[Polyhedron] Are women interested in this type of fantasy?

[Artimoff]

I would love to know where you get the power to make these sort of statements?

We need powers now? No one told me.

 

[Particle_Man]

From Marsha Chance

I showed the initial posts of this thread to my wife, an extraordinarily competent woman. I then asked if her she would have been attracted to me if I were an ineffectual man who required her to basically mother me. Her response was a very sarcastic, "Yeah, right!" For my wife, that is rather strong language.

The few other women that I know well (which, admittedly, isn't too many, mostly relatives and the wives of my friends) would all tend to agree with my wife.

Of all the females of any age that I know, I can only think of one that finds the idea of the ineffectual, "fixer-upper" man attractive, and this particular young lady is 15. While I risk be accused of "ageism," I try not to put much stock in the relationship experiences and opinions of 15-year-old girls.

I showed this to my friend Marsha Chance, and this is how she responded:

"I showed the initial posts of this thread to my husband, an extraordinarily competent man. I then asked him if he would have been attracted to me if I were an ineffectual woman who required him to take total care of this high-maintainance me. His response was a very sarcastic, "Yeah, right!" For my husband, that is rather strong language.

The few other men that I know well (which, admittedly, isn't too many, mostly relatives and the husbands of my friends) would all tend to agree with my husband.

Of all the males of any age that I know, I can only think of one that finds the idea of the ineffectual, "high maintainance" woman attractive, and this particular young lad is 15. While I risk be accused of "ageism," I try not to put much stock in the relationship experiences and opinions of 15 year-old boys."

Hmmm...it seems that Marsha and Mark have something in common...both have spouses that don't want to take care of totally ineffectual people...but then, this doesn't seem to be related to gender, does it?

 

[Lizard]

As a quick addendum -- I did not receive any orders to make ILJ "politically correct", and, as anyone who has perused my web page will note, I'm pretty far away from anything remotely resembling PC (I'm sure people on other lists I'm on will find the accusation...amusing.) While I still have not yet SEEN the published game, it seems it was published more-or-less as I submitted it, so, feel free to blame me for any crimes against my gender. I was not acting under orders.

If I had any other motives, it would be only that I find strong, competant, women to be a lot more appealing than fawning, fainting, ones, so, I was going to stick one in there. I find it amusing that one or two sentences out of about 25K words could generate such controversy. (And, as others had noted, had I stuck with the traditional gender roles, someone would be jumping all over the game for 'promoting the objectification of wymmyn' or the like. As the 70s song says, "You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself." I wrote the game I wanted to write, with the tone I wanted, and Polyhedron deemed it suitable to publish. So it goes.)

 

[Darrin Drader]

If I had any other motives, it would be only that I find strong, competant, women to be a lot more appealing than fawning, fainting, ones ...

Hmm, me too. That's why I married one. We butt heads occasionally, but I find it much more refreshing than a partner who constantly caves to my every whim.

 

[jdavis]

That seemed to both my wife and I a fair characterization of the sort of treatment a generally ineffectual man would require. Therefore, it was the context in which her answer occurred. Since there are no such things as Martians, it seemed a sensible context at the time. I'm sorry I forgot to get our opinions pre-approved by the Proper Authorities.

[/b]

Did I say this? Please quote me.

[/b]

I'm saying this? Again, please quote me.

I normally wouldn't ask for such proof, but I don't recall ever venturing a single comment about "the vast majority of the women on the planet."

I remember mentioning my wife, as well as a handful of wives of friends of mine, and one teenage girl.

Of course, I could be blacking out and typing all sorts of unusual stuff. If this is the case, I'd really like to know. [/B]

Well the person you quoted was making a statement against the person she quoted generalizing the actions of women, then you stated that your wife and every woman you know (except a teenager who's opinion you don't respect) agreed with the other side of that, which was:
quote:
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Originally posted by Artimoff


Yes but the women who rescue their men in this way usualy think less of that man. I'm not saying women don't/can't rescue men in thisa way, it's just that women put the situation in the evergrowing column of reasons to question their relationship with him (he becomes less desireable).
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So are you saying that most women would think less of a man because they had to rescue them? That is what she was defending against in the statement you quoted. I drew my conclusion from what you quoted and the points she was trying to make which was that the above was a bogus statement on the gereralized reations of most women.

You see any answer depends on your preception of the original question not any actual given facts. What you call a fair characterization of the term "somewhat ineffectual" is that the person:

who required her to basically mother

My characterization of somewhat ineffectual (based on the stories this is mimicing) is a very hansome man on Mars who just happens not to be able to fight the aliens on his own. Look if you asked "would you fall in love with a 80 pound weakling who had no redeming value as a living creature?" then most people (male and female) are going to answer no, there is not a lot of love out there for the totally inept. Now if you asked the question " If you rescued the most wonderful and attractive man the world has ever seen, would the fact that he isn't a incredible fighting machine instantly make you decide to never think of him in any sort of romantic way for the rest of your life regardless of any future events?" well you will get different replies for sure. We are basing the whole picture of what is going on on the term "somewhat ineffectual". What do we have to go on, well we have to look back at the types of stories the game is based on, and in them the female characters were stunningly beautiful and very helpful to the hero, they just couldn't rescue themselves. That is a very workable definition for "somewhat ineffectual" why does "somewhat ineffectual" keep getting pushed down to the realm of braindead doofus?

