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So the argument for "women are treated unjustly by western society" boils down to "individual artists don't create art in the way we like it".

A woman is just as much a full human being as a man and women's human right's should not be up for debate, so don't treat it as one.

At no point have I treated human rights, for men or women, as being up for debate. They are not, nor should they be.
It is starting to feel rather humorous that you keep acting as if I did, though!

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always give a feminist an excuse to be offended."

Equal rights between parents is a great idea, but an embryo inside a woman is not the same as a child.

Yeah, that's the other sticky subject of debate: at what point is that embryo a living human being. Alas, that topic will get us to travel down the abortion legality rabbit hole, and I am really not in the mood for that one today.

Men and women should not, in my opinion, have equal say over the womans body. That would be akin to slavery. But the father and mother should both have equal rights over their child, so the line is not quite as clear as one might think, as the aforementioned abortion debate has proven.

Killing is also very much against the law, so to speak of person on person violence as an injustice is true, but bringing gender into the matter seems extraneous to me. Violence against a woman is no more just or unjust than violence against a man, unless you're suggesting changing the laws to make one even more illegal, or harshly punished, than the other. Which in turn would mean we have to assign a measurable value to a mans life and a womans life, measured in how harsh the penalty is for damaging one over the other. Again, a sticky subject, at least if you consider equality among the genders.

And you can say sexism (in the west) doesn't exist and then a moment later imply that men ought to have rights over an embryo inside a woman's body. This is incomprehensible to me, and seems totally incompatible with egalitarianism.

How are equal rights between parents incompatible with egalitarianism? As there is a continued and increasing push to turn the process of raising children into an equal effort in order to free women from that particular burden and give them a fully equal footing in life, it seems to me that this should extend to all parts of a child's life.

I also notice that both times I've asked for examples of modern injustices toward women in a western society, or the Nordic countries more specifically, this question has gone unanswered.

Or if you truly did care for equality, could you name and acknowledge any gendered injustice western women face or name anything you've done to further gender equality?

I cannot really think of any injustices that western women face. From a legal standpoint, and at least within the justice systems I am familiar with, women are on equal terms with men and in many cases enjoy freedoms men do not (such as being freed from conscription in Finland, and being treated more gently when facing criminal prosecution for a wide variety of crimes). I would be most curious to hear one or two examples of what you consider injustices women face in western societies? Say, specifically, in the Nordic countries, since you and I are clearly most familiar with that region of the world.

The only issue in which I feel there is a debate left to be had is reproductive rights, and the right to abortion, but as the opinions on that topic are wide ranging and vary greatly from country to country and society to society, I feel I should only comment on that as far as my own country is involved. Ensuring the rights of both the mother and the father to the unborn child, let alone ensuring the rights of that unborn child, however, is a tricky business an very much depend on how we interpret the word "human" to begin with, so that is likely a conversation well beyond the scope of this thread. As always, I'll be happy to discuss elsewhere as well. My Discord and PM's are open.

As for what I do: I participate in the politics of my country by voting for candidates I feel best promote the interests of the Finnish people, which obviously includes both men and women, up to and including voting for a female presidential candidate in the last election we had (sadly, she lost). I promote meritocratic ideals where people should be rewarded and recruited based on their merit and ability, regardless of their gender. I also strive to promote female characters in the fiction I create, whether it be as protagonists or otherwise key characters of short stories I write, or in the games I develop.

Funny how this turned into "WHAM, prove your egalitarian credentials" somehow, but here we go.

Really, you think caring about equality is, in your own words, "some weird fetish"? This really says it all about where you stand, doesn't it?

As I've said, I am an egalitarian, and I care about equality. There is a difference between caring about something and doing what you can to promote it, and trying to paint every mundane action you take as being some grand crusade for equality and making a massive show out of it in order to get more attention.

