See the idea of something like this just exploiting or offending women isn’t a fair assumption. One implies indirectly that all men appreciate it.
What about guys trying to recover from porn habits, or men who are trying to be faithful to their wives? Constant images like this erode against the will and genuine intent. Society tells me it’s ok to me a horn dog, its natural!
My wife doesn’t look anything like that, and she never will. But perhaps she has more value that a poster girl who doesn’t exist anyway?
6/10 of the female minutres I scan the internet for trying to find one for my wife’s characters are porno or topless.
It’s pretty sad.

Aside to Psychic Robot and anyone else whose comment doesn’t make it out of moderation: if you are defending the image without basic knowledge of the theories I’m using to question it then there isn’t much to say, and I don’t have so much free time now that I can give y’all an intro course on feminism.

(By the way “thing” is not a pronoun, though that’s admittedly not a novice mistake. It’s just a noun.)

Re DR: It’s been a while since I was a d20 gamer. I don’t really care to get the details of a system that I’ve abandoned right in the fine details, especially when I’m skewering a representative of that system. If you want to geek about it, I can respect that from one geek to another, but I don’t really care about it.

So the obvious inversion was to have the white people on the outside, as the oft-victimized minority. Another ploy was to include social mores that have reasons, and to try to emphasize that these are the community’s IDEALS — and that, as with our ideals of honesty and integrity and respect, they’re rarely completely lived-up-to.

But one thing that I really considered is how racism is different absent a history of race-based slavery. So there’s racial bias, sometimes with a basis in cultural fact. (”Ob-lobs are sex fiends!” — well, actually, they have a culture that’s incredibly permissive in most circumstances while being very strict in one other. Compare with “Ulds are sex fiends!” That’s just a misperception caused by their low infant mortality. Or there’s “Truils are sex fiends!” which is just a total fabrication based on projecting ‘animalistic’ impulsiveness to less technologically advanced outsiders who happen to eat human flesh.) But I try to portray that race bias as a matter of prejudice rather than hatred. Just because you think “Hm, a Pahar, so he’s probably a verbose intellectual” doesn’t mean you necessarily hate or fear him. You hate or fear him because he’s on the other side of the battlefield.

-G.

Who didn’t ask to be born into the oppressor class, and is squandering his white male privilege as fast as he can.

Stuart’s last blog post: Year-end evaluation and thoughts for the future

For an idea of what I’m basing this on, look at the section on Allies’ ammo in combat in the core rules, and my post Bookkeeping-free provisions and torches in AD&D.

I’m not sure why Alchemy needs power points. In general, I’d see potion-making taking a while and mostly happening off-screen/during downtime. As such, power points would be recovered pretty quickly. Here’s a more detailed version of what I was thinking:

1) An alchemy roll can harvest PP from ingredients. The number of PP depends on the quality (price/difficulty attaining) those ingredients. Some ingredients have an affinity for a certain type of magic and gain a bonus toward that.

2) An alchemy roll can harvest ingredients from natural surrounding or dead creatures. This takes some time. If you want to avoid all ingredient tracking, this might be an issue, but I was thinking that it would be tracked along the lines of Decent Ingredients x 5, Great Ingredients x 2 or whatever.

3) Making a potion takes a long time - usually a full day. Maybe one of the tools - say a calcinator - could reduce this somewhat.

Stuart’s last blog post: Year-end evaluation and thoughts for the future

With boobs. Big ones. Y’know, for the wife.

I understand why Sean brought up the bugaboo of violence in games, because gaming is generally under assault for it’s more controversial elements. Gamers are used to pushing back strongly against any criticism of our hobby.

Wyatt’s last blog post: It’s my birthday!

Daedra cults are on my list of things to think about. I’m not sure if I even want Edges to represent the factions, so it’s low on my todo list.

I’m pondering just including a d4 in the Alchemy skill in the Alchemist Edge. It’s a pain to have to use Advances for a skill that’s going to be useless before the Edge can be bought. However, depending on which direction I go with it, I might end up making it a Background edge, and then that consideration is moot.

For ingredients, I wanted to avoid having players keep track of an ingredient inventory. It’s not really a very SW sort of thing to do, and I’d rather abstract it will rolls. What I was thinking was that if they just want to shop for the ingredients, then they can. Otherwise, they can use their Alchemy skill and a bunch of time to Gather, which will give them die sizes in Stock or something similarly named. A successful roll on Stock means they have the ingredients for X task. (I have to think about whether it’s a quantity of potions, a whole potion, just a certain number of PP worth of Power, or what.) A failure means they have to go out and buy the ingredients. A success also means their Stock goes down a die size. On a Raise their Stock isn’t depleted at all.