You could really boil this whole thread down to a agruement on whether women are attracted to men who can't fight. "Are women attracted to guys who can't fight as well as they can?" Well I know in my case yes because I have never been in a fight in my life and my wife is mean as a snake (she took a baseball bat to her ex and chased him for almost a mile with it). I'm in no way a weakling, heck I worked construction for years I just don't like to fist fight. Why you could say that in a fistfight I am "somewhat ineffectual" and that is something that made absolutly no difference to her, I mean really when you get into your 30's who cares if you can streetfight or not? Heck she was actually happy that I'm not the kind of guy that goes around getting into barfights.

When you are talking about somebody you are going to fall in love with and spend the rest of your life with just how much weight do you give to the fact that they were captured and had to be rescued? By what a lot of people are saying that's a deal breaker, the one fact that they had to have a woman rescue them makes them not good enough for them regardless of every other possible fact or reason or personality trait there is, the ability to fight is the only thing that is important in this choice.

I think it is safe to say that there is no real answer here, some people say no and some people say yes but when you get right down to it who has actually had this situation come up and had to deal with this in real life? Who here has married somebody they had to rescue from aliens? Can anybody really say that they would never fall in love with somebody based only on their lack of martial ability? Can anyone honestly give a 100% true statement on how they would react in such a outlandish fantasy setting? Can anybody say that all or even most of the billions of females on the planet would react one way or another every single time? What if the person in question was on a planet where every male was enslaved? Would she deem all men to be below her and unworthy of her love? Would she live alone for the rest of her life because there were no men on the planet that could match her fighting ability? Lets face it you cannot answer a question on how all or most women would react to anything, heck I can't answer a question on how my wife will react to me not getting the dishes washed after dinner more-less how she would react if she was Jane Carter Warlordess of Mars.

 

[jdavis]

If I had any other motives, it would be only that I find strong, competant, women to be a lot more appealing than fawning, fainting, ones,

I dumped a girl in College once based solely on the fact that she was way too nice to me. She kept bringing me cookies and would answer every question with "whatever you want is fine by me". After about a month of that I was ready to pull my hair out, I even asked her to say no or to disagree with me once in a while. She was inteligent and witty and quite pretty but she just didn't have a backbone, I felt bad about dumping her but she was just getting on my nerves by being so nice to me all the time.

 

[S'mon]

I can't see many action-woman heroines being much interested in a 'brainless bimbo' or 'screaming wimp' kind of male rescuee, but you can have the cerebral-scientist type male character rescued by the combative heroine. I think the male rescuee needs some positive qualities other than looks, if lacking in physical/combat ability - intelligence, courage ("Do what you like - I'll never give you the formula!") and such, to be a worthy object of rescue. Of course there's no reason a female space-adventurer shouldn't rescue a male space-adventurer comrade-in-arms.

 

[Mark Chance]

So are you saying that most women would think less of a man because they had to rescue them?

I don't know. Am I? You have said I am. I have already said I'm not, but admitted I could be typing such things while blacked out. I asked for you to quote me making such a generalization, which you've failed to do. You did make an mild effort at some sort of convoluted "guilt by association" rap, but that's it.

Given your failure to substantiate, and my already stated answer to your question about whether or not I'm generalizing, I guess I'll stick with my take on my comments.

 

[Mark Chance]

Re: From Marsha Chance

I showed this to my friend Marsha Chance

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!

but then, this doesn't seem to be related to gender, does it?

It is, and it isn't, which is what is confusing to some people. Back to my wife: She didn't answer the way she did because she's a woman, but the fact she is a woman did figure into her answer.

Threads like this crack me up, especially the "you don't have the proper credentials so don't you dare express yourself in an unapproved manner" crowd. Too many people are so enamored of their own points of view and impressed with their own "credentials" that they forget that often the answer to a question isn't Either-Or but is Both-And.

BTW, Lizard, it sounds like you came up with an interesting game idea. I love the old pulp adventures, especially Burroughs's Tarzan and John Carter. Great stuff, and (in Burroughs's case) really not quite as racist or sexist as certain modern hyper-sensibilities would want them to be.

I'll have to pick up this Dungeon to give things a proper gander. Uh oh. Gander is a "male" term. Can I use that?

 

[Ravellion]

Sheesh, this thread has gotten way off track.

In Flash Gordon esque sci fi you have a hero who is strong, smart, cocky and handsome; a macho male. The woman he rescues is helpless. She was captured not because of lack of laser guns, not because of massive overwhelming odds, not because she got outsmarted by the evil genius.

She is tied up in the back of the lab with only her beauty as a quality. Often she doesn't even have a personality. Mysogynistic? Perhaps. But making a PC version isn't suddenly going to get women to think "Flash Gordon is such a cool concept!". Let's face it, that kind of pulp sci fi was written with a certain demographic in mind, and it wasn't the empowered woman.

The reversal of the role is nothing more than being PC, and is completely worthless for both the genre and from a marketing point of view.