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A cousin of your avatar picture? 

That was unexpectedly poetic Reiter, you wouldn't happen to write prose and essays for fancy magazines as your day job?

Also, I'm surprised that there was a Nicole Kidman film based on Gertrude Bell, I might just see it from curiosity. I'm not a super fan of Werner Herzog's films or his methods, but my mother adores his works
and he's an acclaimed filmmaker among "culture-cardigans" who consider any mainstream audience critiquing it for being boring to be a badge of honor. 
Plus I guess in my opinion, I'd rather have a boring than an unpleasant and malicious film when it comes to portraying real people.

That all being said, I can't help but feel as though there's something incorrect about this whole discussion. 

Right. We were talking about discrimination tests in the first place.

Are really useful in videogaming?

_

(sorry if my first reply in this thread started a separate discussion and sidetracked the initial question) 

As for tests, I can agree that the Bechdel test isn't too useful when it comes to video games, due to many games not featuring conversations between npc's in the first place (everybody just hanging out waiting for the player to interact with them being an old standard in gaming),
but that doesn't mean other forms of discrimination tests don't matter. As I mentioned previously, as a girl, only seeing boys in video game marketing and only seeing burly men with guns on the covers made me feel alienated as a kid, and it was seeing cool female game protagonists like Lara Croft, April Ryan and Zoe Castillo that got me into gaming, and eventually made me want to try more different games (including those with burly gunmen on the cover). So yeah, I think representation matters in gaming because I've experienced the effects of it firsthand, and I think having media tests can be useful in discerning broad trends and help people start to think and discuss the matter.

Maybe an alternative to the Bechdel test more adapted to video game-style narratives would be to ask if a game has;
1. A named female character (with an actual name, not a title)
2. Who has a full conversation with the player character/protagonist (more than two sentences),
3. And her conversation isn't about a romantic or sexual relationship with the player character

Any thoughts on this?

By the way, speaking of comparison between people getting killed and people getting sexually or otherwise humiliated, I wanted to add this example that a lot of young boys, at least of my generation, were not opposed to the idea of "dying heroically" for whatever cause seem just, or withstand a "torture" where they ofcourse won't break and tell enemy any information. Assuming the "torture" is something like beating ofcourse. On another hand I doubt anyone would be excited of this idea if the "torture" was rape. Innocent kids don't realize that may be a possibility, and those of older age tend to switch it out from imagination unconsciously.

I think you hit the nail on the head, and I think that this is why, in war propaganda, they are fine depicting all other sorts of violence and they are fine showing or implying women being threatened by sexual violence because it's a way to rally men into acition by going "look what they're going to do to our women!", but the sexual violence and rape men suffer in war is kept secret, because while you can die heroically in battle, or be a brave symbol whilst being tortured/executed (the film Braveheart springs to mind), you can't portray suffering rape as something heroic, because that crime is all about humiliating and depowering the victim and the perpetrator taking enjoyment from doing it. I remember being absolutely shocked when I read this article and seeing just how prevalent wartime rape against men was, because it's virtually never brought up in any media, documentary or fiction, and I think a big reason for it is that it would be immensely harder for men to fantasize about going to war if they considered it to be a risk they themselves would have to risk. 

As for Call of Duty, I should have specified that I played the first CoD in the series, which didn't have any female soldiers in it. 

Not in general, but men being raped is sometimes played for laughs. You have your soap-dropping jokes, and then there are things like Hangover 2. It's a bizarre one - the guy is raped on his wedding day and the actor plays it more or less straight, no goofiness, you can see he's genuinely devastated. But the whole thing is framed as just one of those craaaaazy shenanigans the guys go through and the main issue ends up being how he's gonna hide it from his bride-to-be. The weird tonal mismatch almost makes the movie interesting .

I strongly recommend you watch this video by Pop Culture Detective, which explains why this trope happens pretty well. I don't like it either. 

So far I find the studies Blondbraid linked to be most compelling here. There are a lot of different assumptions being made about how people interpret and react to scenes of sexual violence, so I'd be curious what actually happens in people's heads, in relation to which aspects of the scene, and all the different factors that play into it. That's also why I find attempts like the Unconsenting Media database potentially misleading - it tries to bundle a vast array of differently framed and executed scenes into a handful of categories, which may not be representative of how people perceive those scenes in context.

I should have added that Unconsenting media isn't meant to be a scientific database, it's man purpose is to give people a chance to look up weather a film depicts sexual abuse beforehand and decide if they want to watch it. If you have depression, anxiety or PTSD, such sites are a lifesaver.

Personally, though, I've come to feel that there is no ethical way to depict rape on screen because no matter how heinous you think you make the scene, some creep will find it arousing. Then, there's also the issue of actors being abused on set, and directors specifically adding scenes of sexual assault in the script to punish them, this post links a few good articles on the subject.

But I gotta say that's a pretty awesome illustration! 

Then take it as a peace offering. I see your points, especially this is interesting:

How nice of you, would it be OK if I put it in my banner?

Are there studies post 1984 replicating the results? Metastudies comparing it to the influence of other types of violence in media and desensitization to violence in general? I would never have imagined that a significant number of men (30%?!) get aroused by slashers of all things. I'd also assume that if rape is used for shock value or to make a villain particularly disgusting, it must be because it's seen as horrible, not that it makes it look less horrible. What the... ?!

I'm afraid I don't have any similar studies I've read in full on hand, but I do know one of the researchers conducting the study, Neil Malamuth, did a lot of reasearch in the same field after the 1980s study; https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DJ7AWaoAAAAJ&hl=en

As for authors using it for shock value and show villains doing it, the sad fact is that even if the act is portrayed as evil, it's still normalizing it, and by treating it as a normal and logical consequence of male frustration, it makes it easier to blame victims for a danger people think they should have seen coming. It's similar to the quote "The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic", if you've seen graphic depictions of something a dozen times, many people simply stop being shocked and disgusted by it.

And sadly, I'm not surprised so many men got aroused by Slashers, because in most such films, the victims are almost always played by conventionally attractive women and displayed in a sexual manner,
and there is a study showing objectified images of women makes it harder for viewers brains to differentiate between living people and objects. 
It's a lengthy text, but there's a short video recapping the findings.

It sounds like the overall answer to my questions, is that because some people are unable to see things from another person's perspective, they assume that others can't see things from their perspective.

Also, for the record, my sister also grew up with games, and I asked her, and she really didn't give a crap about the male orientation in them back then or even now.
I'm not sure whether my sister's experience or Blondbraid's experience is the norm. If I had to take a guess, probably Blondbraid's. But it's all anecdotal anyway.

That all being said, I can't help but feel as though there's something incorrect about this whole discussion. 

Well, I find this hard to explain too, but there is an entire subreddit dedicated to men writing women poorly. Not that there aren't bad female authors, but I've never heard of a female author who wrote okay female characters but struggled writing a believable male character, or skipped out on writing male characters altogether.

As for your sister, if there's any chance she grew up gaming together with you, chances are that having someone else to play male-geared games together with contributed to her not feeling left out in the same way I did, but if not, it'd be interesting to hear more of her perspective.

I know I've made this joke before, but if there's a bunch of anime girls with cat ears,
then by all laws of balance, there has to be cats with human ears somewhere.

This might be hard to believe, but I didn't realize you were a woman until your last post - for some reason, "Blondbraid" made me think of a Viking beard or something .

Heh, same here. I remember when I first figured out Blondbraid was a woman.
The username really does make you think of a viking beard. Or maybe a viking ponytail. 

Well, Mulan was my favourite Disney princess growing up. 

Also, I have a question somewhat based on this discussion.
Why do males have to be displayed as masculine and females have to be displayed as feminine, for it to count as those genders being properly represented?
Why can't a man be feminine and a woman be masculine? What even constitutes as being masculine and feminine anyway? Aren't those purely cultural concepts? Aren't we forcing genders into stereotypes by "properly" representing them in this way?

Well, I think there is a misunderstanding in this discussion because I certainly think you can write a female character without any surface trappings of femininity (like feminine clothes or doing feminine jobs) and still make her a believable character. I think the problem is that even if a woman chooses not to conform to femininity, you're still socialized as a woman and has a woman's body will approach several situations differently from a man. For example, when I was growing up, I was the only girl in my class who played video games, and even when I played alone in my room, I could feel weird for wanting to try Call of Duty, and only seeing men in that game, I constantly felt reminded that it wasn't made for me and I was some random anomaly for liking it, so even when I've done things not typically associated with femininity, I've still been aware that I'm a woman and that a man's experience of the same thing would be different.

If I could come with a non-gender example, imagine an American person writing about someone in Europe just as they would write an American, and have this European character do American stuff like thinking of politics in a Republican/Democrat divide, or tape their trashcan lid shut in order to prevent raccoons and opossums from digging into it, even if the American author tried to write the European as a well-rounded person and tried avoiding making them a national stereotype, it'd still feel weird if they didn't take these the differences between nationalities into account, right?
I hope this helps explain things, in addition to the good explanation Babar already gave.

Also, with Kirby, he's a weird pink blob, and I say people will have a lot more suspension of disbelief when it comes to non-human cartoon characters. But if you set out to create a character meant to be an average "everyman", and they are supposed to be somewhat realistic humans, people will expect them to be relatable to a higher degree. And I don't think characters have to be relatable in the sense that they have the same personality like me, but they do need to be relatable in the sense that you can tell why they are feeling the feelings they feel or take different actions throughout their story.

Years ago, when I first discussed different ideas for a username with my mom, she told me "Blondbraid" was rather feminine and it might risk getting associated with bimbo /barbie stereotypes, so I didn't think of it that way.

Yeah, it seems pretty obvious in hindsight. But I swear, that "arrogant" post, that was you being treated like a man . I guess because it rhymes with Bluebeard? It's a captain's name!

Well, you proabably should think over how you treat men in that case!   

But I gotta say that's a pretty awesome illustration! 

[Poe's Law]

That honestly sounds like the way stuck up atheists think Christians see atheists. Are we certain that the film wasn't made by atheists? Because I could definitely see myself making a film like that. 

Poe's Law, everyone. 

[did]

Yeah, I see how that could have come across as arrogant - and it was a little bit, but towards anime fans (sorry! ). I genuinely tried to recall any misogynistic rape/torture scenes I've seen and struggled to do so, while scenes of people (mostly men) being murdered in various ways popped up in my head one after another, and so I felt you were exaggerating. Although to be fair, it's pretty much always men committing the violence, regardless of the gender of the victim. Which mirrors real-world statistics I'm afraid.

Yeah, I'm really not surprised, like I've said before, lot's of men don't get it, and I've seen dozens of other guys do exactly the same mistake before. Men being killed in action scenes is not the same as a helpless victim being raped, I know several men who are perfectly fine watching James Bond movies and films like Saving Private Ryan but visibly recoil at the mere suggestion of watching Pulp fiction or Deliverance, not because they are more violent, but because they show men being raped, and it's frustrating how many men get this when it comes to male viewers but can't understand women feel the same on depictions of female characters. Like, I'm fine watching Lara Croft and similar female action heroes get shot at, risk death in ancient death traps, and fight female opponents, but this article pissed me off.

In any case, I could be wrong. If you want, I can try to list the last 10 movies / TV shows I've watched and you point out the violence against women that you see in those.

Well, I think searching their titles on Unconsenting Media might be a better idea. Granted, not all movies and TV-series has been added to their database, but most mainstream works can be found there. From my experience, their statistics are a pretty good representation of mainstream TV.

Maybe just one question: is the implication supposed to be that Martin is a misogynist?

