The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human.
The men who didn't activate the portion of the brain for recognizing humans were already rated high in sexism. Brain chemistry is something I, technically speaking, know little to nothing about but find incredibly fascinating. The chemicals that effect brain function have some carry-over effect, supported by that article. Maybe I don't have that function in my brain, but it seems like people are either dicks, or not dicks.
What are you disagreeing with, exactly? That a culture with a Boys Club attitude can result in more people having a Boys Club attitude?
all of these are bold new ways to express the tame shit you're hand-wringing about because it's more fun to never have been wrong than to address reasonable problems in a sedate manner
Look. Okay. I'm just trying to understand your guys' stance. That's why I've been asking questions. I didn't get how those 2 points overlap, I still don't. I don't care anymore. I won't bother you anymore. Forget I posted anything. I'm sorry.
all of these are bold new ways to express the tame shit you're hand-wringing about because it's more fun to never have been wrong than to address reasonable problems in a sedate manner
Look. Okay. I'm just trying to understand your guys' stance. That's why I've been asking questions. I didn't get how those 2 points overlap, I still don't. I don't care anymore. I won't bother you anymore. Forget I posted anything. I'm sorry.
@Cucco Leader Try reading the first one or two articles linked in the OP. From there, if you have more quesitons about things, skim the other articles and see if they're addressed there. If not, come back.
All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, we are primarily happy to talk about this stuff.
all of these are bold new ways to express the tame shit you're hand-wringing about because it's more fun to never have been wrong than to address reasonable problems in a sedate manner
Look. Okay. I'm just trying to understand your guys' stance. That's why I've been asking questions. I didn't get how those 2 points overlap, I still don't. I don't care anymore. I won't bother you anymore. Forget I posted anything. I'm sorry.
Please don't feel discouraged from asking questions if you are legitimately trying to figure something out. The only reason some of the posters in this thread might get a little bent is because for every person like you who is trying to learn something there has been another who has to be repeatedly told time and again to read things that they have asked about before and have been answered before. All anyone asks as far as this thread goes is that if you have a question that you try to do a little bit of reading before asking the question that way we don't needlessly retread the same information. It's part of the reason why there is a massive list of links to articles and other pieces of information in the OP.
EDIT: Also, beat'd. Damn your short and simple response Wyborn. Quit being better than me. :P
The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human.
The men who didn't activate the portion of the brain for recognizing humans were already rated high in sexism. Brain chemistry is something I, technically speaking, know little to nothing about but find incredibly fascinating. The chemicals that effect brain function have some carry-over effect, supported by that article. Maybe I don't have that function in my brain, but it seems like people are either dicks, or not dicks.
What are you disagreeing with, exactly? That a culture with a Boys Club attitude can result in more people having a Boys Club attitude?
Well when you put it that way you you defeat my entire argument!
I guess what I'm disagreeing with is that it is inevitable, not that it isn't more likely to propagate. Maybe I'm not understanding your argument correctly, but I feel like the number of people on planet Earth who are not complete dickbags like this are at a minimum. More people, like those of us engaging in intelligent conversation right here, can move this problem to the back burner despite the content like this.
Is it though? I keep hearing the "we aren't trying to censor, we just want more variety" argument and Dragon's Crown is definitely niche. If these things can't exist in a niche game, where can they?
There are all kinds of games about all kinds of shit around, and no one (I hope) is saying it shouldn't exist.
In my closer to ideal world though, more people would look at that and go "wow thats kind of tacky and gross"
The amount of people who look at it and straight up do not notice theres an issue is what bothers me, because that's an attitude that seems to pervade to a lot of things.
Like, theres a guy in the other thread who was saying (parphrasing) "whats the big deal, tits and ass, thats the normal way advertising is everywhere."
Maybe the "normal way advertising is" is kinda bad?
The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human.
The men who didn't activate the portion of the brain for recognizing humans were already rated high in sexism. Brain chemistry is something I, technically speaking, know little to nothing about but find incredibly fascinating. The chemicals that effect brain function have some carry-over effect, supported by that article. Maybe I don't have that function in my brain, but it seems like people are either dicks, or not dicks.
What are you disagreeing with, exactly? That a culture with a Boys Club attitude can result in more people having a Boys Club attitude?
Well when you put it that way you you defeat my entire argument!
I guess what I'm disagreeing with is that it is inevitable, not that it isn't more likely to propagate. Maybe I'm not understanding your argument correctly, but I feel like the number of people on planet Earth who are not complete dickbags like this are at a minimum. More people, like those of us engaging in intelligent conversation right here, can move this problem to the back burner despite the content like this.
That's fair.
Now, do you acknowledge that in a Boys Club kind culture, you wouldn't be getting adverse affects from it yourself? God knows I don't, not really. I'm a dude. If the culture benefits dudes, I get no ill from it. Right?
So is it possible that, if this stuff isn't brought to my attention, I wouldn't notice it at all? I think so. It was true for years and years.
Does that seem reasonable?
+2
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Is it though? I keep hearing the "we aren't trying to censor, we just want more variety" argument and Dragon's Crown is definitely niche. If these things can't exist in a niche game, where can they?
The Dragon's Crown thing is a two-fold issue:
The first was when the art was initially posted. At which point the reaction was a collective statement of, "Given the prevalence of sexual objectification, this is only adds to the problem. I'm really sick and tired of seeing the same exaggerated body parts." It's worth noting along with this that while the art may be of niche style, it still incorporates the same propagated body image that a lot of other over-sexualized females characters possess in other art styles.
The second was the art director's reaction to this collective statement, found here. (Caution: Kotaku) The shows that he is(was) somewhat ignorant of the issue that is being presented to him.
Compounding the first with the second is when things really began to heat up a little as at that point if nothing is said in response than it is just the status quo as usual. More discussion on situations like this creates more awareness.
Also compounding the second issue is that apparently the guy does not speak English as a first language, because he at least comprehends the issue and took it seriously enough to give a real response
Are people implying that it is impossible to both objectify women and to respect them? That the two are mutually exclusive?
Yes. It's impossible to do both at the same time.
Objectify: to treat as an object
I don't respect too many objects.
This is not to say that someone can't objectify one woman while respecting another. But it's impossible to respect someone you treat as an object.
When I started at my current job I had a supervisor who is, in fact, a younger woman. For her age, she was highly ranked. She was also a well proportioned woman. The misogyny was there doubting her abilities from other people. When I met her I did my standard assessment, thought to myself "hey, she's kind of a sexy lady" and then continued my work with her with an ability to fully respect the fact that she was super smart, and a fantastic leader.
