Tasha

What did they do to you: Our women heroes problem
 

Ayup.  I've seen this attitude before.  To put it another way, they're like the mayor in "Jaws":  "If we warn people about the shark attacks, people will think we have a shark problem!"

Kyra.
 
Paizo upper management was stated they wanted a diversity of characters - species, color, gender, orientation.
Golorian has the equivalent of easy to get contraceptives (magic or herbal) so that sexuality itself is not viewed as wrong - this is also there to help the idea of female adventurers and such, to counter the historical issues of women in those kind of positions.
 
It is something that the company is very aware of, and works on. Their iconic Inquisitor is a half orc.

Erasing your audience isn't 'fun': The false choice between diversity and enjoyment
 

This explains so, so very much about MoS.
 

   
No, dude, that doesn't sound arrogant.  He set the bar so low that almost anyone could do better.  You could do much, much better.

I'd be hard pressed to say most female superheroines weren't originally created as sex objects on some level. 
Barda was a twist on the Damsel in Distress, saving her husband but her look was based on a playboy playmate. 
Wonder Woman was the tie me up fantasy
Ms Marvel was the feminist heroine with the belly costume and short pants. 
Phantom Lady anyone?
Power Girl's expanding bosom?
 
This doesn't mean they weren't well thought out characters worthy of carrying books or story lines, or they didn't evolve in the hands of a good writer. But yeah, titilation has always been a superhero standby. To what level some fans approve of this, or some writers/artists take this varies. 
 
Reading what these industry insiders say is pretty depressing, and I hope that they suffer some sort of backlash for it. 

And in today's ignorance...
 
Man of Steel Sequel Writer David Goyer Calls Marvel’s She-Hulk “A Giant Green Porn Star,” Insults Geeks

How the heck does anyone living in the 21st century fail to realize that stuff like this is no longer acceptable? I can understand someone still having private prejudices, and even still thinking that they "should" be allowed to express them, but how is anyone so unaware as to think it's okay to act like that in public?

I think part of the problem is that it does seem so natural for a villain to demean a woman because she is a woman.  There's a sense that this is basically normal behavior.
 

 
See, it's only bad guys threatening to rape catwoman and calling her sexist slurs.  If Batman ever does get threatened with rape, it is nowhere near as common. It is only normal to make the threat to the woman.
 

I know two things about Blizzard: 1) It employs people of all genders and orientations, and seems not to be discriminatory in its hiring practices, and 2) A lot of their key people are pretty juvenile.
 
With that in mind, I'm going to post some thoughts on the points made in the above link:
 
The sexual harassment of Draka: We don't know what Draka's response is. So . . . what do we have? A villain saying something that's out of line to a major female lore character? How shocking that a villain would belittle a woman! It's really Draka's response that should form the context of this situation. It's stupid to say villains shouldn't ever say anything sexist. Next thing you know, people will complain if a villain kicks a puppy!
 
Rape jokes are even endorsed in hearthstone’s card set: There's no rape joke there, sorry. Typical bent over female elf, sure. I'll give you that one. Then again, female Night Elves are the warrior caste in WoW. Seems like NEs have a lot of female badassery going on. Not to mention the whole Sylvanus and her Dark Rangers, who are so badass that people have been asking for playable Dark Rangers since the game came out. It makes the whole bouncy-boobed idle animations, skimpy armor on females (belly button plate!) seem even worse, though. It's like, "Hey, we have badass female warriors!  . . . . In bikini plate!" Kind of a wash on how they depict females in game. But the negative there is really the art. There may be some bone-headedness in the placement of the text and the image, but I think claiming it adds up to a rape joke is a stretch.
 
What if gender roles were reversed for in-game dialogue? I actually thought the dialog sounded fine with Thrall being cast as the female. Well, not fine. It was some crappy dialog to begin with. The whole damsel in distress, implied rape thing is very tired, and yeah, more than a little sexist. I found two things disturbing about the "fixed" dialog. First off, it's "wreaked" not "wrecked." Seriously, if you're going to frame a large part of your arguments in semantics, learn the idioms of the language you're writing in. Second, she strikes out "my love." What in the holy hell is sexist about that phrase? Is it the "my"? My wife calls me "my love," and I call her "my love' all the freaking time. It's a term of endearment, not a term of belittlement. Striking the phrase strikes me as overdoing things just a bit. No. It strikes me as way too over sensitive and ignorant, but I was trying to be polite.
 
Here's the bottom line: World of Warcraft has always had cool, strong, female characters. They've frequently been given awesome storylines and dialog. They've also tainted them in some stupid, sexist ways starting with the art. Because nothing says powerful and respected female leader like belly button armor.
 
Will Warlords of Draenor actually be any worse than the norm for Blizzard? I doubt it. They don't have a sterling track record anyway. If the author of that article thinks Jaina's storyline in MoP was in anyway an elevation of the character, then she has some seriously rose-tinted glasses on, and that's only looking at the current expansion.
 
