mccoyed

Some of you guys love slamming words into other peoples' mouths, eh? I never said anything remotely close to "hey we should ban ALL female minifigs". Moreover, I'll thank you not to imply that I have some kind of psychological "problem" because I look at some female minifigs and note an emphasis and exaggeration of features that are highly commodified and sexualized in our culture. Note the differences between these two torsos: Female barmaid. Note the low-cut top and cleavage lines. You can't see it very well in this pic, but there are big ol' round titties in there too. Nice work, TLG! Female pretzel girl. Note an exceptionally similar torso piece. Oh look, feminine costuming and features without them big ol' titties. Nice work, TLG! Now if you can't see a difference here, maybe you're the one with a problem. All I'm trying to do is talk about this and show why these complaints exist. You're super defensive over Lego and you seem very threatened by the idea that maybe TLG should do better at representing females. The fact that they agree with this and are already making moves in that direction doesn't really seem to register with you. Hive, you're being very dishonest and rude in your treatment of me and my words. I never said I despise feminine minifigs. I've said repeatedly that I think TLG is already on the right track but could further improve things. I never said anything about hairpieces and, honestly, I could care less what your girlfriend thinks about this issue. Anecdotes don't really do much but show you can tell a story that demonstrates bias. You're misrepresenting me and taking my criticism much further than I am. I don't want to ban female minifigs, I don't want to have only gender-neutral minifigs, and I don't have anything against female hairpieces, feminine clothing prints, or anything your girlfriend seems to like. If you define femininity by tits, hips, lipstick, and cleavage then congratulations on your male gaze. Nice work, Hive!

I think a mythology Castle theme would be the best, most original move they could make. I'd love to see either an in-house original storyline or simply sets based around various Greco-Roman myths. I could also see a fairytale theme given the current popularity/overexposure of fairytale-derived stuff in media (movies especially). That said, they already have the Disney Princess stuff so that might fill that out already.

There's a lot of supporting arguments for how I see things. I offered those already, earlier in this thread and in the other. Are you too busy to backread? If so, I'll again summarize in brief: It's sexualized because hips and breasts don't signify just feminity. There are other signifiers, like the lipstick and eyes, that work better to signify feminity without signifying sex. Like it or not, breasts and hourglass figures are major signifiers of sex. We can't hold our hands over our eyes and ears and deny this, much as we might like to for rhetorical purposes. Everything from food commercials to music videos and magazine covers sells this female image to us and while it'd be nice of breasts could be uncoupled from sexual imagery, that is not currently the case. It's an is/ought problem. Also, instead of telling me not to be sensitive and then baldly stating your view as fact, maybe try and offer an argument about why this is not an issue where feminism has a role or claim. Moving on. I don't think women in one-piece swimsuits or tropical indigenous garb qualifies as part of what I'm talking about. And I've already demonstrated that it is not just the licensed stuff where TLG's printing is potentially crossing the signifier/sex line we're discussing. Please have a look at some of the medieval garb, corsets, etc they've printed in recent years. I don't think "but that's how people dressed!" qualifies as a responsible excuse. Yes, licensed sets are more commonly feature this problem but how is this not TLG's fault? The notion that I want to remove all feminine signifiers is a strawman. I've repeated many times that this is not my idea of a solution. In my last reply to you I clearly outlined what I thought would be helpful from TLG. I'm not going to repeat myself, man. It's all there already in my previous comments. I don't understand why you're asking me basically the same question twice. Perhaps you should be more specific.

He's talking about the Research Scientist set... which is sort of the catalyst for this whole debate. And maybe you, personally, aren't threatened by the idea that TLG needs to get with the times in terms of gender representation (even TLG seemingly agrees with that anyway)... but plenty of people on EB are if the two threads on this topic are any indication.

