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Crisha
Moderator
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As you mentioned, appealing to the target demographic is always a priority in media. This is true for both East and West. It is easy to see what is targeted for the male eye once you learn to understand the cultural differences between countries like Japan and America. In terms of cultural values, Japan is Yin to America's Yang. Cultural values that the Japanese promote include harmony, group concensus, collectivism, and behaving according to status. Americans, on the other hand, value individuality, competition, efficiency, and freedom. Japanese values naturally tend to waver on the side of femininity, while American values naturally tend to waver on the side of masculinity. Therefore, is it really all that hard to understand why the Japanese might tend to value women who are more feminine? Or why more feminine women might show up in the shows targeted for the male (or female) demographic? I think that's to be expected given the culture. Overall, Japan has a strong affinity for everything cute (Pokemon characters decorating the sides of planes, etc.). Girls are required per dress code to wear skirts in school (something that would bother the shit out of me because I hate wearing skirts). America, on the other hand, prefers more masculine traditional values; therefore, it's expected that women are likely to be more masculine in comparison, or that more masculine women might show up in shows targeted for the male (or female) demographic. Now, having said all of that, I had no trouble finding both girly girls and tomboys in my female-targeted entertainment. Nancy Drew is a formative 'girl power' icon, who is strongly independent, bold, and likes to go on sleuthing adventures (all very American traits). In the Babysitters Club, Dawn, Claudia, and Stacey (and probably Mary Ann) were all girly girls, while Kristy was the sole tomboy (I'm not certain if this changed in later volumes when some of the girls got replaced) - I'm not certain where Mallory and Jessie stand. In Sweet Valley Twins, Jessica was the girly girl and Elizabeth was the tomboy. With Tamora Pierce (one of my favorite authors since she really does a great job with addressing and tackling female issues, such as periods, sex, and sexuality), Sandy, Tris, and Daine lean more on the girly side, while Daja and Alanna lean more on the tomboyish side. And then there was Barbie, Cabbage Patch Kids, Poly Pocket, My Little Pony - all quite girly. And then there's the Disney Princess line. If you notice, a lot of these come from literary entertainment. Given the information I provided in my previous post on the differences between male and female brains, it can be expected that there would be a greater female-to-male ratio in terms of the demographics of those who reads books (since women's brains are more wired for words). This is also seen in the manga world - I can't quote statistics, but I think I've read articles that state women outnumber men in the Western world in terms of who reads manga and that women are more likely to switch over to manga (from anime) as they get older. The female-to-male ratio is probably more equivalent for manga than it is novels though because it is largely visual. On the flip side, how women's and men's brains are wired can also explain why men way outnumber women in the gaming fandom - gaming is a more hands-on, interactive experience, which would appeal to brains that are more visually/spatially-oriented. Just because girly girls may not exist as much within animated entertainment doesn't mean they don't exist. They just exist in mediums that more women tend to gravitate to. I would also hope that some day that the female audience grows large enough to get targeted within these strongly male dominate fandoms. But for now, it's not like we don't have our own fandoms targeted to us. Also, in regards to American society being more accepting of femininity? I'm thinking that it will eventually flutuate that way (with the changing of the generations). I'm noticing that within workplace environment, the acceptance of EQ (Emotional Intelligence) is growing more popular in leadership roles. My male supervisor and manager strongly stand behind it, and several engineering team leaders (including myself) have taken AMA courses on it. The entire corporate group of companies I'm in seems to be strong proponents of it. I think AMA mentioned that its classes for EQ have been growing over the years. The idea behind EQ is to learn to utilize emotional intelligence in order to understand and manage you own emotions, empathize with others, and being able to effectively lead your team by uniting them behind an inspiring goal and creating interdependence (as you can see, these are all very feminine qualities). EQ is seen as a lot more valuable than IQ in terms of leadership (though the best leaders demonstrate both). Women leaders are becoming more valuable, since women are naturally seen as more emotionally intelligent. |
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dandelion_rose
 Posts: 657 Location: Kuala Lumpur |
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I find the EQ business fairly repulsive, in part because it seems to reward mediocrity (in behavior) and pushes eccentricity to the margins. Being very intuitive with an interest in the arts and slightly temperamental, that kind of emotional safe-zoneness is a killer for me. What bothers me the most is that EQ is also treated with a kind of quantifiable value, like 'you have low EQ' instead of 'you hate your workplace, you can't find people of like-mind, you don't feel your talents are appreciated'.
