Recent rants by Anita Sarkeesian regarding the promotion of male adolescent power fantasies within video games has reignited the concern of sexism in video games. While I whole-heartedly disagree with her slanted views, it was hard not to take notice of the complaints and how they come about. You can twist many things in life to prove your points, and amazingly, without much thought, I’ve been able to pull out 5 points that may prove that Bioshock Infinite is another sexist game. Feminist can feel free to swipe these points to make their future complaints.
5) Elizabeth Not Allowed To Fight In Combat & No Female Enemies
Elizabeth is a major companion throughout Bioshock Infinite. During combat sequences however, she serves as a placeholder. No one attacks her and she attacks none. All she essentially does is hold Booker’s ammo. And open a tear or two. How is this not sexist? The main female protagonist of the game is degraded into being a ballboy essentially. Thinking back too, there were no female enemies in the game at all. None. The only one coming close being Daisy Fitzroy, who gets killed off in a cutscene by Elizabeth of all people. How is this not a typical ‘male adolescent power fantasy’ game? Who didn’t love Elizabeth obeying your choice of cage or bird either?
4) Elizabeth Required A Man’s Help To Succeed
Let’s face it, without Booker, Elizabeth would’ve stayed locked up in her tower. This is even more embarrassing considering it really didn’t take much effort to free Elizabeth from her ‘cage’. You practically waltz in and out without a problem, until Songbird decides to take the plot into its own hand and make Booker and Elizabeth’s escape slightly harder. This is again further proven by the earlier point, that Elizabeth isn’t allowed to fight her own battles in combat. Then, come the end, Elizabeth again requires Booker (or more accurately, you, the ones with this ‘male adolescent power fantasy’) to sacrifice himself in order to achieve her ultimate goal. She couldn’t have done it without him/you.
3) The Lutece Twins Prove That Man And Woman Aren’t Equal
Bear with me on this one, as this is a long, but relevant stretch. You see, whenever someone enters a different universe, aside from outstanding circumstances, the same people overlap their bodies and thus, memories. You see this numerous times in the game with characters like Mr. Lin and Booker himself. The Lutece twins however, don’t overlap. Why is that? The only explanation is that they are of different genders, thus they are significantly different from each other not to overlap. Surely that counts as promoting gender inequality? Pure gender equality would mean that the Lutece twins would overlap each other regardless of gender, because they should still be the same person. They aren’t real twins, just in case people forgot.
2) Daisy Fitzroy Required A Man’s Help To Succeed
Although Daisy Fitzroy is a bit part player in Bioshock Infinite, this simply allows for an even greater case of sexism in Bioshock Infinite. We see this more clearly in the universe where the Vox Populi have started to revolt. In it, they succeeded because of the influence of a whole other Booker DeWitt. Daisy’s influence is much weaker compared to Booker. It is easy to come to the conclusion that Daisy wouldn’t have succeeded without Booker’s help. This was also the case in the original universe (the one where you rescue Elizabeth), as in that universe, the Vox Populi were nothing and Daisy hadn’t been able to lead a proper revolution aside from sneakily killing Lady Comstock. It doesn’t help that Elizabeth essentially becomes Daisy 2.0 as Elizabeth sneakily kills Daisy and then kills an unborn Comstock (thus many other people birthed in only those universes), much like Daisy was going to kill some young kid to stop future problems.
1) Booker Should Have Been A Female Character
Let’s face it, nothing stopped having the lead character (ie. Booker) be female. The heart-wrenching family bonds shown in the game would have equally worked with a female character in place of Booker, where she could be Elizabeth’s mother. Comstock would be female too (or that’s one hell of a baptism otherwise). It would have still been a fantastic tale. Of course, given the time period, it would make believing she went to war in 1912 on the front lines very unbelievable, but we’re talking about a game with a floating city here. The game didn’t try to escape from the sexism of the past, and instead basked in it. Like I said before, were there any other female ‘soldiers’ besides Daisy in the game? No. Would it have been so damaging to provide a ‘character creation’ section in the game? No. No one cares what Booker looks like in the first place, heck he looks nothing like Comstock anyway. So allowing gamers to create their character, and allow it to be female, would have taken nothing away from the game. Unless the game was sexist to begin with.
The proof is in the pudding.
Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no. Are the points extreme? That’s par for the course in these arguments.
Totally disagree, the points are extreme feminist hostility in every possible way. And I especially don’t agree with the Lutece point… They are different genders of the same person. They are identical in every single way apart from a single chromosome (she even says this herself in the game).
That is perfect equality.
The only reason they are different genders is because they come from alternate universes (the entire point of the games story). In one universe, their mother gave birth to a daughter. This means that obviously the other universe branched off to give two other outcomes: 1, she gave birth to a boy, and 2, she had a miscarriage.
This is what the entire plot is based upon, and which is why Chen Lin’s wife was asian in one reality whilst being caucasian in another. ALL possibilities and ALL outcomes are present in other dimensions.
completely agree. they said how booker should have been a woman but they said in game that “there will always be a man and a woman and a lighthouse. constants and variables.” so booker will always be the ‘man’ and elizabeth will always be the ‘woman’ just technically different people.
or Booker is just one of those men and Elizabeth is just one of those women – their roles could have been reversed considering the whole point of the game is that there are an “Infinite” number of realities.
That’s totally what i think too , and in addition to that as for the Lutece thing , actually the female one was the dominant in every speech i don’t think her brother talked in any voxphone ( or has he? ).
And also , Booker wasn’t a female because that’s the story line made by 2K.
And also why is it always the word sexism means differentiation against women , actually i can write the same article as above but say it was sexism against men , i mean Elizabeth is the strongest character in the whole game and she is a female so that is offensive for any man , and that applies to every game having a woman , like Tomb raider for example , it’s totally based upon a woman and how she is stronger than men and how she can easily beat them up isn’t that sexism?
It seems the only way to stop those sexism critics is by making every game include only women , a story about a women who fights women to free women , seriously you can’t just think games are made of sexism because they include a man as a hero , it’s just the story that is made like that , if you want you can make yours.
Have you even played the game? Elizabeth is the most powerful character in the whole game. And Booker isn’t a female because he isn’t. In your story he may be, but in Ken Levine’s he’s the man. Also, you’re forgetting about the gender roles in the beginning of the 20th century, so because of *spoiler*, Booker sure as hell can’t be female.
Lutece twins are the same person.
It doesn’t say nowhere Daisy required Booker’s help. We know she had Booker help her, but so what? For the convenience of the political correctness they have to kill the story?
Of course Elizabeth required help to succeed. How would she get out of the Tower and navigate herself through the world otherwise?
Booker requires Elizabeth’s help too, to a very big extent. But I won’t cry that this game is sexist as a male can’t succeed on his own.
What a joke. Spoiler Alert ahead.
5) Elizabeth doesn’t want to kill people because she isn’t a borderline sociopath like Booker. We also apparently disagree on the significance of bringing into reality an automated turret that fires bullets or rockets into enemies. Also, congrats on not noticing the female troops being sent against you basically all the time on both the Founders and Vox sides.
4) This could be equally, and perhaps more accurately rendered as Booker needed a woman’s help to survive.
3)Not to shit on your point entirely, but the female was depicted as the brilliant one that created everything and the male was basically depicted as useless except maybe as a courier and a boat-rower. So yeah, it actually does “prove” gender equality.
2) For one, Comstock framed Fitzroy. For another, Fitzroy needed the help of many people. It’s hard to say how much Booker actually helped the Vox, only that Fitzroy was very, very willing to use him as a martyr. Also, if you actually paid attention to the story, the biggest difference between the Founders and the Vox realities was the fact that the Vox actually had access to weapons with which to rebel.
1) Would have required large changes to the story, with Booker, Comstock, and Elizabeth’s mom getting gender swapped. Also a wildly different backstory, since it’s absolutely impossible for a women to have served in the US Army in the 1800s. It would also make the motivations for what Booker did to Elizabeth considerably more implausible. So yeah, I guess I can agree that they could have included a wildly different story and called it Bioshock Infinite, but they didn’t.
Like your buddy Anita, you go into a game looking to prove your hypothesis and twist facts and ignore the null-hypothesis until you do, congrats.
very well said!
Dude, read the last line
Dude read the first lines, though the person who posted this doesn’t agree, the person who made the argument entirely finds her points valid.
“Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no. Are the points extreme? That’s par for the course in these arguments.”
You missed the last part written lol.
Apparently you are the idiot. Even though the person who posted this doesn’t believe it, the person who wrote it Firmly believes it.
OK… so he/she wrote an entire article to prove that Bioshock Infinite is sexist. But he doesn’t believe that it is? What the hell was the point of writing the damn article then? Stick behind your writing or change the name of your damn article for peat sake!
the person who made this article was referring to a feminist. and basically to prove his point that anyone can twist something to serve their argument, he decided to quickly make his own absurd list of why bioshock is sexist.
Although now I am wondering why the twins didn’t overlap…
They did. They lampshade this by saying: Rosalind-“Do you ever think it odd that we-” Robert-“-finish each other’s sentences?” Rosalind-“Exactly!” Robert-“I think it would be odder if we didn’t”.
Alternatively, the fact that they exist outside of time and now can travel where they will would explain the lack of overlap.
They don’t overlap, since they don’t replace each other, but just how much similarity is required for an overlap is hard to say. There are multiple versions of Elizabeth who show up at the end, and given that they all make the same decision, that suggests that none of them are as radically different as Booker and Comstock. Given that Rosalind and Robert do apparently have some differences (they’re able to talk about legitimate disagreements on issues), they probably don’t have the same personalities, and therefore they’re not the same person. The fact that one of them is male while the other is female is only relevant in a tangential way, and was probably mostly just a way that the developers could make them different enough to not give away the plot the minute they appeared.
Because they existed outside the tears like Booker and Elizabeth.
Rosalind was a brilliant quantum physicist who figured out how to travel between worlds by what pretty much looks like sheer will or intellect. She and her alternate self could probably figure out how to avoid the overlap effect.
I agree, but they did overlap not even geniuses can avoid laws of reality
There are so many realities in the game that there is a Booker that there is a girl and Elizabeth be a man. That is the WHOLE point of the game, there is infinite possibility. You name it, technically, in the Bioshock universe, it has happened.
Actually no, that is not possible. May I remind you of “constants and variables”? A gender swap in this case is absolutely impossible.
I always just assumed that in one reality Mr. and Mrs. Lutec had a daughter and in another reality something slightly different happened so they had a son. They’re not the same people. They just have the same parents.
Actually, Mr. And Mrs. Lutece are the same person, different gender. They just ended up in the same reality (Technically) and because two of one person exist, it defies space and time, which separates them from the existential plane, and allows them to defy literally everything.
Probably because they were different enough in personalities to be different people, like Booker and Comstock. Obviously they’re similar to one another in a lot more ways than Booker is similar to Comstock, but Rosalind does suggest that they have serious differences in their opinions on the nature of the future and therefore in their worldview. Rosalind would have also experienced different expectations and stereotypes because of her gender, particularly given the time period when the game is set. It all adds up to form two people who are very similar (to a much greater extent than even two identical twins), but who ultimately have lived very different lives and developed personalities that aren’t quite superimposable.
Did you actually read the first paragraph?
“While I whole-heartedly disagree with her slanted views, it was hard not to take notice of the complaints and how they come about. You can twist
many things in life to prove your points, and amazingly, without much thought, I’ve been able to pull out 5 points that may prove that Bioshock Infinite is another sexist game.”
And it only proves he himself is a sexist douchebro who missed the point, because her “slanted views” are actually pretty damned on the money.
/facepalm
You’re an idiot…and probably a feminist.
And what’s wrong with that? All feminists want is gender equality, and some people (generally us men) hate them for it. I am a man, and I’m proud to be a feminist – it horrifies me that people really think that women have equal rights and opportunities. And before someone uses the argument that “feminists should be campaigning for men’s rights too if they want equal rights”, just think about that for a moment. What you’re saying with that argument is equivalent to going back in time to the black civil rights movement and telling them that they’re all selfish white-haters because they’re not giving white people more rights as well. If you campaign for equality when it isn’t there then obviously more work will need to be done for one party than the other – otherwise you don’t get anywhere…
I hope you realize that in today’s times there are more freedoms and leniency for women than there are men? Boys have been getting raped for years. YEARS yet just 4 months ago the rape laws got re-written to include men. There is also no draft for women nor are they required to pay the same amount of taxes or serve the same amount of jail time for an equal crime. So equality only counts when they stand to gain something for it?
Please just stop and think about what equality truly means. There are so many imbalances and it is impossible to make everything fair. Should things be more balanced? Hell yeah they should be but as it stands the more people focus on how “bad” we treat women when in reality it isn’t as “grim-dark” as some would have you think. Then maybe we can move on and grow as a society.
Get your freaky bullshit “mens movement” type shit out of here please. You can take the author of this inaccurate and stupid article with you as well. You two compliment each other so well im sure you wont mind playing in the gender crusader corner with Valorie Solanas and the rest of the crazies on either side of the line. It sickens me how stupid some of humanity is.
You call me stupid but have you bothered to look what I said up before just discredit what I stated? If you paid attention I know it’s hard because it was a lot of text and you might have a hard time reading it all. But I did say that things are bad for women. Are they as bad as some people try to make it out to be? Not at all which is what I was getting at. But seeing as you think I am just some other crazy then you should just ignore what I say even if it is backed up by facts.
I’m going to assume that by what you said you also know that it isn’t the legal system that determines sentencing but the judge themselves. The legal system gives a range of years for any man or woman to serve in jail, and then the judge decides what the sentence should be.
And I’m going to also assume that you do realize that there is no longer a draft for man or woman in the US. There hasn’t been a draft since 1960’s.
And I’m going to assume that when you say women do not pay the same in taxes as men, you mean “equal pay for equal work”. Everyone pays the same taxes. Taxes are based on income level, NOT gender/sex.
So, when you graduate college/high school/elementary school (?), learn how to do research, and have a formed opinion based upon live experience AND education, please then and only then return to the national Discourse. And yes, it should be a capital “D”. Look it up.
I smell someone who doesn’t have reading comprehension skills or basic logic.
The state of society is sad indeed.
They don’t get the same amount of jail time!? oh HELL no. It’s already bad enough they pay less insurance (statistics be damned) but now equal crime doesn’t matter either?
I hope you realize that in today’s times there are more freedoms and leniency for women than there are men? Boys have been getting raped for years. YEARS yet just 4 months ago the rape laws got re-written to include men. There is also no draft for women nor are they required to pay the same amount of taxes or serve the same amount of jail time for an equal crime. So equality only counts when they stand to gain something for it?
Please just stop and think about what equality truly means. There are so many imbalances and it is impossible to make everything fair. Should things be more balanced? Hell yeah they should be but as it stands the more people focus on how “bad” we treat women when in reality it isn’t as “grim-dark” as some would have you think. Then maybe we can move on and grow as a society.
White American women are the most protected and aided people in the world they have no room left to bitch about privilege. Modern feminism isint about equality its about revenge.
[nod]
and by 2040-ish, the high birth rate of hispanic [most catholic] women will have garnered the first [second? return to native tribes of america] predominantly non-white generation [currently the 5yo-s].
so yeh, in about thirty years. all these concerns over these ‘issues’ will be GONE.
There’s a difference between minority/majority and dominant/marginalized populations. A dominant population is the one that calls all the shots, sets the culture, the politics, etc; the marginalized group is the one outside of the dominant population. A dominant population can be the minority – Apartheid S. Africa, I’m looking at you.
Feminism= “Sexual Fascism”
“Feminism”=A sexist female. One can support the idea of gender equality being of both genders yet self claimed feminists don’t want equality, they want all the rights of men for women AND to be treated as higher citizens (Queenists may be a better name).
You know, feminism actually needs to be here, but many people get carried away. Feminism needs to exist to reveal things such as how women’s products are portrayed (you aren’t a woman if you’ve got hair on your legs, you aren’t a woman if you don’t wear make up). Not to mention the ads for clothes. Every female model starves themselves for that perfect body so that they can keep their job, yet they photoshop the pictures and create an unattainable standard of body figure (i.e. you aren’t pretty with an ounce of fat, if you don’t have a “thigh gap”, and if you do somehow get this figure by starving yourself you’re viewed as ugly for having fat.)
An example of sexism in the work place even, taking an account of my friend’s experience because she can do extreme heavy lifting, is that she applied to a boxing/packing facility where they lift 100lbs boxes into trucks. Without even physically seeing her or testing her capability to fulfill the requirements (which were only having the muscles to lift the boxes) they turned her down on the account that she was not a man. In the end, she raised hell with them and they agreed to see her in action. She wound up being one of the best workers there. Long story short, you can find many places where they turn women down for work just because they’re not male. There’s a common mis-belief that one’s genitals are used for every single action in one’s life, when the only time you’re privates matter is in the bed, because it defines whether one can plant a seed or grow one.
I have had trouble being an artist and an author just because I am a female. I was turned down not because of my talent or style, but because of my genitals. Feminism exists because people somehow hold the belief that you wrap your genitals around the pencil to draw, that you cook with them, clean with them, write with them, or lift with them. When someone says “you’re a girl, you can’t be an artist, you can’t be a heavy lifter”, they should realize that it’s not the vagina clasping the weight bar or pencil. It’s a hand to a human, who just so happens to be female.
And one last thing, in America, if you open your eyes and look around you, another reason feminism exists is because rape on women is ignored. Look up the statistics of how many cases actually end up in court, and how many women don’t see their offender behind bars even though the tests PROVE his DNA was found inside her. Rape is not on America’s list of priorities. Rape is a joke here, because if you are a woman who claims rape and who has proof, it is still somehow your fault for dressing the way you have, for drinking too much when you have had nothing but a glass of water, for walking the streets alone at night.
Feminism exists because women aren’t even safe in their own homes. We treat the sexes as though they are different races of humans, and then treat those with different skin colors even more so like animals.
And to finish, if a female claims she is a Feminist but hates men, she is not looking for equality or justice. She is degrading those who actually fight for the safety of others. She is placing a bad name on those who love men. People who wish harm to the other sex is nothing but cruel and violent who hold no true cause at all.
“America, the land of the free”
if you are a white male. All else are damned.
This comment. This right here.
This needs every single upvote going.
You know, men go through that exact same shit. You think life is handed to men on a silver platter? You think there isn’t hundreds of things you could do to make you “not a man”, you think all men are attractive to women? That it’s okay for men to be fat?
Jesus, if there needs to be feminism because of that stupid bullshit, then there needs to be a movement for men too.
Because we do have shockingly similar experiences, you only hear about one side of the species.
Women aren’t safe in their own homes? This just in, feminism exists because of falsely equivocated and manipulated facts.
Fact is, domestic violence has gone down, fact is rape has gone down, fact is women commit both rape and domestic violence on NEARLY the same level as men, and men are far and wide the biggest victims of both rape and violence.
Feminism exists where it doesn’t need to, in this overly privileged first world of ours. Where there are issues of feelings and mass hysteria based on poorly analyzed statistics run rampant.
And I lived my life as a poor white male. The only priviledge is class privledge.
“America, the land of the free.”
If you’re rich, all else be damned.
You see, that’s the truth, but you’ve been trained to believe in this great big “white male” boogeyman. You say feminists don’t hate men, but that whole “if you’re a white male” logic just completely and totally diminishes and erases the experiences of hundreds of millions of white males out there. That’s pretty hateful.
But you will never see it this way, because you’ve been poisoned by feminism and are blind to your own privilege.
Also, this whole “you’re a girl, you can’t be an artist” thing is completely bullshit. Do you know how many annoying fucking hipster girls flood college art courses? I think a lot of feminism is also applying SOME women’s experiences to ALL women. Which just isn’t going to get you anywhere.
Fun fact, did you know there IS an education epidemic in America involving the genders.
Oh no, it’s not women going into STEM fields, fuck that. It’s men graduating high school and college altogether.
But there haven’t been any men’s… anything made. There won’t be until it’s too late.
Because to feminism, anything that helps men hurts women.
Eh, I’m just rambling at this point.
