Butt why?
Or, when political correctness attacks. Volume XXX.
So, a slight furore on ye olde Twitter on a pretty innocuous situation in Overwatch occurred tonight.
That?
Apparently that's "overtly sexual". According to one "mom" on the Overwatch forums, her "young" daughter is now seemingly scarred for life because Tracer looks over her shoulder in one victory pose.
The exact same pose Hanzo, a guy, has in his repertoire:
What? No complaint about this one? What with that rippling musculature? Those come to bed eyes? That slight hint of "I won't hurt you...much, tiger" in his demeanour?
*ahem*
Seemingly not. Apparently her "young" daughter isn't scarred by this. Odd.
Or Widowmaker, another female character in Overwatch who's pretty overtly sexually attractive.
Even though she's blue.
Never stopped the Draenei from being hit by Rule 34 I suppose.
In all seriousness though, this one complaint, if you could even call it that, has led to Blizzard removing the pose from Tracer's character. Now they're trying to state they're not removing it because it's offensive, but because it "doesn't fit with her character".
Yeah, ok. Here's a shovel, it'll help you dig quicker.
Honestly, no matter what content creators put out there, there will always be SOMEONE who takes the opportunity to find offence, no matter how hard they have to dig, or twist the situation or facts.
Usually they'll find offence where there's none to very little to be had, at least by any reasonably sane person.
I've posted this link on Twitter a couple of times. It's an article by a woman named Godless Mom, and she writes an Atheism-related blog, but the two streams happen to cross this time.
It succinctly, and superbly, explains the reasons why the generation of people raised around the late 90's, early 2000's, the so-called "Millennials", are the generation "butt-hurt". Why they WANT to find offence in anything. To scream and shout and make themselves feel important by tearing and railing against anything that others take any form of enjoyment in.
In fact, it additionally relates to the article I wrote on these adult-babies currently derailing and muddying the educational system the western world over.
Generation butt-hurt need to learn some things about the world, and pretty damned fast.
People like sex. People like sexy imagery. It doesn't make them bad people. Hell it's what advertising has 90% bet and based it's entire industry on over the past half-century since the 60's onwards. Everything from cars, to perfume, to games and movies? Sold via sexy imagery, and it works, because guess what? People like sex, and to feel sexually attractive and attracted to someone.
Hell it's the main reason I mainly play female characters in games where I have a choice. If I'm going to be looking at a character's arse for hours on end, I'm at least going to make a character worth looking at!
Does that make me a sexist pig? A violent, misogynistic virtual rapist, if the likes of Anita Sarkeesian are to be believed?
Fuck no! It makes me a normal heterosexual male. That's ALL.
And if people (women included, shocker I know!) didn't like sexy imagery? We wouldn't be here having this discussion. NONE of us, so suck it up cupcake and get on with your life.
The world is a hard place to live in. Life is hard, and we don't always get anything we want, never mind everything. Things will happen, and you won't like them, but that's just tough shit. None of us get what we want, not at least without a hell of a lot of hard work and effort, and no amount of screaming the house down and throwing of Twitter-Tantrums will get you your way.
Well, that's how it should be at least. Life's not fair. It's not, and the main problem is you were spoilt and sheltered from the real world as a child and can't wrap your head around the fact that the world does NOT in fact, revolve around you. Get over it already.
Blizz flipped on this uncomfortably early, and now they're facing a backlash. These days companies are all too often, too fast to react like a pendulum, mainly out of fear. Sir Tim Hunt's career is a notable example.
Me? Don't particularly care that it's been removed, but the reason for it grates. Plus that and I found my twitter feed delightfully full of butt-support tonight, which was hilarious.
One person takes offence, and makes a frankly pathetic, mewling complaint to Blizzard who very rapidly make a change to a game enjoyed by the thousands currently playing in the Beta. None of whom had a problem, until now.
But in folding, they've triggered a far worse response than I think they would've seen coming. Will they u-turn on this? Who knows? Personally I don't care, but I think Blizzard can stand to learn a lesson from this to not be so hyper-sensitive to complaints of a character being sexualised, or sexually attractive, or having qualities that fall within that particularly sexy wheelhouse.
I, for one, am all for content creators creating their content, and letting the public choose to consume it or not. Censorship? If this even amounts to that? Not particularly a fan, and I think that we're all adults here, and should behave as such.
And anyhow, Overwatch is rated T, y'know, for Teen?
Why is a young girl playing the game anyway?
Regardless, I've solved the problem in my own ingenious way:
