Denotatively, conceded.Originally Posted by Skyblade
My apologies for my statements.
I'm going to be interested to see which characters Raist thinks are sexist.
Too often, I believe, sexism is confused with stereotyping gender roles. The latter can imply or lead to sexism, but isn't necessarily sexist. Sexism implies not that men and women are different, but that the differences between men and women mean that men are inherently better than women. Or sometimes those "differences" can be imposed (on either sex, but almost exclusively women) in order to oppress.
It seems it's both, actually.
The connotation of "attitudes or behavior" is that the behavior and attitudes are detrimental to the genders.
The point wasn't that sexism doesn't involve stereotypes, but that not all stereotypes (even sexual stereotypes) are sexist. Or perhaps I'm saying, not all stereotypes should be considered sexist.
Recognizing traditional gender roles is not bad. Using those stereotypes to manipulate, oppress, or devalue people is bad. Forcing women to be domestic goddesses and not letting them work outside the home is bad. Recognizing that, generally, women are better than men at running a house (yes in large part because they were raised that way) because they multitask better, have better color recognition for decorating, etc., is not.
to be better on topic:
I hate when games/movies/literature force a female character into a role that doesn't make sense for the character just for the sake of being anti-sexist. I don't think that gets us anywhere.
So they're making the next Final Fantasy and they've got a White Mage character they want to use. They're sitting around throwing ideas back and forth. Someone presents a female design for that character, and everyone's like "No, no, can't be a girl, that would be SEXIST," even though the design fits, and the character's background makes sense, etc., etc. The point isn't to avoid reverse sexism, because sexism is bad, and getting rid of it is worth a little backlash. But blindly avoiding the appearance traditional gender roles doesn't do anything to help remove sexism from our culture. Strong (not physically strong, but fitting, apt) female characters in various roles that show the character as a "person" without regard to anything else is the ideal.
We don't want to force genders into roles that are opposite to traditional roles any more than we want to force them into the traditional roles. They're equally sexist.
The point is every character (and by extension every person) being open to every potential, and taking on roles based on choice, not societal pressure.
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