The almost uncritical praise for bringing in EQ makes me wonder how it'd make of someone like Steve Jobs, whose biography I am reading now. He'd spend ages (forcing others too) on details like having the light fall on the computers just right for presentations, cry during tense meetings, cry because the first iMacs came with a CD tray instead of an elegant one-dash slot, etc. I don't particularly care for IQ either. |
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Ojamajo LimePie
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Moe isn't just about girls being vulnerable; strength and intelligence can be very moe. Holo from Spice and Wolf provides a good example. She's widely considered to be moe, but is never put into a position where she needs to be saved. Holo is usually the one saving Lawrence, whether it's making a shrewd business deal or chomping down on attackers in her wolf form.
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
 Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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Trust me, you weren't the only one receiving such pathetic submissions, and it wasn't just homestuck panels that triggered the annoyed kvetching. Luckily we had a ton of great submissions. |
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jvowles
Otakon Representative
Posts: 219 Location: Maryland |
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I feel compelled to clarify: there was at least one halfway decent proposal too, IIRC, but we didn't short list any submissions this year that failed the relevance test. |
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Big Hed
 Posts: 1607 Location: Melbourne, Australia |
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Specifically in Western anime fandom I agree that's true, or is at least becoming true. For a lot of people--myself included, on the occasion I feel compelled to ascribe the term--"moe" has attenuated to more generalized feelings of admiration and adoration for a character, male or female. A natural evolution if you ask me, since the protective urges at the root of "moe" would seem to apply to a wide base of qualities that human beings value. Holo is a good example; I'd say Motoko from GitS is another, and in the male column Mutta from Space Brothers. |
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LUNI_TUNZ
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I'm surprised they didn't mention Mileena's alternate costume in the new Mortal Kombat. I mean, holy hell.
That said, I actually beat challenge 300 in like two matches with Kitana. Also, since Sailor Moon keeps getting brought up, until recently when I started re-watching I never noticed how despite being the main character she very often needs to be saved by Tuxedo Mask and his roses, at which point he spouts some cheap aphorism. |
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YotaruVegeta
 Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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Who needs to weild a heavy sword to kick ass anyway? Courtney Kraft brought up the Atlus games, and the women use a variety of weapons, from a Rapier (persona 3) a demonic alter ego (digital devil saga) or just martial arts skills (persona 4)
A Katana is beyond hack at this point in games, and so is a broadsword. I'd like to see a woman wielding an ax- battle, sword, anything. For me, if you want to gain some small victory over the actually immature or the people in arrested development, my #1 rule is "don't lose your cool!" If you rationally state your point regarding some dudebro's dudebroing, the most he can do is just say "whatever" and be off. Since I'll probably never be involved in the creation of a video game, I'm going to throw this out there: why not have an all female FPS? Valkyria Chronicles is filled with female millitary, so why not a shooter that's only women? We've got a few female fighters, with the latest one being Skull Girls, so why not go through all the genres and make everyone play as women? |
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Chagen46
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Because a game being nothing BUT women also feels as forced and fake as one of nothing but men.
Can't we just try for an even 50-50 gender split? That's better than having only one gender, in my opinion. |
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Fencedude5609
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There are so many essentially male-character-only games that having some with just female characters would be good. |
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Chagen46
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The main problem I see with that is that it tends to quickly end up just being a male fantasy given form. Quite often the girls in all-girls games are carefully designed to appeal to men instead of being actual characters.
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YotaruVegeta
Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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Then don't make it just a male fantasy. That's where good, characters with interesting personalities come in. Developers don't have to get their character ideas from the covers of men's magazines.
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TitanXL
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Anything a girl can be, do, say, act, dress, or has can be a fetish. If you look at it that way, every character panders to certain fans in some respect. I find it best to not worry what other people think of your work and just write whatever you want. People will find fault or sexualize anything. As they say, you can't please everyone, and if you try to, you just get mediocrity.
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Surrender Artist
 Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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It’s rather less than a triumph, but I think that I might at least be wrong in interesting ways, although I’m not sure if anybody will correct me in interesting ways. It basically ended up being ALL THE IDEAS ABOUT FEMININITY, ergo more monstrous than I had intended.