You see, I can look and say "sexy lady" which is objectification, and then continue to interact with her and see her as a capable woman who deserves my respect.
Don't apply the strict definition of objectification, because I don't think anybody looks at a person they find attractive and see them as an inanimate fuck-doll. Unless that's what everybody else does and apparently I don't objectify women.
Saying or thinking someone is attractive isn't objectification. Saying or thinking that all someone is good for is your own pleasure to use as you will is objectification.
So yes, you're in the clear, what you were doing wasn't objectification. You weren't defining your coworker by only her looks. Apparently your coworkers were. They were objectifying her, you weren't.
This is a perfect example of someone getting a strawman in their head and not realizing what's actually being argued isn't something that even applies to you.
Then doesn't this apply to games as well? I can like HHH tits (I don't btw, those game images are seriously outlandish) but not treat women like shit. I guess my argument still stands if you just take the idea of enjoying those images in your gaming experience and not taking it to a level of objectifying.
This is why I think the games/images aren't the problem, but the dickbags who treat women like this are.
Images that feed into that perceptions, if they are the norm, are absolutely part of the problem.
Fascinating article. Let's discuss it!
The results showed that images of people activated the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), which is highly involved in social cognition (e.g., recognizing human faces, when separating one person from another).
The exception was when men high in sexism viewed pictures of sexually dressed women. These pictures did not activate the mPFC for sexist males. This suggests that these men's brains did not perceive these women as fully human.
This is a very specific statement -- men who are sexist don't perceive sexualized women as fully human.
There are two ways to fix this. One is to remove all imagery of sexualized women. The other is to remove the sexism.
This study is consistent with the work of University of Padova researchers. They found that when women were dressed sexually (compared to when they weren't), people implicitly associated them more with animals.
This is a really interesting statement that I'd love to see expanded upon. This fires off a dozen different questions in my mind immediately.
Other research has found that merely focusing on a woman's appearance (fully dressed) is enough for people (men and women) to dehumanize a woman. Specifically, we found that people assign female targets less "human nature traits" when focus is on their appearance. These traits are perceived by humans to separate people from machines, automata and objects.
Now this one is weird. Frankly I find it irresponsible to put these few sentences together in an article and just leave it at that. Essentially they're saying "if you can see a woman, even if she's dressed, then you will see her as less human." So, we go for the burka? Of course not, nobody rational is arguing for that. What, then? Is it merely an artifact of how our brains process visual patterns? Then why even mention it? Does it also happen when you look at a man's appearance (fully dressed)? Is it all "people" that "dehumanize" or just "sexist" people as the new study suggests? And what happens when a person "ends" the focus on appearance (for example, upon interacting about something entirely unrelated). Does the brain throw a "switch" that reverts the person to full "human nature traits" status? Or does it carry over?
Another study found that these women are seen as less moral (sincere, trusting) and less emotionally warm (likable, warm).
I want more info about this one, too. This one sounds like it's from miseducation. I know I sure used to have this problem; my super-religious upbringing absolutely taught me to be judgmental and distrusting of women dressed sexually. I fixed it in myself. Can we fix this in people in general? Do we do this by sexualizing sincere, trusting, likable, warm characters to create that mental association and by reducing the tendency of having female villains loaded up on sex?
Interestingly, research even finds that when men view sexualized pictures of women, they subsequently view a female experimenter as doing a worse job. In other words, men "carried over" their views of the sexualized women to another woman, who was not scantily dressed.
All men? The "high in sexism" men? Did the "sexualized" images also have the women looking less assertive and more submissive?
Actually, there's no comment in any of these examples of controlling for the apparent assertiveness of the model or character in the image. Might that be a bigger factor? There's a tendency for sexualization to add submissiveness, which is terrible and needs to stop.
And lastly, research shows that men and women view sexualized images (of both men and women) as lacking "mind," which is basically a denial of thoughts and emotions. In this work, people even had less concern for the sexualized people's pain, compared to when they were fully dressed.
That's not surprising. There's this society-wide belief that lust and sexuality is mindless and banal. Most people won't admit to viewing porn (even though they do). Sex shops are usually seedy-looking and at the edge of a "bad" part of town. Women that dress attractively are slut-shamed and men are seen as gay. As soon as you put moral judgments on someone, you empathize with them less, care less about their trials.
This sucks and needs to change, yesterday.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
I think what you're saying is, well, not everyone's an asshole. And that's very true. Not everyone is an asshole, and not everyone is overtly sexist. Lots of people aren't sexist at all!
But we agree that a Boys Club culture feeds Boys Club mentalities. We agree that you and I wouldn't notice sexism against women in the same way a woman would.
And, based on those articles, I think you and I will agree that women have to deal with a lot of shit in the game industry that guys, by virtue of their gender, do not have to experience. This topic is, after all, primarily about the shit that women deal with in developing games, and issues that feed into that.
So not all guys are assholes or misogynists.
But based on what's being said here, on what these women have experienced, about the expectations around women and video games, or women and sex, expectations that reflects on my wife and your wife and your daughter, can we agree that too many men are?
Is it though? I keep hearing the "we aren't trying to censor, we just want more variety" argument and Dragon's Crown is definitely niche. If these things can't exist in a niche game, where can they?
I think what annoys people is that this is in fact only slightly exaggerated from the industry baseline. If the industry had mostly respectful and non-titillating depictions, people would probably be laughing with Kamitani - this would clearly be a parody, something meant to be funny and wink at the player about ye olden tropes of classic fantasy.
But that sorceress is not one parody among a lot of serious fare. It's in fact just a step further than what we already have. Because this is an industry where we have games like TERA Online, and where females are objectified in almost every step of the way. It's, in all honesty, not totally removed from some of the stuff I have seen in my DS games, to the point where the only thing it elicited from me at first was a sigh and an eyeroll because this is the kind of shit we put up with in most games, only just a little more, but the idea that this might be a joke never even occurred to me because it never is. And people seem to be starting to get markedly tired of it. I am starting to get markedly tired of it.
I've had some weird experiences in my mental development lately because, for anybody who's known me for a fair while can tell you, I'm actually an asshole. Well, more likely I was. Some behaviors were presented back to me with a "hey, you're being an asshole. don't do that" and it was not effective at all. When I made these discoveries on my own however, I immediately changed my behavior and people are having a hard time trusting that this "new me" is legit.