I’m just going to end it with…
You need to critically analyze feminism, and the things men go through. It will offer you some perspective, as most of what feminism wants to deal with is completely up to the individual. Don’t let them take that power away, or let your self image become some community thing.
Edit: Women graduate college and high school in orders of magnitude greater than men.
But “not enough” women graduate from STEM fields, and it’s an epidemic that needs to be solved.
lollolololol
The double standards and the truth are right there for you to see. Modern feminism isn’t about gender equality.
Someone worried about equality would look at those statistics, be shocked, and would want to do something to help.
🙁 You’ve had trouble becoming an artist
Such a struggle
Jesus.
I can’t stop reading this idiocy.
Lol. What does race have anything to do with feminism? FYI, illegal immigrants are the most protected and aided people.
The problem is that all feminists are also idiots.
The bigger problem is that you’re grouping feminists and radical feminists together, and you’re factually incorrect.
i do not doubt feminists are intelligent, they usually are very much so; i dont agree with passing opinion as fact. perception as proof, et al.
i do not condone ad hominem attacks in the guise of arguing against opinions.
Very True
These feminists that want equal rights are usually extremists that are stupid and see everything as sexist… yes Iam glad to have the same things as men, within reasoning, but at the same time, I know we are not equal in everything, it does not mean we are lesser – that is when sexism comes in, it is making people of opposite sex feel lesser or inferior to the other. Noting differences is not.
It is just common sense. It is called equity. We are different and therefore have different needs, but we need to ensure that we have all our needs catered for so that in the end we have the same treatment as physically possible. This is not equality, it is equity. For example, men’s health care is different to women’s health care. We are going to have certain different needs catered for. This is not unfair, but it is not equality.
I cannot stand when people see such negative things in something when it is not there.
feminists don’t want gender equality, they want Women to be acknowledged as the superior sex. They look at anything that could make a woman look bad and start screaming and whining about it.
If a game or a story shows a man being stronger or smarter than people around him then its sexist.
If the same story shows a woman being above her peers its gender equality?
That makes no sense to me.
You people keep commenting on “feminists” with things that dont apply to me. You seem to be getting information wrong. I’m a feminist. I have a degree in Womens Studies. I am a naturally born male. I dont want either sex to be superior. I would prefer equality. In video games the problem isnt men shown as badass. It isnt even women being objectified when it comes down to it (games objectify everyone). It would be that badass men are the norm and badass women are an exception. We notice them, sure. We see Samus and Croft and whatnot. They exist. But ratio of men to women is way off. Booker of course couldnt be female (time period issue) but any game set in the near to far future or in complete fantasy worlds could easily star women. Most still star men. Games that let you pick the gender of the PC usually use a male PC for the default and in promotional items (Mass Effect 3 is a notable exception).
But this is off point. I’m more concerned by all the people who talk about what “feminists” want with no clue what they are saying. Most make comments that apply only to radical extreme feminists rather than the whole. Some people make claims that no feminist faction really supports that they clearly either pulled out their ass or were spoon-fed as part of their daily diet of bullshit.
I would much rather these people set down their spoons and realize that their is much better stuff out their than just shit. Then when they stop eating shit maybe they will express opinions that are not shit and I can stop trying to punch them in the grocery store. My personal issue of course being rage. Im trying to cut back on that.
Its called demographic. With your high education I can’t believe you aren’t aware of basic marketing tricks. The average gamers is an 18-25 yo male. Therefore a male protagonist will sell more games. I totally agree tho’ the ratio of strong badass women vs strong badass men is totally unbalanced.
48% of gamers are female. Your argument is invalid.
I’m pretty dubious of those statistics. Are these women who’d play the games mentioned above, or just women who play angry birds and WoW and are thus statistically labelled “gamers”? Before you jump down my throat and accuse me of doubting the existance of female gamers altogether, let me explain why I’m dubious. If 48% percent of gamers were female and, by in large, found the games discussed above unappealing due to “sexism” or what have you, then the companies in question would essentially be committing financial suicide.
I’m sure feminists will screech about some far reaching industry conspiracy that puts patriarchy before profit, but I think it’s far more likely that your statistics are bunk. That, or female gamers do exist in those numbers, but are reasonable people who don’t care much whether the gender of a game’s protagonist matches theirs, in which case the point you’re trying to make is moot.
It theoretically sells more. They don’t make enough games with female protagonists to be sure, and the problem is that most games that do have a female protagonist end up bombing. Not every game can be a portal or perfect dark (N64, not that 360 abomination.) Plus, action games seem to follow the gender trend that action movies set with male protagonists.
Well I don’t know as much of the study of gender equality, but just accept it, there are just way more feminists that are taking advantage of their argument than the ones that are going for equality. One more example, have you not noticed that it is a freaking crime to even lightly tap a girl while females don’t get in much trouble when they kick a man in the freaking balls? Females and males are physically different, that is the reason why there is just no way they should be given the same task and expect them to do it the same and give them the same payment. True, there are some of them stay-home husbands ( disgrace of men if you ask me ）， but then again, that happens not often. One more example. Imagine a boy and a girl broke up, they were both crying and stuff. Don’t even try to deny that the first thought you have is that it is all the boy’s fault. Men had been giving fine treatment to women for a long time now, yet they remained unsatisfied. Also, about the games characters. Oh for the sake of your intelligent brain, have not realized that most of the producers are male? How do you expect a freaking male to make a good female character? The way the character talks, the way the character thinks, none of those us men would know. And when that happens in a game, with crappy analogs and horrible physics, women will start whining and men will think that game is but a pure pile of turd. Games are made to earn money, not to exclaim equality, so the producers just have to build whatever character they can build best, and most of them are male due to the lack of female game programmers.
About the unfair assault standards, you can see videos on youtube of women brutally assaulting men and bystanders just laughing or saying its probably his fault. Yet I’ve seen cases that have been won where women claim being attacked without physical evidence like bruises. Ucked up Shi
In regards to saying that there’s not many badass female characters in games. I somewhat disagree with that. I personally think that most people are under the impression that a female character that is feminine is automatically an objectified, useless character; that a female badass can’t be feminine.
I’ve played a lot of games, and I’ve seen a LOT of badass female characters. While I won’t say it’s impossible that I’ve played all the exceptions, from the games I’ve played, a lot of the females ended up being cooler than the males.
Take Zelda for instance. She’s a graceful and beautiful leader, and while it’s true that Link is the main character, who’s there 90% of the time in the final battle against Ganon? I’m not going to say I’ve played and completed every Zelda game out there, but in the few I did finish, Link couldn’t even touch Ganon until Zelda blasted him with a Light beam or something first.
There’s also video game characters like Noel Vermillion. She’s cute, she’s clutzy, and she’s all around girly. But ya know something else? She’s one of, if not THE, strongest characters in the BlazBlue universe.
Just because a character is feminine doesn’t mean they aren’t badass, and I think people tend to not notice that. They notice Samus because she’s in her power suit all the time; because Samus never acts girly, and I think that’s just as bad. I mean, why is it considered a bad thing for a female to do something feminine?
1. Not to detract from your point but I don’t think you’ve played any zelda games
2. Samus is (technically) Military. I don’t know how many female soldiers you’ve met, but most I’ve met don’t act too girly.
Wind Waker and Ocarina of Time. You CANNOT beat Ganon without Zelda’s help.
I wasn’t saying that Samus is girly. I was pointing out that because she isn’t girly, people accept that she’s a badass female. Which I think is kinda defeating the point, because again; why is it considered a bad thing for a female to do something feminine? Samus is an undisputed badass. Samus suddenly wearing high heels shouldn’t change that, but there are people who say that her new design is sexist. I fail to see why. It’s an outfit change. That should not determine who she is.
Feminists want gender equality? You’re joking right. When was the last time you saw feminists demand women get punished the same way men are when they commit a crime? When was the last time you heard a feminist demand women sign up for the draft? When was the last time you heard a feminist demand women work the same amount of hours as a man if they wanted the same pay? Whem was the last time you heard a feminist talk about false rape allegations and paternity fraud ? Feminist don’t want gender equality. They want a society where men have no rights and women have no accountability.
Being a feminist is equally as bad as being a… did you know there is no opposite to feminist? wonder why? cuz the word per se is feminist. so lets say… being sexist is bad in either side of the coin.
if a feminist wants equality start by being equal, not asking for it. while being on the other side. either side needs to give in. Dont you think?
Its like an Atheist who denies god… why do you deny something you dont believe in? funny
I am neither, I have asperger so that in a way puts me on a point where sex/gender is, unimportant
There is an opposite to feminist: look up Men’s Rights Movement. Much of it is thinly disguised sexist BS, but there are some good points.
Although Feminism has done some good for men as well: for example, the idea of “stay at home dads” and men being allowed and encouraged to spend time with their children is based on the feminist idea that “traditionally feminine” qualities like being nurturing are good and worthwhile, and not something to be “left to women”.
Feminism does promote equality. Unless all you know about the subject you got from 12 year olds on Tumbler.
MRAs aren’t the opposite of feminists, the two are identical. Sad attention whores competing to see who can paint themselves as the bigger victim.
If that were true then you would call yourself a humanist, or genderist.
Do you have no understanding of history? When the feminist movement started, women could not vote, own property, etc. In the 50s and 60s when feminism got a second wind, women were expected to become housewives with “career girls” being used as a negative (as if a woman who wants to do anything with her life other than having babies and looking after her husband is somehow bad). That’s why it’s called feminism.
Today many of those problems are gone (in major cities in the west, most of the world is still overwhelmingly sexist), but the movement wasn’t renamed, why should it be?
People who harp on about a NAME of all things just prove their ignorance.
Care to explain what, if anything, that history has to do with video games?
Or a Equalist
What, the baddies from Legend of Kora?
The word your groping for is Egalitarian.
no
nope it’s equalist what are you talking about?
no the word ie equalist
*sigh*
Because if we had a truly balanced society, no one would give a shit if it was feminine or masculine.
That you feel it has to be changed is a sign of the problem
Feminism is an egalitarian movement dealing with the biggest and most obvious inequality.
Stop bitching about the name and look it up I suggest The GoodMen Project.
Bs
feminists do not stand for equality most feminist are crazy or dady’s little girl who expects to be treated like a princess but is too much of a bitch to people around them and blame this on there gender, the fact is there is way more equality then there was 100 years ago in fact it may have even pushed men to oppressed, if a man gets accused of raping a women people would go as far as wanting him killed, if a women does the same crime and is found guilty gets a slap on the wrist.
in devorce women always win….while the man has to pay her more then 80% of what they owns, even if she was cheating.
happened to my friends brother, thats when i seen through the bs of femenism.
PS. My name is Emma and i am real women, the difference between me and a feminist i look at things objectively, i do not draw my concusions and build a case to prove i am right that is just stupid and the main reason feminists are vile and often wrong. I also love bioshock all of them and found the stories to be interesting the game was so much fun and a little dark but arnt we all…..
Little Kitten? Your name is totally Steve.
There may well be more equality than there was 100 years ago but women still get paid much less than guys and men still can’t get decent paternity rights. It’s still better to be a guy than a girl in this crazy world.
And that’s why the Egalitarian movement for equal rights has ‘fem’ on the front of it; to underline the point that it’s still unfair for the ladies.
Lets play spot the feminist
No. Just no. TRUE feminists care about gender equality. MODERN feminists wave picket signs and cardboard cut outs demanding equality and complaining about the way they’re treated as women, when in reality, they have things easier than men. Women, on average, spend 1/3 of the time in jail as men do for committing the exact same time. Can you explain that? And JUST as vanish said, boys have been getting raped for years, and have simply had it shoved off because “justice” believes that the man should have had the power to stop it, because the man can control anything. BS. Women scream for equality, and they received everything on easier terms than men have it.
No.
The Classic feminist, the true feminist asks for equality.
The modern feminist demands to have the upper hand, punches a man in the face, then says “You can’t hit me back, I’m a girl.”
*crime
My bad. Must have caught some ignorance and messed up.
You’re a whipped beta male. Feminism only promotes women being a certain way, it shames women who embrace their femininity, like their virginity and basically anything that deviates from being exactly what the feminist movement wants and attack women who think for themselves if it’s even slightly feminist. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been attacked for being a woman who doesn’t follow feminism like a cult.
In the civil rights era, there was nothing blacks could do or had that was more than any white woman can do. There’s are several situations in our culture where the woman is favored just because she’s a woman.
You’re an idiot … and obviously a sexist merely male.
So says the grill with cleavage just flying everywhere.. Congrats you further prove why people can’t have nice things
It’s cute when you string a bunch of words together like you know what they mean. But dismissing a woman’s (far wiser than yours) words because she happens to show cleavage is utter nonsense. That’s like saying Neil Degrasse Tyson knows nothing about science if he gives a speech while wearing a Simpsons tee-shirt.
He seems to know what he means, as his sentences are structured well enough to be relevant to the topic and make sense.
Saying that your words are far wiser than his doesn’t make it so, it just makes you sound arrogant (cleavage or no).
While I don’t agree that cleavage adds or detracts from anyone’s credibility, vanishmantle makes a good point that is often ignored: Gender equality means exactly that. There are still aspects of both genders that are not treated as equal, and your apparent aggressiveness towards males doesn’t make you a gender equalist, it just makes you another sexist.
So congratulations, while you’re technically on the other side of the fence, you’re clearly among like-minded individuals.
Pointing out that SPECIFIC men are being sexist idiots doesn’t make me sexist in reverse. No such thing to begin with. It’s simply being observant. And pointing out my wisdom in dissecting mindnumbingly obvious stupidity doesn’t make me arrogant, it simply proves I have more intelligence than a total idiot.
LETS AGREE TO DIS AGREE WOMEN GET TREATED UNFAIRLY AT TIMES SO DO MEN BUILD A BRIDGE AND GET OVER YOU IDIOTS
Caps-lock is cruise control for coooooool!
Put it away has hit home with a perfect, well established point, same as Vanishmantle. Please put it away no one wants to see that (Yours). Your points are weak at best. The game is not sexist its the story. Which person is sexist in your opinion? Point them out because all I see you doing is generalizing people.
You are sexist. Now shut up.
You CAN make a claim to being more intelligent and even present things like IQ results to back it up if you want. Wisdom is much harder to prove and people claiming to know it or have it tend to not. You are, however, arrogant, as anyone who scrolls down the page and reads the progresson of all your posts can see. You end up bragging about how much pussy your breasts get you, which hardly seems humble, wise, or intelligent.
hahaha its funny because your a female who wants so desperately to be right, your every typical bitch rolled up into one lul
My god woman. You don’t shut up even when proven wrong. You obviously didn’t play the game so go seeth over penis bearers elsewhere
No one proved me wrong. All anyone here did was try to sound intelligent while basically demanding I make them a sammich. And given that it’s been almost a bloody year since I stopped paying attention to you sad idiotic misogynist twonks, it’s depressingly pathetic that my cold hard truth made you all so butthurt that you’re STILL posting comments in reply to my facts but failing to offer anything resembling an actual provable argument.
I also laugh at your assumption that I “obviously didn’t play the game”. Why obviously? Because I’m a woman? Pffft, I’ve been gaming since most of you sexist wankpuddles were still the load your mothers should have swallowed.
Cleavage is one thing, those drooping sacks are another altogether.
However, to put things into perspective, males with their shirts off are never taken as intelligent … so we have a form of equality – unnecessarily showing your chest = a thicko’s in charge of the wardrobe or there’s something unspoken going on.
Nice try but no. Nothing unspoken here, and my point is still valid. Your juvenile attempt to discredit it by AGAIN focusing on “Tits as proof of stupid” only serves to reveal your own idiocy, not create any in me where none exists. And these tits I guarantee get me more pussy than anything your feeble sad self has to offer kid.
SHUT THE FUCK UOP AND GET BACK IN THE DAMN KITCHEN
Please take my like, good sir
My God… you’re seething and raging through the entire comments. Calm down. You’ve only proven that you’re the only idiotic one in these entire comments.
this is the funniest thing.the truth is i saw plenty of female enemies alot of the guard captains giving orders were females and the lutece’s if she actually played the game ended up being married not twins
Actually the Lutece twins weren’t married, least I saw no indication of that. They were the same person from different universes. That said you’re completely right about there being female enemies (Hell, both Founders AND Vox had female soldiers!) and either the author missed that, or they were trying to show how a lot of radicals eschew actual facts to try to convince people.
On that note, I believe the Lutece twins’ minds DID merge, it’s just not as obvious. Just look at the audio log talking about Robert’s hemorrhaging, or how they always finish each others’
so basically blind revisionism; surprised?
MK was not saying “Tits as proof of stupid”, he was saying that ANYBODY showing their chest’s means that, and I quote ” a thicko’s in charge of the wardrobe or there’s something unspoken going on.”, so using what I have seen people say in this forum, you are completely misunderstanding them and just proving that you aren’t feminist, you are sexist, but right now on the TV (and yes this is real) a man is giving women self defense classes, finally, if you ever went to school, you would notice that the amount of female teachers heavily out weighs the amount of male teachers, so what you have basically have, and I quote a saying used for both men and women, “you have pulled statements out of your ass”.
whoa. logic. [clapping]
No, tits aren’t stupid. You don’t want to be objectified but you have them hanging out for the world to see. Not that anyone wants to see (Yours). I would work on your face because its pretty hideous. Trying to take away from a sore site? Its not helping your cause, like how you feel about not being part of the idiot faction of sexists. You fit in quite well.
I bet you are SUCH a prize yourself. Attacking a woman based your perception of her relative attractiveness, rather than her arguments, kind of proves her point about the pervasive sexism in the gaming community. People who have to resort to “oh yeah…well you’re ugly!” are clearly losing an argument and have no valid points to make. How is resorting to cruel, disgusting put-downs making any kind of logical sense? STFU unless you are willing to post a pic of yourself so we can all mock you.
So I have read your comments and read what they were in response to.
Quote: “And it only proves he himself is a sexist douchebro who missed the point, because her “slanted views” are actually pretty damned on the money.”
Show me what views were right on the money. Take 1 + 1 and = 2 with your reasoning. That means no twisting of the thing being complained about to serve your purpose. That means including all relevant data into the final calculation. Booker shoots people in the face and Elizabeth doesn’t therefore the game is sexist is not an accurate portrayal of all the relevant data as an example.
So if you twist logic resulting in a misrepresentation of the facts, or in layman’s terms you lie, would I be sexist because I say that your views are slanted as a polite way of saying you are full of sh*t? That is what you have said here in your posts.
Not to put words in anyone’s mouth, but the original reason of referencing your cleavage was as a response to you calling a man a “sexist douchebro” for simply saying a woman has slanted views.
Following along the lines of responding to the hypocrisy of your statement, as you call the author a “sexist douchebro” as a replacement term for “slanted views” for simply having a different view.
Continuing with more logic, let’s move on to sexuality. Both men and women have a biological imperative for reproduction. As women already know, men react to breasts based on that drive. Thus, showing cleavage causes a chemical reaction in men, which then causes them to envision the woman as a means of reproduction.
So a feminist showing cleavage holds less credibility due to positioning themselves as a sex object, which is biologically driven and not the fault of the man. That is all caused by your own actions and doesn’t make a man sexist, it makes them a living creature.
So the real question I have now is why you came here to do nothing more than try to bash any man that happens to say something that you are able to twist into “sexist”? You haven’t even attempted to reference what is sexist in this game, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t think you even played the game.
Show me some logic. Defend your position. Make some points that are debatable. Present some sort of argument that shows you are more than a woman that wants to bash men, because no matter how intelligent you keep telling yourself you are, you have shown nothing other than you will support feminism regardless of the lack in logic of a given argument.
And this folks is how you totally own somebody and have them stop responding.
I’m sorry for the amount of shit you had to put up with on this stack, but you really should have chosen a better target than Bioshock Infinite. It is definitely not a sexist game, and at least one of the points on this article is blatantly false (there are lots of female enemies, most of which are different skins/voice-packs of enemy archetypes).
And, yeah, you should really not use a picture of yourself wearing a shirt with a low v-neck if you want to be taken seriously. Consider how seriously you’d want to take a guy using a picture of himself in tight underwear as his avatar.