Unrelatedly: Does anybody know who made the image that got passed around earlier? It couldn’t’ve emerged out of nothing and it might be a little telling to know its origins.
This thread had occasioned me to read a little about feminism in an attempt to figure this out. It’s still probably more ‘tried and failed’ than epiphany, but it was worth thinking about. Some feminists do seem averse to what is known as ‘femininity’. Second wave feminists, who lived more restrictive girlhoods in the forties and fifties, saw masculinity as linked to power and so in order to attain equality, believed they had to discard femininity, which they saw as a problem. This, curiously, laid the path for a ‘girlier’ contemporary strain of feminism among women who had their girlhoods in a much less restrictive era, thanks to the efforts of their anti-feminine predecessors, and thus did not perceive a unique tie between masculinity and power, leading to a version of feminism that embraces ‘girly’ things. (To the disappointment of some older feminists) To some extent, I imagine that women might want to maintain a separate identity. It might seem counter-intuitive, but distinctly 'girly' or feminine things could be a perfect way to assert that identity. Things aren't fixed eternally in one state. Very feminine traits and behaviors might really have been weakness in the era of second-wave feminists, but society changed and they no longer need be stigmatized. To offer a dramatic example: the cross was once a symbol of death because of its use in executions, but the rise of Christianity radically changed that. I'm not saying that there should be a Girl Jesus (Jesusa?), but someone wearing pink in the sixties might have been an act of compliance to a social order that put her near the bottom, however for her granddaughter pink might be a matter of intentional choice that she is not required to make, thus part of defining her own identity. Some, however, do reject femininity and innately demeaning. The reasons for this tend to be rooted in their interpretation and conception of femininity, for example that of Professor Laura Kipnis as presented in this Salon review of her book The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability.
At some level, it’s difficult to have distinct groupings without one being in some way the lesser of the two. If we maintain distinct femininity and masculinity, the best we can hope for is, as the creepy phrase goes, “separate, but equal.” My conceptual toolbox looks (wait… toolboxes have eyes?!?) to language and draws a parallel to the fact that American blacks want to sound different from whites, whereas other analogous communities in other countries tend sound like the rest of the population. (There’s no Queen’s Ebonics, so to speak) The subject seems rather contested. A ‘girlier’ feminism that’s friendly to femininity seems to be in ascendance at the moment, but things are vaguer in the fields of argument. I’m sure as Hell not sure who’s right and it’s not really my question to answer. This uncertainty, however, doesn’t mean that the whole thing should be disregarded. I think that things like feminism find themselves internally split over some issues because it’s a planned, intentional ideology trying to act upon a world that emerged from a collection of spontaneous happenings over time. The world as it stands didn’t need to understand itself to forge its path, which can obscure just how it did so, creating extensive ambiguity that can frustrate those who want to reorder it by design and thus need to know how it happened. This article provides a slightly irritatingly glib, but very digestible taxonomy of feminisms. And, of course, for some, femininity is just an anti-feminist bludgeon.
Do these biological differences, or related ones, account for any variations in realization of sexuality? Are, for example, the stereotypical obsessions with racking up sexual conquests and slavering over sexualized images somehow secondary, or just plain 'other', consequences of neurochemstry? (And is there any possible explanation for the higher incidence of bisexuality among women from their greater production of oxytocin?)
Fittingly, the summary of William Labov’s findings on how sound change works that I noted earlier attributes change to sociable young women. I always used to use my dol… ACTION FIGURES *STROKES BEARD AGGRESSIVELY* to tell stories. I mostly had Star Trek: The Next Generation stuff, but a few others got mixed in… I think I must have had some pretty weird crossovers going on (to be published by Marvel comics next year!)