It was a cost-cutting measure they would have done either way, dressed up in some progressive language in a failed bid for popularity points, largely derided and then fading into obscurity.
It's pretty ridiculous that it got traction abroad because politicians painting cost-cutting as a principled stance exists everywhere, they just use different rhetoric to fit different nations.

Basically, it's not a great idea to use third-hand accounts with clickbait headlines when talking about Sweden to native Swedes.

That sound precisely like what I figured it was. They could have just done the normal thing and said the changes were made to improve efficiency and better serve the most people with available resources, but as we keep seeing Sweden has some weird fetish about appearing to be the most progressive nation on the Earth, which gives the Finnish media plenty to laugh about! Don't worry, Swedes: we love you for it.

Found it. It was dropped in 2017. Don't know if the Guardian is considered a right-wing blog, but I also recall the same story being covered by the Finnish national broadcaster YLE.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/12/sweden-rejects-quotas-women-boardroom-listed-companies

The idea seems to have been to fine companies by up to almost half a million GBP each year if they didn't have at least 40% women on their board of directors.

In searching for this I also found another classic story of how Sweden has been turning the act of snow-ploughing more gender-equal by ensuring that footpaths are cleared of snow before roads for cars, since women don't apparently drive much in Sweden or something.

Just because a form of argument is used by bad people in some instances, does not mean the form of argument is flawed. That kind of logic makes as much sense as saying "we need to outlaw veganism because Hitler was a vegan!"

Also: did Sweden ever actually pass that one law where they threatened the government would seize assets of private corporations if they failed to fulfill gender quotas in their board of directors? I recall that being a pretty major news piece over in Finland several years back, as it was painted as "those wacky Swedes being at it again" over here. Since I haven't heard of it since, I'm guessing no.

Ah, so you seem to advocate for either some expansion of current law so it can control people more strictly, stripping them of freedoms to make personal decisions, or some other kind of extra-legal manner in which equality is enforced.

Since I believe people have various personal preferences, and should be free to apply them as they see fit, up to and including things like private businesses or religious organizations having the freedom to choose who they associate with and why, or for artists to create the kinds of characters they like, I would have to object to those kinds of attempts to trample of people's freedoms. If you take away a persons right to choose things freely based on their preference in one area of life, you might as well do the same in all areas of life, at which point the creatures you have left are no longer human. They are less than human.

I do, however, support full equality in how laws are written and applied, and wish to see that equality improve the lot of both women and men.

Clearly I do! 

Wait, so you're claiming women are actively oppressed in modern western societies? Now I am curious to see what you're thinking of!

Yes, Ali, I was making a hyperbolic joke. Well done for pointing that out. Good job.

[exactly]

At no point did I say it was a coincidence. More people getting education and the right to vote is exactly what lead to the aforementioned social advances of the LGBTTQQPPAA+ movement. The difference here is that those were minority groups being actively oppressed, and people lacked the natural freedom to influence our governments and laws. These were issues that could be rectified with clearly defined actions. Meanwhile women are neither a minority group nor actively oppressed (outside of minor religious extremist groups, and certain regions of the world, such as portions of religiously influenced Middle East, Asia and Africa, where feminism still has a clear cause). And as we are now talking about something relatively trivial in the form of the entertainment industry, the movement is naturally slower and more ponderous, because there just isn't the same kind of need or urgency for a change. Women who create entertainment aren't being locked up for daring to act outside of their assigned gender roles (well, except by other women who think they did it wrong. Hi, J.K. Rowling!)

But I do believe that change is happening, and we'll see it steadily unfold over the coming decades. How far it reaches in our lifetimes is the only question left to be answered.

[homosexuality was forbidden by law until the 1940s]

And as for natural changes over time, the idea that people just naturally started accepting LGBT people is laughable. In my homeland, lauded as one of the most progressive countries, homosexuality was forbidden by law until the 1940s,
and legally defined as a disease until the 1970s, and it only became acceptable and legal because people actively fought to make people accept it as something healthy and normal, and constant activism, which was often met by the exact same
arguments you're been making against feminism in this very thread.