Slimy feminists and their disgusting mentalities. Rather than constantly blurting out laughable bs and comparisons and overusing the word “cute”, try for once proving your points using simple, smart and clear sentences. That’s if you can prove anything to begin with.
It’s cute when somebody debunks your entire argument and you don’t even have the balls (lol) to answer back. You aren’t a feminist you’re a sexist. Accept it.
hahahah NO
😉
gender inequality is so flawed.
People like you think women are treated un-equally but would you like the law to just say, “Hey he beat a girl to a pulp because she hit him” and he gets off on self defense? Nah i bet you wouldnt like that! shut up and leave games out iof this sexim war
OK.
1. I’m a girl.
2. I’m a gamer.
3. I think the person that wrote this and you, and anyone who agrees with this is a moron.
Let’s go through this article and so called feminist slander with a bit of logic and reasoning, shall we?
5 – 4. The fact that Elizabeth was booker’s companion and did not fight throughout the game does NOT mean this was sexist. This is based on a character’s history, choice and personality. She was locked up in a tower, spent her entire time reading and learning, and did not get fighting lessons. Despite this she is a vital to Booker in every way possible for finishing this game. Opening the tears and escaping first of all is a huge one. Opening tears so Booker could use weapons to kill people ring any bells? Along with collecting ammo and money. She also found interesting things, would remind you of things, and was the best most intelligent and awesome companion personality I have come across yet! This makes her an amazing character! I loved Elizabeth – in the beginning so curious about the world she had never seen, and in the end, seeing the results of her choices, coming to grips with it and offering a choice for Booker – to end all the destruction and kill himself in order to wipe out Commstock so he never happened. She could have just knocked him out and drowned him herself, but she offered the choice.
3. Yes. You are right. The Lutece twins did not merge their memories into each other as they WERE DIFFERENT. And this whole crap about gender equality, is crap! Men and Women ARE different, we are different with our bodies, our way of thinking – because our way of thinking IS different to each and everyone else – and our entire make up. Therefore things are going to be different. I always hate how people mention equality. No one is equal, we are going to be different no matter what! The difference is a good thing! People do not understand it is equity we should focus on. Equity is addressing and focusing on these differences, yet ensuring that these differences do not get in way of ensuring treatment of both men and women to be fair.
Back on topic, though. The fact that their biological make up was different it allowed them to still remain whole and unaffected by the tear. As someone said above, the woman was actually more intelligent, she created the machine, had the image, but her “twin” was able to help her as well. Yet they worked together. And in the end worked together as one, the male twin, wanted to right what was wrong, even if it meant going back to opposite sides of their worlds, possibly never remembering or meeting due to Booker stopping himself from becoming Comstock.
2. Once again, someone has shed light on this above. In the end, the Vox did so well as they were able to do get the weapons, which I agree. And I think the author may have forgotten one important factor in all this. Who enabled the Vox to get the weapons in the first place? Who created the tear and transported said weapons? Yeah, that’s right. Elizabeth.
1. The main character in this story was Booker De Witt. He served in the war, then in one parallel world Booker took the baptism. He became Comstock and found he could not have a child so took his own child from himself in a parallel dimension. He was father of Elizabeth. We are also forgetting this was in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Back then Men were still the main power and women were only starting to gain more powerful positions, which was still very few. In my opinion, creating a character, giving him a personality and back story which was very damned believable, is not sexist. If anything, I call this good story telling.
Although I do recall that the main part of this game was the fact that Elizabeth was so special, which is why she needed rescuing, which is why she – and only she – could make tears, which is why Comstock kept her locked up in the tower in the first place, and why in the end, she became so powerful she could see through ALL TIME AND SPACE. She also figured out how to stop Comstock from ever existing, to stop all those horrible events happening to every other version of her, without killing off Booker De Witt or herself. She pretty much cleaned the slate, so to speak.
…………………………………………………………………
In my opinion, Elizabeth is one of the best AI companions EVER, best female characters ever portrayed in a game. I loved her! I loved the game, the story… everything! It has been one of the first single player games with such an amazing story that I could just not stop playing and finished it within days.
Anyone who thinks this game is in any way remotely sexist with how it depicts it’s characters is just as stupid as someone who thinks this is mocking religion. All it takes is a little bit of logic, reasoning and common sense.
I also apologise for the long post, but I felt it was needed to get through this crap. Some people just need to lighten up and get over themselves. >_>
You seem like one of the few people here who actually played Infinite with their brain turned on. Kudos.
loooong ago, i bought a used SNES only to play SUPER METROID.
how many vids/blogs/rants have you EVER seen where a ‘douchebro’ says/laments that ‘oh how i wish i were playing a bro, instead of a female samus’…
answer: NONE.
excuse me while i got into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich and chuckle at the belligerent revisionism of ‘feminists’
according to her girls liking guy things is sexist or girls being physically strong or warrior like is wrong, she might be right about a few things but she’s wrong about most.
The woman mentioned in this article has never made a sensible argument in her”feminist” rants. Anytime a women is helped with ANYTHING by a man its sexist. If my wife gets shot at and jump in front of the bullet t save her I’m sexist. If she falls down in the street and I reach my hand out to help her up I’m sexist. That is EXQCTLY how she views feminism and she hurts the movement 10 times more than she helps it with her nonsense. The actual REAL feminist women I know who aren’t totally off their rock like this lady thinks she is a total idiot. All of that is putting aside the fact that her big campaign I’d above it freaking video games. Yeah let’s find something less important to the feminism movement. Don’t bother with REAL life issues that effect and hurt RRAL people.
While I agree with you about her rants, video games and other media ARE important. The way you portray men and women in games, movies, books etc has a huge impact on how people think, especially younger people.
I’m not saying Bioshock is sexist but unequal representation of men and women in media is a valid concern. And it goes both ways: I’ve seen guys online who comment things like “I wish men in video games weren’t always a super-buff unrealistic dude, I want to play a lithe assassin, but they’re typically female”, same as women who comment they want more variety in the way female characters are represented.
It’s written by a man…
If there is a sexist game, it’s because there are nerdy devs concocting the whole thing. Her slanted views are nothing more than just that. Slanted. The world isn’t out to get you. Especially the fake, imagined world of video games. I bet you nodded your head and agreed with every warped point that the writer disregardingly slapped onto this page.
were that simply stating an opinion enough to make something a fact… or ‘proof’
No, the article was written to get page views for advertisers and thus money for this site. The title and subject guaranteed that eyeballs would show up.
This is the sad truth of journalism these days. No effort just grips to rile people up into mindless rages, all for the money.
I read the bullets to the articles and enjoy reading the debate below. Pretty comical how people freak out when the word sexism is thrown in
No, no… you’re wrong, man… I mean… you can dislike a rock band, but not because of that you must think they’re bad musicians… it’s just that you don’t like their music… this is the exact same situation… in my times, we used to call it “respect”
Guys. Guys. Guys. Calm down. Have a Poptart.
To start us talking about it, probably.
You want to know how else Bioshock is sexist? There are more guys than ladies on the dev team.
So why write the article? It’s a comment bait article, designed to provoke, as all articles are on this site.
So when it does bait and provoke a response your first reaction is to crumble.
Agent provocateur? Ok fair enough
Devils Advocate? Again ok
If that’s the case, stick to your guns for at least a while – don’t cave at the first criticism. Otherwise what’s the point?
Well, i did not. And there is no such Game as a Bioshock “Infintie”.
Did you actually read the first paragraph or the last line? This wasn’t suppose to be serious at all, he was making the point he can just pull random broken points out of his ass.
Seriously, read the entire article before you comment missing the point entirely.
The article doesn’t claim to not be serious, just that it doesn’t “actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist” and that it admits the points are extreme. So the author is serious even without believing the intent is sexist but as the first commenter noted, the problem isn’t with how serious they were about the points, its that the points were factually wrong.
Pretty much this. The facts aren’t a bad example of a person obsessed with proving that the game is sexist, they’re a bad example of a person trying to make a straw feminist argument. In actual arguments that video games are sexist, the points are, unfortunately, usually factually true.
Couldn’t agree more. Without Elizabeth’s powers, lockpicking abilities, and her attention to detail, the game would have been considerably harder to play through.
Congrats sir your are a true believer in feminism
Not to mention, arguably the most powerful enemy in the game and the only “Boss” is Lady Comstock, so they are just plain wrong about their being no female enemies.
@ 5) Not to mention the siren (one of the most dangerous) “heavy hitter enemies”
how did they manage to miss the female police for like half the game i mean it was like 60% guys 40% girls
“the female was depicted as the brilliant one that created everything and the male was basically depicted as useless except maybe as a courier and a boat-rower. So yeah, it actually does “prove” gender equality.”
Oh, wow.
Wow.
Did… did you just say that when the *man* is portrayed as the inferior one, then it’s *not* sexist?
Are you really that hilariously stupid?
Considering that there are several powerful male characters throughout the game, yes, you can argue that it isn’t sexist for one male character to be inferior to one female character.
I’ll agree with Snowskeeper that one male character inferior to one female character wouldn’t be an issue given that the gender make-up in power structures is pretty equivalent in the game, but honestly, the argument that Robert is inferior to Rosalind is overplayed here. They’re both quantum physicists involved with running Columbia. Robert does a few chauffeur-y things, but then again, he also wears sandwich boards, toss coins, and play catch with himself over a gondola rail. The Luteces are kind of weird, in case no one noticed.
Im so sick of all the bitching, im sure a girl came up with this stupid BS, he bitch how about you stfu and just see it as a fucking game instead of a man made game to put you down, im sure men and women made the game, and dont give me BS like the girls have lower rank job positions and had to listen to the men at the company, its a game so stfu.
I love your reply. It’s so dead on accurate.
actually there was one female enemy right after you get elizabeth out off her prison. the girl ask elizabeth for her name flaming that she was her friend. after the guy stabs you in the concession stand or you point your gun at him. the girl is probably the first on you kill because she the first one you see when you turn around. this girl gives you your first shotgun.
Awesome, everything I was going to say and you said it already. This article is a joke. Did the author even play this game or just read the wiki?
Those are so many likes
for number three if you even bother listening to the in-game monologues you you understand that the they discovered each other using a similar if not identical method. in the beginning this method is described as being no more pronounced as a knock on the wall. in the case of gender vs. gender this could only be seen as proof of equal genius on their parts. as for them being twins they actually are in a way since they share the same birthday and parents
For #5, this is another way to disprove that statement. In Burial at Sea II, where Elizabeth is the main protagonist and does kill a lot of people. Even though this is over 30 years later(I think) it still is at a time when women “aren’t equal to men” and she was still badass.
What’s so bad about a woman needing help? This is clearly written by someone who didn’t play the game. There were female enemies, Booker couldn’t have gotten far without Elizabeth and finally, the Luteces were equal. Robert is more sensitive and analytic and Rosalind is more philosophical. If they did play, then they didn’t analyze the game.
4) This could be equally, and perhaps more accurately rendered as Booker needed a woman’s help to survive.
OR to die? He need her to kill him to end the misery, suffering, and lies. Elizabeth(s) violently kill her own father and saviour, HAW HAW. If that’s not womens lib going to far I don’t know what is? *snide snigger*
Thank you! I wanted to write something like this, but I’m not ballsy enough to do it. Thanks again.
David
Thinking back too, there were no female enemies in the game at all. None.
Unless you count the Siren, one of the most difficult enemies. Oh, and the female Vox Populi gurillas. Don’t count them and I would agree with you.
What is she talking about there were lots of enemy female soldiers also daisy is hardly a bit player her followers are the final battle of the game
A sexist game?
Cry me a fucking river.
This article is a self-absorbed joke. Bioshock Infinite is set in 1912 and yet I feel like the mindset of this writer is older than that. Waste of time.
You all realize that the author wrote this piece as a parody of “feminist” arguments against games. The parody has fallen a bit flat, but you all need to read a little more carefully.
However, I think the parody obviously falls a bit flat for a couple of reasons. One, Bioshock Infinite turns the “rescue the girl” narrative on its head (so much so that you can’t really parody it) and two, no feminist who would make these arguments against the game. In fact, the second point is probably what brings about this piece’s inability to get a laugh. You’re just being hostile towards Anita Sarkeesian, who does make valid points about tropes in video games and the treatment of women (whether you agree or not).
Aaaaand you lost me when you said Sarkeesian makes valid points.
“Recent rants by Anita Sarkeesian regarding the promotion of male adolescent power fantasies within video games has reignited the concern of sexism in video games. While I whole-heartedly disagree with her slanted views, it was hard not to take notice of the complaints and how they come about. You can twist many things in life to prove your points, and amazingly, without much thought, I’ve been able to pull out 5 points that may prove that Bioshock Infinite is another sexist game. Feminist can feel free to swipe these points to make their future complaints.”
nope.
Dude. If you’e going to tear apart this argument, at least read the fucking article all the way through.
The clue is in the last line of it.
Fucks sake. I was just as mad as the rest of you, least I read it.
Stop saying, “Let’s face it” and jumping on the band wagon with this fem rights nonsense. This game is NOT sexist — quit trying to make it out to seem like it is. “Let’s face it,” if you’re going to spend this much time writing and editing a bogus article on a bogus topic, you have too much time on your hands.
1) Read the last line, ffs.
2) “fem rights nonsense”? Yea, making sure human beings aren’t treated as inferior just because of their gender is total nonsense. While we’re at it, what’s with all this nonsense about non-whites being equal to whites? Pfft. (Note: this bit is sarcasm, since you’re obviously not very good at picking that up.)
you have no idea what todays feminism is, educate yourself please.
If you have to explain that it’s satire, it’s extremely shitty satire. It reads more like an attempt to piss people off and get page-views.
I don’t see the point of writing this if you believe the game isn’t sexist. And, all of the comments below butcher the article anyway…So yeah, probably best to write useful articles rather than pointless and incorrect criticism.
“Booker, are you afraid of God?”
“No, but I’m afraid of you.”
Anita Sarkeesian You are an idiot and reason why women are not getting same status as Men. Keep asking that for long run years and shall not be granted because of woman like you.
Game story revolve around Booker and his tasks to bring the girl and she helps Booker in Fights by supplying him ammos, health and Vigor. She is in fight and she can take care of herself. Also she doesn’t get hurt because she never went out of world. She is angry woman but she surely knows how to control it and she knows killing is not solution. Vox leader is Woman and she kills and also orders her army to kill Booker. There are female police officers also attacking on Booker. Dear Anita, Go wax some poles in Strip club.like your mother did.
Someone didn’t even PLAY the game lol. There are female enemies after the first level or two. Lady Comstock appears as an enemy that controls men. If anything, you can cry sexism toward men that they chose to make the main character who is full of vices and gambling debts a guy.
3 is so stupid, and once again, you clearly didn’t even play the game. If you had, maybe you’d realize that Lin/Booker’s circumstances for appearing again are completely different than the Lutece twins. Honestly, Rosalind being a physicist in those days is impressive and I’m surprised they included that. Good for them.
You must be a troll, 10/10 would rage again.
I’m perfectly fine with people seeing the game as racist, sexist, religiously blindsiding and a host of other derogatory terms.
It’s a work of art, like others, and there should be more like it. Then again I’m a sexist who treats my woman as a slave, racist, religiously intolerant Creek (that’s Native American).
Uh… there are a lot of female enemies?
Also, Anita Sarkeesian didn’t say any of this. She’s likely smart enough to know that yes, a lot of gender roles are fulfilled at some points, but then often turned upside down in this game. It’s 1912. It’s historically accurate – but then it also does a lot to show these things can be made different.
All the alternate universes in Infinite are born from different choices and variables. Every crossroad creates two universes. Rosalind and Robert Lutece – from a story perspective – are different genders specifically so you can tell them apart. Rosalind is also a fatalist while Robert is an optimist… Why do you suppose that is? Her entire life she was likely told she can’t be what she is (an intelligent physicist and inventor) due to her gender. That would breed fatalism as much as being a white male in those times (with the same brain, same ideas, same IQ) would breed optimism. The point isn’t sexism (just as it also isn’t racism), the point is historical accuracy.
The only issue I have some disappointment over is that I wish there were a way for you to play as a female Booker DeWitt. By all intents and purposes, there is an alternate universe where he is a her (Brooklyn DeWitt?). Just as there is one where Elizabeth is Elijah or some other male name. That would require an insane amount of work (and about double the budget, most likely), however, and I partially understand why they didn’t do it.
Daisy Fitzroy only used Booker because he was publicized as some kind of enemy to the Founders, might I add. It literally doesn’t matter to her what gender Booker is, just that his name is associated with False Shepherd and that can be used. Daisy Fitzroy is apparently one of the highest IQ characters in Columbia, as well, if you read some of her background info. She is leading a rebellion against an oppressive regime and delegating responsibility to many different sources; she is who is answered to. Pretty feminist, if you ask me. Yes, she turns out to be bad, but everyone does except Elizabeth. She turns out to be the most powerful, most intelligent, and only well-adjusted character in the game.
Booker is shown the way by Elizabeth. He’s in denial and has been for decades. She gets out of the tower and pretty much figures out life, while Booker only develops as a person because of her. You might think she only assists, but the woman leads. She is the one with her hand on the leash by the end of the game. One might argue this would never have happened unless a male character intervened with her life, but one might argue that this exact same turn of events has happened in another universe with a male Liz and a female Booker. That’s the point of the game. The point of the NAME of the game, even. That this story happens in an infinite number of ways with many different variables, but it always happens. I would make the argument that it actually makes the genders of the characters utterly unimportant.
It makes almost everything about the characters important except their motivations, in fact. External differences will only have a shallow effect on their attitudes, but their motivations would remain exactly the same. That’s the point.
I’m not defending sexism, as it is present in the game. But I really just don’t believe it’s a sexist game. Racism is present in the game as well, but it’s most certainly not a racist game. Ken Levine and company are notorious overthinkers and I do not believe this is an issue that they didn’t discuss while creating the game. I think he’s talked about racism a lot more as that seems to be what the media has brought attention to, but when asked about sexism, he noted that Elizabeth was the most powerful person in Columbia and when given freedom, became the best person in the game. I’ve summarized this, of course, but the point is simple: nothing is as it seems in BioShock Infinite.
Those points are all ridiculous. Elizabeth doesn’t fight because she’s actually a good person that greatly dislikes violence as proved when she flat out tells Booker(a borderline pyschotic) so. Elizabeth, whether she was male or female, would have needed help to get out of that tower. The characters only other option to escape was to do a tear…which was risky. The rest are equally as farfetched but at least you admit it at the end of the article and state you don’t really think the game is sexist. It’s not racist either. The antagonists are racist, but the game itself isn’t. 🙂
You must be poor or something. You’re lack of education disturbs me.
most males play action games and most males like to play as a male, so this article is irrelevant why aren’t most men the lead role in rom-coms because women prefer and watch them.
besides there a alot of female past and present protagonists, femshep(one of the best male and female roles) lara croft, samas aran mirrors edge girl and mo.
basically this article can suck upon mah t*ts.
the link that sent me here said gaming is sexist not just bioshock so some of what i said might be irrelevant but still bioshock is not sexist.
good god….get a life…seriousely. nothing about the game is sexist.
Geez people read the last line. The whole article is a gigantic parody and not to be taken seriously at all. It’s just showing how ridiculous people’s arguments can get when it comes to trying to portray something as sexist.
Yes, apparently it’s much easier to type than read.
I guess most people assume that they wouldn’t allow an article to be published here that’s nothing but, “trollolol, I don’t believe anything I just said.” And got fired up but the rest of the 99% of the article.
if it is left without comments, then people who don’t read said line will use this as fuel for any fires they may want to light under the game industry over sexism. this way, even if the original points are satirical, they still have counter-arguments.
That doesn’t make this article helpful or constructive. It’s just idiotic trolling.
More like a successful troll with all the morons freaking out down here in the comments
It’s finally happened, feminism has reached the point where Poe’s Law applies…
lol
no, the guy who posted this thinks it’s a bunch of bull, the person who wrote this actually believes it, read the first lines.
Read the whole first paragraph again until it sinks in please.
If you have to state that your satire is satire then it’s shitty satire. The sarcasm in and of itself should be enough to convince anyone not retarded. If the points you make are points you feel other people would make then you’ve failed, and they are, they’re just applied in a way that in this instance is wrong, making it seem like he’s making actual (false) arguments.