There’s some more thoughts about bonuses to the gathering based on being in interesting places, and bonuses to the Stock roll based on having Mages Guild membership and having your workshop near to a headquarters.

I do think Power Points are necessary for Alchemists. I’ve been looking at how Shaintar and how Freeport handles SW alchemy, and they do use Power Points. The Alchemist has to invest their points and they only start to recover at the usual rate when the potion is done. It acts as a limiter on 1) how powerful a single potion can be without investing an Edge in more PPs, and 2) how quickly they can make potions. Since SW Powers are much more potent than the potion effects in Oblivion, I don’t want Alchemists in SW TES to be creating the masses of potions that TES4 alchemists make. Also, the (1) reason slightly tracks the need for alchemists in the video game to get to higher levels before they can make the really powerful potions.

As a gimme, though, I think I’ll let Alchemists make poisons without having to purchase a Power to do it. I’ll leave the morally-questionable nature of poison use as a limiter. I’ll probably base it on Smite in terms of Power Points and effects.

If I make Alchemy an Edge that doesn’t piggyback off Magicka Powers, then they’ll have separate Formulae (Powers) that aren’t mixed. That’ll let me give them different effects, too.

Skills - The skill list seems large… and some skills (Fighting) are far more generally useful than others (Boating). This is a general issue I have had with SW, though.

Factions - Daedra cults? Plus, there are additional factions from Morrowind.

Alchemist - the Professional Edge lacks a prerequisite of the Alchemy skill. Also, it doesn’t really track the use of Alchemy in TES. Thoughts: Remove power points from this Edge. Allow the use of the Alchemy skill to harvest power points from ingredients. The professional edge can then be used to store those power points toward a dedicated power in a potion. Instead of Powers, the edge could give Recipes (essentially, powers that can only be stored… and take more time/equipment to use).

Stuart’s last blog post: What I’ve been up to…

I also find Mr. Reynolds’s reactions here to be unprofessional and off-putting.

Dave T. Game’s last blog post: YouTube Tuesday: Singing about Kissing Wookies Edition

But yeah, the flood of rabid fans is lame. The signal to noise ratio is just so poor. But, I can’t complain that much because they’ve publicised this post enough that there are some people here now who have thought-provoking things to say. And, the worst of them have either been driven off or

@Amy(11:58): Right bloody on. I imagine that’s the sort of thing that Amy #1 up-thread was thinking of when she invoked roleplayers’ geeky creativity.

@Greg: Y’know, I can get on-board with the idea of reclaiming pinups, after reading Amy’s post. I got my head too far stuck up my, ah, theory, that I wasn’t seeing the possibilities. Yeah, I was letting my world get too small. Paizo didn’t pull it off, but I think that’s due to lacking the depth of commitment and awareness of the pitfalls and alternatives necessary to do it right. I mean, the artist they chose is an obvious boob artist based on the links a deleted comment provided.

@SlatzGrubnik: Sorry, I missed your second comment until now.

The difference is in how gender is filtered through culture. So, no, something can be true of cheesecake and not true of beefcake, such as one being exploitive and the other not. That said, I don’t think that beefcake is unproblematic. It’s just that the objectification of women has much more direct harmful consequences (due to the cultural disempowerment of women) than beefcake does. Ideally neither would happen, but I think I’m justified in tackling the worse one first. If feminists were committed to the idea that everything about women and men were equal, we could hardly coherently claim that women are treated differently than men, could we?

@Robert: I seem to keep missing your comments in the pile, too.

Again, I want to emphasise that I’m not advocating an enforced removal of images. I would like Paizo to decide that it’s not right to participate in the production of such imagery, in the same way that they’ve decided that it’s not right to participate in the production of all-White gaming products.

I agree that shielding a community from vices has major negative consequences. What I’d like to see, rather than repression, is a deliberate non-participation in the objectification of women by people and companies in the RPG community. I know it’s unrealistic on that scale, but Paizo has given the impression of wanting to do that.

Well spoken on the art bit. I’m not sure how to ferret out the nuance I’m looking for, but it is about intent. I do think that the Paizo forum readers who voted for this Christmas card had those kinds of negative objectification intents. Paizo’s satisfaction of those might have been naïve, but if so it’s all the more important for them to think about this harder.

