#idk i know that radical feminism as a movement has never existed separate from racism/classism/transphobia

[the-cryptographer]

Mmm... I think Aloy Horizon Zero Dawn kinda disappoints me as a protagonist because I can definitely feel the ways the story went out of its way to minimise her relationship with her gender. Aloy is someone who imho would be a more resonant character if the game better explored her feelings about being outcast and excluded from her tribe AND about being excluded from societal femininity. Something I don't imagine she would simply wish to be included in either - it's complicated. But the absence of this conflict in the narrative to me feels like an oversight that can basically only be explained by trying to keep a female protagonist otherwise as comfortable for male devs/players as possible, and not letting gender influence her priorities in a way that would make them clash with those of male players.

And I think it's fair if the writers/devs didn't feel capable of tackling this. And this is of course happening in an environment of executives that are wary of funding games with female protagonists to start with and an environment of gamers who are incredibly sexist and like to complain when a fictional women is too martially competent or has vellus hair.

But, yeah... mmm... idk? I suppose this is also me disbelieving the egalitarian quality of the worldbuilding? It's not that women are less martially capable than men or unable to meaningfully hunt and fight. It's that this is a world where people are under constant threat of death via killer robots and exposure, and any group of people who regularly take on the task of leaving camp to hunt will suffer casualties. And losing too many people with wombs (who are disproportionately if not exclusively women) is uh... extremely bad for the survival of a population in a way losing people without them isn't.

So, yeah, realistically there should be fewer women hunters in this verse. And it's not a problem that Aloy - who is already an outcast and has been written off by the tribe and needed to learn to live in the wilds - is totally bamf at archery and climbing and taking down robots and bandits. Just, yeah, like... I think if anything this should be more of a mixed blessing and another thing that separates her from social conformity. And it's almost strange to feel the game lean out of this interpretation rather than into it when they have Aloy otherwise struggle against being accepted as an outcast with her own people and as an outlander with ppl of other tribes.