for a toy, but I guess barbie was a sex doll before they brough to the U.S.A. So in sure thous poeple are out there. But, I call it a work of art like david, just no were near the level of Michelangelo's work.

Sean previously pointed out the single most definitive point on this;

But we have done some tests. Conversions on the same figure, and released under different part numbers and names have shown that an immodest figure will outsell a more modest version of the same exact figure. A topless version will sell a LOT more, and full nudity will sell even more.

Nevertheless, we try to use sensuality and nudity only where it is appropriate to the figure, for the character, the story, or the imagery. Obviously, Valloa would not be appropriate as a nude figure, for example.

We are at a golden moment in miniature gaming: the costs of entry into production have never been lower, the costs for even scaling up to national/international distribution are not only low, but due to the existence of kickstarter, it's possible for a single sculptor/creative to bring their idea to light.

So where are the "acceptable" female miniatures? Bombshell Miniatures was designed with this idea in mind, to produce respectful and non-stereotypical female models. And it made $140,000! But let's not kid ourselves, how many of the people that condemn KD would find Bombshell miniatures acceptable, let alone ideal?

To MajorTom11's point, the most amazing female miniature is about to hit the market, want to see it?


What's that? Not feminine enough? how about this?


It's doubtful there is any more realistic female mini out there, and in perfect illustration of MT11's point, in order to show that that's a woman, Ada is modeled wearing power armor... with no helmet.

Man or woman, anyone wearing realistic rigid armor would have their gender become indistinguishable.

 Melissia wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I don't find it overly sexual either... the pose conveys confidence and business... she is not bent over presenting her cho-cha like some soda-pop stuff. That being said obviously she is pretty bloody scantily clad, but again, it comes down to does nudity = sexual every time?

Actually, it'd be less sexual if she was nude....

I dunno... look at the spartacus dudes... straps all over, a sword, bulging cod-piece... they aren't really attired all that differently. It's really a matter of perspective there. You look at two nearly identically clad members of the opposite sex, neither posed provacatively, just clothed provacatively... with one you see warriors, strong and proud. With the other, a sexual object that is offensive. Really the problem to my view is our perception of some things, not the things themselves. That being said, I am sure we all, every last one of us, have gender defined pre-suppositions... it's just part of life.

I am not trying to point out that you or anyone is wrong to feel as you do, however, I am also trying to point out that likewise not thinking the model is sexist or sexual is not necessarily wrong either. Just perspective, it is literally down only to that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Sean previously pointed out the single most definitive point on this;

But we have done some tests. Conversions on the same figure, and released under different part numbers and names have shown that an immodest figure will outsell a more modest version of the same exact figure. A topless version will sell a LOT more, and full nudity will sell even more.

Nevertheless, we try to use sensuality and nudity only where it is appropriate to the figure, for the character, the story, or the imagery. Obviously, Valloa would not be appropriate as a nude figure, for example.

We are at a golden moment in miniature gaming: the costs of entry into production have never been lower, the costs for even scaling up to national/international distribution are not only low, but due to the existence of kickstarter, it's possible for a single sculptor/creative to bring their idea to light.

So where are the "acceptable" female miniatures? Bombshell Miniatures was designed with this idea in mind, to produce respectful and non-stereotypical female models. And it made $140,000! But let's not kid ourselves, how many of the people that condemn KD would find Bombshell miniatures acceptable, let alone ideal?

To MajorTom11's point, the most amazing female miniature is about to hit the market, want to see it?

Spoiler:

What's that? Not feminine enough? how about this?

Spoiler:

It's doubtful there is any more realistic female mini out there, and in perfect illustration of MT11's point, in order to show that that's a woman, Ada is modeled wearing power armor... with no helmet.

Man or woman, anyone wearing realistic rigid armor would have their gender become indistinguishable.

Spot on, I had not actually seen that one, but it makes the point I was trying to articulate perfectly thank you! Note she also has her hair down, not shaved or in a manageable warrior cut, or bunned up.

 Melissia wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I don't find it overly sexual either... the pose conveys confidence and business... she is not bent over presenting her cho-cha like some soda-pop stuff. That being said obviously she is pretty bloody scantily clad, but again, it comes down to does nudity = sexual every time?

Actually, it'd be less sexual if she was nude....

To explain this:

The wind-blown loincloth-skirt-thing she wears is designed specifically to draw one's attention to her genitals-- at first glance I wasn't sure if she was actually wearing anything under it, actually-- while the bizarre little buckle-bra is designed to do everything it can to outline and fetishize her breasts like a cupless bra.

So yeah, it's definitely sexualized. It's a gorgeous model though, and the posing of it helps save it from being pure cheesecake.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
You are being a bit dramatic Melissia

Given the number of female models with erect nipples and other signs of arousal on them? No, I'm really not. There's a similar problem with some of the less competent comic book artists (*coughRobLiefeldcough*), with the excuse there being that they're basically tracing over softcore porn. And it shows. These artists suck and they suck hard.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
some concession to feminity and therefore female sexuality must be made in a female model to make it work.

Define "make it work"? Because a model does not have to have gigantoboobs or blatant ass-cleavage to understand that a model is female, nor do those features necessarily really help make a model look all that feminine.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
Studio Mcvey's Kara Black models are good examples of 'tasteful' non-overly feminized sculpts that are respectful and treat her as a warrior first and a woman second. But the concessions are still there, the overly pouty lips, high cheekbones, woman's haircut unblocked by a helmet, some pretty form fitting clothes... It's not some plain looking woman all covered up, it's still feminine and makes concessions to show it, but it works... do you agree?

It sort of works. I'd be better if she did not have her arm revealed in the first image (I don't particularly like single-pauldron or single-shoulderpad designs), but the second one is good. Could definitely be better, however.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
1. To your what makes a model male comment, you are missing the point and being unnecessarily combative there sir. The default assumption in wargaming is that the model is male, I am surprised you even raised it as a question. When you see combat armor and power armor, the assumption is the model is male. When you see a viking you assume the model is male. The onus is not equal in this venue, in fact, the level of automatic assumption of maleness both in the medium and subject matter in general of warriors means you have to go to extra effort to 'call out' a female.

Yeah, but that's just saying that wargaming has a sexism problem. It's obviously true that the default is a man, but the fact that this default assumption exists highlights the problem.

2. People are clamoring for female models, not female fluff with unidentifiably female models. That is what the discussion is about unless I am mistaken?

What I mean is that you're using too narrow a definition of "female model". For example, a tank ace character (like Pask) that is clearly identified as a woman in her fluff gives women someone to identify with and says "you can be part of this universe as more than just a sex object". And it does that even if the actual person isn't visible, and it's just another tank. On the other hand, the fact that you don't have characters like that (even the anonymous guardsman dying in the background is always referred to as "he") presents an image that everything is about men, and women are secondary characters at best.

IOW, there's a lot more to it than wanting to paint the female form more often.

3. Again, you are very black and white here. I don't think everyone wants to be every single male model out there. I haven't ever looked in the mirror and said damn, I wish Yarrick was looking back at me lol. You are very much in denial if you think that male models are not also there to be appreciated for their form alone too for a great many people. Sure, there are a few rock-stars... but it's like saying I wanted to be every storm trooper in star wars. I didn't. Sometimes, males are just dudes in cool armor. Not every single model is representative of some devastating and deep psychological envy.

I don't mean you literally want to be them, to have their body and everything. What I mean is that, say, Yarrick is a hero. He's awesome because he has awesome adventures, performs heroic feats, etc. If you consider his body at all you admire his powerful muscles because you idealize being strong and capable, not because he looks pretty. Compare this to far too many female models/characters where the primary reason that people like them is because they look pretty.

To borrow from a semi-related field, look at comic book and fantasy novel covers. Sure, you'll often see male characters with less than fully-covering clothing, but usually they're showing off their great strength, performing heroic feats, etc. The intent is that you look at them and admire what they're capable of, whether or not you wish that you were in their place (and of course many men do wish they were that character). The strategically ripped shirt is meant to show off "damn he's got huge muscles", not "ooh, pretty!". I'm sure that occasionally a woman will value it for sex appeal, but that's not the primary intent of the design.

Now compare that to similar female characters (sadly, often in the same picture), where they're wearing clothing that is designed to be as revealing as possible, and they're often twisted into impossible poses to show off as much of their body as possible. The very obvious intent is to get men to look at it, think "wow she's hot", and buy it so they can see more. Meanwhile you'll find a lot fewer women who want to be that character (especially that presentation of the character) compared to men and male characters. By overwhelmingly favoring that presentation of female characters the industry is consciously choosing to focus on using female characters to sell to men and ignore the women in their potential audience.

And this isn't really controversial. People in this thread have even admitted that they look at things this way, they just refuse to see it as a problem.

Similarly in your last called out point is the idea that all men are glorified as something to be and women are glorified to look at only. It is extremely male centric to not realize that as far as pretty people go, the same is also true in reverse when a female sees an attractive pretty-boy and attractive pretty-girls in a magazine. We all want to be idealized versions of ourselves, I doubt many women are wishing they looked like brad pitt or whatnot lol. Maybe some lol, lord love em lol!.

Of course there are situations in which women are presented as something to be, and men are presented as something to lust after. The point is that these situations don't occur in the context of wargaming. It's almost universally true in wargaming that women are glorified as something to look at, while men are glorified as someone to be.

 Melissia wrote:
And then there are the models that are just plain bad, but I'm sure I probably have a bit too high of a standard on that (I also think plenty of GW and Infinity models are just plain bad, as well, FWIW). So pardon me for not taking Reaper in to account, but they're... a mixed bag, at best.

Of course they are a mixed bag - that is one of the reasons why they are such a good source on the issue. They make a larger variety of figures than anyone else still in full production, from the fully clothed and modest to "Urban Legend" figures which are wearing nothing but chaps. When they openly discuss there sales figures (as Buzzsaw was so nice to track down one of their posts on the matter) it bares more credance than say KD (who effectively only sell cheesecake) or a company who sells no female figures at all (or nearly none).

Some of the models they sell are arguably awful from any viewpoint - others are excellent (sculpted by legends in the field). In any case with over 3600 figures in their DHL line alone - you should be able to find one or two to your liking.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I am not sure if you agree here, but Studio Mcvey's Kara Black models are good examples of 'tasteful' non-overly feminized sculpts that are respectful and treat her as a warrior first and a woman second.

Wasn't addressed to me, but I'll say that yes, these are a good example. They might not be perfect, but they do a much better job of presenting the woman as a character to identify with and not just porn for the male customers to look at. If, say, GW's Cadian models were a 60/40 split, or even 70/30, between the current all-male models and a Cadian version of the McVey model then people would be a lot happier with them.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Some of the models they sell are arguably awful from any viewpoint - others are excellent (sculpted by legends in the field). In any case with over 3600 figures in their DHL line alone - you should be able to find one or two to your liking.

I couldn't.

Not for sci-fi purposes anyway.

If we're solely talking about the over sexualisation of females depicted in minatures then the problem isn't the minatures themself. This issue in video games was the centre of a short youtube video in the HAWP series. The problem isn't the depiction of the women but the abundance of them. Ask people to find a non-sexualised female minature and you'll struggle once you start to get to double digits. Try and find a sexualised female minature and the list would be gigantic.

The problem isn't the oversexualisation, wether it be male or female the problem is balance and right now sexed up female depictions clearly outnumber everything else in the minatures industry and every other geek sub-culture.

If however we were to talk about the misogny and sexism present in all geek culture and the community's massive resistance to change or even admit that there is a problem in the first place. Well as this thread has already shown by crying out femnazi, man-hater, etc. I don't debate this topic much on the net anymore.

 Peregrine wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
1. To your what makes a model male comment, you are missing the point and being unnecessarily combative there sir. The default assumption in wargaming is that the model is male, I am surprised you even raised it as a question. When you see combat armor and power armor, the assumption is the model is male. When you see a viking you assume the model is male. The onus is not equal in this venue, in fact, the level of automatic assumption of maleness both in the medium and subject matter in general of warriors means you have to go to extra effort to 'call out' a female.

Yeah, but that's just saying that wargaming has a sexism problem. It's obviously true that the default is a man, but the fact that this default assumption exists highlights the problem.

I would actually need to track it down - but I have seen it a few different places that the cheese cake figures are often as popular with the female customers as they are the male customers. About the only thing which is more popular with females in general are anthropomorphic dogs, mice and bunnies.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
some concession to feminity and therefore female sexuality must be made in a female model to make it work.

Define "make it work"? Because a model does not have to have gigantoboobs or blatant ass-cleavage to understand that a model is female, nor do those features necessarily really help make a model look all that feminine.

I say you are being a bit dramatic Melissia because you keep saying Gigantiboobs and butt-crack in context of my argument! I certainly am not and never did say that these elements must be in place to make a model female. So I would appreciate it if in the course of our discussion you didn't continue arguing from that bent in relation to my points out of respect please, that is certainly not a brush I wish to be painted with, especially when I am making trying to point out the opposite!

To clarify for the 3rd time, when I say concession to femininity, it could be as simple as the hint of hips, allusions to a female hairstyle, or just poutier lips than a man. It doesn't have to be nipples tearing through a shirt or jiggling boobahs, there are subtle concessions to femininity and that is what I am talking about, and as Buzzsaw excellently pointed out with his post at the bottom of page 2, that model very clearly illustrates my point when it comes to full combat fatigues or rigid armor.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
1. To your what makes a model male comment, you are missing the point and being unnecessarily combative there sir. The default assumption in wargaming is that the model is male, I am surprised you even raised it as a question. When you see combat armor and power armor, the assumption is the model is male. When you see a viking you assume the model is male. The onus is not equal in this venue, in fact, the level of automatic assumption of maleness both in the medium and subject matter in general of warriors means you have to go to extra effort to 'call out' a female.

Yeah, but that's just saying that wargaming has a sexism problem. It's obviously true that the default is a man, but the fact that this default assumption exists highlights the problem.

I would actually need to track it down - but I have seen it a few different places that the cheese cake figures are often as popular with the female customers as they are the male customers. About the only thing which is more popular with females in general are anthropomorphic dogs, mice and bunnies.

I can vouch for that.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I say you are being a bit dramatic Melissia because you keep saying Gigantiboobs and butt-crack in context of my argument! I certainly am not and never did say that these elements must be in place to make a model female. So I would appreciate it if in the course of our discussion you didn't continue arguing from that bent in relation to my points out of respect please, that is certainly not a brush I wish to be painted with, especially when I am making trying to point out the opposite!

That's not the point. I was trying to figure out what you meant by "make it work".

 MajorTom11 wrote:
To clarify for the 3rd time, when I say concession to femininity, it could be as simple as the hint of hips, allusions to a female hairstyle, or just poutier lips than a man. It doesn't have to be nipples tearing through a shirt or jiggling boobahs, there are subtle concessions to femininity and that is what I am talking about, and as Buzzsaw excellently pointed out with his post at the bottom of page 2, that model very clearly illustrates my point when it comes to full combat fatigues or rigid armor.

I'm not certain that any one is necessarily arguing with you here. But earlier, you seemed to be arguing AGAINST more subtle features.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
I would actually need to track it down - but I have seen it a few different places that the cheese cake figures are often as popular with the female customers as they are the male customers. About the only thing which is more popular with females in general are anthropomorphic dogs, mice and bunnies.

Of course that's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that once your choice of miniatures (and the sexism of the community in general) drives away the potential customers that want something else you're left with the ones that like what you're producing.

 Melissia wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Some of the models they sell are arguably awful from any viewpoint - others are excellent (sculpted by legends in the field). In any case with over 3600 figures in their DHL line alone - you should be able to find one or two to your liking.

I couldn't.

Not for sci-fi purposes anyway.

This is not meant as an attack: Why don't you do something about it?

I'm not being facetious: you obviously have a very specific idea of what you would like, so why don't you do what Adam Poots did. Poots isn't an artist, he's a creator, he hires a concept artist (most famously Lokman Lam), and then hires talented sculptors like Jon Troy Nickel to translate the 2D work into 3D.

All Adam has is the vision and the will to bring these things together: his artists are on one side of the world, his casting houses on the other. If you are truly dissatisfied with what exists, and you believe there is a desire for these miniatures out there, why not follow his example? Get some ideas sketched out, take your proposal to the people, to kickstarter!

This isn't japery: I've often considered a similar scheme (with different focus), I just don't have such a coherent issue, as I'm satiated by the things that are coming to market right now. You don't appear to be.

What's the worst that can happen? You only end up like JunkRobot? A little company making the miniatures they really want to make?

 Melissia wrote:

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I say you are being a bit dramatic Melissia because you keep saying Gigantiboobs and butt-crack in context of my argument! I certainly am not and never did say that these elements must be in place to make a model female. So I would appreciate it if in the course of our discussion you didn't continue arguing from that bent in relation to my points out of respect please, that is certainly not a brush I wish to be painted with, especially when I am making trying to point out the opposite!

That's not the point. I was trying to figure out what you meant by "make it work".

 MajorTom11 wrote:
To clarify for the 3rd time, when I say concession to femininity, it could be as simple as the hint of hips, allusions to a female hairstyle, or just poutier lips than a man. It doesn't have to be nipples tearing through a shirt or jiggling boobahs, there are subtle concessions to femininity and that is what I am talking about, and as Buzzsaw excellently pointed out with his post at the bottom of page 2, that model very clearly illustrates my point when it comes to full combat fatigues or rigid armor.

I'm not certain that any one is necessarily arguing with you here. But earlier, you seemed to be arguing AGAINST more subtle features.

Ah ok, I see what you mean... No no no lol!