Seems to me that someone has not paid much attention when playing the game…. Saying that there are no female enemies is so wrong it hurts to read. I believe I fought as many females as I did males, how on earth can’t someone not notice them?
You didn’t. There are a lot less females but regardless yes, they are there.
What actually bothers me about this article is that the person who wrote this somehow did not notice the female NPCs, but found it annoying to not be able to kill more woman…… :S
I was starting to get up on the fanboy soapbox here and had constructed arguments until I realized the article was lampooning the extreme feminist arguments in their cries of sexism (unless I grossly misinterpreted “Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no. Are the points extreme? That’s par for the course in these arguments.”). Manahtten’s response provides all of the rebuttal needed to the points themselves and I hope that people read it.
There is sexism in many video games but this just ain’t one of ’em.
if you actually played the fucking game you would see female enemies. They also dont shoot her because she is the LAMB the person EVERYONE in colombia worships so now i dont fucking think they would shoot who they would worship. She is ” the prophets daughter “.
She needs his help because of the fact she is sealed airtight in a room where she can not free herself in any humane way possible requiring help male or female.
Robert lutece came second to the lutece fame showing that the other lutece is the more famous and prominent one.
Just cause she was a female doesnt mean she needs a mans help it just so happened that she had something booker wanted the airship. And booker just so happened to kill about over a thousand men in his life so it would be ideal to send the fucking terminator to get her weapons to kill a million people proving she has some serious balls.
The fact booker is a male makes the entire story of the game fit with each other. The game relates to bioshock two. The unbreakable bond of a father and his daughter. History at the time also restricted women to enter the army. FUCKING IDIOT.
Tip: actually play the game
What about the female cops?
I sometimes do not understand people. The game is set in 1912. What do you expect from back then? Women to be wearing short skits and prancing around with all the freedom they have?
Think with a mind from a person from the 1900s and you will understand why they have this. Same shit applies to those “offended” with the amount of racism in the game. It’s a game. Fiction. Fake. Never real, never will be (although i hope it will be. Some games are just incredible to go to.)
Grow up
the world was sexist in 1912.
thank you lol
there are female bad guys from the beginning to the game to the end. they are all over the place. generally commanding the others.
She cant fight because she just realized there are more than 15 people in the world other than what she saw in a window.
she needs help because she realized that there are more than 15 people i the world other than the time windows.
all the characters in bioshock have been men being controlled.
This is horrible and wrong.
Feminism…
I know…
what about it?
Yea, what with wanting women to have rights & be treated like people.
Don’t they know they’re just property?
Ugh, I almost vomited just trying to type that. I don’t get how misogynists don’t go insane… oh, wait…
Oh boy, in the beginning it was about that, now feminism is like “that’s sexist, i cant explain how, but i shout for punishment with bullshit arguments”.
Well, the best explanation for it is that feminists are fast becoming unneeded, so they have to do and say more and more ridiculous things to survive in their current state. For the most part, they are a bunch of unreasonable, unhappy chip-on-the-shoulder types that base their entire existence around being a victim. Frickin’ hate it.
Cuz they cant find a man to make sandwiches for since they are ugly and usually eat the sandwiches before they get to the man of the house. Ain’t nobody got time to wait for another sandwich. So they get kicked out of the house and have to feel empowered by running around on blogs and writing shit that is based off 0% fact and 100% bullshit.
When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you’re a misandrist hiding behind the fig leaf of feminism, every portrayal of women is sexist.
Thankfully, most feminists aren’t misandrists… and misandrists aren’t very common (despite what misogynists & MRAs would like to think).
misandrists aren’t as common as misogynists in modern society. I’ll give you a cookie if you can tell me why.
All this hostility.
Sure, the points in this article are flawed and extreme. I guess that’s an attempt to suggest that all feminist arguments are flawed and extreme right? That the feminist perspective is really just a faulty filter in which to view media?
So I guess women should shut up about any form of sexism they see in media? Because their arguments are always flawed and extreme?
Anybody heard of the straw man fallacy, here?
“That’s par for the course in these arguments”
Sure it is.
It’s finally happened. I’ve finally read the most idiotic article of all time.
Reread the last paragraph, he points out how far-fetched his article is. “Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no. Are the points extreme? That’s par for the course in these arguments.”
It’s entirely possible to realize that this was an attempt at satire, and still think it’s shit.
It’s finally happened. I’ve finally read the comment that missed the point of an article by not reading the entire article the worst of all time.
but what’s the point of making such article in the first place?? that’s kind of stupid…
the guy was showing how people can pull extreme reasons to slander games (or anything really) out of their ass and make them sound true, which these aren’t.
The thing is, this doesn’t even *sound* true. The author uses an image from the demo of a considerably different model for an extremely prominent character, uses straw feminist arguments that are objectively untrue (“there are no female enemies”, Songbird makes your escape “a little harder”) or have already been answered (Elizabeth doesn’t fight because it would make her either a liability or unrealistically invincible; AI allies in combat can be either annoying or immersion breaking if they’re not *incredibly* well designed). They’ve either never played the game, or their trying to act like they haven’t.
It’s by far the worst satire I’ve ever read. It’s way too easy to miss the point entirely. Especially considering the title.
too me its pretty sexist to say guys roles should be taken away…
Define “guys’ roles.” Maybe you don’t understand what “sexist” means, hm?
Female chauvinist pigs?
If we want to go that way, it’s just as easy to say the game is racist. After all, The blacks needed a white person to help them out. To start off, if you look at the time period they’re using, the simple truth is that men and women weren’t of equal standing at that point. Not having women in combat while the men ran around and protected them seems completely reasonable in this circumstance.
Secondly, I fully support balanced representation and I do believe that while the female gamer base is growing, representation in video games like in so many other male-dominated nerd hobbies is not growing to match. The point I need to reiterate is that there’s a need for balance. Like every other -ism, the tendency is to try to correct the problem by suddenly making everything in favor of the discriminated party or crying foul whenever it isn’t. Balance! That is, know which gender is right for which role in which setting. I do not feel discriminated against in this case because a man was running around doing the heavy lifting while the girl provided support in this instance. It feels appropriate. And, given the setting, I think having a female lead would’ve felt wrong and out of place. Yes, I would like to see more strong female leads who’s primary value isn’t her sexuality, but not at the expense of strong male leads. Having a male lead doesn’t automatically make a game sexist.
OMG this looks like the writer is in that time of the month and with the sexist coming out the the way (because I already know I am ganna be call that “c’est la vie”)
5) manhatten_project_2000 is right she didnt want to kill any one at first so she try to help at best as she can with out being a combatant
4) to make it to the ship Booker needed her help and skills just about all the time. I took time to searching around for items, potions, etc and she will alway throw something hella’ useful in the right time when I was out or low play is you didnt notes by the time that Booker got to her she was already opening portals to other places, it was matter of time for her to figure it out and port out.
3 and 2) in this manhatten_project_2000 made a point plus if you actually find the vox recordings it will hint that they are twin brothers. she claim that she wants to see his brother she didnt care about Columbia they just give her a chance to do her work to meet up a brother the probably die in birth but she probably new that she had a bro. at one time so why not bring him back from a paralel universe
1) they could made Booker a female character but it just dont fit right that character.
for what you see in his house and the basic info about him he probably gamble and he out people money, drink and blame him self for his past he hated who he was you also learn about wounded knee. war plays with your head so he most likely had PTSD now time frame and like style of that time you wouldnt see a female soldier or a female with booker’s traits so yes you could have a female booker but it would like cheap like they just did it to make your gender happy not gamers as a hold
so… play that game and get your fact right before you post crap thanks
you know…there are female soldiers in the game
dude these are the worst reasons ever im sorry but elizabeth is a inoccent girl who has been trapped for her whole life with girl stuff so why would she just want to go on a killing spree killing everyone
I agree that there is nothing stopping Booker from being portrayed as a female except, and I’m no history major, the whole being a soldier thing at wounded knee. Also I do remember running into female police and Vox.
On a side note about feminism I would like to say that feminism is all about female equality. It’s not about taking over the whole world by hairy lipped, wang hating lesbians. I have a mother, a wife, and many female relatives so why wouldn’t I want them to receive the same amount of pay as a male counterpart in the work place? People mistake feminism for the extremist cartoonish versions of feminists portrayed by people like Rush Limbaugh.
April Fool’s Day is on the first, Damon.
This is 1912. No female enemies? Then you are blind as fuck, because I remember killing plenty of female cops. I don’t want to waste my time to argue probably with feminist. There are already a lot of smart comments below. We don’t need more bullshit like that in the internet -.-
First I was “R U SICK??!?!?” Then I was “OHH i C WUT U DID THERE”
Well played
There are loads of female NPC-enemy soldiers in Bioshock Infinite. Loads of them.
So true I was wondering when someone was going to point that out. They must have not been paying attention to the game characters at all.
What about Lady Comstock’s ghost???
exactly!
didn’t you at one point have to fight a female ghost as a boss too?
There was plenty of female peace officers, as well, early on in the game.
apparently, being a sexist means to be a male nowadays. it is just a conventional storyline with a male hero. get over it.
to call all such storylines sexist would be kinda rash. but hey, the world is different today, and i will gladly let women do all the fights do on their own, suffer all the pain and have a wussy pussy boyfirend who isnt allowed to do anything without being called racist on top. I don’t care anymore. well, i guess i developed into a sexist.
That moment when I read the last line.
While I am sure these articles are just written to purposefully provoke people and generate more comments and views, I have more issue with a point raised in number 3. I don’t believe people overlap their bodies when entering different universes, they only receive the memories. If this wasn’t true it would break the entire game’s plot (regarding the twist) and I also believe that you cant just have random exceptions, I’d prefer to have a little more faith in the writers. Could be wrong but that’s how I see it.
Saying “Booker should’ve been female” doesn’t make it sexist. It means that they chose to have a male character be the lead. Is there something so suddenly wrong with having a male character be the lead?
The HIGHEST rate comment is one that disproves a PARODY article!
Oh boy…
this is a joke
but still i aint played the game yet will buy copy for my PC i watched the CGI movie on youtube and its elizabeth that i am scared of i was even having nightmares about her she is strange and she got some strange powers cute she is but if she was real life i wont wana mess with that or shes gona chuck your ass in the middle of space or god knows were but hey its just a game right
most of your other points have been thoroughly argued, so I’ll just say one thing about number 3. The reason everyone else starts overlapping is because their alternate version is dead.(btw, spoilers) if you ever reached the end, (assuming you actually played the game. the no female enemies bit makes we wonder) then you would see that it is extremely possible for both booker and Elizabeth to exist with other versions of themselves. The Lucete’s aren’t an isolated incident. and, even if they were, that’s two individuals visiting a third(and fourth and fifth etc etc) world, one that, more than likely, neither of them are from. the way they talk and see the world, they no longer have a home dimension and would probably be immune to the whole distortiony nose bleed thing.
soooo did you ACTUALLY play the damn game at all? or are you jumping into anything you find and say “hey lets try and force something to look bad and say whatever we want to make it look like were right!” so full of shit right here
there are female enemies in game, you just didnt play all the game , i encountered them en route to the first ladys airship if i recall, or before that
Yep, her name was Esther, and she was (in quite possibly the only non-Lutece gender role subversion in the game) a Columbia Police agent with orders to recover Elizabeth
No female enemies? Did we play the same game? There were plenty of female enemies… Or were they men with very feminine voices? LOL. Yah, practically nothing in this article really proves a point. Without Elizabeth’s help, Booker would have died like 20 times in this game…
Jesus christ… can you please find a better way to spend your time?
You have a decent life, please don’t waste it witch-hunting.
Elizabeth is not a trained soldier, she is not a warrior. To my knowledge, she was not brought up to kill people, you troglodyte.
Wow… please just find a real issue to pursue. Unless, of course, you’re not actually all that philanthropic and simply enjoy sitting back and firing off complaints whilst not doing any real work yourself.
fuck you fucking faggots, fucking bitching about every fucking videogame. fucking kill yourself.
>>>/v/
Are you guys fucking dense? Did you even read the article?
“Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no. Are the points extreme? That’s par for the course in these arguments.”
Well, the “are these points extreme? That’s par for the course…” part just hand-waves any legitimate complaints people can have with women’s presentations in video games.
So it’s still a stupid article it’s just not stupid in the way most people think.
Seriously, enough with the “sexism” bullshit already. Let devs do what they want to do.
Fucking hell
I specifically remember killing several women in a very brutal fashion. You didn’t even play the game.
female enemies are in the game. this person obviously didn’t play this game and right at the start after you find Elizabeth the game tell you that Elizabeth can take care of herself you dont need to protect her in battle.
this person is a idiot for writing this garbage.
wow, so it’s sexist because you don’t play as a female?
i was open to this article until that point.
how stupid. we want to play as a male so we can relate to what’s going on. it’s a first person game you know!
…aaaaand once again assuming only guys play vidoegames. Duh.
Just so you know, if you look carefully; there are plenty of times when things (such as the statue of R. Lutece, because it changes gender if you stare at it) depict and imply that the Lutece twins are the same person or at least fairly equal.
So like you know, if you want to make another parodied article, just double check your “facts” it’s harder to “dispprove.”
Am I actually slight offended… HELL NO.
I would get it being a trolly article but the problem is that there has to at least be some connection to the game first. Nearly all of the information is incorrect.
One of the most striking things about the combat to me was just how prevalent female enemies were in the game. They showed up as Vox Populi, The Siren bossfight, regular Columbia police, and Columbia military officers.
This whole list is such a stretch it hurt my head.
5. Elizabeth can take care of herself.
4. Booker brings Elizabeth the key to escape her tower. Has nothing to do with Elizabeth being helpless and in need of a man to get her out, she just needs a key like any person locked in a cage would.
3. The Luteces situation isn’t comparable to Bookers or Mr. Lin’s as it is explained on the Voxophone found in their lab; an anomaly happened with their ‘rift’ contraption and they now exist in all possible dimensions. And the female Lutece is the stronger character here.
2. Daisy Fitzroy is the leader of Vox Populi and she’s one tough bitch so yeah, really sexist.
1. This is the worst one of all. Infinite’s magic is based in it’s narrative (a rarity for video games) an important part of narrative is character developement. Sure you could create your own character but it would lessen the connection Elizabeth and Booker (and the player) have that Irrational games put so much time into. So yeah you could create your own character if you wanna ruin what may be the best game of the past year (if not decade)
Oh and I’ll add one of my own
Elizabeth is a strong, intelligent, independent woman who has a better understanding of history and the world around her than anyone else in the game.
Bro, do you even game?
5)There are female enemies in the game. When you get to alternate Finkton you encounter a female cop who’s going through some of the trauma of being killed by alternate universe Booker. There were in fact many female enemies in the game. In preview materials they talk about how they tried to make Elizabeth a combatant, but they couldn’t get it to work right so she was relegated to a support character.
4) She needed Booker’s help because she couldn’t pick the lock to her cell. Whereas Booker was given the key for that door. Also, when it’s revealed that Booker lied to her about Paris she threw him out of the airship and tried to get away on her own!
3) The Lutece twins are in fact equal BECAUSE THEY’RE THE SAME PERSON! They aren’t affected by the alternate universe shenanigans because they exist out of time, and more or less made dimension hopping possible!
2) She was just using DeWitt because he was already marked as the False Shepherd, therefore automatically aligned against Comstock. She used the fact he had killed a lot of Comstock’s people just as a rallying point to gain support for her cause. Also, Fitzroy didn’t kill Lady Comstock, Comstock himself did it! They say as much in the game! She was just framed for the murder, it wasn’t a voxophone that was hidden away, it was right on the plot railroad.
1) It wouldn’t have worked with a female character because the game is based somewhat on historical precedent, given that Booker is a former Pinkerton and all. Seems unlikely there’d be female strike-breakers. A character creation mode would’ve been utterly pointless, because you never see Booker. Not every game needs a FemShep, what in all honesty would a female Booker added that the Booker we got didn’t. Would Elizabeth have been a guy instead? If not the whole getting into Comstock house would’ve been really bizarre.
What’s the point of this article when you admit that you don’t think the game’s at all sexist?
Please consider playing the game with your eyes open instead of just looking at all of the gameplay footage that didn’t even appear in the game. Also, Rosalind stated in a voxophone that she and Robert are exactly the same, just different genders.
I have to disagree with point number 5 (not to say I agree with the others either). First, does it make sense for Elizabeth, a young girl who has been locked away her whole life, to run around putting bullets into people every second she gets. I don’t think a sweet girl like that has the capabilities to be a badass gunslinger type. Second, there are female enemies.
This honestly made me smash my head against the desk.
I stopped reading when I saw “no female enemies in the game.” Hilarious. There are several female enemies of both the Vox and the Founders.
wtf? this whole post is just a pile of fuckin bullllshit… this game wasn’t sexist you dumbass.. geez… if anything YOU are sexist…
p.s….also i want my 5 mins of life back…thank you
We all agree, this article is stupid, and none of its arguments makes sense (even the author says so). One thing however :
Can you imagine Elizabeth as a guy ? Impossible. That’s something that bothered me for a while, and I initially though it was a form of sexism. I changed my mind though.
For the white/rich people of Columbia, she is the lamb, the figure of hope. And since it’s a 1912 society built on a religious basis, that figure must be a female. It’s a perfectly balanced government, with a strong, reliable male prophet and a female child full of happiness and generosity for the future.
In fact this game isn’t giving us a lot of stereotypes and clichés, it’s putting them in context ’cause it’s ****ing realistic !
This is why men do not want female gamers,because they ruin everything with sexism talk,just like on the job when men are having a private convo and a woman overhears some minor joke,than two men lose a career that took 4 years of ciollege and god knows what else,to satisfy so woman’s hobby of being a bitch at every corner.
lol “men don’t want female gamers”, but then they wonder why their girlfriends don’t like/dont want to play games with them.
if men lose their “career that took four years of college” for being sexist, then here’s a thought … don’t be sexist?
oh what a tangled web we weave
Your number 3 reason Doesn’t fly. SPOILER WARNING!
When you beet the game you find out that Booker and Comstock are the same person from different worlds and they both exist in the same world but separate. The memory thing happens when you travel from your world to a different one.
As for the game being Sexist. uhmmm not really Elizabeth is the most powerful character in the game and she is also the strongest. (see the ending)
She relies on you to do the killing. But you rely on her to keep you alive ( items and the rifts)
At the end she knows what drowning Booker will do ( she will never have been born) and yet she does it anyway because she knows the pain Booker/Comstock will cause.
Is there a way to vote down this trash article! The author didn’t even play the game!
I think everyone needs to get over the whole white knighting bullshit this shouldnt be a fucking issue jesus fuck who cares? girl main character? fine not a girl main character? fine shut the fuck up you neck beardy faggots the girls dont need you to protect them in the gaming industry
video games arnt for girls anway, along with comics and driving
Now THAT is sexist.
Kill yourself. Thanks.
Maybe then both races and genders can have equality.
i read half of the first one and didnt read the rest this i stupid lol
#5. There were women enemies. Elizabeth isn’t a killer; she’s a frail soul not accustomed to the violence that comes so easily to Booker. This is made evident by her fleeing from you after you murder the enemies who attack you and how in shock she becomes once she takes Daisy’s life.
#4. Booker had the key (given to him in the box handed to him by Lutece in the opening scene) so there was no way out of that tower until Booker arrived with it. It’s to be thought that the Siphon kept Elizabeth weak enough to not sustain portals that she could travel through and escape on her own.
#3.Rosalind Lutece brought her brother Robert through a tear and helped to “mend him” once his mind began to go and experience the hemorrhaging that causes nosebleeds. They were separated by these different universes and collectively worked with one another through slow communication between those worlds to be brought together. If anything, the Luteces’ show how man and women are seemingly 2 sides of the same coin.
#2. As with your other inferiority-complex-based comments, this whole ‘A girl can’t succeed without the help of a man’ mentality is complete garbage. Daisy was the LEADER of the Vox. Booker might have been a hero in that world, but Daisy was still their lead. And like Comstock’s corruption, Daisy’s taste of power lead her to become corrupt and even willing to kill a child. You see these things as mad vs. woman, but it’s more black and white than that; it’s simply the morale good vs. evil.
