allblue said:
I'm sorry, the general idea is that, if anyone remotely capable of using their brain can't differentiate between what is cosplay/ media portrayal of women with how common sense would tell you to treat fellow female workers at a work place, then the females should take it to that said person, not protest against or infringe other people's right to freely express themself. Any preferential treatment/concern towards anyone based on gender is sexism, positive or not. Did someone harass you at work? Take it to the court, find your solution with that person, don't protest the media.
Your posts have elements of truth in them, however, feminist movement isn't restricted to just gaming industry, and in general the movement itself trumps on other individuals' freedom of expression and that's when it crosses the line. Unfortunately, that holds true for the Majority of the feminist movement.
Edit: The ridiculous idea is that if a guy pays a girl to dress up pretty, it is associated with sexism. What about the right of those women, who likes to scantily clad themselves at videogame/cosplay events? What about their rights to freely express themselves?
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Did you read what I linked? The author in the first link - a young woman working at Crystal Dynamics - actually stepped in to help a group of Lara cosplayers in an embarrassing situation at PAX, she has nothing but good words for them and she got thanked profusely.
Let's stick to the point: there is no freedom of expression at risk with the IGDA event. This is not a case of ugly, jealous, hairy-legged, bespectacled feminists being hostile towards more attractive women who, casually attending a party, sported some risque attires and had all the eyes for themselves. That's the trope you seem to like to indulge in, and even post images about.
The models there were because they were paid to be there and they were dressed like that because they were paid to and they were available to go dance on stage because they were paid to. As such the message did not came from an individual girl attending the party among coworkers in the game developing field.
No one went: "I like to have fun at parties, so I came in a furry bikini", to which a friendly response could have been "Ok... but isn't it inappropriate in this context? I mean, tt's still meant for socializing between colleagues and do some relaxed shop talk...". That would have been a small problem of personal, free expression.
No, here the shots where called by (and the money handed from) the sponsor. And the message was: "for this company, the way to have a better work party of game developers is to have attractive girls in skimpy outfits that dance on stage at a command". That's not really expressing much, but certainly carries implicit disdain for the women among those developers. Women who, as by those links, already have to put up with enough attitude in the workplace and are scared to talk about it because the whole environment is hostile.
Freedom of speech and expression - in this case of the most crass, commercial type - does not make you any less responsible for what you choose to communicate.