"This character is not ugly like me, please delete it"

My wife plays heavily modded skyrim and always wears the skimpiest clothes and has the most sexualized character ever. Shes otherwise very puritanical and never wears revealing clothing. I think maybe women and men both like fantasy female characters because they are cool and thats it, simple as

Swords and Slippers is going to cause so many mad ravings.

I think at this point we can stop pretending these people were ever arguing in good faith. It's literally just every character that looks attractive or even just normal that's a problem for these people. And we also don't have to pretend if the characters were changed to fit their warped sense of beauty, they would buy the game. They have proven time and time again that they aren't buying anything regardless of what it looks like. They just want to make sure nobody else gets to have something they find "offensive". That's all there is to it. For them, it's the virtue signaling that's the hobby, not gaming.

"majority female, who dont even play games"  So you mean Most of the western development studios then?

So men and women sometimes hold each other and themselves to higher appearance standards than is necessary.

And this is likely due to outdated societal norms, so let's all try to be kind to, and appreciate each other and ourselves.

The Male Gaze was never real to begin with. It was a term created by Laura Mulvey, a self-admitted radical feminist, in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In it she used psychoanalysis for “political means” to explain why men looking at women is bad. You may remember psychoanalysis from Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis is widely laughed at because it is almost entirely theory and has little, if any, basis in science. However, it’s the kind of “science” you can lean on when you want to present your opinion as fact.
While the essay itself is about camera angles in movies, Mulvey mainly argues that when a man looks at a woman it is misogynistic because of his genitals. She also argues for the female gaze being good, which is just women liking a female character more than men.

I always found it funny because it’s one of the most ideologically transparent essays ever written and should be treated as a joke on the same level as the Bechdel Test. Its an industry plant. Yet years later feminists and progressives picked it up and made it central to their belief system. Links between attractive women and misogynistic attitudes have never been consistently found in any study that wasn’t heavily designed to produce that result. But today’s progressives and feminists act as if they already won the debate: they simply assert “Male Gaze” and wait for applause.

Funny enough, while the “female gaze” is heavily debated (since it is literally based on vibes), if you’re terminally online enough you can watch the double standard in real time. When a character is “claimed” by the right people, accusations of male gaze and misogyny suddenly disappear.
This was best shown with Bayonetta 1, 2, and 3. The character was trashed for years because of her design, the supposedly unnecessary use of hair for clothing, and her suggestive poses. The fact that a woman designed her didn’t matter. In fact, the original Bayonetta had to be toned down, even though her creator described the character as a form of liberation. However this didn't fit the narrative at the time, so it was ignored.
However, when Bayonetta 3 came out and the discourse in certain communities shifted, Bayonetta was suddenly reframed as an icon. The suggestive poses, clothes made of hair, flirty behaviour, and the fact she was designed by a woman now meant she had obviously been queer-coded the entire time and belonged to the LGBT community.

Thanks for actually including soruces!

What's worth studying is how Western culture can revert to Victorian debauchery yet propel towards outlandish sexuality in complete parallel.
It's not moving the goalpost anymore; they've knocked the damn thing down, saying they'll get back to us on what a goalpost even is.

Developers out here heard "male gaze" and went "male gays... great idea".

Very educational. I knew they had done studies on the "Male Gaze" in the past, but having these studies compiled and discussed in one place is very helpful.

I am also not shocked in the slightest at the results of those studies.

A lot of these veteran toddlers need to be removed from the internet. For their own good, really.

Those that can't have The Male Gaze upon them are the one that always complaint also vise versa.