#1. Booker could have been female, yup. And though chivalry is dead, there is a rather significant subsect of male gamers out there who enjoy the role of coming to the rescue of a female. It’s a primal thing with men; to protect and provide. Like a mother’s instinct to care for their child. These women, who are in need of a guy to save them might be seen as a shortcoming to you because they “rely” on a man, but this isn’t so scrutinized a situation. Your gender bias makes you not see things from both sides of the coin. Elizabeth is an amazingly powerful ally, one whom Booker would have died if not for her help (even though in the end, she kills Booker/Comstock by drowning him)
A game can only pick 1 of 2 sexes for the player to roleplay as. And in the event the player isn’t the same sex as the character, the chances that the person can relate to the player’s in-game behavior becomes less so.
There was a story of a guy who hacked a Donkey Kong ROM so that the Mario character was swapped with the Princess. He did this for his daughter so she could rescue Mario. No matter how “equal rights” you want to slap onto that, he’s did nothing more than put the male in the role he didn’t want to see his daughter in. A child is impressionable at those ages, and chances are has not even made the discernment between what it is they are doing, instead wanting to play as a female merely because they too are one.
Good points. But not all gamers are guys, however – even though the industry goes to great lengths to keep it so or at least pretend that’s how it is. So your final argument kind of trips over itself.
Oh god…
Believe me if it was sexist and your point weren’t pulled from places that you fabricated no doubt due to men being complete assholes and treating you like dirt.
But if you look at it realistically; killing people is fucked up and extreamley traumatizing, most characters in video games who kill a lot of people are either soldiers or go through this trauma during the video game like the character “Jason Brody” from “Far cry 3” and they make it very clear that this “Booker” character is rather hardened in the area of killing.
But can you really expect a young woman who has spent her life with books to suddenly become a killing machine?
And as for female enemies, i find it painful and rather sickening when you have to kill women in games, to the point where i usually sprint fast enough to avoid being killed or in the case of games like mgs i use tranq’s.
(call me a wuss, but whatever)
But i find it strange how you think a game is sexist if you dont have to opportunity to kill women. Sorry, but overall it seems you have some deep seated issues when it comes to men. I respect that and apologize on behalf of the men who were weak enough to pick on you.
wrong there were actually female enemies when u go into Chen lin’s warehouse downstairs and in the plaza a few times
There are female enemies, if you look at the enemies you’ll see them. They aren’t running around wearing dresses, they are wearing the same uniforms as the men.
They tell you several times that Elizabeth can take care of herself, and if you’ve played through the game she’s the key to solving it all. He needs her.
Faith in humanity: 0
are you a moron
every single one of those points are just flat out wrong
I like the others articles, but this one is definitely the worst!! Was a pile of crap read. Seriously, who thought of this bs article?!?
‘Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no.’ What a stupid asshole. Typical worthless internet ‘article’ by an idiot that can’t write.
Wow, get over it. It’s not feminist. More bullshit from the low-brow media, they’re getting worse than the MSM game media.
Um… there are female enemies… :/
5) No female baddies? You must be joking. I was actually surprised by the percentage of female soldiers that swarm you. Sure, it’s no 50/50 divide, but there is absolutely no way you can claim male-only enemies. Not to mention. NOT TO MENTION. Lady Comstock, my favorite boss battle in the game and arguably the most tragic villain.
4) Elizabeth starts weak because she has been kept weak. Through the course of the game she grows and develops up until the end, at which, you cannot claim that she was anything but Omnipotent.
3) Absolutely, the Lutece duo are inequal, but skewed blatantly in the female’s favor. If you paid attention to the actual characters and world building, it’s clear that the female universe Lutece is by far the more successful physicist, having developed the Lutece particles and fields where the male Lutece didn’t.
2) Daisy Fitzroy needed a martyr for her cause, and if anything, I felt subject to HER dominance as she steals my airship and commands me to go ass-backwards through Finkton to get her guns.
1) Yeah Booker could have been female, but so could have Kratos, or Master Chief, or anyone else in fiction. Lara Croft could be Lawrence Croft. Adam Jenson could be Alice Jenson. Tell me what a female Booker would have added to the narrative that the male Booker lacked.
You’re so very much wrong here, the isn’t sexist, YOU are 🙂
Clearly reviewed by someone who never actually played the game.
From the beginning I was getting ready to write a huge rant reply, but then I got to no. 1 – “Booker Should Have Been A Female Character” and then I felt the fishiness XD. I presume most of the other ranty fighting back comments are due to not reading the last line and thus having Poe’s law fall on their heads.
5 reasons girls are dumb.
I understand the parody-point of this article but…
Spoiler*
Fitz. Never killed lady C.
Comstock used her as scapegoat…
Which actually would have made a better anti-femist argument…
This article is idiotic. Anita Sarkeesians criticisms of the game industry are based on observations of actual videogames tropes and cliches. Saying that “Booker is a dude, therefore sexism” is the laziest, most reductive and unhelpful way to define sexism, this is some serious “barrel scraping”. Also, there were dozens of female Columbia soldiers, you just weren’t paying any attention.
actual observations my dick, she looks for the most insignificant bullshit imaginable. she’s less objective than IGN
“The proof is in the pudding?” If you’re going to use a saying you might want to check that you’re quoting it correctly, or people will use your failure as an excuse to discount all your arguments.
The problem is that you’re looking at things from a gender perspective. If you just look at them as people and recognize that all these choices make perfect sense, instead of hunting for sexism, you’d see that.
1) It’s a gameplay mechanic, she is supposed to back you up without interfering, allowing the player to have fun without having to worry about protecting someone or having them interfere. Without this aspect the entire mechanic of the game is shafted. Moreover, there is no reason for Elizabeth to know how to fight, she was raised in a cage her whole life. The fact that Elizabeth is not only a woman and the single most powerful character in the franchise means something.
There were in fact female troops that the player mangles, they were less common than the men but very much present. If there weren’t it would still make perfect sense. The game takes place in a backwards ass, extreme right society in 1912, a period and place where woman aren’t allowed to join the military or police force.
2) She needed a man’s help to succeed, but in return, Booker needed a woman’s help to succeed. Their genders had nothing to do with it, they needed each other’s skill sets. Without Elizabeth Booker would have died/failed his quest very early on. You’re making us tiptoe a line so narrow that it states we can’t ever have be as or more useful than any female character or ever help them in any crucial way, thus making any and all male heroes completely impossible to implement in any manner that imparts any meaning unto the story.
3) You’re right, that is a big stretch, so big that it’s complete nonsense. Yeah, they don’t overlap one another, and? How does that in any way de-empower women? It’s a bit strange and I think that I’d need to play the game again and carefully examine all this again to really get a good understanding of it, but it’s not sexist. A better explanation would be that with their ability to manipulate time and space it would allow them to resist such an overlap.
2) Daisy required Booker’s help to succeed because he’s the hero of the story. Were Booker not to help her succeed she would be utterly irrelevant and have no reason to be there. The fact is that the leader of the revolution and one of the more powerful characters in the game was a woman. I guess it’s not enough equality to have women in positions of power and influence, no they must succeed without any help from any men, whatsoever. The true sexism here is the idea that males aren’t allowed to contribute by your logic. Also, Daisy didn’t succeed, she failed, she died and then she failed. She got off a good attack and did some real damage to Columbia but she inevitably failed. She was stopped by a man AND a woman, proper gender equality.
1) You prove my point for me, the story wouldn’t be believable if Booker/Comstock were a woman. Going to war in 1912 and ruling a city with prejudiced right wing philosophy in a time when women couldn’t even vote? Yeah, that doesn’t make any sense, none at all.
Hmmm… actually, there is female soldiers in Bioshock Infinite. I remember seeing female soldiers with pistols right after the first raffle& racist ball throwing thingy.
Oops, grammar mistake
not a native English here
So those occasional women I was killing were actually dudes with high voices. Intriguing.
All wrong, elizabeth is allowed to fight, she just doesn’t want to, and she doesn’t like you killing people either, and wtf are you talking about with ‘no female enemies’… Also I’m pretty sure you’ve asked somebody to make a choice that was hard for you before.
Elizabeth didn’t need a man’s help to succeed, she needed anybody’s help to succeed, but a man was told to help her.
If they wanted the Luteces to prove inequality, they would only have made the guy a scientist
You’re just totally wrong about the vox, nuff said…
And finally, nobody can say a game is sexist because they think that the protagonist should have been female… actually if Booker was female, one could argue that it’s sexist because he’s not male, or homophobic because he’s not gay, or racist because he’s not black or discriminates against anything because he’s not it…
And what’s with this line “Do I actually believe Bioshock Infintie is sexist? Hell no. Are the points extreme? That’s par for the course in these arguments.”
Is it a joke or are you making points that you think could be used?
Because either way, this article sucks…. and you spelled Infinite wrong…
kill yourself
UGH, why can’t people just read the last line? Some of these comments are making me lose brain cells from doses of sheer stupidity.
None of your points are valid. If you actually played and paid attention to the game (or had an IQ above that of a sponge) you would know this. Especially when you say there are no female attackers… maybe it’s just you who is sexist and doesn’t notice women.
you know when there is something messed up about this woman when your own girlfriend says that she needs a good dicking.
And yet another ridiculous article full of nonsensical points just to create fan outrage, and thereby gain more hits. I gotta stop clicking these damn links.
Im sorry but didnt elizabeth rule the entire world at the end and kill daisy? this article is a joke, pick another game to prove sexism exists in video games because this is NOT the right game.
Also this article is wrong because lady comstock was an enemy.
I am deeply offended by your use of the word “ballboy”, the correct term is “sphereperson”. Please adjust accordingly.
Those are all stupid arguments.
So many people just got trolled.
There were female enemies dumbass.
The game takes place in 1912….if gamers are too young or stupid to know that the game reflects the zeitgeist of the early 20th century, they should stick to playing Super Mario where your only main concern is centered around jumping high. That’s a fun HAPPY game! yaaaaaaaay….
Stupid article either way you want to read it. Usually satirical articles are aided and made persuasive through use of wit.
The story plot was that her mother died giving birth.. so no he could not be a female. Also without Elizabeth pick locking you wouldn’t get very far so they need each other this has been a waste of my life. )=
ummm this is all wrong, did you even finish the game? way to stretch it to justify your opinions.
Elizabeth does fight, she also helps you fight and with out her, you would never make it as far as you get. shes pretty much the main character.
No female enemies? are you high? Elizabeth’s mom turns into a siren and it takes days to beat her, daisy Fitzroy becomes an enemy really fast in the game and is killed by Elizabeth and besides that, you see many female soldiers in the game as well so that ends 2 of your stupid ass complaints.
also, the game isn’t sexist, THE TIME LINE IS, remember your history or are you just some dumb bimbo who didn’t pay attention in school? during that time women didn’t have as many rights but in Columbia it would seem they had more seeing as there were female soldiers and higher ups and not just maids and wives.
BIOSHOCK INFINITE is far from being a sexist game, I think you just dislike it for its popularity and couldn’t find anything solid to complain about so you made crap up.
this is the most ridiculous post I have ever seen, your are on bias stuck up writer who needs to get a life and attack something else.
This article just shows a lack of research. If you haven’t noticed, there are female enemies, if you look at some of the police officers, they ARE women, and you do in fact HAVE to fight them. Also, Elizabeth doesn’t get to fight? Seriously? She may not get to do that in regular combat, but she kills Daisy. That doesn’t even get some consideration? (Sorry for the spoiler there, but I suspect the majority of you who read this article have already played, and/or beaten the game). It is obvious the author of this article is someone who hasn’t played much of it, or any at all, and just got their facts from Wikipedia.
What do you expect, it was the early 1900’s, Women weren’t consider person’s until the famous five proved that they were persons. yeah, this game made me want to study history
First of all, Elizabeth does not want to fight. She had never been in a fight until during your first outing with you, and she becomes frightened of you. Secondly, there are lots of female enemies. I have shot several female enemies in this game. The person making these arguments has obviously not played this game. Also, if Booker were a woman, there would no sense to the Bioshock lore. Always a man, always a lighthouse.
The fuck are you talking about? I’ve decapitated female enemies with melee!
Are you serious? Is this some kind of sick joke? No? Sigh. What a f*****g waste. Some game spoilers ahead. The person wrote this obviously hasn’t even played BioShock Infinite. SHE is the sexist here, not the creators. First, there ARE female enemies. I’ve seen some African-American women with guns try to shoot me in this game. I think the “no female enemies” refers to that there aren’t much white women as enemies. The only one I can think of right now is the ghost of Lady Comstock. You hear that? ONE OF THE BOSSES IS A FREAKING WOMAN! Are you stupid?! Second, from my reaction to Elizabeth, it seems like she can’t actually survive on her own. She has no gun training, no experience in fighting, otherwise she would actually fight. I don’t know why she wouldn’t tear open tears like when in combat with booker, maybe she didn’t want people knowing of her ability. This is why she didn’t actually fight at all. My opinion is that the creators didn’t want a lot of help from here in combat otherwise it would’ve been too easy. Third, and call me a sexist if you want, considering this rubbish article, I think the majority of people who play FPS games would look a little bit more at having a male player. There are other video games with female characters however. Fourth, the twins not being equal because of their different gender? F**k. Just f**k. What the heck. That I’m not even gonna rant on since anyone with a right mind knows that this is just eaten dog poop puked up by a cat. In fact, that’s what this entire article is. Obviously no, they’re not the same person because they’re from DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS. They act the same, they talk the same, they dress the same, they’re two different versions of themselves with their difference being their genders. They, essentially, are twins, just not biologically. No one even said they’re ‘real twins’ either. The reason they don’t overlap each other is because they can travel between dimensions. The alternate realities Booker and Elizabeth went to were also entered by the twins, so they don’t overlap each other. To top it off, no one ever said men and women are equal. They’re not. One carries the ability to impregnate, the other has the ability to become pregnant and give birth. Aside from sexual differences, that’s the only general difference between men and women. Fifth, since when did a woman start a revolution? No woman in the ‘1910s started a revolution like this. And Daisy was an African-American woman, so she would have a very hard time making one anyway. Booker happens to be a white American. And he’s an actual gun thug. So it seems like he would do wars and shooting and stuff pretty better.
I have never before seen another rubbish piece of writing such as this in my life. She calls this game ‘sexist,’ despite all of the bulls**t she wrote here. People like her will most definitely end up in hell for any life they ever live if they actually say things like this. This “Anita Sarkeesian” has shown just how far people can go with mislead and unjustified opinions on sexism.
There are numerous female enemies.. Pay closer attention for boobs.. 😛
It sounds like Anita never played Bioshock Infinite. Anita also sounds like a huge wiener.
Anita = Feminist extremist wiener.
I’m pretty sure Elizabeth carried Booker through half the battles. Also: Rosiland Letuce. Yeah, a woman made Columbia possible. Anita, get your shit together.
Fucking hippies
did a feminist write this?
This article is sexist.
So unless every video game features a woman for every character… it is sexist. That’s what this article is screaming.
Is this a legitimate website? Because this HAS to be a joke.
Not sure if troll or just stupid.
5. Nobody attacks Elizabeth because Songbird protects her and to Columbia, Songbird might as well be Amon-Ra. There weren’t a whole lot of female combatants in either the Revolutionary or Civil wars either. Perhaps one should note the time period before complaining.
4. Booker can’t even open locked doors without Elizabeth.
3. Men and women aren’t equal. Women have bewbs. And are pretty. Men can’t match that.
2. Ahh whatever…
1. Can’t argue. I’d love way more female action heroes in games, and pick one every time. I’ve seen male action heroes already. But Booker would be a horrible name for a female hero. So…I guess I can argue.
Thank
(To Anita Sarkeesian) When are you going to get through that thick skull of yours is that not EVERY SINGLE STINKING WOMAN has to be a bloody super soldier. If every woman was a super soldier we would have no variety in our female characters and it would get boring. I like strong female characters as much as the next gamer but as the saying goes “There’s a time to fight and there’s a time to not fight.” So remember that the next you once again be the chick who cries “Sexist”.
5 points that prove Damon is an idiot.
Everything he said is wrong in some way. But at this point, everyone and their mother has proven him false, and all Damon cared about was cheap hits, so why bother?
My god this Anita chick is just so annoying, I mean seriously she thinks everything in video games is sexist regrading females.
– A woman getting kidnapped: Sexist
– A woman taking orders from a man: Sexist
– A woman who shows even the tiniest bit of skin: Sexist
– A woman who’s good looking: Sexist
– A woman who can’t fight because she’s either a pacifist or has little to no training: Sexist
– A woman who prefers magic over swords: Sexist
– A good looking villainess: Sexist
– A woman getting killed: Sexist
– A game targeted for YOUNG girls: Freaking sexist
She needs to understand that women are almost as sexist as men, by thinking that all men are pigs, perverts etc. I have to wonder to myself, the way feminists stereotype men do we truly deserve women’s rights at all? The only feminist in history that I respect is Queen Elizabeth I, why is that? She actually took action instead of whine and complain like a child.
Pointless. Even as a parody this does nothing except clog up the internet! At least doing the arguments for and against each point would have given this some credence but all I have here, in front of me is an article that offers no information or insight beyond what was said by another (actual journalist) Yeah she made a point that may not be true but she was abused by gamers as they did not agree. this is not the way we should conduct ourselves it we believe this to be untrue. As a group we should be assuring these people that only a tiny percentage are that way inclined, that we as a group do not want to be represented that way. Instead you parody her arguments and offer no reassurance that we as a collective do not view it like that.
just, shut up, and get a real job. obviously writing and reviews arent for you
Actually, there is a female enemy. She’s one of the regular police guys, but they’re certainly women. What a dumbass article.
One of the dumbest articles I’ve ever seen by Sarkeesian. Wasn’t she the same woman who claimed LEGO was sexist? I’m glad developers are completely ignoring psychotic feminists. Ken Levine was absolutely right in his interview with Oord.
That was one of the most retarded things i ever read. You really took the time to write alle that stuff?
Try a career as fiction writer.
There are plenty of female enemies throughout the game. Had Elizabeth not helped booker, he would have been doomed to repeat the process infinitely. You’re are looking into this way too much. So much, in fact that you completely miss the point of the entire game’s narrative, because you’re looking for things to call sexist for you’re article. Knowing a good number of women who have played the game personally who all enjoy it immensely, I feel like your argument is not only invalid, it’s just silly.
>Complains about sexism
>Doesn’t consider it’s based on the game’s time
>Says nothing about the racism
Gee, you’re quite the chooser… Be it that it is fictional, it still tries to follow a timeline in the game and to be honest I respect that. It was uncommon for women to “fight” in any way, shape or form so it’s not surprising to me that the game doesn’t feature many women. Now, during the same time there was racism and such too which is why certain scenes are included in the game. Not because the developers are racist or anything.
Personally I think this article was a waste of time, and was almost painful to read. I’m getting pretty sick and tired of people complaining about stuff just for the sake of complaining.
some game’s that is based on a time period in our world take’s the “general” view of that timeline in this case what was it 1912 it was a very sexist time period and racist period back in those days female’s where suppossed to bring up the children and take care of the daily things in the household african ppl where seen as lesser beings that didn’t have a choice i agree this game might be sexist but that’s because of the time period it was placed in i think if asked that the develorper’s of bioshock infinite would agree on that fact that they made the game like that to match the time period u c it in many games today tbh
Congratulations on writing the most embarrassingly baiting article in the history of the internet. I sincerely hope you enjoy the .02 percent spike in traffic. I imagine it will be the last time anyone cares what you have to say.
Damon just quit breathing, you are essentially, an oxygen thief.
FIRST PARAGRAPH
LAST SENTENCE
READ THEM
FUCKING MORONS
Wow, nitpicking and plain out BITCHING, just for the sake of stirring the bee-hive.
you’re also giving this awfully mediocre game way too much FREE ADVERTISING with these crappy articles, that are nothing but (poor) opinions.
