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Depictions in themselves are not necessarily harmful, else doctors would be terrible rapists etc because they spend a fair amount of time learning about bodies in anatomy classes.

What is possibly harmful is the presentation of the display, owing to the social and mental attitudes that surround it.

Personally I think cosplayers are perhaps suspect for buying into an often clearly fetishistic display of female attraction -- depending on the character. This would be because they are victims of false consciousness. They have been conditioned to think that their proper role is to display themselves for the delectation of primarily male onlookers.

There are male cosplayers too, of course.

So you rule out any possibility they like it and cosplay give them the freedom to dress in a way society would not approve?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I will have to call BS on him despite his really impressive title, I was not aware that "scientists" ever tried to make a theory of tying social aspects on biology and calling them "evolutionary psychology" that was an interesting read.

So after science decried those who insisted the measurements of ones body dictates what they will become and do, they try again with more "elaborate" theories.

He even says colour choices are dictated by biology, no, just no.

I will agree that there are biological differences between male and female humans, we are sexually diverse species after all, but social behavior been dictated by biology? no.

Yes, I realize quite a few pages ago that I also said that the potential female player base may be small, but I believe its because of social pressure, preconceptions and gender roles society enforces on genders, not "biology".

It's funny, this comment brought to mind a story that one of my thesis advisers (I want to say Dan Weinstein) told me back when I was in grad school;

He was at a conference, sitting at a table with other developmental biologists, talking about their various areas of research. One of them was researching a compound used in olfactory signalling; what was so interesting about it was that the receptors for this compound had differential expression in humans, with only females expressing the olfactory receptors necessary to smell it.
"In fact, I have some right here," the researcher said, producing a bottle from his pocket.
'Eh... I dunno about that" said one of his colleagues at the table, "let's have a sniff, this seems far fetched."
So they popped open the bottle and around it was passed, each man taking a sniff deeper then the last and proclaiming "I think I smell something."
The bottle was making it's way around the table until, at last, the only woman among the colleagues, hand on her forehead, fingers pinching her nose, interjected "Could you dumb-asses close that? You're going to make me puke over here!"

The moral being: even the most scientifically sophisticated people have trouble accepting things that challenge their world view.

It's important to understand that, but at the same time to understand that when you do what you seem to be doing, rejecting evolutionary psychology as a discipline, you're making a statement of belief. That is, you're not registering a complaint about a study being used, nor quarreling with the methodology: your objection is not that they are failing to prove their point, but that such a point could be proven. Now that's fine, you're entitled to reject evolutionary psychology as a part, just a creationists are entitled to reject evolution as a whole.

It is also, however, important to understand that there is a difference between attributes influenced by inherent biological factors, and biological or racial (or sexual) determinism, as we see here;

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Depictions in themselves are not necessarily harmful, else doctors would be terrible rapists etc because they spend a fair amount of time learning about bodies in anatomy classes.

What is possibly harmful is the presentation of the display, owing to the social and mental attitudes that surround it.

Personally I think cosplayers are perhaps suspect for buying into an often clearly fetishistic display of female attraction -- depending on the character. This would be because they are victims of false consciousness. They have been conditioned to think that their proper role is to display themselves for the delectation of primarily male onlookers.

There are male cosplayers too, of course.

For those that don't know, 'false consciousness' is a term of Marxist origins that was at first used to explain the failings of Marxist pseudoscience to predict the actions of people according to 'class'. Now it is usually used as a more polite way to say a black man is an Oreo (or Cornball brother), an Asian man is a banana, or a woman is "conditioned by an androcentric society". It is an essentialist term, and is fundamentally linked to the idea that certain groups of people have "authentic" modes of thinking, and diverting from that represents a loss of race/class/gender authenticity.

Let's be clear that is not what evolutionary psychology is about: evolutionary psychology instead critiques Biological Determinism as nonsensical.

Science and religion have base in faith, the difference is science puts faith in having the principles right and religion puts faith as the end reason.

So yes, I am making a statement of belief if you will, I have no faith in that disciplines principles.

As I said I agree there are biological differences between humans, I am not denying that, but I do not believe biology dictating social behavior.

The data presented on the initial video you showed seems to be more a "I chose to interpret what I have in the way I want them to be" than science.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Why, then, do most women not feel like being a part of a war gaming community?

For the same reason most men do not feel like being part of a scrap booking community.

We, generally speaking, like different stuff.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
The moral being: even the most scientifically sophisticated people have trouble accepting things that challenge their world view.

As I said previously, I'm not well researched on the topic so I don't intend to make broad sweeping statements. The reason I said "I'm not entirely convinced" was not because it challenges my world but because in the video you linked I can see potential for holes between the facts he is stating and the conclusions he is drawing, but without reading all the papers he quoted I'm not willing to make a judgement one way or the other and I currently don't have the time to do that, so without a more compelling argument I shall remain in limbo for now.

Obviously being a Professor (which you didn't have to make clear, I noticed it all by myself TYVM )makes his opinion more credible than your average forum dweller, but I've spent enough time surrounded by people with the title of Professor at respected Universities to know not to trust someone based on their title. As someone who has spent considerable time working as a researcher as well, reviews and summaries like that are useful but I'll always go back to the original studies to form an opinion based on how valid I think the testing methodology was.

Also, FWIW, I also really hate watching videos of people talking My colleagues seem to love it, I hate spending 15 minutes watching a video that I could have read in 5 and gotten more out of it.

 Lockark wrote:

Disclaimer: I know I just made a bunch of huge generalizations, and that there are exceptions. What I'm trying to get at is that this is more the historic trends in the industry, and trends have have started appearing in other industries. Compare Modern Role playing games to classic ones to see this evolution. I think here on dakka many people lament the fact that Wargameing feels like it's lagging behind other more progressive IP's.

To an extent but personally I find oversexualised miniatures in poor taste, in general at least. It simply looks cheap in the same way that inappropriately oversexualised women (and occasionally men these days) make other mediums look cheap. It may be entirely appropriate for the specific project, in which case I don't mind, but titillation is its usual function.

'Feminism' has little to do with my view.

About 10 years ago I encountered one of the most well crafted armies that I have ever seen. It was a Warhammer Chaos army (before it was split of into various factions) and it was heavily converted to the extent that much of it was handmade (the deamons were giant maggots) and it was well painted, it looked extremely impressive on the table.
The problem with it is that it a strong motif of vaginally impaled women, every unit had one as a standard and there were quite a few scattered around the deamon units. This was entirely appropriate given the context of the army but on the other hand it was uncomfortable viewing (which actually increased the impact of the army to be fair) it also asked quite a lot of questions about the guy who made the army.

This thread brought that army to mind and to be honest I'm still not sure if I approve of it or not.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So you rule out any possibility they like it and cosplay give them the freedom to dress in a way society would not approve?

Society clearly has an ambivalent attitude to these costumes. There are so many video games that feature them, and such popular events. Against that, there is also the annual shenanigans of the Booth Babe at E3, and so on.

But to address the question properly, I think the situation is too complex to have an easy explanation. Fancy dress is a very old activity and cosplay is merely a modern variation. Clearly there are a lot of people who just enjoy dressing up for the party atmosphere, the social aspect, and probably the crafting skills too.

OTOH there are people who crave attention, and in some cases they are happy for that to come from a crowd of leering men, because this is pretty easy to get by being a nubile young woman, dressing in a skimpy outfit, and going to a games convention. This is where the idea of false conciousness comes into it. Someone validating their choice by conformation to the preferences of the audience is not making a true choice of their own volition even if they think they are. Of course some of them may be doing it knowingly as an ironic tease or soemthing.

I don't think cosplay is a bad thing, but there are some dubious aspects to it.

Ah ok, you sounded too absolute in that statement.

There are dubious aspects in every part of life so I do not see cosplay been any different.

I am not sure I agree with the false consciousness assessment, but I can see what you mean.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So you rule out any possibility they like it and cosplay give them the freedom to dress in a way society would not approve?

It's called "internalising misogyny".

And yes, it's a load of bull.

You know it´s quite feisty to make a passionate defense of not dismissing fields of study because they contradict your personal opinions, then in the next paragraph dismissing a field you dont personally agree with as "pseudoscience"

 Kilkrazy wrote:
OTOH there are people who crave attention, and in some cases they are happy for that to come from a crowd of leering men, because this is pretty easy to get by being a nubile young woman, dressing in a skimpy outfit, and going to a games convention. This is where the idea of false conciousness comes into it. Someone validating their choice by conformation to the preferences of the audience is not making a true choice of their own volition even if they think they are. Of course some of them may be doing it knowingly as an ironic tease or soemthing.

I don't think cosplay is a bad thing, but there are some dubious aspects to it.