Personally, no, I don't think Martin intended to be misogynistic, however, I think he makes a common mistake lots of male writers do in thinking that merely showing tons of gruesome violent acts against women counts as a good criticism of misogyny and woman-hating. However, firstly, many men fail to understand that sexual violence isn't the same as fantasy violence, as author Chuck Wendig puts it;

If I were to sit in a room full of 100 people, how many of them do you think have been beheaded, cock-chopped, throat-slit, war-murdered, skull-asploded, and so on, and so forth?
Probably none.
Except Gary. Poor Gary.
But how many do you think might’ve undergone sexual assault or rape?
That’s a higher number, innit?

Secondly, more often than not, throwing in scenes of sexual violence normalizes it to the viewers, and rather than thinking it's wrong, many viewers start thinking it's normal, and looking at the Game of Thrones discourse, I've seen an alarming number of people defend the rape scenes using similar arguments used against real-life victims! There have even been scientific studies showing rather disturbing connections between watching films with sexist violence on screen, and increased victim-blaming in the audience.

EDIT: This might be hard to believe, but I didn't realize you were a woman until your last post - for some reason, "Blondbraid" made me think of a Viking beard or something . So here's a question: is it wrong if that changes how I read your posts on this topic? Because I have to admit it does a bit, which makes my whole "gender isn't important" spiel sound somewhat hypocritical . I'm conflicted!

Okay, this is actually the first thing you've written here that did surprise me! Years ago, when I first discussed different ideas for a username with my mom, she told me "Blondbraid" was rather feminine and it might risk getting associated with bimbo /barbie stereotypes, so I didn't think of it that way. As for your question, I'd say it's complicated because as much as I'd like to be judged as a person rather than being judged for my gender, I think it's wrong to deny one's sex and gender strongly colors one's experiences and outlook on the world, because I certainly read your replies seeing you as a man and with the perspective that many men never have to think about such matters unless someone brings it up to them, and while I think that the advice to write women as people isn't wrong per sé, I've seen plenty of male writers fall into the trap of writing women like men who just look like women, because in their eyes, a well-rounded human being = man. It's similar to video games where you can choose the gender of the hero, but if you choose to play as a woman you get a female hero who visits strip clubs, participates in all-male sports tournaments, and has a bunch of female NPCs otherwise portrayed as straight suddenly fawn over her, none of which is particularly relatable to most women. 

[just because they are women]

Weird, I don't remember ever having this issue. I feel like there have always been plenty of stories around where men get treated at least as badly as women. Maybe you watch too much anime?

I like George R. R. Martin's take: just write women as if they were people. Controversial, I know.

I really hope you didn't mean to come across as so arrogant as you sound like in your reply, but I've literally seen exactly the same arguments coming from different guys almost a hundred times by now, and it's galling to have to explain this over and over again.

If it wasn't clear enough in the comic I posted, I'm not saying I'm against women in fiction suffering any trauma ever, what I'm specifically railing against are gratuitous scenes of sexual violence, rape, and women being tortured just because they are women, and this phenomenon is very much not seen in male characters in any mainstream media, and the few times the rape of a man is shown, the work quickly becomes infamous for showing something so horrific to male viewers. I ask, would you feel comfortable watching the scene where Ned Beatty is violated by the villains in Deliverance? And even if you personally would be, would you expect the broad majority of other men to be ok with having to watch such scenes?

And I've virtually avoided all anime, but it's not like it's easy to avoid this stuff in other media. According to the site Unconsenting media, only about 26% of TV-series doesn't feature rape or sexual assault.

And while there are worse authors at writing women, George R. R. Martin is a terrible example to bring up in this discussion considering how criticized he's been for not only including several hundred instances of female characters being raped, often in a manner that bears little to no matter to the plot, victims reduced to "background flavor" so to speak, he's also been criticized for describing female character's bodies in a voyeuristic manner even when they're meant to be through the perspective of the woman the body belongs to. I'm seriously perplexed you managed to miss this whole discussion when the TV-series aired, and I could easily link to dozens of essays written on the subject, but I'll limit myself to one, you can read it here.