A few months ago, I read an extremely interesting article by neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky that makes that interesting claim that testosterone only exaggerates aggression that is already present with surprising insensitivity to the quantity of the hormone, emphasizing that the aggression itself is a more complex phenomenon that must derive extensively from social context. He cites, for example, a pack of spotted hyenas, an interesting species whose females are larger and more aggressive than its males, that were raised in California and did not demonstrate the normal domination of the males by the females seen in the wild packs of Africa because they were not taught the social structure. All I can really do is open my filthy, ignorant speculation to the sunlight for disinfection, but I figure that’s better than leaving it in the back of the fridge with the quasi-ambulatory mold (give him time, he’s still a growing fungus) Barring the possibility that Dr. Sapolsky is a crank, outdated or that I have misinterpreted him, he makes me wonder if the effects of other hormones might also simply exaggerate existing behavior patterns. This would make for an interesting intersection of biological and social femininity with the actual defining features being socially conditioned and merely amplified by hormones I’m not rejecting biological femininity, there’s no way in Hell that it’s the place of a dumbass poli sci and linguistics major to do that, and I still think it likely that features of human sexual dimorphism underlie social differences and it seems possible that differences in hormonal secretion patterns subtly encourage patterns in social femininity by more often exaggerating typically feminine traits, thus making them more conspicuous. Related is the idea that male aggression has a historical explanation for male violencea more historical than biological explanation[/url] that agriculture, thus manual labor elevated men socially and that social dominance is the cause. Of course that’s a philosopher’s perspective. This is all speculation built on a potential house of cards, but it has made me curious about a lot of things. For one, I wonder if there are differences in the frequency of gender-atypical people across population groups. Crudely asked: there more tomboys in America than Japan? Could there even be such variations in hormonal secretion. I recall reading that East Asians exhibit particularly pronounced sexual dimorphism and that East Asian women are particularly neotenic, so perhaps hormone secretion could show such variation too.
You remind me a little of my mother, and her mother, who’re both markedly ‘unfeminine’ in certain ways. (My mother told me a story once about how they were wrestling in the kitchen and her mother slammed my mother’s head into the oven door) I’m certainly unmanly in some respects, despite having a full beard, broad shoulders (inherited from my mother) and having once when wearing a plaid flannel shirt been asked by the Belsnickel (crazy, irritable Pennsylvania Dutch Santa Claus) how many points ‘the buck’ was, which confused the Hell out of me until my mother explained what the Hell he had been talking about (hunting… I’ve never even fired a gun). I’m notorious for my poor sense of spatial relations and lack of sense of direction; I’m a wordy bird (well, quantitatively), but not on speaking terms with most mathematics. I’m also rarely in any sense aggressive, tending to avoid or try to ameliorate conflict. Yet, I don’t tend toward strong emotional connections, don’t like to be outwardly emotional, although I sometimes wish I felt more comfortable being emotionally open, and lack strong nurturing instinct (it’s a little weird, I’ll have passing, but intense moments when I feel a desire to help, but, to my shame and regret, rarely act upon them; I guess that my heart's an autoclave) I have a loose impression that the women who appear in ‘nerdy’ circles tend to exhibit pronounced ‘masculine’ traits more than in the general population. I hesitate to make any parallel statement about males because I am one and I have learned that my perspective is completely unreliable in cases where it should be, but some stereotypes do trend toward a higher incidence of more feminine traits.
I think that you underrate yourself badly here.
When I was a child, I tended to gravitate toward characters who were the ‘smart guy’, ‘wise man’ or even just more acerbic rather than the boy scouts with a sword and macho dudes. I also distinctly remember that I wanted there to be more girls in active, important roles. That’s translated through to today when I can’t deny having a preference for anime with female leads. I do seem to prefer slightly more masculine types (I dig all of the ones that you listed, but, alas, I haven’t had a chance to see The Rose of Versailles, so I’ll put Motoko Kusanagi in Lady Oscar’s place), but by no means exclusively. A lot of relatively feminine characters have appealed to me and interesting and impressive in their own rights (Several of Kōichi Mashimo’s girls-with-guns, Maetel, Marika Katō) My tastes haven’t shifted much on male characters, but I don’t find much interest the trying-to-hard macho types who yell a lot and MUST DEFEAT THE STRRNGEST HUR DURR HURR YARRR; they annoy me. My favorite male characters tend to be more restrained, gentlemanly and maybe a little melancholy (I’m not sure if I got at what I mean, but to exemplify, some whom I admire are Jet Black, Ricardo from El Cazador de la Bruja and Capitain Gotō from Patlabor). I still think of them as fairly masculine, but not oriented around forceful dominance. Then there are occasional androgynous characters who don’t strike me as easy to peg with either, like Kino and Kurau. What’s conspicuously absent is more feminine male characters; I guess that this is a product of the limitations of what I’ve watched, but perhaps also their rarity as leads or important supporting characters. The closest I can come to one who counts is Shūichi from Wandering Son, who’s transsexual and in elementary school. Maybe Benten from Cyber City Oedo 808? Well, he was more drawn as feminine (and was originally supposed to be a woman) and I thought that the OVA was just okay, so he’s not a favorite. Actually, the only others I can think of offhand are the transvestite bandits from El Cazador de la Bruja and the somewhat unfortunate gay stereotype from Speed Grapher. Maybe there's something amiss, maybe I need to read more shōjo.
