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[Alevice]

I love the conflation that women either have to look like strippers or wear a burqa. As if there wasnt a thing called sensible clothing.

[Landshark RAWR]

moderation is a myth created by homo commies

[matwek]

Little kids do not need to play violent/sexy action games, there are more than enough cute games for that, and the classic Mario is always there.

Its not that the content isn't suitable for kids, its that the context isn't suitable.
If I was playing some game with blood, violence or sex then yeah, I agree, the kids shouldn't be playing the game, but I don't think that was their point.
Its embarrassing to explain to a little girl that the only character she can play as is the sexulised female, or how her gender is regularly regressed to a single character class (usually the agile nimble one).

nobody is stopping females from making their own kid and female friendly games, or whatever they like.

This kind of thinking is exactly what people are arguing and fighting against. Feminists don't want to play "female friendly" games, they just want to play games, they want to play the same games as me, you and anyone else, and they want to be treated as equals.
They don't want to censor or ruin your games, they don't want all games to be about horses and flowers, they want to blow chunks off zombies or run a spear through an enemy barbarian, they want to explore hidden tombs and evade the police driving 100mph the wrong way up a freeway... but they want the option of being able to do that as realistic and relatable female characters. Is that really so much to ask? They just want to be involved in something that all of us love so much.

[battlerager]

My final solution

Nice

[JWK5]

He'd send them all to the gas chamber but due to budget cuts and local resistance they'll have to settle for random complaints and the occasional dirty look.

[gimymblert]

He'd send them all to the gas chamber but due to budget cuts and local resistance they'll have to settle for random complaints and the occasional dirty look.

[FK in the Coffee]

More like the ass chamber am I right fellas

[JWK5]

Where do you think the gas comes from?

[Torchkas]

I love the conflation that women either have to look like strippers or wear a burqa. As if there wasnt a thing called sensible clothing.

To be fair, pretty much all modern clothing doesn't cover up your ass at all.
Though, that wasn't the point. The point was a little less leather and latex.

GTA gets brought up a lot for doing it wrong, which I feel is misguided. In fact you can walk around in your underpants if you want, and the main story doesn't line out women as being inferior in any way.
Perhaps we'll see male strippers in the next installment, since that's usually what the fuss is about.

[gimymblert]

I love the conflation that women either have to look like strippers or wear a burqa. As if there wasnt a thing called sensible clothing.

To be fair, pretty much all modern clothing doesn't cover up your ass at all.
Though, that wasn't the point. The point was a little less leather and latex.

GTA gets brought up a lot for doing it wrong, which I feel is misguided. In fact you can walk around in your underpants if you want, and the main story doesn't line out women as being inferior in any way.
Perhaps we'll see male strippers in the next installment, since that's usually what the fuss is about.

[citation needed]

[Torchkas]

I can't think of any examples where women are being portrayed as inferior in the story. I'm not talking about insults, which do happen, but that's definitely not the same thing.

But there are quite a few strong female characters in the game.

[ProgramGamer]

That was clever. Too clever. Are you the real Torchkas?

[gimymblert]

They pretty much all seems define by either sex or male affection though, not sure we can them strong, do they have agency, do they have significant role, do they have significant story arc? do they are target of derision?

What appear normal to a man who don't have the experience of being a woman might not be so normal when it happen to just be the narrative we are fed about them since we are kids.

I'm not convinced

[gimymblert]

Conclusions

So what do we have here? Well, one of the first criticisms that we can level is the total lack of a playable female character. Given that you have three to play with, it seems a little remiss that not a single one is female. But the developers said that they wanted to tell a story about masculinity. It isn’t necessarily sexist to want to do that with male characters. It is certainly the case that in the majority of video games the ‘default’ character setting is male (obviously this does not include games where you create your own character), and this, to me, reflects more of a problem with the industry as a whole rather than just the Grand Theft Auto franchise, or Rockstar as a company.