You can "see" whatever you want. It goes further than gender differentiation. Not all the time, sure, but enough of the time that it's been frequently criticized. Are you going to say the critics are full of crap, as others have tried to say? Making a problem out of nothing? Mounting a crusade? rUsing wording like that to describe the discussion here is just strident and seems to be fear-driven. I can understand dismissing them if they're like outsiders or something who "don't get it", but I'm a critic and I'm not an outsider. Are you going to dismiss my concerns? Why? You say that TLG isn't selling sex and then list some examples where they clearly are. Case in point, eh? I'm not protesting male figs because there's tons of variety in male figs which adequately represents the variety of that half the species. Females are the other half and they are not similarly represented. That's because of a few different factors. Please read my other comments on this thread if you want to know what I think about this because it's far easier than having me repeat myself or Autorazr's contributions. In brief: I think TLG is already taking steps to improve things. I think TLG is very responsive to fan and critic complaints and they want to make as many people happy as they can. That's awesome. They're one of the least sociopathic companies I know of. To improve female minfigs they should make more in general and try to represent more variety. This is already seemingly their position as well. This is awesome and a big part of our discussion here (and on the other thread) has been praising TLG for their attention to this issue. Male figs are already varied and represent a 2 or 3:1 ratio to female figs in most sets. This reflects that, currently, young boys get more Lego than girls in the standard themes. Girls have Friends and the Disney Princess themes that are "for them". This is a kind of segregatory practice which Lego did as a business decision, to try and capture more of the female market. This makes sense from that perspective and it's not as if TLG is doing something bad. That said, they could pay more attention to the underlying reasons why boys prefer their general themes more than girls rather than perpetuating the general stereotypes that afflict both genders. Boys don't de facto prefer violence and robots and machines any more than girls de facto prefer pink, cute animals, and baked goods. These influences are encouraged and reflected. Boys and girls are told what boys and girls like based on tradition, the insecurities of their parents and society in general, and so on. This is a social problem that is much bigger than Lego but in which Lego has its part. Since we're on a Lego forum, we're discussing that.

Yeah and you clearly put a lot of thought into it. Interesting thought but how can we tell, really? They're silent. Let them stay silent if that's what they want to do. The rest of us can have discussions and try to sort stuff out. I'm not at all. A hypothesis is a kind of premise that is testable in scientific conditions. A premise might be something like "Heated water will turn to vapour". No one would say that this isn't a premise. What makes it a hypothesis is at the point where we're declaring it as a scientific fact or theory and then testing it scientifically. Words, man. They are versatile like that. "Feminists and other Leftists", eh? So I see what kind of discussion this is going to be. As for the assumptions... well, the nature vs. nurture debate is by no means solved either psychologically or neurologically so it seems like all we've got are premises and rationally/obvservationally derived evidence, all "unproven" I guess, on which to debate the rational merits of each. It was said that unproven premises have no argumentative merit. I think this would be sensible if you'd said "unsupported premises" but you didn't, did you? Now your premise, that underlying assumptions are false on the other side due to an agenda, which is unproven also and based only on what rational merit and evidence you might conjure for the argument, is similarly without merit? Do you see how circular that is? Well, you must not, given the rest of your post. You're right. I should have narrowed my point there to what occurs between two rational, honest agents in a perfect world. There is plenty of misinformation and bad ideas out there, I can't deny that. Actually, there's still plenty of evidence for this but it's far from the only thing feminists still point out as a problem. I'm not going to get into this argument, though. It's way too specific for our scope here. I can just imagine how you'll take that, but tough. Oh sure, and it's them who are ideologically blocked. You must see that anyone can claim this about anything they don't agree with, right? And it seems like someone who does this may also have ideological reasons. You see this all the time with various camps like climate change deniers. Now I'm not saying you're a climate change denialist or anything like that, but you're definitely denying feminism its claims and casting aspersions on the credibility of its proponents and, seemingly, anyone who argues that a baseline feminist premise is useless simply because it's predicated on rational inquiry and social science than on something a microscope can detect. Too bad for history, philosophy, literature, etc then because all the "knowledge" of those fields is similarly not based on premises you can "prove" in any way that would seem to satisfy you (I'm not sure though because you've yet to define "proven" as you use it). If I try to use solid sources, you'll just say I'm ideologically compromised or something. If we stay on general ideas as we have, you can basically say whatever and never really acknowledge that the same can be said to you.

