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 Melissia wrote:

 MetalOxide wrote:
Ah yes, the golden rule of life, it's only sexist is men do it.

This has not been said in this thread. Stop making things up and then claiming that other people are saying it.

Last time I checked there is just as much sexism towards men in products designed for women, so what's the problem if a female miniature from a make-believe world which is designed for men happens to be showing some cleavage or wearing a chainmail bikini?

 MetalOxide wrote:
Last time I checked there is just as much sexism towards men in products designed for women

Irrelevant to the topic at hand.

No one claimed womens' products do not have problems (not that you've provided a coherent example, but that's not important)-- in fact ,the problems with womens' products HAS been pointed out in this thread... but that there are problems with womens' products does not justify the problems expressed within this thread.

Or, to use an old adage, two wrongs do not make a right.

 Las wrote:
You don't have to defend yourself here, boys. Feminism is NOT an attack on the male psyche. [...] Lower your shields, fellas.

I disagree. I see feminism, or at least the blog version of it, as an instrument of mainstreaming -- an attempt to replace one set of values regarding a given topic with another set, a set that has little or nothing to do with that topic. This is a kind of moral imperialism: "adopt my beliefs or you are a troglodyte." We can do without such an invasion, thanks all the same.

 Las wrote:
Jesus, this thread is embarrassing.

Arguing about the logical ability of women to fight fantastical monsters is so unbelievably ridiculous. For example, I don't necessarily think there should be female space marines as there is nothing wrong with having an all male 'brotherhood' of genetically modified humans in fiction, but hypothetically how is it so difficult for people to imagine a genetically modified female able to stand toe to toe with a male counterpart? It's fiction. All you have to say is "yes they're equal in prowess because of augmentation." boom, done.

Look, I want my games to have dragons, psychics, magic users, people wielding swords larger than a small car, guns the size of modern tanks that destroy mountainsides with a single round, orbital strike capabilities, force fields, jetpacks, invisibility, energy weapons, vibro-blades, genetically engineered super soldiers, aliens, Aliens, Terminators, Predators, powered armour, giant robots, grenades that count as weapons of mass destruction, ghosts, time travel, and countless other examples of the supernatural, high technology, high technology masquerading as low technology, magic (again) and anything else my imagination can conjure.

But female soldiers on the battlefield? You're shattering my suspension of disbelief over here.

 Manchu wrote:

 Las wrote:
You don't have to defend yourself here, boys. Feminism is NOT an attack on the male psyche. [...] Lower your shields, fellas.

I disagree. I see feminism, or at least the blog version of it, as an instrument of mainstreaming -- an attempt to replace one set of values regarding a given topic with another set, a set that has little or nothing to do with that topic. This is a kind of moral imperialism: "adopt my beliefs or you are a troglodyte." We can do without such an invasion, thanks all the same.

Oh yes, because apparently wanting to be treated like a human being who is just as valuable and important as men is "moral imperialism".

How fething DARE I desire to be treated as something other than a second class citizen, an outsider never to be included in the community of the hobbies I love. I guess I better get back in to the damned kitchen.

 Peregrine wrote:

 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.

While I agree there's a ton of sexism (and racism, and homophobia) in the hobby, this is one notion that has a bit of a "no true Scottsman" vibe to it. So if there's a half naked and powerful male, its OK because men want to be him, but no true woman would want to be the similarly revealingly dressed, powerful female depiction? (To be clear, I'm NOT talking about the irritating knock kneed, submissive females we too frequently see) Similarly, the female depiction isn't OK because it exists to slake male lust, but no true female would desire the male version? It just strikes me as a little narrow minded of what's "allowed" within the female gender, and hedges close to slut shaming with regards to women and overt sexuality.

Bossk_Hogg wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 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.

While I agree there's a ton of sexism (and racism, and homophobia) in the hobby, this is one notion that has a bit of a "no true Scottsman" vibe to it. So if there's a half naked and powerful male, its OK because men want to be him, but no true woman would want to be the similarly revealingly dressed, powerful female depiction? (To be clear, I'm NOT talking about the irritating knock kneed, submissive females we too frequently see) Similarly, the female depiction isn't OK because it exists to slake male lust, but no true female would desire the male version? It just strikes me as a little narrow minded of what's "allowed" within the female gender, and hedges close to slut shaming with regards to women and overt sexuality.

This (that is, Peregrine's point) is also demonstrably untrue: there were a non-trivial number of women speaking up in the comments section of the KD:M campaign talking about how they loved the Pin-Ups, and how they especially loved their "proportions" (wide hips and big breasts, but not six-pack abs).

I like to think there is no one way to be a woman and no one way to man. To see someone as who thay are more than what thay are

 Melissia wrote:
Oh yes, because apparently wanting to be treated like a human being who is just as valuable and important as men is "moral imperialism".

That's a nice example of what I mean.

There's a sexualized female sculpt.

You say you have a problem with it

I say I'm fine with you not liking it but I myself don't have a problem with it.

You say you have a problem with it because you want to be treated like a human being who is just as valuable and important as me.

I say that the sculpt has nothing to do with any of that.

You insist that it does and furthermore that me not finding the sculpt problematic means I do not value you or other women as equals. In other words, not agreeing with you makes me morally inferior to you.

But that doesn't help convince me that the sculpt has anything to do with gender equality. I still find your premise to be lousy. All I have learned from this exchange is that you think my value depends on me agreeing with you.

So, like I said, no thanks.

Imagine this.

Space Marines suddenly become bishounen ideals. No more armor. No overgrown musculature, no baldness, no scars. They no longer go around doing awesome things-- no no no, they just exist for the purpose of looking sexy. And any time they DO try to do anything other than sit around looking sexy, they get slaughtered by the thousands. They aren't allowed to accomplish anything of note, and they don't really have heroes per se because heroes would require them to actually manage to accomplish something of note, and as said before, they aren't allowed that. Instead of having lots of awesome tanks, they are instead stripped naked and put in slave chains to ride on the hood of someone else's car. Instead of the Death Company, they put the men in bondage gear and almost nothing else, genitals covered up by nothing more than a scrap of paper, and instead of being put in there because of a magical curse, this is caused by them being "bad boys" that must be punished, by a whip-holding marine with an oversized codpiece. Instead of the Scouts wearing reasonable armor and uniforms, they instead wear skin-tight bodysuits, and are posed in a way to show off their bodies. Dreadnoughts are replaced by dreadknights, except the marines attached to them are naked save for a scrap of paper, and they're put in there for being bad boys rather than heroes like for dreadnoughts. Whenever they're displayed in artwork, they're not displayed fighting or taking cover or doing anything relevant to the scene at hand. Instead, they're shown flexing, or pouting, or in stances that show off their bodies. Same with most of of the miniatures.

Would you like to buy this army? Be serious now. That's basically what buying female miniatures feels like. While some of these complaints don't actually apply to Sisters, they apply to the modeling in general, and certainly Sisters have their own problems completely unrelated to this (see: price, outdated miniatures, no effort put in to updating them, etc).

The male models might be "fantasy" models and might even be considered cheesecake. But even the male cheesecake models are usually better than the female ones in terms of interesting composition.

You're doing a poor job at speaking for everyone who might or does collect/play/enjoy SoB.

 Rainbow Dash wrote:
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

Well, Kickstarter is making it easier to fund smaller projects, and test the market without risking as much.

Interestingly, from Bombshell Babe's order numbers, the most popular minis were the fully clothed Valkyrie, Bomber Pilot, Chinese Swordswoman and Cowgirl in a Trenchcoat. The two least popular were the 2 of the more scantily clad - the cave girl and the chainmail bra sword woman. The most selected premium add on figure was again, the most clothed, and one you'd have a bit of trouble even telling its female, the rocket bike rider. I'd initially written this project off myself as just more boobie minis, but was rather pleasantly surprised by most of the offerings.

 Manchu wrote:

 Las wrote:
You don't have to defend yourself here, boys. Feminism is NOT an attack on the male psyche. [...] Lower your shields, fellas.

I disagree. I see feminism, or at least the blog version of it, as an instrument of mainstreaming -- an attempt to replace one set of values regarding a given topic with another set, a set that has little or nothing to do with that topic. This is a kind of moral imperialism: "adopt my beliefs or you are a troglodyte." We can do without such an invasion, thanks all the same.

Your opinion is incorrect. Men need to learn we have to give up some of our unearned advantage over women (granted by a society that has and still does favor men) to have a more inclusive pluralistic society. You're free to fight against it, but it's going to put you on the wrong side of history-- a move to more actual equality and the destruction of unearned advantage is pretty much inevitable at this point if society doesn't implode first. Whine about it if you want, but if you want people to stop talking about the troglodyte label the best solution is to not act like one.

It's sort of sad to see people defending feminism still knocking "leftist weeners", as if being any less than the most manly man is something to be ashamed of. Being able to define yourself in a non-predatory way is a good thing, not a bad one. Especially in light of the idea that things are going more towards equality instead of less.

 Manchu wrote:
You say you have a problem with it

Please actually read the posts you refer to.

 Melissia wrote:
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.

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

And so on and so forth.

