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19 comments
As a woman, and a femme to boot, I'm a little bit over oversexualising female characters, be it in Skyrim or fantasy in general. The chainmall bikini isn't a problem per se (maybe there are some shieldmaidens happy with sharp metal so close to their not-usually-sharp-objects-enthusiastic parts), but the way it is presented. Male gaze sure is present in the Images section and while there are way more important things going on in the world when it comes to female/feminine portrayal in culture in general, it's still kind of... you know... upsetting. It seems at times that women in Skyrim can either be seen as manly macho men with addition of boobs or just boobs.
Of course, I'm fortunate enough to follow individuals like you who show their girls as people. And the fact that your shots are always so cool and high quality only adds to the general awesomeness of not being sexist. So kudos to ya!
However,. I am concerned at some of the comments contained herein given that they seem to be, to me, bordering on generalisation and profiling.
I wonder into which label you feel my characters, images and stories might fit, toxic or non-toxic, sexist, or non-sexist, misogynist or misandrist.
Personally, I never had a problem with your ladies - and my comments under your images are proof enough. Also, I know you to be a smart guy, well-read, well-spoken, and kind overall - and that alone assures me there is no ill intent behind your works.
Still, I'm not the OP and it's not my place to decide what the intent behind the original text was, so I'll stop acting like a host of this party now
Definitely not my intention to skewer anyone in particular. More laying down the gauntlet to the dudes here in the screen-shooting scene to think extra hard about the social implications of their aesthetic choices. It's easy for those of us on the privileged side of the inequality game to justify doing whatever we please by saying (to ourselves, to the world outside) "yes I did that thing, but I can't be sexist/racist/whatever because I'm actually a nice guy". All of us hide behind that cloak at one time or another, self-included. It may not be harmful per se, but the hiding of an act that reinforces (or fails to challenge) an inequitable status quo itself contributes to the perpetuation of that inequity.
The choice to challenge or to accept the pervasive sexism of the dominating culture in which we live is just that- a choice. That choice is dynamic; there are no rules ("thou shalt not take a picture of a video-game tit!", etc.) Every choice of framing, lighting, subject matter, juxtaposition, description, etc. has aesthetic, cultural, and political implications that can be acknowledged or ignored, but are always there and are always situational. Which is why sometimes a bikini is just a bikini, and sometimes it's a fun expression of playful individuality, and sometimes it's an exploitative gimmick, and sometimes it's a way to accentuate the beauty of someone's body, and sometimes it's a disrespectful objectification of that body as commodity, and sometimes it's got polka-dots.
This here is for sure a tiny, tiny section of the overall culture, with arguably limited effect on society at large. Still, here we are; this community is what we make of it. If we all want this to be a place that feels safe and is respectful for folks of all sorts, those of us who don't experience disrespect or a lack of safety in the broader society need to go out of our way to understand where those experiences come from. Can't make an omelette without knowing the difference between an egg and a brick, after all.
Well done!!
Regarding the gender theme, I will only say that once we no longer feel the need to politicize *insert gender, race, sexual preference, whatever* then we will know that we have arrived as a mature society.
I hear you- in a community that's sorted its nonsense out, you don't see people having agonized conversations justifying this or that aesthetic choice as it pertains to the politics of personal identity. But we don't live in a culture like that. All over the place some folks are treated very poorly indeed by others, and that poor treatment tends to be ignored or justified by the sorts who don't suffer (directly) from it. If one wants people to stop treating other people poorly, the first step is to pay attention to it, name the thing that is happening, try to understand why it's happening, how it has happened up until this point, what we might want it to be instead, and how it might effectively be altered towards that ideal. Those are political actions, in the sense that they result in a will to change the inequitable aspects of the status quo, but I don't think there's anything inherently obnoxious about that.
I've done a great deal of Sexy Wednesday sets and I don't really have a problem with it either. Perhaps because I rely on myself, knowing I appreciate a strong independant woman well enough to know there's nothing wrong with going skimpy or naked as long as it's done with elegance, class or showing the female beauty with style. Tacky efforts with out-of'proportion bossoms don't appeal to me, so I'm not doing that (or liking it), but I would throw rocks in a glasshouse if I said I don't appreciate a great looking woman in some bikini armor. It has to add something more though, and normally that's when the strong individual comes in of the character depicted. The fantasy genre has always been showing sexy women in small outfits and big swords - just as they show broad-shouldered, bare-chested men - so to me it's kind of part of this subculture. Kayol said something about, it's not the armors the women wear that are wrong, it's how the female in the image is imagined.
I understand the whole sexism of it, but I'm also from Sweden where nudity and sex is seen upon with more liberal eyes. The female body has always been painted, photographed or skecthed in art, because it's beautiful...but again, it should be done with some class or realism at least. I love the Womanly Wednesday idea, but I won't abandon Sexy Wednesday either. I think they both can co-exist if treated and shown with elegance and care...
I totally hear what you're saying about the hyper-fetishization of nudity (in Anglo-American culture) being part of the core dilemma here. Refusing to look at, much less cherish, someone's body because it's supposed to be inherently dirty or sinful or shameful or some other bogus thing is part and parcel of hating the person who lives in that body. I can totally understand the Nexus anti-nudity policy, to keep the pornographic aspects of the screenshooting zeitgeist down to a manageable minimum, but it is unfortunate that the byproduct of such a moderation choice is a reinforcement of ideologically dodgy puritan mores. Bodies are beautiful and deserve to be treated lovingly; it's totally possible to portray someone in a sexy way without being sexist!
That being said, it's also possible to reinforce sexist cultural norms unconsciously by taking certain aesthetic conventions for granted. In a dominating culture in which women are habitually devalued, countering that culture is always an active decision rather than a default passive state, whether one thinks of oneself as a 'nice guy' or not. I happen to think that you are actually a nice guy who actively thinks about the implications of his decisions, so I'm not calling you out specifically. More that I know I've pulled the "oh but I can't have just done a sexist/racist/hateful thing because I'm a nice guy" card before, and in my own experience it's always been a phony excuse.
I also get where you're coming from as to the fantasy tradition of swords and no pants- but I think that's actually problematic. Though our respective home cultures are a bit different, they're both heavily informed by Indo-European traditions. That cultural lineage has, for a while now, been pretty cruel to women, and covered up that cruelty with habit, cultural convention, and a "that's just the way things are" mentality. It's as easy as breathing for those of us who benefit from inequitable privilege to ignore that inequity and its consequences. To resist it is to run up against your own blind spots and greed, as well as the sometimes overwhelming popular sentiment of your peers.
We actively create the culture of the Skyrim art scene. It's up to us what we want to celebrate, what we want to change, and what sort of a world we want our art to help shape. All of which starts by looking directly at and naming the things we love/fear/sorrow for/cherish/etc.