What Zero Could've Been

[Lunaxia]

Okay, this thread's taking a turn and I really just got curious about something, so don't take it personally because it's really just curiosity at play. You're not even the only one saying this. And I KNOW this is gonna be a drama powder keg, so I'll just preface it here by saying this.

Essentially: why be so against that?

Yet people react like it's going to undo centuries of women empowerment in society... which, again, it only would promote that sort of thing if that were the only dynamic the story presented.?

You answered your own question.

Women - and some men, to be fair - have fought for many, many years and continue to fight for a diverse representation of men and women that goes beyond defining women by their femininity and their appeal to men, and men by their strength and how they adhere to traditional depictions of masculinity. We've made some progress, but look at Western media in general and you can see it's still fairly rampant, the messages are merely more subtle these days. Gaming in particular has often been a hotbed of misogynistic viewpoints and male gaze parades, and it's taken a long time just to get to where we are now, which isn't terribly far. Doubling back on that to return to haggard tropes that undermine quite literally all of that under the pretext of "variety" is pointless, unnecessary and self-defeating.

As for your point on Cottagecore, women enjoy it because they feel they can now freely enjoy the idea of a rural, country life on their terms, without all of the stereotyping and sexist misery that used to go along with it. Most fantasies and aesthetics revolving around it actually exclude men entirely.

[Midareyukki]

You answered your own question.

Women - and some men, to be fair - have fought for many, many years and continue to fight for a diverse representation of men and women that goes beyond defining women by their femininity and their appeal to men, and men by their strength and how they adhere to traditional depictions of masculinity. We've made some progress, but look at Western media in general and you can see it's still fairly rampant, the messages are merely more subtle these days. Gaming in particular has often been a hotbed of misogynistic viewpoints and male gaze parades, and it's taken a long time just to get to where we are now, which isn't terribly far. Doubling back on that to return to haggard tropes that undermine quite literally all of that under the pretext of "variety" is pointless, unnecessary and self-defeating.

As for your point on Cottagecore, women enjoy it because they feel they can now freely enjoy the idea of a rural, country life on their terms, without all of the stereotyping and sexist misery that used to go along with it. Most fantasies and aesthetics revolving around it actually exclude men entirely.

Well, it wasn't really an answer to my question, because what I was asking was "it doesn't do this, so why are people getting so upset about it?"
And that's true for Cottagecore, it's even probably why it's popular in sapphic circles.

[Lunaxia]

Well, it wasn't really an answer to my question, because what I was asking was "it doesn't do this, so why are people getting so upset about it?"
And that's true for Cottagecore, it's even probably why it's popular in sapphic circles.

It does have an impact, though. Every bit of representation matters, especially when it's still relatively early on in the battle. It might not tear down the entire movement with a single character, but it does register with people, so it just doesn't really benefit anyone bar the people who actively want to hold up this sort of dynamic - who harbor the sort of ideas on men and women that are harmful to the rest of us -to suddenly re-insert it when we've made a scant bit of way forward, and potentially set back the progress that has been made.

It may sound dramatic, but when you're a woman and actually affected by these ideals and have grown surrounded by these messages in modern media, it really is important. The existence of this thread in its entirety attests to that.