I want the assholes of the world to operate like this. Put them in a scenario where they can see the effects for themselves and come to the conclusion that "this is not an OK way to act". I don't want that to stop the art we see, just the attitudes. I would assume the art would become more tame as a byproduct over time though.
The problem is people, in my experience, don't like being presented with their faults and tend to resist change. So basically what we're doing here is making it worse. OH GOD EVERYBODY STOP.
What I found instead was an article about Portal 2 and feminism, which I want to quote, because it really lays out something important in these discussions that doesn't always get directly addressed: the difference between interpersonal, institutional, and unconscious sexism.
They say that sexism (and other ‘isms’) operates at at 3 levels: Interpersonal, Institutional and Unconscious:
- Interpersonal Sexism: involves interactions (actions, expressions, etc.) between persons not governed by explicit or implicit rules (Cudd and Jones 109)
I think that most who are unfamiliar with feminism think of sexism or racism (and other ‘isms’) along an interpersonal or individual level. The model they have in mind is of a person who holds, and would endorse, explicit statements that negatively characterize women, racial minorities (etc.) and who would advocate unequal treatment on this basis.
Interpersonal (or individual) sexism is not the only kind of sexism that interests many feminists. Instead, they also talk about Institutional sexism and Unconscious sexism
- Institutional Sexism: explicit and implicit rules or norms that structure social institutions that function to exclude women, or place men above women. At some points in history these rules have been explicit, for example when women were explicitly denied the vote or prohibited from owning property. Other norms are implicit, rather than explicit. For example, while women are expected to do the majority of the work raising children and most people blame mothers rather than fathers for many child-related expectations, this rule is implicit because it is not written down anywhere as an explicit law (Cudd and Jones 109)
- Unconscious Sexism: psychological processes, tacit beliefs, emotions and attitudes that create, sustain or exploit sexual inequalities (Cudd and Jones 110-112). Cudd and Jones give a number of examples of unconscious sexism, if one is interested, one can also try the Implicit Association Test* developed by Harvard psychologists to test for the presence of some of these mechanisms.
*Note: It took me a bit to find the gender test from that link, so here is a direct link to the social implicit tests from that website, Gender-Science and Gender-Career can be found around the middle of the page.
This would be a much easier topic to handle if interpersonal sexism were the only one that needs conquering. Some very intelligent people seem to believe that the only kind of sexism under discussion is the interpersonal kind, and that when you criticise a piece of art as being sexist that you're labeling the artist as an explicit woman hater, so naturally they want to argue that point. But the much more likely culprits with that kind of art are institutional and unconcious sexism, which are much harder to fight, but just as important.
@Cucco Leader, censorship is forcible suppression. "But," people say, "isn't there de facto censorship through things like peer pressure?" And this seems appealing for a moment until you consider that we constantly exert social pressure through approval and reproval for everything. If a celebrity comes out and undertakes a cause to eliminate childhood vaccinations in spite of all evidence, we don't say "you can't criticize that, that's censorship!" It's not as if the only two acceptable options are praise or silence. Note that this doesn't inherently label social pressure right or wrong: it just is, and it can go many ways.
Now, accept for the sake of argument that the things people are condemning are sexist, to see it from their point of view. Is it wrong to censure (the negative peer pressure, as opposed to the enforced rule of censorship) it? If it was racism, would it be wrong to censure it? Homophobia? Anti-vaccinations?
Everybody experiences stuff and learns stuff differently. And once they have the germ of an idea in their heads, they tend to apply it to a lot of different things that they see.
I've had some weird experiences in my mental development lately because, for anybody who's known me for a fair while can tell you, I'm actually an asshole. Well, more likely I was. Some behaviors were presented back to me with a "hey, you're being an asshole. don't do that" and it was not effective at all. When I made these discoveries on my own however, I immediately changed my behavior and people are having a hard time trusting that this "new me" is legit.
I want the assholes of the world to operate like this. Put them in a scenario where they can see the effects for themselves and come to the conclusion that "this is not an OK way to act". I don't want that to stop the art we see, just the attitudes. I would assume the art would become more tame as a byproduct over time though.
The problem is people, in my experience, don't like being presented with their faults and tend to resist change. So basically what we're doing here is making it worse. OH GOD EVERYBODY STOP.
I've had some weird experiences in my mental development lately because, for anybody who's known me for a fair while can tell you, I'm actually an asshole. Well, more likely I was. Some behaviors were presented back to me with a "hey, you're being an asshole. don't do that" and it was not effective at all. When I made these discoveries on my own however, I immediately changed my behavior and people are having a hard time trusting that this "new me" is legit.
I want the assholes of the world to operate like this. Put them in a scenario where they can see the effects for themselves and come to the conclusion that "this is not an OK way to act". I don't want that to stop the art we see, just the attitudes. I would assume the art would become more tame as a byproduct over time though.
The problem is people, in my experience, don't like being presented with their faults and tend to resist change. So basically what we're doing here is making it worse. OH GOD EVERYBODY STOP.
Concencus changes peoples opinions though even if they consciously deny it, this is how you get things like the fallacy of the middle ground, people assume that since lots of people are saying X, there must be some truth in it, even if its not outright true.
People can deny their views are changing even as they change, (then often deny that they were ever different to begin with.)
There's this society-wide belief that lust and sexuality is mindless and banal. Most people won't admit to viewing porn (even though they do). Sex shops are usually seedy-looking and at the edge of a "bad" part of town. Women that dress attractively are slut-shamed and men are seen as gay. As soon as you put moral judgments on someone, you empathize with them less, care less about their trials.
This reminds me of something I've been wondering and plan to research: Did the increase in sexualized images of women and fetishization of pronounced female sex characteristics arise partially as a reaction to the Puritanical idea that sexuality, especially in regards to the lust that women were (and still are) often blamed with inspiring in men, is sinful and morally wrong?
I mean, just look at the analysis of Cortana's appearance and the reactions here to it. The initial design of Cortana was slim with few pronounced female sex characteristics, while the Halo 4 design depicts a full-figured woman. I really wonder how people would react if Halo 1 Cortana was rendered the same way as Halo 4 Cortana. Sure, people would say "why did they make her look more like a real naked woman?", but I bet people would care less because the design would not have pronounced female sex characteristics.
It's interesting to me that the more pronounced a female character's sex characteristics are the more criticism the design receives. I know posters here criticize such designs because they are meant to appeal to men, but people unconcerned with feminist ideals would also react negatively to the same designs because they would find them indecent and blame them for causing sexual promiscuity. One group is saying "sexualized depictions of women are sexist" and another is saying "sexualized depictions of women are sinful".