#1 There are plenty of female enemies in the game
#2 Although Elizabeth is booker’s daughter and is the one being “escorted”, she is by far the most powerful character in the game
#3 Although Booker could have been a female character, since the game is marketed towards males, doesn’t really make much sense
#4 Daisy Fitzroy needed weapons…not a man…
#5 The Lutece “twins” are really two versions of the same person…not “twins”…argument does not make sense…
It DOES make a difference for recording purposes if the player had a chance to pick their gender/name, as that significantly increases the amount of recordings necessary to keep the storyline coherent and also make the player feel as if their character has a significant role…
I know the article is kind of tongue in cheek, but it’s just nonsense…
5) There are actually quite a few female enemies (the columbia police force for starters) and the pendant was only your decision because she liked both of them and couldn’t decide
4) The tower elizabeth was in was actually heavily reinforced to prevent her escape and the only reason booker got her out in the first place is because the Lutece’s gave him one of only keys made to open her cell door
,3) The Luteces shouldn’t overlap considering they are an alternate version of one another, but it should be noted that they had equal intelligence and technical skill and also shared much of the same thought processes in conversations
2) This is also not true considering Daisy was putting up a considerable fight before Booker arrived and in the alternate reality Booker was a martyr and failed to get the guns Daisy needed to lead a successful revolt. Daisy managed to get the weapons without Booker’s help and overthrow Fink in the alternate reality.
1) Having a female Booker makes no sense from a narrative stand point. A female Booker would have no military training to successfully rescue Elizabeth and it also makes the Pinkerton backstory impossible. The sexism displayed by characters within the game makes sense because women’s rights were a big dispute around this time and it makes no sense for sexist overtones to be absent and it also makes no sense for racism to be absent. It does not however mean the game is sexist or racist only that the creators of the game wished to make an accurate portrayal of that era’s ideology to make the gamer feel more immersed.
What a pile of shit this article is
Oh my god, you fucking idiot. Every point you raise is because of narrative context, not sexism. Second, I doubt you played this game because there are inaccuracies everywhere! Do the internet a favor and stop writing forever!
And can I say your idea of gender equality is way off. Feminism isn’t about giving women everything men have in a sort of binary, everyone gets one of everything system. Its about getting women the respect and proper treatment they deserve in society. So doing things like making the male protagonist female isn’t gender equality because its just a token gesture that goes against the context set by the time period therefore ruining the story. True gender equality in a game like this is making the female characters plays as an important role in the story as the men, and Bioshock Infinite does that! Elizabeth, Daisy, Rosalind Lutece, they are perform actions that have a dramatic effect on the story and each action is done consciously. It could be argued that the women are more competent in this game as they decide to perform the actions they under take, male characters like Comstock, Fink and Booker all perform actions that change the story dramatically but only make these decisions when blinded by their own xenophobic opinions, their personal drive to make a profit or their suicidal tendencies, respectively. So again, shut you face and remove your head from your ass before you comment on anything we adults talk about.
There actually are a bunch of female AIs that you fight in the very first fucking level in the game. Plus, they’re all over Finkton. Both Vox and Founder factions have female enemies. Plus, Lady Comstock. Pretty much every part of this article is just outright false and a lie. It sounds like the author just watched the game’s trailers and came up with best guess inferences for 95% of this crap.
The first comment is totally wrong because there ARE female enemies in the game (a whole lot less than men but there are women ) also elizabeth does fight enemies but she usually just hides in cover but if an enemy comes close she will kill them plus shes got powers that could f*** booker up in a second. Shes also helpful with ammo/health and salts get ur facts right if you are going to make such a claim. Also it is mostly males that play videogame even though there are loads of female gamers most videogame companies do direct their games toward males (their biggest customer base) step one of marketingremember this you don’t see a big fat hairy dancing around in makeup/hair dye commercials
there a lot of female oficers and military in the game they don’t talk but there they are
Why does this article even exist?
And yet another “journalist” that subsisted on a diet of lead paint as a child…
who ever wrote this needs to actually play the game as there are many idiotic comments, the worst being no female enemies. as there are on both prophet and vox sides. so check ur crap next time
Sooooooo, no one gets that this is a joke….
Did they decide to make a ridiculous article to see what reactions would follow? Such stupidity can’t be intended seriously. I hope.
Also, i killed a shitload of female soldiers in the game. So get that lie out of this article, it pisses me of even more than the rest of it.
there are women in the game right in the first fighting point
Are you fucking kidding me? so if booker was a woman and elizabeth was a man it would be the exact opposite. then we would have another idiotic article but talking about women empowerment. its a game, no one cares about the equality of men and women. they just want to have a good time playing. guaranteed no gamer ever thought of inequality when they played this game. ever.
You realize this game takes place in the EARLY 1900s right? Also if Booker had been male… you know what. Whatever.
This article is a troll, right? It’s the only explanation I can think of. Even the silliest of freshman women’s studies students on Jezebel couldn’t take any of these points seriously. Also, EVERY SINGLE POINT IS DEMONSTRABLY INCORRECT. I seriously made a better video game critique in the bathroom this morning.
isnt elizabeth a tranny though?
but…it wasn’t deal with it and make your own game. The entire scenario for this game is turn of the century (the 20th century). It wasn’t exactly a time of gender equality. There are plenty of games with strong female leads and supporting characters. Some aren’t even sexed up. If you don’t like it make us a game and we’ll play it and check it out.
not only it’s the dumbest article i’ve ever read, but it’s also wrong.
“Daisy hadn’t been able to lead a proper revolution aside from sneakily killing Lady Comstock”
did you even play the game you moron? Comstock killed his wife cause she knew he is a liar, then he blamed it on fitzroy. And there are female enemies, don’t you think that the mere fact that they have women serving in police and army means they are NOT sexist?
a woman wrote this I imagine.
The last point just made me facepalm. You find it sexist that you’re playing as a male instead of a female? Are you kidding? If it matters to you what gender you’re playing as, isn’t that kind of sexist?
I think I had my first aneurysm.
these tards did the same thang with halo 4… if they dont want a girl to fight in this game its there right. and if they made it is so she does fight there still going to say its sexist when its not.
Does anyone still take feminism seriously anymore? I mean really? Elizabeth is an educated character that is full of life, good info, and concern for others. They didn’t have to add her. No one owes you anything. You want a female character? Learn how to develop your own games and make a game with a female protagonist, where she has the physical strength of Hodor and the brain of Einstein. Why should a man have to do it for you, since you are equal?
your article has no standing points at all and gave me a good laugh
This is all most as bad as Pokemon Black and Blue (Peta parody)
Of course this game appers sexist/racist it was set in an era that the white male was the prominate human being where all others are unequal and lesser it had to apper blatantly racist and sexist with all the added cliches
for it to make sense in its time
none of you read the first paragraph…smh
so basically, this fucktard is saying that having a male protagonist is automatically sexist because the hero is not a female. if the hero was a female all the time it would STILL BE FUCKING SEXIST!!!!! theres a difference between “women’s rights” and “women have to be in every aspect of everything all the time, or else it’s sexist”. this author is retarded.
No one said what you wrote above, as far as I can see. Besides this article was a huge satire, and the person they are responding to (Anita Sarkeesian) is crazy.
Moreover, no one is asking for EVERY protagonist to be female… but about 50% would be fair, no? That is not the case today, female main characters are while not completely rare they’re not common either.
And yes guys play more games than girls, but that’s another question to ask: why would they care about playing a female character some of the time? After all female gamers don’t seem to mind playing men (I sure don’t), why should it be the other way around?
Exactly, warn us before you spoil, person. When I saw a spolier I stopped reading, but still, even the first thing you say is wrong, so I’ll correct you on it – there ARE female enemies in the game. Did you even play it? What about
SPOILERSPOILERSPOILER
SPOILERSPIOLER
SPOILER
Esther, for instance? She appears pretty close to the beginning of the game.
Women didn’t fight at wounded knee. Did this writer actually play the entire game? Elizabeth has all the power…especially in the end.
Will feminists make up their mind whether it is sexist to kill female enemies, or to be unable to do that?
How stupid could you be?
there are plenty of female enemies, have you even played the game”
Im a girl and this game is relevant to its time. I never once thought that this game was sexist. Some people are just really stupid and strive to find something wrong with a game that is full of perfection. It sounds like she didn’t even really play the game or pay attention because her argument doesn’t make sense.
Yeahh no. I don’t know where you get your facts but they’re all quite wrong. Did you even play the game?
“No Female enemies” DID YOU EVEN PLAY THE GAME?
“Elizabeth required a man’s help to succeed.” And Booker, a man, required a woman’s help to succeed. They are reliant on each other, regardless of gender. Booker fights because he’s a Pinkerton, while Elizabeth has no experience with firearms.
“The Lutece Twins…” Maybe they aren’t treated completely equal, yet the inequality is because Robert plays second fiddle to Rosalind. Columbia wouldn’t exist without a woman, despite that being kind of crazy for 1912.
“Daisy” Daisy didn’t kill Lady Comstock. She’s just martyred for it.
“Booker” If you actually played and finished the game you’d understand why him being a woman wouldn’t be possible at all.
Critical failure. I say this as a woman AND a feminist.
whoever wrote that is nuts. yeah lets burn all the fairetales then because the poor princess gets saved by the knight!
I ended up here by accident and after reading the starting and ending paragraphs I don’t quite get what the point of the article is… making fun of feminists I guess?
Anyways about the points:
1)1st of all there are female enemies in the game. There are kinda robot looking cops and the masked people near the end could be female(prolly not but still). Also Lady Comstock ? The only “Boss” battle in the game? Ring any bells? Hello?
Why the hell would Elizabeth need to fight? She’s not a fighter. It’s not a co-op game. It was a great design choice to have her be useful as companion and not a dumb AI partner pain in the ass like in many games(whether female,male,dog etc.)
2)Well it would be Quite awkward if she didn’t require your help and just finish the game on her own. Would be pretty damn stupid now would it?
3)WTF? Besides not making sense here this is just NOT true. Booker and Comstock seem to exist just fine in the same universe(s). Also the Lutece twins don’t exist in regular space/time.
Also about Luteces, have we conveniently forgot that Rosalind is quite the important figure in the game’s universe while Robert is basically nobody?(hating Men I tell ya)
4)Daisy seemed to do quite well for herself considering she had a fucking army to command! An army that seemed to succeed after Booker died.
5)Good luck making a believable female character with Booker’s history/personality in 1912. You’d need a alternate universe for that alone.The main character IS Elizabeth anyway.
While there weren’t a lot there were a few female enemies in the game. ONE actually blocks an entrance, has a name, calls Elizabeth a wrong name (for some reason I don’t know) then waits in the next room for an ambush. That character has about 2 Vlogs and is seen right outside the arcade. About the Luteces, ask anyone which was the superior Lutece, they will probably say it was the female one. She had all the Vlogs I think the male didn’t have any (though it wasn’t his world he was around) and all the discoveries and “smart stuff” was from her perspective. She also turned out stronger in a lot of their bickering.
Theres more but basically I think all your points are pretty weak. Also look up any info on the Devs on how much they fought to make the game not sexist. Don’t downplay their effort.
seriously, this is just an example of fake-signs of sexism. The main player, happened to be male. Protagonist female. It’s suppose to show the sign of a possible romance, saving the damsel in distress.
Your primary complaint is “she doesn’t fight.” Thousands of people don’t like to fight and protagonist you want to protect tend to not protect themselves.
not true their were female soldiers
You are wrong… There are female enemies….play the game before you write shit — Uncle LuciferSLE13
Did she actually play the game? These points are based on false premises. I suggest she actually learn what’s in the thing she’s criticizing before attempting to speak with authority on it.
Are you KIDDING me? Bioshock Infinite is sexist? It appears that this swell-headed, feminist jerk has not paid ANY attention to ANY of the other games in the series.
Let’s start with Exhibit A: Bioshock 2.
1.You fight female Splicers. 2. The evil mastermind in this game is Sophia Lamb- a WOMAN. 3. The most feared- and arguably the most AWESOME- creatures in the entire friggin’ game are Big Sisters- again, FEMALES. 4. Eleanor Lamb, damsel in distress extraordinaire, dons a Big Sister suit and becomes more of a BA than the main character was, is, or could be.
To make another point- Elizabeth is said by many people- notably in a GameInformer review- to be the best AI companion that they ever had. She was also an engaging and deep character- which throws pretty much all of that feminist claptrap straight in the garbage heap where it belongs. Because, heck, if a well written character that isn’t a total pushover is sexist, then we might as well just give up and go back to ‘Annoying McSex-On-Legs’ for our female leads.
Ms. Anita Sarkeesian can go take a flying screw at a rolling donut- the only point that she is proving is that women are impossible to please, which is WAY more stereotypical and sexist than this game ever will be.
THERE ARE FEMALE ENEMIES OTHER THAN DAISY YOU LITTLE PRICK
Getting really sick of these shitty feminist articles in every video game site.
So you didn’t like the game. There is no need to throw your overly-feminist views at it and try to make it out to be something it isn’t. Grow up.
Long story short: Read my lame article for having a “controversial” title. Guess it worked to a degree but that seems to be most articles on sites like this.
Not only are there many female troops that you face, but they are also just as powerful as the men. From afar, you can’t even tell the different until they speak. Also, throughout the entire game you are dependent on the skills of women to survive.
C’mon guys, the writer admits he twisted around his personal viewpoint deliberately just to be able to find things wrong with Infinite. It’s not what he believes but rather he’s showing us how easy it is to form a persuasive argument against an issue that doesn’t even exist.
As much as I disagree with feminists like Anita Sarkeesian I really wish the “angry male gamer crowd” would also delve deeper into articles to find the truth before flying off the handle. Just makes us all look bad.
PS: I’m not directing this reply at every poster,just those who immediately attacked the writer without knowing what he was actually trying to get across.
5) Elizabeth doesn’t attack anyone nor carry and weapon, so why do people bother attacking her? Just try to leave her alone and see: they abduct her immediately. Please play the game before even comment on it. Is your game version a sexist one because in mine, there are female enemies. If a game doesn’t have children enemies, does it have problem treating children or just because it’s a common morale or a simple matter of choice?
4) Elizabeth is a young ado, and moreover she is Booker’s child. This promotes the importance truth: people can’t live alone on their own. They depends on and affect each other. Elizabeth saved Booker more than once. Without her, could Booker have solved his own problem?
3) The true and pure equality is to let things in their correct position. Given a female person who only prefers making up her beauty over working out for muscle, is it equal to ask her to do heavy works? It’s the same for male people. Feminism activities is to ask for better human-to-human behavior and treatment. Those who have not actually been involved and participated, please do not say nonsense.
As for the twin, that’s how Booker and others interpret the two instances of the same entity. That’s the point of quantum physics: people, with ordinary eyes, only see atoms, molecules as separated and different entities, while in fact they are just different manifestations of the same entity. Do Booker and Comstock overlap each other??? Please take time to reflect before commenting.
2) The whole game is only a small fragment of the multi-universes it tried to depict. And the version we’ve played is just a special case. Don’t try to use it as a generic argument because you just proved that you still don’t understand the main point of what Elizabeth told you at the end of the game. Or you don’t even care to listen to a female character speech?
1) It’s because in the version where Booker is a female, nothing just simply happens. There is no plot at all. As a female, Booker might not be addicted to gambling thus would have never sold Elizabeth.
Once again, I don’t really see that the game is sexist. And more importantly, please remember that we usually SEE and BELIEVE what we WANT to see and believe. So it’s time to review whether or not the game is sexist or the comment is 🙂
It’s not against the OP, it’s against the 5 points above.
While I’m sure some will take this as sexist, but here we go anyway — your final point (#1) doesn’t work because of the game’s setting. It was 1912…a female fighting on the front lines of a war followed by employment with Pinkerton’s just isn’t possible. There is a reason they were called “Pinkerton Men”.
I’m not for sexism, racism, or discrimination of any kind, but when you set a game (or movie or tv show) during a specific time period, it needs to live within that period. Only way Booker could have been a woman is if his story had been significantly reworked. VERY significantly I might add given his other key identity…
One day someone will set a game during the 90’s and early 21st century and people will say the same thing about the rampant homophobia and wonder if its appropriate that it’s included. And I will give the same answer. Retcon-ing history because it doesn’t fit with modern ideals is never the right choice.
I honestly found the racism in this game a much larger deal than sexism. That’s where the complaints should lie. Most of these points require you looking to make them, rather than their objective presence. This would not be the case regarding the game’s racism.
Honestly, I don’t care. The game was one of the greatest of all time, period.
Oh look Feminist banter. women couldn’t have been in the army at those points in history, ALSO THAT CHICK ISNT CRAZY LIKE BOOKER,OH AN SHES SMALL AND WEAK. additionally Shut up, you are stupid.
Remember big sisters? Yeah, you know the most powerful chicks ever?
holy crap you are dumb
Ha, am I the only one that caught that this article is of a sarcastic nature?
Jesus.
Although I have not managed to play the game yet, I have to comment on this.
There is nothing I am more annoyed by than all the power-played women all over the gaming and the movie industries who kick men’s asses just because of their sex; sort of standing for a super, mega-revenge on men for ‘all that’s been done to them’. Get over it!
Elizabeth is not supposed to fight. There are women who don’t fight. Elizabeth needs a man to succeed. There still are women who do-and consider the fact that the game is supposed to be historical. Back then, women did not fight. So, it would have been utterly brainless to add in female power-warriors, super-sayans or whatever they are called these days.
Nowadays, I find more games are made to re-create female fantasies of domination rather than male ones. Get-over-it. I, for one, want to see games made about women who don’t suddenly pop up with great combat skills and who do not know how to use weapons, at all! Fighting chicks have become a lame cliche.
That’s all from me.
Oh, in case you were wondering.
Yes, I am a woman.
To whoever wrote this article: Shut up you liberal pussy, sexism=realsim.
They made Elizabeth sex appealing… end of story
Are all the commenters here just illiterate or something? Not only does the last line blatantly says that the author doesn’t actually think this, but the entire first paragraph explains why the author is writing this and why he doesn’t agree with it. I mean, goddamn, read the article before you rant about it, more than half the comments completely missed the point. Don’t just skip to the pretty, pretty numbers and read the intro. It’s not that hard, assuming you can read.
in regards to 5: The elizabeth not fighting in combat was to help aid you while not having the game feel like a traditional escort mission a la RE4. You never have to worry about elizabeth. 4: the game shows why Elizabeth couldn’t escape on her own. Her power is being drained and the doors are heavy ass metal. 3: Robert Lutece goes through the mental changes just like Lin and DeWitt. He says so himself. 2: No, she didn’t need a man’s help: she just needed help. The help of the main character just happened to be a man. and finally 1: No. I don’t it would be believable to consider that a woman would have been as strong of a protagonist given the backstory. She would not have been a war hero. So would not have such a tortured past. Would not have gambling troubles because in the time I don’t think women were even allowed to gamble.
Guess what time this takes place in.
Hi everyone, im just a random person, and I could care less about this, lol, everyone is raging on here over something stupid, trollolololololololololololololololololololololol, now someone go make me a sandwich. xDxDxDxDxD
Pathetic.
If there were female enemies that I could kill, you could scream sexism because of violence against women; like with God of War.
i haven’t played bioshock infinite (and ill admit i got lost on the whole dimension jumping and soul overlapping thing) but just because a woman doesn’t pick up a gun, and collect a body count the size of rambo’s, mean that a game is sexist. i am actually more inclined to buy the game because she’s defenseless. i always liked ashley from resident evil for that same reason. i like the idea of defending a girl, does that make me sexist.
opinions below
im 17 and like to think ive been raised well. i was taught manners and iv’e always favored the cute girls in pink rather than tough as nails femdom or i don’t take shit from anybody chicks.
bamf: sexist steam vented
Well think of it this way, were there actually many female soldiers back then or any at all, I mean seriously. I know its a floating city and all, but they tried making it as real as possible without making it boring
You missed the bit about female soldiers ACTUALLY EXISTING IN THE GAME, idiot.
it is just a game. Get over it.
Uh… You all DO know that this article is all satire, right? That the point of the article is that you can cherry-pick whatever facts from a subject that you want that leans toward whatever theory you want to believe while completely ignoring other facts from that same subject that contradicts that theory? Please tell me I’m not the only one who saw this after reading the first and last paragraphs.