I entirely agree you about how the path should be open. In part because I hope that doing so will be mutually beneficial to men and women by establishing a precedent for fluidity of identity. I mean, masculinity has its discontents; I entirely get what Louis CK means when talks about how a man can’t say, “that strip club was wonderful.” I was going to comment more on the idea of what defines a woman’s strength, but then I realized that doing so would be a little presumptuous and would have been mostly a muddled restatement of what you wrote. I just dare a little elaboration that the drawing of conclusions and making of choices is best done with an awareness of their significance and implications. Really, this shouldn't be a burden unique to women. I think that a great deal could be improved if more men would think about the causes and results of their behavior and why they behave as they do. I think a lot of these 'women's issues' really loop around to being of interest to men, but it's not often obvious to us that they do,.
I think that this gets to what has made me cynical and suspicious about some of the talk allegedly in favor of femininity in this discussion. It seemed oriented around superficial details of appearance and behavior, gender as a kind of performance, rather than qualities that were more deeply personal and specific. It felt odd to see adamant agitation on behalf of femininity, but no confronting its more complex and challenging elements, its origins and why it’s good. There’s keenness to leap the defense of femininity when its frilly clothes, being emotionally vulnerable and kissing her man, but jump ship when it gets all gross and heavy with periods, sexual assault and social anxiety as well as seeming uninterest in other issues that might cut against women A possible significant cause of disagreement is that different people emphasize the biological and social elements of it to different extents. I tend to be more concerned about the consequences of what I think of as social femininity, where I see traditional femininity as dominant, thus secure, potentially oppressive, and not in need of defense. This is probably also part of why I sometimes interpret male support for femininity as an insincere and sexist; I see them invoking femininity not because they care about feminine women who might be marginalized, but because they can coöpt femininity to promote a status quo that they enjoy and delegitimize threats to it. Another important question is unfolding what falls within the remit of femininity. Some of it’s a question of what social femininity encompasses. Are the repressive restrictions that women in Saudi Arabia live under feminine? Are the various much less onerous restrictions historically imposed on women in the west and Japan feminine? Those limitations might ultimately be shadows of biological differences, but I doubt that they are innate, but they can be part of a culture’s concept of femininity and thus girls will be socialized to adhere to them. Under these conditions, something with a character who breaks these expectations could be seen as demeaning femininity. But, would that be a bad thing? Then there are very similar traits that represent common human features, but that have been masculinized. There is an ample history, at least in the west, of marginalizing female sexuality like the dismissal of the clitoral orgasm, the way that the vibrator was suppressed after the pretense that it was a medical device become untenable and just of women being openly sexual at all. Similarly, women, naturally, developing their physical abilities has a history of being discouraged (I believe that this was part of the premise of Taishō Baseball Girls), to the extent that I’ve heard men dismiss women as, “really a dude,” or the like for moving the slightest distance beyond having pipe cleaners between her hands and shoulders. (These are meant as clear examples, not statements of the central problem) These seem like things that aren’t at a basic level made unique, or predominant to one sex. There may be differences in practice and outcomes, but I think that’s just different realization of the same traits. Ultimately, I guess that it’s not whether a feminine feature is bad or good, innate or socialized, but the social function of femininity and masculinity. There’s a human instinct to enforce conformity to social norms and to stigmatize or punish deviations from those norms. I see more need to be concerned about non-conforming types who would be targets of this enforcement than better-conforming traditionally feminine types who would be unaffected by it or even its agents. Looking toward the products targeted at young girls suggest that demand for traditional femininity is alive and well, so the occurrence in media of less feminine female characters (‘men with breasts) strikes as a pretty minor threat to the self-esteem of traditionally feminine girls, but a potential boon to nontraditional ones who might feel socially isolated.