There certainly are female characters within the world, although not that many of them. The problem there lies with the type of female characters they are. I am not saying that all female characters in games need to be ‘good’, there is nothing inherently wrong with a female character that is bad, or flawed. It is even possible to have a well crafted female character that embodies some sexist stereotypes without it necessarily being problematic. The trouble is, all of the female characters in this game are little more than sexist stereotypes of womanhood, or just figures of derision. We have the career obsessed, emotionally stunted woman, we have the harridan oppressing her poor hen pecked boyfriend, and we have the whores. And boy do we have a lot of whores in this game. Taken on their individual merits, again they aren’t necessarily a problem. Quite a lot of the characters have justifications for the way they behave that could, in theory, move them away from just being stereotypes. Amanda de Santa left everything to follow her husband into witness protection, but feels alienated from him and alone, so she seeks comfort. Her daughter Tracey, like so many teenagers, is susceptible to the media which glorifies fame for fames sake alone, and shows her that sex is the way to do it (just look at the paparazzi).However, even with these theoretical justifications, Amanda barely exists as a character, and Tracey is really just a ‘damsesl in distress’ trope with some sex added into it. And in the one quest where Michael’s whole family are at risk, in the end it is only Tracey and Amanda that need to be rescued, and the ‘manchild gamer’ who rides in for the rescue.
When you have so many characters that are barely clothed walking stereotypes, and couple them with the characters who have no story or character reason really for being what they are, you start to think that the writers started with ideas of women, and worked backwards from there.

Then you add in the world that they created. It is huge and impressive and wonderful. And contains so many awfully sexist, and sometimes outright misogynist things. As with the female characters, looked at individually you can argue reasons for some of them. Some you can theoretically argue are played for ‘satire’.
For example, the ‘Beyond Insemination’ radio station, we are meant to be laughing at the presenter. He is a pastice of the ‘traditional redneck’, racist, sexist and homophobic. The joke is on him. So you can chose to view the horrible things he says in that context. Personally I am not comfortable laughing at a character advising someone to drown his wife when an average of two women a week are murdered by a current or former partner. And the line about eating sushi off of his stepdaughter cut a little too close to child abuse for me (tho they make no mention of her age).
As I mentioned previously, Lazlow is meant to be a pitiable, pathetic character. But even saying that, the players love him. That’s why they keep bringing him back (this is the fourth full length GTA game that Lazlow has featured in). Maybe the developers intend us to be laughing at him rather than cheering him on, but how much weight can we really place on their intent when the reality is something different.
The ingame billboard adverts are clearly swipes at ‘real world’ advertising. Real world advertisers know that sex sells, and there are certainly no shortage of horrifically sexist advertising campaigns. So again we can chose to view these as satire. At the very least there is a defined target, even if women are caught in the crossfire.
When it comes to the Paparazzi missios, you can in theory argue that what Franklin says to the paparazzi is the developers comment on this ‘profession’. And he is clearly not meant to be a likeable character, so we coud possibly view his appalling dialogue in those terms, as something that we are meant to see as awful. But it does feel an awful lot like having your cake and eating it. Oh we bemoan his terrible behaviour, but we then go and help him do it. And of all the missions that I completed in the game, these made me feel the most…unclean.Although you can choose not to pick up the missions, there is no option when he asks you for help to say, ‘no’. You can walk away, but then the mission comes up as ‘failed’. The developers intend you to complete them.
But there are things in the game world for which I can see no satirical target. Where is the satire in picking up prostitutes? Where is the satire in going to stripclub full of dancers who really want you to touch them? What is satirical about a man describing how he likes to crush a woman’s sternum?
I guess the other defense that can be offered is what you might chose to term the ‘comedy defense’. Almost all of these things are framed as a joke. The awful female characters, the disturbing radio shows are all in the service of ‘the joke’. The writers, the developers think that these things are funny. But, to me, that is no defense. It almost makes it worse.