People want TLG to produce war Lego as well, but Lego doesn't. I've made this point a few times. TLG has taken socially conscious stances before, is the point. They have shown the capacity to make decisions that aren't purely profit-driven. Your comfort with companies feeding society's issues back to them because it's profitable is what I find absurd. As for expecting TLG to lead a gender revolution, well, they don't have to since it already happened before any of us were born. All anyone is asking TLG to do is be as respectful and responsible in their representations of women as they already are with men. Since they're already taking steps in that direction, I'm not sure why you need to put words in peoples' mouths. This discussion is much more mild than you're making it sound. As an aside, business are leading development in various areas of life all the time. Sustainable energy? Tesla. Technological networking as a social good? Google. The list goes on for days. To say that business are businesses and have no other responsibilities than... business is just lazy and incorrect. Male minfigs occasionally have beards. They occasionally have all kinds of other facial features like dimpled chins, scars, wrinkles, etc. There's quite a bit of variety there. But ALL contemporary female minifigs that are not children have lipstick. Every one of 'em. Feminism isn't a crusade. It's just people, mostly women, who want a fairer shake and point out places where things could be better. No one is saying LET'S RUIN TLG or LET'S BURN ALL THE LEGOS so I don't know why this bothers you so much. Why do you feel threatened by it? Why do you feel like just discussing this stuff is somehow ruining or trying to ruin Lego? There are MANY figs like that one which are totally appropriate. Unfortunately they are currently exceptions but they do show that TLG is improving and responding to representation complaints from their fans and critics. That is why even someone like me, who feels they could do better, can still love and support Lego. They give a crap and that is amazing. I do take your point that people find things to complain about. Insightful observation. Could it be derived from the fact that there are tons of different people, all cut from different cloth, who have different feelings and views and want to share them or see them reflected in the world around them? Seems like TLG can more or less keep doing what they're doing except for a few adjustments. One would be to improve the male to female ratio in non-Friends sets and themes. Another would be to stop boob/curve/lipstick printing every adult (or near to) female fig. The eyes are always quite enough to identify a fig as female. I don't think TLG should make gender-neutral torsos or heads as a rule since some torsos already do this job nicely.

Thanks Gunman.

Yeah. Hopefully with less grainy pictures too!

TLG is sexualizing minifigures. I'm not sure what "gross" sexualization would look like, but there's definite sexualization. Look no further than the corseted, breasts spilling out torsos of certain minfigs. As you say, breasts and curves are common signs of being of the female sex, but women are also sexualized more than men (male gaze in media) based on these features and it seems like you need to maintain a bit of cognitive dissonance to not see how emphasizing these features, like in the minifig I linked, is sexualization. Yes, men are also sexualized (more and more, actually) but this doesn't detract from the point. Beyond this issue, TLG defines feminity with curves and makeup. This is a less severe issue, I suppose, but also speaks to their gender priorities as being misguided. Not all male minifigs have bears or brawny torsos or whatever male signifiers we could name. They are, on the whole, more varied and thus more representational to men and boys because they run a gamut. This is by virtue of a) there being a 2 or 3:1 ratio of male to female minfigs (higher in some themes, such as Ninjago) and b) TLG seems to think if they don't have lipstick and tits, we won't be able to tell they're girls. I'm suspicious of the idea that we're "wired" this way, though. Many cultures have additional or different gender identifiers. I don't think anyone is arguing that TLG intentionally sells sex. I said as much. It's more their reaction and market-driven perpetuation of a common trend in general culture. Also, the argument that we should shrug this off because of focus grouping or market demand is ridiculous. How much money would TLG make on WW2 Lego? There is precedent for TLG to take a stance based on concerns other than profit, even if it does imply a profit loss as in the case of their policy on war Lego. So the logic doesn't follow. TLG is capable of showing some conscience here and they DO show it, which is why I will continue to support them.

Agreed totally. I think TLG is concerned with this stuff, too. They are smart, conscientious people and they are trying to do right by everyone. I personally don't put a lot of stock in decisions made via focus groups and market testing. Especially when it reinforces ideas about gender that we shouldn't encourage, such as that women must have curves and makeup to be women. The toy industry has this problem in general, but contrast Lego with something like Bratz or, hell, even Barbie. Their strategies show more nuance, more caution, and more thoughtfulness. Friends, whatever we might say about its less gender-responsible elements, has a lot of love behind its designs and it definitely does demonstrate, in some sets, the notion that young women can be more than consumers, hairdressers, dog walkers, etc.

That's an incredibly ignorant statement. You should be more sensitive and careful about dismissing people's feelings like that. What controversy, in your opinion, needs to exist? Controversy can only happen if enough people feel strongly about something. Enough people feel strongly about TLG's gender representation and have for quite a while. The popularity of the product, for both men and women, puts a spotlight on this very well established issue.

Amen. Though I'd say there are more and more young women who have adopted the violent nerdy heroic fantasy (of all settings) preoccupation of their male contemporaries. I'd say that the more arbitrary gender norms are overturned or at least de-emphasized to promote choices and decrease shame for those choices, stuff like Ninjago might appeal just as much to girls if there was more female representation. I'd say CHIMA is operating with (current) ideal ratios, but I do hope for a day when the male to female ratio in even the most representational media (including Lego themes) is better than 2:1.