WoD will definitely have sexist elements to it, just like every past iteration of the game. But declaring it some kind of huge step back on the three above points is may be premature. The damsel in distress point -- particularly the talking around the implied rape -- is probably the most damning. But if that's the worst of it, then WoD will likely be about an average effort for Blizz in regards to sexism. Probably on par with Classic or BC.

JIC you all haven't seen this yet
 
 
“Why Won’t You Educate Me About Feminism?”
http://bellejar.ca/2014/02/22/why-wont-you-educate-me-about-feminism/

JIC you all haven't seen this yet
 
 
“Why Won’t You Educate Me About Feminism?”
http://bellejar.ca/2014/02/22/why-wont-you-educate-me-about-feminism/

Her costuming is pretty stunning. There are some who clearly buy costumes (you see identical sets constantly) and then there are those who make them, the latter is a larger, more impressive group. Some of them are clearly professional class tailors/designers. 
 
There was a great thread in a cosplay forum (I think ) that I got pointed to somehow about a young woman making HALO Spartan armor...it took her almost a year and the process was daunting and remarkable. 
 
Some of the best cosplay I've seen are those who take an idea and make it their own; The Samurai Storm Trooper, Slave-Leia Harley Quinn, Hello Kitty Vader, these are neat as all get out. 
 
I love the steam punk players and people willing to make their own/original stuff as much as those who perfect an existing character/design.

First person shooters are the domain of the buttheads, anyway. 

I'm with Sociotard on this. 

While I have never played anymore than a few versus matches of Halo (FPS aren't my thing), I have watched the full story arch for the newest in the franchise. And just like Sociotard mentioned, Master Chief doesn't comment on much of anything. And while he doesn't comment much, you can certainly gleam from his actions / reactions and the few comments he does make, that he feels fear, worries about abandonment, and strives to better the situation the best way he knows how given his resources. 

And while lacing messages into games is nice, at the end of the day games are a means to escape the tedium or harshness of reality. Why play a character who needs to go to counseling when you can play a character that takes control of their environment? 

Lastly, while I agree that having more positive and expressive male characters is better, I don't think it is fair to claim that there is really that big of a lack. I have played a number of games where leading male characters showed at least some emotional side and how that helped drive the plot. It strikes me that, at least for boys and men, there are bigger fish to fry in the gaming sphere than simple emotional openness of male characters. 
 
La Rose. 

Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet
 

‘Men’s rights activists’ conspire to cripple college rape reporting system with false reports
 

Well, I think if you go to the comments on her Kickstarter Page you can see the threats - could be wrong could have been on her blog. I know someone made a flash game of punching her face, adding bruises, blood, and such to her. So no, I don't think taking a while to put her videos out and having view points I disagree with (and I do on some of them), as well as her saying she doesn't like video games an offense equal to what she received as threats, insults, and all around exhibiting the exact behavior they were accused of. 
 
I know that both sides on this issue tend to dove tail into territory I tend to eye-roll on, but the evidence I saw was by and large making her argument for her. 

Really? The Men's rights advocates I read are VERY dismissive of rape victims. They seem to assume they're all liars. But again this is on internet comments boards where they can speak anonymously, and say things without it being attributed to them. They might be trolls. 

I think you overlooked, "Take precautions, fine." The point is that we don't do much about teaching boys about respecting someone else's choices; we all too often place the responsibility of preventing rape on girls' shoulders instead. We should help women to defend themselves against others, but the bulk of the work should be in primary prevention (i.e., working on interventions for men who might take advantage of women). I'm not talking about grabbing women in parking garages and raping them; I'm talking about coercion, manipulation, taking advantage of inebriation, etc. The messages that we get from our culture tell us that women are here to please (heterosexual) men, and we have to work on undoing this in some way if we are going to create a better world where everyone understands what consent is. For those that don't or refuse, yes, take precautions against them.

In light of some of what has been reported at the conventions and geek communities Dragonmeet is implementing an Anti-Harassment Policy. Now it ain't a big convention but it may help. I will be there.
http://www.dragonmeet.co.uk/

http://ageofravens.blogspot.com/2013/11/cat-rambo-taught-me-d.html

"She played in the early days of rpgs and gaming around here, often the lone female gamer in these groups. I saw the shit she went through. She would tell stories about the funny stuff, but I knew there was a lot more she didn’t talk about. I saw some of it. The misogyny, the jokes about characters getting raped, the fans of John Norman’s Gor, the condescension, and even divisiveness among the few female gamers. If I can claim any right to be called a Feminist, claim any enlightenment about women’s issues and especially their struggles in hobby circles- that comes from my sister. She enjoyed fantasy & sci-fi, loved games, and she kept going regardless of the asshatery around her. "

Thanks for the kind words, Tasha.  This has been something that's been eating at me for a while now.