For radical feminists is way easier to project the problem to men than to introspect, that would be one of the main reasons of why they act like they do, at least in my opinon

I'm gonna say something that I think barely anyone will agree with me on: there are barely any characters in media, that are being sexualized. In particular, none of the characters that those twitter warriors are so angry about are sexualized. There's a huge difference between a sexualized character, and a sexy character, and for the most part we're dealing with sexy characters sexualized by some. Those twitter keyboard warriors just throw a blanket title on any attractive female characters because they are socio-politically captured or deeply insecure. The only way for a character to be sexualized from ground zero, is for this character's theme to be nothing more than their sexiness. Other than that the "sexualization" aspect comes to play when we take into consideration the reception of the character, by the fanbase. If the character is sexy, and only a fraction of the people are focusing solely on the "sexy" aspect of the character, while the vast majority talk about how great their morals are, how strong the character is, how inspiring they are, then the sexualization is non-existent beyond said small minority (which sits on 4chan or r34 for the most part).
If I were to give an example of a character that I feel is over-sexualized, I would point out Quiet in MGS. And mind you, I have no clue about the story of MGS, so I can't speak to her impact to the story, I know exactly 4 things about her: she's mute, she's an attractive woman with a whole lot of skin showing, she's a sniper, and there's a lot of explicit content with her in the spotlight. Based on those 4 things I know about her, as well as the fact that Kojima was the writer, I find it reasonable to call her nothing more than eye candy, so I'd need some MGS enthusiasts to enlighten me on her impact on the story.
Now here's a list of female characters from the past 10 years, that I would never imagine calling sexualized was justified: Claire Redfield, Ada Wong, Ashley Graham, Eve (Stellar Blade), Yennefer, Triss Merigold, Ciri, any Overwatch character, Tifa Lockhart, Lara Croft, Lady (DMC 5), Panam Palmer, Judy Alvarez, Jill Valentine, Shadowheart, Lune, Sciel and many others that I can't name from the top of my head.
All of those characters are attractive, all of those characters are sexy, most of those characters have been called over-sexualized or "goonerbait" by the insufferable pricks on twitter. And they all also have one more thing that brings them together: their sex appeal is not the center point of their character, each of them represents something, strength, morality or moral ambiguity, nurturing, and a huge plethora of other things that make each of those characters unique. Those are the qualities that an average gamer focuses on, but that's a harder point to go against then "they are just sex dolls for losers online", so none of those crying bitches on social media will ever address that, because the point of a strawman argument is for you to have an easier time arguing, at the same time making it an uphill battle for your opponent by having to clarify what their stance actually is, while you can just shout "lalala I can't hear you, you're just a gooner".
Which brings us back to my original statement, barely any characters are explicitly sexualized, because to sexualize something you have to enact your own personal notions about said thing, and that doesn't happen as long as the audience isn't explicitly told what to make of a character - which is the case for vast majority of media, and funnily enough it's the modern "politically correct" creators that seem to be pushing their view as one and only correct moral compass. The characters aren't sexy or attractive because they are nothing more than eye candy, they're attractive because just like in real life, attractiveness tend to bring people towards something, rather than push them away, so it's in the creators best interest to create an interesting and attractive character to gather attention that can afterwards be hooked with a compelling story. But like I've said before, that's something those crying losers will never face head on because they know they're fighting a lost battle where they have no leg to stand on. THAT's why they strawman, THAT's why they resort to calling names and ad hominem, THAT's why they use underhand tactics like pushing for payment methods to be removed from the products. BECAUSE THEY CAN'T WIN ON MERIT

It's all projection,  all the time.

I haven't listened to what you said yet. I just wanted to say this before my perspective is altered: The male gaze idea is silly because a lot of what detractors say about these sorts of designs are also influenced by female beauty standards and vise versa. It ping pongs, women notice something men like, they adapt, men notice something women like, they adapt.

Ohhhhhh, we are going to get another banger, boys. Thanks for the video mate.

Really appreciate the look at actual studies on the "male gaze". It's legitimately the first time I've ever seen someone cover this debate from the angle of research rather than "vibes".

That said I have to push back on there being bigger fish to fry. Because this argument isn't about weirdos on X or attacking woman in gaming. It's about the extensive infiltration of the western gaming industry by cultural marxists. Of which Modern feminist ideologues are a part of.

The male gaze and the female gaze is normal biology being normal 🧬 We've come along way somewhere else if this isn't obvious 🫤
Attempting to normalize abnormality is what's really going on in this BIGLY manufactured debate 🧔🏻‍♀😬