That's a pretty wild misunderstanding of how argumentation works let alone the history of rational thought. Philosophy and other academic fields of inquiry typically rely on rational premises, rather than "proven" ones (whatever this means). The scientific method yields knowledge we tend to trust without much need for debate precisely because it's titular method is based on proving and disproving premises (hypotheses) but this is not a requirement for all forms of rationality, let alone debate. A premise's only necessary condition for the merit to argue it is that someone holds the premise. Bad premises will quickly be laid waste by better ones (and better argued ones) but the persistence of gender inequality as a foundational argument from and for feminism speaks to its solidity. There's also that the continued development of social science seems to support many claims about gender inequality that originated from feminist's rationalist observations and theories about gender. As the science and reason have developed, feminism has abandoned claims and made new ones, just as any social consciousness movement worth its salt evolves over time. I didn't know EB had so many men willing to be so dismissive to an incredibly well established and valuable body of inquiry and social development. I'd have to guess that some of the other men here are feeling a bit threatened by the idea that one of their favored products might not always be very inclusive to all genders. I get it, guys, but let's at least pretend we understand that we're a group of mostly men (and boys) sitting here discussing this and we may actually not have a very clear idea what it feels like to be a woman (or girl) in many respects, let alone when looking around for an interlocking brick system to play with. One that doesn't occasionally represent us only in gender terms.

Hey welcome Autorazr. Where'd you get that torso!?

You guys shouldn't be so quick to dismiss feminist concerns about the sexualization and representation issues in Lego. They are real issues, though I think TLG generally applies a healthy approach to working through them. Patting each other on the back for some guy's wordy claptrap about the need for a social consciousness movement to promote social consciousness? Yeah, don't be so hasty guys.

Very neat design for a small ship. Also like your figs.

Very cool little build. I love the idea of a pinch-faced old orcish winetaster.

Gorgeous work. I especially like the shaping of your trees. They look much more natural than most Lego trees somehow. Also, is that a brickbuilt bow I see with the lightsaber handle and green horns? That's a great idea. I'm already following you on Flickr it turns out.

Very cool. This is also a good idea, doing a building tour of the Guilds. I've always wanted to do a Kaliphlin build myself.

Thanks guys. I am definitely thinking about making a full MOC around this concept, especially since I now have a wider variety of colors for tree leaves.

I think the curves demonstrate a notable difference in the strategies of gendering 'figs. TLG occasionally prints "sexy woman" 'figs with visible cleavage and curves. This, rightly or wrongly, implies sex (whether or not we should consider the female chest sexual imagery and the male chest not is a separate issue) and TLG knows it. How could they not? To me, this is a case of selling sex to kids. That's just as inappropriate, in my view, as selling war to kids (which TLG refuses to do). But they do it anyway because, well, everybody does. It's a cynical, profit driven strategy. Far be it from them to not make a profit, of course, but acknowledging that they are a business trying to make a buck doesn't insulate companies like TLG from social criticism and the suggestion that they always try to do better with stuff like representation and getting away from outmoded gender stereotypes and the like. That said, TLG is often responsive about this, which is why they're a company worth supporting in spite of any oversights, wrong footing, etc. The Research Lab, though they smartly don't admit it, is a goodwill gesture. They are interested in selling their product AND being ethical. It just doesn't happen by magic. Takes time, research, feedback, etc.

Hey, that's mighty decent of you Gedren. I'll be sure to place an order with them after work! EDIT: Holy crap, Gedren! This is a great store. I don't know how I've missed this one.

I should get more comfortable with bricklinking small orders but I usually try to limit myself to one every couple of months, usually with an assortment of stuff I need. I was 'linking plates I need last night and got up to $50 with assorted other crap and then backed off out of disgust with myself haha. But I will check on the arms. My wife says stop browsing by color or part type and just search the parts I need and pad out orders for shipping or whatever with anything interesting the store might have that I don't necessarily need. Seems like a good policy. I have a lot of trouble finding Bricklink stores that have a good selection of stuff I need. Many of the ones I've used a lot specialize in minifigs and sets instead of raw bricks.

I've noticed I only have 2-3 pairs of medium green minifig arms in my entire collection. Just doesn't seem like a popular color for figs anymore. Do you guys know of a solid source on getting more of those for cheap?