I know the extremely large breasted ideal is a recent development in Western culture, and I don't see much evidence that it is based on some inherent behavioral trait (if it was we'd see statues from ancient Rome depicting Venus with breasts bigger than her head). I'm thinking this ideal might have arose because womens' bodies, especially those with more pronounced female sex characteristics, were demonized as causing lust in men, and as the U.S. continues to actively rebel against traditional American Christian moral values those once taboo traits have become fetishized (an idea that the U.S. media has spread to other countries).
#1reasonwhy has completely changed the way I view the world. Please, video game industry, I desperately want to play a game where everyone is superlatively average. If my male avatars aren't pale, acne-ridden, and out of shape, and my women aren't all pear-shaped, freckly, and bespectacled, then they clearly aren't an accurate reflection of reality. The fact that video games are a form of escapism, and don't accurately reflect the real world sickens me. 5 months ago I thought that I liked big boobs, but now I realize how wrong that is. I've been living a hollow life full of sin, that casts a pall on all my interactions with men and women both. I'm only glad I found out about #1reasonwhy before it was too late.
0
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
Are people implying that it is impossible to both objectify women and to respect them? That the two are mutually exclusive?
Yes. It's impossible to do both at the same time.
Objectify: to treat as an object
I don't respect too many objects.
This is not to say that someone can't objectify one woman while respecting another. But it's impossible to respect someone you treat as an object.
When I started at my current job I had a supervisor who is, in fact, a younger woman. For her age, she was highly ranked. She was also a well proportioned woman. The misogyny was there doubting her abilities from other people. When I met her I did my standard assessment, thought to myself "hey, she's kind of a sexy lady" and then continued my work with her with an ability to fully respect the fact that she was super smart, and a fantastic leader.
You see, I can look and say "sexy lady" which is objectification, and then continue to interact with her and see her as a capable woman who deserves my respect.
Don't apply the strict definition of objectification, because I don't think anybody looks at a person they find attractive and see them as an inanimate fuck-doll. Unless that's what everybody else does and apparently I don't objectify women.
A study by Princeton psychologists hooked up men to an fMRI machine. After being hooked up, these men were shown pictures of both men and women. Some were scantily clothed; some were not
They found that when women were dressed sexually (compared to when they weren't), people implicitly associated them more with animals.
Other research has found that merely focusing on a woman's appearance (fully dressed) is enough for people (men and women) to dehumanize a woman. Specifically, we found that people assign female targets less "human nature traits" when focus is on their appearance. These traits are perceived by humans to separate people from machines, automata and objects.
Another study found that these women are seen as less moral (sincere, trusting) and less emotionally warm (likable, warm).
These findings are also consistent with a wide range of work showing that objectified women are perceived as less competent. Interestingly, research even finds that when men view sexualized pictures of women, they subsequently view a female experimenter as doing a worse job. In other words, men "carried over" their views of the sexualized women to another woman, who was not scantily dressed.
"Local processing underlies the way we think about objects: houses, cars and so on. But global processing should prevent us from that when it comes to people," Gervais said. "We don't break people down to their parts -- except when it comes to women, which is really striking. Women were perceived in the same ways that objects are viewed."
This isn't a matter of how strong willed you are as a person. Your brain is doing these things without your consent. So is mine.
Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
On my sleeve, let the runway start
#1reasonwhy has completely changed the way I view the world. Please, video game industry, I desperately want to play a game where everyone is superlatively average. If my male avatars aren't pale, acne-ridden, and out of shape, and my women aren't all pear-shaped, freckly, and bespectacled, then they clearly aren't an accurate reflection of reality. The fact that video games are a form of escapism, and don't accurately reflect the real world sickens me. 5 months ago I thought that I liked big boobs, but now I realize how wrong that is. I've been living a hollow life full of sin, that casts a pall on all my interactions with men and women both. I'm only glad I found out about #1reasonwhy before it was too late.
Is this a 'activism annoys me' post?
I mean, people are welcome to whatever views they want. Just expressing them in that much snark is kinda goosey to the extreme.
+13
CambiataCommander ShepardThe likes of which even GAWD has never seenRegistered Userregular
See, the problem is you're saying zombie bait controversy is dumb bullshit while we should really be concentrating on real sexism. As if the former isn't real sexism. And that we can only concentrate on one thing at a time. Go big or go home. Real issues.
These are all real issues, dawg.
If you decided you wanted to write a series of articles about gun violence, would you give the same amount of time in your articles to fictional gun violence as you would to real gun violence? Or would you give a different amount?
Have you watched the #1reasontobe panel from GDC? Where, for example, Brenda Romero talks about going to E3 having to walk past some woman's asscheeks every day, and having the men speaking to her professionally constantly saying "You have to admit she has great tits and ass" and how she felt sexually harassed by that entire atmosphere? How is that only "fictional"?
Peace to fashion police, I wear my heart
On my sleeve, let the runway start
#1reasonwhy has completely changed the way I view the world. Please, video game industry, I desperately want to play a game where everyone is superlatively average. If my male avatars aren't pale, acne-ridden, and out of shape, and my women aren't all pear-shaped, freckly, and bespectacled, then they clearly aren't an accurate reflection of reality. The fact that video games are a form of escapism, and don't accurately reflect the real world sickens me. 5 months ago I thought that I liked big boobs, but now I realize how wrong that is. I've been living a hollow life full of sin, that casts a pall on all my interactions with men and women both. I'm only glad I found out about #1reasonwhy before it was too late.
You could have just said "I don't underatand". It's shorter to type out and then you don't look like a goose.
I've had some weird experiences in my mental development lately because, for anybody who's known me for a fair while can tell you, I'm actually an asshole. Well, more likely I was. Some behaviors were presented back to me with a "hey, you're being an asshole. don't do that" and it was not effective at all. When I made these discoveries on my own however, I immediately changed my behavior and people are having a hard time trusting that this "new me" is legit.
I want the assholes of the world to operate like this. Put them in a scenario where they can see the effects for themselves and come to the conclusion that "this is not an OK way to act". I don't want that to stop the art we see, just the attitudes. I would assume the art would become more tame as a byproduct over time though.
The problem is people, in my experience, don't like being presented with their faults and tend to resist change. So basically what we're doing here is making it worse. OH GOD EVERYBODY STOP.