The thing about art is that it does communicate messages. Many would say it’s not art, otherwise. It doesn’t have to be labelled as promoting violence against women in order to carry that message or to have that effect. The message doesn’t even have to be intended by the artist or the art director. It just has to be passed unimpeded from the culture, through the artist, through the art, and into a receptive or perceptive mind.

Really, I don’t think taking old art that has become objectionable and refreshing its negative features with a modern rendering is a good idea. Best leave the mistakes of the past in the past and, yes, appreciate the art for being art. But, why create more art that makes those mistakes? If art is the communication of culture, do we really want to keep repeating the visual equivalent of some pretty nasty things about women?

Again, not that I’m advocating censoring such images. But, an artist that is just rehashing the sexist imagery of the past shouldn’t be unquestioned just because it’s art.

I suspect that I’d find the beefcake/cheesecake Santa and Mrs Claus similarly problematic, so just as well. I appear to have my hands full right now.

Women over the age of nubility.

Women who look confident and in control of their own sexuality. (There has been a lot of improvement here over the years, but you can never have too muchof a good thing)

People wearing clothing that is practical to their profession. Practical clothing can be very sexy if you know what you’re doing. Swap out that fetish-club clothing for some adventuring gear. Heck, it can even still be leather!

If a woman is skinny, then maybe she can have small breasts. And if she’s big-breasted, then maybe she can a significant degree of body fat.

People who have jobs that need muscles should look like the people who perform those jobs rather than professional gym models (bulging pectorals are a product of a modern gym, not swinging a sword - washboard abs are created more by dieting than by work).

Women in masculine professions who look a little butch. Not Hollywood butch (i.e. Fried Green Tomatos) but actually dykey. Just now and then.

People of a variety of colours.

Men being portrayed as sexy. Any men. At all.

Pin-ups that look like they came from the same demographic as their audience. Or that looked like such a character might actually look like.

If anyone can provide some links to examples, that would be lovely.

Seriously people, other human beings can have negative opinions without doing it to grub for hits on their blog.

Wyatt’s last blog post: Paizo Watch: Paizo’s Boobgate

If you’re going, thanks for participating as one of the reasonable ones.

I don’t pretend to think I’ve made friends by this approach, but I also don’t think there’s any profit to be made respecting certain opinions on this subject. If they don’t appreciate the at least the possibility of complexities coming into the discussion, there’s little hope that they will actually be a “participant”. I’ve been weighing giving people a more even response, but I haven’t been able to accept the degree to which I would be condoning certain comments by giving them a “fair” (in the Fox sense) hearing.

An alternative would have been to just delete comments that were out of line and keep the discussion fairly high-minded, but there are obvious problems with that. Another alternative would have been to just ignore the people who don’t get it, but I don’t think I could have remained comfortable being their “publisher” without pushing back. My demon is a pleasure in mocking the clueless, and that’s certainly been cavorting about more than does me credit.

I’m going to remove the bit at the top, since you’ve proved me wrong. Some people are going to say that I’m hiding it, but meh. You’ve reversed my esteem of you enough that I don’t want it to stand in the archives.

The insults are mostly aimed at the men rabidly refuting a charge sexism against a company they’re fans of. They’re not worth my time beyond the entertainment they give me watching them run into a cluestick they can’t see. If you read up-thread, you’ll see that anyone who had the barest idea of what they’re talking about got a much more reasonable answer.

And, yes, I only have a Store account at Paizo. It’s just that you seem to pop up in all of the threads I’ve enjoyed reading over there, and not in a way that contributed to it beyond a smug sense of superiority. So, maybe that’s just my bad luck, or maybe you’re all over the boards like that. Possibly you’re just condescending to the people saying things that I find interesting, and contribute constructively elsewhere.

Yes, we all participate in sexist (and racist) discourses. It’s unavoidable while being part of this culture. I’m not free from it, but I try as hard as I can (as I was saying in the other article) to see and mitigate it. The reproducers of sexism that are unmindful and heavily invested in the status quo aren’t going to be converted by a post like this no matter how much I wish it could. So, I mock them when they’re clueless enough to try that shit here, and meanwhile I try to have a fruitful conversation with the clued-in people.