I don't have infinite time and energy to explain why this matters so much, not just to me but to so many other women as well, so I hope you can forgive me if I'd rather link to a blog post that explains all this pretty well.
Here is a link, I hope you can take the time to read it.

From what I've seen after that Kevin Sorbo started starring mostly in Evangelical Christian propaganda films made for right-wing Americans.

Eh, not my cup of tea, but a job is a job. Nothing wrong with that as far as I'm aware.

Well, apparently he directed and did the writing for at least one of them according to imdb, and there's not been much money in any of those films. I'm fairly certain he picked evangelical films because he likes evangelical films.

I have another test: if the game or movie is about space travel in the future, at least some of the characters should not be Americans (or at least have names which do not look like "common american name").

I mean, they could do it with Jean Luc Picard .
... and also the woman politician from "Expanse" (whom I subjectively found the only likeable character in the series lol)

That's a great point, especially when the space crew is supposed to be representing the population of Earth as a whole, it comes across as weird when everybody is coded as English/American.
...

Personally, while I think it's a useful starting point, I'm less concerned about making media pass the Bechdel test and more concerned about avoiding tropes like Women in Refrigerators, and just gratuitous scenes of female characters being tortured and killed in general. I actually got inspired to try and come up with a different test after seeing a particularly frustrating story where basically all the main female characters either got killed in a sadistic manner, sexually assaulted, or only existed for fanservice, and I just felt so tired and angry at not being able to just see an exciting story without constantly having to worry about seeing gross and nasty scenes of misogynistic violence, so I tried to draw a short comic expressing my feelings on the matter, that also served as a test similar to the Bechdel test with three basic criteria for me to want to see a film:

Spoiler

[close]

I will admit that I was pretty angry when I drew this a while ago, but I do still wish there were more films that passed the criteria I set up. 

Oh, hey, he used to be Hercules in that show I loved as a kid! Neat!

From what I've seen after that Kevin Sorbo started starring mostly in Evangelical Christian propaganda films made for right-wing Americans.

Bomber Crew is free on Humble Bundle right now:
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/bomber-crew-free-game?linkID=&mcID=102:5fff86fcf2bea658cf429d24:ot:5a32df31c438005fac3a31c9:1&utm_source=Humble+Bundle+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021_01_14_store_newsletter&utm_content=Banner

Is this how American healthcare works?

Think i will still pass on the surstromming, Blondbraid, even though you have tried your best to speak out in its defence.
Yes, women characters should be strong, but still retain their femininity.  Kathryn Janeway, in Star Trek, springs to mind.

Well, you can't win em' all. 
As for whether strong women should retain their femininity, I get what you mean, but I still liked how Ripley from the first Alen movie was originally written as a man but still worked when played by Sigourney Weaver.

I like my female characters how I like all of my characters... well written. 

True that! Too many writers throw in a character who only look cool, but never actually does anything interesting.

Also, from the sound of it, I think my mother would really like that surstromming.
She likes really strong smelling fish you see.

Maybe, but keep in mind that it doesn't smell like any regular fish.

With all the crazy stuff happening in the world right now, I think we could use more fun animals around.

Does anyone else just love maned wolves?

[STRONG]

Hi to you too, BarbWire

Please don't take the drastic action of eating a whole tin of Surstromming, if things go horribly wrong.
I had never actually heard of this...er...delicacy, but when I investigated,  it is described as the worst
smelling fish in the world. I saw a video of a tin of this fermented fish being opened and an onlooker
nearly throwing up. Cucumber has the same effect on my husband 

I've never been able to eat regular fish, and I've always found the smell of it nauseating.
However, I actually tried Surströmming for the first time last year, and it was not that bad. I think the smell of the Surströmming overpowered the disgusting smell of fish. It actually smells like a really pungent french cheese more than anything else.
Of course, I only tasted a small piece, but the key is to make sure you open the can inside a bucket of water, and once you eat it, you eat it with some chopped onions.

Though I've always thought food should be like female characters;

                                 STRONG