I think, for the sake of clarity, I think that I’ll propound my own theory as to why Japanese culture might highly value femininity, just to see if it’s anywhere near what you had in mind. My guess is that as Japanese society is more collectivistic, it puts greater value on behaviors that signal acceptance and obedience to social norms. As such, it will both have more, and stronger methods of making those signals as well as exert greater pressure to do so. Hence, its accepted norm of femininity will be more ‘marked’ and things promoting or demonstrating it commoner. As I recall your list of feminine traits, I think that perhaps Japanese society enforces them also out of a sense of necessity, as they all seem oriented around ensuring harmony and cooperation. Perhaps that is more what you had in mind. So Japanese femininity is more about defining women's part in maintaining social order. I suspect that the two are substantially compatible. It’s worth considering that Japanese femininity and American femininity differ enough that the comparisons can be misleading. Perhaps the alleged stigmatization of femininity in American animation proposed by the imagethe image[/url] would be wholly applicable in a Japanese context, but is less so American one. Likewise, if we accept the Japanese femininity as in its own way empowering, it might not actually serve that purpose in an American context. Besides, I haven't see that many women complaining about Korra or Toph. There surely have been some and I know there have been self-identified feminists who are critical of the series, but not in a way bound up in their sense of identity (in fact she seems to wish that Korra had kicked more ass). A considerable number of nerdy girls seem to like those characters, not feel threatened or marginalized by them. I think it's also worth bearing in mind that Japan is still more patriarchal than the United States. The United States has a long way to go, but its well within its economic peer group on on the [url=hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_20072008_GEM.pdf]United Nations Gender Empowerment Measure[/url], actually doing better than France, while Japan is well behind in the middle of the pack (although it performs a little better than quite a few of its peers). Given that, Japanese femininity might still be closer to the stage of reflecting male expectations of women than women's own identities. (The below small text is an barely relevant digression that I just happened to think of on the way) I’ve often wondered about the origins of the more collectivist Japanese culture versus the more individualist American one. I always find myself doing a Jared Diamond act by coming back to geography, although the theory has problems. The United States has historically extremely low population density and much of its history is dominated by rapid expansion over a vast swath of land as well as the exploitation of the enormous resources present there. Under these conditions, an aggressively individualistic culture makes a certain sense. Social bonds would be less valuable because people were relatively likelier to move on than stay to build them, some were isolated from the possibility of forming bonds in remote locations and it was relatively easy to escape people who don’t like you. This might also explain the short-term bias in American business: for much of American history some new mineral lode or rich farmland with the concomitant business opportunities were expected around to be right around the corner, so lower-yielding long-term strategies seems unfavorable. The Japanese case is largely the opposite. The Japanese have been isolated on a mountainous archipelago with serious constraints on their resources for something like two millennia. Under these conditions, people are likelier to stay where they are and it’s harder to get away from people who don’t like you, so social bonds are essential to the functioning of such a society. The smaller stock of exploitable resources might also explain the longer-term orientation of Japanese business, being more or less the opposite of the American case. In a sense both nations developed attitudes that made them most fit to their geographic conditions. (I think that this implies that the United States might be becoming less fit as conditions have changed; so maybe the Tea Party is right that traditional American values are going extinct, but what they miss is that this is a necessary thing) An obvious problem with this, other than my not being a cultural anthropologist, is that many American traits seem to have their origins in English culture, which, after all, birthed the Manchester Liberalism that Libertarianism resembles and England, like Japan, is an island nation. Similarly, from my understanding, the Quebecois French have a more communitarian outlook, like the European French, which put them at some odds with Anglo-Canadians, who more closely resemble the United States. (Perhaps there’s a difference because Canada has less abundant resources and more severe weather) Then there’s the fact that Japanese culture might have imported some of its values from China, which hadn’t labored under the same limitations as Japan. It also doesn’t account for things like the surprising individualism of the traditional xeer system of Somalia.