@REG Rysk: Did you just pull out the "wait, wait, wait, wait, wait... let me explain to you how to talk to me argument?" The one that was specifically listed in the "Top 5 Ways People Try To Derail Feminist Discussions"? Maybe you should review the previous thread a bit because you have some misconceptions about some fundamental ideals that have been discussed at length.
Furthermore, based on your posting, it looks like to me that you are, in fact, deeply sexist. Here is how I came to that conclusion:
(I don't want my kid to be seen naked by anybody...probably not even the guy/gal that she'll marry someday).
What you have illustrated here is one of the oldest, most subtle, and probably the most powerful types of misogyny there is. You have a daughter, so you are probably aware that sex is fantastic. It is among the greatest of human experiences, but you don't want her to have that... WITH HER HUSBAND. What you are doing is a form of slut shaming. An insidious method of robbing women of their sexual agency and a gross form of dis-empowerment.
Ask yourself this... what are you actually protecting her from? Why is it such a bad thing for someone's daughter to seek out multiple sexual partners but not our sons? If you had a son, would you want him to remain a virgin forever?
My next bit of supporting evidence is the fact all of your posts (as of the writing of this one) make the argument that basically states:
"I can look at sexy images and not be transformed into a sexist asshole so it's not really a problem."
Not once have you ever considered the fact that maybe we shouldn't sexually objectify women not because of how it makes you, the man, act, but because of how it makes women uncomfortable. You have not once, in all the posts I've read, ever even considered that your male perspective might be irrelevant compared to how gratuitous, sexual objectification makes women feel.
Your posts are further made incorrect by the fact that you actually are subtly and deeply sexist. You want to deny your own daughter's sexual agency with her husband. You frame all your arguments from a male perspective. You pulled out the classic "If feminists want me to take them seriously, they need to talk to me nicely and with respect" white male privilege argument.
Are people implying that it is impossible to both objectify women and to respect them? That the two are mutually exclusive?
Yes. It's impossible to do both at the same time.
Objectify: to treat as an object
I don't respect too many objects.
This is not to say that someone can't objectify one woman while respecting another. But it's impossible to respect someone you treat as an object.
When I started at my current job I had a supervisor who is, in fact, a younger woman. For her age, she was highly ranked. She was also a well proportioned woman. The misogyny was there doubting her abilities from other people. When I met her I did my standard assessment, thought to myself "hey, she's kind of a sexy lady" and then continued my work with her with an ability to fully respect the fact that she was super smart, and a fantastic leader.
You see, I can look and say "sexy lady" which is objectification, and then continue to interact with her and see her as a capable woman who deserves my respect.
Don't apply the strict definition of objectification, because I don't think anybody looks at a person they find attractive and see them as an inanimate fuck-doll. Unless that's what everybody else does and apparently I don't objectify women.
A study by Princeton psychologists hooked up men to an fMRI machine. After being hooked up, these men were shown pictures of both men and women. Some were scantily clothed; some were not
They found that when women were dressed sexually (compared to when they weren't), people implicitly associated them more with animals.
Other research has found that merely focusing on a woman's appearance (fully dressed) is enough for people (men and women) to dehumanize a woman. Specifically, we found that people assign female targets less "human nature traits" when focus is on their appearance. These traits are perceived by humans to separate people from machines, automata and objects.
Another study found that these women are seen as less moral (sincere, trusting) and less emotionally warm (likable, warm).
These findings are also consistent with a wide range of work showing that objectified women are perceived as less competent. Interestingly, research even finds that when men view sexualized pictures of women, they subsequently view a female experimenter as doing a worse job. In other words, men "carried over" their views of the sexualized women to another woman, who was not scantily dressed.
"Local processing underlies the way we think about objects: houses, cars and so on. But global processing should prevent us from that when it comes to people," Gervais said. "We don't break people down to their parts -- except when it comes to women, which is really striking. Women were perceived in the same ways that objects are viewed."
This isn't a matter of how strong willed you are as a person. Your brain is doing these things without your consent. So is mine.
Right on! This is a very important point, and I think it's one of the sticking points for a lot of people. It's incredibly easy to recognize and respond to sexism on an interpersonal, case by case basis. Some guy decides to call your boss a bitch because she acts assertive and confident. Yeah, that guy is clearly a sexist jerk. I think most of us would have no problems recognizing that behavior as sexist and problematic.
But, sexism is also a systemic feature that we are all unwittingly shaped by, and it is much harder to get people to recognize that. Peggy McIntosh wrote an incredibly famous article about white privilege and male privilege. Someone online went out of their way to publish some of the attributes that McIntosh describes as male privilege in the article. Probably worth a look for the thread: http://sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/male_privilege.pdf
(I don't want my kid to be seen naked by anybody...probably not even the guy/gal that she'll marry someday).
What you have illustrated here is one of the oldest, most subtle, and probably the most powerful types of misogyny there is. You have a daughter, so you are probably aware that sex is fantastic. It is among the greatest of human experiences, but you don't want her to have that... WITH HER HUSBAND. What you are doing is a form of slut shaming. An insidious method of robbing women of their sexual agency and a gross form of dis-empowerment.
He didn't say daughter, he said kid and then specificaly said guy/gal. Doesn;t that mean it's just speculation?
Your posts are further made incorrect by the fact that you actually are subtly and deeply sexist. You want to deny your own daughter's sexual agency with her husband. You frame all your arguments from a male perspective. You pulled out the classic "If feminists want me to take them seriously, they need to talk to me nicely and with respect" white male privilege argument.
Dude, step off a bit. It's been a nice, civil conversation, and that shit is heinous, incorrect, and uncalled for.
I dislike that goose's implication that pear-shaped, freckly, glasses-wearing women aren't attractive. That's closer to what would fit my own personal "male gaze" criteria than 90% of what we see in the media. From a completely selfish standpoint I'd love to see more glasses-wearing nerd girls with smallish breasts and broad bums.
#1reasonwhy has completely changed the way I view the world. Please, video game industry, I desperately want to play a game where everyone is superlatively average. If my male avatars aren't pale, acne-ridden, and out of shape, and my women aren't all pear-shaped, freckly, and bespectacled, then they clearly aren't an accurate reflection of reality. The fact that video games are a form of escapism, and don't accurately reflect the real world sickens me. 5 months ago I thought that I liked big boobs, but now I realize how wrong that is. I've been living a hollow life full of sin, that casts a pall on all my interactions with men and women both. I'm only glad I found out about #1reasonwhy before it was too late.