So if a woman desires attention, and dresses in a manner to appeal to a specific audience that would give her that attention she didn't actually make a choice for herself? Unless she does it "ironically" somehow? Is that what you're saying? That if a woman uses her sexuality to get something for herself it's not of her own volition?

If a girl cosplayer goes to Tokyo Game Show as Kasumi out of Dead Or Alive, what is the benefit she is getting?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If a girl cosplayer goes to Tokyo Game Show as Kasumi out of Dead Or Alive, what is the benefit she is getting?

Attention, to show off time spent at the gym, display of her tailoring skill, and/or to meet other people that share her interests?

 Buzzsaw wrote:


First, let me make something clear I should have in my earlier post: that video is not from some random guy on YouTube, but from Gaad Saad, Professor, "holder of the Concordia University Research Chair in Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences and Darwinian Consumption". It's basically a video presentation of his lay article on the evolutionary basis of toy selection (lots of links in that article).

So, forgive me when I'm a little unclear on what you (Solkan) mean by "devil's advocacy"; that toy preferences in children are subject to innate sex differences is, I would say, pretty standard for anyone interested in evolutionary biology or evolutionary phsychology. (Unless you were making a very obscure pun on evolution as the devil's work, in which case, bravo!)

When you read the research articles cited, and those they in turn cite, you notice that while males significantly favor wheeled toys, female preference is variable to the point that a significant attraction one way or the other (to wheeled toys vs. dolls, plush things, etc. varies by study) is not often determined. The difference then is the presence vs. the absence of uniformity of preference across genders, which is interesting in light of this discussion.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If a girl cosplayer goes to Tokyo Game Show as Kasumi out of Dead Or Alive, what is the benefit she is getting?

Attention, to show off time spent at the gym, display of her tailoring skill, and/or to meet other people that share her interests?

To show they are a fan, they are literally wearing it on their sleeve, socializing with meetups to do group cosplays, events with prizes (not sure if they have that at Tokyo Game Show but just reference to conventions in general).

I feel like that is like saying, what benefit does any miniature gamer get by playing with a painted miniature... or miniatures at all. Why not just tokens and play the rules? There is no benefit to the miniatures painted or unpainted.

Why not ask the question of what benefit is derived from playing with model figures?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Why not ask the question of what benefit is derived from playing with model figures?

I'm more curious into whether there was anything you wanted to expand upon regarding the benefits of a cosplayer going to a convention, or it was a genuine question asking what benefit would a person receive from that?

ulgurstasta wrote:

Spoiler:

 Buzzsaw wrote:

It's funny, this comment brought to mind a story that one of my thesis advisers (I want to say Dan Weinstein) told me back when I was in grad school;

He was at a conference, sitting at a table with other developmental biologists, talking about their various areas of research. One of them was researching a compound used in olfactory signalling; what was so interesting about it was that the receptors for this compound had differential expression in humans, with only females expressing the olfactory receptors necessary to smell it.
"In fact, I have some right here," the researcher said, producing a bottle from his pocket.
'Eh... I dunno about that" said one of his colleagues at the table, "let's have a sniff, this seems far fetched."
So they popped open the bottle and around it was passed, each man taking a sniff deeper then the last and proclaiming "I think I smell something."
The bottle was making it's way around the table until, at last, the only woman among the colleagues, hand on her forehead, fingers pinching her nose, interjected "Could you dumb-asses close that? You're going to make me puke over here!"

The moral being: even the most scientifically sophisticated people have trouble accepting things that challenge their world view.

It's important to understand that, but at the same time to understand that when you do what you seem to be doing, rejecting evolutionary psychology as a discipline, you're making a statement of belief. That is, you're not registering a complaint about a study being used, nor quarreling with the methodology: your objection is not that they are failing to prove their point, but that such a point could be proven. Now that's fine, you're entitled to reject evolutionary psychology as a part, just a creationists are entitled to reject evolution as a whole.

 Buzzsaw wrote:

For those that don't know, 'false consciousness' is a term of Marxist origins that was at first used to explain the failings of Marxist pseudoscience to predict the actions of people according to 'class'.

You know it´s quite feisty to make a passionate defense of not dismissing fields of study because they contradict your personal opinions, then in the next paragraph dismissing a field you dont personally agree with as "pseudoscience"

Heh, I think the Imperial Infantryman's Handbook describes your point best, "an open mind is like a fortress with its walls unmanned and its gates unbarred." Put another way, you seem to think I am advocating non-judgmentalism with regards to science, when I am actually advising against prejudging. Avoiding prejudging simply means that one is open to ideas that challenge your existing ideas (this is, of course, the basis of the scientific method); you, on the other hand, seem to think that I'm advocating never making a judgement even after the evidence has been presented, which is antithetical to science.