I was argueing that is very difficult to be completely realistic and respectful and still have a good looking, female model at the end. From my perspective I would want the female model to be recognizably female for my tastes, like the Kara Black models. But, some find even that too much, and I was saying that going further than Kara Black just makes for a skinny male model for all intents and purposes, which I find useless personally, but can now appreciate that people like you and Peregrine would still appreciate it, even if mostly just fluff based for femininity which I found quite interesting to be honest.

Separately, and I do mean seperately, I do not mind a nude or near nude female form as long as it is not posed porno style, as I find women beautiful artistically as well as sexually. As one-off or character models I am ok with them. I would find an entire sci-fi army of nude women a bit rude though lol. I.E, I am ok with the boobies and bums in context to what and where the model is. I do not advocate s.o.b going in the bra for nips only direction though.

I find, just like male models, there is a time and place for both cool highly armored or clothed models and for near nude or nude models too. The time and place are pretty important though, as is the tone with which the models are treated.

For example, with the linked KoD model, had I commented that I wanted to motorboat her or something like that then it makes the problem with the model me, not the model. Also, if I purchased that model for an 8 year old, but treated it respectfully enough myself, the problem would again be me, not the model. Context. Time and place.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
This is not meant as an attack: Why don't you do something about it?

[snip]

I don't have the money, and I'm not that in to wargaming (which of course is probably heavily influenced by this subject matter, but meh)-- I've been priced out of wargaming, essentially, by Games Workshop. And Infinity has failed to garner my attention reliably... feth I hate some of their more asinine female models. SO MUCH. And so on and so forth.

I guess it's hte same problem I have with most anime-- things like Naruto or DBZ are great settings, with elaborate concepts and well developed backgrounds... but then the authors don't really do much with them and so they end up being lame more often than not (especially for DBZ, which would really, honestly make for an awesome martial arts setting and the story for the original DB was great, but the author just kind of fethed around with a power fantasy instead).

Laziness and a lack of money are the biggest problem, however. I prefer writing over drawing, myself, and I spend a lot of time writing out new settings. Perhaps someday a miniature range might come from one or several if I get money.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
I was argueing that is very difficult to be completely realistic and respectful and still have a good looking, female model at the end. From my perspective I would want the female model to be recognizably female for my tastes, like the Kara Black models. But, some find even that too much, and I was saying that going further than Kara Black just makes for a skinny male model for all intents and purposes, which I find useless personally, but can now appreciate that people like you and Peregrine would still appreciate it, even if mostly just fluff based for femininity which I found quite interesting to be honest.

I respect that it's difficult, but doesn't that just make the artists lazy in not even bothering to try to get it right?

As for me, I'm okay with, for example, having a ponytail stick out the back of a guardsman model, with a more slender waist and a very slightly more pronounced chest (Slightly is the key word here), and a less chiseled face-- enough that one can notice that "hey, that's female" if one looks, but not enough to make one wonder "what the feth is that thing doing in this otherwise professional army?"

 MajorTom11 wrote:
Separately, and I do mean seperately, I do not mind a nude or near nude female form as long as it is not posed porno style, as I find women beautiful artistically as well as sexually. [...]

As I said, there's really nothing necessarily wrong with the fanservice models. I just wish there were more models that weren't fanservice.

Given the breadth and depth of the miniatures out there, and the extreme ease of casting up pewter, if there's a market, there's a model. It's not like female sci-fi trooper minatures don't exist, as typing that exact string into google spit out the following examples:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1470153821/effigy-miniatures-havoc-protocol-sci-fi-miniatures/posts/353582

http://www.rattleheadgames.com/catalog/HFMHFSF001.html

http://heresyminiatures.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_61&products_id=155

http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/hasslefree-miniatures/grymn-sci-fi-dwarves-/light-infantry/kadlin-female-trooper-with-smg/prod_7155.html

This topic comes around from time to time. I'll freely admit, there are times I cringe at the locker room atmosphere of most gaming stores. At least, when I'm not the one making crude jokes. It's not something that bothers me. I can see why a woman interested in minis wargaming would quickly lose interest upon experiencing that scene. OTOH, I'm not going to ask everybody to be on bestest behavior on the off chance a girl shows up.

I think the same theory applies to the minis. Clearly T&A sell. The market skews heavily male, and even women seem split on the nastier models. I've had an ex-girlfriend recoil in distaste from reaper's milder stuff, while another ex girlfriend asked me to paint her the nude succubus on her knees. A third ex collected a slaanesh demon army with juan diaz demonettes, because she thought they looked sexy. My mom displays the holiday sophies that I paint her, while my current GF wants me to stick with painting her unicorns.

My point? The people love boobies.

 Melissia wrote:
I respect that it's difficult, but doesn't that just make the artists lazy in not even bothering to try to get it right?

This was the reason for my very first post in this thread. They aren't lazy. People try all the time. All the time. I promise you, as fact with my own eyes they try.

It just isn't all that easy, striking the correct balance is nearly impossible, and a big problem being that any female model, unlike a male model, will always be a problem to someone. Not enough boobahs. Too much Boobahs. Looks like a dude. Isn't realistic enough. It's a losing proposition right off the bat. That's why most of what actually makes it out there is the hyper sexual stuff, because they know 99% of their audience is male, and that of the female models, it is most likely to sell over 'portly woman in pantsuit'.

But that doesn't mean a lot of talented people aren't giving a lot of honest effort to striking the right balance of female and respectful... the problem is that succeeding is difficult, aesthetically or morally, for many reasons. That's why you don't see much, it either looks like crap, or it ends up emphasizing female bits too much to make it work for most.

 Polonius wrote:
OTOH, I'm not going to ask everybody to be on bestest behavior on the off chance a girl shows up.

Why would it need to be best behavior? When you have people who are actively going around calling any woman who dares ask if there's any female marines "feminazis", or who wants a female guard model a "feminist bitch", one would think that's far, FAR less than "best behavior"-- that's probably closer to worst.

And usually it's just a single douchebag who's doing their best to make it uncomfortable for the women, too. Like the guy who had a bad break-up and so he hates every woman out there. Apparently it's mean to call him out on it but his misogynistic rantings are to be tolerated without pointing out his own hypocrisy.

Discouraging this kind of behavior is not asking people to be on their "bestest behavior". It's just asking people to be decent fething human beings.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Some of the models they sell are arguably awful from any viewpoint - others are excellent (sculpted by legends in the field). In any case with over 3600 figures in their DHL line alone - you should be able to find one or two to your liking.

I couldn't.

Not for sci-fi purposes anyway.

This is not meant as an attack: Why don't you do something about it?

What's the worst that can happen? You only end up like JunkRobot? A little company making the miniatures they really want to make?

This a thousand times this. Why so many people feel the need to stand around crying about what's wrong instead of rolling up their sleeves, getting dirty and fixing it. If this was a guy crying about his local meta we'd be telling him fix it by example. This is no different, don't like it fix it by example.

 tomjoad wrote:
The level of sexism, racism and homophobia tolerated within not only tabletop wargaming, and not only gaming in general, and not only 'nerd culture,' and really the entire internet is so revolting that I sometimes think "Why do I even do this crap?"

Then I remember that at many jobs I've held or sporting events I've been to or parties I've attended all the idiots there think I'm as racist/sexist/homophobic as they are and I think "Well, at least gaming is something I enjoy..."

But guys, look at the long arc of history. Every time a group has managed to agitate for better treatment and more rights, they have not only got those rights eventually, but the people who denied them in the first place went down as either fools or monsters. It takes far to long to get this stuff right, but it happens eventually. I'd rather we not be remembered as the last society to get it wrong.

Something I've pondered at length over the years is how powerful and appealing escapist entertainment can be for those who may lack/feel they lack power and agency within their lives in the society that they live in. Be it movies, books, music, gaming or any other number of fantasies (shared or otherwise), it's makes perfect sense to me as to why such things would hold appeal for minorities (literal (physical) or figurative (gender)). It originally occurred to me when I heard about some gay gamer groups in the area (I've lived in the gaybourhood for the last half decade), but it makes sense for any individual who feels marginalized for any particular reason. And when I hear people speak passionately at length about their nerdy/geeky pursuits and hobbies, these are often expressed as outlets or escapes from turmoil as they grew up; bullying, abuse, harassment, feelings of not fitting in or belonging, homelife uncertainty, and any number of other issues.

To then see the other side of many such hobby groups; often primarily made up of Caucasian (apparently) heterosexual males in their teens, twenties and thirties, and the simply unfortunate amount of homophobia, sexism, racism and other ... ahhh ... shenanigans that can be spouted therein (X-Box Live, I'm looking at you), it really seems like a shame. That the thing so many find solace in can often find those individuals acting out in a territorial fashion, lashing out in an insular fashion when embracing those who are different would broaden the base of interested individuals. What's more important; feeling like _____ is 'your thing' or having a wider audience interested in a similar hobby?

Which, brings me in a very roundabout way to the topic of the thread; sexism and outright misogyny in entertainment in general, and gaming as a whole. The 'audiences demand X' and 'X is produced by all these companies' has a very Chicken vs Egg feel to it, but in the end I feel it's kind of a red herring tangent. People in general (audiences/participants and creators alike) need to recognize that things aren't done in a vacuum. That not being put off or offended personally by something doesn't mean that nobody will find fault with it, and that finding fault with it doesn't mean that it should necessarily change to become as non-threatening as possible.

But companies are about making money, and when we look at a variety of gaming genres, female players are often seen as a vast and mostly untapped (... I'm going to regret that) potential source of income and participation. That many female players don't seem to mind questionable female character attire (the significant female player population in World of Warcraft, as an example, though I've felt that Blizzard walks the line well in terms of 'chain mail bikini' vs fairly functional (for fantasy) gear), or perhaps that's just damning with faint praise when somewhat less questionable characterization makes a mark. Hell, the characterization of the Asari in the Mass Effect series earned some eye rolling from my girlfriend, but she played through the whole series and in her eyes (and control) "FemShep" is a fairly hardline Renegade badass who is loyal to her crew to a fault, and will wipe out entire fleets if anyone threatens her people, particularly Wrex and Garrus. And yet even then, you have Miranda (so much pinup in one place it hurts) and EDI (homage to early era robot pinups or not, there's all kinds of ... stuff going on in that character design).

Anyway, dueling anecdotes back and forth aside, I think it's worth taking a moment and recognizing that it is possible to critique something you like and enjoy. Far too many people seem to feel it necessary to offset criticism of a product they like with unbridled enthusiasm, when it often does a disservice to them and the things they enjoy. Do I enjoy RPGs, movies, video games and some Malifaux? Hell yes! Are these all rife to one degree or another with variations on Male Gaze, appealing to stereotypical beliefs of beauty and some truly weaksauce attempts to portray femininity? Most certainly. There are exceptions (Ripley in Aliens!) and issues even with the exceptions (She still ends up in her panties in that series like every 2 hours or less).

As a very general rule, anytime you characterize any entire profession/trade/industry as "lazy" because they don't produce exactly what you want, you may want to at least consider that something is harder than it looks.

It's unrelated, but I have a college buddy that I saw for the first time in years this fall. He's got a PhD in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkley, and is the project manager for a fairly large team of engineers. Their sole job is trying to make the air conditioners on commercial aircraft lighter to help save fuel. He is, without hyperbole, the smartest and hardest working guy I know, and he's leading a team to accomplish something that I would have thought one engineer could knock out in a week. Some things are just a lot harder than they look.

 Polonius wrote:
As a very general rule, anytime you characterize any entire profession/trade/industry as "lazy" because they don't produce exactly what you want, you may want to at least consider that something is harder than it looks.

I'm not intending to do that. But there are a lot of people that seem to be saying "it's hard so I shouldn't even try it". Including some model sculptors that I have read comments from (nothing from GW sadly, but sometimes I wonder if they even care).

I thought it would be hard to write a 21k word short story in a month (I was right-- I got half-way through it before holiday stuff got in the way, and I'm just now continuing it again) but I still attempted it, and am trying to complete the challenge even if it's taken longer than I thought it would. :/ I respect those that try, but it just feels like a lot of people give up and just sculpt boobies instead.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
OTOH, I'm not going to ask everybody to be on bestest behavior on the off chance a girl shows up.

Why would it need to be best behavior? When you have people who are actively going around calling any woman who dares ask if there's any female marines "feminazis", or who wants a female guard model a "feminist bitch", one would think that's far, FAR less than "best behavior"-- that's probably closer to worst.

And usually it's just a single douchebag who's doing their best to make it uncomfortable for the women, too. Like the guy who had a bad break-up and so he hates every woman out there. Apparently it's mean to call him out on it but his misogynistic rantings are to be tolerated without pointing out his own hypocrisy.

Discouraging this kind of behavior is not asking people to be on their "bestest behavior". It's just asking people to be decent fething human beings.

Well, I haven't witnessed a ton of that sort of behavior. Maybe I hang out with classier guys that run to the married/long term girlfriend side of things, but that's not the stuff I've seen. Oh, one guy did joke that after losing his first two games at the tournament on Saturday, and not scoring a point, he went home on his dinner break and scored with his wife.

Nearly all overt misogynists are pretty easy for me to live without. I guess I was talking more about just crass joking and whatnot. I guess for me, I'm used to my "mixed company" behavior being the sort appropriate for a legal workplace where I have a female superior, many female coworkers, and I'm training a woman. I don't exactly shift from that to raging tool.

I agree and disagree, lots of males in miniatures are also exagerated, look at GW, lots of beefcake there. But it is not only miniatures, read comics (superhero) most ladies they wear tight clothing with unrealistic bodies, but go to computer games, movies advertisement it is all directed at the male crotch.

It still annoys me people have a hissyfit when there is some male nudity in a movie but not when it is a female.

Most entertainment is still mostly directed at males.

 R3con wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Some of the models they sell are arguably awful from any viewpoint - others are excellent (sculpted by legends in the field). In any case with over 3600 figures in their DHL line alone - you should be able to find one or two to your liking.

I couldn't.

Not for sci-fi purposes anyway.

This is not meant as an attack: Why don't you do something about it?

What's the worst that can happen? You only end up like JunkRobot? A little company making the miniatures they really want to make?

This a thousand times this. Why so many people feel the need to stand around crying about what's wrong instead of rolling up their sleeves, getting dirty and fixing it. If this was a guy crying about his local meta we'd be telling him fix it by example. This is no different, don't like it fix it by example.

I actually did (though not to deal with this particular problem). Got tired of incoherent scales, incomplete lines, exaggerated features (to include fun things like chibi proportions). Got enough interested parties together and we have been making miniatures for 5 years now to fit our needs. When you divide the costs up between a half dozen people - it actually doesn't cost much more per figure than buying off the shelf miniatures from companies like GW or PP.

Like I said above...if people think there is such a demand - they shouldn't have a problem making the arrangements and either making a go of things as a commercial venture or just private work like what we have been doing.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
As a very general rule, anytime you characterize any entire profession/trade/industry as "lazy" because they don't produce exactly what you want, you may want to at least consider that something is harder than it looks.

I'm not intending to do that. But there are a lot of people that seem to be saying "it's hard so I shouldn't even try it". Including some model sculptors that I have read comments from (nothing from GW sadly, but sometimes I wonder if they even care).

I thought it would be hard to write a 21k word short story in a month (I was right-- I got half-way through it before holiday stuff got in the way, and I'm just now continuing it again) but I still attempted it, and am trying to complete the challenge even if it's taken longer than I thought it would. :/ I respect those that try, but it just feels like a lot of people give up and just sculpt boobies instead.

But... people do try. A half assed google search pulled up a half dozen examples of exactly what you wanted. The stuff is out there.

I respect people that do hard things as well. What I don't do is judge people for not doing what I think they should be doing. "Yes, I understand that sculpting cheesecake is fun and profitable and straightforward, but you really should be sculpting challenging, unsellable, miniatures that aren't very interesting."

I can't be bothered to reply to the topic beyond the following:

If one wants to see something bad enough it will be there, if only in their minds. Hunt for the boogyman hard enough and you will find him.

 MajorTom11 wrote:
It just isn't all that easy, striking the correct balance is nearly impossible, and a big problem being that any female model, unlike a male model, will always be a problem to someone. Not enough boobahs. Too much Boobahs. Looks like a dude. Isn't realistic enough. It's a losing proposition right off the bat.

This is part of why I mentioned things like the basic infantry, or a tank commander or aircraft pilot where it's just a head sticking out of a hatch. Sure, it would be nice to see impressive centerpiece hero models that are women and well done, but the secondary characters are also important. If you changed a third of the Cadian box to be women you aren't going to get much criticism because most people see them as just "filler" models and don't pay too much attention to exactly how they look, but it would be a statement to women that they're part of the universe as more than just sex objects and allow them to see themselves on the tabletop (a privilege male gamers seem to take for granted).

 R3con wrote:
This a thousand times this. Why so many people feel the need to stand around crying about what's wrong instead of rolling up their sleeves, getting dirty and fixing it. If this was a guy crying about his local meta we'd be telling him fix it by example. This is no different, don't like it fix it by example.

Sorry, but that's a terrible comparison. Fixing your list to compete better is easy, pretty much anyone is capable of doing it with a little google research into tactics and list building. Making new miniatures, on the other hand, demands either a very specific set of artistic talents or a substantial amount of spare money to pay someone to design your vision. And the simple fact is that there are plenty of people who have ideas but don't have either of the things that would allow them to do anything with their ideas.

 Melissia wrote:
Why would it need to be best behavior? When you have people who are actively going around calling any woman who dares ask if there's any female marines "feminazis", or who wants a female guard model a "feminist bitch", one would think that's far, FAR less than "best behavior"-- that's probably closer to worst.

This, x1000.

