The mental gymnastics you are employing here are almost pathological. You also stated so many obviously incorrect things it is a bit overwhelming. I will attempt to have a fruitful dialogue with you still, despite having every reason to think such efforts will be in vain.
Your personal incredulity does not automatically make what I say wrong.
Yet, you don't give a single one...
You refuse to accept evidence unless it fits in with your own narrow definition of sexualization, rather than the more broad examples of which it can occur. It's akin to how morons on sites like the Hawkeye Initiative equate sexualization with dressing men in skimpy outfits designed for women. You aren't even aware of masculine sexualization, yet you want to set the parameters for what counts as evidence?
Yes it most certainly does. A jacked character just going about his business is not sexualized. A male character only becomes sexualized if the cutscenes emphasize the cut of his muscles, his physique, or demeanor in an erotic manner.
An ignorant, reductionist view if there ever was one. So just to be clear on how you view the matter:
When a female character is physically appealing in terms of her build or manner of dress, it's sexualization.
When a female character's body is viewed by the camera and puts emphasis on her appealing features, it's sexualization.
When a male character is physically appealing in terms of his build or manner of dress, it's not sexualization.
When a male character's body is viewed by the camera and puts emphasis on his appealing features, it's sexualization.
Again, this is doublethink. You believe men cannot be sexualized by their physique or manner of dress, only how the camera views them? This is wrong.
This NEVER occurs for males and this ALWAYS occurs for females.
Your previous statements have been hyperbole. This is an outright lie.
Even if the numbers are not as absolute as never and always, they are pretty damn close if you were to break things down into percentages. You are arguing that it is EQUAL.
I am arguing that it's equal, because it is. Your malfunction is you don't think male sexualization "counts" as sexualization. You equate different with non-existent.
It becomes a problem when every time you interact with a character in a video game or other medium of a specific gender, they are always presented in a one dimensional sexual way. This translates into the real world, where you presume that the person you are speaking to is not a complex human, with lives, and with complex desires and problems that do not involve sex at all.
Except every sexualized character you mention is not just some one-dimensional object. They all have stories, motivations, goals, allies, enemies, struggles and successes. You're personal offense is making you take a reductionist view of these characters. By the very definition of the term, and in a hilarious fit of irony, you are objectifying them. You are removing everything but their superficial appearence, reducing them to nothing more than a tool to use for your ideological agenda.
Women in stories and media being exclusively used in relationship to the male character and their sexual lives is so common that there is a test called the Bechdel test that points out if a story treats women as humans. Most stories fail, not just in video games and in films, but in literature as well. This fact pretty much proves your position incorrect.
You continue to objectify female characters by removing everything but their most superficial status which suits your argument. You reduce them to "love interest." That is in complete denial of any kind of character nuance that exists, as for you it's inconvenient to have around. Moreover...
the Bechdel test
You completely miss the point of the Bechdel Test. It's about bias in representation, not the roles women play in individual stories. Most importantly it's an agreed upon fact that it only works in aggregate and is a poor tool for determining of female characters are represented well in media. Pacific Rim, which did a great job with it's female lead Mako Mori which was praised by feminists fails the test. Twilight, a sexist work if there ever was one, passes with flying colors.
Uhhh... No. Whenever a person is made out to be x and not a complex human with a life, problems, thought processes outside of x, etc they become objectified. There are many forms of objectification. When a person becomes a label and not a human, they become objectified.
And this is exactly what you are doing to female characters in order to make your argument. Most importantly it just proves my point that sexualization and objectification are not inherently linked. Even the most sexualized character is not objectified as first and foremost they are a character. They are more than just their body and their clothing.
Also that is bad logic on your part.
Of course it is. I was summing up your logically fallacious statement and called it was it was. Doublethink.
You are dismissing the fundamental aspect of the sexualization of characters which is the overt nature and the degree of conscious effort that goes into that process. If you are a male looking at a jacked guy doing regular things with no suggestion involved, and you think he is being sexualized, then you are probably just a homosexual.
So you're diving right into homophobic statements and assumptions that straight men can't recognize sexualization despite seeing no physical appeal in it? Here's some knowledge for you:
Straight men aren't repulsed by the male body and can even appreciate it's beauty and aesthetics without being homosexual. The only place this can't happen is in your own deluded fantasies.
Your absurd position was that males and females are sexualized EQUALLY. The people who make video games and movies are disproportionately straight white males.
What is the Japanese video game industry? So you're erasing an entire separate people's contribution to gaming? How racist of you.
You also seem to think that only men sexualize female characters. Bayonetta, a highly sexualized character, was designed by a woman. She thought such a character was a power fantasy.
Of course there are gay creators of art that add homoerotic perspectives to those characters, but they a part of a very small minority.
It took you this long to acknowledge LGBT video game creators, and only so you can brush it aside as "a very small minority." Cute.
Give me some examples of what you consider the sexualization of male characters in videogame characters.
Your entire argument is based off so much ignorance, doublethink, and informal fallacy of the topic that I can't even begin to take this request seriously. So how about you answer me this question:
What is, outside of your own personal offense, the evil of sexualization? Your offense is not good enough. You need a concrete, provable basis for why it's a bad thing.