I agree with you, women rights have come along way, (US perspective) but there is always room for improvement. Women however are not always getting the short end of the stick, there are many social and economical situations were its better to be a woman then a man and vise versa. However a video game is not the arena for these kind of politics. Especially one that has made clear attempts to represent all kinds of people, (you are even allowed to have gay marriages). A game that is making an obvious attempt at equal representation does not deserve to be drag through the mud by someone on a vendetta

Bethesda may be pretty good at equally representing male and female people in their games, but this thread is something else. There is so much sixism in this thread written by people that have no idea how sixist they are being.

Well Skyrim is a warlike gaming world so it makes sense that the word for the more aggressive and warlike gender is used more. When you think of a warrior with raw physical power you think of a guy with giant muscles and a huge sword. Well at least I do.

Example?

I don't really think being politically insensitive (sometimes to prove a point) is being sixist.

The real question is; should they be? LOL JK happy holidays.

In some ways, probably more than they should be. What I mean is that when I'm going around splitting bandits' heads open, a lot of them are female, and this isn't realistic. While females represent just over half of the population of the real world, they've historically been a tiny minority when it comes to a lot of roles, including soldiers, pirates, and bandits/mercenaries/whatever. Movies, television, games, and books like to toss in more female characters into these sorts of roles than what would be realistically representative. Now, my point here isn't sixist in any way, mind you. I treat genders with a greater degree of equality than anybody I know, including women (since women often like to cling to certain unequalities that are to their advantage). It's just that while I'm the most fair person that I know I'm also brutally honest, for better or worse.

Using a recent example, some weeks back I was watching Neverland on Sci-Fi (I refuse to use their new spelling). It was based around Peter Pan, Captain Hook, and that sort of thing. In the movie they had the pirate captain as a woman. While it's technically true that there have historically been female pirates, and possibly even in a captain's role, they were unquestionably rare exceptions, so the odds of your ship being raided by pirates with a bunch of women making up a big chunk of the crew is unlikely and the odds of that ship being captained by a female pirate would be almost nil. That's just the facts of reality.

So, realistically, there might be a few females taking my blade through their chest, but they should be fairly rare. Skyrim, however, has a lot more women taking up bandit or warrior professions; more than would be believable.

As for the remainder of the topic post, I'm going to be honest and admit that I just skimmed over it. I saw bits about wanting to change lyrics so that they were more gender-neutral rather than being male-specific. While that may be nice for feminists or to appeal to PC sensibilities, I have to object and for good reason.

Let me use Huckleberry Finn as an example. Earlier this year I learned of new editions of Huckleberry Finn that were to replace the "N word" with "slave". I object to this because 1) it's changing an original, classic literary work and 2) it's supposed to use the "N word" because that's the language people commonly used at the time. Changing it to be more PC would be like having a movie with the KKK as primary antagonists but then making them more PC by having them refer to black characters respectfully. It wouldn't be an accurate depiction at all.

This would hold true with something like songs and written texts in the Elder Scrolls universe. While technically a fantasy universe, it couldn't help but draw on elements of the real world, and Tamriel more or less mimics medieval Europe. The importance of this is the fact that medieval Europe was very male-oriented. For example, written texts would be expected to use he/him/his/man/men instead of more gender-neutral terms, and these things would typically be understood to also reference women, much as they did in the Bible, with only gender-specific references using she/her/woman/women. The term "man" isn't even exclusively for men, as "man" or "men" is also used to reference humanity in general regardless of gender ("mankind", for example). The phrase "children of men", for example, likely wouldn't specifically mean children of males but children of humanity, here with "men" encapsulating both genders. It's really just feminists who have a major problem with the term being used interchangeably.

Further, humans tend to assume that you reference a male unless you specifically state otherwise, with the exception of specific roles that are typically associated with women. An example of the latter would be a reference to a flight attendant, which almost all people would assume to be female unless you specify that it was a man. This isn't just men who do this, but most women as well. When you have words written about nonspecific people, using terms like he/his/men isn't at all unusual, but it's really not all that sixist since, as I've mentioned, terminology for males often applies to humans in general regardless of gender. "Men of the north" thusly doesn't have to be read as specifying gender, as "men" can also be used gender-neutrally for humanity. (Note that "human" has "man" in it, as does "woman".)

Dude, Epic Face Palm!

This is such a moronic post that I need to go find something to drink.

Gritty realism is something I truly enjoy in games, books and films and would like to see more of. Unfortunately that would mean that in any kind of medieval style setting Women would be woefully underepresented by modern standards. I've no real opinion on the song, I've never even heard it, but in the Skyrim game itself women are very well represented, too well perhaps.

Modern games and films are almost obsessed with trying to depict women in an unnatural way in order to make them equal with men and its just silly to me. I love a strong female character in a story, as long as they are not robbed of their femininity and just turned into a male character with a male personality and male characteristics but with a pretty smile and boobs. Ripley from Alien is a great example of a strong female character who doesn't lose her femininity. Game of Thrones has a fair few strong female characters who retain their femininity too. Good stuff.

skyrim is awesome shhh

Short Answer: Yes.

