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Old 06-21-2013, 08:24 PM
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The Lone Ranger The Lone Ranger is offline
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Default Re: Return to Gender 101

I happen to enjoy the game Skyrim. One of the reasons I enjoy it is because it doesn't matter in the slightest whether the character you play happens to be male or female; at least, not so far that I've noticed.

I particularly like the music; the "Song of the Dragonborn" is just epic. So, I was looking for information about the song yesterday when I came across this video by the very talented Peter Hollens and Lindsey Stirling.




The video is, frankly, kind of silly, though it has excellent production values. The real appeal is that Peter and Lindsey are excellent musicians.


Still, I must admit that aside from the music, the main appeal of the video is seeing a very pretty young woman dancing and smiling and looking like she's having a wonderful time. If the roles were reversed and Peter was dancing and having a great time while Lindsey was looking all dour and super-serious, it probably wouldn't be half so appealing to me.


Anyway, I bring this up because I found the video at a Skyrim message board, and I was struck by the irony. I mean, the designers of the game apparently made a conscious decision to produce a game in which the sex of your character doesn't matter in the slightest. Yet a huge number of the comments regarding the video were very blatantly sexist, and were either about how much they really couldn't care less about Lindsey's musical talents, they just wanted to get her into bed; or saying something really revolting like, "bitch can play the fiddle."


Sometimes, I really feel ashamed for my species.

I almost never visit gaming boards. But if that one was even a little representative, I must say that even though I've read plenty about how much sexism there is in the gaming industry, I was nonetheless surprised at how openly and visciously sexist a great many of the comments were.


ETA: I'm a musician myself, and I must say that I think it's downright criminal what they're doing with that violin bow. I know it's play-acting and all, but I think I'm safe in saying that pretty-much every musician I know would regard treating one's instrument in such a manner as something akin to blasphemy. (Granted, I noticed that she didn't treat the violin so cavalierly, but still ...)
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