I’m curious then. Do you think it’s futile to oppose things like Paizo’s Seoni? I mean, I don’t think so, but it sounds like you’ve been reading this stuff longer than I have.

@Greg: That’s a good point. I do think “queer” has only been reclaimed because it has long since lost currency as a slur. Maybe that’s enough to be able to reclaim a word? I can’t see how it would be possible to entirely reclaim a word that is in active use by an oppressing group.

Hm. Iconography does work differently that direct slurs. What they share is the embedded cultural control they are implicitly created to exert. There’s enough else that’s different to make them work differently in reclamation efforts. Is it enough of a difference?

I see the problem, though. But, is that difference not accounted for by “safe” spaces that are created in which to value these things? I’m thinking about more public spaces where the dominant cultural meanings will strongly contest (in bad cases, by violence) the reclaimed meanings. Of course, I can’t figure out how the burlesque revival fits into that. It’s very thorny territory, and I’m not sure there is a right answer.

Something to consider in looking for an answer is the oppressor’s tendency to embrace and co-opt the victories of the oppressed. The only thing that patriarchy is concerned with is sustaining the imbalance of power, so it tends to rewrite the boundaries of the conflict so that “losses” are recolonised with oppression. That tendency really complicates attempts to analyse a particular image.

Bringing this back to Seoni, I’m more inclined to believe that positive image of her as an iconic in general (though I’m still not sure about that). In the Christmas card, though, she was drawn specifically to satisfy a request by people not interested in the reclamation of pinups by women. The devil’s in the details, and I can’t yet see any way for that particular detail to not be damning. In the context of the reclamation of sexual liberation-era imagery, I’m seeing that as as sexist because it’s a recolonisation of the symbol by oppressive men, with Paizo’s (possibly unwitting) help.

Can Paizo really intend and sustain Seoni as an empowered character despite her fans?

@Sean: Since you can’t tell the difference between thinking men and women are equal and thinking that men and women are treated inequally by society, I don’t think you have the analytical skills or theoretical grounding necessary to add anything constructive here. If you really do care about sexism and learning more about the less obvious kinds, consider looking up some of the authors that have been cited so far when you’ve got some distance from this argument. Though I wouldn’t suggest starting with Butler, because reading her is like reading Kant.

@ Sean: No, he’s not nutters or trolling for his blog. He knows the arguments well and has put a lot of time into thinking about them. I don’t agree with his approach but I don’t doubt his sincerity.

Were this true, “pagan” would mean the same thing it meant 1000, or even 100 years ago (in both cases, a pejorative, but a *very* different pejorative in those two eras).

To go out on a bit further of a limb here, though, we’re talking about iconography, not language, and in particular, we’re comparing historically exploitive iconography where the harms, while real, were largely incidental, to historically spiteful language, where the entire point *was* the harm, and it seems rather safe to argue that they obey very, very different rules.

Mores change, cultural fixations and symbolisms change, and yesterday’s exploitation forgotten or reanalysed. Are modern history buffs with enthusiasm for the Tuskegee Airmen or the Negro League or even of Blaxploitation films like Shaft or Foxy Brown furthering the cause of racial inequality? Are women who like period dress furthering the exploitation of women through their enthusiasm for corsets? Or, are they rather acknowledging a valued and important part of their heritage *as* minorities or women, however complicated by the inequality that they stemmed from?

I’m sorry, but the world you’re presenting is awfully small, by my estimation. It’s a world where I’m Wrong for cherishing the segregation-era heroes that are a part of my cultural heritage, and it’s a world where most of my nerdy female friends are Wrong for thinking corsets are cool, or for thinking pre-liberation female sexuality is something to be enshrined as equally heroic. See the problem?

You claim to have an account at Paizo just so you could take a look at the Beta version of the Pathfinder RPG, but you know me well enough to know I’m a self-important, contrarion, jerk with nothing useful to say. I think you’ve spent a bit more time at Paizo than you let on.

I’ll pop back later this evening with something that I hope adds to the conversation, but, for now, I’ll say this: your insults are not warranted by your theories. If sexist discourses are pervasive in society and, if, as I’m sure you’ll agree, the implications of discourses are not fully understood by those who reproduce them, then people will continually produce sexist discourses even when they consider themselves to be well-meaning and well-educated. Labelling people as ’sexist’ or suggesting people are ‘racist’ simply personalizes something that is a general social trait.

In other words, we are all sexist, D7, to the extent that we all participate in sexist discourses. Some of us simply do it more self-reflexively than others.

I’ve been reading feminist theory since I was 15. I grew up encountering racism on a daily basis. However, as my understandings are informed by the society I am in, I, like you, continue to struggle with my participation in racist and sexist discourses.

@Dreamweaver: Oh, I think it was an accident too. But, consider that only non-White characters are every accidentally drawn White, and White characters are never accidentally drawn non-White. There’s a one-sided bias at work that causes those accidents.

Re your wife, read the italic text at the top of the post.

If a company decided that they weren’t going to do any cheesecake shots, I’m pretty sure that nobody would be “offended”. I have a game book right here that doesn’t have a single cheesecake shot in it, and I haven’t heard anyone complain about it. (Shaintar, for the curious.) If Paizo not being sexist contrary to fan request gets them in trouble, it’s their own damn fault for deliberately creating a reputation for pandering to their fans’ whims. At some point in the process, Paizo is responsible for deciding to indulge a particular whim.

The fact that such imagery exists, in spite of the inability of those with impulse control issues, or generally ignorant people, does not say that it is not really wrong or an issue, instead it shows the difference between those who can handle it and those who cannot. All removing such imagery does is remove it, it solves not one single problem, it probably makes it worse. Although this is my personal view, I am fairly certain that sexual crime within various religious groups and their hierarchy is increased in those groups that have celibate clergy, thus making them external toward society, while those who allow for marriage in their clergy have less.

Now, we could either outlaw all religious, since it obviously can lead, in potential, to such issues, or we can let people be spiritual leaders while still having corporeal based lives and families.

*shrugs*

Whenever something is repressed in the group, because of the fact that some cannot handle their [insert vice here], it rarely fixes anything. I think an informed and reasoned society is much better than a shielded and stifled society, or else you are going to create the Morlock and Eloi paradigm, which is not a good idea, either.

As for the whole slave girl motif, race should not matter, at all, so long as the intent of the peace is positive, not negative. If the goal of the piece is to promote the enslavement of a race, the negative objectification, in actual not assume, then the piece has issues. But, if the piece is just a piece, with art being just art, then there is nothing wrong with it. I’d rather see examples of real history, rather than have it glossed over and sanitized, simply because it reminds us of our mistakes and, hopefully, keeps us from making them, again.

Fiction is fiction, just as Harry Potter doesn’t promote neo-paganism, satanism, homosexual agenda, or any other bit of wingnut thought, neither does men and women, wearing skimpy outfights, while they run around the known and unknown world killing folk and taking their stuff.

Now, if you really wanna worry about art that promotes negative behavior, wait for a picture that outright says, “Thanks for supporting our company, we hope this picture gives you an erection and makes you rape.”

Paizo’s intent in the picture is obvious, as it is a piece of fantasy art, in a stylize pin-up, with a cartoonish female figure in provocative clothing. If you see offense in it, as well as others, I am fairly comfortable in guessing that, by far, you are in the extreme minority and that it was not Paizo’s intent or desire to do so.

I feel that turning society into an over sensitive, political correct entity will only succeed in dumbing us down, making it worse, and retard society, instead of enlighten it and move it forward. There is a lot of art out there, which truly is art, that was inspired by some cultures that, by today’s standards, are very backwards, callous, and demeaning toward various segments of society, male or female, but that doesn’t make something any less artistic.

If I could link to it, I would, but there is another company provided peace out there of a beefcake Santa and a cheesecake Mrs. Claus, with her curled up around his leg in what you could, easily, call a Howardian pose, ala Conan, and while I’m sure some could find it offense, I find it enticing and enjoyable without the urge to sow my rapine urges.

Robert N. Emerson’s last blog post: Review of Rite Publishing’s The Living Airship by Soren Keis Thustrup

Personally, I think there was nothing that bad about the picture in question. I have seen worse in Disney movies.

@Robert: Fabio is mocked because he’s Fabio, not because he does beefcake modelling. He’s the exception. Conan and other muscle men depicted in RPG products are more what I’m talking about, since that’s actually on-topic.

Of course there’s a huge difference between viewing such imagery and acting on less-than-civilised impulses related to the imagery. As you say, you are a reasonable and sensible person. Others are not. For those people, being surrounded by images of women as sexually available servitors lowers the bar on their worst urges. There’s a reason that the rates of murders and sexual abuse of women are much, much higher than those of men. You’re not part of that directly, but condoning objectified images certainly tells those uncivilised men that we don’t really mean it when we say they should respect women as dignified human beings. There’s no “profile” here, I’m talking about how it effects* the culture that individual men and women operate in.

I’m certainly not advocating that this sort of thing be legislated. It doesn’t need to be, and it would be counter-productive to do so. I’m advocating that Paizo not participate in it, and that people be aware that cheesecake isn’t harmless. If the majority thought that way, there would be no need for legislation. Then, there would be lots of room for sexy depictions of women that weren’t exploitive (like there is room now for sexy images of men that aren’t exploitive), because they’d be produced by and for people who aren’t interested in the “servitor” and other negative aspects of the image. As an analogy, holiday snaps of children on the beach aren’t considered exploitive, despite a tiny and disgusting portion of the population that will look at them with exploitation in their thoughts anyway.

As for the image recalling Betty Page pinups, it ain’t the 50s anymore. Standards of how women are treated have gone up since then, I hope. Would you think a depiction of naked Black slave girls that was commissioned specifically as T&A fanservice was harmless because it recalls old art? I would hope not. The point being, that being like old pinup art doesn’t make any difference to the objectification built in to a current-day image.

* Yes, I mean “effect” and not “affect”.

@Greg: I had to think about it for a while, but yes, I do think it implies that complete reclamation of a term or image is impossible, and I think that’s accurate. Not even the biggest reclamation projects have succeeded at forcing the wider culture to treat the words as reclaimed: consider the reclaimed words “fag” and “nigger”. They’re still used as epithets, despite being reclaimed by certain subcultures. The paradigm shift, which is bigger than any single term or image, has to come before the culture as a whole will recognise a term or image as reclaimed.

Certainly, Paizo can’t claim that they’re even trying to reclaim pin-up art when they’re doing it to satisfy their fans’ demands for boobs. If Paizo was trying to do that, they failed as soon as they turned a blind eye to why the fans were requesting Seoni.

@Tarren: RTFT. You’re living up to your reputation as a contrarian with nothing useful to say. You had such a good start. I’m disappointed.

@Majuba: It’s been a long time since Uhura’s skirt-wearing was a symbol of sexual liberation. If a new Star Trek series started and all the women had to wear miniskirts, it wouldn’t be “sexually liberating” because it’s not the sexual revolution anymore. That inch of ground is already won, and feminism is working on the next inch, where women are allowed to enjoy their sexual liberation without being objectified for it.

It’s not necessarily a good idea to follow Reaper’s lead here, not if Paizo wants to be progressive on how they represent people. Nor do I think Seoni’s normal costume is unproblematic, so that’s not much of an excuse either.

Half-naked, muscular men are objects of power and command respect by what they represent to the dominant creators and viewers of those images (men). They challenge the viewer and resist the viewer’s attempts to make them anything other than they are. This is just a result of the history of men as a gender, and how and why they have been and are depicted in art.

Half-naked, voluptuous women are objects of desire and represent a “giving” to the dominant viewers and creators of such images (men). They are designed and received as objects to be consumed visually in the same way cheesecake is to be consumed: as a purely pleasurable device.

Hence, beefcake commands respect and cheesecake doesn’t. You’ll notice, too, the subtle fact that beefcake != men and cheesecake != women. They’re depictions of men and women for a certain purpose, with particular messages built into them and established cultural roles. They are very much different in ways other than simply the gender of the object of view.

@Celt: Art being subjective doesn’t really excuse art that, historically, has almost always been interpreted as “I’d like to hit that” (or the historical equivalent). Sure, cheesecake could mean something else because it’s art and art is subjective, but the fact is that it’s rarely experienced with any other subjectivity.

I do think that there is something to be gained by women reclaiming pin-up art, but it does need to be reclaimed, and Chestnut men still have the dominant grip on it and hence the loudest voice in determining what cheesecake means to the culture at large. People like your girlfriend and friends, who’ve taken control of their relationship to cheesecake away from culture, are the exception. For everyone else it’s still a big dose of toxic cultural messages about what women are valued for, how they should look, and the how women and men are supposed to relate.

And, I do think it was Paizo’s intention to serve that, if not necessarily provoke crude comments. The crude comments just illustrate why Seoni is demanded as fanservice. If Paizo wants to be progressive, they can’t pretend that satisfying desires for T&A because “the fans want it” is part of that.