I have not advocated taking away the fan-service models, the cheesecake models, etc.. No matter how much you might try to claim otherwise, the claims are false, and I insist that you stop claiming that I have advocated that.

I really dislike the idea of "Well the man are half naked too, so it's ok!" This is a response that makes no sense. Here's a lovely video from The Escapist which kind of breaks down why it's an argument that doesn't really hold water. It addresses the issue within video games, but I think the arguments work well for nerdery in general.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5950-Tropes-vs-MovieBob

I have no issue with saying that one of the things which bothers me in regards to model hobbies is the frequency with which the bog-boob-tiny-armor cliche happens.

This is also a great read about just how damned hard it is for us ladies to actually be taken seriously when we bring up the issue of sexism within the gaming realms. Please give it a look.

http://www.themarysue.com/the-all-too-familiar-harassment-against-feminist-frequency-and-what-the-gaming-community-can-do-about-it/

hands_miranda wrote:
Whine about it if you want, but if you want people to stop talking about the troglodyte label the best solution is to not act like one.

You claim to herald a pluralistic society but your language is full of derogatory comments and warnings to fit in. "Get with the program." Who's program? You have to realize that you're not talking about the end of privilege but its restructuring according to different parameters. This is different from what I mean. For example, you presume in the part of your post that I quoted that a person who doesn't want to be called a troglodyte should not act like one. It would be a wonderful world if people were only criticized for what they actually did and said -- but that's not the world we have. In this world, people call you a troglodyte for disagreeing with them. I reject that. Whether or not I share Blogger X's "concern" about a sexualized sculpt actually has nothing to do with whether I treat women with respect and dignity.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Melissia wrote:
I have not advocated taking away the fan-service models, the cheesecake models, etc.. No matter how much you might try to claim otherwise, the claims are false, and I insist that you stop claiming that I have advocated that.

I'm not insisting that you claimed anything about fanservice. Fanservice is not the issue. The issue is sexualized miniature sculpts. Please stay on-topic.

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not insisting that you claimed anything about fanservice. Fanservice is not the issue. The issue is sexualized miniature sculpts. Please stay on-topic.

Stop acting like there's any difference. I AM on topic.

 Melissia wrote:
Imagine this.

Space Marines suddenly become bishounen ideals.
Would you like to buy this army? Be serious now.

I'm not likely to buy any army (since I don't play 40k), but I'd buy some. Same with overweight or ugly women for that matter (I like painting variety) I'm really curious to see how the bishou Messenger of the Spiral Path in KD sells. People kept asking for male pinups.

 Mrs. Stompa wrote:
I really dislike the idea of "Well the man are half naked too, so it's ok!" This is a response that makes no sense. Here's a lovely video from The Escapist which kind of breaks down why it's an argument that doesn't really hold water. It addresses the issue within video games, but I think the arguments work well for nerdery in general.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/5950-Tropes-vs-MovieBob

I have no issue with saying that one of the things which bothers me in regards to model hobbies is the frequency with which the bog-boob-tiny-armor cliche happens.

This is also a great read about just how damned hard it is for us ladies to actually be taken seriously when we bring up the issue of sexism within the gaming realms. Please give it a look.

http://www.themarysue.com/the-all-too-familiar-harassment-against-feminist-frequency-and-what-the-gaming-community-can-do-about-it/

Hey Mrs Stompa, great to see you on here! And excellent post. Hope to see you and MGS in-person again someday in the not too distant future!

 Melissia wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
I'm not insisting that you claimed anything about fanservice. Fanservice is not the issue. The issue is sexualized miniature sculpts. Please stay on-topic.

Stop acting like there's any difference. I AM on topic.

If there is no difference, then what are you so upset about? If all of this is fanservice, then be on your merry way. Clearly there is a difference between the things that you don't have a problem with and the things that you do.

Is Manchu really a moderator? If Dakka has such blatantly sexist mods running it, no wonder this kind of bile flows so freely.

I crawl out of the woodwork on occasion! Dakkacon will live on, so I'm sure we'll meet again.

hands_miranda wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 Las wrote:
You don't have to defend yourself here, boys. Feminism is NOT an attack on the male psyche. [...] Lower your shields, fellas.

I disagree. I see feminism, or at least the blog version of it, as an instrument of mainstreaming -- an attempt to replace one set of values regarding a given topic with another set, a set that has little or nothing to do with that topic. This is a kind of moral imperialism: "adopt my beliefs or you are a troglodyte." We can do without such an invasion, thanks all the same.