Even setting aside the issue of the models themselves, the community's reaction here is just depressing. Almost as soon as the discussion (both here and in the BOLS comments) began the response to criticism went straight to "feminazis" and "punishing men for being men" and similar stuff. Obviously not everyone is guilty of this, but there is certainly a very loud sexist element in the gaming community, and it's a major problem.

Shrug. I'm not pointing fingers at any particular sculptor here. They sculpt whatever they want to/have been hired to sculpt, and that's the nature of being an artist, or a writer, or etc.

But that really doesn't detract much from my complaints about the medium in general....

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
I actually did (though not to deal with this particular problem). Got tired of incoherent scales, incomplete lines, exaggerated features (to include fun things like chibi proportions). Got enough interested parties together and we have been making miniatures for 5 years now to fit our needs. When you divide the costs up between a half dozen people - it actually doesn't cost much more per figure than buying off the shelf miniatures from companies like GW or PP.

Like I said above...if people think there is such a demand - they shouldn't have a problem making the arrangements and either making a go of things as a commercial venture or just private work like what we have been doing.

I admit, I'm not much of an entrepreneur. Starting a business like that is daunting to me.

I do have plans for something to be released on kickstarter eventually, even if it's a bit low-priority thing for me right now. But miniatures? NOT easy to fund. Hiring someone to make them for me would cost several times more than I have saved up. What I have planned for Kickstarter is closer to an RPG series and fluff books, to be released as a PDF-- something I can create myself in my free time.

The broader question of bigotry in nerd culture is probably the biggest elephant in the room. By it's nature, geeks and nerds are frustrated people, disproportionately white, male, and of middle class means. People that feel rejected and powerless, and seek escapism in fantasies of powerful, competent heroes. Bigotry is the minds way of saying "no matter how bad I am, at least I'm not that!"

Right now, nerd culture is opening up, and the normals are pouring in. I think some of the worst stuff will die down in the daylight, but just grow in the corners.

What's interesting is that 40k armies run the gamut. Eldar are clearly evenly split between male and female, from heros down to guardians. Tau are androgynous, orks have no gender, and Nids and Necrons aren't really "people." The imperial armies include cartoonish, "super manly and in no way gay" male super soldiers, nuns with guns, and a whole bunch of models that fall into the trend of only "femme fatales" can fight. Sure, you can have a female assassin, or commissar, or inquisitor, but you won't find any women in the fighting line (the catachan grenade launcher model aside).

 Polonius wrote:
But... people do try. A half assed google search pulled up a half dozen examples of exactly what you wanted. The stuff is out there.

Well, keep in mind that you're saying this as someone with experience in the hobby. Instead, look at it from the perspective of someone who is thinking about whether they want to join the hobby. What they see is mostly going to be limited to what's on the store shelves, and that's an entirely different situation. Want a male model? Plenty of options covering a wide range of designs. Want a sexy female model? You can almost certainly find a few on the shelf. Want a female model that isn't designed for sex appeal? Go search on the internet for some random company that makes one that looks vaguely like the models you can buy in the store.

And of course there's the related problem that the google search results aren't part of complete games. I guess that's fine if you want to use proxy models, but it's still a problem that "non-sexist female models" means "third-party manufacturer" and having to settle for proxy models that often aren't as good as the real ones you could have if you just bought male models instead.

 Melissia wrote:
There's a similar problem with some of the less competent comic book artists (*coughRobLiefeldcough*), with the excuse there being that they're basically tracing over softcore porn. And it shows. These artists suck and they suck hard.

Woah. Woah woah woah. Rob Liefeld does NOT draw women (I'd argue that he barely even draws humans, but that's another discussion altogether). I'm certain he's never seen a real woman in his life.

It's important in these discussions that we try not to be dismissive or derisive toward one another.

Disclaimer: I'm male and I find certain female forms pleasant to stare at. Though I make an effort never to stare or objectify a woman, it's not something that comes without conscious effort - like not staring at car accidents or a child throwing a tantrum.



The argument of there being sexism in this (modeling / miniatures) hobby, is a rhetorical one. There is sexism. We shouldn't focus on that part. Women and, arguably, men are objectified; this doesn't happen with equal frequency or degree, but it's there.

It's curious, though, that nobody has mentioned anything outside of the miniatures themselves. Coming into the thread I thought for sure the majority of discussion would be about the involvement (or lack thereof) of women in the various game systems. However, the focus seems to be on the tabletop T&A. Determining the causal relation between sexist miniatures and the participation of women is like the Chicken or the Egg argument: largely irrelevant.

Is the environment welcoming of female hobbyists? Certainly it's welcoming to male hobbyists if we go with the assumption or fact - I'm not sure which it is - that we're the large(?) majority. More importantly, should we collectively reach out to women or go out of our way to make the hobby / miniatures more welcoming to women? Would such efforts make it less welcoming to men? What constitutes Equality in this?

Personally, I don't believe that anything should be done with men or women in mind. People should do something because it's 'cool'. Some people will like it and some people will not. And please, please don't read that as me saying "Deal with it, ladies!" because that's not my intent at all.

Sisters of Battle are an army I've never played but love to think about collecting. Is it because I think they're representative of subjectively attractive women? In a sense. The idea of a force composed primarily of women that are competent, tough, and all around badasses is very attractive to me. It's not something found in abundance. Were the SoB designed to lure women to the game? To appeal to mens' sexual appetites? Was it simply a preemptive anti-discrimination thing?

The point either way is that it's an army that I'm interested in - miniatures that I'm interested in not because they have hawt bewbs but because I think they're cool conceptually. If they were in plastic, I'd be all over 'em.



There is a market and I think it's safe to say there will always be a market for cheese-cake no matter what medium we're talking about. The Kingdom Death pinups are perfect examples of this; their purpose is labeled explicitly: they exist to be objectified. (And yes, I think it's a bit odd that I'm talking about objectifying a thing though I do realize that the actual idea being called into question is objectification of what that thing represents: women.) This isn't suddenly going extinct and will be available for those of us that want it. Kingdom Death certainly got enough money to make me believe this.

So back on point, is it alright that most (according to Melissia and others) non-pinup models are cheese-cake? I don't think so. But at the same time I understand that we cannot expect businesses to operate at a loss or not to seek the greatest possible revenue streams. The article Buzzsaw linked exemplifies this.

Reaper Bryan wrote:When we release a figure such as Valloa, those who complained about this didn't come out of the woodwork to support it, and the supporters of the Cloud Giantess don't come out to complain about Valloa. Modest figures get no "pushback".

But we have done some tests. Conversions on the same figure, and released under different part numbers and names have shown that an immodest figure will outsell a more modest version of the same exact figure. A topless version will sell a LOT more, and full nudity will sell even more.

Nevertheless, we try to use sensuality and nudity only where it is appropriate to the figure, for the character, the story, or the imagery.

Holding the above as true, we are left with a few non-mutually exclusive options:

• Write to voice our elation / displeasure with their product(s) when it goes against our sensibilities.
• Purchase or boycott in support of our morals.
• Present alternative models or methods.
• Learn to sculpt.

Patrick came on DakkaDakka and asked for ideas when he first launched the Bombshell Babes kickstarter. Some of us suggested 'sensible' female models. We were told that exaggeration of certain features was sometimes inescapable to distinguish the model as female. We were also told, if I recall correctly, essentially the same thing that ReaperBryan said. I apologize in advance if I'm horribly paraphrasing or misremembering.


Those are my two cents for now.


Edit: When I started this post, the thread was on page 2. Just fyi.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
But... people do try. A half assed google search pulled up a half dozen examples of exactly what you wanted. The stuff is out there.

Well, keep in mind that you're saying this as someone with experience in the hobby. Instead, look at it from the perspective of someone who is thinking about whether they want to join the hobby. What they see is mostly going to be limited to what's on the store shelves, and that's an entirely different situation. Want a male model? Plenty of options covering a wide range of designs. Want a sexy female model? You can almost certainly find a few on the shelf. Want a female model that isn't designed for sex appeal? Go search on the internet for some random company that makes one that looks vaguely like the models you can buy in the store.

And of course there's the related problem that the google search results aren't part of complete games. I guess that's fine if you want to use proxy models, but it's still a problem that "non-sexist female models" means "third-party manufacturer" and having to settle for proxy models that often aren't as good as the real ones you could have if you just bought male models instead.

Ahhh, but while what's produced is a chicken and the egg problem, what is widely available for retail is always a reaction to market forces. If FLGS's could make money selling non-sexualized female minis, they would.

GW's reluctance to produce female guardsmen in bulk is one the great mysteries, but as an IG player, allow me to profess being baffled in general at GW's approach to selling IG infantry.

 Peregrine wrote:


Sorry, but that's a terrible comparison. Fixing your list to compete better is easy, pretty much anyone is capable of doing it with a little google research into tactics and list building. Making new miniatures, on the other hand, demands either a very specific set of artistic talents or a substantial amount of spare money to pay someone to design your vision. And the simple fact is that there are plenty of people who have ideas but don't have either of the things that would allow them to do anything with their ideas.

 Melissia wrote:
Why would it need to be best behavior? When you have people who are actively going around calling any woman who dares ask if there's any female marines "feminazis", or who wants a female guard model a "feminist bitch", one would think that's far, FAR less than "best behavior"-- that's probably closer to worst.

This, x1000.

Even setting aside the issue of the models themselves, the community's reaction here is just depressing. Almost as soon as the discussion (both here and in the BOLS comments) began the response to criticism went straight to "feminazis" and "punishing men for being men" and similar stuff. Obviously not everyone is guilty of this, but there is certainly a very loud sexist element in the gaming community, and it's a major problem.

Why does this have to be about making models? Melissia is complaining about the culture. How about taking steps to influence the culture so it conforms to her wishes? Maybe hosting a panel at Adepticon or Gencon?

When you on the first page start calling a community misogynistic then move on to racist and homophobic how do you expect them to react?

I made it quite clear from the very beginning that I think that it is just a small subset of the community, not the entire community. Or at least tried to.

Most wargamers tend to be rather nice. But the ones that DO do these things tend to stick out, sadly.

 Dentry wrote:
Personally, I don't believe that anything should be done with men or women in mind. People should do something because it's 'cool'. Some people will like it and some people will not.

The problem is that "do nothing" is effectively a vote in favor of sexism. The current situation has serious problems, and doing nothing allows the problems to continue. It takes an active effort to change things before you can get to a position where "do nothing" produces equality.

 Melissia wrote:
I admit, I'm not much of an entrepreneur. Starting a business like that is daunting to me.

Not a business - wouldn't do that even if it paid a lot more than it actually does...have to deal with this sort of thing all the time (make this, make that, don't make this, don't make that...). I make what I want, when I want, as many as I want. Our local group throws in when we want a big project done.

 Peregrine wrote:
Making new miniatures, on the other hand, demands either a very specific set of artistic talents or a substantial amount of spare money to pay someone to design your vision.

Not so much...well, artistic skills yes, but not a substantial amount of spare money.

A green costs us about $350 for characters and about $200 for a line troop with swappable arms/weapons. I make my own molds and spin them now - though I used to have that done with a contract caster as well. Master cost us about $75 to go from green to a production mold (that was several years ago - so the price will likely have gone up some). Castings were less than a quarter each.

3 characters...a half dozen troops...mold made...200 figures spun...$2300. That ends up being $11.50 per figure. Split that up over a half dozen people who want to add some females to their IG army and you can pepper it with regular guardsmen, sergeants and officers (or however you want to break it down). Each person is in for about $400 and gets 30 or so figures, plus once the molds are made...you can add to your army for a song.

Sadly, that exceeds my budget for miniature-related expenses at the moment.

 R3con wrote:
Why does this have to be about making models? Melissia is complaining about the culture. How about taking steps to influence the culture so it conforms to her wishes? Maybe hosting a panel at Adepticon or Gencon?

First of all, at least one person did say it was about making models, that you could hire your own sculptors to make them and start a business selling them.

Second, you're assuming that everyone can host a panel at a major convention thousands of miles away. The simple fact is that "do something about it" is often easier said than done, and not everyone who cares about an issue has the ability to do the things they might like to do about it.

When you on the first page start calling a community misogynistic then move on to racist and homophobic how do you expect them to react?

If I did say that (which I didn't), I would expect people to realize that those things are true of the community as a whole and not necessarily about any particular person. Therefore I would expect them to say "yes, but I don't support that behavior", not to complain about "feminiazis" as soon as anyone criticizes the community.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
OTOH, I'm not going to ask everybody to be on bestest behavior on the off chance a girl shows up.

Why would it need to be best behavior? When you have people who are actively going around calling any woman who dares ask if there's any female marines "feminazis", or who wants a female guard model a "feminist bitch", one would think that's far, FAR less than "best behavior"-- that's probably closer to worst.

I got jumped in a similar thread here recently, so it's not super surprising to see at least a few guys out there with these attitudes on this board. It's pretty disgusting, but expected. Honestly, it comes from a bunch of the community being very homogenous and not at all disadvantaged (trying to use words not bring down the usual anti-PC crowd). But getting the boys to act like semi-civilised people all the time (being a good person is what you do when folks aren't looking) isn't too much to ask.

On the topic of getting some decent and non-sexualized female sci-fi figures, I'd think 90% of it would be getting a decent female head and putting it on a figure without a huge amount of musculature. Body armour is going to hide all the secondary sex traits of a woman, so on the battlefield the only way to tell them apart would be an exposed head. I've thought about doing a "realistic" sisters army this way for a little while now. My problem has been that heads need to be comically large to look right in on a powered armour figure, and I haven't found any that are out of scale enough to work yet. But with a little work on the crazy hairstyles you could get something that works for a guardsmen out of the female heads from the DE wytch and warrior kits.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Dentry wrote:
Personally, I don't believe that anything should be done with men or women in mind. People should do something because it's 'cool'. Some people will like it and some people will not.

The problem is that "do nothing" is effectively a vote in favor of sexism. The current situation has serious problems, and doing nothing allows the problems to continue. It takes an active effort to change things before you can get to a position where "do nothing" produces equality.

Maybe. I'm not any kind of authority on how to effect change.

My point from what you quoted was to say that once we start thinking in terms of what men like and what women like we can't help but be inherently sexist. We start viewing everything as either pro-this or anti-that and lose focus on the idea being implemented.

But the thing is, if you just ignore it and all you end up is creating male characters/miniatures/etc because that's all you ever think about (which is often the case for people unless they actively seek to diverge from their comfort zones-- I tend to write female characters when writing my lore, and I have to actively think about it in order to add a male character, as they default to female in my mind))-- what exactly does that do to solve the problem?

Buzzsaw- this is somewhat of a tangent, but while I wouldn't personally say that I think all of the Bombshell Babes models were tastefully done, some were fantastic. Vivian Gale (with the scuba gear and huge helmet) almost tempted me enough to back the project.

But yeah, again tangetally, but I found Kingdom Death's models to be just a blatant money grab. The quote from Reaper was pretty spot-on: sex sells, but imo sometimes it's a bit of a sell-out move to only rely on that.

Would it have made 2 million without all the "pin-ups"? Probably not. But, it could have done really well.

To me, it's a bit of a non-issue. I vote with my wallet and is I feel a model is "over-sexualized", then I don't buy it. And lions with penis tails are just as guilty of it in Kingdom Death as the scantily clad ladies although less common in other projects.

In the end, the human form has and always will be a source of inspiration for artists, and there are always going to be a range of views on what is tasteful and what is not. I have my views, others have theirs, and if anything I think the portrayal of extreme violence is a bigger "blindspot" in mini wargaming (and culture) than over-sexualization.

In some ways, this is all taking things too seriously, though. There are other avenues and ways that will yield a lot more results for the effort if you want to fight causes / debate issues like this, than the prevalence or non-prevalence of over-sexualization in miniature wargaming models.

When you on the first page start calling a community misogynistic then move on to racist and homophobic how do you expect them to react?

I dunno, maybe with a little bit of shame? The prevalence of bigotry in the nerd community is pretty obvious and widespread, and even if it brings up some not very nice feelings in people when it gets brought up, that's the only way you're going to eliminate it.

 RiTides wrote:
If anything I think the portrayal of extreme violence is a bigger "blindspot" in mini wargaming (and culture) than over-sexualization.

But there's one key difference between the two: nobody (well, nobody sane at least) thinks that extreme violence is acceptable behavior outside of their fantasy game, while people do think that the sexist attitudes found in the game and community are appropriate behavior in the real world. Just look at the comments on the article, you won't find anyone reacting to a new model of a space marine chopping someone's head off with "that's awesome, I'm going to go decapitate my parents because it will be SO COOL!!!", but how many posts did it take for the inevitable "feminazis! men are being persecuted!" response to appear?

re: Bombshell Babes models

Some of the bombshell babes models were good, but others... most certainly do not pass by my standards.

Which are probably too high, I admit. I was tempted to support them but then I was like "just shy of half their models are fan-servicey, and I don't like that". I kind of feel bad for it, but meh. I don't want that kind of model at the moment-- it's not for me, and so I really don't want to support it, either...

Also, let's not pretend that sexism exists in the hobby, or even geek culture, and nowhere else.

Bigotry is more openly expressed in gaming, due to the fairly homogeneous demographics, but it's a huge part of our culture.

We can't hope to eradicate it. That's not defeatism, that's psychological reality. It's like diabetes: you can't cure it, but you can minimize the complications.

As a rule, sexism has kept women out of fields and activities, but once they started entering in numbers, the overt stuff died down. When I made my "bestest behavior" comment, I was alluding to my theory that the reason women aren't into wargaming is because it's not their cup of tea. I don't think sexism helps, but I think we have open sexism in gaming because women aren't there in numbers, not the other way around.