Is this a 'activism annoys me' post?
I mean, people are welcome to whatever views they want. Just expressing them in that much snark is kinda goosey to the extreme.
And it's a wrong and ridiuclously often leapt to fail-argument. No one is saying that all images need to be 100% couched in reality or that everyone in media needs to be average looking or less.
But of course, unless they make that false logic jump then they don't actually have an argument.
I dislike that goose's implication that pear-shaped, freckly, glasses-wearing women aren't attractive. That's closer to what would fit my own personal "male gaze" criteria than 90% of what we see in the media. From a completely selfish standpoint I'd love to see more glasses-wearing nerd girls with smallish breasts and broad bums.
This reminds me of something I've been wondering and plan to research: Did the increase in sexualized images of women and fetishization of pronounced female sex characteristics arise partially as a reaction to the Puritanical idea that sexuality, especially in regards to the lust that women were (and still are) often blamed with inspiring in men, is sinful and morally wrong?
Mmm, there might be some of that, but America isn't unique in this regard (and it's also not leading the times). Western Europe was under the heel of some pretty extreme religious beliefs, too; these ideas originated there, after all. And while Catholicism is no Puritanism, it holds the same views about sex. In fact that religion still holds that sex for any reason but procreation, even with your spouse, is sinful, which is something most American Protestant churches have at least left behind.
You can find carvings of fertility icons, of ancient African origin, that show even more exaggeration than stuff like Dragon's Crown. There are some stylistic differences (the African designs have the breasts hanging down to the ground with the woman depicted sitting, for example) but the focus remains there.
I'd chalk up the modern focus on exceptional breast size to two things:
1. Augmentation surgery now exists. This makes it more available, which makes it more common, which kind of feeds an expansion loop of sorts (to a certain extent). Augmentation also implies wealth, which contributes to attractiveness on its own.
2. I'd say this is the bigger one: better health. People in the developed world have better health than ever before. While genetics plays a large role, there is a link between a girl's breast size development and her childhood health (diet in particular). Health has always been a large component of attractiveness. Consider the once appeal of women with more "plump" body types -- back when it was common to be skinny and hungry instead.
Fleur de Alys on
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Out of curiosity, I'd be very interested to see a repeat of the study where its men instead of women that the subjects are looking at. I wonder if we'd see the same result or not.
I fully support the de-sexualization of *both* genders in our popular media, as I have found the T&A approach to be quite disgusting. However the press needs to stop yanking psychological studies and presenting their findings as the One True Finding. Without understanding the basis behind implicit association tests and cognitive neuroscience, it is impossible to have any reasonable discussion about the findings.
Plus, any finding is meaningless without a good comparison. Why only examine whether men's cognitive processes of women change based on sexualization? Why not also examine women's cognitive processes as a good comparison? Is it really a problem of men's attitudes towards sexualized women, or is it more a question of how the human brain processes sexualized images?
I fully support the de-sexualization of *both* genders in our popular media, as I have found the T&A approach to be quite disgusting. However the press needs to stop yanking psychological studies and presenting their findings as the One True Finding. Without understanding the basis behind implicit association tests and cognitive neuroscience, it is impossible to have any reasonable discussion about the findings.
Plus, any finding is meaningless without a good comparison. Why only examine whether men's cognitive processes of women change based on sexualization? Why not also examine women's cognitive processes as a good comparison? Is it really a problem of men's attitudes towards sexualized women, or is it more a question of how the human brain processes sexualized images?
I will admit to being fine with men being MUCH more sexualized. There's certainly more of it now then there used to be but I'm comfortable with more. I understand this may make me a terrible hippocrite OH WELL
Velma's got glasses and freckles. Two out of three ain't bad, butt...
She could have the rest. She's happily not wearing skin hugging clothes so she could be anything under there.
I love Velma.
You know, I hardly ever see people draw Daphne, but Velma is depicted all the time. Odd then that we more often see conventionally attractive Daphne type characters in games but not more Velmas (heck, I'd settle for an Irma).
Posts
What are you disagreeing with, exactly? That a culture with a Boys Club attitude can result in more people having a Boys Club attitude?
Look. Okay. I'm just trying to understand your guys' stance. That's why I've been asking questions. I didn't get how those 2 points overlap, I still don't. I don't care anymore. I won't bother you anymore. Forget I posted anything. I'm sorry.
@Cucco Leader Try reading the first one or two articles linked in the OP. From there, if you have more quesitons about things, skim the other articles and see if they're addressed there. If not, come back.
All appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, we are primarily happy to talk about this stuff.
Please don't feel discouraged from asking questions if you are legitimately trying to figure something out. The only reason some of the posters in this thread might get a little bent is because for every person like you who is trying to learn something there has been another who has to be repeatedly told time and again to read things that they have asked about before and have been answered before. All anyone asks as far as this thread goes is that if you have a question that you try to do a little bit of reading before asking the question that way we don't needlessly retread the same information. It's part of the reason why there is a massive list of links to articles and other pieces of information in the OP.
EDIT: Also, beat'd. Damn your short and simple response Wyborn. Quit being better than me. :P
FFXIV - Milliardo Beoulve/Sargatanas
Well when you put it that way you you defeat my entire argument!
I guess what I'm disagreeing with is that it is inevitable, not that it isn't more likely to propagate. Maybe I'm not understanding your argument correctly, but I feel like the number of people on planet Earth who are not complete dickbags like this are at a minimum. More people, like those of us engaging in intelligent conversation right here, can move this problem to the back burner despite the content like this.
There are all kinds of games about all kinds of shit around, and no one (I hope) is saying it shouldn't exist.
In my closer to ideal world though, more people would look at that and go "wow thats kind of tacky and gross"
The amount of people who look at it and straight up do not notice theres an issue is what bothers me, because that's an attitude that seems to pervade to a lot of things.
Like, theres a guy in the other thread who was saying (parphrasing) "whats the big deal, tits and ass, thats the normal way advertising is everywhere."
Maybe the "normal way advertising is" is kinda bad?
That's fair.
Now, do you acknowledge that in a Boys Club kind culture, you wouldn't be getting adverse affects from it yourself? God knows I don't, not really. I'm a dude. If the culture benefits dudes, I get no ill from it. Right?
So is it possible that, if this stuff isn't brought to my attention, I wouldn't notice it at all? I think so. It was true for years and years.
Does that seem reasonable?
Also compounding the second issue is that apparently the guy does not speak English as a first language, because he at least comprehends the issue and took it seriously enough to give a real response
This is a very specific statement -- men who are sexist don't perceive sexualized women as fully human.
There are two ways to fix this. One is to remove all imagery of sexualized women. The other is to remove the sexism.
This is a really interesting statement that I'd love to see expanded upon. This fires off a dozen different questions in my mind immediately.
Now this one is weird. Frankly I find it irresponsible to put these few sentences together in an article and just leave it at that. Essentially they're saying "if you can see a woman, even if she's dressed, then you will see her as less human." So, we go for the burka? Of course not, nobody rational is arguing for that. What, then? Is it merely an artifact of how our brains process visual patterns? Then why even mention it? Does it also happen when you look at a man's appearance (fully dressed)? Is it all "people" that "dehumanize" or just "sexist" people as the new study suggests? And what happens when a person "ends" the focus on appearance (for example, upon interacting about something entirely unrelated). Does the brain throw a "switch" that reverts the person to full "human nature traits" status? Or does it carry over?
I want more info about this one, too. This one sounds like it's from miseducation. I know I sure used to have this problem; my super-religious upbringing absolutely taught me to be judgmental and distrusting of women dressed sexually. I fixed it in myself. Can we fix this in people in general? Do we do this by sexualizing sincere, trusting, likable, warm characters to create that mental association and by reducing the tendency of having female villains loaded up on sex?
All men? The "high in sexism" men? Did the "sexualized" images also have the women looking less assertive and more submissive?
Actually, there's no comment in any of these examples of controlling for the apparent assertiveness of the model or character in the image. Might that be a bigger factor? There's a tendency for sexualization to add submissiveness, which is terrible and needs to stop.
That's not surprising. There's this society-wide belief that lust and sexuality is mindless and banal. Most people won't admit to viewing porn (even though they do). Sex shops are usually seedy-looking and at the edge of a "bad" part of town. Women that dress attractively are slut-shamed and men are seen as gay. As soon as you put moral judgments on someone, you empathize with them less, care less about their trials.
This sucks and needs to change, yesterday.
Seems reasonable.
All right.
here are some articles that lead into my point:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/29/1reasonwhy-we-are-all-responsible/#more-133548
http://digitalnoms.com/2012/12/03/i-am-a-woman-yep-i-said-it/
http://alivetinyworld.com/2012/11/27/too-many-reasons-why/ <-this one, in particular, merits looking at
http://www.polygon.com/2012/11/28/3699422/sexism-gaming-twitter-discussion-1reasonwhy
Now, I think
I think what you're saying is, well, not everyone's an asshole. And that's very true. Not everyone is an asshole, and not everyone is overtly sexist. Lots of people aren't sexist at all!
But we agree that a Boys Club culture feeds Boys Club mentalities. We agree that you and I wouldn't notice sexism against women in the same way a woman would.
And, based on those articles, I think you and I will agree that women have to deal with a lot of shit in the game industry that guys, by virtue of their gender, do not have to experience. This topic is, after all, primarily about the shit that women deal with in developing games, and issues that feed into that.
So not all guys are assholes or misogynists.
But based on what's being said here, on what these women have experienced, about the expectations around women and video games, or women and sex, expectations that reflects on my wife and your wife and your daughter, can we agree that too many men are?
I think what annoys people is that this is in fact only slightly exaggerated from the industry baseline. If the industry had mostly respectful and non-titillating depictions, people would probably be laughing with Kamitani - this would clearly be a parody, something meant to be funny and wink at the player about ye olden tropes of classic fantasy.
But that sorceress is not one parody among a lot of serious fare. It's in fact just a step further than what we already have. Because this is an industry where we have games like TERA Online, and where females are objectified in almost every step of the way. It's, in all honesty, not totally removed from some of the stuff I have seen in my DS games, to the point where the only thing it elicited from me at first was a sigh and an eyeroll because this is the kind of shit we put up with in most games, only just a little more, but the idea that this might be a joke never even occurred to me because it never is. And people seem to be starting to get markedly tired of it. I am starting to get markedly tired of it.
I've had some weird experiences in my mental development lately because, for anybody who's known me for a fair while can tell you, I'm actually an asshole. Well, more likely I was. Some behaviors were presented back to me with a "hey, you're being an asshole. don't do that" and it was not effective at all. When I made these discoveries on my own however, I immediately changed my behavior and people are having a hard time trusting that this "new me" is legit.
I want the assholes of the world to operate like this. Put them in a scenario where they can see the effects for themselves and come to the conclusion that "this is not an OK way to act". I don't want that to stop the art we see, just the attitudes. I would assume the art would become more tame as a byproduct over time though.
The problem is people, in my experience, don't like being presented with their faults and tend to resist change. So basically what we're doing here is making it worse. OH GOD EVERYBODY STOP.
@Cucco Leader, censorship is forcible suppression. "But," people say, "isn't there de facto censorship through things like peer pressure?" And this seems appealing for a moment until you consider that we constantly exert social pressure through approval and reproval for everything. If a celebrity comes out and undertakes a cause to eliminate childhood vaccinations in spite of all evidence, we don't say "you can't criticize that, that's censorship!" It's not as if the only two acceptable options are praise or silence. Note that this doesn't inherently label social pressure right or wrong: it just is, and it can go many ways.
Now, accept for the sake of argument that the things people are condemning are sexist, to see it from their point of view. Is it wrong to censure (the negative peer pressure, as opposed to the enforced rule of censorship) it? If it was racism, would it be wrong to censure it? Homophobia? Anti-vaccinations?
Everybody experiences stuff and learns stuff differently. And once they have the germ of an idea in their heads, they tend to apply it to a lot of different things that they see.
No, we're not.
Concencus changes peoples opinions though even if they consciously deny it, this is how you get things like the fallacy of the middle ground, people assume that since lots of people are saying X, there must be some truth in it, even if its not outright true.
People can deny their views are changing even as they change, (then often deny that they were ever different to begin with.)
This reminds me of something I've been wondering and plan to research: Did the increase in sexualized images of women and fetishization of pronounced female sex characteristics arise partially as a reaction to the Puritanical idea that sexuality, especially in regards to the lust that women were (and still are) often blamed with inspiring in men, is sinful and morally wrong?
I mean, just look at the analysis of Cortana's appearance and the reactions here to it. The initial design of Cortana was slim with few pronounced female sex characteristics, while the Halo 4 design depicts a full-figured woman. I really wonder how people would react if Halo 1 Cortana was rendered the same way as Halo 4 Cortana. Sure, people would say "why did they make her look more like a real naked woman?", but I bet people would care less because the design would not have pronounced female sex characteristics.
It's interesting to me that the more pronounced a female character's sex characteristics are the more criticism the design receives. I know posters here criticize such designs because they are meant to appeal to men, but people unconcerned with feminist ideals would also react negatively to the same designs because they would find them indecent and blame them for causing sexual promiscuity. One group is saying "sexualized depictions of women are sexist" and another is saying "sexualized depictions of women are sinful".
I know the extremely large breasted ideal is a recent development in Western culture, and I don't see much evidence that it is based on some inherent behavioral trait (if it was we'd see statues from ancient Rome depicting Venus with breasts bigger than her head). I'm thinking this ideal might have arose because womens' bodies, especially those with more pronounced female sex characteristics, were demonized as causing lust in men, and as the U.S. continues to actively rebel against traditional American Christian moral values those once taboo traits have become fetishized (an idea that the U.S. media has spread to other countries).
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-big-questions/201008/sexualized-women-are-seen-objects-studies-find
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120725150215.htm
This isn't a matter of how strong willed you are as a person. Your brain is doing these things without your consent. So is mine.
On my sleeve, let the runway start
Is this a 'activism annoys me' post?
I mean, people are welcome to whatever views they want. Just expressing them in that much snark is kinda goosey to the extreme.
Have you watched the #1reasontobe panel from GDC? Where, for example, Brenda Romero talks about going to E3 having to walk past some woman's asscheeks every day, and having the men speaking to her professionally constantly saying "You have to admit she has great tits and ass" and how she felt sexually harassed by that entire atmosphere? How is that only "fictional"?
On my sleeve, let the runway start
You could have just said "I don't underatand". It's shorter to type out and then you don't look like a goose.
@REG Rysk: Did you just pull out the "wait, wait, wait, wait, wait... let me explain to you how to talk to me argument?" The one that was specifically listed in the "Top 5 Ways People Try To Derail Feminist Discussions"? Maybe you should review the previous thread a bit because you have some misconceptions about some fundamental ideals that have been discussed at length.
Furthermore, based on your posting, it looks like to me that you are, in fact, deeply sexist. Here is how I came to that conclusion:
What you have illustrated here is one of the oldest, most subtle, and probably the most powerful types of misogyny there is. You have a daughter, so you are probably aware that sex is fantastic. It is among the greatest of human experiences, but you don't want her to have that... WITH HER HUSBAND. What you are doing is a form of slut shaming. An insidious method of robbing women of their sexual agency and a gross form of dis-empowerment.
Ask yourself this... what are you actually protecting her from? Why is it such a bad thing for someone's daughter to seek out multiple sexual partners but not our sons? If you had a son, would you want him to remain a virgin forever?
My next bit of supporting evidence is the fact all of your posts (as of the writing of this one) make the argument that basically states:
"I can look at sexy images and not be transformed into a sexist asshole so it's not really a problem."
Not once have you ever considered the fact that maybe we shouldn't sexually objectify women not because of how it makes you, the man, act, but because of how it makes women uncomfortable. You have not once, in all the posts I've read, ever even considered that your male perspective might be irrelevant compared to how gratuitous, sexual objectification makes women feel.
Your posts are further made incorrect by the fact that you actually are subtly and deeply sexist. You want to deny your own daughter's sexual agency with her husband. You frame all your arguments from a male perspective. You pulled out the classic "If feminists want me to take them seriously, they need to talk to me nicely and with respect" white male privilege argument.
Right on! This is a very important point, and I think it's one of the sticking points for a lot of people. It's incredibly easy to recognize and respond to sexism on an interpersonal, case by case basis. Some guy decides to call your boss a bitch because she acts assertive and confident. Yeah, that guy is clearly a sexist jerk. I think most of us would have no problems recognizing that behavior as sexist and problematic.
But, sexism is also a systemic feature that we are all unwittingly shaped by, and it is much harder to get people to recognize that. Peggy McIntosh wrote an incredibly famous article about white privilege and male privilege. Someone online went out of their way to publish some of the attributes that McIntosh describes as male privilege in the article. Probably worth a look for the thread: http://sap.mit.edu/content/pdf/male_privilege.pdf
I'm a feminist. I don't have a sense of humor.
(Sorry, I didn't read the tone in your post at all... Guess I fell into the sarchasm.)
He didn't say daughter, he said kid and then specificaly said guy/gal. Doesn;t that mean it's just speculation?
Dude, step off a bit. It's been a nice, civil conversation, and that shit is heinous, incorrect, and uncalled for.
Tim Minchin kinda put this best:
And it's a wrong and ridiuclously often leapt to fail-argument. No one is saying that all images need to be 100% couched in reality or that everyone in media needs to be average looking or less.
But of course, unless they make that false logic jump then they don't actually have an argument.
You can find carvings of fertility icons, of ancient African origin, that show even more exaggeration than stuff like Dragon's Crown. There are some stylistic differences (the African designs have the breasts hanging down to the ground with the woman depicted sitting, for example) but the focus remains there.
I'd chalk up the modern focus on exceptional breast size to two things:
1. Augmentation surgery now exists. This makes it more available, which makes it more common, which kind of feeds an expansion loop of sorts (to a certain extent). Augmentation also implies wealth, which contributes to attractiveness on its own.
2. I'd say this is the bigger one: better health. People in the developed world have better health than ever before. While genetics plays a large role, there is a link between a girl's breast size development and her childhood health (diet in particular). Health has always been a large component of attractiveness. Consider the once appeal of women with more "plump" body types -- back when it was common to be skinny and hungry instead.
She could have the rest. She's happily not wearing skin hugging clothes so she could be anything under there.
I love Velma.
Plus, any finding is meaningless without a good comparison. Why only examine whether men's cognitive processes of women change based on sexualization? Why not also examine women's cognitive processes as a good comparison? Is it really a problem of men's attitudes towards sexualized women, or is it more a question of how the human brain processes sexualized images?
I will admit to being fine with men being MUCH more sexualized. There's certainly more of it now then there used to be but I'm comfortable with more. I understand this may make me a terrible hippocrite OH WELL
You know, I hardly ever see people draw Daphne, but Velma is depicted all the time. Odd then that we more often see conventionally attractive Daphne type characters in games but not more Velmas (heck, I'd settle for an Irma).