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Compare to, for example, feminism in Western media.
Yasuke was probably not a samurai, that's a historical question. Many times the women described in these stories - where they function like men in the plot and mechanics - are anatomically impossible.
Yet, almost every single bit of Western media I watch allows this fantasy. I watch something about war or violence and ScarJo or whoever is doing acrobat-jiu-jitsu and throwing around 200lb men. I play a game and the female characters play just like the men even in places where it just doesn't make sense. I watch The Rookie and the 5'4 Latina captain and the 6'0 Nathan Fillion have the same record in fights.
I could complain about this being inaccurate , but I'd be the one swimming against the tide. And looking a bit weird the more insistent I got about it. Even other woke-critical people would be unsympathetic or walk away.
That's the 'women are wonderful' effect. Everybody loves women. Everybody of any race has some women they care about.
On the other hand, aside from some with exotic racial preferences, people usually want to see people that look like them in the media they consoom. Moreover, adding characters that look blatantly out of place from a historical, common sense point-of-view, takes away from the immersion.
For a lot of (male) gamers, adding attractive women in skimpy clothing is just a bonus. It does take away from the realism, still. The problem these days is that Western content creators have a tendency to pair a 'realistic, gritty' aesthetic with feminist fantasies. So the male fantasy of a scantily-clad (it's magic armor ok) Amazonian goddess turns into a rough-looking, middle-aged, square-shouldered she-man.
This isn't actually true. White people used to care about seeing people of their own race in their media, but during the Civil Rights era have pretty much stopped doing that. Black people, on the other hand, really want to see themselves, and haven't stopped. (source: Lenk, Hartmann & Sattler; "White Americans’ preference for Black people in advertising has increased in the past 66 years: A meta-analysis" PNAS, Vol. 121, No. 9)
Well, I was referring to all people in general. Even for white Westerners, I wager that the effect you describe is driven by a significantly different demographic than the average gamer. I'd be surprised if this was not also a factor in the rising popularity of Japanese/Korean animated media over Hollywood's muddied productions.
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I highly doubt that this particular trope would play as well in traditionalists societies. I don't think you can pin this on the WAW phenomenon because it manifests in the exact opposite way in certain cultures: it'd be considered immoral to send women into combat if it wasn't laughable as a concept.
Seems to me that it's just a very Western trope. Cultures have their fictions, this is the West's. As it is with the race swap stuff, so it is with the gender stuff.
Well, yes. They listened to the people who (rightly) said that those characters were meant to titillate men. I don't even think it was a confluence of two factors, it was straight up hostility to "objectification".
I guess nobody bothered to argue that attracting men in media men were likely to pay for was hardly a great sin, cause here we are.
Its immoral to send them into combat, but awesome to see them beat up meanies. Women being fighters is to enjoy visceral revenge fantasies in a kinetic manner often unavailable to them. I strongly suspect that hollywood/journalist/academic weaklings also fail to understand how much physical difference there is between men and women, hence the claims that transwomen are actually only as strong as baseline women who work out a bit. If your reference point is a commie poet who thinks the gym is a haven for reactionary chuds you have literally no idea how much of a difference there is between men and women
True. But, as someone said above, it's interesting that a lot of this stuff is aimed at men (or in male genres). I may not have been the target audience for Atomic Blonde but it was me and people like me in the theater.
I think that bit would vary by culture.
Oh, 100%.
The funny thing is, people think they've corrected against the pervasive social messaging. Except that same messaging - and their bubble - has ensured that they underestimate the gap. I hear a lot of caveated statements about "well, a really well-trained woman" or "maybe using speed". Um...this isn't a video game. There's no balancing...
That'd be my practical argument against this particular myth: apparently we can't just do kayfabe and leave it at that. But that doesn't mean it's more plausible than other, more recent "woke" myths.
Fucking idiots think womens small frame is -1 STR -1 CON +2 DEX. Speed and nimbleness is not natural to humans and women dont get some balance to the physical meta. Except for making more humans, but thats a 14 year process before they're useful.
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I think there's a significant possibility of disagreement on that point. Wasn't Athena the goddess of war?
I'm sure there are many other examples, from the common witch to the royalty/divinity, where female characters gained the might to defeat men through supernatural means.
Another aspect of it is that having out-of-context female characters opens up different modes of storytelling such as romance, motherhood, which randomly making one of the character browner does not really do.
Athena was the goddess of war and wisdom, i.e. strategy. While she was portrayed with a helmet and a spear, she- and her following cities like Athens- weren't really known for mobilizing the women into formations. She is much more of an advisor / general archetype than a warrior.
Yeah, if you want a god to help you with actual fighting, you want Ares. Athena, as you said, was more about behind-the-lines strategy.
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