 MajorTom11 wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I respect that it's difficult, but doesn't that just make the artists lazy in not even bothering to try to get it right?

This was the reason for my very first post in this thread. They aren't lazy. People try all the time. All the time. I promise you, as fact with my own eyes they try.

It just isn't all that easy, striking the correct balance is nearly impossible, and a big problem being that any female model, unlike a male model, will always be a problem to someone. Not enough boobahs. Too much Boobahs. Looks like a dude. Isn't realistic enough. It's a losing proposition right off the bat. That's why most of what actually makes it out there is the hyper sexual stuff, because they know 99% of their audience is male, and that of the female models, it is most likely to sell over 'portly woman in pantsuit'.

But that doesn't mean a lot of talented people aren't giving a lot of honest effort to striking the right balance of female and respectful... the problem is that succeeding is difficult, aesthetically or morally, for many reasons. That's why you don't see much, it either looks like crap, or it ends up emphasizing female bits too much to make it work for most.

One of the reasons I think that KD:M succeeded so greatly is precisely because (IMO) Adam Poots viewed it first and foremost as an artistic, rather then a commercial endeavor. What we see in his models, whether it's the Bosch-esque monsters or the sumptuous pin-ups, is his vision, an artistic achievement that is uniquely his, despite being produced in collaborations.

It is uncompromising, and in so being, it is authentic.

This is to me the greatest and most unforgivable flaw of the original article's complaints: it appears incapable of appreciating the products of KD:M as art, only as crass appeals to commercialism. Look at Nickol's dA page, and you will find one of the best comments on this idea;

Yeah. I try to make beautiful 3D women.

Regarding all the stuff that has come up in the last year about women in games, and tropes in videogames etc etc unequality and all that. I wrote this over at polycount but sharing it here.

I'm not sorry at all that I am in the pursuit of beauty in my work.

I'm not going to stop for anyone. I do what I do, because I enjoy it.

For years all I built was big space marines and ww2 soldiers, no one ever once told me back then I should 'diversify' and 'do something else' no one ever hassled me either it's just pretty much accepted. Pretty girls though?
...
If you look at my work and all you see is a sex-doll, that's your business not mine.
...

If making pretty girls in my spare time, to you, lumps me into the same category as these kinds of discriminatory men, then so be it. Im very proud to be doing what im doing, and again. NOONE will stop me.

I've redacted some bits because you should go read that whole thing. Seriously. READ IT. The article complaining about KD:M (and, you will note, specifically complaining about one of JTN's sculpts) does not, even for a moment, entertain the notion that this could be the work of passionate people passionate about their work. It drips with scorn, with judgement, with the snobbery that embodies the very worst elements of modern criticism.

KD:M succeeded ultimately because it showed us something we didn't know, and made us desire it. It is all the more tribute that wonderful artists like JTN and creators like Adam Poots have done what they have down and stayed true to themselves.

 Polonius wrote:
As a rule, sexism has kept women out of fields and activities, but once they started entering in numbers, the overt stuff died down. When I made my "bestest behavior" comment, I was alluding to my theory that the reason women aren't into wargaming is because it's not their cup of tea. I don't think sexism helps, but I think we have open sexism in gaming because women aren't there in numbers, not the other way around.

I don't really know if I agree. Even amongst men, wargaming is a rather small minority, so it's hardly a fair assumption that it would not also be popular amongst a bigger population of women than is currently playing were it marketed better towards us, and were the culture less hostile.

After all, it's really only recently that women get in to gaming in general. Think about it this way-- although we're usually buying "casual" games (due to them being the easiest for a non-gamer to pick up and play), more women now purchase and play video games than men do, despite the fact that gaming was viewed as a traditionally male thing.

The thing is, we're still trying to break down the gender barriers. Biology doesn't really make as big a difference as many people believe-- many facets of personality are due to societal influences rather than biological.

 Melissia wrote:
But the thing is, if you just ignore it and all you end up is creating male characters/miniatures/etc because that's all you ever think about (which is often the case for people unless they actively seek to diverge from their comfort zones-- I tend to write female characters when writing my lore, and I have to actively think about it in order to add a male character, as they default to female in my mind))-- what exactly does that do to solve the problem?

I'm not sure that it would.

Using your example of writing male or female characters, it would depend on the person writing them. This does bring up several questions that are beyond the scope of this thread, I feel. What is male? What is female?

In developing anything to appeal to both genders, I still think development should happen unhindered by notions of sexism. After the sculpt is complete, then it would be prudent to focus test the model. But if, as a male sculptor, I grab input from just one of my female co-workers or whathaveyou, then I'm only referencing my idea / product against the sensibilities of a single person, period. Her being a woman becomes irrelevant at that point. There's no guaranteeing this imagined woman would be a good representative of the women in my target demographic (women miniature enthusiasts), let alone of women in general. It would need to be a sizable representative group of men and women.

 Dentry wrote:
My point from what you quoted was to say that once we start thinking in terms of what men like and what women like we can't help but be inherently sexist. We start viewing everything as either pro-this or anti-that and lose focus on the idea being implemented.

The problem with the kind of faux-equality you're discussing is that it's doesn't do much to correct already existing inequalities, just to maybe correct for them in the future. You have to actually even things up before getting past it will work. I'd like to say "build it (i.e. some non sexualized women figures) and they will come" would work, but at the same time a lot of gamers need to stop being as openly antagonistic towards women in their hobby space.

 Dentry wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
But the thing is, if you just ignore it and all you end up is creating male characters/miniatures/etc because that's all you ever think about (which is often the case for people unless they actively seek to diverge from their comfort zones-- I tend to write female characters when writing my lore, and I have to actively think about it in order to add a male character, as they default to female in my mind))-- what exactly does that do to solve the problem?

I'm not sure that it would.

Using your example of writing male or female characters, it would depend on the person writing them.

And yet, what I stated is the end result of our current set-up. Continuing with our current set-up will only encourage stagnation, not progress. The stagnation might be good for someone who doesn't care, but it is NOT acceptable to those who do.

 Polonius wrote:
Also, let's not pretend that sexism exists in the hobby, or even geek culture, and nowhere else.

Of course not, I even said that very early in this thread: sexism in geek culture exists because sexism in society as a whole exists, so unless you make a conscious effort to avoid it there is going to be sexism in your community. But I'd like to think we have higher standards than "we're not the worst community".

 Polonius wrote:
When I made my "bestest behavior" comment, I was alluding to my theory that the reason women aren't into wargaming is because it's not their cup of tea. I don't think sexism helps, but I think we have open sexism in gaming because women aren't there in numbers, not the other way around.

I don't think that's really true. We've had similar stereotypes that video games and RPGs weren't their "cup of tea", but it turned out that there were a substantial number of women interested in those games and the biggest obstacle was the attitude of the community, not the game itself. It remains to be seen whether wargaming is somehow inherently a male-only activity, or if the reason so few women are interested is that the community is not exactly welcoming towards them.

Sex sells

Nuff said

meh, nothing wrong with it.

it's the same thing in video games. the girls are usually scantily clad or at the very least attractive looking.

heaven forbid games predominantly played by males have attractive women in them. i personally dont want to look at butch models, if the game is really good i would still play it. but do i like it better when the girls are hot? yes.

Most girls think a guy's a total wierdo for playing with space marines and debating about "astartes" anyway. So who cares about scantily clad models, if you like them, get them, youre screwed either way.

kb305 wrote:
Most girls think a guy's a total wierdo for playing with space marines and debating about "astartes" anyway. So who cares about scantily clad models, if you like them, get them, youre screwed either way.

What would you know? Did you take a poll amongst a statistically representative portion of the population, or are you just making this up?

I reckon most women don't even KNOW about the game, nevermind have passed judgement on it, same with men. It's a pretty obscure hobby all things said.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
As a rule, sexism has kept women out of fields and activities, but once they started entering in numbers, the overt stuff died down. When I made my "bestest behavior" comment, I was alluding to my theory that the reason women aren't into wargaming is because it's not their cup of tea. I don't think sexism helps, but I think we have open sexism in gaming because women aren't there in numbers, not the other way around.

I don't really know if I agree. Even amongst men, wargaming is a rather small minority, so it's hardly a fair assumption that it would not also be popular amongst a bigger population of women than is currently playing were it marketed better towards us, and were the culture less hostile.

After all, it's really only recently that women get in to gaming in general. Think about it this way-- although we're usually buying "casual" games (due to them being the easiest for a non-gamer to pick up and play), more women now purchase and play video games than men do, despite the fact that gaming was viewed as a traditionally male thing.

The thing is, we're still trying to break down the gender barriers. Biology doesn't really make as big a difference as many people believe-- many facets of personality are due to societal influences rather than biological.

I've seen no evidence to suggest that there is a significant untapped female market for miniatures wargaming. I agree that logic seems to dictate that it would exist, but where are they? It's not like female 40k players are uncommon. They are strikingly rare. I've been to adepticon, where there are hundreds of gamers, and not seen a woman playing 40k. I've been to conventions working the booth for Armorcast, and while I'll see women look at the minis, they never cast an eye at the terrain. Women that wander by a 40k game rarely seem intrigued. Even wives of gamers rarely show an interest in the game itself. I've literally been to 40k tournaments were a group of wives and girlfriends sold concessions they cooked. They spent time with the gamers, but not gaming.

I'm not disputing your logic, only that I have pretty broad (no pun intended) and deep experience in gaming, and I've never seen anything to make me think women are interested in minis gaming but are put off solely by the culture.

And I agree with you that personality is based far more on nurture than on nature. That still doesn't lay the blame for the lack of female 40k players on the male gamers.

Let me be clear. I think that if there are women that feel uncomfortable joining the hobby due to the culture, that's a problem. I just don't see the lack of women, in and of itself, as a bad thing.

It took 8 thousand years to get where we are with women. It doesn't mean it'll take 8 thousand years to get to another place. Good thread, good handful of key posters. Gets me all self aware and it's good to know I'm not alone.

 Polonius wrote:
I've seen no evidence to suggest that there is a significant untapped female market for miniatures wargaming. I agree that logic seems to dictate that it would exist, but where are they?
[ snip ]

In your words, it's untapped.

Tell me, how many people have even HEARD of 40k, perhaps outside of the DoW franchise or Space Marine?

The thing is, much like with video gaming or any other source of entertainment, as the hobby becomes more mainstream it will attract a wider variety of people. But whether or not these newer, more diverse sets of fans are KEPT, whether or not their enthusiasm is MAINTAINED, depends entirely upon the culture of the more veteran fanbase, and the culture of the companies producing the source of entertainment itself.

kb305 wrote:
it's the same thing in video games. the girls are usually scantily clad or at the very least attractive looking.

The fact that other games have the same problem doesn't make it any less of a problem.

heaven forbid games predominantly played by males have attractive women in them. i personally dont want to look at butch models, if the game is really good i would still play it. but do i like it better when the girls are hot? yes.

Thank you for summing up very nicely why people say the community has a sexism problem. You do realize that there's an entire other half of the population besides men, right? And that by reducing women to being sex objects you're pretty much telling them "don't play this game, you have no place in it"?

Most girls think a guy's a total wierdo for playing with space marines and debating about "astartes" anyway.

Actually in my experience even if women don't like the game their reaction is either "cool models, not my thing though" or at least "that's your business, I don't care either way". But maybe things are different when you're still in high school or a fan of books by self-titled pick up artists.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
When I made my "bestest behavior" comment, I was alluding to my theory that the reason women aren't into wargaming is because it's not their cup of tea. I don't think sexism helps, but I think we have open sexism in gaming because women aren't there in numbers, not the other way around.

I don't think that's really true. We've had similar stereotypes that video games and RPGs weren't their "cup of tea", but it turned out that there were a substantial number of women interested in those games and the biggest obstacle was the attitude of the community, not the game itself. It remains to be seen whether wargaming is somehow inherently a male-only activity, or if the reason so few women are interested is that the community is not exactly welcoming towards them.

As I commented earlier, I agree with the logic, I just dont' see any evidence of interest.

Women have played video games for years, they just did so differently. They've trended heavily to different games than guys, but there have been female video gamers as a small but notable minority since forever. Ditto RPGs. When it comes to hobbies, people get involved because they either think it's super cool, or somebody close to them is involved. A lot of people pick up a spouse's or SO's hobby or interest. So a lot of guys dragged girls to D&D night, or played video games with their gf/sister/wife, or taught them magic. Why does that not happen in 40k? Is 40k culture so unrelentingly sexist that it prevents women from gaming at home with their partners? Or is 40k not something that horribly appeals to most women?

 Melissia wrote:
Sadly, that exceeds my budget for miniature-related expenses at the moment.

I can understand that - though my primary point is that it isn't what I would consider a "substantial amount". Sure, it is a bit more than what you might find in between the sofa cushions...but if you compare those costs to say something like putting together an IG army from FW resins or GW metals (or worse...GW resin) - it really becomes something more affordable, especially if you were to consider quantities in line with an IG army (as opposed to 30 figures each, it would be more like 70 or 80 figures which would get things down to around $5.50 each for a half dozen people, cheaper than a Vostroyan army.

Plus - there is always learning to sculpt. We have about a dozen people and 3 of us can sculpt now - so the largest costs have evaporated except for when we are looking for something special and want to hire a specific sculptor or have something done that none of us feel up to (or are too busy otherwise). Of course, you might be able to avoid having to learn to sculpt if you can find someone who can sculpt and feels the same way you do. They may be willing to do the putty work in exchange for some free castings (or at reduced rates). And then there are those who are looking to build a portfolio - they work for peanuts.

Long - short...will - way and all that.

It's substantial to me. But then again, I consider 60 USD for a video game to be a substantial investment-- I don't exactly have a very good paying job at the moment.

The money I do have saved up I'm really not wanting to spend on entertainment. Which means any plans I have for things which would cost me all (or more than all) of the money I currently have saved up just have to be pushed back a while. And why the RPG plan is the most valid kickstarter plan I have-- I can produce that on my lonesome, and playtest it with my current group of friends.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I've seen no evidence to suggest that there is a significant untapped female market for miniatures wargaming. I agree that logic seems to dictate that it would exist, but where are they?
[ snip ]

In your words, it's untapped.

Tell me, how many people have even HEARD of 40k, perhaps outside of the DoW franchise or Space Marine?

The thing is, much like with video gaming or any other source of entertainment, as the hobby becomes more mainstream it will attract a wider variety of people. But whether or not these newer, more diverse sets of fans are KEPT, whether or not their enthusiasm is MAINTAINED, depends entirely upon the culture of the more veteran fanbase, and the culture of the companies producing the source of entertainment itself.

there's a difference between untapped and non-existent.

I've seen more women enjoy 40k gamer culture, but not the game, than I've ever seen enjoy the game. Show me women that are interested, or would be interested, in 40k, but can't stand the culture, and I'll gladly change my mind. What I have seen, are plenty of women see the game and simply not find it appealing.

It's not like 40k advertises in Maxim or something. Geek guys learn about it from geek friends. I'm sure a large number of women have been exposed to 40k through friends, relatives, and partners. Is there anything other than conjecture to think it was culture that repelled all of them?

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I've seen no evidence to suggest that there is a significant untapped female market for miniatures wargaming. I agree that logic seems to dictate that it would exist, but where are they?
[ snip ]

In your words, it's untapped.

Tell me, how many people have even HEARD of 40k, perhaps outside of the DoW franchise or Space Marine?

The thing is, much like with video gaming or any other source of entertainment, as the hobby becomes more mainstream it will attract a wider variety of people. But whether or not these newer, more diverse sets of fans are KEPT, whether or not their enthusiasm is MAINTAINED, depends entirely upon the culture of the more veteran fanbase, and the culture of the companies producing the source of entertainment itself.

GW has stated, though, they profit most from new players and their number one goal is turning profits. They would make a White Dwarf swimsuit issue if they knew it would sell (which sadly it probably would)

 Chi3f wrote:
GW has stated, though, they profit most from new players and their number one goal is turning profits. They would make a White Dwarf swimsuit issue if they knew it would sell (which sadly it probably would)

I don't exactly view GW as a very competently managed company, so that might be a bad example.

 Peregrine wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
To make an on topic comment I will say that wargaming is a rather gendered activity. One can argue about the appropriateness of gender roles, but this does not change the fact that, according to perceptions of gender roles prevalent within the dominant society, wargaming is a very masculine activity. Wargaming principally concerns themes of conflict and violence. In this way it is a very masculine activity. One can easily argue that a wargaming identity is often a subordinated form of masculinity, if one were keen on the concept of the multiplicity of masculinities and femininities.

But that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wargaming is perceived as a male activity, therefore the wargaming industry and community treat it as a male activity and do things that push women away, and therefore wargaming continues to be a male activity. There's nothing inherent about wargaming that makes it inappropriate for women. The same was said about RPGs and video games, and yet somehow both of these manage to have decent numbers of women participating. So why is wargaming somehow special? Even if the "natural" ratio would be, for example, 70/30 that's still a substantial female audience being driven away by the actions of the community and industry.

And of course none of this changes the fact that a problem exists.

Did I say a problem did not exist? I also believe that I said that the reality of male to female participation in the hobby was likely inconsistent with peoples' perceptions. Do you read the posts that you quote?

Identity is indeed performed, which absolutely makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. If I wanted to wear lipstick, heels, and glittery dresses, I might not do so in order to avoid being stigmatized. Because people say it is not masculine to wear lipstick, heels, and glittery dresses, I do not wear lipstick, heels, and glittery dresses. I perform a certain masculine identity as a means to avoid subjugation, which in turn reinforces the perceived need for such performances.

