Final Fantasy Sexism Part I: Why It Matters

[Raistlin]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone. FYI, I expect this series to last maybe 3 more articles (subject to change), and I'll be trying to get them out every two weeks until it's over.

Now that the images are fixed, I'm very looking forward to it! You should do another follow-up series on Racism in Final Fantasy.

This is something I thought of, actually. There's nothing definite planned yet, and I still have a couple of months of this series to get through, but it's a consideration. I'll see how I feel after this series is over.

You should judge a game in its social milieu. In this case the whole environment around video games has changed (a good thing), it isn't where it should be (hope it gets there) but something that was socially progressive in the 1960s can be seen as blatantly racist/classist in 2013.

It is not entirely fair to judge a game from the late 80s by standards today- you wouldn't really compare the graphics of FF1 with FF13 directly, the more fair comparison is FF1's graphics (and portrayal of women) vs 1987 games' graphics (and portrayal of women) and FF13's portrayal of women vs how women in games are portrayed in 2010.

I'm a little confused by this criticism, as I have not yet mentioned anything that could be considered a contrary point. Regardless, most of the games I will discuss in this series came out in the '90s and 2000s. Those were not entirely different times. Sexism from 10-20 years ago may be a little more excusable but it is certainly not entirely forgivable and immune from criticism. Additionally, the main point of this article is not to hammer on the games for being sexist, but to make people more aware of sexist portrays of women -- recognition of sexism in those games, rather than just a critique of the games in question.

You also did not touch on what is culturally influenced and was is innate- will this be mentioned at all?

This is a subject I'm personally very interested in, but I'm trying to keep the rest of this series FF-centric -- explaining how some of the female characters fit into stereotypes/gender roles, but not really delving into the issue of cultural vs. genetics regarding these roles and differences between the sexes (which is worthy of its own series somewhere). My own long-held position is that gender roles and gender-oriented personality stereotypes are largely cultural inventions. This has been supported by modern cultural shifts, where more women are being raised to be independent and encouraged to pursue previously male-dominated careers, and more and more women are doing exactly that.

I'm with Dr. rydrum on this one. Final Fantasy are Japanese cultural products. You can't just apply a western-originated approach to them.
I'm not saying you're wrong on the sexism issue - Japan's society is even worse and more backwards on the sexism front and that's something that should be dealt with. But it's going to take a closer look at other facets of Japanese culture and their influence on the FF games to get a bigger picture, rather than using an approach focusing on specific elements (ie portrayal of women in this case) in the same way you would with an american piece of media, to get a perspective of what exactly is going on.

An analysis/criticism of Japanese culture could be an entirely different series in its own right. I'm trying to make this a bit manageable length; the only concession I gave myself was this introduction, to try to rebut some more common counterarguments when accusations of sexism in media are brought up (plus I wanted the excuse to use the awesome comics). The main point of this article is recognition of sexism and why it's sexist, not an analysis on why a Japanese company included it in its games. This is equally relevant to Western societies as well, where some similar sexist prejudices are commonly held. The FF series, for example, has been widely played in Western societies, and I would say most people do not even realize how sexist some of the female portrayals are, and even if they did, likely did not consider it anything bad or worth criticizing. That sort of thinking is what I'm trying to address.