[Dweller1622]

Can you give me an example of this? As far as I understand it sex positivity doesn't seem to be concerned with "media sexualizing women" in and of itself. Consequently I'm not sure what "media [that] sexualizes women to a problematic degree" is or would even look like.

[nosignono]

It has to do with agency, primarily. Is the character in the media given the agency and depth necessary to support their sexual appetites? Or are they treated like an object by the camera, a 2 dimensional cutout whose purpose is only to be an object.

Compare, for example, Sex and the City, where 4 women were regularly engaged in a variety of sexual encounters and say, background dancers in a music video or advert that exist to appeal as objects to a male audience.

[Dweller1622]

I've definitely seen people say it's about agency, though exactly what they mean by that and why they think that matters tends to vary. That said, I suspect your response is in line with the person I was originally responding to.

In a different context I might be more sympathetic to this specific formulation of the concept since it's not always clear how much agency the background dancers in a music video or advert have. However, on the original topic of video games, the notion of "character agency" is rather pernicious.

[nosignono]

In a videogame, I can think of some examples.

In Kotor 2, there's a character called "The Handmaiden", who will join your party if the player character is a male. She talks at great length about her situation and the decisions the player should make. She's depicted as a chaste, virginal religious character. But one of the very first things you can do with her when she joins your party is spar with her. And she strips into black lingerie to do so. Then she stays in black lingerie on your ship while you go and do other stuff.

She's clearly there as an object for the audience to drool over. It's given a very surface level justification ("we always spar with only our bodies"), but that justification is provided the instant before the player sees her in her undies. (Which, it's important to note, aren't like modest undergarments one might expect from a religious figure like this, but are specifically sexy underwear.)

Compare this to another Star Wars game, Jedi: Fallen Order, where the Night Sister Mirrin can becomes romantically involved with the player character. She has a well developed culture, and is given space to articulate her personality, choices, and opinions in a cogent way. She can be a romantic interest without being an object. She is as complex as all the other characters, and we don't see her positioned in sexy lingerie suddenly out of the blue.

I can come up with other examples if those aren't illustrative.

[Dweller1622]

No, that's fine, since I think it's not only the case that these are sufficient, but that I simply wasn't explicit enough in my rejection.

What I'm disputing is any application of objectification theory to media analysis wherein there are no actual agents involved. Neither The Handmaiden nor Night Sister Mirrin ever possessed any agency, nor were they deprived of it. There is simply no moral valence in how one treats or regards them.

The demand here is that they be treated as if they possessed agency. I see no reason or obligation to do so.

[nosignono]

Sorry, I should have included -- in the context of the story. They are of course, not agents. They are fictional characters in a videogame.

But humans built them, and humans framed them in the camera. Those humans did have the choice to provide them with a setting in which the characters do or do not have that agency. Those humans chose whether or not to depict that agency.

Art reflects something about the creator, and often (but definitely not always) it's the values of the creator. If the authors choose to depict a world in which the character has no agency (within their setting), then perhaps the authors did not feel it was important or valuable to do so. Likewise, if the authors do depict a world in which the characters have agency, perhaps the authors feel it is valuable.

But even detached from authorial intent, art is subject to critique -- we can look at a piece of art, knowing nothing of the creator, and ask, "What themes do we draw here? What values does this work put forward?" Kotor 2 raises many interesting questions about pedigogy and teaching, for instance. One critical read is that it is a piece of art that believes you should absolutely question the motivations of the people who want to teach you. Another thing Kotor 2 seems to value is women can (or even should) be objectified (in the case of the handmaiden) or instrumentalized (in the case of Kreia).

None of the above requires you to recognize that the characters are agents within our world or have agency here.

[Dweller1622]

There's a number of things being said here, but much of it seems orthogonal to the original discussion and so I'm not going to address it.

Rather, if these characters aren't agents, I wonder where this leaves us re: sex positivity and "media [that] sexualizes women to a problematic degree." I don't think anything here tells me.