Do the people who buy "cheese cake" miniatures buy them purely because they enjoy them, or is part of the purpose the performance of a masculine identity? To respond to a problem one must first recognize that there is a problem and seek to understand it. Bear in mind that I am not saying that all identify performances are conscious choices.

I consider them very poorly managed indeed, yet they are the focus of our discussion.

The point is that GW doesn't care if they offended a handful of people as long as their demographic, the young men with money, keep buying their stuff.

weeble1000 wrote:
Do the people who buy "cheese cake" miniatures buy them purely because they enjoy them, or is part of the purpose the performance of a masculine identity? To respond to a problem one must first recognize that there is a problem and seek to understand it. Bear in mind that I am not saying that all identify performances are conscious choices.

I buy them because I like the female form. I'm not going to deny it. I don't see how it makes me sexist to be a male that like the female form.

 -Loki- wrote:
I don't see how it makes me sexist to be a male that like the female form.

And I fail to see any one that is saying that it does.

I think the biggest obstacle would be that the gaming aspect is still a 'boys club', so to speak.

There are plenty of great models/sculpts out there that aren't 'cheese cake' or whatever.

Sex always has and always will sell. If some people are going to sculpt that to pay the bills, so be it. It really is as simple as voting with your wallet, and buying from companies/places that don't do that if you are ethically against it.

I personally like to paint space marines. Don't see the attraction of painting a 28mm naked woman, but to each their own.

Let's not pretend that there aren't gender differences in interests. Lawyers are roughly half women, while engineers are something like 20% women. Are engineers more sexist than lawyers? (If so, I'd be impressed). Or is engineering not an interesting career path to women?

Nurses are disproportionately female, even highly trained and paid nurses. Even in that field, males trended to managerial roles, while women enjoyed more patient care roles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10659519

Why have some fields seen nearly complete parity in a generation, while others don't? Yes, some areas are due to bigotry (high level executives are overwhelmingly male), but I think that for whatever reason, men and women want different things.

I think you end up with sexism in any field that doesn't have a lot of women in it to begin with, and IMO it's more negative toward men than it is women. It's more degrading to think an unrealistically cartoon character with big boobs and a g-string is what it takes to attract a male audience than it is to the women, after all, the product isn't being marketed to them and it's so unrealistic I can't imagine how they could find it offensive any more than a characture of a man with arms the size of tree trunks and a chiseled jaw line.

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
yeah GW seems to have a fear of women, very few being there (and the ones that are, SOB for example, are forgotten and butchered over and over in the fluff)

I actually came up with a few idea's (one being the attempt in making a silly sounding idea, amazons in space, interesting and not suck, though cannot sculpt to save my life, so when I get the money will commission someone to do that for me)

I don't think GW fear women so much as women don't have a massive place in a game primarily about war. You have elf armies that are sexually mixed and then a SOB army, I would find it more absurd if we actually had a much larger female presence. A few female guard units wouldn't hurt, but other than that, meh.

I don't understand why people are saying this is sexist. Men like women, especially beautiful ones. Men are dominant in this hobby. Why is it a surprise that sexy models sell? I buy sexy models because they're sexy. It has no impact on how I feel about women, I don't get some power trip from it, or anything else. They're sexy. That's it. Why does it have to be such a huge issue?

You might as well shout that women why are sexist for liking sexy men. This is completely absurd. Gender equality in miniatures is not an issue. Period.

 Melissia wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
I don't see how it makes me sexist to be a male that like the female form.

And I fail to see any one that is saying that it does.

Well, it still comes down to the model itself. As MT rightfully pointed out, a GW Cadian could very easily be a female. Simply putting a head on it with long hair would still look female, because with baggy fatigues and armour she's not going to look physically different to a male. I'd still far prefer to paint this than a Cadian with a female head on it, which is pretty much a cheesecake model. So that could classify me as 'part of the problem', because that's what I would prefer to buy and paint, which in turn reinforces to companies that this is the kind of female model the community wants.

I just don't see it as me being sexist.

 Polonius wrote:
Let's not pretend that there aren't gender differences in interests. Lawyers are roughly half women, while engineers are something like 20% women. Are engineers more sexist than lawyers? (If so, I'd be impressed). Or is engineering not an interesting career path to women?

Nurses are disproportionately female, even highly trained and paid nurses. Even in that field, males trended to managerial roles, while women enjoyed more patient care roles: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10659519

Why have some fields seen nearly complete parity in a generation, while others don't? Yes, some areas are due to bigotry (high level executives are overwhelmingly male), but I think that for whatever reason, men and women want different things.

Actually, there is a very nice article examining some of the elements underlying gender disparity at the highest levels of achievement at City Journal (by Kay S. Hymowitz) you might be interested to read.

With regards to your earlier point about the actual interests of female miniature enthusiasts, it's interesting to note that I've seen more (self-reporting) female fans in the comments of the KD:M ks then in most (any?) general discussion of GW products.

 Polonius wrote:
Let's not pretend that there aren't gender differences in interests.

Let's not pretend that the difference in interests is entirely biological.

 Polonius wrote:
Lawyers are roughly half women, while engineers are something like 20% women. Are engineers more sexist than lawyers? (If so, I'd be impressed). Or is engineering not an interesting career path to women?

I am a chemist. When I was in high school, I made my highest grades in biology and chemistry and lowest grades in English and the obnoxious mandatory arts classes (amusingly enough, the only art I enjoyed was sculpting and drawing, I absolutely fething HATED painting or color-based art). The sciences interested me the most out of the various courses and I put the most effort in to them because I ENJOY labwork.

The school's advisor tried to push me away from going in to a chemistry- or engineering-related field. Wouldn't say why, but it's fairly easy to figure out. We, as a society, still try to push women away from engineering or math-related roles, and we do not raise both genders equally.

Let's also not ignore the impact womens movement had on encouraging women to take on what was once male dominated industries. Back in the 70's women only made up 1-2% of engineering roles. Give it a few more decades and see what happens.

 -Loki- wrote:
Well, it still comes down to the model itself. As MT rightfully pointed out, a GW Cadian could very easily be a female. Simply putting a head on it with long hair would still look female, because with baggy fatigues and armour she's not going to look physically different to a male.

And yet, none of them are actually being produced by GW.

 -Loki- wrote:
I'd still far prefer to paint this than a Cadian with a female head on it, which is pretty much a cheesecake model.

Yeah, that's a terribad model, horrible posing and composition. The paint job certainly didn't help, what with the ugly vomit-esque colors.

 -Loki- wrote:
I just don't see it as me being sexist.

I never accused you of being sexist. For me, the discussion on sexism is more related to how women-- real, live women, not the models-- are treated in the hobby.

 Peregrine wrote:

kb305 wrote:
it's the same thing in video games. the girls are usually scantily clad or at the very least attractive looking.

The fact that other games have the same problem doesn't make it any less of a problem.

heaven forbid games predominantly played by males have attractive women in them. i personally dont want to look at butch models, if the game is really good i would still play it. but do i like it better when the girls are hot? yes.

Thank you for summing up very nicely why people say the community has a sexism problem. You do realize that there's an entire other half of the population besides men, right? And that by reducing women to being sex objects you're pretty much telling them "don't play this game, you have no place in it"?

Most girls think a guy's a total wierdo for playing with space marines and debating about "astartes" anyway.

Actually in my experience even if women don't like the game their reaction is either "cool models, not my thing though" or at least "that's your business, I don't care either way". But maybe things are different when you're still in high school or a fan of books by self-titled pick up artists.

lol you talk like if developers made the women ugly that flocks of women would suddenly start playing video games, warhammer and dungeons and dragons. Sexism has little to nothing to do with why most women dont play these games.
Say whatever you want but playing with models most definitely doesnt win you any points with most well adjusted, attractive young women. Take your head out of the sand.

 Melissia wrote:
And yet, what I stated is the end result of our current set-up. Continuing with our current set-up will only encourage stagnation, not progress. The stagnation might be good for someone who doesn't care, but it is NOT acceptable to those who do.

Are we sure that there haven't been attempts to woo the female population? Maybe that market is just untapped or maybe it is not interested. I don't know which. There are too many variables, too many unknowns for us to effectively come up with a course of action that hasn't been tried. There are certainly possibilities, like the scenario I presented of focus group testing miniatures. That particular one seems a bit of a stretch to me, personally, but who am I to say it'd be ineffective?

In response: stagnation is an impossibility; things change, that's irrefutable, inevitable. If, however, we're trying to catalyze said change, then it might be expedient to create awareness if one considers it an important enough issue and push for more equality wherein miniature design is concerned (since that seems to be the focal point of this ongoing discussion).

hands_miranda wrote:

 Dentry wrote:
My point from what you quoted was to say that once we start thinking in terms of what men like and what women like we can't help but be inherently sexist. We start viewing everything as either pro-this or anti-that and lose focus on the idea being implemented.

The problem with the kind of faux-equality you're discussing is that it's doesn't do much to correct already existing inequalities, just to maybe correct for them in the future. You have to actually even things up before getting past it will work. I'd like to say "build it (i.e. some non sexualized women figures) and they will come" would work, but at the same time a lot of gamers need to stop being as openly antagonistic towards women in their hobby space.

I wholeheartedly agree the antagonism needs to stop. I believe it stems from a feeling of being threatened more than any actual hostility towards women or homosexuals or whomever.

What would you suggest, though, for evening things up? Do they need to be even? Are enough people interested in male pinups? Less female pinups? Seems attitudes would be more important than models.

The hard thing about nailing equality / sexism / bigotry down is that it's all subjective so we can't have a unified, abstract definition. Sure there are laws but legal definitions don't mesh with individual ones.

 -Loki- wrote:

weeble1000 wrote:
Do the people who buy "cheese cake" miniatures buy them purely because they enjoy them, or is part of the purpose the performance of a masculine identity? To respond to a problem one must first recognize that there is a problem and seek to understand it. Bear in mind that I am not saying that all identify performances are conscious choices.

I buy them because I like the female form. I'm not going to deny it. I don't see how it makes me sexist to be a male that like the female form.

Please don't take me to mean that I think you are sexist. I am merely arguing that it is possible that the proliferation of such miniatures is related to masculine identity performance. And more broadly, my original point was that the reason for a perceived sexism in wargaming is likely related to the gendered nature of the hobby.

 Dentry wrote:
Are we sure that there haven't been attempts to woo the female population?

I don't think there have been many good attempts to woo any population really. I almost never hear about it outside of the internet's various cliques-- wargaming is virtually unknown.

The first, and most important thing, is to try harder to bring the hobby in to the mainstream, rather than to try to woo any specific group or subculture. That only comes later.

 Dentry wrote:
In response: stagnation is an impossibility

That's certainly untrue. Stagnation might only be temporary, but it's still a possible, and quite undesirable, outcome. See the stagnation in the Middle East, for the longest time it proliferated, and only recently began to slowly change again.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Let's not pretend that there aren't gender differences in interests.

Let's not pretend that the difference in interests is entirely biological.

 Polonius wrote:
Lawyers are roughly half women, while engineers are something like 20% women. Are engineers more sexist than lawyers? (If so, I'd be impressed). Or is engineering not an interesting career path to women?

I am a chemist. When I was in high school, I made my highest grades in biology and chemistry and lowest grades in English and the obnoxious mandatory arts classes (amusingly enough, the only art I enjoyed was sculpting and drawing, I absolutely fething HATED painting or color-based art). The sciences interested me the most out of the various courses and I put the most effort in to them because I ENJOY labwork.

The school's advisor tried to push me away from going in to a chemistry- or engineering-related field. Wouldn't say why, but it's fairly easy to figure out. We, as a society, still try to push women away from engineering or math-related roles, and we do not raise both genders equally.

As Tanto said to the Lone Ranger "who's this 'we' kemosabe?"

My experiences in research science (biology) were of graduate and post-graduate laboratories being predominantly female. Medical school students have been parity/majority female for over ten years*.

*In fairness this is a difficult number to unpack, as there is always a tendency towards women beginning post-graduate education and then dropping out for obvious reasons.

 Melissia wrote:
The school's advisor tried to push me away from going in to a chemistry- or engineering-related field. Wouldn't say why, but it's fairly easy to figure out. We, as a society, still try to push women away from engineering or math-related roles, and we do not raise both genders equally.

I don't think that's true in general. Maybe it was in your specific case, but the couple of Universities I've worked at have tons of events and programs promoting women in science and engineering. The race car building team I worked on did everything they could to offer positions to women and encourage women to join, to the point there was a couple of female team members who joined who I think were significantly less qualified than some of the male applicants who were rejected. Still, not many women applied and for the most part the ones who did mostly quit because they didn't like the work environment associated with building race cars or didn't like building cars enough to put up with the work environment (now I will qualify that by saying we had a couple of good women on the team as well, though I don't think we had any good ones that actually went the full 3 years that most members put in, maybe 1 or 2).

 Fafnir wrote:
Well, there's a lot to talk about concerning sexism in... everything.

Hell, women weren't even considered a major audience for big-budget movies until TWILIGHT came along (and it hurts me to admit that the Twilight films actually managed to do something good, and do not misinterpret, they do not promote anything positive themselves).

Number of movies in the 1920s movies targeted women.

I did some research, and it appears that there is still a lingering bias that women are not as good at math as men. Or, more accurately, that girls aren't as good as boys. That could preclude engineering and the hardest of sciences, but leaves medicine, bio, etc.

Still, even in the most wretchedly male profession, computer engineering, there have been notable women since before there were computers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Timeline_of_women_in_computing

Despite everything, women work on computers for a living, and have since they helped invent them.

Why is that not true of wargaming? Why, in a society where interests can span every aspect of the gender spectrum, is it unthinkable that there is simply a hobby very, very few women find interesting? I mean, is anybody worried how few men enjoy scrapbooking? Do we think that scrapbooking is a den of male hate that is hostile to men? Or is it just not something that interests dudes?

Titanic certainly didn't target men.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Actually, there is a very nice article examining some of the elements underlying gender disparity at the highest levels of achievement at City Journal (by Kay S. Hymowitz) you might be interested to read.

Thanks for the link. I've seem similar, but less fleshed out, versions of the same. The sad reality is that women face a career or kids divide that men don't.

 Polonius wrote:
Why, in a society where interests can span every aspect of the gender spectrum, is it unthinkable that there is simply a hobby very, very few women find interesting?

Because Bronies exist. [/sardonic]

 Polonius wrote:
Why is that not true of wargaming? Why, in a society where interests can span every aspect of the gender spectrum, is it unthinkable that there is simply a hobby very, very few women find interesting? I mean, is anybody worried how few men enjoy scrapbooking? Do we think that scrapbooking is a den of male hate that is hostile to men? Or is it just not something that interests dudes?

I'm curious if it's as simple as women don't find war and conflict as interesting as men do.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I don't think GW fear women so much as women don't have a massive place in a game primarily about war. You have elf armies that are sexually mixed and then a SOB army, I would find it more absurd if we actually had a much larger female presence. A few female guard units wouldn't hurt, but other than that, meh.

This. There is a reason men go off to war to die. Men are expendable. Women are not. It isn't that women can't fight, it is that men cannot give birth. So war has primarily revolved around massive deaths based around the idea that a man can go off to war to die, but as long as his wife and kids survive, his way of life was protected.

Amazons are ok... Space amazons make no sense in many universes as the primary role of amazons was to pillage a settlement, and impregnate themselves. Why would that be viable in an alien space war? Battle nuns at least make sense as any female not making babies to feed the emperor psykers every day would then be trained and allowed to fight. Otherwise the dying imperium desperately needs females to get back to the back lines and make more humans.

Even in fantasy war games, there is almost zero reason for the female of the species to be on the front lines unless they are immortal or are In role where they are immune to harm. For every skaven dying in a battle, there is a pregnant rat woman birthing dozens of rat babies.

I think the reason women don't like wargaming is until very recent in modern times, women have no role in harms way in war due to them being the most precious resource. It isn't that they can't fight, but historically the whole point of war usually revolved around keeping them alive to give birth to the next generation.

RPGs are different because adventuring is not WAR, and if an adventurer dies on a treasure hunt or slaying monsters, the world keeps turnin. RPGs are pretty equal opportunity as you are an army of one, and women can be dynamic and skilled just like men. I think that is why you see women gamers drawn to those types of themes over wargaming.

I do not think shoehorning women into war will attract women either... I see no point in making a "female" I guard army because yeah,ok, it is unique, but unrealistic in a universe where humanity is shrinking to the tune of millions a day and the emperor devours humans to stay alive. I dislike unreasonable and unrealistic female wargaming figures. It is gross pandering to me on both sides of the spectrum. It adds nothing to the game usually and doesn't seem at all to add any appeal to women gamers.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I agree and disagree, lots of males in miniatures are also exagerated, look at GW, lots of beefcake there. But it is not only miniatures, read comics (superhero) most ladies they wear tight clothing with unrealistic bodies, but go to computer games, movies advertisement it is all directed at the male crotch.

It still annoys me people have a hissyfit when there is some male nudity in a movie but not when it is a female.

Most entertainment is still mostly directed at males.

I walked out of the movie theater feeling inadequate after watching 300.

I think people just like to admire the human body in a "perfect" state.

 Melissia wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Why, in a society where interests can span every aspect of the gender spectrum, is it unthinkable that there is simply a hobby very, very few women find interesting?

Because Bronies exist. [/sardonic]

God don't get me started on the Bronies -____-

I think for my next terrain project I'm gonna make a Bronies glue factory.

There's sexism in my hobby?

To be fair this doesn't surprise me in the slightest - the real question lies in what we as a community will do about it.

nkelsch wrote:
I see no point in making a "female" I guard army because yeah,ok, it is unique, but unrealistic

40k is anything but realistic.