Did you even play the game? This is a poor written and poorly researched article
Just to point out, there were scads of female police mooks in Columbia. One of them was even a named enemy, Esther, who set Booker and Elizabeth up for the ambush in the train station. But yeah, lots of the cops booker shot in the streets were female.
In video games maybe 10-15% of the people that kick ass in combat are women. In real life it is probably less than 1%. Any complaint that there aren’t enough heroines in video games is not founded in reality.
You can call a cow a horse, but at the end of the day, it’s still just a cow. ‘BioShock: Infinite’ is not sexist.
Point 1 is immediately shot down because there are female enemies.
Point 2, while true, can also be seen from a different perspective. Booker also needs Elizabeth’s help. They are dependent on eachother throughout the game.
Point 3 also falls flat. It promotes gender differences, not the deluded idea that one gender is better.
Point 4… Sorry, I’m not even entirely sure about what you’re trying to get across with this one.
Point 5… He could’ve also easily been a female. They picked one and went with it. It’s completely infuriating to see the straws you’re grasping at.
Even the publishers, who demanded Elizabeth be removed from the cover, can’t be called sexist because they’re motive aren’t based on some absurd ideal of men somehow being better than women.
This is the dumbest article I’ve ever read. Let’s go through the list:
SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!
5: Elizabeth Not Allowed To Fight In Combat & No Female Enemies
There are INDEED female enemies, and at some points I heard or saw one taking a leading role in the fight against Elizabeth and I. And quite frankly, Elizabeth does more in some combat situations than Booker.
4: Elizabeth Required A Man’s Help To Succeed
Let’s face it; Elizabeth has nigh-unlimited cosmic powers. All she would have needed is help escaping the tower and she probably would have been okay. And Booker didn’t sacrifice himself, he practically, in some ways, committed suicide by letting the events in the ending play out. Some of these points are valid, I suppose, but they’re not thought out well at all.
3: The Lutece Twins Prove That Man And Woman Aren’t Equal
In the Lutece backstory, it is shown that the Lutece twins jumped realities and found each other, then went back to the “sister’s” reality. Hell, it appears that the “sister” takes the lead role, and the brother is somewhat left on the backburner. So this has nothing at all to do with the subject at hand, really. It’s just a debate over quantum mechanics.
2: Daisy Fitzroy Required A Man’s Help To Succeed
Me, myself, and I are all quite confident that she would have found a way to get the weapons herself, perhaps with bribery or something of the sort. But really, no she didn’t. This is stupid.
1: Booker Should Have Been A Female Character
Really? Why? I mean seriously? Why? He’s SO much less relateable with the gaming community if he’s not a guy.
FINALLY! IF YOU DON’T FUCKING BELIEVE THE GAME IS RACIST, then PLEASE don’t write an article about it, chucklenuts. Or at least think it out a little more, listen to the game’s dialogue and research the game’s backstory.
I apologize for any grammatical mistakes I may have made.
Thanks for reading.
Are you fucking kidding me. Let me remind you that this game takes place during a time when America was kind of sexist. But anywho. Let me disprove your “proof”.
5) The game would be much more difficult if you had to protect Elizabeth. And besides that, Elizabeth is a passive character. She freaks out when she kills her first person. And there ARE female enemies. They frequent battle later in the game, idiots.
4)Elizabeth was raised without knowing how to fight for herself. Sure, she had books, but really, would there have been books on how to escape from her tower? If she didn’t require assistance, what point would there have been to the game?
3) For fucks sake. The female one was the one capable of bringing her male self into her world. And the creators didn’t make heir memories overlap simply for the sake of not confusing the player.
2)Booker is the main character. Of course he would have a giant influence on the Vox! And another thing. Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, Daisy had a bad ppersonality that the video game characters just didn’t like? Maybe she was an asshole. And that is not sexist. Lots of men in the game are assholes.
1) I don’t even.. “Should”? Does that mean that ALL video games with a main male character are sexist? and if it WAS a female, would you guys be complaining and saying she should have been male? You can me sexist about men, too. Simply because the main character is male means nothing.
I have taken away your proof pudding and burned it, mother fuckers.
there /were/ female enemies. lol #owned
For a guy who wrote an article entitled “Top 5 Erotic Video Game Moments” this sure seems hypocritical…. And also very wrong, very much an article to get knee-jerk reactions.
This type of sensational, misinformed and outright misleading journalism is repugnant.
this article is blind bullshit
NO FEMALE ENEMIES!? There are loads of them all around the place, and even if you didn’t notice those cannon fodder female enemies, there’s still Elizabeth’s mother. FAIL.
You should pay more attention when you play a game.
First of all, there are female enemies.
-When you try to buy a ticket for the balloon The First Lady (btw, could there be a less sexist name for one of the more important vehicles of the game?), you get ambushed by 3 or 4 male cops and what I believe to be their supervisor, which is a woman.
– When fighting the more equipped cops, you will sometimes find females among them.
– At some point near the beginning of the game, a woman is describing your appearance to a cop. That’s somewhat of an enemy or at least a threat. Either way, you can shoot them both.
I clearly remember shooting at least 3 females in this game (and I’m not even half way through)
Secondly: when Elizabeth discovers you’re not going to Paris, she knocks you down. Not that weak and helpless, I think.
Above all, this is a game that shows us the close-mindedness of the early 20th century. You see black slaves cleaning the floor, a seperate bathroom for whites and blacks and a sect-based religion. So why does the sexism comes as a surprise to you? Never thought this could have been done on purpose?
Actually, the point of history that the game is set in (despite the fantasy/scifi whatever you want to call it portion) women had next to no rights and were considered to be weak and only good for housework and child rearing.
“Let’s face it, nothing stopped having the lead character (ie. Booker) be female.”
I would say that this pretty much sums
up your thesis however, you completely missed the concept of the game if
you believe this to be true. Booker was Comstock but more importantly the game
repeatedly suggests that Columbia is the Rapture of its reality. This means
that in Rapture’s reality Comstock is actually Andrew Ryan. This means that in
order for Booker to be a woman they would have had to rewrite the original Bioshock
or change Infinite’s story all together.
Please stop with this “Reasons why this
game was sexist” bull crap. It is very annoying and people who write these
articles always pick the most ridiculous games to use as an example. For
instance the last game I saw that had an article to this effect was Skyrim. How
can you claim a game is sexist simply because it chose to go for some
historical accuracy? Honestly for the time period women could have been
portrayed allot worse than they were. You can’t claim sexism for a game set in
the past that’s just moronic. Was Django racist because it had slaves and used
the N word allot? Is The View sexist
because there aren’t any male hosts? Are movies about WWII sexist because there
are never any female soldiers? Where does it end?
Any game or movie for that matter set
before the 1980’s will often suggest that women were inferior to men. That was
just the way of the times. Which means it’s historically accurate that women
don’t have major roles in a story that is pre 1980’s. I am not saying that I
agree with this or that it is impossible to make a good game/film pre 1980’s
that shows strong women. I am just saying that its much less likely. But if you
look at more modern games such a “Tomb Raider” (2013) (set in the present
rather than the 40’s) or “Beyond Two Souls” you will see that allot of progress
has been made in the last 20 years in regards to the way society views gender. I
am not saying it’s perfect but simply put, progress has been made and will continue
to be made without the need for ridiculous articles such as this.
In a different reality Booker is a women…
“Whole heartedly disagree” yes, because the MAJORITY of female video game characters in FPS’ aren’t boobs on legs. Defiantly not.
Haha. So Cinderella, Snow White, and all those romantic stories where the prince rescues the bitch from the dragons tower are totally sexist too right?
what a stupid article. Its suppose to feel like the 18th century, back then woman didn’t have a lot rights.
That’s just stupid. Even I’m female and find that a load of codswallop. A game ot having a female hero is not sexist. ~facepalms~ some idiots these days
I can’t say any of these points are valid, since most are blatantly false, and gloss over parts that could actually be sexist. Most of this sound like fem-nazi babel from someone who never played the game, and I’d also assume whoever wrote this can’t count.
5. Opening up tears in the fabric of space and time to help one particular side in a fight counts as fighting as far as I’m concerned. she didn’t shoot anyone because She’s not accustomed to killing, Booker on the other hand is an almost psychotic murder machine. Everything from his back-story to his melee animations are meant to characterize him as a violent asshole. Elizabeth is meant to contrast this, She’s purposefully non-violent in her opposition, and despite being locked away in a tower for her entire life is infinitely more well adjusted.then Booker.
As for no female enemies… what? There where tons of Female Police and vox populi, they all had pistols, and some can be seen twoards the end of the game taking commanding roles wile wearing statue of liberty masks and giving speeches. let’s also not forget lady Comstock, the hardest 3 fights in the game. Look harder next time. As for Daisy being Killed by Elizabeth I don’t really see how this has any bearing on this point, nor does helping her pick out a choker as she liked both anyway. (also this is two points)
4. Elizabeth didn’t need a man’s help, she just needed help and Booker happened to be a man. There was nothing gender specific about Booker’s brand of help (as said in the last point booker could have been a girl and it’d have no bearing on the story at all). Having her bust out all by herself and murder her way out of columbia in some psychotic rampage in some giant female power fantasy would be just as sexist as having her crumble and needing to be carried by Booker through the game in some male power fantasy. Instead they got through it together, as neither character could have gotten through that themselves. The problem here (and in many places) is the false definition of sexism, Like it’s something women are incapable of being by definition when in truth they can be just as sexist. Things don’t become less sexist by emasculating one gender over the other, it becomes less sexist by making both sides equal.
3. This point is not just a stretch, it’s wrong. The male Letuce says he specifically remembers the unpleasantness of having your memory’s readjust due to overlap and the Female Letuce mentions having to nurse him back to health from the ordeal in a voxphone recording. look again, and pay attention to the game next time.
2.The false facts in these arguments really don’t help this argument at all. Daisy never killed Lady Comstock, and the vox populi go out of their way not to disgrace any images of her if you pay attention to the fact that they destroy everything except the lady comstock stuff. You can find entire areas defaced with graffiti and red cloth and the only thing that’d be untouched are the lady comstock paintings and statues. On to the meat and potatoes of this argument, Daisy didn’t need a man’s help, she needed an entire army angry racists and Booker’s help. Calling Booker’s help a man’s help undermines the fact that Booker’s a huge game changer in any universe he’s thrown in. His minor decision about a baptism at some point dictates weather or not a giant floating city get’s built. Also the biggest factor in her rebellion is weather she get’s enough guns, as booker goes through one existance where the tools are impounded and does nothing for that reality even though he’s trying to help. She needs guns for her army.
1. Man this Point… God this shoots so many holes in the whole sexist argument. Saying Booker Should have been female is also like saying every game with a male protagonist is sexist (even ratchet and clank, and half of banjo kazooie). that’s a pretty big list of games, and A very sexist comment in the complete wrong way. I’ve touched on this in my second point, so forgive me if this sounds like it’s repeated, but if this game was a male power fantasy (which it clearly isn’t at this rate) making it a female power fantasy would make this no less sexist. The fact that one could so easily swap Bookers gender and tweak his militant background a bit and it’d have no bearing on the story whatsoever proves how not sexist this game is. the only comment I agree with of course slightly is ” The game didn’t try to escape from the sexism of the past, and instead basked in it.” of course it did, just like it did with all the racism. it’s 1912 for Christ sake! You can’t make this time period look believable without touching on the social structure of the time. woman couldn’t vote, and where expected to be quite obedient house wives. I’m surprised there where even female cops to shoot.
So, while many feminists have actually given this game a thumbs up, you still had to make this article mocking complaints they could have had (but not really because you did so pretty badly). And while doing this, you completely belittle and disregard any criticism of any game when is comes to being sexist.
Seriously, you are part of the problem with the gaming community.
booker and comstock didnt overlap, is comstock a woman? no
Umm I am all for gender equality especially in games I think the protagonist should be able to be either sex, but this game is set just after the Civil War, and basically it would be COMPLETELY out of character to have women running around shooting people, in other words its politically correct for the time era. And yes that makes it sexist but, that was how things were done in that time period.
First of all none of that is “sexist” it may be somewhat stereotypical. But sexist? Pffffft. Also from your points it sounds like you want the females to be better than the males, but not equal. And let’s just assume that your right and the game is sexist. Well first, look at the time period, things were pretty sexist back then, and if your suggesting it shouldn’t be, then we might as well make civil war movies without racism.
Unaware that the poster wasn’t the writer 😉
This is the dumbest bullshit ever. Every point makes me rage more and will never visit this site again. It must be easy being an online columnist just have down syndrome and pull stuff out your ass, boom there’s an article. Starting on 5) Um, no female enemies? how about Lady Comstock, one of the most formidable boss battles.
it couldnt possibly be that the game is based in 1912 where sexes wernt equal…
If you want to reread the first reason its wrong.
When you try to get tickets to fly there are female enemys. When your sneaking over the roofs in the first second there are female enemys.
Who ever ranted about there being no female enemys needs there eyes checked.
umm who the fuck wrote this blog? look at the time era the game takes place?
The only strong female characters requiring mens’ help to succeed isn’t sexist. The fact is they needed SOMEONE to help them, and most of society is only aware of two genders. To avoid these arguments being made, everyone in the game would have had to be female. These arguments are sexist because they imply that the fact Elizabeth needed Booker’s help is anything to do with him being a man. Hell, if everyone in the game was female, someone somewhere would still cry sexist because there had to have been men involved at some point for those women to have been born. You just can’t win.
Also, the Luteces were differently gendered because the world-hopping in Infinite is derived from the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. That is to say, there are infinite universes in which anything that could happen, did happen. So in infinite universes, the Lutece of those universes were female, and exactly the same as the one we know. In another infinite of universes, the Lutece of those universes are male, but were cobblers. In another infinite of universes, there WAS no Lutece. In another infinite of universes, humanity never happened. The clue is in the name – Bioshock Infinite.
The fuck are you talking about? There were a bunch of female enemies.
Excuse me but…
Your so full of shit
There are female enemies.
Elizabeth couldnt escape because of
A)the power limiter
B)Songbird
C)She didnt had the fucking key
She doesnt fight because she never used weapons before.
She doesnt get attacked because
A)The enemies want her ALIVE!
B)2K didnt wanted to make her a Damsel in Distress
And lets be serious without her Tearing Powers and her Ammo/Health searching YOU would be fucked.
Remember what happend after the limiter got destroyed?
She became an unstoppable Universe changing GOD!
How is that sexiest?
The Lutece…only difference is the Gender.Both are weird in a charming way.
You dont need to like the game,but dont talk about things you dont understand
Nice strawman, bro.
Does the fact that no feminists are saying things like this about Bioshock Infinite do anything to deflate your smug sense of self-importance?
Bullcrap, The Lutece twins are not equal, This person did not play the game she would relize the Rosalina Lutece is the smarter on of the two. She even said in one of the Voxaphones that the X chromosome made Robert Lutece slow. She is the one that Invented the Levitation Particle not the brother. She is the one that Invented the Tear Particle to bring Robert Lutece to her world.
Spoiler: And as for Elizabeth the game would not be as great if she was not in it. She did all the Tears and Lockpicking, She did kill as well. And in the End she had the power over Booker and drowned him. Made her look that the female was the strength.
to be fair the male Lutece did all of the same inventions in his own timeline before being pulled over. He’d have had to make a tear machine to talk to Rosland, which most likely means he’d have had to floated a Colombia in his own timeline first.
They even argue and discuss matters with each other so that doesnt seem to me as sexism between them. There are differences between anybody.
2.Daisy requires someone to help her. It is complete coincidence that she finds Booker and gets his help. How would a female even get through all the trouble to help her(explaining this further in 1.).
1. What for a bad image would a female gambeling Pinkerton agent be?? This woman wouldn’t make a believable protagonist selling her child and such. This game just needs a male protagonist to make it a good game.
Concluding, Bioshock Infinite doesn’t contain sexism and in the few points where it does it’s so because of the time(1912) where feminism wasn’t booming and the whole society worked different,
If you want to play a game with a female protagonist, go and play Tombraider!!
P.S. Sorry for my bad English.
LOL Silly feminists xD
Dude, your weak attempt at skewering the very legitimate complaints about the very real sexism in videogames just makes you look like a clueless douchebro who missed the point and is trying to sound intelligent while throwing your own feces.
Actually Elizabeth DOES help you in combat by throwing you weapons and ammo, ALSO you’re supposed to be protecting her so yeah…
Started reading this… Got half-way through number Five… Had an uncontrollable urge to put the laptop down and take a nap.
Started reading this “5 Points” thing… I got half way through the first one, then became so bored that I put my laptop down to take a nap. =/
wow this is by far the stupidest thing i’ve year all year every single point in this list is wrong false or would have made for an awful or not as good game.
and to think there are people that believe this stuff.
by the way gullible is written on your ceiling.
Wow, what a joke. Nobody can just enjoy a game anymore. People seem to get upset just for the sake of getting upset. I’m so sick of the entire gender vs gender, race vs race debates and complaints. We’re all people, and everyone crying over this is a moron. It’s almost as if people forcibly attempt to go around causing trouble. Wait… who am I kidding, of course they do because people are stupid. It just seems more prevalent now than ever before because people care more about being “politically correct” rather than improving the situation.
TL;DR: I don’t want to live on this planet anymore.
Another game about another rugged gunbro who saves the girl, liberates the browns, and goes down to redeem himself and save all the universes in another boring messianic gesture. All while glorifying gun ultra violence.
Nothing but inane, narcissistic masturbation for white boys. That’s Bioshock Infinite.
Of course I don’t expect Ken Levine, a sheltered, upper class New Yorker male (did you enjoy those college drama classes paid by daddy, Ken?) to be capable of anything a little deeper than that. You have to have experienced the world and the conflicts of it in order to craft meaningful stories. Otherwise, what you get is self-centered, pretentious and ultimately hollow posturing like Bioshock Infinite.
I can’t tell if you’re being serious or if you really believe that crap.
You have to keep in mind, that the setting of the city in which this takes place in, WAS BEFORE WOMEN’S RIGHTS (Directing this to the person who wrote it)
God what a baby. You can pretend sexism is imaginary if you want. It won’t make you any less of a sexist.
dear lord this is just Farfetched and this is the kind of over analytical garbage that pisses off alot of people and makes REAL feminists look like over analytical up tight schmucks who like to pick apart every little detail of anything and demonize it and that just blows my mind and is quite annoying and not many people respect those opinions except mindless drones who are just eating your shit as it comes out your bung hole good day.
When I played the game, I did see woman enemies. Also in one of the scripted scenes, she fights away a guy trying to grab her. And for number four, i think its the other way around, because remember the asylum part? I cant be the only one who died constantly because she wasnt there to provide ammo and health.
I didn’t even really pay attention to what the sex of my enemies were…why? Deep down I know it doesn’t matter, they’re Booker’s enemies regardless.
the Arguments presented are half assed at best. the Cloumbian Army had Female Soliders including officers, Elizabeth was a priosoner who had no training, but that wrench she beat me with certainly shows she is willing to assert herself. Rosliand Lutece was arguably more successful then Robert, and the two are oddballs in that they are forcibly separated from the Universe, which grants them thier omnipotence. Daisy Fitzroy did not need a man, she needed an OUTSIDER, and that was the player character.
I hate this idea that because men and women should have equal opportunities (and they should), they should be treated as biologically and psychologically similar. Reason number three is truly absurd, and to claim that genders should be treated 100% identically is just ridiculous and ignoring millions of years of biology. Of course being male and female leads to some differences, each body has a variety of different hormones, body parts, and genes!
Point five is incorrect there are female enemies in the beginning. I beheaded a female officer as I recall.
Nice post.Thank you for sharing some good things!!
More feminist garbage… BTW men and women aren’t equal as proven by a myriad of scientific studies. BTW feminists, male geniuses out number female geniuses 7:1.
Dude read the intro to this piece.
Go play Tomb raider if you want a main female character. That is just nonsense your wrote of coarse its sexist but look at the time era. For a fun fact the main character has always been male in the Bioshock series.
