About the whole '' shorts and skirts '' thing...

[Kolsykol]

This is more or less just me venting a bit, but...
Why is it that people always ( including in real life ) talk about this as if the masculine is the inherent default?
It's really driving me insane, whenever there's female gear that has shorts and skirts there's people throwing tantrums about it, people that want the female characters to wear pants instead and they talk about it as if pants are the inherent default and that anything else is '' abnormal ''.
I mean, if I play a female character then I could just as easily argue that the female version is the default... Because to me it is, and in the end of the day your perception of this is entirely based on the lens from which you perceive it.
The same way that the female body is the default to a woman, whilst the male body is to a man ( yes, I know about different gender-identities. I am simplifying things ).
Men used to wear skirts historically, if men still did then they'd be regarded as the default and normal.
Why should it purely be defined by what men do?

I do see people saying that they want it to be a choice that you get presented with for both genders, and I do agree with that.
If you're one of those people then I am not talking about you, I do agree with you that more options is a good thing.
Like if someone playing a male character wants to wear a skirt then they should be able to imo. Or even '' boobplate '' I think.


I mean I don't want to get into a gigantic discussion here about armor design historically, but armor has always traditionally been designed after the masculine norms of the time, and that also applies in many ways to how it's designed in fiction today in ways which wouldn't be regarded as masculine back in the day.
Shadiversity on Youtube did two videos exploring this which were pretty good and he's absolutely right.
Armor never has been '' agendered '', it always revolved around masculinity based on the time period and it still does.
And if women fought to the extent that armorsmiths would actually take them into consideration at all, then the armor that they wore would change accordingly.

But people throw tantrums if there's even slight boobplate and act as if it'd literally kill the wearer ( meanwhile, our ancestors wore armor that was shaped like corsets because narrow waists used to be regarded as masculine, which by the same logic would be 100 000 times more deadly. Not to mention huge plate bulges shaped like a penis... And the most popular dagger at one point was quite literally shaped like a penis... People severely underestimate how effective armor was and how much people went out of their way to '' style it ''. There was that one blog post and people just jumped aboard the '' hurr durr boobplate is dangerous '' train which is just wrong... It's even a thing in HEMA, fencing and other different sports ).
I am not saying that people have to like it, I am moreso talking about how people don't even really seem to even acknowledge that they're essentially just trying to push women into adapting traditional masculinity and are probably not even aware that what they regard as '' default / non-gendered '' is in fact VERY gendered too and specifically designed for men with masculinity as the framework.

Again, I absolutely do agree that more options is a good thing.
And I am not really interested in this whole discussion about '' sexualization ''.
In the end of the day I do think that a lot of it is quite puritanical and that people wouldn't react to it if it was for male characters which is just blatantly sexist imo.
But if people genuinely feel the same about a man in shorts as they do about a woman in shorts then that's fine I guess, so long as they don't try and dictate what I get to wear.
I do know that some people will jump into that discussion, but I think that it's an entirely different thing.
And I do agree that it often swings in one way more than the other. Personally I'd like to see more of it for male characters and not less for female characters, but that's a preference thing.
But mostly I am just in favor of options that allows everyone to create what they want.

What I am talking about is how people attribute normality to masculinity and abnormality to femininity ( or what they perceive as feminine, I think that the shorts thing is especially ridiculous in that regard because men wear shorts too... ).
And I mean in the end of the day I think that people are way too quick to attribute '' sexualization '' to pretty much anything having to do with the female form...
To me it's more about aesthetics and what I think is cool, I genuinely don't understand at all why some people think that boobplate = sexy.
It's steel....
To me it just looks way cooler and I think makes my character look more powerful and badass.

More options for people to express themselves no matter what they play is a good thing imo, sitting around just shitting on anything '' feminine '' and arguing about this as if the masculine is the norm and default that the feminine needs to pander and adhere to on the other hand is just wrong imo.

/vent, lol...
I am talking about people who always attribute normality and the default-status to whatever the conventionally masculine thing is.
We see this in real life too how anything feminine gets attacked by a lot of the same people and is attributed with weakness and victimhood.

[Kolsykol]

Btw, this is moreso just me reacting to some posts I read about the Bard artifact gear in Shadowbringers.

I think that some people are approaching this with their complaints in a way that I find very questionable.
I am all in favor of more options.
But I do think that people perhaps need to take a step back and ask themselves why they always look at what men do and wear as '' agendered '' and the default...
And anything feminine or that women do and wear as '' the other '', and abnormal...

Maybe it's just because video games is so dominated by men, and so the discussion surrounding it always ends up being from a traditionally male lens.

[Bright-Flower]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone complain about shorts in the game?

When you're talking about boob plate, do you mean armor that protects but also emphasizes feminine features? Or do you mean stuff like the dragoon/ninja af1 sets on females that expose the belly/cleavage respectively? The former I'm fine with. The latter for me is largely depending on context.

More often than any complaint about shorts I see is actually people complaining about male healers and casters having to wear 'dresses' as if robes were inherently feminine.

[Raldo]

Oof ouch. Much rambling, terrible formatting.

I tried, but I was unable to understand what you were trying to say.

[NessaWyvern]

Oof ouch. Much rambling, terrible formatting.

I tried, but I was unable to understand what you were trying to say.

They're saying that masculine armour is not the default, nor is feminine armour, and how skirts and shorts are not entirely feminine, and people should complain less about "feminine" looking armour, such as shorts, skirts and boob plates.
Not hard to follow at all

[Akonyl]

The OP is pretty rambly so I'm not gonna try to address the whole thing, but at least to this point:

Why is it that people always ( including in real life ) talk about this as if the masculine is the inherent default?

In this game at least I think it's not too insane to say that SE *does* think of the male as the default in most cases for gear that looks different on each gender, because the actual icon used for the gear doesn't change even if the armor does, and I don't think I've ever noticed a gear icon that favored the female appearance over the male one (example, Faire Joi/all the Shisui pieces). I think it's very reasonable for people to assume that the armor appearance that matches the icon's picture is the default appearance.

[Krotoan]

.. Most of us are Male and from NA. Statistically. So of course most of us are going to consider western male styles to be "default".

[Lukha]

For me, it's not that one or the other is the 'default', it's that the fact that the male and female versions of the same set are often so different that upsets me. I love shorts and skirts, especially the sets that include stockings with them, but every time a set comes out with that design, the male version ends up having generic slacks instead. I've seen players with female characters complain about the opposite; many, many sets that offer full coverage on a male character show off a lot of skin on a female character.

The obvious solution to make everyone happy is to have the sets look the same on males and females - if males get slacks, females get slacks; if females get shorts or a skirt, males get the same shorts or skirt - and just alternate between these two options as they design gear. This way everyone gets the same options, and if someone doesn't like the option that comes with a particular set, they can just glamour over it because, well, they have *options*.

[AxlStream]

Can someone explain to be what OPs point is? I read it 3 times now and it seems more like a brainstorming session than an actual text explaining something...

[Fellgon]

Maybe it's just because video games is so dominated by men, and so the discussion surrounding it always ends up being from a traditionally male lens.

Yes there's so many males playing videogames, that as the legends tells, Men are born under ground!!

now, seriously i really dont understand why some "MALES" complain about girls playing videogames! Some girls play game so well that with no doubt they are better than some "guys".

A man its nothing if he dont have a good woman by your side.