Put another way, after a century of gathering evidence, we can safely classify Marxist doctrines as about as scientifically rigorous as Scientology. With... well, a whole lot more corpses.

Kilkrazy wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
So you rule out any possibility they like it and cosplay give them the freedom to dress in a way society would not approve?

Society clearly has an ambivalent attitude to these costumes. There are so many video games that feature them, and such popular events. Against that, there is also the annual shenanigans of the Booth Babe at E3, and so on.

But to address the question properly, I think the situation is too complex to have an easy explanation. Fancy dress is a very old activity and cosplay is merely a modern variation. Clearly there are a lot of people who just enjoy dressing up for the party atmosphere, the social aspect, and probably the crafting skills too.

OTOH there are people who crave attention, and in some cases they are happy for that to come from a crowd of leering men, because this is pretty easy to get by being a nubile young woman, dressing in a skimpy outfit, and going to a games convention. This is where the idea of false conciousness comes into it. Someone validating their choice by conformation to the preferences of the audience is not making a true choice of their own volition even if they think they are. Of course some of them may be doing it knowingly as an ironic tease or soemthing.

I don't think cosplay is a bad thing, but there are some dubious aspects to it.

Speaking of said pseudoscience, the above is a great example: to say that something exhibits 'false consciousness' is to imply the existence of True consciousness. A true consciousness that is not derived from the individual or their choices, since their choices can be entirely volitional but still 'false consciousness'. Again, whether it's applied to blacks, women, workers or any other class, it's an attempt at delegitimizing personal choice, in favor of the preferred policies of the Marxist/feminists.

More then anything it reveals how Marxism (and Marxist influenced Feminism) is a secular religion, 'false consciousness' being a stand in for sinful. Seriously, how do you measure the falseness of a consciousness, whether a choice is "true" (or by implication, false)?

Lest you think I'm joking about how fanatical this gets, this analysis is exactly how you get to Radical feminists proclaiming that all PIV sex is Rape.

 Sinful Hero wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Why not ask the question of what benefit is derived from playing with model figures?

I'm more curious into whether there was anything you wanted to expand upon regarding the benefits of a cosplayer going to a convention, or it was a genuine question asking what benefit would a person receive from that?

There's a danger of going in circles as I've already said earlier that there are various different reasons why people go display.

 Buzzsaw wrote:


Heh, I think the Imperial Infantryman's Handbook describes your point best, "an open mind is like a fortress with its walls unmanned and its gates unbarred." Put another way, you seem to think I am advocating non-judgmentalism with regards to science, when I am actually advising against prejudging. Avoiding prejudging simply means that one is open to ideas that challenge your existing ideas (this is, of course, the basis of the scientific method); you, on the other hand, seem to think that I'm advocating never making a judgement even after the evidence has been presented, which is antithetical to science.

Put another way, after a century of gathering evidence, we can safely classify Marxist doctrines as about as scientifically rigorous as Scientology. With... well, a whole lot more corpses.

Cute, but no. I think you have an inherent bias that makes you pre-judge a specific field, just like feminists pre-juge for example evolutionary psychology. Which is okay and I wont stop you from doing that (we all have our biases, best we can do is trying to be aware of them), but please dont try painting yourself being above such behavior when you partake in it, hypocrisy is a unbecoming trait.

 Lockark wrote:
In fact, the reboot of fantesy with Age-of-Sigmar and introduction of the stormcasts would of been a perfect time to make add a more gender inclusive army. Instead we got the space mariens 2.0 "boys only" club with the storm cast eternals.

I was under the impression that, according to fluff, there were female stormcasts, they just look and act identical to the male ones. Your predetermined notions just led you to believe the sexless, immortal supersoldiers were all cis-male (I'm sure in part due to their armor all being identical).

Stormcasts are actually fine in that regard as far as I can see. Their armour is all male because they are made to look like Sigmar, but the Eternals themselves can be women too.

Though, they don't all have male names/personalities, right? Because if they do, then Lockark would be right anyway, as it would be a distinction without a difference.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If a girl cosplayer goes to Tokyo Game Show as Kasumi out of Dead Or Alive, what is the benefit she is getting?