Beefcake and cheesecake, since as far back as I can remember, are usually used to identify female and male models, or a particular style of art that you’d see on various magazine and book covers, or as vehicular art, or what not. Sure, mileage may vary on what is obviously a personal thought or opinion, but equating beefcake to commanding respect is out of touch, in my opinion.

I don’t run to the muscle-bound male-model with his shaved chest for help in a crisis, the thought doesn’t even cross my mind, nor does it enter my mind that such imagery commands respect. Generally, models entice a lascivious response because that is how they make money, by looking attractive, and the respect moniker never even enters the picture.

As for exploitive material and imagery, well, in my not so humble opinion, there is a huge difference between viewing such imagery and acting out on any potential negative urges. There is a vast difference between having impulses and acting out on said impulses and if all we do is insulate ourselves from this impulses, instead of dealing with the inability to control them, then you are just creating a bigger problem for the future with a mediocre band-aide for today.

I have played role-playing games for over twenty-five years now, as well as viewed all sorts of material that could be considered questionable or exploitive, yet I have never even been tempted to engage in such activities, as I am a reasonable and sensible person, with a proclivity to rant and rave from time to time.

Personally, I think it weakens a society to not consider its self strong enough to survive the existence of something that a segment of the society finds offensive, as legislative morality always fails and it treats the People as if they are too weak, too stupid, and incapable of handling anything difficult.

Look at the folly that is the War on Drugs, which steams from the mistake of Prohibition of Alcohol and the organized crime infrastructure that it created. Look at the ignorance of gay marriage bans, book burnings, and other such insanity, all of which steams from one segment being offended by something, to the point of feeling outraged by its mere existence.

Personally, I see no offense in finding someone attractive and looking at them, just as I do not see offense in said person feeling upset by it and saying someone to the person and asking them not to stare. The issue occurs if the person does not stop staring, once asked to stop, as opposed to them staring, in the first place, being the issue.

Personally, I thought the image from Paizo was nice, as it looked like the old pinups that you’d see the late Bettie Page do. Sure, some folks found her offensive, just like some folks find Playboy to be offensive, as opposed to tasteful, and there are even folks who find the Suicide Girls offensive, even sexists, all of which I, personal, find odd.

Now, in an effort of full disclosure, I am a white male, in his mid-thirties, who by no stretch of the imagination could ever be called affluent, and I find woman attractive on many levels, of which sexually is one of, and I’ll never make an apology for it, as I think women are generally strong enough folk. But, I was raised by a very vocal, strong willed, independent, and all around cool single mother, so my perspective is prone to being bent, however I avoided being a serial killer, per profile, so I consider it a win. *chuckles*

I say:
In what way is it different other than gender? I, sir, take great offense to your statement. That is purely sexist.

The chestnuts are roasting was crude, but it certainly wasn’t Paizo’s intention to provoke that, just make a gentle nod to the community. And I’m sure if you’d ask them they’d agree.

And if you maintain otherwise it just amounts to schewing intent and purpose for your own agenda, which is ultimately wrong, no matter how good or right your cause, and sexual equality is both.

A better analogy with sexism would be violence against a particular group of people. So, those recent current-events-inspired tactical shooters that feature “brown” people as the primary bad guys do, I think, make people more likely to be hateful of and do hateful things to anyone who they perceive as “brown”.

It’s the same with sexism. Being in a culture that repeatedly condones sexism gives people more license to be sexist. As the late Anon pointed out, men have certain instincts when it comes to women that cheesecake feeds. If that’s not accompanied by a persistent cultural message of respect for the bodies thus portrayed, then there’s going to be fewer reasons present in mind for a man to treat real women respectfully. Cheesecake thoughts are habit-forming, and those are bad habits for everyone in this culture.

(Interestingly, that’s why there’s a difference between beefcake and cheesecake in terms of exploitation. Beefcake commands respect, cheesecake doesn’t.)

Since I’m trying very hard to keep to the spirit of my promise not to engage in this debate twice in six months, I’m going to agree to disagree with you on your post.

The only reason I’m posting again is because you were kind enough to reply, so I thought I’d take advantage of having the attention of a VIP in gaming to ask you a question with a follow-up:

What role do you think that our culture’s repetitive use of certain representations of women’s and men’s bodies have in promoting various eating disorders (anorexia, bulimia, muscle dysmorphia, and others)? If so, does that play a role in your company’s art orders; if not, should it?

2. Again