Also? All-female Guard regiments exist, as do mixed regiments. They're in the lore, no matter how much you would love to deny it. The overwhelming majority of the Imperium does not do forced breeding programs, either.

 Polonius wrote:
Why is that not true of wargaming? Why, in a society where interests can span every aspect of the gender spectrum, is it unthinkable that there is simply a hobby very, very few women find interesting? I mean, is anybody worried how few men enjoy scrapbooking? Do we think that scrapbooking is a den of male hate that is hostile to men? Or is it just not something that interests dudes?

I think at the end of the day, certain hobbies just don't appeal as much to women as they do to men. Whether it actually be gender based or cultural ingraining, I dunno. We still give our girls pink toys and our boys blue toys, we give our girls dolls and or boys action figures. Wargaming is still largely about simulating "war" with "toy soldiers". I would be mighty surprised if it had a lot of women in it.

Now that's not to say women can't enjoy the hobby, but I think it's unrealistic to assume there would ever be 1:1 ratio of genders.

The same thing goes with a lot of hobbies. I have 3 older sisters, all of them like cars, one of them knows more about cars than most men. However, in general, I think it's less likely that a woman is going to be have their base instinct tweaked at the rumble and roar of a big block V8 and wet their pants at the idea of several hundred horses fighting to leap out from under the hood. Despite the fact all 3 of my sisters like cars, I'm the only one who actually actively works on my own vehicles, even though my Dad spent more time trying to encourage them to pick up a wrench than me. I know that when the 4 of us were growing up, my sisters disliked being in the then 20 year beat up old beast my Dad had, while I loved it because it had a grunt of a V8, the late 60's styling hidden under the dust and dirt, and could drag off other cars from the lights.

I don't expect gender equality in all hobbies, and a result certain hobbies are targetted to a particular gender.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
pink toys and our boys blue toys

A century ago, this was flipped. Pink was manly because it was related to blood and blood was manly.

Giving girls pink items would have been considered bad parenting because pink was a manly color.

 Melissia wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
I see no point in making a "female" I guard army because yeah,ok, it is unique, but unrealistic

40k is anything but realistic.

Also? All-female Guard regiments exist, as do mixed regiments. They're in the lore, no matter how much you would love to deny it. The overwhelming majority of the Imperium does not do forced breeding programs, either.

Even that logic doesn't make sense, it'd be perfectly realistic/logical to have an all female guard regiment. Think of the Firstborn, but dedicated to the daughters of a planet instead.

 ENOZONE wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
I see no point in making a "female" I guard army because yeah,ok, it is unique, but unrealistic

40k is anything but realistic.

Also? All-female Guard regiments exist, as do mixed regiments. They're in the lore, no matter how much you would love to deny it. The overwhelming majority of the Imperium does not do forced breeding programs, either.

Even that logic doesn't make sense, it'd be perfectly realistic/logical to have an all female guard regiment. Think of the Firstborn, but dedicated to the daughters of a planet instead.

Besides, having an all-female guard regiment that settles the planet that they conquered means more loyal breeders, if the Imperium is really all that concerned about it (there's really no evidence of it, the Imperium seems to take a mostly medieval approach on the topic, breeding camps really don't exist except in the most tyrannical of planets, and those are the exception, not the rule), on the planet.

 Melissia wrote:
I don't think there have been many good attempts to woo any population really. I almost never hear about it outside of the internet's various cliques-- wargaming is virtually unknown.

The first, and most important thing, is to try harder to bring the hobby in to the mainstream, rather than to try to woo any specific group or subculture. That only comes later.

I'm confused now. In agreement with regards to your points, but I thought my earlier point about considering hobbyists as people first and men / women second was left by the wayside (or overlooked/lost).

• Yes. We should definitely see each other as persons. With that in mind we should extend the courtesy we would like shown.

How anyone interprets my above statement is up for grabs.

 Melissia wrote:
That's certainly untrue. Stagnation might only be temporary, but it's still a possible, and quite undesirable, outcome. See the stagnation in the Middle East, for the longest time it proliferated, and only recently began to slowly change again.

My scope was over several generations. Really, I was thinking of the whole continuity that is Time.

During one (or a few) generation(s), then it certainly is, as you pointed out, a possibility. And to see change in our life time usually does require action on some parts. It still leaves the question open of what change exactly would benefit this situation.

 Melissia wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
pink toys and our boys blue toys

A century ago, this was flipped. Pink was manly because it was related to blood and blood was manly.

Giving girls pink items would have been considered bad parenting because pink was a manly color.

Interesting, however my point was is that we treat our kids differently from a young age based on their gender. I don't think there's any doubt that women, as a group, have less interest in certain hobbies than others, and my point was simply I don't know whether that's actually gender based or just culturally based.

 Polonius wrote:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

Actually, there is a very nice article examining some of the elements underlying gender disparity at the highest levels of achievement at City Journal (by Kay S. Hymowitz) you might be interested to read.

Thanks for the link. I've seem similar, but less fleshed out, versions of the same. The sad reality is that women face a career or kids divide that men don't.

Good link, Buzzsaw.

And I'd love to be a stay at home dad or house husband as some of my friends call it. Maybe I'll change my mind when I actually have kids. Hah!

 Dentry wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I don't think there have been many good attempts to woo any population really. I almost never hear about it outside of the internet's various cliques-- wargaming is virtually unknown.

The first, and most important thing, is to try harder to bring the hobby in to the mainstream, rather than to try to woo any specific group or subculture. That only comes later.

I'm confused now.

I was going with the logic that once it becomes more mainstream it will naturally attract more of every population within the greater whole, and thus become more representative while trying to avoid marketing specifically to individual populations.

Modern marketing, after all, has no fething clue how to market to individual populations without belittling them.

 Melissia wrote:

 Dentry wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
I don't think there have been many good attempts to woo any population really. I almost never hear about it outside of the internet's various cliques-- wargaming is virtually unknown.

The first, and most important thing, is to try harder to bring the hobby in to the mainstream, rather than to try to woo any specific group or subculture. That only comes later.

I'm confused now.

I was going with the logic that once it becomes more mainstream it will naturally attract more of every population within the greater whole, and thus become more representative while trying to avoid marketing specifically to individual populations.

At the risk of pessimism, I find it... unlikely, that table top wargaming will ever achieve what we would recognize as going "mainstream".

Then again, who knows? It's to the credit of the new wave of companies (with PP and CB at the forefront) that they are amazingly inclusive in terms of providing characters/models of both genders.

kb305 wrote:
lol you talk like if developers made the women ugly that flocks of women would suddenly start playing video games, warhammer and dungeons and dragons. Sexism has little to nothing to do with why most women dont play these games.

Nice straw man. Nobody is demanding ugly women (or ugly men), what people want is realistic women that aren't just sex objects. There's a huge difference between "I'd like to see women in armor that actually functions as armor" and "make deliberately ugly models".

Say whatever you want but playing with models most definitely doesnt win you any points with most well adjusted, attractive young women. Take your head out of the sand.

How old are you?

 -Loki- wrote:
I buy them because I like the female form. I'm not going to deny it. I don't see how it makes me sexist to be a male that like the female form.

Nobody is saying that you're sexist for liking the female form. The sexism is the fact that the dominant portrayal of women is sex objects first, characters second, and a community that reacts with "feminazi!" every time anyone dares to say something about it.

 Polonius wrote:
They've trended heavily to different games than guys, but there have been female video gamers as a small but notable minority since forever. Ditto RPGs.

The same is true with wargaming. The person running Warmachine events at my old FLGS was a woman, occasionally I'll see women playing games, even looking at gaming forums will show you a small but notable minority. It looks like the exact same kind of situation that other games have been in before, so why concede defeat for this one game? What's so special about wargaming?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I can't imagine how they could find it offensive any more than a characture of a man with arms the size of tree trunks and a chiseled jaw line.

Because the man with arms the size of tree trunks is often ALSO aimed at men. It portrays what many men wish they could be, not what women want to see. Like I've said here before, the default is that female characters are what you want to look at, while male characters are who you want to be. And "you" defaults to being a straight man.

It won't become as mainstream as video gaming I reckon, due to the fact that it requires such effort (painting), but it certainly has come a long way, and has a long way to go.

 Melissia wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
I see no point in making a "female" I guard army because yeah,ok, it is unique, but unrealistic

40k is anything but realistic.

Also? All-female Guard regiments exist, as do mixed regiments. They're in the lore, no matter how much you would love to deny it. The overwhelming majority of the Imperium does not do forced breeding programs, either.

Yeah, it's hilarious to me that, in a universe in which 8' tall genetically engineered superhumans armed with chainsaw swords travel through hell to fight giant demon monsters from another reality and fungus beasts that just happen to resemble rioting British soccer fans, having women fighting in the infantry is just too unrealistic to accept.


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Now that's not to say women can't enjoy the hobby, but I think it's unrealistic to assume there would ever be 1:1 ratio of genders.

Of course it's unrealistic, but that's not what anybody is demanding. What we want to see is a removal of the attitudes that drive women away, not an artificial 1:1 gender ratio. If it turns out that wargaming is just more popular among men and the outcome is a 70:30 ratio then that's just how it is.

Yeaaaaah... 40k and realism are like the couple that had the worst break-up ever. They don't want anything to do with eachother. Realism moved to Canada. 40k moved to Mars and started its own colony, trying to recreate the Mechanicus. Realism hopes, one day, to launch a rocket at 40k and break its biodome but it keeps forgetting about it because it has more important things to do.

 Peregrine wrote:
Because the man with arms the size of tree trunks is often ALSO aimed at men. It portrays what many men wish they could be, not what women want to see. Like I've said here before, the default is that female characters are what you want to look at, while male characters are who you want to be. And "you" defaults to being a straight man.

Perhaps a good example of someone targeted to women would be Orlando Bloom? Robert Pattinson? Tom Hiddleston?

I'm told these guys are very attractive. At the same time, aside from the money and fame, I'm not envious of them and in fact am not rather fond of Mr. Bloom.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Then again, who knows? It's to the credit of the new wave of companies (with PP and CB at the forefront) that they are amazingly inclusive in terms of providing characters/models of both genders.

It could happen. I've yet to run into anyone identifying themselves as a miniatures anything outside of hobby shops. I frequently run into video gamers, though.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
I see no point in making a "female" I guard army because yeah,ok, it is unique, but unrealistic

40k is anything but realistic.

Also? All-female Guard regiments exist, as do mixed regiments. They're in the lore, no matter how much you would love to deny it. The overwhelming majority of the Imperium does not do forced breeding programs, either.

Yeah, it's hilarious to me that, in a universe in which 8' tall genetically engineered superhumans armed with chainsaw swords travel through hell to fight giant demon monsters from another reality and fungus beasts that just happen to resemble rioting British soccer fans, having women fighting in the infantry is just too unrealistic to accept.

This brings up an interesting point: it's a given that GW views girls as having cooties. But PP clearly doesn't.

Out of the starter sets for WM/Hordes, 3/5 Warmachine starters have female warcasters (Khador, Cryx and Retribution), while 2/4 Hordes starters have female Warlocks (Circle and Legion). 5 out of 9 starter products for PP's flagship games come with a female character (and if you go by the 2-player boxes, 3/4 are female), and no single faction has an absence of female (or male, in fairness) "leaders".

It's fair to say that PP products are about as inclusive on the gender level as could possibly be expected. Is there any evidence that this has attracted more female players? Honestly not sure how one could even tell this. I notice female staffers are often prominently highlighted on the Privateer Insider web feature, but as for attendance at conventions, no clue.

 Dentry wrote:
Perhaps a good example of someone targeted to women would be Orlando Bloom? Robert Pattinson? Tom Hiddleston?

I'm told these guys are very attractive. At the same time, aside from the money and fame, I'm not envious of them and in fact am not rather fond of Mr. Bloom.

But that's not the point. The claim was that both men and women are objectified and idealized, that the "arms the size of tree trunks" male character is the equivalent of the porn-star-in-chainmail-bikini female character. In reality it doesn't work that way, especially in wargaming/fantasy novels/comic books/etc. The exaggerated and unrealistic ideal male characters are presented as a male fantasy about how awesome it would be to BE that character, while the exaggerated and unrealistic ideal female characters are presented as a male fantasy about how awesome it would be to have sex with that character. In both cases it's the male gaze that is most important, and any female interest is just a nice bonus.

The fact that attractive men exists is an entirely different subject, since Orlando Bloom is not an exaggerated stereotype walking around with tree-trunk arms.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Yes - the "Venus de Milo" and the "Birth of Venus" (or any other classical sculpture or painting) are "porn".

But that is where you are mistaken. Art appeals to our intellect, it tells a story or engenders an emotion. Pornography, on the other hand, in designed to tittilate and entice - work up a desire, not usually in a beneficial way more about self gratification than anything else.

I would consider something found in a museum art, something drawn on the inside of a porta-john pornography.

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I can't imagine how they could find it offensive any more than a characture of a man with arms the size of tree trunks and a chiseled jaw line.

Because the man with arms the size of tree trunks is often ALSO aimed at men. It portrays what many men wish they could be, not what women want to see. Like I've said here before, the default is that female characters are what you want to look at, while male characters are who you want to be. And "you" defaults to being a straight man.

So - you think that women don't want to be like the cheesecake?

There is probably more evidence that women buy products (not necessarily evidence regarding miniatures specifically - but products in general) that would indicate they want to be cheesecake than there is that men want to be Thrud. Again, I point to all the various marketing and media for women and by women which you can readily find.

Even within the confines of nerdom - you see more women dressing up as Poison Ivy at conventions than you do see women dressing up as some ambiguous acceptable character (there are certainly a few out there). While it might not be exactly a scientific data set - the evidence within it is substantial.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

xraytango wrote:

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Yes - the "Venus de Milo" and the "Birth of Venus" (or any other classical sculpture or painting) are "porn".

But that is where you are mistaken. Art appeals to our intellect, it tells a story or engenders an emotion. Pornography, on the other hand, in designed to tittilate and entice - work up a desire, not usually in a beneficial way more about self gratification than anything else.

I would consider something found in a museum art, something drawn on the inside of a porta-john pornography.

Pretty sure you missed something along the way...there is a 'casm round these parts you need to be careful to avoid.

In any case, what would you make of this then?

http://www.weam.com/

 Peregrine wrote:
But that's not the point. The claim was that both men and women are objectified and idealized, that the "arms the size of tree trunks" male character is the equivalent of the porn-star-in-chainmail-bikini female character. In reality it doesn't work that way, especially in wargaming/fantasy novels/comic books/etc. The exaggerated and unrealistic ideal male characters are presented as a male fantasy about how awesome it would be to BE that character, while the exaggerated and unrealistic ideal female characters are presented as a male fantasy about how awesome it would be to have sex with that character. In both cases it's the male gaze that is most important, and any female interest is just a nice bonus.

The fact that attractive men exists is an entirely different subject, since Orlando Bloom is not an exaggerated stereotype walking around with tree-trunk arms.

Understood. My point with those examples was to demonstrate that true eye-candy for women could be something offensive or distasteful to men. As I mentioned, I'm not a fan of Bloom and could do without him in some of the motion pictures I enjoy; nothing against him as a person. It was under the assumption that others might feel the same about some of the examples I listed.

I was backing up your assertion that tree-trunk-armed guys are presumed part of the male fantasy (muy macho).

 Sean_OBrien wrote:

In any case, what would you make of this then?

http://www.weam.com/

Told myself to keep out of this but...
What is a giant mind screw to Fundy & prudish morality?

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
So - you think that women don't want to be like the cheesecake?

Not really, especially when "on display for everyone to look at" is an inherent part of it.

Even within the confines of nerdom - you see more women dressing up as Poison Ivy at conventions than you do see women dressing up as some ambiguous acceptable character (there are certainly a few out there). While it might not be exactly a scientific data set - the evidence within it is substantial.

Ignoring the issues of peer pressure to be sexy in public, the issue isn't that there are sexy female characters, it's that this is the dominant image in the hobby, and even things as simple female Cadian infantry are almost entirely nonexistent. While men get a diverse range of characters to identify with women are pretty much stuck with "sex object", or, at best, "token girl".

And of course if anyone complains about the situation a loud and obnoxious element immediately starts screaming about "FEMINAZIS!" and "STOP PERSECUTING MEN JUST FOR BEING MEN!!!!!".

 Peregrine wrote:
Because the man with arms the size of tree trunks is often ALSO aimed at men. It portrays what many men wish they could be, not what women want to see. Like I've said here before, the default is that female characters are what you want to look at, while male characters are who you want to be. And "you" defaults to being a straight man.

I feel you're taking what I said out of context a bit, as that's basically what I meant. Wargaming, by and large, appeals to "straight men", so that's what the advertising is targetted at. Women should feel no more degraded by it for it having unrealistically proportioned women than men should be for it having unrealistically proportioned men.

Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

But WHY is "straight men" the only target audience? That's part of the sexism problem, the assumption that men are the target audience and women can just be ignored (or even driven away, if it means more men are interested).

 Peregrine wrote:

kb305 wrote:
lol you talk like if developers made the women ugly that flocks of women would suddenly start playing video games, warhammer and dungeons and dragons. Sexism has little to nothing to do with why most women dont play these games.

Nice straw man. Nobody is demanding ugly women (or ugly men), what people want is realistic women that aren't just sex objects. There's a huge difference between "I'd like to see women in armor that actually functions as armor" and "make deliberately ugly models".

Say whatever you want but playing with models most definitely doesnt win you any points with most well adjusted, attractive young women. Take your head out of the sand.