Same timeline in Finland. Why do you think those classifications changed over time? That funny 30 year time skip between the shifts in attitude? It's the natural change I'm talking about in action. New generations and new ideas replacing the old.

Well, some guys will interpret anything a woman says as nagging. Not pointing any fingers, just putting it out there.

Funny you think nagging, and pointing it out, are both gendered actions. I consider both acts gender neutral.

And secondly, glasshouses and all that. You're the one who's kept saying " but why don't women make your own games/books" several times now despite me and several others point out that even if more women do that,
they still won't have the money and resources as giant companies who have the money and manpower to mass-market their stories and reach a worldwide audience most can never dream of, and you keep painting any suggestion
of how to improve anything as a fool's errand, and seemingly keep arguing for the status quo for the sake of it.

This is exactly why I asked the question of what you suggest, and the sad outcome of that is that you, just like every other person I've talked to about the topic, has found themselves in the same dead end. No concrete actions that could be taken, so all people can do is nag other people around them and hope that SOMEONE comes up with a solution. Your only suggested action was dictating more closely what books children are made to read as part of their education based on a non-educational criteria, which does seem to be along the lines of ideas I've seen other feminists have in other areas, so that checks out.

To me it seems the only paths to solving this issue are:
1) A harsh authoritarian regime that strictly controls what kinds of entertainment, and most importantly created by whom, are permitted for public consumption and in what amounts.
2) A natural change of attitudes over time, as audiences change and grow and generational changes bring about changes in demographics and interests, much like we've seen in the whole LGBTTQQPPAA+ movements success in becoming mainstream in most of the civilized world in a few short decades.

There is also a difference between criticising something, and nagging about something.

> The roof is leaking.
< I know, but we have no ladder and the roofing company won't open until Monday. I put a bucket under the leak.
> Well that's not good enough. This is all taking far too long!
< Nothing we can do at this very moment.

- 10 minutes pass.
> The roof is leaking.
< Well what do you want to do about it!?
> I'm just pointing out the issue! I can do that without suggesting a fix, right?
< ...yes

- 10 minutes pass
> The roof is leaking.
< !!!!!!

---

Still, though. Critique away! I think you have every right to point out these issues and talk about them, just like I have the right to critique your critique and, occasionally, disagree with portions of it, or challenge some of your views.
I just tend to be the practical sort, and I feel that there is a point where repeatedly complaining about an issue while not being able to suggest any concrete actions that might actually resolve the issue, becomes counterproductive. Thus I try to challenge you on the topic, to try and see if we can think of concrete actions that could resolve the matter and put an end to the need to point out these issues, as they become resolved.

Thinking back, we had to read five books in school, and I think three of them were written by women. I guess Finland is ahead of the curve in equality, or maybe it was just a fluke in my years.
Fun fact: Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers (modernly known as "And Then There Were None") still had it's original name on the copies we were given in class. Finland is not ahead of the curve in that area...

[already are]

The thing is that when you don't know about the subject, you do research, and find what people who have lived through those things say about it.
Good historical authors read history books, people writing war stories read testimonies of veterans, etcetera.
And what does it say about an author's view of women when they think 50% of humanity isn't worth speaking in depth to, empathize with, or learning enough about to portray believably?

Precisely, you do research if you want to portray something in an accurate and realistic manner. Or you don't, and you work on well known stereotypes to make something less serious. The latter is, obviously, also far easier to do, and thus more popular.
You also seem to portray this as purely a male problem, the failure to know how to write characters of the opposite sex well. I do wonder if that really is the case, though.

I've already spoken about this in this thread before; most women here already are telling their own stories in AGS games or the Fortnightly writing competition, but that still can't be compared with the vast entertainment networks that dominate the public and the broad market, all of which are strongly male-dominated. Heck, just buying a full computer plus most of the Adobe and Autodesk licenses that AAA game developers use costs more than I make in a month!