Your opinion is incorrect. Men need to learn we have to give up some of our unearned advantage over women (granted by a society that has and still does favor men) to have a more inclusive pluralistic society. You're free to fight against it, but it's going to put you on the wrong side of history-- a move to more actual equality and the destruction of unearned advantage is pretty much inevitable at this point if society doesn't implode first. Whine about it if you want, but if you want people to stop talking about the troglodyte label the best solution is to not act like one.

It's sort of sad to see people defending feminism still knocking "leftist weeners", as if being any less than the most manly man is something to be ashamed of. Being able to define yourself in a non-predatory way is a good thing, not a bad one. Especially in light of the idea that things are going more towards equality instead of less.

The only rational response to this.. thing, would seem to be;


Assuming, arguendo, that the quoted comments are serious rather then a Jonathan Swift-like parody, that may be the most morally blinkered statement in this thread... which is really saying something. It's a magnificent affirmation of the nature of moral blackmail at work in some of these more esoteric forms of "feminism".

Which is to say, a feminism that betrays its origins as a movement towards equality and is increasingly at the academic level a movement towards grievance and special interests. Which is probably why, despite widespread agreement with regards to classical elements of feminism/egalitarianism, the vast majority of women do not self-identify as feminists today.

 Melissia wrote:
Imagine this.
Instead of having lots of awesome tanks, they are instead stripped naked and put in slave chains to ride on the hood of someone else's car. Instead of the Death Company, they put the men in bondage gear and almost nothing else, genitals covered up by nothing more than a scrap of paper, and instead of being put in there because of a magical curse, this is caused by them being "bad boys" that must be punished, by a whip-holding marine with an oversized codpiece. Instead of the Scouts wearing reasonable armor and uniforms, they instead wear skin-tight bodysuits, and are posed in a way to show off their bodies. Dreadnoughts are replaced by dreadknights, except the marines attached to them are naked save for a scrap of paper, and they're put in there for being bad boys rather than heroes like for dreadnoughts. Whenever they're displayed in artwork, they're not displayed fighting or taking cover or doing anything relevant to the scene at hand. Instead, they're shown flexing, or pouting, or in stances that show off their bodies. Same with most of of the miniatures.

Heh, so essentially these guys. http://www.taban-miniatures.com/shop2/index.php?cPath=48_49

 tomjoad wrote:
Is Manchu really a moderator? If Dakka has such blatantly sexist mods running it, no wonder this kind of bile flows so freely.

Could you let me know how anything I said is sexist?

And yes, nerd culture can often be female unfriendly. My wife won't go near it for the most part. When terms like "pin-up" and particularly "cheesecake" are considered completely ordinary and not derogatory at all, it's easy to see why. I again point to Vivian Gale as a model that is awesome and doesn't fit the stereotype of over-sexualized female miniatures (not that all or even most of the models in that campaign escape the stereotype).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mrs. Stompa wrote:
I crawl out of the woodwork on occasion! Dakkacon will live on, so I'm sure we'll meet again.

That or a normal Con I am sure . Will PM you guys about it

 Manchu wrote:
If there is no difference, then what are you so upset about? If all of this is fanservice, then be on your merry way. Clearly there is a difference between the things that you don't have a problem with and the things that you do.

I pointed out EXACTLY what the problem is not TWO POSTS AGO. Seriously Manchu, if you're not going to bother reading my posts, why are you responding to them?

 RiTides wrote:
And yes, nerd culture can often be female unfriendly. My wife won't go near it for the most part. When terms like "pin-up" and particularly "cheesecake" are considered completely ordinary and not derogatory at all, it's easy to see why. I again point to Vivian Gale as a model that is awesome and doesn't fit the stereotype of over-sexualized female miniatures (not that all or even most of the models in that campaign escape the stereotype).

I actually love "pin-up" type art. And cheesecake has its place! But when they're the only options, things feel can pretty unfriendly, especially to women dipping a curious toe into the waters.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Which is to say, a feminism that betrays its origins as a movement towards equality and is increasingly at the academic level a movement towards grievance and special interests.

I can't speak about the academic level, but this is exactly what I find on the blogosphere/message board level. The ideas of feminism seem to be increasingly used on the internet (and not just by or even predominately by women, see ITT) as a moral counter-lever to implicate as inferior anyone who dares to disagree. Again, this is no candid look at privilege. This is a counter-privilege.

Or maybe women don't universally support feminism for the same reason poor Americans vote against their own self-interest year after year after year? Maybe they are socialized to think that standing up for themselves will only lead to being smacked down and further oppressed and they are then sexualized and abused for generations.

I don't know, I guess it's possible that women have had the self-respect beaten out of them over the past hundreds of years, which is only reinforced by guys telling them that the sexism being directed at them is not only not a problem but is actively healthy. I guess that's possible.