Almost any one of these problems on their own can be explained away. Even a few together. But taken together they are almost overwhelming. That is why a reviewer described the game as having an ‘undercurrent of misogyny’. It seems to underpin the whole game. You can chose to not notice it (for the most part). You can not listen to the talk radio shows. You don’t have to pick up the prostitutes (indeed, prior to writing this I have never picked up a prostitue in game. Why would I?). You can avoid having a lap dance. But that doesn’t mean that these things aren’t there. And it doesn’t make the game not incredibly sexist.
I think the final point that I can make here is the games final joke. After the credits are done, you find yourself back with Trevor for one last mission. His mum has turned up and, within seconds, reduced him to a quivering, sobbing wreck. The last word the game has to say about Trevor, the lovable (to a point) psychopath, is that, really, it was all his mother’s fault. The only damaging female stereotype that they missed in the whole of the game, the iconic ‘Mrs Bates’, the smothering abusive mother, the put in as the games final laugh.

Yes, Grand Theft Auto V is a good game. But it is impossible to deny it also appears to be a game that hates women. It shows it in it’s characters, in it’s missions, in the game universe these all occur in, and in its advertising.

https://feministborgia.wordpress.com/2013/10/19/grand-theft-auto-v-a-feminists-review/

holy shit if gta characters don't convince you guys nothing will

STOP BEING OFFENDED 

[Torchkas]

It seems like these people would get really oversensitized if they ever go outside.
I also didn't like GTA V that much, but I don't exactly know why. Sexist undercurrent? Maybe just bad taste of humor. I'm not that perceptive of that type of stuff I think.

Though I think it's a very classic case of "you don't get it". Which is kind of a weak defense but it definitely applies.
When your entire game is full to the brink of stereotypes it's kind of hard to see what's commentary and what's being made fun of (the homoeroticism by Trevor for example). It might be a problem with the scale of the game, but that's more a critique of the game itself rather than "sexist undercurrents" that it's apparently plagued by.
You could probably grab anything the game makes fun of and call it excessive.

Also, those characters definitely function outside of "sex or male affection" which I find a kind of bothering statement coming from you. The ones that have a relationship are meant to be contrast to the criminal lifestyle of the protagonists (like the wiki entry says), but there are counter-examples of this which I didn't list of course.

[gimymblert]

Well it's a long been told that being outside is not pretty for women, don't you know about cat calling? or call a slut when you walk late at night (like if you work  and end at night)? or that women seek someone to go somewhere to feel safe at night?

None of those restriction are on men.

[FrankieSmileShow]

Why does every discussion about feminist things related to video games need to eventually devolve into explaining to people basic ideas and concepts regarding criticism, representation, culture, oppression, basic fucking human decency and empathy, and stuff about gender roles in culture and where they come from and what they do that really isn't up for debate anymore anywhere other than on overwhelmingly male nerd echo chamber communities on the internet, and how sexism can be insidious and people don't need to be evil to do bad things that make the world a worse place, and sometimes things are just a little bit complicated but its all okay everything is going to be okay and no one is gonna take your weird anime rape sex games away they just want to also make the weird objectifying sex stuff maybe not invade every other game being published because that's really kind of creepy and awkward and its mostly caused by people just passively repeating existing cultural artifacts and because of publishers and developers still not quite getting the idea out of their heads that their demographic is mostly or entirely male and heterosexual, which becomes an annoying self-fulfilling prophecy, a vicious circle of dumb shit, but its okay because things are clearly changing because of cultural conversations like this one, but not this one exactly, this one forum topic is probably a waste of time, but who knows maybe some dongus is gonna read all of this and spontaneously realize that whole gamergate thing was frankly super embarrassing.

I mean right???

[s0]

it's especially annoying when mainstream games that do something slightly different are derided as "sjw pandering". as if the more "traditional" games aren't also pandering.

tbh i wish videogames were less about pandering to demographics in general, but that's probably a pipe dream at this point.

[Schoq]

Syria of all the fucking places

[Garrent]

"This one game did something bad therefore all games are bad."