Plus you shouldn't have to be a chef in order to be allowed to say if the food tastes bad, should you?

So what do you propose, then? Some kind of government mandated balancing of power in the media industry, slashing male jobs until we have 50-50 representation? Or forced education of male artists, to ensure they create art with the correct balance of genders in a manner that accurately depicts the lived experience of women? I'm sure you're a smarter person than that, so I am genuinely curious: what do you, Blondbraid, personally believe should be done?

I suggested before that we need a slow and steady change over time, but you rejected than and demanded a faster change.
I suggest that women should create more, even on the small scale, and await for their eventual breakout successes that allow them to hit it big in the mainstream, but you shot that down as well.
All I can see is a demand: "I want change and I want it now!", but I cannot recall seeing any concrete suggestions on steps that could be taken to correct the issue, and I can't really think of any that wouldn't trample all over the freedom of artists to create what they want, how they want.

True, like stereotypes, tropes exist for a very good reason. They're often rooted in lived experience and reality, or some adaptation of those, altered to make it more entertaining to the target audience.
But alas, what is a fun trope or stereotype to one, can be disgusting to another. Like most jokes that target a type of people, whether it be blacks, whites, gay, motorcyclists, gingers or cat owners, it's often the least entertaining to the people who are the butt of the joke, or in this case, the subject of the trope or stereotype.

The more I read here, the more I feel like reverting back to that old writing guidance: write what you know.

If you are not a woman, it seems very unwise to risk treading into the territory of even trying to write female characters, for no matter how hard you try, you are more and more likely to tread on a minefield of "no, not like that". I'm sure even my depictions of female protagonists in Cold Hand Reef, or the cancelled He Watches project, are inadequate on some level. And in my other games they exist as side characters, or not at all due to limited cast of characters.

If one does not include an adequate number of female characters: you are excluding women, and thus sexist.
If one does include women, but not in the role of a protagonist or a key character: you are portraying women as less important, and thus sexist.
If one does include women as protagonists or key characters, but not to an exact standard that varies from audience to audience: you are characterizing women incorrectly, or abusing tropes (which is somehow wrong, I guess?) and thus sexist.

All of this seems to come back to the basic concept: women should create more, and be the change they want to see, rather than try to squeeze water from stone in the form of forcing established male writers to write outside of what they know.

Something very short may pale in respect to the magnum opus in your mind, but even getting small projects out of the door is pretty rewarding. Gamejams,

This is true if the goal is to release something and get that fulfillment out of completing a project, but if one sets out a goal to, even once in a lifetime, to build something bigger and more complex, then it doesn't quite work.
Knowing what the project is, and setting goals you can reach and a timeline you can follow to reach that goal are important, and come right back around to project management skills.

Reading all of this makes me think it might be interesting to create a new thread, probably in the Rumpus Room, where people can post about "the lost projects". I have at least a dozen projects of my own that reached various stages of prototyping and documentation, but died out, or have been on hold for years and years. I might make one over the coming week, to see if people are interested, unless someone beats me to it.

The complexities of developing a game, the workload required combined with a whole host of other pains that come with creative hobbies, sort of invite this kind of disaster.
In my view it mostly comes down to project management skills, segmenting of work, motivation and the people working on the project. Trying to work alone means a larger workload and more stress, and a single setback can collapse an entire project, while distributing work to a wider team consisting of multiple people creates a whole host of uncertainties and risks one simply cannot reliably manage without a vast financial budget at their disposal.

It's not the most helpful advice, I know, but all I can really say is: keep at it! Keep starting new projects, smaller or bigger, and see where they lead. Keep going back to old projects on hold regularly, and see if they might feel worth building on again, or perhaps could be converted to a new idea that takes advantage of old work. And most importantly: try to make sure you have fun all through the journey. While it's a great feeling to finish and release a game, it isn't worth it if the journey to get there was too painful and unpleasant to make.