Nice rant, I really believed it was a feminist rant before I read the intro. Damn you Poe’s Law. Anyway I did rebut all points but now that I know it’s satire there’s only a few that I think need to stand. You really should have SPOILER warnings though.
3. If your explanation worked how come Booker never overlapped with Comstock?
1. It would’ve taken something away from the game. First off you would need different models for Booker and Comstock. Second you’d need voice actors to record female Booker and female Comstock and you’d need alternate takes. All this shit requires money and time. 3rd, if people figure out that female Booker gets you a female Comstock and a male Booker gets you a male Comstock they may figure out the twist from that feature alone.And like you said it would make the game even more unrealistic.
There is a female villain in the game: Lady Comstock’s ghost. She is the most difficult boss in the entire fricken game! How could you forget that?
This game is also racist
This is a reason why the feminist movement got destroyed and highjacked… People who want women to be superior to men instead of working toward equality. Stop trying to make issues out of nothing, it makes everyone look bad.
What is wrong with pointing out that many of the games released today are sexist? Noone is saying “damn those men, they can’t do anything right and must hate women”. All people want is to feel like the game they are playing represents the world today. Half of our population is female, so why aren’t half of video game characters? To just use an easy example, why doesn’t COD do the same as Halo and let you choose the sex of your multiplayer character? It wouldn’t make any difference to the game itself and might even get a few more women playing. I find the last sentence to be a worrying indicator of how people view this topic: why is it “extreme” to wonder why there is such a great divide between the number of female and male characters is a game?
“Feel like the game they are playing represents the world today”. So setting a game in 1912 is “wrong”? If a story is a period piece (fictional or not), having it not feel like that period would be an artistic, social, and technical failure.
And COD vs. “half of the population is female, why not the characters?”: Because half of the population of special op combat soldiers are not female (though their later game has the option now, and most choosing those characters are said to be teenage boys anyway. That is understandable, since after it’s first incarnation (which was technically a “spiritual successor” to the historical accurate Medal of Honor: Frontline title), it deviated further and further away from historical accuracy in the storylines.
1) You cant start paragraphs with “Lets face it, … ” multiple times
2) You cant site Anita’s work because she only did a degree in some sort of sociology or something useless like that
3) You cant take her articles seriously as she is (most likely) a product of an abusive relationship in some way or another. She has a HUGE bias towards things, and even saying ‘Hi’ to her may offend her and get her to call the cops on you for sexual harassment.
Just stop giving her attention, and I’m sure she’ll go away.
Wow. I just bought this game and completed it within three days. There are n o signs whatsoever of sexism… and I’m a female gamer..
And you are just another b.s. “reporter”. You’re statements are invalid.
The game is set in 1912 it has to portray sexist and racist points or eles it won’t reflect the time period. Look at Bioshock 1 and 2 where woman had more rights because of raptures freedom laws. So the series is not intentionally sexist nor racists for any other purposes.
found the feminist
The article fails. Not because it’s a silly attempt to label a game as sexist, but it’s a failed attempt to satire straw-feminism.
what if you were elizabeth? would you prefer to fight or hide behind the powerhouse helping out a bit? she probably can’t fight because of a lack of training or drive.
what a stupid article. did you really play the same game that I did? I was actually surprised by the non-sexist nature of the game (given the time period) in a place where sexism was rampant.
you didn’t see any female enemies? What?? you’re kidding right? there are quite a few female soldiers. are you blind?
didn’t you listen to any of the voxophones? there are several from Lance Corporal Vivian Monroe that were quite impressive. Hellooo. Lance Corporal Female Lady in that era? died for her cause?
Daisy Fitzroy can’t succeed without a man’s help? Isn’t she like the leader of hundreds of men?
Booker should’ve been made a female? What about the “always one man, always one lighthouse” line? Conveniently forget about it?
Urhh I’ve had enough. This so called “article” is embarrassing. The Bioshock makers obviously thought things better than you have. Don’t be a writer. Its quite embarrassing. Thanks
In all fairness, this game takes place in a time where that is basically how all reality worked. It isn’t sexist if it is a fairly accurate portrayal of society at that time.
Set in 1912 = sexist, therefore game is sexist and racist, does she not care about the blatant racism? sigh
Oh yea lets have elizabeths father as a woman instead, idiot
Those 5 points really don’t mean shit. Game developers shouldn’t have to make female enemies and all that other stuff to prove that they’re NOT sexist.The game is set in 1912; the time when sexism WAS a big deal. If the game is sexist (which it isn’t) it would be an accurate portrayal of how things were back then.
This is why no one takes these internet femnists seriously.
“I’M FIGHTING SEXISM” they cry, while just writing angry nonsense on the internet.
What a bunch of…
Spoilers ahead:
5) Elizabeth clearly stater, during mst of the game, that
she hates killing, but she understand what Booker has to
do to get out of there with her, so she helps him with
ammo and tears.
On the choice of the cage and the baird, is pure
pshycology in that scene, the scene shows that Elizabeth
is trusting in Booker, why? because he got her out of the
tower, even though he has not get her out of Columbia,
he is already a Horo to her.
Also there where many female enemies in the Vox
Populi army, and even a boss fight with Miss Comstock,
so there was plenty of female enemies.
4)Elizabeth is more a help to Booker that Booker is to
her.
She couldn’t scape the tower by the simple fact that her
powers were drained in there, and Booker get her out of
there by the simple fact that he has guns.
Elizabeth didn’tneed Booker to sacrifized himself in
order to achieve her goal, Booker wanted to destroy
Comstock and fix his mistakes with his daughter, the
only way to do it is the way Elizabeth sowed him. See?
Booker nedded Elizabeth to achieve his goal.
3)People overlap their bodies and thus, memories..
because they were dead in a very similar universe
conected to theirs.
Not everyone overlap their bodies and thus, memories.
Look at Booker, he never overlapped with Comstock.
Luteces never died, never overlapped because of this,
and because their universes were very different, also,
overlaping their boddies would be simply impossible
since he has an Y cromosome and she doesn’t.
2) Daisy didn’t required much help from Booker, in fact,
she used him. In the revol universe, Daisy promised
Booker to help him find Elizabeth if he got her guns, but
he died in the process, Daisy then make people believe
he was a martyr to motivate the Vox Populy, but he
wasn’t, he never was a martyr in that universe, was a lie,
a plan she made.
1)Booker’s character works a lot better as a man,
because if he was a woman, that would require her to go
to war, and also become the founder of the greatest city
ever made, all that, in a society full of sexism where
women can’t even vote. That, in that time, is more impossible that a floating city.
Answering your final questions:
There were female enemies besides Daisy.
It would be a radical change to the plot to change the character’s apearience, as I said, because Comstock being a woman is impossible.
PS: I’m sorry for my bad english, is not my mother language.
What a bunch of…
Spoilers ahead:
5) Elizabeth clearly stated, during mst of the game, that she hates killing, but she understand what Booker has to do to get out of there with her, so she helps him with ammo and tears.
On the choice of the cage and the baird, is pure pshycology in that scene, the scene shows that Elizabeth is trusting in Booker, why? because he got her out of the tower, even though he has not get her out of Columbia, he is already a Horo to her.
Also there where many female enemies in the Vox Populi army, and even a boss fight with Miss Comstock, so there was plenty of female enemies.
4)Elizabeth is more a help to Booker that Booker is to her. She couldn’t scape the tower by the simple fact that her powers were drained in there, and Booker get her out of there by the simple fact that he has guns.
Elizabeth didn’tneed Booker to sacrifized himself in order to achieve her goal, Booker wanted to destroy Comstock and fix his mistakes with his daughter, the
only way to do it is the way Elizabeth sowed him. See?
Booker nedded Elizabeth to achieve his goal.
3)People overlap their bodies and thus, memories.. because they were dead in a very similar universe conected to theirs.
Not everyone overlap their bodies and thus, memories.
Look at Booker, he never overlapped with Comstock.
Luteces never died, never overlapped because of this, and because their universes were very different, also, overlaping their boddies would be simply impossible since he has an Y cromosome and she doesn’t.
2) Daisy didn’t required much help from Booker, in fact, she used him. In the revol universe, Daisy promised Booker to help him find Elizabeth if he got her guns, but he died in the process, Daisy then make people believe
he was a martyr to motivate the Vox Populy, but he wasn’t, he never was a martyr in that universe, was a lie, a plan she made.
1)Booker’s character works a lot better as a man, because if he was a woman, that would require her to go to war, and also become the founder of the greatest city
ever made, all that, in a society full of sexism where women can’t even vote. That, in that time, is more impossible that a floating city.
Answering your final questions:
There were female enemies besides Daisy.
It would be a radical change to the plot to change the character’s apearience, as I said, because Comstock being a woman is impossible.
PS: I’m sorry for my bad english, is not my mother language.
No female enemies?
I thought I found some. They arent FEMALE?
Booker a woman….. I’m sorry that the fact women didn’t fight in the battle of little big foot disturbs you but Booker being a woman would have destroyed the story because of that. Elizabeth required a man’s help because she is 13, aside from that fact the man wouldn’t have succeeded without her because of her aid in combat, AND Elizabeth is probably the only reason I actually succeed in combat. The twins I had no problem with and who the fuck is Daisy. A woman is the only reason I made it through Bioshock Infinite. Your argument is flawed.
Elizabeth is actually 20. 😉
Thank You for deleting what I wrote, thank God people agree with me instead of your stupidity. None of these points are valid in both fictional and historical context. Disgraceful
You lost credibility at one
men and women aren’t equal. Thats why men and women don’t compete against each other in most sports. In races they have prizes for first person over the line, then a prize for first female over the line. Tennis, 3 sets for women vs 5 sets for men, Men get bigger prize money but they have to play longer, a few years ago there was a fight to have the prize money made equal but it was pointed out that women would have to play 5 sets to make it fair so the matter was dropped. Each sex has their pros and cons but we aren’t equal.
I actually thought all the bioshock’s were quite “feminist” games. Not feminist per se but examining problematic gender stereotypes, and social conditioning etc. I don’t usually like to play male characters (unless the game is very good) and I usually stick to action or turn based rpgs but all the bioshock’s got me hooked. The symbolization, painful realizations, Capitalist “utopia” gone wrong. I got a completely different experience from these games and I enjoyed them immensely.
There are sexist games out there, there are misogynist and misandrist games out there. Bioshock isn’t one of them. The depth at examining gender roles, or just humanities ‘forced’ roles in general. The expanse of the character development and how they established them, it had depth yet subtly and themes of morality were ubiquitous throughout. Your choice (or illusion of choice) defines you in this Capitalist dystopia. It just doesn’t seem like the person who originally wrote this played the whole way through, or as intently as I did.
This is the most trolled post I’ve ever read. Right from your first of second firefight you go against female antagonists. lol
This post is a joke.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, the poster DOESN’T AGREE WITH ANITA’S VIEWS. He is posting this, if anything, as a “look at how retarded this woman is” kind of thing.
I see the title and all i can do is face palm
The only thing I can do is to hate you more and more with every letter typed up.
Whoever wrote this – You are an idiot.
First off, it’s set in a time and place that suck up to American values. So what exactly do you expect?
Second, even if your article held the slightest level of weight, so what? You think a single person cares about what you say enough to change their mind about buying or enjoying it? Fuck you, and fuck your imaginary opinion.
Well, I’ve recently started playing this game; therefore, right after the second point of your list I stopped reading, blaming only myself for not having foreseen there would be spoilers, but anyway… I can refute your first argument. There ARE female enemies. I have already been atacked by a lot of female security guards in Columbia, Am I the only one who has seen them?
On the other hand, you can hear several women talking about the place for women in society; and yes, they’re not really talking about equality. But then again, isn’t the whole game a complete piece of criticism about the kind of close-minded mentality that led (in this game at least) to the creation of Columbia? Doesn’t that mean that the discrimination of women is, in fact, wrong?
Elizabeth is also one of the best AI Non-playable characters I’ve ever seen in a game. The fact that you don’t have to keep constantly saving her time and time again makes her seem far less helpless, like she’s much more prone to taking care of herself. If anything, she saves Bookers ass all the time by finding him ammo and opening tears. They work as a team, where he is like the combatant and she is the medic and supplier. If anything, this game glorifies women. Idk how many people I know who have said Elizabeth is one of their favorite video game characters period. Also, there ARE female enemies in the game. Lady Comstock’s ghost, Daisy Fitzroy, and I can recall at least a few female cops. I remember one of them was one of the people that freaked out because she was killed in another world. None of these points are valid, this whole article is just a case of somebody WANTING to see sexism in the game, and looking way too deep into every aspect of the game to find it. It’s ridick.
If Anita is reading this,FUCK YOU.
Anita didn’t actually make any of these arguments you know.
this is the most idiotic article I’ve ever read, and I am a big advocate for feminism and gender equality and representation in games.
I feel very proud of the man who posted this article, simply for the fact that in the prelude he stated, “While I whole-heartedly disagree with her slanted views, it was hard not
to take notice of the complaints and how they come about. You can twist
many things in life to prove your points, and amazingly, without much
thought…”
I’m not sexist, I state that outright (though some will likely state that I am simply for putting that as a pretext), but it really does weaken the feminist point, is that while their arguments seem sound, they just are twisting everything so that it can fit their view point.
Not all feminist do things like that, the problem is that those who do are far more vocal and are getting funds to do things like that.
Really there are much more important and better things out there to focus on for equality than video games and pointing out things that just about all gamers already notice. At most the only thing that I’d really love to see right now that would be the biggest improvement to me is that females get clothing and armor that actually covers them.
Video games, movies, books, etc are important. They both represent the way people think, and encourage them to think that way.
I’m not a “violence in video games is killing this country” crazy person, but to say that it’s completely not important is incorrect.
It’s not the biggest issue but it’s a valid issue. If people already notice it, good, but if it’s not going away, then we’ve gotta keep talking about it.
I did not say that it was “completely not important” I just would like to see more pressing issues addressed first.
As for Anita’s work well she has said and pointed out a lot of things but sadly many are out of context forgetting or completely ignoring the fact that some of the things happening to female characters have been done to male characters within the same game.
But in a way it does come down to your own view of some things like how she dismisses some female characters you might see as great leads that breaks from the mold as nothing more than their male counterparts in a dress.
I’d love to hear an open discussion on this, and see her speak with some of the people who have debunk some of her points so that we can get a boarder view, especially if she plans for her videos to be used in classes.
Who the fuck wrote this crock of shit??
ahhhh women….. ya love em and ya hate em, and ya wish they couldnt vote….
what happened to that grilled ham sandwich?
Honestly? Get your fucking panties straight you stupid whore.
The Lutece twins not combining isn’t inequality, their different on a genetic level. Two VERY different chromosomes. xx=xx, xy=xy, but you cannot make xx=xy.
How about you get a real job and stop wasting our precious time with your feminist bullshit articles?
What about Lady Lutece? In 2 different parallel dimensions there are, in one, Mr. Lutece, and in the other one, Mrs. Lutece. Lady L. is the one who invent the system that Columbia uses to “fly”. Mr. L, though he’s a smart and a physichist, it appears to not invent anything because he’s not as intelligent as his “sister”, cause of his Y chromosome.
Wasn’t the ghost of Lady Comstock a female enemy?
I’ve run into female enemies. @.@
This article is horrible and though I would love to explain why it is wrong, I feel that the person who wrote this did so out of some spite or insecurity and could not care less about the truth.
This is the most disrespect that you could possibly give to the game. You people should be ashamed of yourselves for writing this.
Where to begin?
5) Elly Doesn’t want to kill because she wants to live a carefree life of no violence and hopes to accomplish her tasks with as little collateral damage as possible. She even sacrifices herself in one scene so the song bird doesn’t kill you. A WOMEN sacrifices herself to save the MALE PROTAGONIST. However in a life or death situation when there is no other option, she can be brutal. She stabs Fitzroy in the back with a pair of scissors and blood splurges out all over the place. Also at the beginning of the game there are SOME female enemies, however the games central focus is on racism, classicism, and sexism. It’s 1912 Women weren’t allowed to be police officers or firemen back in 1912 did you even think about that when you guys wrote this article.
4) Of course she requires Booker’s help to succeed. She’s only one person. She also realize on the goodness of others men, women, and a giant mechanical bird.
3) The twins are there to guide you, they both have supernatural powers also it was the female twin who invented the technology that allowed Columbia to fly.
2) Once again it was 1912 Fitzroy was a black women who needed the help of a white man to get what she needed.
1) Absolutely ridiculous. It would be impossible for a women to serve in the military prior to 1961 If they did that they would have to make an entirely different origin story for her.
This article is filled with slander and inconsistencies. Please think before you post.
The was trying to be realistic. The game had gender inequality AND racial inequality. I was against the racist part at the beginning with the African American women and caucasian man but it made sense. At that time nobody was equal, so if the women who wrote this is gonna call it sexist, she is gonna have to take into account the racism plus what is was like back then.
Well, THOSE points are REALLY GOOD.
If you count that Call of Duty, Medal of honor and so on should have the same thing.
Heck Halo, and Battlefield should ALSO be under those rules.
Sorry, but Anita Sarkeesians five best points is moot on those grounds.
Generaly said: ANY wargame has most male character. That’s not sexist, but how it is. She should try making some where there are equals.
On a side note: in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the patriot, you play Snake and kills mostly ladies… Hmmm wonder how Anita Sarkeesian feels aboute that?
Besides the obvious reasons why Booker shouldn’t have been a female, it would also remove what I thought was an important part of the story. As the game progressed, for myself at least, it felt like Booker and Elizabeth were moving towards a romantic conclusion which when the story concludes and you discover the truth about their relationship made it even more of a shock. My mind was blown at that moment. If Booker was a female, I’m pretty sure I would have figured out that Elizabeth was Bookers daughter before the twist occurred. Thus ruining the ending.
If you want to make this argument under stand how different universe works if there is so much of a difference as gender there memories because they would have such a difference in memories that it could not be shared that is how it worked
why would we make him a guy the prince saves the princess right maybe that was the point of he being male or the wanted it to be like the other games.
Thank you
Whoever did this article didn’t get much things about the game.
-The Lutece don’t have any side effect of traveling through portals because they were “killed” when one was closed, so in some way they became “ethereal” being able to teleport to any other timeline.
-Elizabeth didn’t get out on her own because she wasn’t mentally disturbed as Booker was.
-There ARE other female enemies in the game beside Fitzroy, they often carry a revolver-like gun.
-The game clearly states that Rosalid Lutece had more success because of being a woman than his “XY” Chromosome counterpart, Robert Lutece.
Is this a parody of these sorts of critiques?
If not, then it is truly depressing that someone would write this many words on the subject while apparently playing the game half-asleep, stoned, through a veil. There are several errors of fact in each point:
There are female enemies, Elizabeth is essential in combat and personally kills several people, Booker is helped by Elizabeth just as much if not more than the inverse, the Lutece twins are far more than the simple ‘overlaps’ of other characters as their juxtaposition was caused by different means, Fitzroy’s success or failure is based on a whole bunch of different factors in which gender plays almost no part, and… the final argument might as well be applied to 95% of male characters in fiction. Frodo could have been female. So could Luke and Deckard and Kane and Master frigging Chief.That’s not a criticism of Bioshock, it’s a criticism of all media, everywhere, which features a male protagonist: the author of this didn’t argue that the game would have been better served by a female protagonist, merely that it wouldn’t have been damaged.
I have to believe this a parody, because if this is the voice of ‘feminism’ and ‘equality’ in video games, we may as well go back to Duke Nukem Forever.
also “could have been” isn’t sexist but “should have been” is sexist against males 😛
Yes it is a parody of these sorts of critiques. There are valid reasons to criticize some video games from a sexism standpoint… but this article deliberately didn’t bother making any of them.
Not that I think Bioshock specifically is sexist.
Is this serious? wow. I didn’t find the game sexist at all…
I have looked at about 40% of these comments and as far as I can see there all crap {this one included} sexism & feminism will never be finished as long as there are men & women or women & men whichever is preferred. Its a game its meant to be enjoyed for the story. is this whats next we cant even be told a story without fueling hate, little red riding hood was saved from a wolf by a Man w