Whatever she wants, it is her body, her choice, if the lewd guys have fantasies about her, that hardline feminist go on about that she is brainwashed, that normal feminist applaud that she uses her sexuality to her advantage, it all doesn't matter.
If she enjoys it for whatever reason, is all that matters

The incorrect implication is that cosplay (or anything) has to have an inherent "benefit".

I think the cosplay thing has gone wildly off topic, the original 2 questions (which haven't been addressed because we instantly went off on a tangent ).....

 Kojiro wrote:
I'm curious if the same people who object to sexy miniatures object to sexy cosplayers? I mean, if it's harmful to women for miniatures to depict women then surely its at least as harmful to have real women turn themselves into these depictions?

Something doesn't need to have benefit if it's enjoyable. Being enjoyable is benefit enough, surely wargamers should know that more than anyone The question posed was whether it was harmful in general in the same context as some people are viewing sexy miniatures as harmful.

Sexualised models are far less prominent in wargaming than sexualised costumes are in cosplay. Google images "tabletop wargame" and it's a while before you hit your first female model in skimpy clothing. Google images "cosplay" and you won't find much else besides females in skimpy clothing

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I think the cosplay thing has gone wildly off topic, the original 2 questions (which haven't been addressed because we instantly went off on a tangent ).....

 Kojiro wrote:
I'm curious if the same people who object to sexy miniatures object to sexy cosplayers? I mean, if it's harmful to women for miniatures to depict women then surely its at least as harmful to have real women turn themselves into these depictions?

Something doesn't need to have benefit if it's enjoyable. Being enjoyable is benefit enough, surely wargamers should know that more than anyone

People are entitled to do things they find enjoyable? The hell you say...

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The question posed was whether it was harmful in general in the same context as some people are viewing sexy miniatures as harmful.

Sexualised models are far less prominent in wargaming than sexualised costumes are in cosplay. Google images "tabletop wargame" and it's a while before you hit your first female model in skimpy clothing. Google images "cosplay" and you won't find much else besides females in skimpy clothing

Ah, herein lies the rub: the people that find sexy miniatures "harmful in general", let's call them X (normally I would use a three letter abbreviation, but let's be thrifty).

Group X finds sexy miniatures harmful. I would content that Group X members are the same individuals that object to 'sexy' cosplay, and for the same reasons.

I would further argue that Group X would justify this finding (of harm) with terms like 'false consciousness'*, 'gender in-authenticity' and 'making patriarchy work for her' arguments. We might also get a smattering of 'cultural appropriation' thrown in.

Assuming the above, I content that group X should rightly be the subject of much scorn. No woman, after all, is hostage to the image of all women, no more then any Jew is hostage to the good of all Jews, a given Black hostage to the image of all Blacks, and so forth. To presume or operate as if it were otherwise is to cast our rights to do as we wish as group rights, rather then individual rights. It is a wholly illiberal enterprise.


*As an aside, apparently I'm familiar enough with Marxism to identify relatively obscure nomenclature, but my opinions of it are 'prejudgment'. Ah, kids these days...

If someone decided to oppress all Jews, individual Jews surely would be oppressed.

At root we are all members of the group "human" and our rights derive from that membership. Individuality is one of those rights -- freedom of religion and expression, for instance.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The incorrect implication is that cosplay (or anything) has to have an inherent "benefit".

To digress briefly to cosplay again;

People do things because they get a benefit from it. It's core reward/reinforcement behaviour.

Therefore cosplay does not "have to have" a benefit, but for different people it does present them a benefit -- a reward for performing the behaviour -- and this is what draws people to do it. No-one would go to all the trouble involved otherwise. Some people (booth babes) are rewarded with money. Others are rewarded with emotional benefits.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If someone decided to oppress all Jews, individual Jews surely would be oppressed.

At root we are all members of the group "human" and our rights derive from that membership. Individuality is one of those rights -- freedom of religion and expression, for instance.

You do realize that you just completely inverted the point I was making, right? To the degree I'm not even sure if you understood what I was saying at all. Further undermining my confidence in your understanding is this baffling manner you describe human rights. Even if we were to accept your formulation, it would still be irrelevant to my point.

Which is, quite simply, that 'false consciousness' and other similar doctrines of racial/sexual 'inauthentic thought' are illiberal doctrines, which are ultimately rooted in the authoritarian idea that some entity external to the individual can determine what is an appropriate thought for someone based on their immutable characteristics.

As I understand it, you are making the point that group rights cannot trump individual rights.

I am making the point that our individual rights derive from being a member of a group, and that if you oppress the group you oppress the members individually.