I wish I had known about Tamora Pierce when I was younger. Ah well. Brian Jacques did well enough by me, although I can’t recall much about the treatment of gender rôles in his books. I think there were at least two with female leads. (And one, by amusing coïncidence, with a Sea Rat named Willag) I can’t say as though I might have read the other stuff, part because I’m a boy, but part of that might have been because when I was a kid, my literary tastes were a little stuffy. (I read Homer’s Odyssey in sixth grade as a way to thumb my nose at the school librarian and her inane ‘genre wheel’ assignment)
I’ve observed more females than males grazing in the manga aisles at bookstores. My understanding is that female gamers are a larger share of the casual gaming market. I’m not really a gamer of any stripe and I don’t even know how Angry Birds works, so I don’t know what the implications of that are. I do think that there’s a potential distinguishing feature in casual games emphasizing competition less, if at all, that can be extended to anime and manga. Perhaps anime being easier to consume, because watching, even with subtitles, is still easier going than reading, even with pictures, ‘points’ are more readily racked up and thus making it more amenable to competition than manga. It might also be a historical legacy that anime came to America first upon the initiative of men, so when manga followed on, its gender associations were less fixed, making it less forbidding to women. Anime has nothing like what's recounted Fat, Ugly or Slutty and Not In The Kitchen Anymore, but when something is identified strongly with nerdy dudes, it can become uninviting to everybody else.
I would certainly relish more balanced fandoms. I was a little disappointed, but not surprised that only a quarter of ANN’s readers are women and slightly less than a third of active forum users (I’m guessing that’s the constituency) are. I think that this would entail some degree of further breaking the distinctions down. It might also entail more concessions and adaptations from the male audiences; a some of female anime fans seem to varying extents resigned to, acceptant of or even enthusiastic about male things, like ecchi, which I suspect might be adaptions, of a sort, to participate in a traditionally male-dominated fandom that often caters quite enthusiastically to male tastes. Perhaps a larger female presence would mitigate that catering and require some adaptations by the male fans.
I had Emotional Intelligence training two weeks ago and it seems popular with some of the management here. I’m not sure, in retrospect, how much it really taught me, but it was a surprisingly pleasant experience. I had been taught a little about it in graduate school. Curiously, when my supervisor, who has served in the budget office for a very long time, asked me about the training, I seemed to have a time conveying what it was to him. I might have been inarticulate, but he might have had some mental block on the idea. I’m not sure how I feel about it myself. I haven’t even reviewed any popular science explanation of it, so I have no solid ground to tread on either way. One on hand, it makes some intuitive sense to me, but it has a certain ‘motivational seminar’ feel that makes me instinctually wary of it. Of course, I’m naturally uncomfortable with the idea because I suck it outside of a few things that could be construed as extensions of being polite. At some level, something about EQ seems valid; I’ve read articles in the past suggesting that female leaders in some cases produce better results than male ones or equal results by alternate means. This makes me think of Hannah Rosen’s rather dramatically titled article ”The End of Men” that touches on relevant things. It seems like there might be a reason to expect a certain ‘feminization’ of our culture, even if it will probably cause a lot of anxiety and kicking against the pricks among men. If you read all of that, I don't just owe you cake, I owe you a whole damned bakery. I'd better buy a new mixer...
Under the right conditions, that could be a kind of emotional brilliance. If he understood his audience well, that could be a powerful way to influence them. During the training, one of the other people present and I observed that a skillfully theatrical sociopath would likely demonstrate very high emotional intelligence.
This seems too reductivist to me and to be more about promoting fetishism than creativity. Sure, anything can and probably will be sexualized, but intent and portrayal still matter. Creepy middle-aged dudes will probably view a show about schoolgirls from a sexual perspective, yet there would be a difference between a series about girls whose skirts never arbitrarily flipped up to flash their camel toe to the audience and one where that would be a regular feature, sometimes the focus of a scene. Whether a portrayal is perceived as fetishistic is beyond the control of the creators, but they can chose whether to make their portrayals deliberately appeal to that fetishism or not. There will always be thieves, but it doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t lock my door at night because somebody’ll try to steal from me no matter what. Last edited by Surrender Artist on Wed Aug 15, 2012 8:37 pm; edited 7 times in total |
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Chagen46
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That was quite an intelligent and fascinating post, Surrender Artist.
Though it was practically a thesis. |
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