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 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.


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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.


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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.


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 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.




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AllSeeingSkink wrote:


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 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.


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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.


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 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.