Long Answer: Yes, they are.

Really, aside from lyrics and the cover guy, what in Skyrim is male-predominant? There are Female Jarls, Female Legates, Female House-owners, Female Bosses, Female Killers...

The Nords are a medieval based, conservative thinking, racist bloodthirsty bigot vikings. Gender equality doesn't really fit their agenda, yknow?

This gets back to the G.R.R Martin books, people make the mistaken assumption that because his books portray violence, sixism, corruption, that it somehow supports these things, it doesn't work like that at all. When you create a world, be it a book or a videogame or a movie, you have to make that world come alive with all it's flaws, so it's believable. Throwing in modern concepts just to mollify Internet White Knights and insecure feminists is a step in the wrong direction for artistic freedom.

Oh and:



So after receiving an overwhelmingly negative response to your post, you thought the next logical step would be to repeat the post here?

I disagree with the Huck Fin comparison. In that book the N word should be kept for the reasons you listed, but also it should stay as the N-word because the word "slave" puts a date on an issue that hasnt fully been resolved. As Huck Fin was written after slavery was over, the book was a reflection not of slavery but of the social situation after slavery; an issue that is still present. (Not as much of an issue as it was back then but still an issue) The word "slave" puts a "date tag" on the issues the book represents. However like I said I dont agree the comparison to the role of women in a video game. This a fantasy word. and its all for fun, so I agree with women having many powerful rules. It my not be a realitic representation of history (Even though that history doesnt apply to the history of all people as it has been well documented of women having leadership and warrior roles in more then a handful of cultures), but that is ok because this game is not ment to be a representation of history. So I have no problem and support the role of women in this game. And the op is very wrong in their "observations"

I'll have to agree with Celan. I think the masculine form was simply for the lyrics to make sense, as saying "By his/her honer is sworn" just wouldn't fit in a song.

Oh and I think that women in TES are actually represented in a very fair way, with more or less half of the heroes and villains of the lore being women. Hell, I usually make a female character because I think they can be more badass than men

I think at the worst, the proportion of women's representation in video games is equal to that of women in the game industry and as players of the games. I think the majority of gamers are guys age 16 - 35(complete guess) and six sells(maybe unfortunately) so companies are marketing games to their core audience. As for Bethesda created characters being Male, it's probably just a personal preference of the person playing, probably being a man. To think that women are just as strong as men can be true, but our bodies are made very differently. Men are typically stronger than females. I'm sorry to say that I find it hard to play female characters much(mainly because I identify more with a man, since I am one) and when I do(as with my mage in Skyrim), it's not usually a warrior type. I do find it unfortunate how women are portrayed and framed in the world and in video games in general, but it's a simple fact of the world we live in.

I have red hair and there just aren't many games starring red-heads or many red-heads walking around the game world. I wonder why. There aren't that many red-heads in the real world, an accurate representation.

Humm - really - Looking at your picture, Im not sure I would agree.

I honestly don't think it really matters whether or not they are. But yes, yes they are.

I always die a little inisde whenever I decapitate a female enemy. Women and womer are such beautiful creatures, why musn't they stay in the kitchen and avoid the atrocities of war?

This entire argument is simple. Bethesda makes no effort in any way to make a difference between genders. In my experience there are more women who are bandits and such, how is that sixist? There are more female housecarls then there are men. I just counted store people on the UESP, adding up all the females, then the total. Guess what, 57 females and 106 total. That makes more than half of them females. 53.77% of them to be exact. What is your argument now.

I got shot in the hip by a female bandit. She was going for a life-changing shot, I know it.

No mercy.

I picture Puss in Boots saying this, it fits so perfectly.

The game is very equal regarding positions to men and women
Jarl of Elisif the Fair of Solitude - Female
Jarl Idgrod of Morthal - Female
Jarl Laila of Riften - Female
On top of this, every Jarl has a Housecarl of the opposite gender, there are female enemies, and the Stormcloaks acknowledge both Sons AND Daughters of Skyrim. Hell, the second in command of the Imperial army is a female and five of the Daedric Princes are female most of the time (otherwise, they are hermaphroditic).

A fact of life, which is unfair but inevitable, is that men have had more influence throughout history down to the present day. While TES is a completely imagined fantasy world, the rules of our real life do not need to be taken into account. However taking in real life aspects makes the game deeper and more believable IMO.

The singer of Sovngarde should not have snapped at you, but it is his song and he shouldn't be forced to change it to suit anybody aside from himself. I personally think that he did not write it just to spite women; it is just how his (and almost all men I'd wager) mind works, with men not representing males, but men as in the race of Man. On a side note, the original lyrics just seem to have more of a ring to them.

I was totally imagining a male Khajiit saying it, too. I guess I did pretty well.

Another Funny!

Until we come up with a natural sounding gender-neutral pronoun, this will happen, sorry.