How old are you?

ehhh none of your business.

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

But WHY is "straight men" the only target audience?

Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

That's part of the sexism problem, the assumption that men are the target audience and women can just be ignored (or even driven away, if it means more men are interested).

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience. Are we going to start calling things ageist because they're targetted at preschoolers? Are we going to start complaining about discrimination because boy bands are targetted at teenage girls and all the lyrics are directed at teenage girls? If all evidence shows your target audience is X, you market to X.

kb305 wrote:
ehhh none of your business.

Saw that one coming. My guess is you're still young and you don't understand how adult relationships work. Once you get out of high school and into the adult world you'll find that "looking down on you for playing with space marines" is something people grow out of, and that many men are happily married to non-gaming women who don't look down on their hobbies even if they aren't interested in playing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

How is it inherently male oriented? It's culturally male oriented, but I fail to see what is so inherently male about wargaming that women can't possibly be a meaningful percentage of the community.

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience.

But WHY? Why start with a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of trying to remove the stuff that drives women away and finding out how many women would be interested in the game itself?

 Peregrine wrote:
And of course if anyone complains about the situation a loud and obnoxious element immediately starts screaming about "FEMINAZIS!" and "STOP PERSECUTING MEN JUST FOR BEING MEN!!!!!".

I think a large portion of dislike of feminist ideals is because a lot of feminist goals seem unclear, unrealistic, sexist in their own right and often harsh on men for being men and not being feminine enough.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And of course if anyone complains about the situation a loud and obnoxious element immediately starts screaming about "FEMINAZIS!" and "STOP PERSECUTING MEN JUST FOR BEING MEN!!!!!".

I think a large portion of dislike of feminist ideals is because a lot of feminist goals seem unclear, unrealistic, sexist in their own right and often harsh on men for being men and not being feminine enough.

Well, maybe if your entire knowledge of feminists consists of strawman arguments.

 Peregrine wrote:

kb305 wrote:
ehhh none of your business.

Saw that one coming. My guess is you're still young and you don't understand how adult relationships work. Once you get out of high school and into the adult world you'll find that "looking down on you for playing with space marines" is something people grow out of, and that many men are happily married to non-gaming women who don't look down on their hobbies even if they aren't interested in playing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

How is it inherently male oriented? It's culturally male oriented, but I fail to see what is so inherently male about wargaming that women can't possibly be a meaningful percentage of the community.

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience.

But WHY? Why start with a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of trying to remove the stuff that drives women away and finding out how many women would be interested in the game itself?

Not to drive this too far into academic territory, war is historically a male thing. Regardless of culture, species, or time period, fighting falls to men. You can put a lot of gender roles on culture but fighting is one we have to put naturally in mens domain, because most species of animal on earth, will leave fighting to the male. Lots of reasons, but any look into biology would show that for most animal species(including humans) its the male doing the fighting.

Yes culturally, across the entire world, human males are put into the role of fighter, but nature play's a big sexist hand in it.

 Peregrine wrote:
How is it inherently male oriented? It's culturally male oriented, but I fail to see what is so inherently male about wargaming that women can't possibly be a meaningful percentage of the community.

I said earlier that I don't know if it is actually a gender based bias or a cultural based bias. I think it could be a bit of both, as I said in my previous post. Here, I can't be bothered making the same points again...

I think at the end of the day, certain hobbies just don't appeal as much to women as they do to men. Whether it actually be gender based or cultural ingraining, I dunno. We still give our girls pink toys and our boys blue toys, we give our girls dolls and or boys action figures. Wargaming is still largely about simulating "war" with "toy soldiers". I would be mighty surprised if it had a lot of women in it.

Now that's not to say women can't enjoy the hobby, but I think it's unrealistic to assume there would ever be 1:1 ratio of genders.

The same thing goes with a lot of hobbies. I have 3 older sisters, all of them like cars, one of them knows more about cars than most men. However, in general, I think it's less likely that a woman is going to be have their base instinct tweaked at the rumble and roar of a big block V8 and wet their pants at the idea of several hundred horses fighting to leap out from under the hood. Despite the fact all 3 of my sisters like cars, I'm the only one who actually actively works on my own vehicles, even though my Dad spent more time trying to encourage them to pick up a wrench than me. I know that when the 4 of us were growing up, my sisters disliked being in the then 20 year beat up old beast my Dad had, while I loved it because it had a grunt of a V8, the late 60's styling hidden under the dust and dirt, and could drag off other cars from the lights.

But WHY? Why start with a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of trying to remove the stuff that drives women away and finding out how many women would be interested in the game itself?

Why? Because your goal is to make money, not change the world and see if it works or not, and that's not where the change is going to happen anyway, if any change were to happen. Look at video gaming. There's games which do tend to appeal to a wide set of people regardless of gender, and then games which don't, like the ones about war and shooting and driving. A lot of the games in the latter category are marketed gender neutrally and play completely gender neutrally and they don't magically attract more women because women still aren't interested in them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And of course if anyone complains about the situation a loud and obnoxious element immediately starts screaming about "FEMINAZIS!" and "STOP PERSECUTING MEN JUST FOR BEING MEN!!!!!".

I think a large portion of dislike of feminist ideals is because a lot of feminist goals seem unclear, unrealistic, sexist in their own right and often harsh on men for being men and not being feminine enough.

Well, maybe if your entire knowledge of feminists consists of strawman arguments.

I can only comment on what I see. If feminists and feminist supporters made less strawman arguments maybe they'd get less people complaining about their arguments

 Piston Honda wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I agree and disagree, lots of males in miniatures are also exagerated, look at GW, lots of beefcake there. But it is not only miniatures, read comics (superhero) most ladies they wear tight clothing with unrealistic bodies, but go to computer games, movies advertisement it is all directed at the male crotch.

It still annoys me people have a hissyfit when there is some male nudity in a movie but not when it is a female.

Most entertainment is still mostly directed at males.

I walked out of the movie theater feeling inadequate after watching 300.

I think people just like to admire the human body in a "perfect" state.

It's okay Piston, we'll get you a CG team and some oil! You too can be perfect!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
pink toys and our boys blue toys

A century ago, this was flipped. Pink was manly because it was related to blood and blood was manly.

Giving girls pink items would have been considered bad parenting because pink was a manly color.

Interesting, however my point was is that we treat our kids differently from a young age based on their gender. I don't think there's any doubt that women, as a group, have less interest in certain hobbies than others, and my point was simply I don't know whether that's actually gender based or just culturally based.

It's nurture, not nature. True we have different strengths and there's mild biological differences between the genders but I know plenty of guys who are average dudes and don't like getting under the hood of a car. I also know a dozen odd women off the top of my head that took their first deer with a rifle before the age of 10.

 Peregrine wrote:

Even within the confines of nerdom - you see more women dressing up as Poison Ivy at conventions than you do see women dressing up as some ambiguous acceptable character (there are certainly a few out there). While it might not be exactly a scientific data set - the evidence within it is substantial.

Ignoring the issues of peer pressure to be sexy in public, the issue isn't that there are sexy female characters, it's that this is the dominant image in the hobby, and even things as simple female Cadian infantry are almost entirely nonexistent. While men get a diverse range of characters to identify with women are pretty much stuck with "sex object", or, at best, "token girl".

And of course if anyone complains about the situation a loud and obnoxious element immediately starts screaming about "FEMINAZIS!" and "STOP PERSECUTING MEN JUST FOR BEING MEN!!!!!".

This. We didn't even make page 2 before someone started crying about the feminazis and men just being men.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

But WHY is "straight men" the only target audience?

Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

That's part of the sexism problem, the assumption that men are the target audience and women can just be ignored (or even driven away, if it means more men are interested).

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience. Are we going to start calling things ageist because they're targetted at preschoolers? Are we going to start complaining about discrimination because boy bands are targetted at teenage girls and all the lyrics are directed at teenage girls? If all evidence shows your target audience is X, you market to X.

You need to go meet some female Marines and soldiers mate. They're scarier on the whole then a lot of recon guys I worked with.

 Peregrine wrote:

kb305 wrote:
ehhh none of your business.

Saw that one coming. My guess is you're still young and you don't understand how adult relationships work. Once you get out of high school and into the adult world you'll find that "looking down on you for playing with space marines" is something people grow out of, and that many men are happily married to non-gaming women who don't look down on their hobbies even if they aren't interested in playing.

This. A thousand friggin times this. The rise of geekdom as a cultural tide's probably helping somewhat but I've dated more then a few girls, even married one and divorced her. It's not like I hid my hobbies in a locked cabinet. They either weren't interesting and said "That's nice dear" (the ex-wife), appreciated the skill and dedication required to paint the minis, or were interested/actively supported/wanted to learn. Out of ten only one was in the first category.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And of course if anyone complains about the situation a loud and obnoxious element immediately starts screaming about "FEMINAZIS!" and "STOP PERSECUTING MEN JUST FOR BEING MEN!!!!!".

I think a large portion of dislike of feminist ideals is because a lot of feminist goals seem unclear, unrealistic, sexist in their own right and often harsh on men for being men and not being feminine enough.

Well, maybe if your entire knowledge of feminists consists of strawman arguments.

I can only comment on what I see. If feminists and feminist supporters made less strawman arguments maybe they'd get less people complaining about their arguments

Strawmen? Dude are you reading yourself? "Oh well that's war stuff! Women can't like war stuff! Or driving games! Those are manly things and men should be left to do those things!"

they're not gonna change because they don't feel they need to
no one wants to take the first step and risk loosing money
I wouldn't, that'd be suicide in a marketing standpoint
plus... women aren't as typically seen as black and white in their thinking
wargames are pretty easy to make in terms of making it appeal to men (lots of gore, naked women, tanks, etc)
try to make a miniature game that appeals to a large group of women
probably be harder

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:


It's a response to this article from http://bitchmagazine.org/post/save-vs-sexism-kickstarting-sexism and I have to say reading it took me back to some other discussions I've had within nerd groups and without when issues or accusations of sexism and bias come out, mostly a deflective attitude of things like "Well it's just the art style" "Males are just as exaggerated in the game!" So not really addressing the issue but blowing it off and redirecting it.

Find it interesting in their website advertisement they link to women's sex toys. Many of which unrealistic compared to the average guy.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
You need to go meet some female Marines and soldiers mate. They're scarier on the whole then a lot of recon guys I worked with.

You need to meet all 3 of my sisters, they're all more scary than most the guys I know. Funnily enough, 2 of the 3 of them hooked up with guys who are even scarier than they are, lol.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Strawmen? Dude are you reading yourself? "Oh well that's war stuff! Women can't like war stuff! Or driving games! Those are manly things and men should be left to do those things!"

You're just putting words in my mouth and taking what I say out of context. They aren't strawman arguments, I offer simple observation that those things appeal less to women than they do to men and therefore people market things in that way and even in the absence of such marketing they don't magically attract more women. A simple anecdotal observation. The only actual argumentative point is that I have no problem with products being marketed to particular groups if the companies observe that is their target audience.

 Peregrine wrote:

kb305 wrote:
ehhh none of your business.

Saw that one coming. My guess is you're still young and you don't understand how adult relationships work. Once you get out of high school and into the adult world you'll find that "looking down on you for playing with space marines" is something people grow out of, and that many men are happily married to non-gaming women who don't look down on their hobbies even if they aren't interested in playing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

How is it inherently male oriented? It's culturally male oriented, but I fail to see what is so inherently male about wargaming that women can't possibly be a meaningful percentage of the community.

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience.

But WHY? Why start with a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of trying to remove the stuff that drives women away and finding out how many women would be interested in the game itself?

OH really? i didnt realize that things were different when youre farting around eachother and have a kid together.

just because your wife tolerates it doenst mean she likes it.

And what about on a first coffee date? Is bringing it up your WOW and 40k addiction automatically going to kill your chances? maybe not. Is brining it up a good idea? def. not.

anyway, this is getting really off topic, im done.

 Varrick wrote:
Regardless of culture, species, or time period, fighting falls to men.

Except that's not true at all. Yes, real war tends to fall to men, but we aren't talking about real war. Women are perfectly happy to fight monsters in RPGs, fight people in martial arts, play video games where combat is a major element, etc. These are things that have been thought to be "for men", but it turns out that once the social barriers to entry are removed women are interested in those things.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Look at video gaming. There's games which do tend to appeal to a wide set of people regardless of gender, and then games which don't, like the ones about war and shooting and driving. A lot of the games in the latter category are marketed gender neutrally and play completely gender neutrally and they don't magically attract more women because women still aren't interested in them.

But it's still not neutral. Look at, say, whatever the latest Call of Duty game is. Male main character? Yep. No significant female characters? Yep. Online-focused gameplay with a community that defines "hostile environment" for any women who make the mistake of admitting that they're women? Yep. Hardly a neutral situation.

I can only comment on what I see. If feminists and feminist supporters made less strawman arguments maybe they'd get less people complaining about their arguments

No, I'm saying that your idea of feminism is a straw man that has nothing to do with what (non-extremist) feminists actually believe.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Melissia wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
pink toys and our boys blue toys

A century ago, this was flipped. Pink was manly because it was related to blood and blood was manly.

Giving girls pink items would have been considered bad parenting because pink was a manly color.

Interesting, however my point was is that we treat our kids differently from a young age based on their gender. I don't think there's any doubt that women, as a group, have less interest in certain hobbies than others, and my point was simply I don't know whether that's actually gender based or just culturally based.

It's nurture, not nature. True we have different strengths and there's mild biological differences between the genders but I know plenty of guys who are average dudes and don't like getting under the hood of a car. I also know a dozen odd women off the top of my head that took their first deer with a rifle before the age of 10.

Errr, "mild biological differences between the genders"? At the risk of using a very blunt comparison indeed, genetically a human female is roughly as genetically similar to a female chimpanzee as she is to a male human (both an illustration of how closely related we are to other primates, and the overlooked genetic differences between the sexes). The differences in brain architecture alone would fill a book (and does, a rather expensive one at that...)

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

But WHY is "straight men" the only target audience?

Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

That's part of the sexism problem, the assumption that men are the target audience and women can just be ignored (or even driven away, if it means more men are interested).

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience. Are we going to start calling things ageist because they're targetted at preschoolers? Are we going to start complaining about discrimination because boy bands are targetted at teenage girls and all the lyrics are directed at teenage girls? If all evidence shows your target audience is X, you market to X.

You need to go meet some female Marines and soldiers mate. They're scarier on the whole then a lot of recon guys I worked with.

*Shrug*, I would say that your experience is at odds with the my friends' experience in Afghanistan, and popular reportage. Not to dispute your truthfulness, merely the ubiquity of your experience.

kb305 wrote:
OH really? i didnt realize that things were different when youre farting around eachother and have a kid together.

No, things are different when you grow up and have a relationship between adults, not a relationship between children who are obsessed with petty "OMG WHAT WILL MY FRIENDS THINK?!??!?" nonsense.

just because your wife tolerates it doenst mean she likes it.

No, but the original claim was that women hate 40k and letting a woman know you play immediately makes her less interested in you. That's a textbook sign of a person with no experience in adult relationships.

And what about on a first coffee date? Is bringing it up your WOW and 40k addiction automatically going to kill your chances? maybe not. Is brining it up a good idea? def. not.

Bringing up an addiction? No, but that's because addictions of any kind are bad.

Bringing up a hobby? Yes, because they might be interested and if they really hate it I'll be glad to get rid of them without wasting more than a coffee date. In fact, why not do even better? I put "I love gaming" very clearly in my online dating profile and filter out anyone who objects without even having to bother to meet them.

PS: my girlfriend thought the scifi art I was drawing was cool before I even knew she existed.

 Peregrine wrote:
But it's still not neutral. Look at, say, whatever the latest Call of Duty game is. Male main character? Yep. No significant female characters? Yep. Online-focused gameplay with a community that defines "hostile environment" for any women who make the mistake of admitting that they're women? Yep. Hardly a neutral situation.

I never said all video games weren't gender neutral. Many, however, are, and don't magically attract more women for it.

No, I'm saying that your idea of feminism is a straw man that has nothing to do with what (non-extremist) feminists actually believe.

Possibly true, but you wonder why people start complaining about feminist arguments, and it's because of the "feminist goals seem unclear, unrealistic, sexist in their own right and often harsh on men for being men and not being feminine enough". Maybe that's because of the extremist feminists you allude to warping the perception of genuine feminists, but there is most certainly a reason why a lot of people straight away sigh and think "not this again" when a feminist whine fest comes up.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

But WHY is "straight men" the only target audience?

Because it is simulating a "war" with "toy soldiers". Two things that are inherently more male orientated.

That's part of the sexism problem, the assumption that men are the target audience and women can just be ignored (or even driven away, if it means more men are interested).

The assumption men are the target audience is because men are the target audience. Are we going to start calling things ageist because they're targetted at preschoolers? Are we going to start complaining about discrimination because boy bands are targetted at teenage girls and all the lyrics are directed at teenage girls? If all evidence shows your target audience is X, you market to X.

You need to go meet some female Marines and soldiers mate. They're scarier on the whole then a lot of recon guys I worked with.

*Shrug*, I would say that your experience is at odds with the my friends' experience in Afghanistan, and popular reportage. Not to dispute your truthfulness, merely the ubiquity of your experience.

I'm not saying the wimps aren't there. There's plenty, just like there's plenty of male Marines who are useless as all feth. It's not limited to genders.

It's also worth noting there's plenty of volunteers for the Lioness program and female engagement teams. http://www.marine-corps-news.com/2009/03/lioness_program_pride_of_the_c.htm

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Personally I have no problem with marketing a product at it's target audience, I simply find it a bit degrading to men that companies feel having such amazingly unrealistically proportioned women is what it takes to appeal to them.

But WHY is "straight men" the only target audience? That's part of the sexism problem, the assumption that men are the target audience and women can just be ignored (or even driven away, if it means more men are interested).

Because they are the only ones who show interest on any scale large enough for a company to take notice of?
This is very much a chicken or the egg question, did people marketing these things ignore women or have not enough women showing interest for them to try marketing it that way. My guess would be that something like warhammer was always aimed more at males than females considering war/guns/violence has always been something that attracts a more boys than girls, then since it's release very few woman have taken an interest (even with the sisters of battle release) so the people in charge never saw a good reason to try and work into that market (they are after all looking to make as much money as possible).

 Peregrine wrote:
But WHY? Why start with a self-fulfilling prophecy instead of trying to remove the stuff that drives women away and finding out how many women would be interested in the game itself?

Doesn't this rely on the assumption that scantily-clad sculpts of women is responsible for driving off female players? Because I seriously doubt it is as simple as that (Anecdotally, my female S/O is a big fan of Franzetta's artwork and grew up reading Heavy Metal magazine).

I would argue that the display of the female form following the Red Sonja archetype is absolutely no different than her male counterpart, Conan. Both wear the same low quantity of clothing, and both are subject to the gaze. To take it a step further, I see no harm in female-warrior sculpts being done in the Franzetta style, as it is easy built upon a few assumptions:
1. Female sexuality is put on display, yes, but...
2. The scantily-clad female warrior is often depicted as a figure of strength, who owns her own sexuality and is in control of it.

That is, I draw a significant distinction between the tattered-clothed princess who pines for Conan to save her, and the chainmail-bikini-wearing female warrior who's still fulfilling the warrior-role. To some extent, I think that the Red Sonja archetype is actually a positive role model for women, as it encourages both fortitude of character as well as am implied level of comfrot with their female-ness.

 Peregrine wrote:
[Regardless of culture, species, or time period, fighting falls to men.

Except that's not true at all. Yes, real war tends to fall to men, but we aren't talking about real war. Women are perfectly happy to fight monsters in RPGs, fight people in martial arts, play video games where combat is a major element, etc. These are things that have been thought to be "for men", but it turns out that once the social barriers to entry are removed women are interested in those things.

Except it is true, for reality. I wasn't saying women cant like the subject or anything it relates to, i said that the idea of war & combat as solely a cultural role for men is bull. I dont know about everyone else, but i would appreciate you stop trying to lecture me on things i never said. You emphasized culture in this, i brought in biology. I didn't say women couldn't fight, enjoy the subject or weren't violent.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Doesn't this rely on the assumption that scantily-clad sculpts of women is responsible for driving off female players? Because I seriously doubt it is as simple as that (Anecdotally, my female S/O is a big fan of Franzetta's artwork and grew up reading Heavy Metal magazine).

The sculpts are just part of the problem. Yes, it's bad that the dominant image of women in wargaming is "sex object" and portrayals of, say, female Cadian infantry are almost nonexistent, but that's not all this little discussion has demonstrated. There's also the problem of the immediate reaction of "FEMINAZI!!!" and "PERSECUTING MEN FOR BEING MEN!!!" to criticism of the image problem, which reveals a community that doesn't see women as a welcome addition.

I would argue that the display of the female form following the Red Sonja archetype is absolutely no different than her male counterpart, Conan. Both wear the same low quantity of clothing, and both are subject to the gaze.

But that's not really true, as I've said before. Conan is someone you want to BE, you look at him and dream of having that kind of power, the heroic adventures, etc. Essentially he's the idealized man that many men want to be. On the other hand, the female models in question are, primarily, someone men want to have sex with. In both cases the primary focus is on the male gaze, and the fact that some women are attracted to Conan is just a nice bonus for the creators.

To some extent, I think that the Red Sonja archetype is actually a positive role model for women, as it encourages both fortitude of character as well as am implied level of comfrot with their female-ness.

To some extent, maybe. But it's a serious problem when that's the only role model for women.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Varrick wrote:
Except it is true, for reality. I wasn't saying women cant like the subject or anything it relates to, i said that the idea of war & combat as solely a cultural role for men is bull. I dont know about everyone else, but i would appreciate you stop trying to lecture me on things i never said. You emphasized culture in this, i brought in biology. I didn't say women couldn't fight, enjoy the subject or weren't violent.

Exactly, you brought in biology. Biology is entirely irrelevant since we've seen that women can like those "unconventional" things that biology supposedly says they shouldn't, as long as the social factors allow it.

Except its not irrelevant. With marketing, the action idea is an almost guaranteed sale for men & boys. Fueled by biology and culture(but not culture exclusively), that makes them the primary target audience. With women, you are looking at outliers since, culturally they aren't pushed to it and biology doesn't do so either.

But to the point, you said its "culturally(emphasis on culture) male oriented" when another poster said inherently. I called BS, and made the point that biologically as well as culturally, men are pushed to war. Implying that they are an easy audience for the subject. I have no part in this fight about women being pushed away from gaming. I don't care because i don't see it as a problem, because i don't see them pushed away from gaming but by vocal donkey-caves, not by the sculpts or aesthetic of a game. So, you can keep lecturing on how women can enjoy the hobby to, i don't give a damn. I tried to make my point & failed to get it recognized as anything other than an implication that women shouldn't like gaming.

 Varrick wrote:
Except its not irrelevant. With marketing, the action idea is an almost guaranteed sale for men & boys. Fueled by biology and culture(but not culture exclusively), that makes them the primary target audience. With women, you are looking at outliers since, culturally they aren't pushed to it and biology doesn't do so either.

Edit: I think I may have confused your argument with someone else that I was replying to in the same post, so this may not be entirely relevant. But it should clarify what I mean about target audiences.



I'm not saying companies should make a special women-friendly wargame. Yes, keep it full of action and bloody death and all the grimdark war we know and love. If more men than women like that product, then that's just how it is, I certainly don't think that we need to enforce 1:1 gender ratios just for the sake of having "equality". The issues I'm talking about are NOT core parts of a nice violent wargame, they're issues with aspects of how that game is marketed. What I do advocate is:

1) Keep the "sexy" models an occasional special thing, not the dominant portrayal of women.

2) Provide female characters that aren't just in the game for sex appeal (for example add some female sculpts to the Cadian infantry box and make them look like realistic women in full body armor, add a female ace Thunderbolt pilot in the flyers expansion, etc) that women can identify with as legitimate characters and heroes.

3) Don't use "target audience" as an excuse to pretend that women don't exist as potential customers.

These are not game-destroying changes, my ideal version of 40k would lose nothing for the male audience, but would potentially be less hostile to women. Just like marketing to both competitive tournament players and casual "kitchen table" gamers is possible, game developers should consider both men and women as their target audience, and considering one does not exclude considering the other.

I called BS, and made the point that biologically as well as culturally, men are pushed to war.

If you'd just left it at culturally you'd be correct and I would gladly agree that the cultural gender roles make it easy to sell wargames to men. However, you made the biology argument, and the biology argument is nonsense.

 Varrick wrote:
Except its not irrelevant. With marketing, the action idea is an almost guaranteed sale for men & boys. Fueled by biology and culture(but not culture exclusively), that makes them the primary target audience. With women, you are looking at outliers since, culturally they aren't pushed to it and biology doesn't do so either.

But to the point, you said its "culturally(emphasis on culture) male oriented" when another poster said inherently. I called BS, and made the point that biologically as well as culturally, men are pushed to war. Implying that they are an easy audience for the subject. I have no part in this fight about women being pushed away from gaming. I don't care because i don't see it as a problem, because i don't see them pushed away from gaming but by vocal donkey-caves, not by the sculpts or aesthetic of a game. So, you can keep lecturing on how women can enjoy the hobby to, i don't give a damn. I tried to make my point & failed to get it recognized as anything other than an implication that women shouldn't like gaming.

Alright this has come up a few times, if men are so driven to warfare why don't more people enlist? We have a scattering of vets and active duty on here myself included but I wouldn't say there's a significant number. I'd actively question the number of people online in general who've even been in a fist fight. The majority of the people who do enlist are male, but the current percentage of the population serving in the US armed forces (with one of the larger military forces in the world) is less then 1%. Warfare is a part of being a man? Then that's a pretty significant portion of the populace that isn't manly. Considering the amount of gak I got just for wearing my uniform around town while I was on recruiting duty for a month, I'd say there's plenty of cultural bias /against/ warfare not towards it.

"Brain washed" "Murderer" "Baby killer" sure sounds like a support for all that's manly and hardcore to me.

 Varrick wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
[Regardless of culture, species, or time period, fighting falls to men.

Except that's not true at all. Yes, real war tends to fall to men, but we aren't talking about real war. Women are perfectly happy to fight monsters in RPGs, fight people in martial arts, play video games where combat is a major element, etc. These are things that have been thought to be "for men", but it turns out that once the social barriers to entry are removed women are interested in those things.

Except it is true, for reality. I wasn't saying women cant like the subject or anything it relates to, i said that the idea of war & combat as solely a cultural role for men is bull. I dont know about everyone else, but i would appreciate you stop trying to lecture me on things i never said. You emphasized culture in this, i brought in biology. I didn't say women couldn't fight, enjoy the subject or weren't violent.

Men are expendable. Women are not. It isn't that women are incapable of fighting, it is that men are incapable of giving birth and nursing children.

Which means when humans are dying by the hundreds of thousands at "war" the men are sent off to die first because their "role" in keeping the species alive has been accomplished and they are expendable. Same with disasters... If a portion of your ovulation is going to "die" for some reason, it is better for the men and elderly to die first as they are out of the breeding pool.

Take thousands of years even up to very recent were there is real reasons why men are the ones forced to fight at war, and you have a historical detachment between the genders on war.

Sure, in modern warfare where the casualty rate is drastically lower and technology is more important that choking their rivers with your dead the gender difference means less, but that doesn't change centuries of history where war and dying at war is a male-centric experience. War is very different from RPGs, martial arts, and fighting which is why you find women have much stronger connections to almost all other aspects of gaming over "wargaming". Violence is gender-neutral, but war has been a male-centric topic for a severe majority of human history.

Space marine scouts are apparently all cloned from their founder Dirk Diggler.

It is amazing how much effort many people will put into justifying their own tastes (or lack of it).

This issue is really quite simple. We are a male-dominated hobby that quite often confuses "juvenile" with "mature" when it comes to sex and/or violence (and other things, but that is beside the point here).Since we are such a niche hobby, it doesn't get noticed all that often by the larger world. When it does (and inevitably is commented on for being rather weird), a vocal minority (the ones who love the T&A-pandering, and in KD's case also the sexual+violence+gore violence combination) get enormously butthurt instead of just accepting that they might have tastes that look pretty odd even within our niche. You see the same stuff with gorehounds and torture porn audiences when society ridicules them - they probably know it is pretty weird, but their knee-jerk reaction is to try to rationalize their taste.

Kaptajn Congoboy wrote:
It is amazing how much effort many people will put into justifying their own tastes (or lack of it).

This issue is really quite simple. We are a male-dominated hobby that quite often confuses "juvenile" with "mature" when it comes to sex and/or violence (and other things, but that is beside the point here).Since we are such a niche hobby, it doesn't get noticed all that often by the larger world. When it does (and inevitably is commented on for being rather weird), a vocal minority (the ones who love the T&A-pandering, and in KD's case also the sexual+violence+gore violence combination) get enormously butthurt instead of just accepting that they might have tastes that look pretty odd even within our niche. You see the same stuff with gorehounds and torture porn audiences when society ridicules them - they probably know it is pretty weird, but their knee-jerk reaction is to try to rationalize their taste.

I find irony in a statement which touts the ills of the 'juvenile' aspects of the hobby, while simultaneously using the term 'butthurt', which is a juvenile and homophobic term.

Bravo.

nah, not at all interested in the female cadians. i think GW should make a new line of dark elf. something like this.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/318656

I think the modern society as a whole has issues with the naked human form and invents problems to hide that plain fact.

Male dominated, bla bla, sexist ectr. there is a nude or almost nude form of males and females exalted to the standards of the current society and there is a problem with that everything else is for me excuses to rationalize this basic problem society has, been unnatural and caged behind "moral" restrictions.

I see nothing wrong in liking the shape of the human body after all that's what we did for millenia, I do have issues with some fake morals that freak out when the form of the human body is revealed and try to disguise that whit excuses like the "sexist".

in the far future... there are only men.

I don't see why there's such a huge discussion going on honestly...it's a business.

Most customers are male => cater to them. Sisters are ugly => nobody plays sisters. Make attractive female minis => feminists (or "special" people like them) run berserk.

Classic hero in literature, movies, history, etc.? Male. A female hero simply does not go well because it's so unpopular. Ask people to think of a "hero" and most of the time, your answer refers to a man.

Also...whoever thinks that playing with war game miniatures could be sexist in any way has...likely....issues.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I think the modern society as a whole has issues with the naked human form and invents problems to hide that plain fact.

Male dominated, bla bla, sexist ectr. there is a nude or almost nude form of males and females exalted to the standards of the current society and there is a problem with that everything else is for me excuses to rationalize this basic problem society has, been unnatural and caged behind "moral" restrictions.

I see nothing wrong in liking the shape of the human body after all that's what we did for millenia, I do have issues with some fake morals that freak out when the form of the human body is revealed and try to disguise that whit excuses like the "sexist".

The problem isn't nudity or the human body, but the sexual objectification of it. Go to a life drawing class, you'll see quite a bit of naked, but no one particularly offended by it. The problem is when you depict a person or character being valuable only as a sexual tool or object, or as a way to promote another character (typically, a female character being played to show just how sexy the male lead is). It's just that having the character as a half naked sex kitten isn't too far from that to begin with.

 Sigvatr wrote:

Classic hero in literature, movies, history, etc.? Male. A female hero simply does not go well because it's so unpopular.

It's only unpopular because nobody even considers that market as being of value in the first place. Hell, it gets to the point where executives are even scared of something appealing to women.

"The initial results – they made the network nervous. The men didn’t respond as strongly as they thought they would, and the women responded more strongly."
- One of the producers of Firefly

Ask people to think of a "hero" and most of the time, your answer refers to a man.

Only because that's almost the only image that's ever popularized in fiction. Seriously, name a mainstream fictional "Hero" icon who is a woman and not a side character. Wonder Woman doesn't count, since no one actually gives a gak about her anymore. It's actually pretty hard to do, and the list is sadly quite small.

Interesting article, concerning film and network executives not wanting to produce things with female leads:
http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-schools-teach-screenwriters-not-to-pass-the-bechdel-test/
(and an interesting follow up article)
http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-discriminate-if-it-doesnt-profit/

MightyGodzilla wrote:I'm curious if it's as simple as women don't find war and conflict as interesting as men do.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:]I think at the end of the day, certain hobbies just don't appeal as much to women as they do to men. Whether it actually be gender based or cultural ingraining, I dunno. We still give our girls pink toys and our boys blue toys, we give our girls dolls and or boys action figures. Wargaming is still largely about simulating "war" with "toy soldiers". I would be mighty surprised if it had a lot of women in it.

Now that's not to say women can't enjoy the hobby, but I think it's unrealistic to assume there would ever be 1:1 ratio of genders.

I don't expect gender equality in all hobbies, and a result certain hobbies are targetted to a particular gender.

I certainly agree with your theory, I think that what's odd about 40k is how grotesquely tilted the ratio is.

Peregrine wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
They've trended heavily to different games than guys, but there have been female video gamers as a small but notable minority since forever. Ditto RPGs.

The same is true with wargaming. The person running Warmachine events at my old FLGS was a woman, occasionally I'll see women playing games, even looking at gaming forums will show you a small but notable minority. It looks like the exact same kind of situation that other games have been in before, so why concede defeat for this one game? What's so special about wargaming? [

I guess my experience has been that women are fantastically rare in wargaming, to the extent that I've maybe seen one in a tournament. D&D in the 1980s was heavily male, but even then the percentage of women was drastically higher than it is in wargaming now.

And here's an honest question: if a woman was running events, wouldn't that help make the culture more inviting for other women? And did any other women express any interest? If not, doesn't that support my argument that it's a lack of inherent interest holding women back?

This brings up an interesting point: it's a given that GW views girls as having cooties. But PP clearly doesn't.

Out of the starter sets for WM/Hordes, 3/5 Warmachine starters have female warcasters (Khador, Cryx and Retribution), while 2/4 Hordes starters have female Warlocks (Circle and Legion). 5 out of 9 starter products for PP's flagship games come with a female character (and if you go by the 2-player boxes, 3/4 are female), and no single faction has an absence of female (or male, in fairness) "leaders".

It's fair to say that PP products are about as inclusive on the gender level as could possibly be expected. Is there any evidence that this has attracted more female players? Honestly not sure how one could even tell this. I notice female staffers are often prominently highlighted on the Privateer Insider web feature, but as for attendance at conventions, no clue.

Women in PP events are uncommon, but probably well over 1% of the player base, making them far more common than 40k gamers.

IMO, even PP falls into the "Nuns and Femme Fatales" stereotypes with women in WM/H, at least with the models.

Winter Guard explicitly in the fluff contain women. The box set? All dudes: http://privateerpress.com/files/products/33086_WinterGuardInfantry13manWEB_0.jpg

Don't worry ladies, you can include a Kayazy eliminator team of killer chicks! http://privateerpress.com/files/products/33074_KayazyEliminators_WEB.jpg

To be fair to PP, there is a female widowmaker that's actually somewhat subtly female: http://privateerpress.com/files/products/33014_Widowmakers_WEB.jpg