RolStoppable said:
Men and women aren't only different in the anatomy of their bodies, but also in psychological terms. This has been quite easy to observe for me with nephews and nieces at an age range of 2 to 8 years old, and their respective friends. All children were raised by parents that can be called liberal in their methods, so the kids got to decide what they want to play. The example of video games, in particular something like Mario Kart which can be considered an everyone's game, highlighted marked differences between male and female children. Boys aren't only fascinated by video games, they are even prone to be obsessive over them. On the other hand, girls can't be bothered to pay attention, so they won't watch, let alone ask if they are allowed to play. This isn't a universal truth because I've encountered one girl that had her eyes glued to the TV while I was playing a video game, which is typical boy behavior; subsequently, she got harassed a little bit by my niece because the game was more interesting than continuing to play with her friends.
I doubt that I've encountered anything out of the ordinary within this sample size. After all, there has to be a reason why the video game industry started to skew towards male customers in the first place. Part of it is definitely that most of the early game developers were men and made games they themselves wanted to play, but the more girl-specific software that also existed was never quite as popular as boys' games. So at the very beginning of this feedback loop was a generally lower interest in video games by the female audience.
Another thing is that creating equal opportunity in occupations will never lead to a roughly even spread between men and women in all fields of work. An obvious example are construction sites where buildings get erected during wind and weather; women do not want these jobs. And I don't look at this with the mindset of "women are so spoiled, think of these jobs as being beneath them", but rather as they don't want to do that and they are free to choose the kind of work they want to do, because men have the same freedom to pick an occupation that suits them. That's part of the reason why I keep repeating that men and women are different, because there are really people out there (not saying you are one of them) who believe that true equality between men and women will only be reached if everything is 50/50.
So back to the original point, that most women like their romances with males being the leading role in a couple, that's just how it is and that should be respected. Note that I say "most women", because not all women are the same, just like not all men have universally the same standards. But there are clear patterns that can be observed among the majorities of men and women, and that's not something that has been constructed by culture because even a 100% liberal upbringing where children have access to all kinds of toys won't result in boys and girls picking the same toys to play with. This different wiring in the brains probably comes down to the most fundamental aspect of humans, procreation. Females can become pregnant (an extended duration of vulnerability during and after pregnancy), so the qualities they look for in a partner are different than the qualities males look for. That's why DNA will always play a bigger role than culture.
What culture does is present an idealized version of how a man and woman should be, so an inherent danger is that both men and women can suffer from depressions, eating disorders etc. because they believe they absolutely have to live up to this ideal. Culture does shape people's thoughts to varying degrees, but I am absolutely sure that men and women would be different in the complete absence of cultural influences as well.
I hope all this still reads reasonably coherent because it's a very short version for a complex subject.
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It's more coherent than most of my posts, I think. 
Seriously, there's a reason you usually see a note that I edited at the end of my posts. That's 'cause I often go with a pretty stream-of-consciousness type of approach when I first author a post so I don't forget anything I wanted to say. That means I usually have to edit to restructure so that there's at least a bit more of a logical order to my thoughts and of course correct obvious grammatical errors usually involving accidentally skipping a word because my mind gets ahead of my typing. ANYWAY...
There's a lot here to respond to, but the bottom line is that the above thought pattern is...for lack of a better way of putting it, just a very male way of seeing things. I think you might find the results of a Pew Research study that was conducted a few years ago interesting in that connection. When asked about the differences between men and women, men generally felt that more differences between the sexes existed and that they were rooted in biology, while women by contrast broadly attributed different behaviors between the sexes to societal expectations instead. There was but one exception to this rule: "their physical abilities". That was the only area where men and women were in general agreement for obvious reasons (or at least that are obvious to all but the most diehard transgenderists anyway), although even there too you'll notice that men display a lower opinion of women's capabilities than women themselves do.
Well just pointing it out.
Concerning video games, I think maybe some data will help. According to a large-scale 2017 study by Quantic Foundry on the subject (which I consider the most authoritative to date), women compose about 20% of all gamers (defined properly)...but you'll notice also compose a substantially larger share of the player base for many game genres. Broken down by genre preferences, here's what it looked like as of 2017:
There are a couple things I'd like to point out about this data:
1) You'll notice that genres with female player bases exceeding the average for their sex include not only the stereotypical casual genres, but also survival roguelikes, city-building games, and a range of RPG genres, among others. This defies lots of stereotyping that has it women would only be interested in simple games requiring only a casual level of dedication and instinctively avoid violent content. AND...
2) Also notice that, within any given genre, titles offering better character roles to women generally get a larger female player base relative to the average for that genre. For example, as of 2017, women composed only 14% of the open world genre player base, but 27% of Assassin's Creed Syndicate players were female. Similarly, women composed just 16% of sci-fi MMO players, but 29% of those playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Likewise, women composed 26% of the players of Western RPGs, but fully 48% of Dragon Age: Inquisition players. It all serves to validate the points feminists make about the difference that representation makes.
Anyway, those are just some basic points. I could elaborate more on like some of what my own experiences were around gaming growing up and broader thoughts on the sales data if you want. I'll leave it at this for now though 'cause I'm tired. Just food for thought!
Last edited by Jaicee - on 03 March 2021
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